I used to know how this worked but I forget and can't seem to find a definitive answer from looking through the rules so I thought I'd ask.

If a mixed formation consisting of War Engine and other units is close combated does the owning player decide which unit gets the hits? e.g. I'll take your regular Reaver hits on my Orkeosaurus and the 3 x TK (D3) attacks to the Ork Boyz (assuming all are in close combat). Or does the attacking player have the option to roll pools of attacks against the WE or infantry separately like it works with shooting?

Thanks for the quick response!

WE (Orkeosaurus) is on the side being attacked, as well as Ork infantry in the same formation (all in B2B with the Reaver, as the Orkeosaurus was transporting them and deployed them into B2B as a countercharge move).

If that's what the rules are then I'll stick with them but it seems unrealistic and a bit 'gamey' that the hits from the 3 x TK (D3) powerfist attacks from the Reaver can be taken on the Boyz while the Orkeosaurus takes the conventional hits.

It's how the rules are. There are exceptions for targeting WEs, but they apply to shooting attacks only.

It's a bit of a weird corner case (I mean, how often do you really have two war engines in close combat with each other with a couple of infantry to soak up the TK hits?).

Don't forget that TKs count as Macro Weapons, so the hits will be allocated after the normal hits have been resolved.

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An Orkeosaurus has enough DC to soak all the normal hits from a Reaver, even if all attacks hit.

I'll play it as advised, but the way it works seems a bit off.

It'd happen a fair bit with the Feral Ork list if you go Orkeosaurus heavy (as I plan to) and keep the infantry in the Orkeosauruses unless in an assault. Plenty of other opposing armies have TK CC hits too - CSM Bloodthirster and Banelord, Eldar Phantom and Warlock, Ork Super-Stompa and Gargants, DE Tormentor Titan, LaTD Bloodthirster and Questor, N Nightbringer and Abattoir.

A change that extends the targeting rules for WE to assaults wouldn't be bad, but it would royally darn over Krieg's Gorgons. If you can choose to target the WE, you can choose to target the infantry as well. (You'd run into the same problem with the Orkeosaurus - instead of the infantry being a bonus, it would be free hits for the enemy in assaults.)

Here is the relevant FAQ
Remember that hits are allocated front to back in separate rounds, first 'normal', then MW and finally TK (in this case TK is not treated as MW because there are appropriate 'targets').

In this way, the 'normal' and MW hits are most likely to remove the screening units allowing some MW and the TK hits to be allocated to the target WE (which will have survived the hits allocated to it in earlier rounds).

I am not sure that this is entirely needed - though it is recognised that the Krieg Gorgons do provide a significant benefit. if a titan assaulted such a formation going b-b with the gorgon, ultimately the MW and TK hits would be allocated to the gorgon as this would be the 'closest' unit to the titan and thus probably going to be destroyed with "extreme prejudice"

Ginger, you're forgetting that both the WE and the "screen" are all in base contact - which means the defender gets to decide all hit allocation (as anyone in b2b are all equally close). A big WE like an Orkeosaurus has enough DC to soak all or nearly all of the normal hits (and survive them).

The point with Krieg isn't that they abuse this tactic (being mainly a firefight formation), but that a theoretical fix has a good chance of screwing them over. If the attacker gets to decide if he targets WE or non-WE, the Gorgons lose all screening ability - all normal hits will go to on the infantry, adding 2-3 hits in every assault. Unless you get very specific and say that the WE in assault hit allocation exception is that the attacker gets to decide if hits are allocated to WE or non-WE only if they are equally close.

The relevant answers to the original post are listed above by Hena, Ulrik and co.

The only additional point I'd make is to remind players that War Engines CANNOT barge through friendly units when making a counter charge. This helps a bit with slightly restricting Gorgons etc. There is nothing worse than a formation of 20 infantry that can be almost guaranteed to have a 4+ Reinforced Armour save!

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The defender has always allocated hits from assault (or shooting). With this in mind, it is up to the attacking titan how it moves into contact with the opposing formation in order to influence the assault results by contacting or avoiding the enemy WE. And Onyx rightly points out that the 'screen' of other units can be used to prevent the WE from counter-charging into contact.

Having the attacker allocate hits would cause a lot more problems than this, and IIRC has been rejected many times in the past