Posted By Mannahnin on 01/26/2007 11:28
AM
One of us is crazy. Or there is some other difference between our play environments which neither of us is accounting for.
I'm fortunate enough to play with some folks who read the rules carefully, and in a couple of stores where the groups have noticed that GW summaries and diagrams don't always match the main body text, and it's better to rely on the body text where they're in conflict.
Sorry, I kind of forgot about this thread. Anyway:
When it comes to determining which one of us is crazy I can safely fall back on a bit of data collected here on Dakka:
dakkadakka.com/Forums/tabid/56/forumid/15/postid/104876/view/topic/Default.aspx Of course that is only a small sample of 25 (Dakka) players. However, I strongly believe from my tournament experience that the ratio shown in the poll is applicable to the greater body of nationwide players (at least in tournaments).
But you’d still have to measure all those engaged models moving from the back anyway if you were piling them in.
Since you already measured who was close enough to attack at the beginning of the assault phase, I find that with horde units it’s just a quick pass with the tape measure to double check who’s engaged after casualty removal. When you’re not moving the front models except where you need to, some of them typically stay in the same place.
I really don’t see why the engaged second rankers would ever block the back models from fitting in, especially since you can just remove them as casualties before the base to base models. This goes hand in hand with the 4th edition rule that models within 2" of the ones in base contact can throw their full attacks. Casualty removal is also faster, because again you can take the guys who are 2" back and aren't wedged into base contact, weapons entangled, etc.
All I can say is that when combats involve multiple kill-zones, either from ICs imbedded in the unit or actually multiple units fighting in the combat you often end a round of combat with very few models in base contact with the enemy but many still within the 2" engaged distance. This can also occur when you have models with specialty weapons (like powerfists) that you need to keep alive (so you pull some casualties from within base contact to keep the specialty trooper alive).
These situations occur and the 'engaged' models that aren't in base contact block the path of any more friendly models piling into base contact (and ususally prevent some models from getting within the engaged zone too).
And while you obviously have to measure the 6" pile-in movement distance, when all models not in base contact pile-in it is instantly easy to define which models are going to move.
When piling in only non-engaged models you have to measure twice: once to see who is still engaged and then again for the actual 6" pile-in move range. But you also have to measure to see if any of those intervening friendly engaged models are far enough apart so that your piling in models can squeeze between them to get into base contact.
Honestly, neither version is rocket science, but only moving non-engaged models is certainly more complex.
Finally, when discussing intent, it isn't just a simple case of the summary and diagram differing from the text. It's also a case of understanding that in the 3rd edition trial assualt rules an "engaged" model was one that was in base contact with the enemy, and that pile-in sentence in the 4th edition rulebook happens to be a direct copy-and-paste from those trial assualt rules (complete with the inaccurate reference to "engaged" models).
Add into the fact that we've never, ever seen a case of just the non-engaged models being moved in any 4th edition battle report (even the first battle report in WD that was meant to highlight the differences between the editions) and you have a pretty darn solid intent argument against you.
