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Abusing the Failed Charge Rule.

When you have a paltry movement of 4" and there is no way in the world you can increase that by Marching, you start to see some really interesting tactics developed to try to get into combat as quickly as possible, or perhaps have a faster movement to put more distance between a potential rear-charge, or whatever.

With a quick look at an independent roll chart for 2d6 you see that 9/36 times you move only 1, 2, or 3 inches. Leaving 7/36 times you move 4 inches, and 20/36 times you move a whopping 5 or 6 inches. More than 50% of the time you go 5+ inches, and exactly 75% of the time you go 4+ inches. Just looking at those numbers you would think, that the Tomb Kings should ALWAYS attempt to charge if opponents are within 18 inches that they want to get to grips with! Not so quick there gunner, let's run the numbers.

Now, I'm not 100% certain that my math is correct. I'd like to think it is. All I did was convert Expected Value mathematics to a sort of Expected Movement mathematics If you guys see any major flaws here, let me know.

1/36 times you're going to travel 1 inch, devide 1 by 36 (number of times out of 36 you'll end up in this situation), then multiply by distance traveled = an average of .027 inches traveled per attempt.
3/36 times you're toing to travel 2 inches, devide 3 by by 36, then multiply by distance traveled = .167 inches traveled per attempt
5/36 times you're going to travel 3 inches, blah blah blah = .417 per attempt
7/36 blah blah 4 inches, boring math = .778 per attempt
9/36 5 inches traveled, same stupid math = 1.25 inches traveled per attempt
11/36 6 inches traveled = 1.83 traveled per attempt
If you add all of the "average inches traveled per attempt" up. This brings us to a total of 4.469 inches traveled per attempt.

This is odd. I honestly thought after looking at the numbers, and the way it all shakes down, that it would be MUCH closer to 5 inches. I know I'm just sort of picking nits, but after some more boring math, and charts, Mathematically the number needs to be at about 4.85 to justify the 25% of the time you're going to get all "stumblestupid".*

So situationally, this is going to be an effective tool in the pocket of a Khemri Player who may need one or 2 extra inches of movement in a critical phase, but in my opinion, should NOT be used 100% of the time.

*The reason you need a higher movement rate to justify the failed charge shenanigans is seated pretty heavily in Gambling Concepts and Mathematics, a series of essays written by David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth The trick here is the implications of the concept of Variance. Basicly, if you're looking at the odds of say rolling a d4, over a very long time (millions of rolls) the odds of each face coming up will tend towards 25%, but if you only roll that d4 6 times (as with our movement phase) it's IMPOSSIBLE to come up exactly 25%, and leads to a higher rate of potential failure. Assuming that you're going to see yourself roll less than 4 inches at least once a game, and you could very potentially see it 2-3 times a game, you have to be able to make up for that sort of a catastrophic failure with your better rolls. 4.5 doesn't do it. 2 failures to roll at or over the 4 inch mark, doesn't get made up by a 4.5 inch move rate, on average. Another interesting observation concerning variance is that things you and I may consider "lucky" or "unlucky" tend to run in streaks. For whatever reason, and with the acknowledgement that this flies in the face of just about every mathematical system out there, if for some reason you do something that beats the odds (say a 3-1 long shot) we often find the odds being beaten again in the very next try, and perhaps even again, before seeing a long dry streak of not beating the odds. This Variance based grouping is easily testable by flipping a coin 100 times and charting the results. While math tells us that the coin *ought* to neatly alternate between heads and tails, the truth of the situation sees the coin perhaps flipping heads as many as 8 times, and then a tails, and then another 6 heads before a grouping of 3 tails then alternating a few times, then going back to like 9 tails in a row...

This applies to all units that move 4" or less, not just TK.

edited First reply was a bit punchy... and not how I wanted it to come across

Being able to march relegates this information to useless for every other army...

I think that you'd be hard pressed to find opponents if you did this regularly, though.

