Charge Phase Tactics... am I doing it right?

[gorgon890]

Afternoon All, 

I'm new here, sorry if this is the wrong place to post the thread!

I have a question about Charge > Pile In > Attack > Consolidate. 

I played a game the other day (after watching lots of videos on the above) against quite an experienced player, Nids vs Ultramarines.

Mid game (T3):
1) I charged my Tervigon into a unit of his but stopped bang on 1 inch away (just in engagement)

2) I then used my 3" Pile - In to scoot around his unit. 

3) I end my Pile - In move closer to a second unit (not declared in my charge) about 0.75" away from the declared charge unit and 0.5" from the undeclared unit. 

4) I put my Attacks into the declared unit (don't kill them all).

This is my question area......

5a) Do I first consolidate (towards the closer enemy unit which is the undeclared unit) or...

5b) Does the declared unit and undeclared unit get to hit me back before I consolidate? 

The reason why I do this (you all probably know this but i'm new) is....

If 5a is correct, then i've moved 3" around the undeclared unit outside of engagement range of the declared charged unit, which means they can't hit me back. I've stolen extra movement. 

If 5b is correct, do I consolidate (if i'm still alive) towards the closest the enemy unit?

Follow on if 5b is correct: Does the enemy unit get to Pile-In before I consolidate, i.e closing the gap towards the closest enemy model and potentially basing me or thwarting my attempt to steal extra movement? 

[hivefleetkerrigan]

Pile in and consolidate have to be towards the closest enemy MODEL. Most units are multiple models. As such, it can be difficult to get out of the "swing back" range for the first unit. In your case above, you would have had to moved slightly closer to the closet model in that first unit.

However, amending your statements, each unit does the full fight sequence before another goes:
Select the unit
Pile in
Swing
Consolidate

Hypothetically, it's possible to consolidate out of range of an enemy unit so they are out of engagement range and therefore cannot fight. It's harder in practice as it requires your opponent to remove casualties such that the closest model is not in that unit.

[turtletyrant]

At 5a, if you move out of engagement range of the unit that you charged, (afaik) the opponent can still activate that unit because it was a target of the charge, and move 3" towards you and get into engagement range.

[hivefleetkerrigan]

Mar 17, 2023 16:02:16 GMT turtletyrant said:

At 5a, if you move out of engagement range of the unit that you charged, (afaik) the opponent can still activate that unit because it was a target of the charge, and move 3" towards you and get into engagement range.

From what I'm seeing (and I'm not seeing it changed in a FAQ), only units that charged or are in engagement range of an enemy unit are eligible to fight. Source: core rules page 228 first paragraph.

[No One]

hivefleetkerrigan said:

Hypothetically, it's possible to consolidate out of range of an enemy unit so they are out of engagement range and therefore cannot fight. It's harder in practice as it requires your opponent to remove casualties such that the closest model is not in that unit.

It can actually be super easy, but requires the right enemy set up. Essentially if two models are close enough you can be in ER of both, you can pile in such that you're closer to the one you want to end in ER of, then consolidate out. A lot trickier to do with something like gaunts with smaller bases and generally ending more models in ER, but something I did once in old Codex was charge two GMDKs, pile in on one and off the other, fight and kill it, then double fight into the other. Actually very easy with how he was positioned.

[gorgon890]

Thank you all for clarifying! I appreciate it!

I was using a screamer killer and tervigon (in separate fights). Single large base to deal with rather than a horde of gaunts.

[Bohxim]

Not 100% sure if charge and consolidation rules changed since, but I don't think so. in 8th, i had a haruspex charge a unit of cultists and a unit of terminators right in their middle, barely in engagement range and equal distance from each. Since I charged, I attacked first. The goal was to swing the many attacks into the cultists then swing the big hits gained from killing models into the terminators. The opponent didn't remove the cultist units from the front of my haruspex so I could consolidate away from the terminators, closer to the bunch of cultists and leaving engagement range from the terminators so they couldn't swing back at it. If positioned correctly you could mess around with such movement tricks

[hivefleetkerrigan]

Yeah. That's still legit. It takes some planning but can work out.

A fun counter play is to interrupt and push at least one model base to base so your opponent cannot pile in. If you want to shoot, you can pull models so anyone in engagement range is left out of coherency. They then fun during the moral phase but you didn't fall back so you can shoot.

[No One]

The even better jank with coherency is that you don't even need to have the ones you want to die be out of coherency: just break coherency somewhere, kill the ones you want dead, and then kill anyone that's still preventing coherency from being restored.