Hang on, just explain that to me again please

[AlanYork]

I have to admit that Hammy the organiser did explain this to me in great depth and clarity at the tournament I played in on Saturday and my only excuses for not taking it in properly are that it was very hot, I was tired after getting up at 5 AM and that I was flagging in my last game so apologies to him for having to ask again.

I have a unit of disrupted English longbowmen 4 wide by 2 deep fighting two enemy units in impact. Half my lads fight one enemy BG, the other half fight the other enemy BG. The left hand side of my unit has four impact dice needing 4s to hit and two shooting dice needing 5s against their opponents. The right hand side of my BG has the same against an identically armed enemy.

However they are disrupted so lose 1 dice per 3. So that's 2 impact dice removed from the left hand side of the unit and 2 from the right.

But where in the rules does it say that it has to be impact dice? Why can't it be the shooting dice? There is something I found about seeing how many dice are lost then proportioning it out but that doesn't really seem to cover it. Can anyone direct me to the relevant page?

[BillMc]

I think you actually lose more than 2 sice for disruption. If you have 8 impact and 4 shooting dice = 12 eligible dice for the BG. Divide by 3 = lose 4 dice. Can't remember how it breaks down (shooting vs impact exactly, but probably 3 impact and 1 shooting - you even it out at your discretion against which opposing BGs.

[Plainsman]

Unless these bow get something special I don't know about, shouldn't they only be getting four dice initially for impact combat?!?! Where does impact and shooting dice come from? Only the front rank get dice and then they lose 1 per 3 for being down, hence, lose one die there leaving 3 dice which may be used 2 against one BG and one against the other...

[ottomanmjm]

If you are losing dice (for any reason) and are fighting two or more units then you work out the total number of dice that would be lost for the entire unit and then remove them in proportion to what you should lose.

So in your case you had 8 impact dice for the 4 front rank bases and 4 support shooting dice for the back rank bases. So you must lose 4 dice if lsong one per 3. This means you lose 2 impact dice and 1 shooting dice, but that still leaves 3 dice unaccounted for (2 impact and 1 shooting). As there are two impact dice one of these is lost. So you end up with 5 impact dice and 3 shooting dice. These dice are then allocated to each combat. As you have two front rank bases fighting aganst each enemey unit 2 impact and 1 shooting dice need to be alloacted to each unit. The final impact and shooting dice can be allocated to either unit, although they probably should be allocated to different units leaving you with 3 impact and 1 shooting dice against one unit and 2 impact and 2 shooting dice against the other.

This can be found in the ruls on p93/94 -Allocating Combat Dice. Specifically the last two bullet points.

Regards
Martin

[AlanYork]

If you are losing dice (for any reason) and are fighting two or more units then you work out the total number of dice that would be lost for the entire unit and then remove them in proportion to what you should lose.

So in your case you had 8 impact dice for the 4 front rank bases and 4 support shooting dice for the back rank bases. So you must lose 4 dice if lsong one per 3. This means you lose 2 impact dice and 1 shooting dice, but that still leaves 3 dice unaccounted for (2 impact and 1 shooting). As there are two impact dice one of these is lost. So you end up with 5 impact dice and 3 shooting dice. These dice are then allocated to each combat. As you have two front rank bases fighting aganst each enemey unit 2 impact and 1 shooting dice need to be alloacted to each unit. The final impact and shooting dice can be allocated to either unit, although they probably should be allocated to different units leaving you with 3 impact and 1 shooting dice against one unit and 2 impact and 2 shooting dice against the other.

This can be found in the ruls on p93/94 -Allocating Combat Dice. Specifically the last two bullet points.

Regards
Martin

Hmmm that's interesting Martin. What you appear to be saying is that dice are removed in proportion to their type (impact / shooting) with any "spare" dice to be removed allocated against the majority type. That kind of makes sense but at the weekend it seemed to be my impact dice alone that were removed, then again maybe I misunderstood, it was a fun day but a long one.

[AlanYork]

Unless these bow get something special I don't know about, shouldn't they only be getting four dice initially for impact combat?!?! Where does impact and shooting dice come from? Only the front rank get dice and then they lose 1 per 3 for being down, hence, lose one die there leaving 3 dice which may be used 2 against one BG and one against the other...

Four bases in the front rank get 2 dice each at impact = 8 impact dice. Back rank shoot overhead with 1 dice per base = 4 shooting dice. Total 12 dice, 8 impact and 4 shooting.

