Slitherine

Posted: **Thu Mar 19, 2009 5:21 pm**

In a recent thread has been referred to the diagram at p 86, and so I look it deeper. I have the feelings the case of right hand file can never happen, or can happen just in very rare cases. In fact, the base rear those marked with B should turn, in the same way of that in left hand file. If there wasn't any base rears of B, then B should turn, and so never in this case could happen the situation depicted. I guess that this could happen if:

there isn't room to turn the base (B or rear of B) but it seems quite rare (and rules doesn't mention it);
red BG is just 2 bases and it is hit in front and both flanks (red BG wouldn't have enough bases to front all enemies) but also this seems quite rare.

I don't see any other cases where the situation could verify. IMHO, it should be better to change the overlap rules (pag 86 2nd bullet) so:

No overlap permitted on a corner between two contacted edges, unless one of the bases which form the corner has its front unengaged.

(the second part of the rule has needed to let overlap in the case, not so rare, depicted by the second diagram of p 72)
P.S. my English is horrible, so of course you can reassemble in a better way.

Posted: **Thu Mar 19, 2009 5:52 pm**

If the light horse were in edge to edge contact they could turn 90 into contact as per the rules on P76. This would not require the BG they were fighting to turn bases to face. The situation is possible if very unlikely.

Posted: **Thu Mar 19, 2009 8:01 pm**

OK, I got it, but not only it seems a rare case, in this case it is a decision of the flanked BG owner. So the question is: the authors' intention was to let an overlap on a corner where two BG are fighting against one, or not? At present, with the actual form of the rules this happens and the rules on p 86 second bullet seems inapplicable.

Posted: **Thu Mar 19, 2009 8:52 pm**

marioslaz wrote:OK, I got it, but not only it seems a rare case, in this case it is a decision of the flanked BG owner. So the question is: the authors' intention was to let an overlap on a corner where two BG are fighting against one, or not? At present, with the actual form of the rules this happens and the rules on p 86 second bullet seems inapplicable.

Page 86 2nd bullet is "the actual form of the rules" and it says that you cannot get "an overlap on a corner where two BG are fighting one".

in the page 86 picture, the two bases "A" do not fight as overlaps.

All other bases fight either because they have a front edge in contact with an enemy base edge, or they are in overlap.

I don't understand why you think there is any doubt here.

By the way, your English is much better than my Italian

Posted: **Fri Mar 20, 2009 2:14 am**

The intention of page 86 is to demonstrate who can and cannot fight as an overlap in a flank charge situation so the actual layout of the picture may not be relevant to flank charges etc. Yes I agree this situation would most likely be next to impossible to actually pull off in a game.

Posted: **Fri Mar 20, 2009 8:08 am**

I apologize because clearly I didn't explain well my thought.
I know that the entire diagrams at p86 represent a situation hard to verify in a real game. But I focused on the right hand side of the diagram, where there are the bases marked with capital letters. Imagine a BG charged in front and on a flank only (not both flanks). One base of this BG must turn to face the flank charge. If you look at p56 and follow, you'll find a such BG must turn at least one base also if all its bases were in contact with enemy at the moment flank is charged. So, the only situation where a BG could not turn a base to face a flank attack is that described at p76, and anyway it is up to player to turn or not one base.
This bring to the conclusion the rules described at 2nd bullet of p86 points to a situation which practically doesn't exist in the game. So IMHO there are 2 possible situations:

Authors are very scrupulous, or
They thought to get a different result

It's clear my opinion could be influenced by some reminiscences of DBM (I don't play it since 5 years, but still I can remember the general structure of the game), but my feeling is that intention was to exclude or to limit overlap on a corner where there are 2 enemy BG, but this practically has not been achieved. IMHO, when 2 BG fight against one that face in two directions, there shouldn't be overlap in the corner between the two side contacted, if the 2 BG are contiguous, because this is too much penalizing for the BG facing in 2 directions and also because, if you think to a real situation, there is no room to claim a contribute from troops not in front contact with enemy; if you look at miniatures (imagine the situation of diagram at p86 left side) you can say the right front base of the left cavalry BG is in contact with the side of the base which is fighting to its front, but if you think a such situation in real life it shouldn't happen so (never experienced, but...).

