[antir-heralds] Dissecting X.4.a.

[Britt]

My heraldry student, Visegradi Geysa, is currently going slowly mad
because I've been drilling him on field primary armory conflict.  But
it caused me to finally type out something I've been doing personally
for awhile and I figure it might be nice to share.

X.4.a. is a bit difficult to use.  Almost all of X.4. is concerned
with counting CDs, but X.4.a. allows both significant and substantial
difference, making it an anomaly within the conflict rules.  And in
its own way, it's not written very clearly.  Many experienced heralds
who can handle armory with three secondary charge groups, dissimilar
primaries, and tertiaries in the same device come to a scalding halt
when they need to get into the minutae of field primary conflict
checks.  I blame it on the embedded parts of X.4.a.ii.

Here's the worst part.  X.4.a.ii.(a):
(a) Substantial Change of Partition - If two pieces of field-primary
armory have substantially different partitions, they are considered
sufficiently different and do not conflict, irrespective of any other
similarities between them.

Any divided field is substantially different from any plain field: Per
pale azure and vert is substantially different from Azure. Any two of
the following partitions are substantially different from each other
except the pairs per fess and barry, per bend and bendy, per pale and
paly, per bend sinister and bendy sinister, andper chevron and
chevronelly: per fess, per bend, per pale, per bend sinister, per
saltire, per chevron, quarterly, checky, lozengy, gyronny(of any
number of pieces), barry, bendy, paly, bendy sinister, and
chevronelly. Checky is substantially different from all other
grid-like partitions (i. e., those formed by two sets of parallel
lines, like lozengy and barry-bendy ); these other grid-like
partitions are not substantially different from one another. Barry and
per pale argent and vert is substantially different from Checky argent
and vert, but it has only a clear difference from Bendy and per pale
argent and vert. Per chevron Or and gules is not substantially
different from Chevronelly Or and gules, nor is Per pale wavy purpure
and argent substantially different from Paly wavy argent and purpure,
though in each case there is a clear difference between the fields.
--------------------------------------------
There are four paragraphs of information crunched into one run-on
sentence in there.  This is why I break down the first half of that
rule, the one that's so hard to parse:

- Any divided field is substantially different from any plain field:
Per pale azure and vert is substantially different from Azure.

- Any two of the following partitions are substantially different from
each other ... : per fess, per bend, per pale, per bend sinister, per
saltire, per chevron, quarterly, checky, lozengy, gyronny(of any
number of pieces), barry, bendy, paly, bendy sinister, and
chevronelly.

- except the pairs per fess and barry, per bend and bendy, per pale
and paly, per bend sinister and bendy sinister, andper chevron and
chevronelly

Everything from Checky on makes sense if you read it slowly, but I
think it should be a separate paragraph.

Anyway, I hope that my personal trick for keeping it all straight
helps someone out there. I love field primary armory.  It looks
awesome, it's good period style, and properly done it can be more
striking than anything with primary charges. Making it less of a
hassle to check might help encourage it, or at least keep me from
reaching for the scotch when I have to do an involved conflict check
on a piece. :)
(Scotch is for afterwards, anyway, right?)

- Teceangl