Art De La Guerre

[Adrian Clarke]

Hi all

I notice from Tim Porter’s recent (and entertaining) report from the front line in Pamplona that there was an issue in one of his games about placing the road that comes with a village terrain placement through the village itself, as well as to a chosen table edge.

Could this be clarified please as I have never had anyone object to me placing ambushes on the road in villages. A village is not a prohibited terrain feature for a road to superimpose and in fact I don’t recall ever encountering a village that didn’t have a road running through it. In real life, I mean.

Adrian

[madaxeman]

[Hazelbark]

Really this was debated?

[madaxeman]

The DT has (effectively) spoken.

http://artdelaguerre.fr/adlg/v3/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7620

'Free' roads only go up to a village, not into or through them.

Normal roads go through
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[Zoltan]

My reading of Soranon's response in the French forum response is:
1. he is giving an "interim" position
2. for now the "free road" should stop AT the village
3. the DT could well decide that this warrants an FAQ and that may result in a decision that like the "normal" road, the "free" road can pass through the village

The RAW on p.65 does say in black and white that a village includes a road:
1. passing through it, or
2. ending IN it (i.e. ending INSIDE the village and not AT THE EDGE OF)

[madaxeman]

[Hazelbark]

I have to say the attacks on common sense is becoming very discouraging.

[madaxeman]

Actually... probably worth clarifying some of my thought process here, as I'm not really arguing this entirely on a DBM-esque "The Word Of Phil Is The Law And Us Mortals Shall Be Grateful Merely For The Opportunity He Has Gifted Us To Seek To Understand It" basis, but also because of what the consequences might be for the game of accepting the opposite POV.

IMO the point of terrain in an ancients game is to set some additional challenges for both players (as well as the challenge of beating each other on a billiard table) in order to make the game more interesting. OK, some armies are better suited to certain types of terrain - but that is actually part of the army design challenge part of the game. Some parts of the terrain rules also actually have game-balancing functions which sit outside of the concept of how terrain works (fake ambush markers do go a long way to offset the advantage of the attacker in deployment and first movement as a great example). But the basic principle is that the terrain rules, and the very idea of terrain adds variety, adds interest and creates challenges and additional choices for both players to make the game better and more engrossing.

With that in mind, the downsides I see of allowing "free" roads to go into villages are several;

The basic principle of an Ambush is (for me) that you get to hide some stuff in terrain, but the trade-off has always been that it's a little tricky to move out if you are ambushing with troops who are not suited to operating in that type of terrain... so the player triggering the Ambush operates on an assumption that the Ambushers are almost certainly loose formation or light infantry ... and so if they are not, and you successfully extricate them from the terrain at the right time the surprise is even greater! There's potential for layer upon layer of bluff and counter bluff here, all of which can create some great in-game stories and moments.

If however every village has a free internal road suddenly we have a class of terrain which, well, kinda "cheats" those principles. Anything can hide in it, and anything can also exit from it (down the road) not only with no penalty at all, but actually with extra move distance. Eh?

Once everyone hears about this "kink in the rules" and spots there is a way of deploying a village that allows it to break most of the negative conventions associated with all the other types of "terrain you can ambush stuff in" it could easily become pretty much a no-brainer to try for a Village + internal road in every defenders terrain selection..

And once you have it, why would you not use it as a way of forward-deploying a column of cavalry or Knights in every game?

Its actually kinda hard to stop - marchers have to halt 4MU away from an ambush marker, after which your Impact HC will all boil out of the village for 2-3 pips and deploy out into line. Which, historically, would be kinda bollocks, as cavalry ambushes out of villages are not to the best of my knowledge a massive part of the records of historical warfare.

So, whilst I do think the rules actually say "to the edge" not "into" for the "free" road, I also think this is a Very Good Thing to actually have it work like this for game balance and variety purposes. If the "free" road can go into the village that just feels like a gamey trick to me, that is almost a no-brainer for people who know it and an game-ily engineered exception to how all other dense terrain works for those who don't know it (yet).
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[Zoltan]

P.65 RAW definition of village:

"A village is an area with buildings, walls and a road passing through or ending in it. (my emphasis). A village is considered difficult terrain..."

To me this says:
- a village MUST have at least some road within its boundaries
- the road within the village is treated as difficult terrain, albeit you get +1 UD moving along it (even though you are on a road the speed limit is lower than when on the autobahn)

So a LC in ambush within a village, and wishing to move out of the village along the road, would move at 2MU (difficult) + 1MU (bonus) = 3 MU.

Maybe a bit of a wheeze but not really the end of the world. All part of the threat posed by an enemy village - the garrison may sortie out and surprise the besiegers etc. Deploy accordingly etc.

[madaxeman]

[Adrian Clarke]

I agree with Tim’s general points about game balance, but surely ambushes on roads are commonplace enough, whether or not a village is involved. They do indeed require a certain tactical response.

An integral internal road for a village seems realistic and reasonable to me, but I agree that throwing in the remainder of the road to a chosen table edge does seem like a free lunch.

A simple FAQ friendly compromise would be to require a player to pay separately for any road beyond the city limits (or hill, if the village is on one). Think of it as being paid for by the district council, rather than the town council. Different budgets altogether.

Adrian.

[Black Prince]

So if I read correctly as a defender if I get a village at the half way line I can place my free road to the attackers long edge. Then I place an ambush marker in the village in my turn I can move my HC (for example) on the road at 4UD +1 so I am over three quarters of the way across the board in my first turn. What can possible wrong if that?

[madaxeman]

[Ramses II]

Which a ‘devious’ / tedious player might circumvent by placing the road up to the side edge rather than the “front edge’. This would be argued to permit a slide followed by a charge entirely on the road, whilst not providing a clear line of sight into the village. . . .
(Assuming the attacker did not anticipate this by placing LC in the way of the single unit making this move) 

Guys, would it be simpler to require the defender to state whether the road ends on the edge, or traverses the village??

As for the question on visibility, I thought that had already been answered; that visibility is stopped by the edge of the terrain even though it is being traversed by a road. No??

[Three]