Slitherine

Yesterday this situation happened:


I'm green and want to impact the LH in front of me. There's about 6.5" between the 2 LH BGs. However, I have enemy knights in the rear and I'm in their restricted area. My understanding is that if I declare a charge on the LH the Kn can charge into the rear of the LH. Is this correct? Pretty bizarre situation considering the Kn would never be able to catch the LH in a race directly forward.

I can understand the rules have to be simple, but still that's pretty strange.

carlos wrote:I'm green and want to impact the LH in front of me. There's about 6.5" between the 2 LH BGs. However, I have enemy knights in the rear and I'm in their restricted area. My understanding is that if I declare a charge on the LH the Kn can charge into the rear of the LH. Is this correct? Pretty bizarre situation considering the Kn would never be able to catch the LH in a race directly forward.

I can understand the rules have to be simple, but still that's pretty strange.

Only if you assume that the LH do in fact start their charge, and that both BGs start moving at exactly the same time.

The effect of the rules, however, is that the LH don't actually start their charge at all, and this represents them being too distracted by the Knights behind them to start a charge on someone else. Looked at this way I would submit that it no longer seems strange at all.

Essentially the LH have more important concerns than charging the LH to their front, and if ordered to do so will dither until the knights hit them. ("But sir, what about those knights behind us?"). Their sensible course of action would be not to declare a charge, but to move away from the knights in an orderly fashion in the manoeuvre phase. I submit that this is historically much more reasonable than allowing them to charge someone else ignoring the knights completely.

Yes you are correct. Essentially in this situation you are fine to move your LH away from the knights and will be able to get them so far away that you will not be in the situation next move but if you charge you will be in trouble. Sort of the knights are distracting your LH, after all you don't have to charge so what this is doing is making the LH honest to the minor threat.

Okay, no probs. I was + on impact and + on melee so I ended up going into the LH after moving away from the knights for the first turn figuring I could get a quick win. Oops... broken before the knights could join the fray...

I posted on a similar situation recently. Look for my thread "The Agema were on the bench, but still Alex lost"
I too felt the way intercept charges were handled resulted in some silly looking situations.
To date I don't feel I received a satisfactory answer apart from the obvious "you muppet, what were you doing letting them get in such a bad place?!"
I would like to see further debate on intercept charges.

Regards

Dave M (a self-confessed FOG muppet)

So that we can rile you over your muppetry some more?

nikgaukroger wrote:So that we can rile you over your muppetry some more?

Undoubtably an accurate reply, but still not satisfactory!

carlos wrote:Yesterday this situation happened:
However, I have enemy knights in the rear and I'm in their restricted area. My understanding is that if I declare a charge on the LH the Kn can charge into the rear of the LH.

Quick addition. Mounted have to be within 4 MU and infantry 2 MU to charge. The restricted zone which extends 2 MU in front of BGs that affects movement is not quite the same thing.

davem wrote:I posted on a similar situation recently. Look for my thread "The Agema were on the bench, but still Alex lost"
I too felt the way intercept charges were handled resulted in some silly looking situations.
To date I don't feel I received a satisfactory answer apart from the obvious "you muppet, what were you doing letting them get in such a bad place?!"
I would like to see further debate on intercept charges.

Here is the answer, satisfactory or otherwise:

The effect of the rules is that the chargers don't actually start their charge at all, and this represents them being too distracted by the enemy behind them (or on their flank) to start a charge on someone else.

Essentially the declared chargers have more important concerns than charging the enemy to their front, and if ordered to do so will dither until the flank/rear enemy hit them.

It's a design decision. We are not in the market for rules amendments for a very very long time.

bddbrown wrote:Quick addition. Mounted have to be within 4 MU and infantry 2 MU to charge. The restricted zone which extends 2 MU in front of BGs that affects movement is not quite the same thing.

My drawing was rubbish. In fact my LH were at about 3.75 inches from the knights, that's why it looked so odd that they could be caught.

rbodleyscott wrote:

davem wrote:I posted on a similar situation recently. Look for my thread "The Agema were on the bench, but still Alex lost"
I too felt the way intercept charges were handled resulted in some silly looking situations.
To date I don't feel I received a satisfactory answer apart from the obvious "you muppet, what were you doing letting them get in such a bad place?!"
I would like to see further debate on intercept charges.

Here is the answer, satisfactory or otherwise:

The effect of the rules is that the chargers don't actually start their charge at all, and this represents them being too distracted by the enemy behind them (or on their flank) to start a charge on someone else.

Essentially the declared chargers have more important concerns than charging the enemy to their front, and if ordered to do so will dither until the flank/rear enemy hit them.

It's a design decision. We are not in the market for rules amendments for a very very long time.

Sorry Richard, but I do think this is a mistake. There are other people encountering this situation in their games and finding it odd. Simon has pointed out how he exploited it in our game: he moved the Cv to my front so close to me that a wheel when charging would be impossible and thus ensure I couldn't attempt to make frontal contact with the interceptors.
I would hazard a guess this will be a thread people return to time and time again, esp. inexperienced people getting bounced by the more experienced who know this anomoly exists.
I have made my view on this plain and will now drop the topic, but that doesn't change my opinion.

Regards

Dave M

Greetings

I've gone through this thread and the 'Agema' thread in some detail - more for consideration as to home games than for anysuggestion for a change to the published rules (see richard's post above).

I don't have a problem with the LH example as I think one might well expect any self respecting LH would get themselves out of there rather than charge other skirmishers with enemy knights to their rear.

Let's assume a house rule that allows an intercepted unit to 'step forward' even if charged in rear (presumably one would have to allow rear intercept chargers to step forward as well tomaintain contact?).

What would happen in the example given? The enemy (blue) LH were > 2 MU away. The knights would catch the green LH and they would be unable to step forward, so no difference from the current position.

The agema situation is somewhat different - I'll try and put my thoughts on that into that thread.

Regards