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This is one of the most hilarious Khador moves I have ever seen and I want to share it with you. It involves a couple Kodiac heavy jacks and Karchev the terrible.

Kodiacs vent steam (making a cloud that gives concealment and blocks line of sight through it). You space the kodiacs out so that the two clouds just barely overlap, forming about 5 inches of "can't see through this" with the Kodiaks in the middle.

Here's the fun part: have Karchev charge one of the Kodiacs. Stop him outside of the cloud (since his weapon has reach it's all good) then before you make your initial charge attack cast/upkeep tow.

Bang! Kodiacs snap behind Karchev. Melee attack can not be made since there is no valid target in Karchev's front arc, but the charge was successful since the movement ended with the charge target in Karchev's melee range so you can continue to cast other spells/use your feat/whatever.

You now have karchev and 2 heavy jacks clamped together behind a LOS blocking cloud ready to slingshot next turn.

Wish I could take credit for this one but I can't.

Actually, not quite. Tow requires that it be done during Kharchev's movement. As he stopped moving, he cannot affect them after the charge move is completed. If he did tow before hand and then charged in, affecting them with Tow at the last part of his movement, he would immediately turn around to face the charged warjack as per charging rules and smack it good.

Ok, first I did get it wrong, tow was cast before the charge. However I'm glad to hear it doesn't actually work. it sounded fairly rules compliant, if ridiculous and gamey.

If you don't mind my asking, where in the charge rules does it specify that someone will spin around in a situation like this? I don't remember reading it but that might just be because I figured it would never become important.

 dementedwombat wrote:
Ok, first I did get it wrong, tow was cast before the charge. However I'm glad to hear it doesn't actually work. it sounded fairly rules compliant, if ridiculous and gamey.

If you don't mind my asking, where in the charge rules does it specify that someone will spin around in a situation like this? I don't remember reading it but that might just be because I figured it would never become important.

at the end of a charge move it turns to directly face its charge target

Ok, but doesn't tow activate at the end of movement as well? I haven't actually read the full timing rules, so I'm just guessing here, but in a case of two abilities triggering at the same time can't the controlling player decide which one to resolve first.

i.e. upkeep tow, charge, apply "end of movement turn to face", then apply "end of moment tow effects" thus making the turn to face irrelevant.

I'm sorry if this is a dumb question to people who actually know the timing rules. I'd look it up myself but I didn't bring my rulebook to China with me.

Not so much on topic, but I just realized the turn to face makes it so you don't have to be pointed directly at someone to charge. That's pretty handy, so you could theoretically charge at an angle to the target, which would let you spread out and block a longer area of the board (assuming you can calculate angles and draw lines across the table accurately in your head. Coming from 6th edition 40k where you can measure anything anytime, my range-fu is very weak indeed. I anticipate this giving me a lot of trouble until I adapt to it.)

You are correct wombat, you can do this maneuver.

You charge, you directly face the target, then your movement ends, then TOW happens.

You can also have one Kodiak and one other jack of your choice, and use Eruption to produce the second cloud - it gives you some more jack options, and the cloud then also damages incoming enemies - downside is your own jack takes a POW14, but using a Clam jack or Spriggan (faced towards Kharchev before the Tow!) can mitigate that.

 dementedwombat wrote:


Not so much on topic, but I just realized the turn to face makes it so you don't have to be pointed directly at someone to charge. That's pretty handy, so you could theoretically charge at an angle to the target, which would let you spread out and block a longer area of the board (assuming you can calculate angles and draw lines across the table accurately in your head. Coming from 6th edition 40k where you can measure anything anytime, my range-fu is very weak indeed. I anticipate this giving me a lot of trouble until I adapt to it.)

You can charge towards someone at any angle that will allow you to get into Melee range of them, but because you have to turn and face your target directly at the end of your charge movement you can end up facing in a strange direction which might expose you to a back strike, and means your Melee arc might not be blocking off that much of the board. It's just something to be aware of.

