Hey there,

I played a game of SBG with some friends recently, and one extremely confusing thing cropped up, and that's multiple combats. Basically when you have a LOAD of guys in a big mass in the fight, I don't know who should be in the fight, who shouldn't, especially if one guy is touching two enemies, which they themselves are being touched by other guys on my team, and so on.

Now from what I can tell, the guy with priority gets to decide who's part of which fight, but let's say that there's one rohan warrior trapped by 3 orcs, but 2 of the orcs themselves are base contact with a second rohan not trapped. If rohan had priority, couldn't I just say "okay, trapped rohan goes first, and he's in combat with the orc not base to base with other rohan AND one of the offs in base contact with other rohan? Let's say I lose, does the base to base goblin with second rohan get to attack second rohan since he's in base to base contact with him?

One last thing, if there was a 2 orcs vs 2 rohan in an x shape with 2 orcs in the middle, and 2 rohan on each side both touching the 2 orcs, since all multi combats have to be multi vs 1, that would mean I couldn't do 2 rohan vs 1 orc, since then the one orc left would either 1. be able to fight the 2 rohans that already fought since they wouldn't have been pushed back, or 2. Not be able to fight them since they would have been pushed back and moved.

I really appreciate the help btw guys!

How I understood it to go is like this:

you take 2 rohan soldiers and charge an orc and finish your move. Then your opponant comes in with an orc of his own on his move and charges one of the rohan soldiers. The rohan soldier that the 2nd orc charged is then pulled off the 1st orc and you have two 1v1 battles. Doing this as it happens will eliminate any gray areas from cropping up.

Follow this sequence and it should solve your questions.
Before any fights take place the player with priority splits any multiple combats up as he see's fit so that there are no multiple V multiple fights and evry model is still in a Fight. You should seperate the models slightly (1mm) to make it obvious.
He then decides the order of the fights.

Having Priority in SBG and determining when fights resolve is actually a very potent advantage. First, as mentioned, just being able to decide how multi v. multi fights are broken up can sometimes mean all the difference in the world. Someone that can shield can be elected to try to hold off multiple opponents, or perhaps you have a sacrificial model involved that you will give up so that your Hero is guaranteed a win. Take a few moments to look over options before you decide.

What may not be as obvious though is the importance of the fight resolution order. If you have a model trapped by another fight, resolving the other fight could very well mean your trapped model is no longer trapped. Or you could resolve a fight early that involves an opponent’s trapped model to get the advantage on them. If an Heroic Fight is resolved early then they can assist others that have not yet fought, but you may need to resolve another fight before that to make room for them.

Manipulating the board’s Zones of Control and breaking up / ordering fight resolution are a couple of the more subtle aspects of SBG that really make it a strong game system and help give it that “day to learn, lifetime to master” quality (ok…maybe not a lifetime but that is the expression).

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Wait ye the finish! The fight is not yours.
Beowulf

http://TacticsInMiniature.com

Combats a very easy to split/sort - in any single fight at least one side must have only 1 figure. So you can have 1 against 1, or 1 against 6, but you can't have 2 against 2 becuase that's just two combats, both 1 against 1.
The only time both sides can have more than one in the combat is with supporting spearmen who are in base contact with their own and not the enemy.

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eBob.

Correct, follow this principle and it's hard to go wrong.

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"There are few left in Middle Earth like Aragorn, son of Arathorn." - Gandalf, Many Meetings