Missiles

Three weapons can hurt a man who is not within their measure. A hand axe and a spear can be thrown, and a war bow looses arrows. A missile has a range instead of a measure, nobody can turn it aside with a weapon, and once it has landed it is resolved exactly as a blow is: the same armour, the same flesh, the same bone (see What a blow does).

Throwing

A man holding a hand axe or a spear has a Throw button beside the measure buttons, and T arms it. It costs 4 action points with either weapon. Every enemy he can reach is ringed, and hovering over one shows the cost and the chance to land it.

He can throw at anyone from the next hex out to that range, but not from the ground. He can even throw at a man he is closed with, though winding up inside a man's measure costs 25 on the chance.

The chance to land a throw

A throw is his skill at throwing, which is an art of its own: a good axeman is not always a good thrower of axes. To that is added:

• the weapon's own figure, above;
• −8 for every hex beyond the first;
• +10 for each step of high ground he throws down from, and −10 for each step up;
• +6 at the man's flank and +16 at his back, as for a blow;
• his own wounds, pain, shock, wind and nerve.

Against it stand half the target's guard and his own wounds. Nothing is parried: a cast is answered by the man, not by his weapon. A man lying on the ground is easier to hit with a throw, by 8. A man lying senseless answers nothing at all: in place of his guard and his wounds, he is 20 easier to hit, and his shield does not count.

The aim (High, Body, Low) still decides where on him a throw lands, but for a missile it costs nothing to the chance. A throw cannot be called at one part: at that distance a man is a shape, not an anatomy. With Called chosen, a throw goes at the body.

Where it lands

An axe turns over in the air. About 35% of the time it comes down flat and arrives as blunt force, and the log says it turned over in the air and came down flat. A spear flies true.

Hit or miss, the weapon has left his hand, and he fights on with his bare hands. It lies where it fell: on the hex of the man it struck, or, if it missed, one hex short of him on the thrower's side. The log says which. Unless it came down among trees or boulders, anyone can pick it up, him included, by standing on that hex and taking it up from the kit (see Taking up a weapon).

So a throw is a blow bought with the weapon. It is worth it to open a fight with a spear from six hexes, or to finish a man who is running, when a spare waits in the pack or there is a weapon on the ground to walk to. It is rarely worth it when the axe is all he has and the enemy is about to reach him.

Being thrown at tests a man's nerve (see Nerve).

The bow

A war bow is two-handed. It has two strokes: Beat, the bow swung like a club (key 1, at −10 to hit), which fights at the closed measure like a dagger: with an enemy in the next hex an archer can neither loose nor beat until he closes in, and Loose, which is what it is for (F).

The Loose button shows the arrows left and the cost: Loose (12) (5). A shot costs 5 action points. The arrows are in the quiver at the archer's waist, which holds 24 and comes with the bow holding 12. Every loose takes one out, whether it lands or not, and an arrow once loosed is gone. The log notes the last shaft, and after it the button is dead.

The quiver stays belted on when an archer falls, as his armour stays on him. A bow taken up off the grass brings no arrows with it: a man without a quiver of his own can only beat with it.

Range

A bow reaches 12 hexes, and no closer than two: an archer cannot loose at a man in the hex next to him. A bow is no use at the elbow. He cannot loose from the ground either.

The chance to land a shot

A shot is his skill at the bow, and to that is added:

• +6 for the loose itself;
• −4 for every hex beyond two, so a bow is far steadier at range than a thrown weapon;
• +10 for each step of high ground he looses down from, and −10 for each step up;
• +6 at the man's flank and +16 at his back;
• his own wounds, pain, shock, wind and nerve;
• −20 if any enemy who can still fight stands next to him. Loosing with a man at your elbow is slow and wild.

Against it stand a little under half the target's guard and his own wounds. Nothing is parried. A man standing in brush is harder to hit, by 12, and so is a man lying on the ground, by 10: he is a smaller mark at a distance. A man lying senseless is the exception, because he does not move at all: in place of his guard, his wounds and the 10, he is 20 easier to hit, and his shield does not count.

