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This came up in a previous game. My friend's Tyranid Prime is 5" away from the termagaunts that I am in base contact with. He proceeds to move the model 3" in his I5 and then declare a challenge.

My wolf priest took the challenge and went down in flame. Should he be able to challenge? My thought on this is you cannot challenge unless you are in the combat.

Page 64: "Characters that cannot fight or strike blows (including those that are not engaged with an enemy model) cannot issue challenges.

That's how we play it in my group. Makes combat tricky but keeps my nobs from being completely useless.

The challenge rules are actually a little messy. You can not issue a challenge if you are unengaged, but you issue the challenge before the round of combat starts, and you don't determine who is engaged until you reach their initiaive step.


Going by the strict RAW as it currently stands, it would appear that you can't issue challenges at all. Ever.

Assuming that you can determine engagement after finalising your charge for the purposes of deciding whether you can issue a challenge woud be a reasonable interpretation.

Assuming that characters lurking at the back of the unit and not in engagement range should be able to issue challenges is no less supported by actual rules, but does seem to go against the current trend for cinematic, action hero battles.

You cannot declare a challenge once it gets to the initiative step 5. Challenges are issued at the beginning of the Fight Sub-phase, which occurs right after you complete a charge. If you get to the first initiative step you have gone too far.

Going by the strict RAW as it currently stands, it would appear that you can't issue challenges at all. Ever.

If your on the receiving end of the charge, you can challenge if your Char is within 2" of a model in BTB with the chargers. Otherwise, no.

The best way to play it, while following the spirit of the 'engaged' term, would probably be that any character that is in base contact, or within 2" of a friendly model of the same combat in base contact at the start of the Fight sub-phase, can issue and accept challenges and be the target of not being able to fight if the challenges is refused.

Which means that if you hide a character in the back, you can probably keep him out of challenges for the first rounds of combat, and that if you flank an enemy unit with the character on the other side, you can avoid that character for a while as well.

I think applying RAW will give some tactical choices to the movement phase. One can control to a certain extent which character he wants to engage.