Watercourses

Dennis, you said earlier that if the attacker doesn't want a watercourse, he can remove it. Is that right, if watercourses are treated the same as rivers?

There is a specific exception in Rule 3.3 that the attacker cannot move or remove a river if there is one. I've always assumed that applies even in tournaments. It seems to me to follow from the fact that the defender has to roll for the river and so cannot be sure of getting one, even though one of his terrain choices is used up whatever the roll. So if the defender is successful in rolling for a river, the attacker cannot simply negate the successful roll by removing the river.

So I think if the defender successfully gets a watercourse, the attacker has to live with it (he can move or remove one of the other terrain choices, depending on how many there are).

Even with that, I've rarely tried to have a river or watercourse.

RogerC

I agree RogerC with your interpretation about removing a river. In the the tournament rules a river runs the whole length of the short edge of the table. A watercourse would only occupy a limited part of the short edge if it were used. It could represent part of a near by shoreline jutting into the battlefield. We're talking two different kinds of terrain types however.

A river is one type of terrain and has specific rules for it. You must successfully roll for it and once it is placed the Attacker cannot remove it.

A watercourse is a different type of terrain and can be placed without having to roll, but the Attacker can move or remove (depending on the number of pieces placed of course). It can be from 10U up to 30U. CG is correct and it does not have to run the whole length of one short side but it can if you like. I try to have it 30U at the Attacker's end and narrowing down to 10U at the Defender's end so as to compress the Attacker's frontage and allow the Defender to still have the ability to move up to create an enveloping move. The Attacker usually removes the Watercourse if he can, so you need to only place 2 terrain pieces to achieve this..

Dennis

Ok, see that probably the text is not clear

Rivers can be any length but avoid unrealistic loops. River width can vary from 3U (streams) up to 10U.
Large watercourses or seas are better represented by a coastline that runs along one side of the battlefield. These areas of water will be a minimum of 10U up to a maximum of 30U wide.

River and large watercourse are the same. The rules are on rivers but you can represent larger watercourse in the same way. Just place the "river" attached to the side edge and extend up to 30U.
So ariver can live some free terrain between the river itself and the side edge. A larger water course not.
In tournament we don't permit the river to cross the battlefield parallel to deployment. It was not uncommon in history (see Alexander's battles) but not good for competitions.

So even a watercourse need a roll of 5 or 6 to be placed and this is to avoid it as an automatic choice. On the other hand once placed the attacker cannot remove it.

If that's what you want then we need to change the wording to reflect this. All you need to say is. "you need to roll a 5 or 6 to place a river or watercourse".

yes I will do. The paragraph on river was inteded to be the same, explaining how large waterways (that can still be rivers) could be represented.
But yes, better to add waterways in the explanation in a future edition.