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Is it benifical to refuse challenges?
If so what advantages do you gain by doing so?
How do you determine if it's advantageous to do so?

It's completely up to you and situational whether or not it's beneficial to accept a challenge. I had Lysander issue a challenge on a Guardsmen squad in this battle and it was a bit of a toss up. If I accepted with my power axe sergeant, I would be risking him, but he'd have the best chance of wounding Lysander. If I refused, he wouldn't be able to fight and I'd have fewer attacks total to kill Lysander. Also, it's thematically cool to do it!

Just think whether or not the risk of losing your sergeant or IC is worth it. Let's say you have a tactical squad and a captain charging a unit of Chaos Marines. Their powerfist champion issues a challenge; you can deny it and hide either your sergeant or captain, risk your captain to accept it, or let your sergeant try to take on the champion. I would have the sergeant duel the champion, since that would:
A. Mean my captain gets all his attacks at the squad.
B. Mean my captain is not at risk for powerfist wounds.
C. Let my sergeant try and hit the champion first; if he can kill the powerfist champion, it makes it safer for the rest of my squad in the melee.

It's something that you just need to understand through experience. It's another layer of risk vs. reward in a game chock full of it.

you have a big blob of dudes that wont die within a single turn. you need them to do some tar piting . the leader of the units gives them fearless , but your opponent has some ultra chopy HQ or squad leader. you refuse then . fearless is more important then maybe doing 1 wound and the whole squad breaking.
your opponent has a warlord with the +1VP per challange or he is chaos . your dude has no chance to win. you refuse the challange .

This is actually one spot where quick mathhammer is useful. If it's probable that you will win the challenge against any model capable of accepting, then you issue one. You shouldn't be challenging otherwise. In general, if your opponent challenges, you shouldn't be wanting to accept, unless your opponent just always issues one without working through whether it's a good idea. The exception is when they have a single high-attack-volume model that you'd like to tarpit. Challenge it to reduce casualties taken.

Yeah, for example.

A Bloodthirster charges a guardsmen Blob squad.

The Bloodthirster will easily kill 5-6 guardsmen a turn and force morale tests each round(both for Fear and for losing)

However, the blob has 6-8 sergeants in it. What the IG player wants to do is issue a challange each round.

As the Bloodthirster is fighting alone, he cannot refuse.

So what happens is in the end the Bloodthirster murderizes 1 sergeant a round for the rest of the game. Uselessly tarpitted.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yeah, for example.

A Bloodthirster charges a guardsmen Blob squad.

The Bloodthirster will easily kill 5-6 guardsmen a turn and force morale tests each round(both for Fear and for losing)

However, the blob has 6-8 sergeants in it. What the IG player wants to do is issue a challange each round.

As the Bloodthirster is fighting alone, he cannot refuse.

So what happens is in the end the Bloodthirster murderizes 1 sergeant a round for the rest of the game. Uselessly tarpitted.

Another cheesy tactic ive seen, was when a ork mob was about to get wiped out but then the nob challenged the terminator seregant, effectively tying up the squad in CC for the next 2 turns.

Wouldn't I be better to kill one model than none though. If you refuse the challenge you just get to sulk at the back while everybody else gets to have fun?

 Daemonhammer wrote:

Another cheesy tactic ive seen, was when a ork mob was about to get wiped out but then the nob challenged the terminator seregant, effectively tying up the squad in CC for the next 2 turns.

That's not really cheesy, that's using the rules exactly as they're intended.

 wowsmash wrote:
Wouldn't I be better to kill one model than none though. If you refuse the challenge you just get to sulk at the back while everybody else gets to have fun?

True, although in some cases you cannot refuse. Such as if you are the only model on your side of the combat.

And remember that the model that gets called out is not immune to getting attacked, he can still be allocated wounds and your opponent chooses the model.

The refuser actually never moves. He just loses the opprotunity to attack this round.

Also, if your opponent charges and does not issue a challenge, you may issue a challenge of your own.

 Brother SRM wrote:

 Daemonhammer wrote:

Another cheesy tactic ive seen, was when a ork mob was about to get wiped out but then the nob challenged the terminator seregant, effectively tying up the squad in CC for the next 2 turns.

That's not really cheesy, that's using the rules exactly as they're intended.

Yeah... I'm a little confused by the "cheesy" comment aswell.

it can be beneficial, i have refused a challenge from draigo when i had a warboss on a bike and 5 nob bikes left (1 painboy 2 pk's, 2 big choppas if i remember correctly) i decline as draigo would wreck the warboss, he says warboss doesn't attack, then the two big choppas take the wounds being up front and the pk's wipe out draigo's remaining 2 wounds, it can be in your strategic value to refuse

I thought if you denied the challenge it explicitly said that the opponent got to pick one model in your unit that could've accepted and place it at the back of the unit?

