Art De La Guerre

Ramses II · Post� le: Mar Mai 10, 2016 1:44 pm Sujet du message: Conformation and groups

Last night two players in our club came up with the following situation

MMMOOO
. . . AAABBBCCCDDD

Where "M" and "O" are Medium Sword, and "A","B","C","D" are Pike which have charged forward and already slid 1U left to arrive at this position against the MI. The question is how should the Pike conform since both "A" and "B" are in contact, although it should be noted that "A" is mostly in contact with "O".

The Defender argued that Conformation is performed by "A", which must conform on unit "O" as it has the greatest contact with that unit, sliding the group to the right. However the Attacker argued that since "B" also had a contact, the group should slide to the left leaving "A" in contact with "M" and "B" in contact with "O".

Who is correct?

(In the end they diced for it and the Defender won leaving only one Pike in contact, which I believe is the correct solution anyway).

Commodore · Post� le: Mar Mai 10, 2016 3:10 pm Sujet du message:

If A is mostly in contact with O, there is only one initial contact : A against O and the conformation is made in accordance, A switch to right and align corner to corner with O and B giving support.
In the case of an angled charge course, it could have been possible to A to contac M first, so, du to conformation the ending situation would have been :
MMMOOO
AAABBBCCCDDD
_________________
"Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead"
Cdr Farragut,Mobile 1864

Ramses II · Post� le: Mar Mai 10, 2016 3:39 pm Sujet du message:

Thanks, that is what I thought and also the way it was ultimately played.

To your second point, in the diagram the Pikes started below and to the right of the target MI, sliding left so that "A" and "B" hit simultaneously, consequently they could not be angled for "A" to hit only "M" as you suggest.

However, if they were angled the other way so that only "B" contacted "O", I presume that "B" would be counted as the charging unit and thus would be aligned on "O", permitting the group to swing forward and slide to the left (providing that the other units including "A" did not move more than 1U).
However, I believe this alternative was also not physically possible given the size of the group and the limited movement of Pike.