Posted: **Fri Mar 20, 2009 8:32 am**

I think I understand your point, but the positioning in the diagram is to illustrate the rule, which I think it does.

Posted: **Fri Mar 20, 2009 9:14 am**

marioslaz wrote:It's clear my opinion could be influenced by some reminiscences of DBM (I don't play it since 5 years, but still I can remember the general structure of the game), but my feeling is that intention was to exclude or to limit overlap on a corner where there are 2 enemy BG, but this practically has not been achieved. IMHO, when 2 BG fight against one that face in two directions, there shouldn't be overlap in the corner between the two side contacted, if the 2 BG are contiguous, because this is too much penalizing for the BG facing in 2 directions and also because, if you think to a real situation, there is no room to claim a contribute from troops not in front contact with enemy; if you look at miniatures (imagine the situation of diagram at p86 left side) you can say the right front base of the left cavalry BG is in contact with the side of the base which is fighting to its front, but if you think a such situation in real life it shouldn't happen so (never experienced, but...).

The front right base of the left cavalry has its front in contact with the front enemy base. This is not an overlap. Having your front in contact with enemy gives you normal close combat dice. An "overlap" (within the meaning of the rules) is when your front is NOT in contact with enemy, but you still get dice in combat.

The rules do prevent overaps against a base with enemy front edges in contact with two of its edges.

I don't fully understand your point. Are you saying that if a base has enemy front edges in contact with two of its adjacent edges, then only one of them should get dice? This is not what the rules say, but do you think they ought to say that?

Posted: **Fri Mar 20, 2009 10:34 am**

lawrenceg wrote:I don't fully understand your point. Are you saying that if a base has enemy front edges in contact with two of its adjacent edges, then only one of them should get dice? This is not what the rules say, but do you think they ought to say that?

Again, I apologize because I couldn't explain rightly. Forget diagram at p86, because I understood I made a bad choice to use it as example and I made a mess. Now look at my diagram:

Yellow and green BG are friends and fight against red one.
Case 1: yellow bases marked with blue dot cannot fight as overlap
Case 2: yellow bases marked with blue dot can fight as overlap
This is what rules say (p 86 2nd bullet of Overlap paragraph). The problem is case 1 practically doesn't exist in FoG and you can get always an overlap over a corner of a BG which is fighting in 2 directions. IMHO this shouldn't be permitted and in both cases yellow bases marked with blue dot shouldn't add dice (you can of course overlap on the other sides, both green on its right side and yellow on its left one).

Posted: **Fri Mar 20, 2009 10:41 am**

In case 2 the blue dotted bases can fight, but they are not an overlap, they are in front edge contact with the enemy.

Case 1 will seldom occur, but it is possible for it to occur, and we needed a rule for what to do if it does.

Posted: **Fri Mar 20, 2009 11:04 am**

In case one, since the blue dotted bases can't fight - can they move to the other side and act as an overlap there?

Posted: **Fri Mar 20, 2009 11:13 am**

dave_r wrote:In case one, since the blue dotted bases can't fight - can they move to the other side and act as an overlap there?

Presumably so if it is their bound, but not in the enemy bound.

Posted: **Fri Mar 20, 2009 12:07 pm**

rbodleyscott wrote:In case 2 the blue dotted bases can fight, but they are not an overlap, they are in front edge contact with the enemy.

Case 1 will seldom occur, but it is possible for it to occur, and we needed a rule for what to do if it does.

OK, I understood what do you mean, but still I didn't get to explain my doubt. Let's try from another point of view. In case 1, by far the most likely, you can have up to 12 bases against 4. Don't you think it's a too high ratio 3 against 1? I mean, in a such situation of a real battle, there wasn't enough room to get this result and IMHO there should be a limit in some way to this ratio.

