At the FFS GT, I was asked to make a ruling on a corkscrew situation in the game between Dan King and Adam Padley. I did some maths (well, drew it out to scale in Powerpoint) and was surprised by the answer.
Dan had charged one of Adams non-Nimble cavalry units with an Individual, hoping to block Adam from hitting the flank of another one of Dan’s units.
Normally when you try and block a charge like this with a unit, one that’s quite a bit wider than an Individual like a troop, then the blocked unit can only perform close to a 90 degree pivot:
For units that are even wider, such as a 150x100mm unit, this pivot can only be 90 degrees.
However, versus an Individual, the angle that you can achieve is rather surprising:
Just over 60 degrees rather than the 90 degrees that most units can achieve in that situation. Even without Nimble, that gives you a lot of flexibility for a corkscrew.
I know it’s started to become quite common to use cheap Individuals for chaff and charge blocking, and it was a bandwagon I was considering hopping on for Lonewolf GT. Now I’m not so sure. Individuals are far more flexible than a troop of chaff and less susceptible to regular shooting, but with the overrun and the massive difference in terms of how far a unit can pivot for a corkscrew…
Nick Williams 