Naval flank marches

[Barritus]

Phil Barker has just pointed out something on the DBMM email list which appears not to have occurred to anyone else playing DBMM: if you send a command flank marching over water, you can use both naval elements and impressed shipping to transport the troops.

The statement came in response to a throw-away comment from Cancon, in which a player sent a command flank marching using impressed shipping, and the one element which failed its arrival dice roll was the command's general. Barker said, "You would have thought the general could afford a proper warship."

Anyway, this got me thinking about naval flank marches in general. If you follow Barker's advice, and provide a naval element for the general, and let the rest take their chances with impressed shipping, the general won't be able to land until a bound or two after the rest of the command, depending on available PIPs and space. It seems a bit odd that he's constrained by PIPs when he's got the best watercraft around.

But what if such a command is driven back onto its own side edge by a larger command? What if the larger flank marching command also uses impressed shipping? Somehow, it seems the impressed shipping of the larger command swarms unimpeded (except for possible dice modifications) around the general of the driven back command on his nautical mount. Somehow that doesn't look right, particularly as it seems he's going to be isolated from his troops on the other side of the larger enemy command.

[LawrenceG]

If your flank march is successful, the general will be last to disembark, but he does get a free march move, another free move if regular and whatever PIPs are on the dice, so he should not be far behind.

If your driven-back flank march has naval elements, it will probably wipe out about 50% of the enemy impressed shipped elements before they can land, and your naval can still sail up the flank on-table. On the other hand, any enemy that do arrive will get free rear attacks on any of your impressed shipped elements that were driven back and are still on the beach. Could be a case of mutual destruction in a single bound. I think this is an unlikely occurrence that the rules don't handle very well, and is not worth the added complication of legislating for in any more detail.

Note that impressed-shipped elements do not cause arrival surprise. Also, naval elements only cause arrival surprise in other naval that they would contact.

[Platypus]

Yes, given how rare it will be, I'd say better to rely on common-sense or an umpire to work out the details.

I was going to use this for my Vikings. But I'll still buy at least 4 longships to protect him from any enemy naval.

If I was umpiring I'd say that the smaller (friendly) command comes on shore first with impressed shipping and dices as normal. Unless the enemy has another command with naval, then the score would be +2 (assuming no fog/winds).  The General and his fleet arrives as well. PIPs will be scarce, but hope for high PIPS as you will need them to turn the naval around. Next bound the larger (enemy) force arrives. If you are smart, you'd take at least 4 naval because then the enemy will need at least 8 to avoid a score of +4. This may end up as a disaster for the enemy as he will have a lot of spent troops, plus YOUR naval should immediately attack HIS.

Why is your score +2 and his +4? Because the rules say "by 2 if enemy naval present exceed half". Present. At the time of the friendly arrival, the enemy have yet to arrive and are not present. So unless the enemy have yet MORE naval on the table, you only need to score +2 and if you have bought enough naval, he will need +4.

So this means, if you are going to do this, you really need to buy as much naval as you can afford. Plus if you have a Sea or Waterway, you may need to buy naval to protect you against a flank-march now we have a mechanism that reduces the risk to the General. I've never used because I thought I'd have to dice for the General!

Cheers,
JohnG

[william]

  I have used Impressed shipping in at least two competitive games, one in a two hundred point comp, I had no naval elements but my opponent had one, command arrived disheartened (that was under version 1, I think elements that failed to arrive were lost). Who brings naval with 200 points 

In the second comp I took a Greek spear army, I took one galley, this was handy as there turned out to be strong winds but at least the general was safe. It might be no bad thing having the general out at sea commanding ground forces, at least he is nearly safe there (if no other naval arround), of course I beached the galley and got attacked by a knight so killed the general before he disembarked! So what do I know. TBF it seemed like a reasonable way to deliver Irr Hoplites to the enemy table edge quickly and might work very well with delayed battle.

 

William

[william]

  Of course I did forget to say that getting a suitable water feature for impressed shipping is very difficult, Vikings would appear a good choice, high agression factor so would invade quite often but the invaded must have a Sea on their terrian (not a WW).

Best of all I suppose would be a low agression army with a compulsory suitable feature.

So planning on using impressed shipping when making out a list is a little far fetched.

I have done it though, with Kyrennic Greeks no less and as per my previuos post I got to use it once!

William