Reserves
Commanders rarely commit the entirety of their available forces at the start of a battle. Rather, they hold some elements in reserve, at some distance from the battlefront. This gives them the flexibility to adapt as the battle progresses, to reinforce areas that are weak or to capitalise on a breakthrough.
Or sometimes, elements of the available forces may be ready to join a vanguard when it encounters the enemy.
Some special rules or scenarios state that you may or must place some of your detachments in Reserves. This means that you will not deploy these detachments before the start of the game. Instead, you will put them into play when they arrive at some point after the start of the game, as we explain below.
For convenience, we refer to a detachment that is currently subject to the Reserves rules as a 'Reserves detachment'.
Setup
During the scenario setup, leave all Reserves detachments out of play. That is, do not deploy them before the game, but instead keep them close at hand to bring into play later.
Play
Unless the rules say otherwise, Reserves detachments arrive and go into play as we explain here.
Arrival of Reserves detachments
We determine the arrival of each Reserves detachment as a function of the Reserve Speed of the detachment, the number of turns you’ve already played, and the roll of a die.
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A detachment’s Reserve Speed is equal to the Speed value of the slowest unit in the detachment, ignoring units that are embarked in transport units. [1]
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In the Start phase of each turn, use the Reserves Detachment Arrival table to determine whether or not each Reserves detachment arrives: Roll a D6 for each of your Reserves detachments — the table shows the score you need to trigger the arrival of a given Reserves detachment.
| Detachment’s Reserve Speed | Turn #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5 | #6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Up to |
- |
4+ |
4+ |
3+ |
3+ |
2+ |
Over |
- |
3+ |
3+ |
2+ |
2+ |
2+ |
|
- |
3+ |
2+ |
2+ |
2+ |
2+ |
|
By default, no Reserves detachment can arrive in the first turn. After that, while you have Reserves detachments that have not entered play, at least one must arrive and enter play each turn. If you roll for all of your detachments and fail to get any die result that would trigger the arrival of a detachment, then your Reserves detachment with the highest Reserve Speed will arrive. If you have multiple detachments that tie for the highest Reserve Speed, then select one of these at random. |
Putting arrived Reserves detachments into play
When your Reserves detachments arrive, they enter play anywhere along the table edge that lies inside your deployment zone.
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Place the detachment’s HQ unit on this table edge. This shows the point at which units from that detachment will enter play. If you want multiple arrived Reserves detachments to enter play at the same point — along a road, perhaps — simply place their HQ units in a column at that point.
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In the Movement phase, measure movement for all units from the point on the table edge that the HQ unit identifies — not from the HQ unit itself!