Also, just remember you can always measure your casters CTRL area and your models Melee ranges, and during a unit's movement you can measure the leaders CMD range to other members. Altogether this can give you a pretty good idea of a lot of distances - not exact, but close enough to help you plan

Your casters control actually. Maybe command as well, but definitely control (and I can't think of many cases that control isn't more useful). Sorry max, I'm not trying to sound picky, and I'm sure you meant control, but you don't want him to miss out on 2-8 or so extra measuring.

 motyak wrote:
Your casters control actually. Maybe command as well, but definitely control (and I can't think of many cases that control isn't more useful). Sorry max, I'm not trying to sound picky, and I'm sure you meant control, but you don't want him to miss out on 2-8 or so extra measuring.

*COUGH* Don't know what you mean *Sound of quick editing* It was right all along, nobody saw nothing

/But yeah, Caster's CTRL area you can always measure

 Maddermax wrote:
You are correct wombat, you can do this maneuver.

You charge, you directly face the target, then your movement ends, then TOW happens.

Actually, both effects happen at the same time. I kinda misread Tow this morning in my pre-work dakka browse.

"At the end of the charge movement, the charging model turns to face it's target directly." pg 47

"If during its normal movement this model advances within 2" of a friendly warjack, at the end of that movement you can place the warjack B2B with it completely within it
s back arc." Tow

It's kinda fuzzy, but it seems that the player chooses which effect to resolve first, according to the example in the big book in appendix A. The errata states that the charged target must remain in melee range for the entirety of the charge once it has entered melee range, but that old special rule > general rule trumps it. So yeah, all said and done, it seems it works out okay.

So it actually works, the question of whether it is an effective use of your time is another one entirely. If I ever see this played against me I'll probably just laugh and applaud the guy.

Can anyone see a situation where someone might actually want to do this? What would you do in response?

Sorry for all the questions, but I'm legitimately interested in learning the strategy of this game, maybe because there's so much to learn. I just figure that the more tactical scenarios I am familiar with, even if they are completely weird and unlikely, the better equipped I will be to evaluate what to do in all the other scenarios.

Good thing I brought an Extoller with my Bronzeback

 dementedwombat wrote:
So it actually works, the question of whether it is an effective use of your time is another one entirely. If I ever see this played against me I'll probably just laugh and applaud the guy.

Can anyone see a situation where someone might actually want to do this? What would you do in response?

Sorry for all the questions, but I'm legitimately interested in learning the strategy of this game, maybe because there's so much to learn. I just figure that the more tactical scenarios I am familiar with, even if they are completely weird and unlikely, the better equipped I will be to evaluate what to do in all the other scenarios.

Well, I'd say it might be useful in setting Karchev up in front for a powerslide the next turn. This set up allows Karchev to be up the front, ready to powerslide forward, but that also puts him at the front, and even at a possible DEF15 (Sidearms and 3 jacks with him) and ARM 21 (After casting/upkeeping spells) won't keep him from taking a fair whack of damage. This would be better than just putting other jacks in front of him, as those jacks would then have to walk out of the way before Karchev activated, preventing them from being used in the power-slide.

Now, the big advantage is that with LOS blocked, nothing can shoot or charge Karchev directly. There are quite a few ways around it however. Firstly Eyeless Sight (nearly all of Legion has it, Skorne can get it pretty easily) and a few casters and models also have ways around cloud effects. Then there are the more pedestrian ways around it - Heavy jacks can just trample into the clouds and attack, or you can run one infantry guy in, then have your jack charge him, before buying extra attacks on Karchev. So basically, it'll stop most shooting, and stop most single attack infantry (assuming they can't just walk into combat), but Jacks can still get through it - so make sure there aren't any close enough to get to Karchev. Enemies can also just run and Jam him, so having something to clear them away (spray attacks would be good here) would be a good idea.

It would also be harder to set up than it looks. While not impossible, it does mean you have to set it up the turn before (so the Kodiaks and Karchev are in position), and you'll just have to hope your opponent doesn't have some really fast things that might interfere with your placement.

So while it could be reasonably effective, there are a number of things that could interfere with it.