Thursday, April 9, 2009

Crowded Building Levels and the Assault Phase

A brief discourse on a recent occurrence.

Situation: My opponent moves (the remains of) his squad on to the upper level of a ruined building. The miniatures occupy the entirety of the level, with (deliberately) no room to get in to base-to-base contact (in case I decide to charge and make a good terrain check roll).

The Issue: On my turn, declaring a charge and making the appropriate terrain check, my opponent says that the assault cannot take place since there is no room to fit any of my models in to base-to-base contact with his. That didn't feel right to me in the slightest. But I let it pass since at the time: it didn't really matter to me since my other units shot up the squad in the building on my next turn. I didn't think any more of it until later and let my opponent have their interpretation of the rules. (Clearly my Alpha Legion psyche might have been kicking in: let them have their way - you'll test yourself out more!)

The Ruling: The real rules for this situation are made clear on page 85 of the rulebook, under "ruins and assaults". The rulebook states that "...it is perfectly acceptable to place models as close to their foe as is safely possible, including the level above or below...". Case closed.

6 comments:

Alvin Khaw said...

I've experienced that before, but I too let it slide since I'm already at the upper hand of the game, but it is understood that units may assault within the ruins regardless of whether it's fully occupied or not...

suneokun said...

Nice Rules Check - Cheers ... I've come across this one before. I hate it where an opponent does something 'against reality' that doesn't feel right to achieve an advantage.

I'm finding 5th edition's far more realistic than 4th (LOS shooting for example, cover saves) and this helps with the 'feeling' of the game.

I generally play games that allow players to do whatever feels right (if not explicitly in the rules). For example a bunch of Tau stealth suits jumped on top of the building, only for the guardsmen below them to pepper them with shots. They ended up killing the lot - but I allowed the Tau a 4+ cover save...

It felt right.

Farmpunk said...

I had something similar attempted on me last night. there were 7Ork Lootas on the top level of a building, and my Callidus showed up, and had to go on the level below with the other 3.

The guy chuckled that I wouldn't get a charge because he was tightly packed on the top level and would pull the bottom 3 when she Neural Shreddered them.

luckily, I killed 7 by flaming up one level, and still got to charge and kill off 2 more.

@suneokun... I'd have given them a 4+ save too. you're shooting through cover. unless you're 2" apart, I usually rule you get a cover save.

oni said...

I've not run into this so I'll just give my two cents on rules in general.

It's always good to check the rulebook if your unsure of something, even in the slightest bit.

I usually try to keep it short and if I can't find something within a minute I'll just press on to keep things moving. After the game is over I'll see if I can find what I was looking for.

erfunk said...

I ran into a slight variation of this a couple weeks ago. There was a building with a squad occupying the front 2/3 of the 2nd floor. An opposing squad of terminators, coming from the front on the ground level, wanted to assault them. Due to their larger bases the only place on the 2nd floor that physically had room was all the way in the back, well out of charge range. But had the termies had smaller bases they'd have been well within range to fit into the gaps in the squad.

There was a valid place to stand, but it was too far away to be reasonable. We ruled that if you had enough movement to make it to be base to base with one (in this case 2" forwards and 3" up), even if there was no place to stand, you could be directly under them and count as in base contact. But we treated only his models that expended the 3" to get up as being in base contact before defender's react, which forced his squad to be bunched under the front 3" of the ruins.

jabberjabber said...

Hi Folks, - thanks for all the comments. Its good to see that I'm not the only one encountering similar situations to yourselves.

I'm hoping by posting these little notes to myself, I'll memorize the details of the rules a little better.

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