Hi guys

Longtime lurker with his first post and it's a rules question, sorry guys.

I play Steel Legion and both my friends play various flavours of Marines depending on their moods and recently one has started experimenting with teleporting several Terminators with a Captain and using them in Combined Assaults instead of the "Thunderbus". Usually against my Reg HQ or a SH Company of course.

In the rules it says (several times in several places.....) something like "2D6 is used to resolve combined assaults". Does this apply to only the units that are making the combined assault?

For example 2 Terminator formations combine against some Baneblades. Do the Terminators roll 2D6 for their combat score (plus modifiers) and the SL roll 1D6 plus modifiers as I'm assuming?

And does the same apply in reverse if one unit declares an assault on an intermingled group of formations?

It's just the rules aren't too clear on this matter unfortunately as it can be read that BOTH defender and attacker would roll 2D6 if their is a combined formation on either side.

Thanks for the help guys. You've got a fantastic thing going here and hopefully when all the units are painted we'll be able to post the battle reports.

P.S could someone PM me the Epic Vassal files if they get a chance please? They work as night porters in a hotel so we may be able to sneak in some extra games when all their charges are snoozing. Here's hoping - always room for more Epic

Both sides in an engage action will always roll 2d6 (picking the highest) regardless of how many formations were on each side.
This is because during an engage action all the formations, attacking or defending count as 1 formation until it is resolved.

From the Commander rule (needed to do a combined assault)
Highlighted the relevant parts.


From the 1.12.10 Intermingled rules section



Hope this helps

Right I see where you are coming from.

The simple answer is that both sides roll 2D6 and each side picks their highest roll.

It may help to remember that there are a maximum of 4 elements in an engagement.

1. Attacking Formation - This may be 1 or more formations depending on whether you are looking at transporting War Engines / Captains are involved - for the purposes of the engagement they are treated as 1 formation.
2. Defending Formation - This again may be 1 or more formations depending on whether more that 1 formation is intermingled and the attacking force have called them this.
3. Attacking Supporting Fire Formation - Formations that have units within 15cm of defending units & line of sight. These may fire (Fire Fight) if the defending units survive the initial fighting & there is 1 attacking unit left within FF range of a defender.
4. Defending Supporting Fire Formation - Formations that have units within 15cm of attacking units & line of sight. These may fire (Fire Fight) if the attacking units survive the initial fighting & there is 1 defending unit left.

But if it's basically stating that you roll 2D6 and pick the highest for your combat resultion (as normal) then why does it stipulate the "roll 2D6 for combat resultion for combined engagements" everytime it mentions combined engagements if it's not making an exception to the normal rule?

Sorry if I'm just being dense it just seems like an unneccesary confusion in the rules if everything is just resolved as normal. Surely it would be enough to state that the combined formations are treated as one for the assault and leave it there

It's the same for rules on intermingled formations and rules on formations dragged in by counter charges, the rules are just reinforcing the 2d6 per side.



If it is left off we then get players asking, is it 2d6 per individual formation on each side, and then asking why not include it for confirmation instead of having it confusing by not being there.

Thanks for the clarification guys. It's been bugging me ever since I first read through the rules as it's mentioned during the rules for Engage in the first few pages.

Yes, I agree with flyingthruwater. Took me a long time after first reading Epic: Armageddon to realise that they weren't talking about an exception to the rules. I spent several days combing the Assault rules to find what, in that case, was meant to happen in a non-combined assault.

dptdexys is right to say that it should be mentioned when the rules discuss combined assaults of all origins, but I think it would really help whenever it's mentioned to add something like "just like any other assault" to the end of the sentence.