Hills and Line of Sight

I had a problem interpreting the rules for hills and LoS at Cardiff tournament yesterday, can anyone help to explain/clarify them? This is my interpretation of what the book says:

p19 1st bullet - Gentle Hills reduce the LoS to 15U (a) , or 5U when looking over the crest (b).

(a) No idea what this means - you can only see up to 15U from the edge of a hill towards its middle?

(b) I thought this meant a unit can be seen up to 5U behind a crest by a unit off the hill in front of it, but I don't think that makes sense - if you're behind a crest you are out of sight?

Thanks for any help.

It's a tough one to interpret, there might have been a different answer given somewhere else but the way we have played it here is you can see troops up to 5U behind the crest (I assume this represents the height of the man or man+horse rising above the crest or somesuch) provided the total distance does not exceed 15U.

Hasn't been much of an issue as I haven't encountered a lot of troops hiding on hills within 5U of the crest to date. On occasions where hills have been involved we've simply declared whether or not troops are hidden behind the crest and that becomes it for both sides. i.e. gentlemen's agreement.

We play it the following.

Gentle hills reduce the LOS to 15U for units wishing to charge or fire when the hill has no definable crest.

When the LOS crosses the crest the LOS is reduced to 5U which means practically that the unit firing must essentially be in Point Blank range. So in this sense we play it differently than GG. The range is not extend 5U past the crest but the total distance can only be 5U from unit to unit to fire over the crest. I hope it is written more clearly in the next edition of Impetus.

Take a look a the following.

http://impetus.forumsland.com/impetus-about1870.html&highlight=los

I had the same problems to understand the rule. I wondered if a unit standing on the hill has also a limited line of sight of 15 U.
Climbing a hill in order to reduce the fog of war seems useless when reading the paragraph.
I assume the rule applies for units with a hill between them?

Since all our hills have definable crests it does make things easier for us. Still we've had to make to some conventions up to deal with this in practice as the rules are a bit vague. Considering how often gentle hills are chosen as terrain features it really would be good to get clearer direction on this.

It's not the clearest bit of the rules but hasn't produced much argument as we tend to define terrain before we start.

We limit visibility into and across gentle hills to 15u or up to where LOS crosses a defined sharp crest. To see across the crest you need to be within 5u of the crest line.

No idea if that's what was meant but it's the way we play it. . .

take 2 units and place a hill between them.

1) Is there a crest between them? No? Ok then they can see (and shoot/charge) within 15U.

2) Is there a crest between them? Yes? Well visibility is reduced to 5U, so shooting/charge is limited to 5U.

Thanks for clearing this out.

Consider one of the 2 units stands on the hill. Does the rule apply, too? thanks.

If a unit stands on a hill there is still hill between it and the other unit - even if that unit is on the same (or different) hill. The only question that remains is - is there a crest in between.

Just to be sure this means:
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Unit A (T crossbow) standing on a hill cannot see B, D or C.

From other games I would consider that A can see D and B without penalty. I am fine with C not to be seen.

I'm not the final arbiter but IMO
A can see D - it can trace LOS without crossing a hill (LOS unlike shooting isn't measured centre to centre but rather like command closest to closest)
A cannot see B because the hill rises between them - A is on the west slope, B on the east and there is high ground between them.
A cannot see C because the crest line cuts visibility - if C was a bit to the left (west) and the hill had no defined crest then A would be able to see C