Hello Everyone,

A couple of questions have arose during my friends' skirmish battle. The Brotherhood without Banners were in play in this scenario.

1. The Lightning Lord's Longbowmen have an attack range of 2-5. Does this mean that they cannot attack in melee even if engaged by an enemy melee unit?

2. If they in fact cannot attack in melee even when engaged, we decided it would be prudent for them to withdraw from enemy attackers whenever they have the oppurtunity. The question is, how is withdrawing handled for Brotherhood units? Since they cannot go inactive, we've decided that a Brotherhood token must be discarded if a unit withdraws. Is this correct?

Thanks for taking the time to read my questions!

1. Correct, they cannot fight at 1 hex range. even if Stalwart, they cannot counterattack.

2. If using the Withdraw rule, your ruling is sound. Since a Brotherhood token is the only means of 'activating' a brotherhood unit, and the withdraw rules requires a unit to become inactive after withdrawl, the discarding of a brotherhood token is a fair price for conducting a withdrawl. I would guess the FAQ/Withdraw rule was written before Brotherhood without Banners came out.

Murnaz said:

They cannot attack in Melee both because they have no Melee Icon on their Unit Reference Card and they cannot attack or counterattack adjacent (Range 1) Units because they have a minimum Range of 2. Remember that Ranged Units with no Melee Icon never Melee attack, even against adjacent Units, so they do not affect Engagement Tokens, cannot Flank and cannot participate in a Coordinated Attack.

Yes, I believe you discard one Brotherhood Token per Withdrawing Brotherhood Unit, in addition to the normal Morale payment for Withdrawing.

Thanks for the reply, vyrago. I was hoping we were doing this correctly. My friend was quite perturbed by the fact that the Longbowmen cannot attack enemies adjacent to them, but it only makes sense that they have some sort of disadvantage considering how much more powerful they are than regular archers.

Cheers!

So if I'm understanding you correctly, Ken, that means that archer units with a range of 1-4 or 1-3 can shoot units adjacent to them, but cannot participate in any attacks where an engagement token is involved?

'regular' archers, with a 1-4 attack range never place their own engagement token. They can shoot at an engaged unit, but never count as 'Flanking'. They can conduct a parting blow if they were engaged by another unit. (opposing engagement token present) and they can counter-attack if they are Stalwart.

* They can only disengage themselves by moving and must always attack a unit they are engaged with. (remember, they cannot create engagement themselves, but can be engaged by the enemy normally)