I have found that while it is easy to find formations that are good at supporting assaults, it is actually a lot more difficult to find formations that are good at initiating assaults.

They need to have the following abilities:

- Mobile enough to assault something
- High initiative of some kind to successfully retain
- resilient enough to survive the initial assault, and not suffer too many casualties for combat result.

In the different armies, quite activations actually cumulate those characteristics, and I would like to know what people use to effect their assaults (which are often the breakthroughs of the game).

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"War is not about who is right, but about who is left". - B. Russell

Formations need to be in position to start an assault their base speed can be slow, even 0cm move units can start an engage action.
Mobility aids getting into a position to assault effectively but even slow formations are capable of assaults, mobility makes it easier to get them into position.

High initiative does make it easier to retain but not all assaults are done on retain and I often see and try assaults when needing 3+ or 4+ to activate.

Not always, it's situational but often formations are sacrificed in assaults to break enemy formations either from support fire or just by causing a few casualties.


Every formation in all armies I use are seen as possible assault formations if the situation is right, from sentinels/deathstrikes/rangers/scouts/predators/manticores and so on.
If it gives me a chance to take out a vital formation or if needs be just to break an enemy formation and give me an advantage in the game and I have support in place or just a good mathematical chance of winning I'd use any available units to assault with.

You forgot:
- starting assaults up on resolution
So being large in number, having inspirings, etc. Case in point, aspects in wave serpents which are 12 strong, have 2 inspirings and initiative 1+.
As for - resilient enough to survive the initial assault, and not suffer too many casualties for combat result. it can mean quite a few things. For nids it's to have lots of gants which in some lists don't count for combat res; for titans and gargants it's to be able to take hits on shields which don't count either; and so on.
Of course sometimes the support fms and the target is so ripe that lackluster assault fms get thrown in there just to get at something juicy.

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Also, a widely used tactic is to position formations at the end of one turn to carry out assaults in the following turn. In this fashion the actual assault can be effectively static if the formation ended up within 15cm of it's target in the preceeding turn.

While I understand your question, I don't think there is a simple answer. In this respect E:A is a little like chess; while the rules are relatively simple, the situations that arise in the game can be far more complex as they depend on so many factors.

Thank you for the answers!

The question was geared towards list design, as I see Carlos understood.

Of course in the heat of battle things will change. however when you choose formations in your army list, you are going to have specific missions for each of them, and I doubt engaging will be Manticore's priority, whereas Aspects in WS seem predestined.

The point of this thread is to go each person's preference on what to pick for engaging purposes, at list design time!

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"War is not about who is right, but about who is left". - B. Russell

I think epic is much less about list design.... The game is so fluid and mobile that you can't always rely on things being as you want them..... The assault choices are fairly obvious, terminators, death company, aspect warriors, rough riders, almost everything in the ork and nid armies etc....

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