Hi All

This came up in a game tonight so I said I would post it up for the concensus.

When a formation counter-charges do they have to move directly towards the closest enemy unit or can they choose to merely charge the assaulting unit (which is not the closest)?

Example: The Death Wheel was the closest enemy unit however was not the assaulting formation and was not yet part of the combat

Thanks

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If you choose to counter charge you must move towards the nearest enemy even if they are not part of the formation engaging you. Then if you bring said models into base to base they become directly engaged.

Yes, you have to move to the closest enemy. This can create some potentially nasty situations and forces you place your formations carefully or alternatively to engage carefully. I have had the odd case where by counter charging I have moved my formation out of fire fight range thus ending the combat before the formation was fired upon and probably destroyed.

So, if you have a Fenrisian Wolves formation with no FF value being FF engaged by Warp Spider formation with a Falcon formation closer to the wolves, the wolves have to counter-charge the Falcons(skimmers) thereby not being able to do anything but just sit there and cop it on the chin because my wolves can't make the correct decision to attack that which is attackable and more likely to do damage to? That is completely counter-intuitive and frankly, stupid.

Can someone please explain why this rule should be so and why it should even be?

My interpretation of the rule in the book "A unit must use their counter charge move to move directly towards the closest enemy unit" is that it's ambiguous because it could be applied to the assaulting formation, as the passage continues on later to tell me that "Counter charging units are allowed to counter charge enemy units from any enemy formation, not just the one they were assaulted by."

If it helps, you can consider the units in the immediate vicinity as taking part in a 40K battle, including a series of charges and countercharges etc. So it actually involves all the surrounding units, irrespective of their abilities or whether the counter-charger can reach the 'target'.

This rule specifically permits the target of a charge to be 'pinned' in place by having a second enemy formation nearby on a flank or rear. This situation forces the target of the charge to move in two directions restricting the number of units that can respond to the charge, but if the second formation is poorly placed allowing the defenders to contact them, it can result in the defenders coming out on top.
Finally, as Meph says, the defenders can choose not to move some or all of the units - the choice to counter-charge is made at a unit level, not by the formation as a whole.

I'd note that in some cases we'll occasionally fudge the "directly towards" part, in order to allow a unit to pass around impassable terrain, or move so that it gets LOF around a War Engine.

So we normally use "directly towards" to mean "Take the shortest route, going directly towards if at all possible", as that seems fairer than having Armoured Vehicles headbutt buildings repeatedly, rather than move 1cm to the left so they can drive around the building and shoot.


And yes, the stipulation is the closest enemy unit, which means all enemy units, not just the ones from the attacking formation. This rule can be used by a skillful opponent to pin enemy formations in place, or make counter-charges too dangerous to do, etc.

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So when it says "Counter charging units are allowed to counter charge enemy units from any enemy formation, not just the one they were assaulted by." that applies how in this situation? Given this is part of the same passage of the rules.... This why I'm dubious on this rule. One part says you do one thing the next part says you must do something completely opposite.

Not sure I'm with you on the last part Dobbsy.

The first part tells you to counter charge the nearest enemy, the second then lets you charge enemies that are not part of the origional assaulting formation. Without the second part you wouldn't be able to enter the ZOC's of formations not part of the assault.

Do you normally allow formations to only counter charge the engaging formation?

The second part tells me I can counter-charge any enemy formation, is my point.

It's not a matter of "allowing" anything because this rule totally threw me. It seems so ambiguous that I wouldn't ever play it that way. It seems so naff that I can't control my own troops by letting them - tactically - counter-charge the assaulting formation and instead may only counter-charge a formation that's not even yet part of the assault if it happens to be closest.

The more I'm told rules like this in the system, the less I like the game. It's the whole 75mile Firewarrior pulse rifles ruling all over again. These rulings just seem to wreck the game for me because they just seem "gamey" for the sake of it and make me wonder how they could ever write a rule that way. I understand there are probably reasons they are written that way, but I still don't have to like them

The reason is that troops, if under attack and told to counter-charge the enemy, will tend to charge towards the nearest enemy they can see, not the enemy who's engaging the other end of the formation's battle line quarter of a mile away.