Regards
Alan

[ottomanmjm]

Hmmm that's interesting Martin. What you appear to be saying is that dice are removed in proportion to their type (impact / shooting) with any "spare" dice to be removed allocated against the majority type. That kind of makes sense but at the weekend it seemed to be my impact dice alone that were removed, then again maybe I misunderstood, it was a fun day but a long one.[/quote]

It's not that they get removed in proportion to their type, but rather in proportion to the POA. The impact dice where hitting on 4's and the shooting dice were hitting on 5's. If the shooting and impact factors were the same then you would simply lose 4 dice in total (2 from each combat)

[hammy]

Look at P94:

You determine how many dice in total the BG is losing

Then you look at the dice at different POAs

Consider a simple example:

a BG of bow that is disrupted is charged and contacted on a 2 base frontage. It should get 4 impact dice and 2 support shooting dice. A total of 6 dice so as it is disrupted it must lose 1 per 3 or 2 dice. It has 4 dice at the impact POA and 2 at the support shooting POA. Clearly there are 3 dice all the same for the impact so as you are losing 1 per 3 you must lose one of them. This leaves 1 impact and 2 support shooting dice from which you must lose 1 dice. As there are more support shooting dice in the remainder then you have to lose a support shooting dice.

If there is only 1 file in contact then you only have 3 dice and 2 of them are impact and 1 support. You now have to lose one dice but because there are more impact dice you have to lose one of them.

If a BG is charged by two enemy BGs then you have to work out the total number of dice lost across the whole combat but the POA related losses by BG.
So a BG of archers 4 files wide charged so it is hit on three bases by one BG and on 1 base by another BG ends up with 8+4=12 dice so must lose 4. When you look at the two impacts though you have one with 6+3 and one with 2+1. From the 6+3 you have to lose in proportion so you end up with 4+2, from the 2+1 you again have to lose in proportion so you end up losing one of the dice you have the most of and the result is 1+1.

[AlanYork]

Look at P94:

You determine how many dice in total the BG is losing

Then you look at the dice at different POAs

Consider a simple example:

a BG of bow that is disrupted is charged and contacted on a 2 base frontage. It should get 4 impact dice and 2 support shooting dice. A total of 6 dice so as it is disrupted it must lose 1 per 3 or 2 dice. It has 4 dice at the impact POA and 2 at the support shooting POA. Clearly there are 3 dice all the same for the impact so as you are losing 1 per 3 you must lose one of them. This leaves 1 impact and 2 support shooting dice from which you must lose 1 dice. As there are more support shooting dice in the remainder then you have to lose a support shooting dice.

If there is only 1 file in contact then you only have 3 dice and 2 of them are impact and 1 support. You now have to lose one dice but because there are more impact dice you have to lose one of them.

If a BG is charged by two enemy BGs then you have to work out the total number of dice lost across the whole combat but the POA related losses by BG.
So a BG of archers 4 files wide charged so it is hit on three bases by one BG and on 1 base by another BG ends up with 8+4=12 dice so must lose 4. When you look at the two impacts though you have one with 6+3 and one with 2+1. From the 6+3 you have to lose in proportion so you end up with 4+2, from the 2+1 you again have to lose in proportion so you end up losing one of the dice you have the most of and the result is 1+1.

OK let's see if I understand this correctly; so in the example I gave I would have the 8 impact dice and 4 shooting dice split between the two combats I have to fight, each combat being 4 impact plus 2 shooting.

First work out the number of dice I need to lose; 4

Then proportion those lost dice out between betwen the combats; it's an even split so 2 each.

On the left hand side of the combat I have a group of 3 impact dice all the same so I lose 1 of them, leaving 1 remaining impact dice and 2 shooting dice to look at. As the shooting dice are more numerous I lose one of those. So that leaves me with 3 impact and 1 shooting dice.

Exactly the same thing applies over on the right hand side of the combat so the final result is each half of my embattled unit throws 3 impact dice and 1 shooting dice against the enemy.

Correct me if I'm wrong here but what FoG is asking us to do when removing dice in combats, mathematically speaking, is in each seperate fight your unit is involved in remove 1 dice from groups of 3 the same and any "remainder" that don't have groups of three dice the same, take away the most numerous type to ensure sufficient dice have been removed from the unit as a whole, ie the first example you gave. Fragmented of course would change to 1 dice per 2.

If they do revise FoG perhaps this kind of thing could use an example as we can see in this post alone there are several different interpretations of this rule.

Thanks for your help and thanks again for the great time we all had on Saturday.

[hammy]

Correct me if I'm wrong here but what FoG is asking us to do when removing dice in combats, mathematically speaking, is in each seperate fight your unit is involved in remove 1 dice from groups of 3 the same and any "remainder" that don't have groups of three dice the same, take away the most numerous type to ensure sufficient dice have been removed from the unit as a whole, ie the first example you gave. Fragmented of course would change to 1 dice per 2.

That sounds correct to me.

