So basically it's a way of minimising casualties on both sides? So you'd use it in a situation where the odds were stacked in your favour already? (i.e. no blast markers, inspiring character)

_________________
Web Designer / Developer type | erinfreeman.co.uk
Harass me on twitter!

Partially. But you minimize the defenders attacks and the potential defender casualties, so you tend to kill more defenders then you lose attackers - you create a very local outnumbering effect, which means you can with a bit of setup and bad planning from your opponent roll two or three times as many attacks as the defender.

Right, got it

_________________
Web Designer / Developer type | erinfreeman.co.uk
Harass me on twitter!

I suppose you could say that the optimal clipping attack is one in which you minimise the number of defenders' attacks (hence you casualties) without limiting the number of kills you get. e.g. if you engage a formation of 15, end up with 5 defenders in range, kill 3 and win by 2, that's the best possible result.

It depends what you are trying to do however. If you only need to break the formation to win the game for example and you have bonuses before going into combat resolution (numbers, BMs, inspiring characters), you might choose to get as few units from the defending formation involved as possible, even if it means some of your own don't get to attack. That way, you limit the probability of losing even if the average "damage" is less. For example:
+2 numbers, +2 BMs, +1 inspiring. You're +5 up before you start combat. If you only let 1 enemy unit attack, vs 2 of yours, you know for sure that you can't lose before resolution, and the resolution will be somewhere between +4 and +7 in your favour. So the chance of losing the roll off outright is less than 1/36, and your winning formation has lost at most 1 unit.

We had a thread some time back that touched on some of these issues, but this is just one example of where the focus on "average" performance can be misleading.

_________________
Kyrt's Battle Result Tracker (forum post is here)
Kyrt's trade list

Excellent, thanks for explaining it gents, shall have a think on it and see if I can work out how to use it to best effect

_________________
Web Designer / Developer type | erinfreeman.co.uk
Harass me on twitter!

marines often rely on this as they don't have the numbers to go toe to toe with big formations, this should help you out a great deal in future!

_________________
Just some guy

My hobby/painting threads

Army Forge List Co-ordinator

Beware of being too cute about clipping, though:
"If all of the attacking units directly engaged in the assault are killed then the assault has stalled and the defender wins"

_________________

Yea I had that happen to me at the Christmas 'bridge too far' game.. got way too cocky with the remains of a tactical detachment and a warhound in support range. Didn't end well

_________________
Web Designer / Developer type | erinfreeman.co.uk
Harass me on twitter!

As enri says, the intention is to maximise the attacking fire on a relatively small number of defenders to minimise their ability to fight back. There are several things that can make this more effective:

1) By placing another formation close to the target to 'pin' the defenders - the defenders must counter-charge towards the nearest enemy and so may be prevented from moving units towards the attackers

2) By using special abilities "First Strike" and "Inspiring" etc to tilt the odds even further in your favour, to make the most of the hack-down hits which apply to the entire formation, not just those in the assault.

The classic example being a Beil Tan aspect formation; Eldar player uses various cheesy Eldar rules to engineer a situation where all 8 aspect stands are within 15 cm or only 2-3 stands of an enemy formation. the mismatched weight of fire and two inspiring characters (and probably blast marker advantage) mean a decisive win with little casualties; hell, if it's a Warp Spider formation, it's quite possible they'll kill all enemy units within 15cm before they even get to shoot back.

the general point is that the initiator of an engagement has much more freedom in unit positioning and should naturally maximise his formation's advantages whilst minimising the enemies ability to fight back. This can often be getting opponant's good FireFight units into base to base contact to neutralise their effectiveness, or attacking good Close Combat units with skimmers to likewise neutralise them. The logical extreme of this is a clipping assault, where you don't even let the majority of the opposing formation even take part. If you want a vaguely real would analogy, think of it as a flank attack

That's exactly what it is. If you feel it's wrong that the supporting formation draws the countercharges, imagine that it (the supporting formation) is fixing the enemy so that the actual attacking formation can flank it.

Well said. Also remember that under 15cm even if the formations are not shooting each other via activations there's still pop shots and harassment fire going on, both sides performing opportunity fire and suppression activities, etc. Rules as discussed in this thread take that real life concept into account in how they were written (such as counter charge vs nearest enemy not the engaging formation.

_________________
He's a lawyer and a super-villian. That's like having a shark with a bazooka!

-I HAVE NO POINT
-Penal Legion-Fan list
-Help me make Whitescars not suck!

So if you engage an enemy formation which only has close combat units in a firefight - and all of your units are within range of all of the enemies you cannot use any supporting fire because the defenders aren't in a position to attack?

That seems... ...oddly worded. Was that really the intention?

no, in that case it's different, if the defenders are engaged in a firefight, even if they have no FF value, then supporting fire can be used on them, it's a case of the fact that they could fight back if they had guns, so it's all units which are directly engaged can be hit by supporting fire

_________________
Just some guy

My hobby/painting threads

Army Forge List Co-ordinator

Thanks. I used to play this game a lot back when it was first released (and posted a lot on the original forum) thinking about starting to play again, just trying to get a feel for what rules have changed.

Its a bit unclear as worded though so I'd rephrase it if it went back into the document - though I imagine there reluctance do rephrase 'official' FAQ's. Maybe add a note?