Hard flanking in rough/bad going

My phone has glurged your diagram...I think I just made that word up...and I like it.

The answer is, no. We don't allow it. This was done on purpose to weaken solid foot in difficult terrain.

Joe Collins

Stevie, I have never had an issue like what you describe. Since you can't close the door, split the difference.It makes little difference to the closing element whether it is halfway or two-thirds of the way to closing the door. Assuming you have infantry line in the rough. If it's a loner, measuring is easy.

I wouldn't allow it, no. I'm more flexible with complex movements or things that involve terrain and the like, especially because deployment and movement isn't laser-precise and there's some degree of fuzziness, but for sort of "in-place manoeuvres" such as this, if you can't, you don't.

Actually not true Stevie - read the rules carefully - first sentence at the top of page 9.  "Movement is measured in a straight line from the starting point of the furthest moving front corner of the single element or group to that corner's final position."   

That means that it can do an about turn with one BW movement if its front edge ends exactly where it was before.  A sort of about turn and shuffle back a bit!

Simon

Spot on, Simon 👍

There are two schools of thought on this issue Bob.

The first idea (concisely described by Stevie) relies on your implication that when an element turns to face the rear, its front edge replaces its rear edge. If this happens, the base rotates around the centre of the element, the front corners move to the positions previously occupied by the rear corners and the distance moved exceeds 1 BW. This is what happens when you physically turn the element on the table top.  It seems intuitive, and if PB truly wanted to disadvantage solid troops in rough/difficult terrain, it might have been his intention. 

However the contrary idea argues that no "real life" unit would move like this. Indeed, hoplite and phalanx formations probably moved more like modern marching bands, where each file follows the leader around to reverse its formation. On the table, the element's front right corner and left corner exchange positions, so that the front right corner finishes exactly 1 BW from its starting position. The overall effect is that the front edge remains in its original position facing to its previous rear, with the rest of the element behind it, hence Simon's "about turn and shuffle back a bit". This is a strict, literal, interpretation of the rule and if adopted, it would allow solid foot to legally about-face in rough/difficult terrain. It implies that turning to the rear is quicker and easier than turning to a flank, and this also appears historically consistent for rectangular formations that would have their better armoured and more experienced soldiers in the front ranks, leading the way and facing the enemy.

To address this thread's initial question, there is no doubt that in rough/difficult terrain, a solid element cannot turn to face its flank in one move. Again using the marching band analogy, it it a much trickier evolution to pivot on one corner, with troops needing to adjust their alignment in order to remain in formation as they rotate around that stationary point. In this respect, the rules seem to reflect reality.

I'd like to believe that PB's intention was for the simpler, intuitive first option for reversing direction, but DBA seems to attract a lot of fairly legalistic rule analysis, so for consistency these issues are probably worth a mention in FAQ's.