Breaking up your battle line

Originally posted by Ted Lapinus:

A kinked line in DBAOL is a representation of a curved defense line on the real battlefield. In the game as in reality, a curved defensive line is much more powerful to prevent an attack but also PIP expensive to set up and quasi unmovable.

IMO, forming a kinked line is not more cheating than waiting a Kn charge with Bw on the crest of a hill [img]smile.gif[/img]

One would wonder how the Romans handled the Carthaginian crescent formation at Cannae (obviously not very well). Wasn't this a form of a kinked line?

[ July 01, 2003, 07:56: Message edited by: Ambiorix ]

Originally posted by Ambiorix:

One would wonder how the Romans handled the Carthaginian crescent formation at Cannae (obviously not very well). Wasn't this a form of a kinked line?

Yes, one may think so: one famous exemple at the largest scale. But I was rather thinking about other cases at smaller scale implying just a part of the defensive wing of an army, especially bows. A curved line is a natural and obvious way for Bw to concentrate fire on a precise point. From an extended point of view, any infantry curved line can quite easily overflank the ennemy in a hand to hand combat (not easy to achieve in DBAOL because of the ZOC rules).

Originally posted by Ted Lapinus:
The two tricks can be judged as frustrating, but none is reprehensible since in strict accordance with the rules.

A kinked line in DBAOL is a representation of a curved defense line on the real battlefield. In the game as in reality, a curved defensive line is much more powerful to prevent an attack but also PIP expensive to set up and quasi unmovable...

Strict accordance with the rules = the first line of defense for rule lawyers.
[not a bash/flame/etc. just an observation]

A lot of the battlefield formation arguments are not really valid at this scale. Because an entire army is being represented by 12 elements, the focus is grand tactical not skirmish.

Kinked line is not a violation of the letter of the rules, but rather the spirit, because it denies legal contact in one or more places by manipulating the front to front requirement for combat in DBA and the fact that the bases are distinct rectangular shapes with which a continious convex front cannot be created.

Kinking your line to bring bows into range is perfectly valid and obviously not reprehensible. Kinking your line just before an opponent's charge to deny a clean front to attack is. The situation created at the point of the kink is one of the elements can be attacked and one cannot. And the element attacked has a guaranteed overlap advantage. In reality, the entire space would be filled in with attackers and the bend in the line would provide little or no inherent advantage. This is nothing more than an artifact of the game system being manipulated.

An opponent who deliberately puts groups his elements into a hedgehog of parenthesis shapes is even worse. The only advantage here over the above scenario. Is that doing this is a huge pip drain and may provide points of vulnerability that can be attacked. And the entire army has become much less responsive because it is broken up.

Originally posted by Scottila:

Kinking your line to bring bows into range is perfectly valid and obviously not reprehensible. Kinking your line just before an opponent's charge to deny a clean front to attack is.

I am not quite sure why a kinked bow line is any more or less the same situation as a kinked line of foot soldiers or cavalry (particularly in the case of psiloi and light horse). If one kinks his line to get more bow shots on an opponent and at the same time preventing him to attack head-on with his line of infantry is still a situation where one is "taking advantage of the rules".

Discussion, discussion...

Tooley 1, you see, that's typically the kind of question we can debate on undefinitely.

Some among us do see kinked lines as a cheesy move, others do not. I guess each of us has their own subjective point of view: cheesy or not, historical or not, in accordance with the spirit and/or the letter of the rules or not...

Just for the fun you can also throw an eye at the Podalire's topic about BOD and killing recoil. It's worse [img]smile.gif[/img]

Hello, to continue the debate in a non polemical point of view - just for curiosity

I made a little test. I am not sure how usefull and how conclusive it is, but it was fun to do, so I did it
A 3D view of the enemy line, as seen from the soldiers point of view.

The first picture is a line of 5 lined of spearmen, very basicaly depicted as basic shapes, and seen from a point of view of a horseman about 2 ZOCs away, facing the middle element.
There are about 400 men


In the second, the 2 group on the right are angled about 45° degree forward.


And in the 3rd,these 2 groups on the right are advanced in echelon.



IMO, in the 2nd and 3rd, attacking the middle element seems like entering a trap (hence the -1)but also attacking in the 2nd could result in big mess... may be justifying the restriction to the number of possible attackers ? :confused:

On the opposite, the men in the rightest group must be elite or well protected, because they're in the first line, very vulnerable (subject to overlap and flank attack), and also, in the second, they would have difficulties to recoil and re-organize (simulated by the cost in PIPs to create and remove the formation)


I am not a specialist at all, so I would appreciate comments from more specialist people than me. Is this approach stupid, and am I just in a fantasy ? Are the pictures clear enough, or am I just spoiling my time and your bandwidth ?

Dear Jerome,

Nice pictures [img]smile.gif[/img]

As you used Spears to illustrate your demonstration, it reminds me I often use with Greek armies (but also with almost all!) a tactic which some players would perhaps qualify as cheesy. But I really like it: Developping it and trying to improve it game by game gives me a lot of pleasure!!

I don't form any kinked line (no angles at all) but I introduce some gaps between each of my Sp to extend my weak wing in the deployment phase. Each gap is smaller than a unit front so that my opponent can not easily "close the door" (trying to do it with monted troops - as typically used in persians armies - would be very risky). So the first advantage of this tactic is that my opponent will spend PIPs to pass behind my "dashed line" and destroy one of my defensive unit with a recoil (the greatest pleasure is to force my opponent to use himself a so called "cheesy" move!!!). The second advantage is that my entire line covers the complete terrain if I introduce 4 or 5 gaps in my weak wing. Of course my strong wing is "normal" and very powerfull in hand to hand combat (most of the time a complete line of Sp).

My tactic is simple: Go forward as fast as you can with your strong wing and form an echelon with your dashed weak wing, destroy whatever is in front of your strong wing BEFORE your dashed line begins to get destroyed unit by unit. Against a persian army, it gives a 50/50 chances for success and it's only a matter of rapidity between the two armies. Big fun [img]smile.gif[/img]

Do you see this tactic as cheesy?

The units kinked forward to form a curved line are also much much easier to flank then the normal ends of the line and their recoils are quite disasterous because they aren't aligned with your opponets army.

Learning how and when to make these formations and how to deal wqith them is a big part of DBA. If you just line up straight lines and march straight into eachother, you might as welll play craps.

For my friendly tabletop games I adopt the following rule to address "kinked" battle lines.

"An element provides overlap support to another element only if its side edge is parallel to that elements side edge."

Thus, front corner to corner contact alone between two elements does not provide an overlap.

Asterix.

I frequently kink or angle-in one or both ends of a defensive line of units. I see it as a tactical decision that costs pips and future mobility of the formation in exchange for some defensive gain. It seems like a perfectly normal military tactic and very historical. The argument that in "real life" all the attackers could move forward in line and attack a curved or kinked line of defenders does not hold up to inspection of the geometry. The defenders, by placing themselves on the outer arc of a circle, are going to have room for more men to engage in the fight. The attackers must either move to outflank the defending line or they will be squeezed by virtue of being on the inner arc of a circle into less space than the defenders. Less space means fewer men getting into the fight and thus the defenders gain an edge. Already pointed out is the fact that the attacker can move to outflank the defender or can chance the frontal assault. With blade vs. a single rank of spear it is still an even fight.

Personally, I like the diversity of decisions that come about in the game. Depending on what else is happening in the game, I might kink or not on defense or on the attack I might challenge a kinked line or try to work around it. For me, these extra dimensions of the game are a large part of what makes it fun to play.