I dont have my rulebook with me, but i thought you cannot declare a charge without a realistic expectation of contact. Since you can premeasure as much as you like, you KNOW what your possible threat range is, 6"-16" or so, and therefore cannot declare a charge outside of that....

however, once you are inside that range, i dont see why not.

HiveFleet wrote:I dont have my rulebook with me, but i thought you cannot declare a charge without a realistic expectation of contact. Since you can premeasure as much as you like, you KNOW what your possible threat range is, 6"-16" or so, and therefore cannot declare a charge outside of that....

however, once you are inside that range, i dont see why not.

Plus the comedy factor when the guy accidentally rolls double 6's and succeeds a charge he has no chance of winning.

Ragnar4 wrote:edited First reply was a bit punchy... and not how I wanted it to come across

Being able to march relegates this information to useless for every other army...

Not really. A successful charge is move plus 2d6 for most units. This distance is likely to be substantially further than your march move. However, if you fail the charge it will be less than the march move. Another factor in the cost benefit analysis is whether or not the unit being charged can make a stand and shoot reaction. I have not calculated the odds, but from personal experience if you are within 11 inches and are move 4, then it pays to charge.

Don't see an issue with it. The potential down sides (succeeding a charge that pulls you *way* out of line, possible *reduction* in move rather than increase, and restriction of direction on a failed charge) balance adequately with the 1-2" of extra movement you stand to gain.

I run into this with Dwarfs quite a bit- many times a failed charge moves me almost as far as I would have been able to march anyway.

This would have been more useful back when march blocking existed

Well, Tomb Kings can never march, so they are perma-blocked you might say.

Hmm, the only argument I have is that rule on outrageous charges, which Hivefleet mentioned.

Still, it's great for manouvering towards units that are 16" away, for all those M4 units out there.

As Red_Zeke noted, I think the half inch that you could gain with this is offset by it's limitations (deformation of your battle line, either due to high or low roll, and restricted movement direction).

I think this can be worthwhile is specific situations, when you know your unit won't be drawn out of position (setting up an opponent's flank charge) and when you know that accidentally making the charge won't put your unit into a combat you don't want them to be in. In other situations, I'd rather just move 4 inches and not gamble for the added half inch.

Well, it is a half inch on average. I agree it probably isn't super useful, but as you said against targets you don't mind getting into combat with it is a good plan.

Red_Zeke is probably a great example though of who it isn't good for. He usually runs moderate sized units of dwarves who really want combined charges. However, I could see hordes of TK skellies not caring if they accidentally make combat, as they won't break and are large enough that the low number of total units doesn't lose them much, as they don't expect help on the charge from other blocks. So if your plan is largely to throw 2-3 huge blocks of skellies at your opponent's line, this is perfect. If you are playing a more tactical list where each unit needs lots of support, this will possibly cause a lot more harm than good.

This reminds me of many many years ago when I started 40k; "So i can't intentionally hit my own units in combat with a template? Cool. I'm targeting your unit waaaaaay over there in the corner with my Flamer. Oh my goodness it falls short! Oh noes! It does, however, cover this combat here directly in front of it almost completely. Darn the luck!"

Hehe actually, that doesn't work either, since if the target isn't in range it automatically misses. I wanted it to work SO badly though, since I play Sisters and have pretty much worn out flame templates through frequent use

Wehrkind wrote:Hehe actually, that doesn't work either, since if the target isn't in range it automatically misses. I wanted it to work SO badly though, since I play Sisters and have pretty much worn out flame templates through frequent use

I used to get away with it all the time back when I played guard from 2001-2005. I remember mashing out numbers on a calculator along these lines during the second round of a tournament:

Sportsmanship is 15% and there are 4 rounds so 3.75% rides on this opponent.

My 3 baslisks could pieplate clear 2 contested objectives if I could legally shoot into them. 1 objective would turn my minor victory into a major (about a 4.5% boost) or both would make it a massacre (about a 9% boost in overall standings.)

