The voting:
Option | Votes | |
|---|---|---|
| Move to prepare for LCs next turn, remove hits | 4 | |
| Move to prepare for LCs, clear out SK w/velites | 1 | |
| Move up to the cavalry (mirroring Megacles's move | 1 | |
| Move to center, move up hastati to attack LI on river bank | 1 |
My thoughts:
There's a clear mandate here, but those pesky skirmishers on the Epirote right are archers, not the usual javelin/slinger guys, and hence they prevent recovery of cohesion hits out to four hexes. So Laevinus is faced with a choice of recovering hits or moving so as to ensure that most of his subordinates can get Line Commands.
Two of the minority votes took opposite horns of this either/or dilemma. On the one hand, you can remove the skirmisher problem by sending forth the velites, allowing for recovery next turn. Or, you can just commit Laevinus wholeheartedly to the cavalry and let the subordinate leaders hope for good rolls when Line Command dicing occurs.
The third minority vote was to clear out the Epirote LC to reestablish line for the velites continuity. Sounds plausible to me; in fact, I think it would have been a good goal for a one-two Magnus-Laevinus activation of the principes. Now, given only 9 MPs and the limited command range of Laevinus (5) to work with, a Roman cohort is going to have to go through a stack (and hence another TQ hit in addition to that for moving again) to reach the westernmost Epirote LI.
In the majority vote, most said get Laevinus in position to distribute Line Commands, and I vote for that as the best move, even though it's pretty conservative. Time is on the Epirote side -- with a denuded Roman flank, Pyrrhus (or Megacles, or both!) will be chipping away at the Romans Rout Point level. Hence, the legions need to close as quickly as possible, and the best way to make sure that this happens is by making sure that those mediocre subordinate commanders can activate an entire line. You're not going to get anywhere moving two or three units at a time.
Laevinus moved so as to keep everyone but Falco in command range. Proper forethought on my part would have left Plautius a few hexes to the Roman left and then the exact placement of Laevinus would be uninteresting.
Why leave Falco out of range? Two voters mentioned which subordinate to leave out, and (predictably) I had one vote for Falco and one for Plautius. I tipped the scales in favor of Falco (i.e. leaving him out of command range) because I think he's going to want to remove some cohesion hits first before attacking further, and line commands are of no use when recovering.
On to the next activation.