Gallop in third person and you sit a half seat on your legs instead of bobbing behind the stride, with your rein hand following the horse’s mouth. The saddle front no longer sinks into the withers: the saddle is carried by the back and the shoulder blades under it, and rides up when the withers rise.
Under it is a felt pad with real thickness, about 2 cm off the coat, where the old pad was crushed to about 1 cm. Where the felt can give, it does, and the back lifts the saddle only after that. Behind the cantle, the wide strap to the saddlebags follows the curve of the croup down to each bag instead of dropping straight through the air with a hard corner.
A playtest then showed the horse’s hip coming up through that strap at the trot and gallop. The strap now moves with the coat under it. That fix, of November 14, was checked on the studio stage and has not been looked over in the normal game yet. Still open, measured outside the game: the cinch dips into the belly at the trot, and the saddlebag bottoms still touch the horse’s thigh by up to 3 cm.
