Reply To: new player with questions

[Charge The Guns]

Hi Mark,

You’re right (see p62 of main rules).  The move of A’s musket blocks up to support the pike have to be a different order.

When you come to work out the result of combat ‘supports’ have to be within 3”.  Note that supports don’t fight directly in the melee as they do in Hail Caesar, but instead give a modifier to the combat result.  So, if B’s musket blocks are within 3” of the pike block they can support.  One way to prevent B having this advantage is for A to charge all three units together 😀.

Supports in P&S are not engaged in combat and so are free to shoot and also to be shot at.

One slight oddity in the rules for which you may want to agree an interpretation in your group is if, in your example, B’s muskets could shoot at A’s pike unit as it charges in to B’s pike. Strictly speaking the rules don’t allow this and we have had several discussions about it.  We have decided to allow ‘supporting fire’ (we have made a similar special rule for commanded shot brigaded with horse) but important that everyone knows this at the start of the game.

Hope the clarifications help. 👍