Art De La Guerre

[AlanCutner]

Slight disagreement at the club last week. I'm sure this has already been asked but can't find it.

1. Blue group charges the enemy red group, with unit W entering unit A's ZOC before any others. Unit W then contacts unit A.
2. The blue group does a wheel to conform resulting in the second diagram. Unit W is now mostly in contact with unit B.
3. So does the group conform such that W fights B, or does it keep to the original contact (and initial most threatening enemy) and conform to unit A.

[Mad Max]

W has to conform to A since w entered a's zoc
_________________
Maxime, Ch'tis Stratège de l'Artois
pas vraiment ch'ti, pas vraiment stratège, pas vraiment amateur d'art non plus

[ethan]

The movement that led to your conform violated the FAQ (p. 5 or so) on conforming in a ZOC.

"When a unit or group is in or enters an enemy ZoC (including a conformation page 52), the only
permitted movement must be made with respect to the most threatening enemy unit."

The move made caused you to become less aligned with the most threatening unit and therefore was illegal.

[AlanCutner]

Thanks, the answers confirm my view. In effect the unit that has to be contacted is the first one that becomes a threatening unit. The intermediate positions reached via the slide/wheel to conform are irrelavent.

[ethan]

Also worth looking at bottom of p. 6 for a sort of partial exception, though also relevant because of this

"If A1 wishes to engage in melee, it must charge B2 because it may not slide in the ZoC of an enemy anyway."

No slides in ZOC (which can be seen from previous parts of FAQ.

[Ramses II]

It is worth noting that, because the charge is a straight line after the initial direction is chosen, the players have to take into account which unit(s) will be "the most threatening" at the end of that movement.

Using this example, it would be illegal for the group to aim their charge with the intention of getting W to hit B by moving through the ZoC of A

[Zoltan]

I had exactly this situation at the Worlds in Rome and asked the umpire for a ruling. He ruled (using your example) that despite W’s initial contact with A, my group had to conform by the shortest distance. Thus W conformed with B etc etc.

[AlanCutner]

[Hazelbark]

[Zoltan]

@Dan - no it wasn’t you.

So the key question seems to be: what takes precedence?

1. You must conform to all enemy units contacted

2. You must conform by the shortest distance even if this means NOT conforming with an enemy unit initially contacted

[ethan]

The charge move as executed was illegal - creating the apparently anomalous conform situation.

The trick is to go back before anything was moved and execute a legal charge the respects the ZOC.

[Ramses II]

When charging, the group must move such that it ends up complying with the “most threatening” rules. (Here, this means that W will consider A as it’s most threatening unit and must move with respect to that unit).

When contact is made, other units may continue forwards until further contacts are made. Then they all conform “by sliding and wheeling” with respect to the initial contact, and that unit conforms with the unit it hit. 

This does have the potential to miss out intervening enemy, but common sense should prevail here; so W conforms on A and the rest of the charging group should conform on W (assuming these units have also made contact).

Dan is correct that the rules and FAQ shows this process quite clearly. 

[kevinj]

I think that this is now clear, however there's an additional scenario that I'm unsure of. If there was another blue unit (V) to the left of W and the group charges the Red line, what happens? Clearly V would enter A's ZoC first and would contact it. Logically (and following the diagram on P53) the rest of the group would continue and W would conform to B and so on down the line. However, this contradicts the clarification regarding "most threatening" as clearly W would enter A's ZoC first. So which takes precedence here?

[plefebvre]

[Hazelbark]