Destroyed if beaten by flanking?

[JonathanJ]

As written, a supported light spear or warrior element will be destroyed if beaten by a flanking element. Is this intended and if so it seems like a pretty severe weakness compared to other troop types.

[David Kuijt]

As will a supported Pike, or a column of two (anything at all), even if not supplying support.

Completely intended. With all the above, protect your flanks. Historically, getting hit in the flank was a very very bad thing.

[Maerk]

Sorry, seems I cannot find the rules paragraph you are referring to. 70.2 says that elements which are to fall back are destroyed instead if they have an enemy stand in flank or rear contact. But this is not what you have been talking about, isn't it?

Maerk

[Kontos]

I believe this discussion refers to a supported unit losing a combat to its flank must turn to face but cannot due to space limitations.

[David Kuijt]

I believe this discussion refers to a supported unit losing a combat to its flank must turn to face but cannot due to space limitations.

Right.

If you hit the front unit of a column in the flank, and it loses the combat, it must turn to face before falling back. The way we have that written, it cannot do so because there's something in the way (the stand behind it) and so it is destroyed.

Applies to any column, not just units that benefit from support.

The strategy answer is to avoid letting the enemy hit you in the flank when you're in column. Bad things happen.

[Kontos]

As it should be. Well designed.

[Rod]

Johnathan, not sure if we answered your original question?

If 2 light spear (in column for rear support for example) get hit in the flank... Supporting diagram E.58.b on page 34 for example...

The active player chooses which stand will fight (A or B) vs. the flank attacker X.... if either "A or B" loses the combat they must turn to face the attacker before performing a fallback (assuming they are not shattered anyway by "X" troop type) and since they are in column neither of them would have the room to do this, therefore they are destroyed.

In this case there is no "supporting stand" since the fight was to the flank and not the front and only one of the two is destroyed.

Now consider if there was an attacker to the front of "A" (say Y) with "A" and "B" both being light spear for example. "A" now is getting rear support when fighting "Y". With "X" in position on the flank as shown in the diagram, if the active player chooses to fight that frontal attack "A" vs. "Y" first with "B" in support, and "A" lost to the front, it would be destroyed because "X" is on the flank, but "B" would not be destroyed as a supporting unit.... "B" would however still be subject to a flank attack from "X" still since its entire flank would remain covered... However, if it lost and "A" was gone, it could turn, then it would be destroyed, because "Y" would be on the flank of "B" after it turned.

So I think your original question (just guessing) might have been more about rear support dudes getting killed if the front guy has his flank wrapped and looses? In that case the frontal attack does not destroy the rear support stand from a loss to the front.

DK, if I nerfed that let me know. Might be a good supplemental diagram showing the sequence of events in column attacks.

[JonathanJ]

DK had it right.
I was asking about the front element being unable to turn leading to its destruction.

My main problem was in my own internal "vision" about what is happening on the battlefield.
I see warriors and light spear receiving rear support as simply deeper formations rather than elements being "in column." Therefore I wondered why a deep formation of warriors would suffer greater penalties than, say, an element of heavy foot. The penalties for any unit being attacked in the flank (loss of any rear support and a combat factor penalty) seemed harsh enough.

However, when viewed as a penalty for being attacked on the flank while in column, the harse penalties seem appropriate. Also, pike were notoriously bad at dealing with flank attacks, so that also seems good. Having one rule to cover all such situations is also probably better from a game design standpoint.

I imagine that I will get over the cognitive dissonance between the game and my internal "vision" eventually...

[David Kuijt]

DK had it right.
I was asking about the front element being unable to turn leading to its destruction.

Another point I'd like to make, although it is a bit of a view into the sausage-making, has to do with how to implement "turn to face" in these rules. Implementing rules that require turning before combat is very complex -- there are like a dozen special cases, and unless you just ignore them all and let players hang out to dry (make their own rules) when they come up, the rules you end up writing will have a huge complex set of conditionals which will make no sense to players most of the time. Consider the problems in legacy systems when an attacker hit the flank of a column such that he was in contact with the flanks of three stands. Or of two where their combined depth exceeded the base width of the attacker. We wrestled with these rules for six months before coming upon the elegant solution of not-conforming -- you only conform if you lose, as part of the losing protocol. Then it is suddenly much much simpler to write the rules, and much more clear for the players.

[Maerk]

(...) We wrestled with these rules for six months before coming upon the elegant solution of not-conforming -- you only conform if you lose, as part of the losing protocol. Then it is suddenly much much simpler to write the rules, and much more clear for the players.

so far as I can tell after a few games the Triumph! ruleset definitely IS very clear which results in a smooth gameplay. Great work by the authors!

Maerk