Art De La Guerre

[daveallen]

So in the brief respite between your Winterval excesses here's a little something to take your mind off your bank balances:

It's a little wrinkle I got caught out by earlier this year:

The rule - Page 35 Exceptions to ZoC bp5:

[Black Prince]

To me the front edge of the LF blocks the ZoC because there is always a piece of LF between to two medium foot bases. The medium swordsmen base is behind the LFI think you are getting hung up on the meaning of behind rather than the intent.

[daveallen]

I agree with you. Unfortunately, an umpire didn't and I'd like to get this one confirmed one way or another.
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Putting the ink into incompetence

[Zoltan]

I think the intent of the rule is: a zoc is ignored by a unit if a friendly unit completely shields it from the zocing enemy. i.e. no part of the enemy zoc touches the unit without first touching the intervening friend.

Using the OP diagram, if the friendly light blue unit was turned 180 degrees facing away from red and towards dark blue (say the LI had evaded red’s charge and stopped when meeting dark blue), I don’t think this would change things. In other words, it’s not so much that dark blue is behind intervening light blue’s rear, but rather that light blue completely shields dark blue from red’s zoc,

In the OP light blue is NOT positioned to completely shield dark blue from red’s zoc. It is possible to draw a straight line from somewhere on red’s front edge direct to dark blue without first touching light blue. So dark blue is within red’s zoc. Because light blue is on an angle, the only way to avoid dark blue being zoc’d is if it was literally squarely behind light blue (i.e. its front edge is parrallel to light blue’s rear edge).

[AlanCutner]

FWIW I agree with BlackPrince and Dave. Sorry Zoltan, don't understand your argument at all.

[daveallen]

I see Zoltan's point - it's about our assumptions about how ZoCs work.

Because a ZoC is a square zone in front of a unit we tend to imagine it as a light beam shot forward from the unit such that an intervening enemy unit would create a shadow (pretty much as shown in my diagram), but that isn't the only possible view. He suggests it could instead be any area in that square to which a straight line could be drawn from the front of the unit without passing through enemy.

As it happens I think Zoltan is wrong. For this reason:

If in the diagram the LI was attached to the front of the blue unit in a group it would still be possible to draw a line from one corner of the red to the blue unit. If this meant blue was ZoCed it would negate the exception quoted above. So it seems to me that the light beam analogy we all use is correct.

If I get time I might draft some more diagrams to examine other implications of the rules.
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Putting the ink into incompetence

[daveallen]

The other point Zoltan makes is a good one too.

What if red and blue were in the same position, but there was a blue LI that had evaded from red's charge and completely obscured the blue unit.

Would that LI block the ZoC?

On a strict RAW interpretation the answer would be no because blue is not behind the LI.

Which is silly.

Dave
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Putting the ink into incompetence

[Zoltan]

@Dave - yes you have understood my arguments correctly.

Regarding the (translated) exception rule - let’s see if the French view is that “behind” literally means “behind”, or rather some form of “between” (interposed,obstructing, shielding etc). I take your point that there will be positions where red’s zoc light beam touches dark blue even if it is squarely glued to the rear of light blue.

“Behind” is no doubt a rules simplification, but taken literally it would seem to exclude all other permutations (such as my evading LI interposers) hence the umpire ruling against you.

PS. Your diagrams are so helpful rather than the X0X0X0 that some posters use. So thanks for that! Do you use Powerpoint?

[daveallen]

Not trained on Powerpoint I'm afraid.

I just draw them on Paint, save as GIFs and upload to Imgur.

Dave
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Putting the ink into incompetence

[Dickstick]

As a child when I was told to stand behind the table I understand where to go. And we had an oval table.
I stood on the far side from the speaker.
There was no "directly to the rear" consept implied.
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Player 747 don't call me Jumbo

[Dickstick]

Does this make me a "pinko"
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Player 747 don't call me Jumbo

[daveallen]

[Commodore]

My fisrt opinion will be : as the LI is totally covering the exerted ZOC, the MSw is no more in Medium spearmen ZOC (ZOX border are not sufficient p 33 last para)

This case question is :
does an unit to be entierly behind the rear edge of another unit to be considered as "behind" regarding the screened/ZOC rule p35 5th bullet.

checking with technical board but i am confirdent with my first thought. Ex: if the LI is turning back, facing the Msw, the screen will be still existing and the MSw will be in front of the LI...
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"Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead"
Cdr Farragut,Mobile 1864

[plefebvre]

[daveallen]

Thanks guys.

Sorry I had to ask, but you know how easy it is to get bogged down by rules on the day.

Dave
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Putting the ink into incompetence