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I feel like this is the kind of situation that would have been addressed before, but I couldn't find it when scanning through the posts searching for "charge".

Say I have a unit of chaos hounds and a unit of chaos knights. The knights are at an angle in front of the knights. The enemy has two units, unit A and unit B. Unit A is in front, unit B is a bit further back off to the side.


As things stand, the knights cannot reach unit A to charge them [and B is out of the question], even though they can SEE them [the hounds are at an angle, off to the side a bit, but still blocking the way].

Can I declare the hounds charging unit B, the further away one, which would then get them out of the way and allow the knights to charge?

Basically, declaring the knights to charge is "illegal" since, well, looking at the board during the declare charges phase, they won't be able to reach and thus the charge is impossible. But knowing the hounds will be cleared [even if unit B flees, for example] can I still declare the charge?

What if the knights were frenzied? They wouldn't have to charge if the hounds stayed put and stayed in the way, but if the hounds charge something that clears the path, would the knights have to charge? They weren't able to before, so didn't have to, but now would - how does this work?

For starters, it's really bad form to declare a charge you know won't succeed - you can't declare a charge with a dragon against a unit in the opposite corner of the board, for instance.

However, assuming you have a legitimate charge from the Hounds to Unit B, you could then declare a harge from the Knights to Unit A - by the time the Knights get to move, their path will be cleared of the Hounds.

As far as Frenzy goes, same thing applies: If the Hounds aren't getting out of the way, then the Knights wouldn't be compelled to charge since they wouldn't be able to reach a target.

See BRB part 2: charges which are reliant on other events happening (other units moving out the way due to fleeing, etc) are perfectly fine to declare, as long as it is reasonable to do so.

Same goes for frenzy - as the hounds have declared acharge the knights would then have to charge.

Yeah, I knew I couldn't declare an obviously failing charge with the hounds for the express purpose of getting them out of the way, but assuming something looked feasible, that was what I was wondering. Thanks!

These sort of situations keep coming up in my games, and my opponents always start questioning it "well, you can't reach as it stands now, and you can't declare a charge that won't succeed...." but thanks guys! This clears up a lot.

GW actually took it even further than this in the most recent main rulebook FAQ, which came out in February:

Q. Can you declare a charge if the only way the
charge can be completed is if some other
conditional event occurs? For example, are you
allowed to declare a charge to a visible enemy
unit in a situation where the only way you can
complete the charge is if one of your own units
fails its rally test and continues to flee?

A. A very interesting question, and not an easy one
to answer! Yes, we think it’s acceptable to declare a
charge in this kind of situations, and if the
condition does not allow the unit to complete the
charge (the friendly unit in the way does rally, in
the example above), the charge fails.

http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m2220025_Warhammer_FAQ_part2_Feb_2009