Skirmisher question

Hi,
Just finished my first full game of BI and noticed this odd situation;
Most skirmishers have a VBU of 2 but there is a -2 penalty for shooting at S, so two lines of skirmishers can't do any damage to each other. What am I missing? I know you get a minimum of 1 die when in melee but I can't find anything similar in the firing rules.
Thanks!

You also have the weapon stat line bonus which adds. Or not so much to S weapons, S will usually get a dice against CL but S shooting S is pretty much ineffective.

In shooting you do not get the minimum 1 dice.

You're not missing anything - it's just that S v S is ineffective.

Thanks for that, I just ended up with two units of javelinmen stood in a field looking at each other for the whole game which was odd. I'd overlooked that S can charge S. Doh.

Might look odd from a wargames perspective but I think it's quite likely on most battlefields. Without someone making them do something aggressive (as you say charging one group) then they are likely to faff around quite happily while the heavily armoured nobility do the real fighting

We applied our own house rule that skirmishes can throw 1 missile attack dice in these situations.

Christopher

Possibly better to just consider S vs S in melee as not being hand to hand but just closing the range down to where it's effective. I'll take that as a narrative.

Skirmishers aren't there to fight and defeat other units but to screen their own main bodies and prevent the enemy causing damage to them before they can get into contact, to occupy bad terrain and deny its use to the enemy and, if unopposed by enemy skirmishers, to get round the flanks and shoot up ther enemy line.

If you make it possible/easy for them to hit enemy skirmishers then the random hit scored will most likely destroy their opponents and seriously unbalance things.

Funny how gamers think alike, in our game last week we had the same situation as Sargon, applied the same house rule as Axebreaker and had the same thoughts as Ingram about skirmishers role in the rules. Other then that things seemed to go smoothly.

Just reviewing this thread as we had a BI2 game yesterday and of course ended up with skirmisher match up's - I think for players coming from full IMPETUS rules the skirmishers play very differently. We ended up fighting in melee but just also interpreted this as just very point blank skirmishing against each other.

Also later had a situation where a VBU 2 skirmish unit fought off CM cavalry that had pursed and contacted it - it was an annoying dice roll from the CM player with no hits. In some ways though it felt logical as the cavalry maybe just could not get to grips with the skirmishers and then fell back after taking casualties. In full Impetus though the skirmishers are automatically wiped out on contact.

Only played a couple of games of BI2 but I like a lot of the features, particularly that the S units get a chance to at least roll dice in a melee.

Wonder how many other players are taking up options to lose a S unit and get two initiative re-rolls.

Cheers Jez

S are a god troop in BI2 and yes swap an S for 2 initiative re-roll needs a second thought.