Death Frenzy and Lash Whip

[zimko]

Rules question:

Scenario:
Lets say I have a Tyrant with Lash Whip and Monstrous Bonesword. (He also has dual Monstrous Boneswords for the relic but that's not relevant to the question). He gets charged by a few units and dies before he gets to attack.

Question:
If I want to use the Death Frenzy stratagem to 'fight' before removing the model from the battlefield, would I use it before or after attacking with the 'Lash Whip' rule? Is there anything preventing us from using both rules to fight twice on death? (And then if you're feeling real spicy, overrun and auto-explode or just auto-explode if enemies are still in melee.)

[No One]

If the bearer is slain in the Fight phase before it has made its attacks, leave it where it is. When its unit is chosen to fight in that phase, the bearer can do so as normal before being removed from the battlefield.

Use this Stratagem when a TYRANIDS CHARACTER from your army is slain; the Hive Mind compels it to one final attack, and it can immediately either shoot as if it were your Shooting phase, or fight as if it were your Fight phase before it is removed from the battlefield.

I'm pretty sure the answer is 'no'.
Either: You die, you use death frenzy (immediately), you fight, then you go to lash whips and your unit has made it's attacks and so is removed from the battlefield.
Or
You die, you use laswhips to leave it where it is. You then use death frenzy, you make it's attacks, and then its unit has been chosen to fight and made it's attacks so is removed from the battlefield.

(And then if you're feeling real spicy, overrun and auto-explode or just auto-explode if enemies are still in melee.)

Hilarious. And yeah, both refer to 'fight': I'm pretty sure you can do this, since the timing clause for death frenzy is 'before removing the model from the battlefield', which both lw and death frenzy refer to as the end after the fight.

[zimko]

Oct 19, 2021 12:53:46 GMT No One said:

If the bearer is slain in the Fight phase before it has made its attacks, leave it where it is. When its unit is chosen to fight in that phase, the bearer can do so as normal before being removed from the battlefield.

Use this Stratagem when a TYRANIDS CHARACTER from your army is slain; the Hive Mind compels it to one final attack, and it can immediately either shoot as if it were your Shooting phase, or fight as if it were your Fight phase before it is removed from the battlefield.

I'm pretty sure the answer is 'no'.
Either: You die, you use death frenzy (immediately), you fight, then you go to lash whips and your unit has made it's attacks and so is removed from the battlefield.
Or
You die, you use laswhips to leave it where it is. You then use death frenzy, you make it's attacks, and then its unit has been chosen to fight and made it's attacks so is removed from the battlefield.

(And then if you're feeling real spicy, overrun and auto-explode or just auto-explode if enemies are still in melee.)

Hilarious. And yeah, both refer to 'fight': I'm pretty sure you can do this, since the timing clause for death frenzy is 'before removing the model from the battlefield', which both lw and death frenzy refer to as the end after the fight.

Wouldn't 'before making its attacks' be referring to it's attacks for the round? Death Frenzy is a separate attack that is outside of the basic rules right? Otherwise you wouldn't be able to fight with Death Frenzy after making a charge, fighting, then dying from the reprisal.

[No One]

zimko said:

Wouldn't 'before making its attacks' be referring to it's attacks for the round? Death Frenzy is a separate attack that is outside of the basic rules right?

It's a fight. That's...all there is to it. The only thing it breaks is the timing, which...counter offensive. You would have already fought with death frenzy, so can't be selected to fight again in the phase.

Otherwise you wouldn't be able to fight with Death Frenzy after making a charge, fighting, then dying from the reprisal.

To be honest, even that's debatable:

No unit can fight more than once in the Fight phase.

Are you doing that? Yes. Now, strats can just let you ignore the rules, that's sort of what they do, and it's both explicit on what you can use it on (a dead unit) and what you can do with it (shoot or fight), but it doesn't have an explicit 'fight again' like adrenaline surge or anything, and has to be used on an eligible unit per rare rule. LW operates entirely within the normal fight rules though, aside from being dead, so I don't think there's any ambiguity there.

[yoritomo]

My argument to that would be that the death frenzy strat says that you fight as if it was your fight phase, not during the fight phase. This would imply a second fight phase is taking place which would let you fight once in each fight phase.

Still not sure this is legal. Though I'm not sure why you'd want to try this as the close combat profiles on all our monsters outside the swarmlord are garbage once they are wounded.

[piersonsmuppet]

Oct 19, 2021 12:24:15 GMT zimko said:

Rules question:

Scenario:
Lets say I have a Tyrant with Lash Whip and Monstrous Bonesword. (He also has dual Monstrous Boneswords for the relic but that's not relevant to the question). He gets charged by a few units and dies before he gets to attack.

Question:
If I want to use the Death Frenzy stratagem to 'fight' before removing the model from the battlefield, would I use it before or after attacking with the 'Lash Whip' rule? Is there anything preventing us from using both rules to fight twice on death? (And then if you're feeling real spicy, overrun and auto-explode or just auto-explode if enemies are still in melee.)