Posted: **Fri Mar 20, 2009 12:10 pm**

marioslaz wrote:
rbodleyscott wrote:In case 2 the blue dotted bases can fight, but they are not an overlap, they are in front edge contact with the enemy.

Case 1 will seldom occur, but it is possible for it to occur, and we needed a rule for what to do if it does.
OK, I understood what do you mean, but still I didn't get to explain my doubt. Let's try from another point of view. In case 1, by far the most likely, you can have up to 12 bases against 4. Don't you think it's a too high ratio 3 against 1? I mean, in a such situation of a real battle, there wasn't enough room to get this result and IMHO there should be a limit in some way to this ratio.

Correct you could get 12 bases aganst 4 but if you put 4 bases in a single rank and attack them with a straight line of bases 2 deep with overlaps on each end you get 12 bases against 4...

Posted: **Fri Mar 20, 2009 12:12 pm**

If you surrounded them you could get 16 against 4

Posted: **Fri Mar 20, 2009 12:31 pm**

hammy wrote:Correct you could get 12 bases aganst 4 but if you put 4 bases in a single rank and attack them with a straight line of bases 2 deep with overlaps on each end you get 12 bases against 4...

They are different situations. In the first case there are a lot of combatants in a small portion of field, in the second case you have a thin and long line and so you have enough room to get all combatants involved.

Posted: **Fri Mar 20, 2009 12:39 pm**

I suggest that, even if there is not enough space for everyone to physically stick a sword in, the presence of additional enemy troops in close proximity to an outflanked unit would have an equivalent effect on morale.

Posted: **Fri Mar 20, 2009 12:52 pm**

marioslaz wrote:
hammy wrote:Correct you could get 12 bases aganst 4 but if you put 4 bases in a single rank and attack them with a straight line of bases 2 deep with overlaps on each end you get 12 bases against 4...
They are different situations. In the first case there are a lot of combatants in a small portion of field, in the second case you have a thin and long line and so you have enough room to get all combatants involved.

How are they different?

In one situation the outnumbered BG is in a line

1111222233334444

and in the other it is in a U shaped line

Code: Select all

Posted: **Fri Mar 20, 2009 1:32 pm**

hammy wrote:How are they different?

In one situation the outnumbered BG is in a line

1111222233334444

and in the other it is in a U shaped line
Code: Select all
1      4
1      4
1      4
1      4
22223333

In the situation you write (U shaped) enemy can be up to 16 (4 : 1 ratio) not just 12.

In the situation I depicted with my diagram (case 2) you have a great concentration in one single spot. If you look to the corner where red faces in two directions, you can see there are 6 bases against 2 (and they can be up to 8 because yellow could be a overlap on its left side I didn't depicted). Looking to this diagram, IMHO the 2 yellow bases with blue dot shouldn't get dice, because in a real situation there wasn't enough space. More, if you compare case 2 with 1, there is a big sproportion (again, this is just my opinion) because in the rare cases base doesn't turn to face, yellow bases marked with blue dot cannot get dice. I mean: the space is near the same, but in case 1 fight 4 bases and in case 2 fight 6 bases. So I can say my doubt, to try to explain still better, it's not on absolute ratio between combatants, because as you point out there are cases where this can happen in a totally different way.

Posted: **Fri Mar 20, 2009 1:37 pm**

The rules on p 86 (again 2nd bullet) it's needed also in another case, more frequent, I just now thought.

Without that rules, and keeping all others as they actually are, yellow bases marked with red dot could fight as overlap (or at last I guess it would be so).
Anyway, I still think in a such case neither yellow bases with blue dot should fight, due to space restrictions.

Slitherine

Pag 86 Diagram

Pag 86 Diagram

I didn't explain well

Re: I didn't explain well

Re: I didn't explain well