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Addendum 1: Why a coastal hex counts as land
A coastal hex is printed part land, part sea. The atlas gives every coastal hex a land terrain, never Sea. The rules never say this outright; it follows from them in these steps.
- Land units can be in coastal hexes.Rules 27.72 and 27.77 land Layforce, an infantry battalion, in a coastal hex from a ship. The ship may stay in that hex, and Layforce may retreat into it.
- What a land unit does in a hex depends on the hex’s terrain.The Terrain Effects Chart (8.37) gives each terrain its cost to enter, its vehicle breakdown, its combat adjustments and its stacking limit.
- The chart has no Sea row.Every row is a land terrain or a hexside feature. Ships never use the chart: they are placed in their hex rather than moved (30.15), and they have no stacking points (30.14).
- So a coastal hex must count as one of the land terrains.Otherwise a unit in it would have no movement cost, no combat adjustment and no stacking limit.
- The atlas takes that terrain from the hex’s land part.The rules don’t say which land terrain a coastal hex has. The atlas reads its land part with the same rule as any other hex, so a hex is Sea only when it holds no land.
What this does not show
- No rule states that a coastal hex is a land hex. The steps above show it has to be one.
- No rule bars land units from all-sea hexes either. The chart simply has no row for them.
Rule numbers refer to the rulebook of The Campaign for North Africa (SPI, 1979).