If we look at a more complex one:

Code: Select all

SpSp  Sp
SpSpSpSp
IFIFLaLa

A disrupted BG of spear (with one file only 1 rank deep) is charged by a steady BG of impact foot and a disrupted BG of Lancers.
The spear should get to lose 2 dice from the 8 they have in total, the lancers lose 1 from 4
If not disrupted then: against the impact foot the spear have 4 dice at - , against the lancers the spear have 2 dice at - and 2 dice at evens

The spear have to lose 2 dice in total and have 4 dice all the same against the impact foot so they must lose 1 of those dice. This leaves 1 dice at - against the impact foot, 2 dice at evens against the lancers and 2 dice at - against the lancers. One of the dice against the lancers must be lost as there are more than 3 dice against them. Because there are an equal number of dice at each POA the spear player can choose which of the dice they wish to lose so will obviously lose 1 at - leaving 1 dice at - and 2 at evens.

The lancers would have 2 dice at + and 2 dice at evens but need to lose one. Like the spears they will choose to lose one of the worst dice but in practice as all their dice need 4s to hit then it makes no difference.

[hammy]

In the same example in melee against the lancers the spear will have 2 dice at a better POA and only 1 at the worse POA. This means that they will have to lose one of the dice at a better POA as there are more of them.
The choice only exists when there are the same number of dice at a given POA against a given opponent.

[Lycanthropic]

You got ripped off.
In the impact phase ALL dice are impact dice. So remove that shooting vs impact mindset, sure you use shooting factors - but they are still impact dice.....(-1 for impact, LF lose 1 dice per 2 instead of getting 1 dice per 2 etc etc).
You must allocate at least one dice per front rank base and then after that YOU choose which dice you lose irrespective of POA. Sure your opponent would love you to lose the better dice...tough.
You started with 12 dice, you get to allocate 8 dice, 4 of which must be your front rank, you now have 4 dice to throw at your opponent....roll eight fivers and chuckle...


"That was all ME"

[stenic]

That kind of makes sense but at the weekend it seemed to be my impact dice alone that were removed, then again maybe I misunderstood, it was a fun day but a long one.

It was a confusing one, not helped at all by me initially only catering for 5 bases each in impact when as Hammy rightly said once he came over it should be 6.
I recall one of the Shooting dice was removed though, Hammy divided the dice up then at the end there were 3 shooting dice against one BG so one of those dice was then removed.

Steve

[stenic]

You got ripped off.
In the impact phase ALL dice are impact dice. So remove that shooting vs impact mindset, sure you use shooting factors - but they are still impact dice.....(-1 for impact, LF lose 1 dice per 2 instead of getting 1 dice per 2 etc etc).
You must allocate at least one dice per front rank base and then after that YOU choose which dice you lose irrespective of POA. Sure your opponent would love you to lose the better dice...tough.
You started with 12 dice, you get to allocate 8 dice, 4 of which must be your front rank, you now have 4 dice to throw at your opponent....roll eight fivers and chuckle...


"That was all ME"

Hammy's version doesn't agree with your interpretation and pages 93 and 94 seem to agree with him, specifically the last bullet ofthe top section; it is not irrespective of POAs. Everything must be done in proportion once you've worked out total dice to be lost then match that figure by apportioning dice loss by BG and then POA until you have removed the number of dice originally determined needed to be lost.

Steve P

[hammy]

You got ripped off.
In the impact phase ALL dice are impact dice. So remove that shooting vs impact mindset, sure you use shooting factors - but they are still impact dice.....(-1 for impact, LF lose 1 dice per 2 instead of getting 1 dice per 2 etc etc).
You must allocate at least one dice per front rank base and then after that YOU choose which dice you lose irrespective of POA. Sure your opponent would love you to lose the better dice...tough.

Sorry, you are wrong. You only get to choose which dice to lose when you are left with the same number of dice at two different POAs. If there are 3 dice at evens and one at minus then you MUST lose one of the dice at evens.

Also where does this one dice per front rank base thing come from? There is no mention of that in the rules at all. There is mention of one dice per BG fighting against you but that is not the same thing at all.

I am not sure where you think I am ripping anyone off?

Support shooting dice are indeed impact dice but may well be at different POAs and or numbers to hit.

[philqw78]

You started with 12 dice, you get to allocate 8 dice, 4 of which must be your front rank, you now have 4 dice to throw at your opponent....roll eight fivers and chuckle...

"That was all ME"

I'm pretty sure it was no-one else Mark. Particularly not the rule writers.

[AlanYork]

Well I have to say I didn't feel ripped off. My opponent Steve seemed a very nice fellow who deserved to win, though I have to say his ability to roll 11s and 12s seemingly at will certainly helped!!!

I see what you are saying Hammy and it does make perfect sense when explained in the clear style you have used. That said, I do feel that should a second edition of FoG come out, then this really needs to be clarified or simplified. The very fact that there seems to be more than one interpretation of one of the fundamental rules of the game and that a moderately complex mathematical procedure has to be used involving POAs, groups of 3 dice the same, 3 dice not the same etc, etc seems to lead to confusion.