Over Slippy Light Cavalry

MattDower · Post by **MattDower** » Sun Jan 11, 2009 9:04 pm

I had another great day at the MAWS FoG Boot Camp.

Since there were no other 25mm aries there, Hammy very kindly lent me some 15mm Arabs, so I essentially an army consisting of Light Cavalry and Shooty Cavalry. So this was a new army and a new scale for me - so I had more learning to do.

On one flank, my worth opponent, Dave, managed to surround one of my light horse units (I had enemy facing my rear, front and both flanks). However, a 90 degree right turn, followed by a 200 degree wheel put my unit into what turned out to a battle winning position. Dave was understandibly furious; umpires declared it as legal.

Basically we run into a problem created because you don't measure round the arc of a wheel, but point to point on the front-outside corner of the wheeling unit.
This means that because a small light cavalry unit is 80mm wide, a 180 degree wheel with move the outer corner 160mm, which is under its full move. Indeed it can continue moving and as it does so the distance measured reduces, so enabling a light cavalry unit to wheel a full 360 degrees, or more usefully say 300 degrees - effectively making it a backward wheel of 60 degrees.

With 25mm this doesn't happen since, with the wider frontage, it can only wheel about 90 degrees.

Taking this to absurdity, is a 4 wide 25mm infantry battlegroup wheels it can do about 20 degrees - fine. However by a strict interpetation of the rules it could keep wheeling to 340 degrees since the regulating distance once more becomes once move less than a full move!!

Although, this manoeuvre served me well I can't help thinking that its not right.

Any comments?

Matt

myrm · Post by **myrm** » Sun Jan 11, 2009 11:03 pm

I can think of two ways of looking at it....

1) No matter how you do things then there will be some places in any ruleset where it shows that this is a game, not really a battle.

2) If they got into a tight space would a bunch of light cavalry without space actually parade ground wheel and move, or does this effectively represent a more organic flow to the line reformed pointing where the officer says.

I would prefer the second answer to be acceptable, obviously, but I have no idea how true it is myself.

hammy · Post by **hammy** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 9:18 am

I seem to remember some discussion on this issue some time ago but have not been able to locate the posts involved.

I agree it seems very odd that a 2 wide BG of LH can wheel more than 180 when if it wheels 90 it has used well over half its move

rbodleyscott · Post by **rbodleyscott** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 9:36 am

hammy wrote:I agree it seems very odd that a 2 wide BG of LH can wheel more than 180 when if it wheels 90 it has used well over half its move

In part of our drive to keep the rules as simple as possible, we decided not to have a rule to prevent this. As myrm says, it really only affects LH and can be rationalised as the men moving individually (or in globi, drungi etc.) to their new positions. After all, LH represent small packets of men (globi) separated by gaps, not a homogenous rectangular formation in ranks and files.

Wheeling is only a rules device anyway. Most troops in ancient armies were incapable of wheeling in the parade ground sense. Yet they must have been able to change direction by some means or they would have fallen off the edge of the world! We are too much in the habit of thinking of bodies comprised of individual men in terms of fixed rectangular geometries.

timmy1 · Post by **timmy1** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 9:51 am

Richard

'We are too much in the habit of thinking of bodies comprised of individual men in terms of fixed rectangular geometries.' Could this have anything to do with another well known set of Ancients rules that based it's level of abstraction upon geometric movement, by any chance? (LARGE SMILEY)

Apologies for the ungramatical sentence construction but it does not work the other way.

rbodleyscott · Post by **rbodleyscott** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 9:53 am

timmy1 wrote:Richard

We are too much in the habit of thinking of bodies comprised of individual men in terms of fixed rectangular geometries.

Could this have anything to do with another well known set of Ancients rules that based it's level of abstraction upon geometric movement, by any chance?

I could not possibly comment.

domblas · Post by **domblas** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 12:26 pm

i thought wheels couldn't equal or exceed 90°

petedalby · Post by **petedalby** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 12:27 pm

Only in a charge.

Pete

david53 · Post by **david53** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 1:04 pm

rbodleyscott wrote:
hammy wrote:I agree it seems very odd that a 2 wide BG of LH can wheel more than 180 when if it wheels 90 it has used well over half its move
In part of our drive to keep the rules as simple as possible, we decided not to have a rule to prevent this. As myrm says, it really only affects LH and can be rationalised as the men moving individually (or in globi, drungi etc.) to their new positions. After all, LH represent small packets of men (globi) separated by gaps, not a homogenous rectangular formation in ranks and files.

Wheeling is only a rules device anyway. Most troops in ancient armies were incapable of wheeling in the parade ground sense. Yet they must have been able to change direction by some means or they would have fallen off the edge of the world! We are too much in the habit of thinking of bodies comprised of individual men in terms of fixed rectangular geometries.

