Infantry turn and move

[VMadeira]

Timmy, what you say is true, although it also applies to restricting cavalry maneuvres.

My concern is, when two battle lines are fighting and one BG breaks an opponent, he has to pursue, as it is now, it may take a lot of time to come back to the fight, even for drilled troops.
If we restrict more the maneuvres it will be impossible to exploit breakthroughs in enemy lines of battle, which it seems unrealistic.

Of course we could be careful and try to always contact 2 BGs when charging, so that if one routs, the other may stick you in the fight, but that is a gamey mechanism, that probably shouldn't be rewarded.

[BeansNFranks]

I see the point with pike, maybe make them disordered on the turn they do a 90 or 180 degree maneuver?

Overall I would hate to see turning and turning and moving go away though. Then you just end up with a battle line slugfest, or make cav and lights more powerful as you can't "dance" to counter them.

If you take all the dancing out for heavy foot, it would kind of make the game boring .

[deadtorius]

Leave the pikes out of this, everyone wants to pick on them.
I watched a university professors lecture on pike formations versus the Roman phalanx and he pointed out that when fighting the Persians Alexanders pikes managed to move through a stream and up the opposite bank to attack and rout the Persians who were waiting for them. They did not appear to suffer any kind of loss of unit cohesion or disorder contrary to the way the rules would treat the same thing being done on the TT. If anything I think pikes should suffer less disorder for terrain issues etc. Their problem was not disorder as it was an unflexible formation that the Legions found ways to exploit. That was the failing reason for pikes going out in the ancient world.
I recall a ECW re-enactor who claimed that his group can turn 90 degrees but thought that ancient units should not be allowed to do that, although I am not sure why since they started the whole thing in the first place. I have heard about some suggestions of you can turn but can't move, whether its a 90 degree or 180 degree turn and that seems ok. The formation turns and the officers move into their new positions.
Everyone wants their opponents to lose cohesion for doing anything other than moving straight ahead, it makes no sense and is not going to make much out of game play either if every time you try to move any way but straight ahead you lose cohesion and eventually rout because your die rolls for CMT were so bad.
Some times the die rolls can go great for you, other times you cant fight your way out of a wet paper bag with poor die rolls. Its not a problem with the rules it was just you grabbed the cursed dice of constant misses or failed CMTs.

[Andy1972]

Talking about pikes... I was reading, watching... Or something.. I do not remember where i read/saw this... Alexanders pikemen where very agile(turning, about face, ect).. As the years went by, the training became more lax.. By the time we get to the Roman times.. They were not as agile as a formation.

[Andy1972]

Now to jump into the general discussion. Here we go with DBX, Warhammer X.. People complaning wanting to change rules that puts their pet army at a disadvantage, citing one or two historical points to make their point... It is a game.. That TRIES to balance fun AND historical functions... IMO does a pretty good job at it.. People complaining that heavy foot armies have a hard time vs shoot cav armies... Tell that to the Romans vs the Parthians ect.. Or the Crusaders vs the Arabs.. Shooty cav armies should take time to kill the hvy foot armies.. As they took time in real life... I am starting to go off on a rant.. I do not want to by a new rule book every 3-4 years, along with new army books.. Its one of the reasons i quit playing Warhammer.. Not to mention history is more appealing to me than fantasy.

[lawrenceg]

Now to jump into the general discussion. Here we go with DBX, Warhammer X.. People complaning wanting to change rules that puts their pet army at a disadvantage, citing one or two historical points to make their point... It is a game.. That TRIES to balance fun AND historical functions... IMO does a pretty good job at it.. People complaining that heavy foot armies have a hard time vs shoot cav armies... Tell that to the Romans vs the Parthians ect.. Or the Crusaders vs the Arabs.. Shooty cav armies should take time to kill the hvy foot armies.. As they took time in real life... I am starting to go off on a rant.. I do not want to by a new rule book every 3-4 years, along with new army books.. Its one of the reasons i quit playing Warhammer.. Not to mention history is more appealing to me than fantasy.

IMO battles where half a dozen to a dozen separate HF and MF formations zip around the battlefield in all directions like a perfectly choreographed ballet of houseflies is fantasy.

Mongol LH, maybe.

[grahambriggs]

Talking about pikes... I was reading, watching... Or something.. I do not remember where i read/saw this... Alexanders pikemen where very agile(turning, about face, ect).. As the years went by, the training became more lax.. By the time we get to the Roman times.. They were not as agile as a formation.

I believe that was a battle between the Macedonians and a Thracian tribe. The Thracians were in defensive terrain, so the Macedonians put on a drill display with the infantry. This seemed to convince the Thracians not to fight.

I don't think unengaged pikes should have any more difficulty in turning than, say, spears. You put the pike to vertical and you can turn. Grated, you don't necessarily have the 'front rankers' in the right position but bthat would be the issue for 90 degree turns with any foot.

The problem specific to pike is that once you have lowered your pikes to fight to your front, you can't turn without raising the pike. That sounds like "pike (and spear?) cannot trun in a restricted area" to me.

[philqw78]

Units turning to keep the same frontage do not actually turn. They sort of wheel. Watch Trooping the colour or Sovereigns parade.




Since a base/BG is a number of units each unit within the base does this. Pikes could be kept at 45 degrees.

Though on the Troop the turn about first, right form then turn about again. Then do it forwards on the march as they go around the parade.

[jlopez]

IMO battles where half a dozen to a dozen separate HF and MF formations zip around the battlefield in all directions like a perfectly choreographed ballet of houseflies is fantasy.

Mongol LH, maybe.

Granted but the issue isn't whether the drilled troops have the ability to manoeuvre (they should if they were trained to do so) but WHY they are doing so. BGs zip around because they are chasing often uncatchable attrition points as this is the only means of winning a game. The only real solution is to provide both sides with an incentive to fight at one or more points of the table. Only then will you start seeing anything resembling a battle rather than a disjointed series of running skirmishes. However, I suspect the introduction of objectives (whether a table sector or a marker) isn't going to happen anytime soon.

[peterrjohnston]

Granted but the issue isn't whether the drilled troops have the ability to manoeuvre (they should if they were trained to do so) but WHY they are doing so. BGs zip around because they are chasing often uncatchable attrition points as this is the only means of winning a game. The only real solution is to provide both sides with an incentive to fight at one or more points of the table. Only then will you start seeing anything resembling a battle rather than a disjointed series of running skirmishes. However, I suspect the introduction of objectives (whether a table sector or a marker) isn't going to happen anytime soon.

As Julian hints at, the problem is not the turn and move, but the disparity in moves distances when every BG can move at the same time. There's no penalty for giving ground.

Restricting turn and movement to cavalry and LH would make this even worse; infantry would become unusable if essentially all they can do is go forwards.