You and your 4 Battle Brothers are part of a squad of 30 men. The 'fog of war' is heavy and just to your right you see another 5 of your battle brothers slowly being swallowed by a gush of the fog as they proceed further down the line. All of a sudden your sensors pick up several enemy moving quickly behind you. In another heartbeat bolter shots and battle cries are heard. Suddenly over the vox you hear "We are undone!" "Defend the line!"

What do you do?

1. Turn your back on the enemy risking a shot in the back and run into the fog not knowing what you will bump into and what you may kill or be killed by?
2. Hunker down and shoot the enemy you can see? (This is representative of a Fire Fight)
3. Charge (counter-charging) the enemy (that you see) and bring glory to the Emperor by slaying each of the infidels with your chainsword? (This is representative of your Close Combat Attacks)
4. Drop, cry and plead to the gods as you are scared shitless (A real life situation that is not represented in the game as part of an initial assault)

Options 2 and 3 represent the countercharge that happens in Epic
Option 1 represents turning your back on an enemy (with no regard to cover) which would otherwise have you killed.

While looking at the battle from a 'God' perspective, you have to remember that each base is representative of 3-5 men. With enemy in sight, the majority who counter-charge will not turn their back on the enemy they can see - regardless of what you know from a 'God' view. Those tanks have hatches. Each marine carries Krak grenades and can force open hatches. Even basic troopers have ways of dealing with cumbersome tanks - my favourite example is one man (Indiana) shoving a rock into the barrell of a gun for it to backfire

So it is representative of the fog of war and it is not a silly or broken rule. It is a Tactically Sound rule that if exploited by a general, allows them to have more control over an assault by splitting the forces of the enemy. This has been shown time and again in many great battles of history (feints techniques and splitting the enemy frontage) to eventually win a battle.

When my forces are the victim of it, I congratulate the opposing general on his tactical stratagem rather than ruin the moment with a perceived opinion on how the rule is broken. It makes for a better game and you learn from your experiences.

_________________
Frogbear is responsible for...
Previous World Eaters
Previous Emperor's Children
Previous Death Guard
Previous Imperial Fists
Previous Chaos Squats

I disagree this is not represented. Approx 4 units, 4+FF, no hits. Rolling snake-eyes on assault resolution. Situation represented.

Morgan Vening
- That snake-eyes thing on assaults happens all too bloody often.

I think this is where views differ, to me a swirling melee is a very chaotic situation and the troops nearby would be seen as a very real threat.
See the overwatch rule for similar situations, enemy being nearby only having to be a threat to have a severe effect on your forces.



Defenders would get to asses the situation, but for me, they would asses it as they see it and troops close by would be seen as a threat.

They wouldn't see an enemy close by and think " It's OK lads those enemy troops that are closer to us will just wait around until we have dealt with their friends that are attacking further down the line"

Ok fair enough.

As you say, our views differ in regards to how we're seeing the actual engagement unfold so we may as well let it rest.

We've hijacked this thread enough. Big apologies to Cheesyrobman.

Lol, that's ok at least I got an answer... sort of. Interesting to see the different ways it can be interpreted.

What happens if you engage, retain and engage with two formations and perform clipping assaults at each end of an enemy line?

*throws spanner into works and retreats into 2+ cover*

_________________
Army projects:
Iyanden Eldar - complete
Hive Fleet Scorpio - complete
Ulthwé Eldar - complete
Nova Guard Titan Legion - complete
Crimson Fists Space Marines - complete

It doesn't work like that. The whole engagement is played out until the bitter end before you get to activate anything else. The only way to have more than 1 fm of yours participate in the same engagement is by using the Commander ability (or through supporting fire but then they aren't really in the engagement itself)

_________________

The real nasty thing would be to take advantage of the Scions of Iron Land Raider Prometheus ability, to have a pair of formations clip the extreme opposite edges of, say, a 'Uge Warband or Krieg Infantry Company.

I don't think it works. The NetEA Space Marine Draft Document
"Allows characters assigned to unit to replace the commander special ability’s '5cm' restriction with 'any formation on table' for purposes of combined assaults."
doesn't override this section of 2.1.2 Commanders
"Treat the three formations as if they were a single formation for all rules purposes for the duration of the assault."
specifically with regards 1.7.4 Formations
"Any units that are out of formation for any reason after a formation has taken the movement part of its action are destroyed."

I'm not sure if that's the intent, but that seems to be the way it's written. I've seen people make this mistake before, with regards Assault/Dev Thunderhawks(Assaults deploy 15cm, THawk only has a 10cm Coherency).

Morgan Vening

You know, I never even thought of that. Makes good sense, though.

You guys have just helped me figure out how to use scouts in a better manner than I was using them before. Not just for space marines, but other armies. Now I just have to get a few games under my belt to properly understand how to implement this information. I helped coach a game last week where scouts did their job and took on an 8 unit force of Shining Spears in assault. The spears had to attack the scouts. The problem was that a dev squad and it's two land raiders were mostly in 15 cm of rang to add in supporting firefight dice. After the smoke cleared the other player was left with a broken u it of spears.

Though the spears were not in the situation as stated in the current dilemma of starting in ZoC.

So basically you could do it, just not at the same time? Engage at one end, resolve the assault, then if necessary do it from the other side too?

_________________
Army projects:
Iyanden Eldar - complete
Hive Fleet Scorpio - complete
Ulthwé Eldar - complete
Nova Guard Titan Legion - complete
Crimson Fists Space Marines - complete

Yes, that would be valid. However as the side that loses the assault is automatically broken it gets to make 2 moves so the likely hood of it happening is pretty remote.

This is correct

_________________
We are returned!
http://www.epic-wargaming.de/

Or rather



Since it's clearer when you remove the double negative.