The Extra Plough wording solved...

 I guess you forgot that I was on the development team, and in fact got Phil to invite Joe :-) I am on the FAQ team. I have all of Phil‘s correspondence from our years of development. More important I got the co-authors opinion on the topic.  Why don’t you believe me?

Yes, that would work...but it does mean a ‘word change’ to Phil Barker’s rules
(the word ‘extra’ will need to be removed from in front of the optional ‘extra Plough’).

“BUA and/or Plough”, as suggested by Macbeth, would also work, if players understand
that ‘extra Plough’ means that you must have some Plough to start with in the first place
(and the word ‘and/’ needs to be added in front of the ‘or’).

But if we are going to make a ‘word change’, then my personal favourite is this:-
“1 Plough + 1 BUA or Plough”...so Arable compulsory terrain is always two picks
(and if Arable always has some Plough, then there’s no if’s or but’s about having ‘extra Plough’).

Even Joe Collins’ interpretation, where the compulsory ‘2 Plough’ is a single pick, really
needs a ‘word change’ in order to make it much clearer and understandable
(“2 Plough for a single pick and/or 1 BUA for a single pick”)

Any of the above would allow both a BUA and Plough to be together on the table, whereas
the current method, where you can never have them together, seems pretty absurd Bob.

Of course, all this is fairly academic, because as Arnopov and Martin have pointed out,
Plough is just about useless as a terrain piece anyway...
...so are we arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

Oh, and I believe you Bob... ...so why is it such a mess?...

Hi Bob.

I do believe you! But looking at Sue's reply it reads as though I can take a BUA as the compulsory choice and Plough as an optional choice. Does that mean we can forget the word "extra" in front of Plough?

Cheers

Jim

Martin,

Brilliant! I just played a game with an Arable army and placed a 1 BW square BUA hamlet in one corner and followed that with 2 roads running along the sides of the table - terrain that we called “Dry Martini” terrain to distinguish it from your recommended option using a skinny Water way that we now refer to as “Wet Martini” terrain. What ever it is called it appears legal and doesn’t bother the terrain lawyers hardly at all! i’m thinking of substituting the hamlet for a fort to make a “Wet Martini on the rocks!”

Paddy

I thought “every feature must have both a length and width of at least 1 BW.”

So true!

So we have a “Skinny Martini” which is a 28.4mm square hamlet and 2 x 60 cm lengths of brown string. That’ll hardly break the terrain budget!

Plonk the BUA in a corner with the roads leading out from the BUA to the opposite board edges. This gives a board that is 99.76% good going and I note with amusement more open than can be achieved in Steppe.