Do you hear that high pitched whine? Yes it does signal incoming artillery. It also signals incoming dick move on my part... I'm targeting a unit directly behind the swirling melee (which is about 20 inches away) and guessing 20 inches. Six years later I still feel a bit dirty about it when I put on that RTT champion shirt.

Shame on you! This is the fantasy section- you should be derailing this thread with ethically dubious WHFB hijinx, not this 40k stuff!

You math is a bit off, because it doesn't take into account successful charges.

An average gain at best of less than 1", really isn't worth the disruption to your battle line, along with the loss of shooting phase.
Worst case would be having a unit succeed, and move 15"+ out of position while supporting units only move 2-3".
Connecting on the charge, to only be hit in both flanks and crumble to death in the following turn is not worth the fraction of an inch of movement.

In an isolated case, such as trying to close in on an objective late in the game, I could see this is useful, but it's limited at best.

-Matt

Matt

The math isn't off because I'm only counting failure instances.

The above chart is only for situations in which you want to maximize your movement, and fail.

Even more, the way I'd have to calculate the possibility of a successful charge, would make this number tend towards 7 really quickly.

Ragnar4 wrote:Matt

The math isn't off because I'm only counting failure instances.

The above chart is only for situations in which you want to maximize your movement, and fail.

Even more, the way I'd have to calculate the possibility of a successful charge, would make this number tend towards 7 really quickly.

Failure movement has a pre-condition of not making the charge. If an opponent is 15" away, a roll of 5,6 doesn't move you 6" forward, it moves you 15" forward and into combat; which you might not want to be in. A roll of 4,6 on the other hand would move you 6" forward.
Because you cannot declare a charge beyond your charge range, and that you must fail the charge to only move the higher die forward, the lower die and the distance to the enemy cannot be discounted.


-Matt

Ok, well if you run the numbers, over a long enough period of time (1 trillion trials) the math tends towards a 7 Matt. IE the limit of this equation is 7.

The entire exercise is broken because you can't roll a 7 on 1d6.

The math I ran was an "average inches per failed attempt." I made the choice to exclude all successful attempts. You can't include successful attempts in the final analysis, when you exclude them in the preliminary data sets.

Ragnar4 wrote:
The math I ran was an "average inches per failed attempt." I made the choice to exclude all successful attempts. You can't include successful attempts in the final analysis, when you exclude them in the preliminary data sets.

Your data set doesn't exclude them. An enemy 14" away would force you to exclude Half of all 6" moves.
A better tool would be a series of data sets with enemies at various ranges, (12",13", 14"...) and averaged distances gained.

-Matt

Thanks for the idea!!

Count up the instances of having a 5 or 6. That's 20. That's a 55.5% you'll move further than normal.
Count up the instances of having less than a 4 on both dice. That's 9. That's a 25% you'll move less than normal.
Count up the instances where 4 is the highest on both dice. That's 7. That's a 19.4% you move the same.

Except during a fail you give up your shooting phase and you have to "wheel around impassible terrain and units, both friends and enemies, by the shortest route," which you might not have wanted to do. And if you succeed you have charged potentially 2D6 ahead of the rest of your troops.

I don't think it's as good as you make it out to be.

Nice Visual, but off on the math.
6,6 moves you 16", not 6. 6,6 will always complete a charge, otherwise you could not have declared to begin with.

An enemy 14" away, really makes a mess of this; taking a good chunk of the high rolls (6 rolls) and turns them into completed charges (which might not be what you want).
Every Failed charge results in a free stand and shoot for the enemy.
Every Failed charge wheels you at the enemy you charged; burning movement on the wheel (which isn't free IIRC).

IMO, the long charge tactic can help some of the time, but a lot less often than the basic math-hammer will indicate.

-Matt

Huh, you know I hadn't thought about it before, but I think you are right: the wheel is no longer free if you fail your charge. It doesn't really say it directly, but looking at the diagram and measuring it does look like the warriors move 5" including the wheel. Good catch!