Slitherine

The chart on p92 that indicates the number of stands/dice that are alloted states (in one section):

"Foot with bow, longbow crossbow or firearm supporting medium or heavy foot of the same stationary battle group from a 2nd rank, or (bow only) from a 3rd rank."

My question is should this be taken literally in that ONLY "bow" can shoot from the third rank (in this situaion) and longbow can not?

Thanks,
GG

GrumblingGrognard wrote:The chart on p92 that indicates the number of stands/dice that are alloted states (in one section):

"Foot with bow, longbow crossbow or firearm supporting medium or heavy foot of the same stationary battle group from a 2nd rank, or (bow only) from a 3rd rank."

My question is should this be taken literally in that ONLY "bow" can shoot from the third rank (in this situaion) and longbow can not?

Thanks,
GG

Yes

The reason to allow for the third rank shooting is for formations where the front two ranks are spear or similar and the third is supporting archers. In allmost all cases this type of mixed formation is armed with bow so in practice the fact that longbow cannot shoot from the third rank is not particularly relevant.

The only case I can think of is Burgundian ordonance mixed BGs where id you deploy your 6 bases less than 3 bases wide you would end up with longbow in the third rank and this is most definitley not the way these troops fought.