What next?

[andrew]

This situation came up in another game yesterday.  What happens to the 2 elements left standing?  How does either element make a legal contact with the other under the existing rules regarding turning to face, extra movement etc. without spending any PIPs?

Sorry the element sizes are not exactly to scale, but the Ax followed up a base width, and the Wb chose to follow up a base depth.  All Wb are facing down the page, the Psiloi was a flank contact on Wb1 and Wb2 and the Ax is facing up the page.

Any thoughts / opinions appreciated.

Andrew

[Doug M.]

Ps auto slides to make legal contact

[andrew]

I presume you mean into the flank?  We explored that but what I didn't show was another Wb element preventing the Psiloi from making a legal corner to corner contact on the flank.  The owner of the Psiloi chose not to slide to conform given the blocking Wb element (who would have slid sideways to make room) would have ended up overlapping the already disheartened Psiloi (side edge to side edge, it was a bit of a mess) giving a net factor of zero.  So once that choice was made to not conform (I presume sliding is optional if you don't have to conform?) then the Psiloi is simply TZ'ing the Warband unless there is some other provision for making a legal contact at that point in time without spending PIPs?  Personally I can't see any other way than what you described, and what was discussed at the time, but my opponent declined to make the Psiloi conform.

[LawrenceG]

Looks to me as though the Ps is in contact with the whole of the Wb flank edge. This qualifies as a valid initiation of combat anyway, so they would fight in the next bound, with the Wb turning to face and line up.

[landmeister]

I agree.

[andrew]

I'm not 100% convinced for a number of reasons (given the Psiloi didn't actually move into contact in one of the ways described on page 33 but that's another issue) but most importantly I think we got the pursuit move from the Wb wrong.  You cannot move a flank edge into contact with an enemy front edge unless the front edge also moves into contact (p33) and a pursuing element stops its pursuit move when the front corner meets an enemy edge (p42).  So the Wb would have stopped his pursuit once his front corner reached the front edge of the Psiloi, which is about 1nm from the corner.  This would then appear as 'corner to corner' contact to a casual observer, or the naked eye.

Andrew

[landmeister]

I'm not 100% convinced for a number of reasons (given the Psiloi didn't actually move into contact in one of the ways described on page 33 but that's another issue) but most importantly I think we got the pursuit move from the Wb wrong.  You cannot move a flank edge into contact with an enemy front edge unless the front edge also moves into contact (p33) and a pursuing element stops its pursuit move when the front corner meets an enemy edge (p42).  So the Wb would have stopped his pursuit once his front corner reached the front edge of the Psiloi, which is about 1nm from the corner.  This would then appear as 'corner to corner' contact to a casual observer, or the naked eye.

Andrew

Ooops. You're right! I didn't remember that!  . Then no pursuing move should be done. 

[LawrenceG]

I'm not 100% convinced for a number of reasons (given the Psiloi didn't actually move into contact in one of the ways described on page 33 but that's another issue) but most importantly I think we got the pursuit move from the Wb wrong.  You cannot move a flank edge into contact with an enemy front edge unless the front edge also moves into contact (p33) and a pursuing element stops its pursuit move when the front corner meets an enemy edge (p42).  So the Wb would have stopped his pursuit once his front corner reached the front edge of the Psiloi, which is about 1nm from the corner.  This would then appear as 'corner to corner' contact to a casual observer, or the naked eye.

Andrew

Close combat occurs when elements "remain" in contact, regardless of how they moved into that relationship.

However, I agree the pursuit does not appear to be a legal move, so the contact should not have arisen in this case.