Moving and facing

The field is a grid of hexes, and a man stands on one of them, facing one of its six sides. Where he stands decides who can reach him. Which way he faces decides how badly they can hurt him.

What a step costs

A step onto open ground costs 2 action points. Brush costs 3. A step up onto higher ground costs one more, so climbing onto a hill costs 3 and climbing into brush on a hill 4. Stepping down or along a hill costs nothing extra.

That price is then multiplied by how the creature moves. A man on sound legs pays it as it stands. A wolf pays 0.7 of it, a boar 0.85 and a bear 0.9, so a wolf covers nearly half as much ground again as a man for the same points. A lame man pays more (see A lame man).

Every hex also costs wind, and a heavy man pays more of it (A turn).

The ground

Hover over a hex that is not open grass and the game says what it is.

Trees, boulders and brush never lie in the two columns at either edge of the field, where the companies form up.

Passing your own men

A man may walk through a hex where one of his own is standing, turning his shoulder and slipping past, but only one such man on any one walk (1). He cannot halt on a hex another man is standing on, so a walk that passes a friend ends clear of him or does not start. An enemy is never walked through.

The lit hexes only ever offer ground a man could stop on. A path through a friend is priced like any other: the hex he slips through costs what its ground costs.

A lame man

Hurt legs make every step dearer. The order bar marks him lame, and his wound chart names his gait:

A man on one knee has a leg that failed below the knee, and shuffles on the knee rather than walks (On the ground); the order bar says so in place of lame. A beast lamed worse than hobbling, on three legs and bad ones, pays ×3. Bad legs also make a man easier to hit, more so the worse they are.

A man marked crawling has no leg left that will bear him. He is on the ground and cannot walk at all (On the ground).

Walking

With no stroke armed, the hexes he can reach with the points he has left are lit. Select one and he walks there by the cheapest way. He cannot walk while he is on the ground, and he cannot set out with less wind than one step costs.

When he has walked, he faces the way he took his last step.

Free blows on the move

Every enemy watches the men inside his weapon's reach: the next hex for a sword, an axe or a mace, two hexes for a spear. A weapon that fights closed (a dagger, bare hands, a war bow) reaches no hex, so a man holding one never strikes at anyone on the move, even a man he had hold of (Measure). A step can draw his blow in three ways:

• Walking out of his reach. If the step takes a man farther from him, he strikes before the man goes. If the blow hits, the man stays where he was and the step's points are spent anyway. The log says he was held in place.
• Working round him. If the step stays inside his reach but goes round towards his flank or back, he strikes before the man gets there. If it hits, the man is turned back, and the points are spent anyway.
• Walking onto a set point. A man who is holding (A turn) strikes anyone who steps closer to him inside his reach, once they arrive, at −10. It does not stop the step.

A blow that misses, or is caught on a shield, lets the man walk on.

Each man has only one such blow a round, and the same one answers a man closing in, breaking away or getting up (A turn). Once he has given it, he lets everyone else by. So a point can be baited: send one man past a spear first, and the men behind him walk past for nothing. The one sent first should be the one best able to take a blow.

Walking up to a man who is not holding draws nothing. Leaving him, or working round him, does.

Facing

A man usually faces one of the six sides of his hex, and then the hexes around him fall into three arcs:

• Front: the three hexes ahead of him.
• Flank: the two hexes behind his shoulders, left and right.
• Back: the one hex behind him.

A man farther off is in whichever arc his bearing falls. When a man turns to someone two or more hexes off a straight line (after a hit, a shot or a throw, or when struck from the side), he turns to that man exactly, and can be left facing a corner between two sides. The six hexes around him then split two to his front, two at his flanks and two behind. Turning one face with the buttons squares him up again.

A blow is judged by the arc it comes from:

His weapon also keeps a man out when he tries to close in, and it does so by the same shares (Measure).

Which way he turns

• When he walks, he ends facing the way he walked.
• When his blow hits, he turns to the man he struck. A blow that misses or meets a shield leaves him as he was.
• When he shoots or throws, he turns to his mark.
• When he is attacked from the flank or behind, he turns to face the man who did it, once the blow is over, whether it landed or not. The blow itself was judged from where it came.

He does not turn to face a blow if he is on the ground, reeling, blind, or running, or if he is engaged to his front: someone else stands in his front arc within reach of him. A man fighting one enemy to his front cannot spare the time to turn to a second who comes round his side. Two men on one should work that way: one in front to hold him, one at his flank or back, where he cannot turn to meet it.

Turning

The turn buttons (↶ and ↷, or the [ and ] keys) turn a man one face left or right for 1 point. He can turn this way whenever it is his turn, engaged or not, but not while he is on the ground.

Before the battle begins, turning a man is free (Forming up).