Questions about shooting and arc of fire

[ahd1976]

I was playing a game last night and some shooting questions came up with my foot bow. I'll just lay out a few things that are unclear to me from reading the rule book, although it's probably just my careless reading that's slowing me down.

1) Let's say you have a foot bow BG with one file facing a target. The closest target base is exactly 6 MUs away, and the two BGs are facing each other and parallel. Let's assume the foot bow BG has two extra files to the side of the one I mentioned, but there is nothing in front of them. I assumed from the Arc of Fire section that they could both shoot (using p.83 illustrations) even if the shortest lines connecting the front bases of those files to any target base are greater than 6 MU. Is that wrong? What I'm getting at here is that the arc of fire section dosen't seem to measure distance from the additional shooters - are they ineligible to shoot if they are not within range?

2) Let's take the example above and say that the main file is exactly 4 MUs away, but because the files of the two BGs are not perfectly aligned, my two other files to the left are roughly 4.3 MUs and 5 MUs away. Assume I am two ranks deep. I thought all 6 bases could shoot as if at effective range (<=4 MU). What is the proper way to sort it out? Do they all shoot as if at 4? Do they all shoot as if between 4-6 [i.e. the close file is penalized by the others]? Or does the primary file get to shoot as if at effective range but the other two files cannot shoot because they are not at effective range? My opponent suggested that the whole BG had to shoot as if it at the same range, and if that's not possible then it meant problems for me...

3) If a BG wants to shoot at a target BG but no bases in the target BG are directly in front of the shooters, can the shooters use the Arc of Fire to shoot at targets to the left or right?

I think that's it. These may be addressed in other posts, but I searched and couldn't find something that made it crystal clear.

Many thanks in advance.

Andrew

[hammy]

I was playing a game last night and some shooting questions came up with my foot bow. I'll just lay out a few things that are unclear to me from reading the rule book, although it's probably just my careless reading that's slowing me down.

1) Let's say you have a foot bow BG with one file facing a target. The closest target base is exactly 6 MUs away, and the two BGs are facing each other and parallel. Let's assume the foot bow BG has two extra files to the side of the one I mentioned, but there is nothing in front of them. I assumed from the Arc of Fire section that they could both shoot (using p.83 illustrations) even if the shortest lines connecting the front bases of those files to any target base are greater than 6 MU. Is that wrong? What I'm getting at here is that the arc of fire section dosen't seem to measure distance from the additional shooters - are they ineligible to shoot if they are not within range?

You have to measure the range and arc of fire for each shooting file so in this case only one file would be in range.

2) Let's take the example above and say that the main file is exactly 4 MUs away, but because the files of the two BGs are not perfectly aligned, my two other files to the left are roughly 4.3 MUs and 5 MUs away. Assume I am two ranks deep. I thought all 6 bases could shoot as if at effective range (<=4 MU). What is the proper way to sort it out? Do they all shoot as if at 4? Do they all shoot as if between 4-6 [i.e. the close file is penalized by the others]? Or does the primary file get to shoot as if at effective range but the other two files cannot shoot because they are not at effective range? My opponent suggested that the whole BG had to shoot as if it at the same range, and if that's not possible then it meant problems for me...

Only files within 4 MU shoot at full effect. Ones further away shoot at reduced effect. If any bases are in effective range then the arc of fire is only one base width. In this case you would get 1 base generating 1 dice and 3 generating 1 dice per 2 bases.

3) If a BG wants to shoot at a target BG but no bases in the target BG are directly in front of the shooters, can the shooters use the Arc of Fire to shoot at targets to the left or right?

Yes.

[ahd1976]

Thanks - that clears it up.

[rogerg]

In part two it reads as if the most distant file may not be in arc. Because one base is at 4MU, there will only be one base width of arc.

assuming there is a second rank then the total firing dice will be two. The long range bases will have one for the two ranks and the close range bases, one and a half dice which rounds down.

Code: Select all

XX

-ABC
-ABC

Hoping the ASCII art works:
Bases A one and a half bases to count rounding down to one dice.
Bases B one per two bases giving one dice
Bases C nothing as their arc limit is directly ahead of B due to A being closer than 4MU