FoG in Melbourne

[lawrenceg]

I umpired FoG on the first day of Caesaer's Challenge in Melbourne.There were only 4 players and only one umpire call, which was a simple RTFR: "Do steep hills count as cover against shooting?" No, they don't, the terrain table says what counts as cover.

I heard afterwards that the two participating clubs had each been playing different sections of the rules differently, but they managed to agree on (I assume correct) interpretations once they discovered this in the games without the need for an umpire.


I also participated in a FoG game at the League of Ancients club, which gave rise to a couple of questions.

1. A BG of Pikemen would have had 6 dice against an opposing BG, two at -, four at evens. They had to lose 1 dice per three. I couldn't find anything in the rules to stop the pikemen from losing the two dice at -.

If the targets had been different BGs they would have had to lose dice in proportion to the number allocated to each target, i.e. 1:2, but would 1:1 or 0:2 have been closer to the ideal ratio? The spirit of the rule suggests that the same allocation of lost dice should apply even when all targets are in the same BG.

2. We weren't sure if the pikemen could end in a non-normal formation after feeding more bases into the melee. There was no restriction in the section on feeding in more bases so we assumed it was OK, but we probably ought to have looked in the section on formations. I noted that several players misunderstood the normal formation and thought that all ranks had to be equal if possible.


I had an exceptional turn in which I had 2 BG of knights (one superior, one average) charged by two BG of superior knights. My superiors lost a base on impact while the average BG dropped to Fragmented. The superiors had a general who died. The average BG failed the CMT for this and broke. The superiors now tested for two causes and failed. Crossbowmen providing rear support (too close) tested for the broken unit and failed. They were then hit by the pursuit and broke as a result of the impact. The remaining knights broke in the melee. Exit one wing. Luckily we were winning everywhere else.

Other comments:

Everyone was surprised at how effective average longbow swordsmen were in impact. They also discovered that opposing bowmen with crossbowmen was not a good idea.

The beginners were keen to get on with playing and didn't bother too much about checking in the rules exactly how or when things were supposed to happen. Even with the index, it still took a while to find the things we wanted to look up.

[shall]

Lawrence

Dice removal is covered t the end of theclose combat section - page 94 last bullet of top section

What you do is drop dice in proportion to how manmy you have where.........

So in your example you havea 2 and a 4.

For the first dice the 4 is in the majority, and 1 dice is removed from this

Then you have dealt with 3 of those so you have 2 and 1 left to subtrect from.

Again the dice goes from the majority - so this time the 2.

Thus its 1 dice of each and there is no choice.

Si