So, I was playing against a swarm the other day. He lined up his TIEs in formation with the front two lined up parallel and equal distance. I lined up my B wing on the other side and between the two. And we both proceeded to do straight maneuvers for two turns, which ended with us colliding (wonderful opening i know...). Now I understand that there are bumps in the game and that normally they wouldn't end up being perfect, but since it was early in the game, they appeared to be along the same line.

The question is - Which TIE did the B wing run into? Presumably it contacted them both at the same time. And if it did indeed contact them both, then I'm assuming it can't shoot at either and neither of them could shoot at it?

This can happen more easily on Vassal than in the real world, but yes - if the backup left one ship touching two others, it would be considered to be touching both.

As I understood it. Touching is not the same as touching caused by an overlap.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought you could touch and still fire at one another. However if you overlapped then backed up along your maneuver template to the point of touching then no you couldn't fire at each other. Or is that what you meant and I miss read it???

The question is - Which TIE did the B wing run into? Presumably it contacted them both at the same time. And if it did indeed contact them both, then I'm assuming it can't shoot at either and neither of them could shoot at it?

If the B-wing overlapped both TIEs simultaneously, and ship bases were aligned so perfectly that when backing up it still touched both of them, I'd say that the 3 ships shouldn't be able to fire at each other.

However, this is extremely rare on a table game. A solution like this would probably require a consensus between players, according to their intentions and the 'cinematic flow' of the match, to consider that all ships involved were flying in perfect formation and 'touching' between them.

One other thing to remember is that the pegs matter for overlapping. So just to add to the improbability, even if the ships are all perfectly squared up and aligned, if the pegs contact one but sit in the cap for the other, it will only be hitting one.

I thought pegs never counted for overlapping? I am pretty sure this statement is correct.

From ruleboock page 10:

Note: When determining firing arc and measuring

range, ignore all guides (the two small bumps on the

front and rear of each base).

This is the only reference I found in the rule and FAQ to the pegs (or "bumps"). I could have missed something though. Any way, that part kind of implyes that thouse bumps are counted in other situations.

Which is funny because the bombs are just the opposite:

Q: Are a bomb token’s movement guides considered when measuring range or when a ship overlaps them?

A: Yes.

As for overlapping however:

OVERLAPPING OTHER SHIPS
There are a few situations that may arise where ships overlap other ships, and they are explained below.

Plastic Bases Overlapping
If a ship executes a maneuver that would cause the final position of its base to physically overlap another ship’s base (even partially), follow these steps:

1. From the opposite end of the template, move the active ship backward along the top of the template until it no longer overlaps another ship. While moving the ship, adjust it so that the template remains centered between both sets of guides on the ship’s base. Place the ship so that the bases of both ships are touching.

So... do the guides count for overlapping? Well they do for bombs which may indicate they do for ships.

Guides are part of the base. As Smuggler points out, the guides are explicitly excluded from range and arc measurement, but nothing else. So with that exception, anything that considers the base includes the guides.

I think this is a fairly logical read given the physical realities of the situation. If they guides are somehow nonexistent when considering overlapping, you'd have to try and balance the base so the guide was on top of the other ship's base. In effect, you'd be saying "The guides can (and must) overlap but the rest of the base cannot." This would actually happen in a lot of cases, since it would also apply when you were backing up after an overlap, and just sounds like a nightmare to deal with.

If this adds any clarity to the situation, i was the guy on the other side of the table.

In this particular case, after i moved my TIE's forward, his B moved forward. When the B moved forward, the little nubs on the front of the base is what was "touching" the base of my TIEs. When the B was placed back down on the mat after the movement, those nubs are what hit the tops of my TIEs base. Each nub was touching it's own TIE base.

Where the initial "huh?" came in was that in the moving of my TIEs in formation (tight formation as in bases touching each other), i would move the one in the middle with the template and then just place the other TIEs right next to it without using the template to maintain the formation. When he moved his B forward, that's when the touch occurred.

I think it's safe to say that if i had moved all of those TIE's using the template, the occurrence of this probably goes down dramatically, but at the time it happened we just kinda looked at each other and was like, "Huh, how would you rule that?". An offer was made to roll dice to determine the result, but in the end we just mutually agreed the B was touching both TIEs and moved on from there.

Note - all of his manuevers up to that point were straight, thus why it was "fine" for us in a friendly game to just move 1 and then move the formation forward to line up with that one.

You can use whatever shortcuts you want in a friendly game and nobody will judge you for it (well, somebody out there probably will, but they're being silly). I've even let an opponent at a local tournament do that for the first several rounds until he broke formation because moving a tie swarm that's in tight formation is time consuming.