As with a throw, the aim decides where on him an arrow lands and costs nothing to the chance.

Hovering over a mark shows the cost, the chance to land the shot, and anyone standing in the way (see Shooting past your own). It does not show the armour forecast that a stroke gets.

Bodkin and broadhead

Beside Loose are two buttons for the arrowhead, Bodkin and Broadhead, each with the number of that head left in the quiver. Every bow starts with bodkins. Changing is free, costs no action points, and can be done before every shot; a head with none left cannot be chosen, and when the chosen head runs out the next shot is loosed with the other.

The bow gives the arrow its energy. The head decides everything else: how much armour it has to part to get through, and what it does to the flesh behind. A bodkin is a hardened spike that puts all of that energy on a narrow point, and it is the only head that argues with armour. A broadhead is a wide thin blade that opens flesh, and will not pass plate.

Loose bodkins at a man in mail or plate. Change to broadheads for a man in leather or nothing, or a beast.

The draw

A war bow gives its full energy, about 169 joules, only to a man who can draw it: a draw strength of 11. The reference man, at a draw strength of 10, gets about 91% of it. A weaker man gets less, though never less than about half.

A bow is drawn with the back, not the arm. The draw comes mostly from the chest and back, and a man with form at the bow puts his trunk into it, where a novice draws with his arms alone. So an archer of middling strength who has trained at the bow can outdraw a stronger man who has not. What a man's draw gives him is on his card at the muster and in the kit, in joules. A wound to his chest or his arms weakens the draw as it would a swing, and so does being out of wind.

Shields

A shield is carried on one side, and against a missile it counts in full from the front, half from the flank and not at all from behind. A cast or an arrow that would have missed may be caught on it instead, and the log says so. As the game stands, a shield does not make a missile that would have hit any less likely to hit: a man with a board on his arm is struck by an archer as often as a man without one. That is a fault in the game, not a rule, and is item 55 in the register.

Calling a shot

A shot can be called at one part, as a blow can (see Calling a part), but only where the archer can pick the part out and it will still be there when the arrow arrives: at a man within 3 hexes, or at a man lying senseless anywhere the bow reaches. Further off, a man on his feet is a shape, not an anatomy.

With Called chosen, Loose costs 1 point more and lights only the men a shot can be called at. Selecting one opens his wound chart, headed Call the shot, with the odds at every part; choosing a part looses the shaft at it. It lands there or not at all, and pays for the smaller mark and the guarded head exactly as a called blow does, so a called shot at the neck is a long one. A bow holds no ward, so there is no ward's help to lose.

A man in range of the bow but not of a called shot is not lit. Pointing at him says why, and a click on him puts the shot down and spends nothing: no point and no arrow. A called shaft that finds another man in the way (see Shooting past your own) strikes him at the height the part was called from.

Shooting past your own

An arrow crosses every hex between the archer and his mark, and anyone standing in one of them, friend or foe, may take it instead. Each man in the line has a 30% chance to be the one it finds, nearest to the archer first. The log says so when it happens (The shaft meant for him finds another in the way), and the arrow is then rolled against that man as if he had been the mark. It can wound your own.

Two exceptions:

• A man of your own at the archer's shoulder, in the hex right next to him, is shot over, not through.
• A man lying on the ground is not in the way.

A man of your own two hexes up the line is in the way, and so is an enemy standing in front of the one you want. Hovering over a mark names everyone in the way and the chance each has to take the shaft, and lays an arrow across each of them on the map, pointing the way it would fly.

So stand an archer directly behind the front rank, not two ranks back. From there he shoots over the man in front of him.

High ground

A raised hex is worth 10 on the chance for every step it stands above the target, for a throw or a shot as for a blow, and costs as much looking up. The map's hover over a raised hex says so.