It is legal. Thankfully Death Frenzy does not say to remove the model as a part of the stratagem. Essentially you just resolve as follows: Slain-> LS remain -> Death Frenzy -> Choose to fight for LW. Fighting once per fight phase is limited to choosing a unit to fight once per fight phase, and Death Frenzy does not involve "selecting" the unit to fight since it is having a single model fight (there is a distinction in the advanced rules). The same thing applies to Pauper Prince models for them doubling up on the "on slain" stratagems/abilities, in that the rules do not say to remove them. I think the newer 9E codex rules all lock the "on slain" fighting to end of fight phase or say to remove the model. Small bonus of an 8E codex!

The "fight as if fight phase" doesn't cause a second fight phase, it allows the model to fight without selecting the unit to fight (enabling fighting in the shooting phase on death). The advanced rules have a clear distiction between a model being allowed to fight vs actual fight phase.

[zimko]

Oct 19, 2021 15:26:58 GMT yoritomo said:

My argument to that would be that the death frenzy strat says that you fight as if it was your fight phase, not during the fight phase. This would imply a second fight phase is taking place which would let you fight once in each fight phase.

Still not sure this is legal. Though I'm not sure why you'd want to try this as the close combat profiles on all our monsters outside the swarmlord are garbage once they are wounded.

4+ to hit isn't bad when you're being charged by drazhar and incubi and you have 5 attacks. I'd like the opportunity to kill as many of them as I can and then explode when I'm done for good measure. Being able to fight twice on death means you're almost certain to kill something like drazhar if you can ignore his invul.

[kazetanade]

Oct 19, 2021 16:07:33 GMT zimko said:

Oct 19, 2021 15:26:58 GMT yoritomo said:

My argument to that would be that the death frenzy strat says that you fight as if it was your fight phase, not during the fight phase. This would imply a second fight phase is taking place which would let you fight once in each fight phase.

Still not sure this is legal. Though I'm not sure why you'd want to try this as the close combat profiles on all our monsters outside the swarmlord are garbage once they are wounded.

4+ to hit isn't bad when you're being charged by drazhar and incubi and you have 5 attacks. I'd like the opportunity to kill as many of them as I can and then explode when I'm done for good measure. Being able to fight twice on death means you're almost certain to kill something like drazhar if you can ignore his invul.

The first fight should kill Drazhar as is, unless you miss everything. He's got 5W, so 2 wounds basically is dead, since you do 3+1 = 4 -1 = 3 damage for 6 total. 

[zimko]

Sure but 5 attacks is risky. And the timing here is important because once you attack with lash whip ability, it's too late to use Death Frenzy. In that specific situation, spending 2 CP is worth it to ensure that Drazhar dies. If the first set of attacks kills him then you get to kill some incubi as a bonus.

[No One]

kazetanade said:

The first fight should kill Drazhar as is, unless you miss everything. He's got 5W, so 2 wounds basically is dead, since you do 3+1 = 4 -1 = 3 damage for 6 total.

He's got a 2+, which makes bonesword sad. Unless you spend on exploding 6s/voracious, only 30% to kill. Of note, spending on those is almost as good as double fight for 2 CP (74% vs 86%).

piersonsmuppet said:

It is legal. Thankfully Death Frenzy does not say to remove the model as a part of the stratagem. Essentially you just resolve as follows: Slain-> LS remain -> Death Frenzy -> Choose to fight for LW. Fighting once per fight phase is limited to choosing a unit to fight once per fight phase, and Death Frenzy does not involve "selecting" the unit to fight since it is having a single model fight (there is a distinction in the advanced rules). The same thing applies to Pauper Prince models for them doubling up on the "on slain" stratagems/abilities, in that the rules do not say to remove them. I think the newer 9E codex rules all lock the "on slain" fighting to end of fight phase or say to remove the model. Small bonus of an 8E codex!

Hmm, interesting...I'm not sure that still works, but I can't think of any strong reasoning against that, so definitely something to talk about with TO/opponent. *Checks* From having a similar discussion come up before, I think the sticking point is that both lw and death frenzy specify that they're 'removed from the battlefield'. You could argue that lw lets it stick around as long as it's removed eventually, but that feels sketch.

[piersonsmuppet]

Oct 20, 2021 1:59:15 GMT No One said:

Hmm, interesting...I'm not sure that still works, but I can't think of any strong reasoning against that, so definitely something to talk about with TO/opponent. *Checks* From having a similar discussion come up before, I think the sticking point is that both lw and death frenzy specify that they're 'removed from the battlefield'. You could argue that lw lets it stick around as long as it's removed eventually, but that feels sketch.

Death Frenzy only specifies to make attacks before being removed. This differs from Only In Death Does Duty End, in which the destroyed model is explicitly removed after making the stratagem's attacks.

[kazetanade]

Oct 20, 2021 16:53:44 GMT piersonsmuppet said:

Oct 20, 2021 1:59:15 GMT No One said:

Hmm, interesting...I'm not sure that still works, but I can't think of any strong reasoning against that, so definitely something to talk about with TO/opponent. *Checks* From having a similar discussion come up before, I think the sticking point is that both lw and death frenzy specify that they're 'removed from the battlefield'. You could argue that lw lets it stick around as long as it's removed eventually, but that feels sketch.

Death Frenzy only specifies to make attacks before being removed. This differs from Only In Death Does Duty End, in which the destroyed model is explicitly removed after making the stratagem's attacks.

In other words:

Triple fight IS A GO.

[No One]

That's definitely a no.