'Clipping' a single formation is often hard to achieve because of counter-charges etc. However the effect of clipping an intermingled formation is often much more significant - and usually evokes a more extreme response.

For example, a formation of rough riders were just intermingled with an HQ company. I assualted the Rough Riders with a small Eldar formation keeping out of range of the HQ formation, killing three or four of them for no loss. The entire lot broke because the HQ company had a BM, cancelling out the effects of double outnumbering. My opponent was more than a little miffed that the HQ company broke because a few scouts less than a third of their number got mauled.

Perhaps this is the situation that you are seeking to modify?

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Vitai lampada
Sir Hemry Newbolt

Yes, thats an extreme example Ginger.  At least with intermingling you can avoid that by not keeping your formations close enough to qualify for intermingling.

But I mean that every (FF) assault is often a case of "How many of my units can I get in range, while minimising the number of enemy units that can attack back".

Counter-charge is rarely enough, unless you keep your formation so tight that it is incredibly vulnerable to BP weapons.

Of course, it gets even worse when you add in support fire...

Imgaine that Guard company again.  Lets say some Eldar Guardians double up to 10-15 cm away.  Then some jet bikes engage the guard in a clipping fashion.

The Eldar player is best served by having as little engagement between the jet bikes and the guardsmen as possible.  So the Guard will sit there, shoot next to nothing, and then get hammered by the guardians sitting right in front of them.

But at the end the Eldar player knows that the resolution roll can allow his jet bikes to suddenly push the guardsmen away, dispite the jet bikes barely being seen by most of the guard.

I just can't visualise the clipping assault having the same morale crushing effect as a close combat defeat would, but they both use the same rules and mechanisms.

Are you sure you're playing Assaults right?

If those "clipping" Jetbikes only get, say, two Guardsmen in FF range... only those two Guardsmen can be targetted by support fire.  Only units "directly engaged" can be support fire targets, you can only shoot at those who could actively participate in the engage.

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And those two guardsmen would get hammered, and the Jet Bikes go into resolution with a nice bonus.  If they win the whole guard company runs off... because a couple of them got picked off from the edge of the formation.

(Yeah, I am aware of the directly engaged rule, my description of the situation might have muddied that a bit but it was off the top of my head).

clausewitz: A counter-charge would allow more Guardsmen to fight, unless they were very poorly placed in which case they deserved to get clipped!

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As Hena requested we should take this discussion to its own thread.

So I made one Here

I'll answer E&C there...