Prisoners of War

If an enemy unit accepts surrender, the figures of the surrendered unit are interspersed with those of the unit taking them prisoner. The prisoner figures are moved by the player who owns the capturing unit. The combined unit has the movement allowance of the slower of the two types of figures (i.e., a cavalry unit with infantry prisoners moves at the same rate as the infantry unit). In addition, it suffers a movement allowance penalty of 2”. A unit with prisoners must always be in irregular formation, and cannot initiate melee combat (it can initiate missile combat, however).

If a unit with prisoners is the victim of missile fire, half of the attacking figures (rounded down) are considered to be attacking the prisoner figures, while the remainder are considered to be attacking to the captors.

For example, an orcish unit with an AR of 8 has taken prisoner a unit of peasants (AR 9). The combined unit is attacked by 7 figures of longbowmen (AD 6). By the rule above, the components of the combined unit suffer damage as though it’s the victim of two distinct attacks: the peasants suffer an attack by 3 figures of longbowmen (half of 7, rounded down), while the orcs suffer an attack by 4 figures (the remainder).

If a unit with prisoners is attacked in melee combat, the prisoners instantly break free and move 4” in the direction of the “friendly” side of the table. At the end of this movement, they are routed (but can be rallied normally). For the first step of combat, the captor figures suffer a penalty of +1 to their AR.

As can be seen, taking (and keeping) prisoners isn’t the easiest matter. In some cases, however--and in some scenarios--there should be some significant benefits to taking prisoners. Perhaps they can give the attackers valuable information about the castle’s defenses, or should the siege fail, maybe they could be ransomed back for a handsome profit.