Yeah, and the GK player chose the Warboss.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
I thought if you denied the challenge it explicitly said that the opponent got to pick one model in your unit that could've accepted and place it at the back of the unit?

If you refuse a challenge, the challenging player gets to nominate one character in your unit that could have accepted the challenge, and that character may not attack this turn. You don't actually move the skulking character.

Which is different from Fantesy where the model does indeed get moved. Thats where the confusion is arising.

Snapshot wrote:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
I thought if you denied the challenge it explicitly said that the opponent got to pick one model in your unit that could've accepted and place it at the back of the unit?

If you refuse a challenge, the challenging player gets to nominate one character in your unit that could have accepted the challenge, and that character may not attack this turn. You don't actually move the skulking character.

You also can't use his leadership, which may or may not be a factor.

Refusing a challenge could be very useful in many situations. You could be fighting an assault where you have a good chance of winning even without one of your characters, so you refuse a challenge to ensure that your enemy doesn't get tied up in combat for another turn. You could be fighting an assault where you'd rather your character lives and flees (and then regroups), rather than dies in a pointless combat. Your opponent could have the Legendary Fighter warlord trait, and you don't want him to get that extra VP. Your characters might not be great in combat, but provide useful aura boosts (e.g. Sanguinary Priests). You may simply want to keep your powerfist-armed sergeant alive for a little longer, rather than risk losing him.

For your average Marine army, it might not be so beneficial to refuse a challenge. But for other armies, particularly those where the characters are more for support than for providing direct damage, often refusing the challenge may be the better option.

If he refuses and the character can't be used in the combat or his leadership, what about any buffs he may provide. Are those removed as well then or do they remain?

As far as I can tell the only restriction on the skulker is his inability to attack, or use his Leadership. Since it says nothing about other abilities we'd have to assume they are still relevant.

I tend to refuse when my character has abilities that affect the unit that will help even without him personally fighting, or when he's very weak himself.

I.e. Uriah Jacobus leading a Battle Conclave. The conclave has no other characters and has a good chance of mulching any other squad even without Uriah helping (and at S3 he doesn't do much anyway). They still get Stubborn, FNP and the extra attack even he refuses.

I got challenged by a Downed Fateweaver in a recent battle. The unit in question was A destroyer lord with 6 wraiths. He challenged my Destroyer lord. Since he has an invuln, and I wanted to kill him fast...I declined, and let my wraiths mulch him instead of relying on fewer power weapon attacks.

I tend to decline the challange if I charge and want to make sure I wipe out the unit on the opposing players turn. Sometimes it makes more sense to not kill off a unit in one turn if you know your going to get shot to oblivion the next turn.

Also if you know that you are going to lose in your turn there is nothing wrong with declining a challange so you can make sure that your opponet wipes you out so you can shoot them when your turn comes around.

 wowsmash wrote:
If he refuses and the character can't be used in the combat or his leadership, what about any buffs he may provide. Are those removed as well then or do they remain?

Unless the rule is specifically mentioned as stopping when a challange is refused then it will not stop.

So Pedro's +1A buff, Calgar's God of War, Fearless from a Chaplain, etc...

This is very situational. You will have to consider the consequences.
There will be lots of identical threads like this I think there already has been one.

Possible times to refuse a challenge:
Nob+ork mob that is about to die, so the nob challenges. This means the nob only gets hit by one model so may survive for the next round of combat.

The characters in range are useful buffs but not good at cc. This tends to happen when a serg. has died, then you have priests and pyskers who you need to survive. Jacobus is an example of this given above. Nob in a boys squad, his bosspole and the boys mass hits mean refusing can be the right course of action. Painboy in a nob squad, apothecary in a command squad.

Combat tactics. You accept and refuse challenges just so you lose combat by one wound and can autofail and escape.

The point is that it does happen, though it slightly rare given that if you swing you can cause wounds.

Chaos not being able to refuse challenges is a huge hit for them. Tactically it destroys the combat ability of their characters.

 Exergy wrote:
Chaos not being able to refuse challenges is a huge hit for them. Tactically it destroys the combat ability of their characters.

Good to know. That will make for some... intresting Nid vs. Chaos games.

As a side note to chalanges, make sure that your deathstars have someone to accept challanges so you don't get tarpitted or hit with something nasty (Loki, MSS, ect). I rune my Swarmlord with 2 guards and a Prime for just that reason.

Only in cases where they are outmatched. And we really should have seen this coming. In Fantesy, Chaos cannot refuse challanges and also must issue a challange if their opponent does not.

Its just a drawback to being chaos.


Of course unless it specifies otherwise it doesn't matter which Chaos character accepts the challange. So the nameless champion can eat it for Abbaddon while he's munching on the rest of the enemy unit.

If an oppenent has Abbadon it would be one of the few times I would actully take biomancy on my Swarmlord. Deathstars would meet and it would be epic.