Slitherine

I was paging through Immortal Fire the other day and saw this under the army notes for the Syracusian army:

"It is permissible to depict the disguised rowers using hoplites. If this is done, their true nature does not need to be disclosed until they are shot at or engaged in close combat."

I found that to be intriguing and downright cool. I know, it's kinda gimmicky and most likely would not make a big difference in the outcome of a game, especially since this affects only 2 BGs. But I still like the thought of springing this on someone in an open competition.

Anyways. I only have about half the army books, so I was wondering what other armies have these kinds of cool "dirty tricks" special rules available to them. Anyone know of any, and does anyone ever actually use them?

PS: I suppose it would be going too far to claim a rear-support bonus from the Disguised Rowers (who are Poor) when they are behind average Hoplites, yes? A truly cheesy rules-lawyer could argue that they counted as average hoplites until they are "revealed" and therefore could give support to an average BG. But I would never go there.

The only similar instance I can think of is in Fog R, where the Polish army can have peasants on nags (Mob) pretending to be Winged Hussars.

As for using them, the basic principle would be that, other than the deception, you can't gain any benefit from the gimmick. They would have to move as if Poor Undrilled HF. They only appear to be Hoplites to the enemy, your own Average troops would know they are crap and wouldn't regard them as suitable for support.

I've never known anyone use Syracusan, let alone the disguised rowers. The Rowers are probably not sufficiently different or cheaper than what they're pretending to be to make much of an impact. The Fog R Fake Hussars have made a few apearances and they're handy to disguise the position of the real Hussars (and cheaply boost the BG count) but they are an 8pt BG pretending to be a 92 pt one.

I've used Syracusans AND used Disguised Hoplites. It was several years ago at CanCon.

It's true that you have to be careful how you use them, but they are a cheap BG and are still real troops.

I used them on the flanks where I expected Light Horse to go trying to make it around to my baggage. They still stop enemy troops from marching at 6". They still need a reasonable number of hits to cause a test, so the enemy have to send something decent to take them on.

I don't remember the details of the game, but I remember them being quite useful in one game.

I DO remember one game against a regular opponent of mine. In a previous game, he played Spartans and my Syracusans made serious mince meat of his Spartiates. I used my own Spartan troops to mark which ones were the Disguised Rowers. As I put them down, I called them out as "these are "Citizen Hoplites, Poor, Undrilled, Protected, Offensive Spearmen"... you can tell they are poor because they are using crappy equipment they found lying on a battlefield a few weeks ago"

It was one of my better jibes, but made even better when they were revealed as "Disguised Rowers"