The devils advocate answer would be that if it can't barge, it's trivially easy to avoid them and blast a 450 pt FF specialized formation to smithereens - in assaults. Are there other formations that would have this much difference between engaging and being engaged?

Most CC based War Engines and Titans.

Any FF or CC biased formation that gets engaged not on its own terms.

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I have a tournament to run this weekend and I'm really torn.
I have no intention of allowing friendly barging because I've seen how it breaks the game and the FAQ says that barging can only move enemy units.
I also do not want to go against the rules outlined here because I want to play Epic Armageddon (not my interpretation of it).

Unless I'm presuaded by a mighty powerful argument though, I will not be allowing barging of friendly units (the FAQ supports this interpretation). As has been stated earlier, if a player has mixed War Engines/infantry formations, they will have to set up their War Engines knowing that they can't barge friendly units.

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Onyx, can I ask if the barging has been done in a FF assault as I've outlined, or in the CC based situation Neal is discussing? I think that will help concentrate minds.

Once engaged in CC, can a unit move at all? Is it not as close as it can be to the nearest enemy and therefore can't counter charge?

It's happened in both situations and always resulted in the Krieg formation being victorious.

I've seen them move on top of friendly infantry in a FF and pushed them to the side of the Gorgon and 2mm behind the front (often with 2 Gorgons taking the first 6 hits).

I've seen them barge straight through friendly infantry to end up in base contact with the enemy. The friendly infantry are moved aside and the first hits always go on the reinforced armour.

In the hands of a great player (and with a little luck) these formation are near impossible to out-maneuver (with friendly barging allowed).

If friendly barging is disallowed (as per the FAQ) the WE/infantry player has to be comitted in his positioning of his WE's. A clever opponent should be able to outmaneuver them and be rewarded for good game play. In the case of the Krieg infantry companies, they still have 20 stands of guardsmen with 5+CC and 5+FF aswell as the Gorgons. They are most often going to out number their opponent (often by more than twice as much) and the have an Inspiring character aswell. This formation doesn't need the huge boost that friendly barging allows.

Remove friendly barging (or stop its introduction) and this problem goes away.

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Ok, in those cases if the krieg player had wheeled/moved his infantry in a counter charge could a gap have been created to allow the WE free movement? If so then the counter charge could be made with no barging so would be fine, which is what Neal is saying.

In almost all cases gorgons will still be able to get to the front by moving (rotating) the troops first to make a gap then moving the gorgon through.

Or stop trying to firefight one of the best FF formations in the game, and kill it another way....

I don't think it's a good thing to make rules so that a real world military practice with proven track record is inferior game play.


No, it doesn't. With 2 WEs, you can do everything you're complaining about. A different formation is required but the effect is the same.

WE[block of troops]WE

The block can be 10cm wide or more. You can put a token cordon of infantry stands around the outside of the WEs as well. The WEs will be able to countercharge in any direction to be closest for FF because they never have to directly cross more than 1-2 stands. If CC comes from from a flank, they can cross/barge for the same reason. If CC goes after the block in the middle, the enemy units will take up space, allowing the WE to hit base contact even though they have to drive around the end of the block of troops.

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Edit: And personally, if I were playing Krieg, I'd always keep several stands inside the Gorgons. The risk of them being killed while mounted is small, it keeps them out of harm's way and gives increased flexibility for both offensive and defensive assaults. Cutting it down to 7-8 stands just makes it even easier to sidestep this "cross enough of my own troops to lead in assault" problem.

I like to keep 4 in each Gorgon as they are dc3 so can only shelter 6 units.

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1. what the heck you talking about?
2. what's the relevance of 'real world military practice' to a game w/ giant walking robots, man-eating bugs, bricks that fly and drop super humans into combat, teleporting stuff, etc etc?

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Quite a lot. Jervis used a lot of real-world influences when he built EA (stuff like only heavy weapons being used in shooting etc). The fun part is when you take a system inspired by real-world combat and add all the crazy stuff to it, imagining how would this work?

Forgetting any connection to reality and just doing whatever, cause, giant robots!!! gets boring very, very quickly.

Sure. And I guess the 100 ton APCs of the contemporary battlefield are used to protect the infantry (who happens to be outside not inside) by running over them when enemies come running in to bayonet them or slash them up with swords, right? That's a proven real world scenario and tactic, right? Giant APCs w/ infantry walking outside them... and then ramming that infantry to protect it from axe-wielding maniacs who run in. Sure.

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Barging represents the infantry moving out of the way, I think you'll find...

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More infantry using APCs as cover. It works against shooting, it should work in firefights too.