Surely if you can do this with LH you can do this will all horse, as not all horse were in formal unit formations.
dave

hammy · Post by **hammy** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 1:58 pm

rbodleyscott wrote:
hammy wrote:I agree it seems very odd that a 2 wide BG of LH can wheel more than 180 when if it wheels 90 it has used well over half its move
In part of our drive to keep the rules as simple as possible, we decided not to have a rule to prevent this. As myrm says, it really only affects LH and can be rationalised as the men moving individually (or in globi, drungi etc.) to their new positions. After all, LH represent small packets of men (globi) separated by gaps, not a homogenous rectangular formation in ranks and files.

Wheeling is only a rules device anyway. Most troops in ancient armies were incapable of wheeling in the parade ground sense. Yet they must have been able to change direction by some means or they would have fallen off the edge of the world! We are too much in the habit of thinking of bodies comprised of individual men in terms of fixed rectangular geometries.

I can live with it for light horse but what about a BG of heavy foot effectively wheeling backwards by wheeling 'forwards' over 270 degrees?

nikgaukroger · Post by **nikgaukroger** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 2:03 pm

david53 wrote:
Surely if you can do this with LH you can do this will all horse, as not all horse were in formal unit formations.
dave

It isn't really to do with formal unit formations. Any mounted rated heavier than LH by definition are not seen as having moved about as quickly and fluidly as those defined as LH. For example Gallic cavalry wouldn't have had formal units but were not as fluid as, say, Numidian cavalry.

rbodleyscott · Post by **rbodleyscott** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 2:30 pm

hammy wrote:I can live with it for light horse but what about a BG of heavy foot effectively wheeling backwards by wheeling 'forwards' over 270 degrees?

Probably another "Punch him" FAQ, even though, in this case, the rules do not specifically disallow it. As an umpire, I would certainly disallow it, whatever the rules (don't) say.

We probably need to do something about this, although I have never yet seen anyone try to do it. Maybe we need an erratum limiting non-charging wheels to a maximum of 180 degrees.

nikgaukroger · Post by **nikgaukroger** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 2:34 pm

Why not just a blanket no more than 90 degrees? KISS and all that.

jcmedhurst · Post by **jcmedhurst** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 2:34 pm

I can live with it for light horse but what about a BG of heavy foot effectively wheeling backwards by wheeling 'forwards' over 270 degrees?

Be very careful here, this may be a way for non-LH to do the turn 180, move backwards and then turn back. I can just see the pike phalanxes wheeling backwards away from the legionaries. Or the legionaries come up to the nice long unit of Early Germans who suddenly wheel backwards away from them and out of charge range. (supervised by a general to avoid the CMT of course)

rbodleyscott · Post by **rbodleyscott** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 2:40 pm

nikgaukroger wrote:Why not just a blanket no more than 90 degrees? KISS and all that.

Worth considering, but it would represent a significant change to the rules both as written and as intended. The 180 degree restriction would merely make the rules work as intended. We were aware of the ability of LH to wheel 200 degrees or so, and were willing to live with that, but hadn't considered the implications in terms of infantry wheeling 310 degrees!

nikgaukroger · Post by **nikgaukroger** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 2:40 pm

Lets not exagerate here. With a 3MU move HF in anything other than a 1 wide column are not going to be able to do this are they?

domblas · Post by **domblas** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 2:45 pm

thats true, all BG in one base wide column can now move in any sens and avoid flank attacks with that interpretation of wheels.

as umpire i'll restrict wheels to 180 ° i think

hammy · Post by **hammy** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 2:53 pm

nikgaukroger wrote:Lets not exagerate here. With a 3MU move HF in anything other than a 1 wide column are not going to be able to do this are they?

Why not?

If you have a BG say 4 bases wide and you 'wheel' it forwards on the front right corner and keep going all the way round the circle until the front left corner is now 3 MU behind where the front left corner started then you have only wheeled (by the definition of how to measure a wheel) 3 MU.

To be honest I think the best solution would be to not allow a single wheel to be more than 90 degrees and only allow the straight line measurement to apply to each individual wheel, not the whole move.

nikgaukroger · Post by **nikgaukroger** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 3:08 pm

Doh, you are of course quite correct Mr H

babyshark · Post by **babyshark** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 3:36 pm

rbodleyscott wrote:
nikgaukroger wrote:Why not just a blanket no more than 90 degrees? KISS and all that.
Worth considering, but it would represent a significant change to the rules both as written and as intended. The 180 degree restriction would merely make the rules work as intended. We were aware of the ability of LH to wheel 200 degrees or so, and were willing to live with that, but hadn't considered the implications in terms of infantry wheeling 310 degrees!

A 180 degree restriction would not be difficult to implement, and would achieve the necessary limitation with a minimum of fuss. It would, of course, need to go in the FAQ.

Marc