It's meant to be a simulation mechanic that represents the tendency of troops to react in a certain way when under fire, not a "gamey" mechanic.

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You might want to think about as one person's 'gamey' is another person's tactical genius.

A long time ago now Jervis did actually confirm this and we Neal might be able to put it more clearly, but I'll have ago.

Remembering that we are dealing with relative scales, if you formation is exposed to an extent that it has two or more enemy formations around it then they are in trouble. You as the general can see the real danger from an enemy engaging you but the rule tries to take into consideration how troops on the ground react. Here they are concentrating on nearest enemy and are not inclined to leave cover and charge away from their most immediate threat.

Make sense?

From the FAQ:


As far as the wording of the rules, the first sentence states clearly that you must charge the nearest enemy unit. Some people assumed that "charge the nearest enemy unit" meant "nearest enemy unit in the attacking formation" which was not intended. The "you can charge any formation" sentence was added to clarify that the only restriction is "nearest enemy unit" and there was no implied restriction to the attacking formation. The text was written after a discussion that the target formation might want to engage the support formation and that support formations which get too close should be at risk, so the way it is phrased can be read as "you can choose to do so" even though that's not the intent of the rule.

In retrospect, it would probably have been clearer to say something like "must charge the nearest enemy unit, regardless of whether the nearest enemy is in the attacking formation" but that is water under the bridge.


The mechanic represents a couple things.

1) The crossfire and the pinning effects of being hit from two different directions turns a close assault into a meatgrinder. "not being able to do anything but just sit there and cop it on the chin" is exactly the intended effect. It's not "gamey" to allow a player who successfully outmaneuvered their opponent to get an advantage. That's their reward for excellent play.

2) Regardless of the players' godlike view of the battlefield, the troops are working from limited information in the face of a very confusing situation. Troops don't charge off to engage the enemy 500 meters away when someone is firing at them from 200 meters. The "correct" tactical response from the players' godlike view and game mechanics is only "correct" in that it saves the game pieces based on other game mechanics. It is not at all correct from the soldiers' fictional perspective or in regards to realism/simulation.

Think about it this way ... a group of soldiers willingly exposes themselves to crossfire, moving away from the nearest enemy to engage a farther enemy, allowing all the enemy to fire at them for far longer than if they charged the most immediate threat. Meanwhile, their own return fire is restricted by the pressing need to coordinate movement and work fields of fire in which there are likely a larger number of friendlies than if they charged the most immediate threat.

No freakin' way. If a commander were stupid enough to order such a thing, most troops would not have the discipline to comply (assuming they haven't been specifically trained NOT to do such a thing). If you had both a command and a force disciplined/braindead enough to try it, they would be mown down like grass.

The rules were written to avoid nitpicky mechanics overwhelming high level, large scale tactical play.

If you track weapon-by-weapon, that wouldn't remove "gamey" effects. It just makes different ones. Instead of ranges "stretching" you'd end up with people measuring individual models to the millimeter in order to maximize firepower. In fact, people complain about manipulation through meticulous movement being too "gamey" in the EA assault rules.

So, which flavor of "gamey" do you want - an occasional disconnect on the exact range of a particular weapon system or painstakingly detailed positioning based on game mechanics?


This is entirely theoretical. No one has reported anything like this in actual play. The overwhelming response was that there was a fair amount of "stretching" in the 15-30cm range, but no one could recall an instance beyond that.

The rules were written to avoid nitpicky mechanics overwhelming high level, large scale tactical play.

If you track weapon-by-weapon, that wouldn't remove "gamey" effects. It just makes different ones. Instead of ranges "stretching" you'd end up with people measuring individual models to the millimeter in order to maximize firepower. In fact, people complain about manipulation through meticulous movement being too "gamey" in the EA assault rules.

So, which flavor of "gamey" do you want - an occasional disconnect on the exact range of a particular weapon system or painstakingly detailed positioning based on game mechanics?

Deciding that trade-off of that is how the rules ended up written as they are.