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Perhaps the overwatch firepower was too heavy? The unit lost its coordination during the initial assault and had to fall back? What do you guys think?

As the rulebook says 'a myriad of factors can affect charge range'. Overwatch fire, potholes, trees, thrown grenades, all the things that happen on a real battlefield when you charge across it are abstracted into a random charge distance.

Don't forget garbled commands, poor visibility, low morale, malfunctioning equipment and Pvt Denny needing the toilet (again).

 Flinty wrote:
Don't forget garbled commands, poor visibility, low morale, malfunctioning equipment and Pvt Denny needing the toilet (again).

I dont know if I'd be mad that he had to use the facilities before an assault or sympathetic. Sometimes I feel like my guys would mutiny under my command. Forcing a small squad of marines to charge deathwing knights would likely cause a insurrection.

Honestly it doesn't really work for all of them. Daemons, Nids, Orks probably being the biggest hole in the, they started to retreat rather than continuing the charge despite the losses, in other words, with units that are fearless or something like fearless (funky daemon rules) it doesn't make much sense. To be honest it would make more sense for them to move up that far to represent how they are charging but failed to really make it. Retreats make sense as well but it seems convenient you would retreat back to the middle of nowhere. If you charged out of cover bingo hopping back makes sense but... but not always does it. With SM, IG, and other forces that would be more prone to saying, wait a second, I usually explain it as some sort of explanation that the charge was determined to be too costly, commands failed and were sent one last time alerting them not to chage, kinda a charge but the commander stops them. It... it really doesn't always work but its the best I can think of. Then again it makes more sense than models always from the front. Good gosh that has done some silly thing.

Getting in each others way.
I have had that hapen to me more than once.
I used to do mideval reniactment.

There are all great reasons why a charge would fail, until you realize it doesn't make sense that it would be exactly the same for a human conscript and space marine to fail an identical charge. I guess we can just assume then when we are dealing with marines there is just a ton of extra detritus in the way to muck up the charge.

It could be anything, really, If you imagine the battlefield as a 'real' one rather than an abstraction, they could be being strafed by a fighter, blasted by artillery, distracted by another threat, receive an incompetent command, get conflicting orders, or just generally get confused. They could have a building or tree fall in their path, they could be blinded by smoke or flashbangs, or they could make a false start on the charge and have to fall back. The possibilities are endless.

The rules are an abstraction, they always have been, so you just have to put in a bit of imagination to determine what's going on. There's no neat way to represent all the things I mentioned above, so we simplify it to random distances and overwatch for the sake of our sanity and it works just fine.

Sometimes, you trip.

Any myraid example of battlefield issues that would occur in the real world that could potentially disrupt a charge and force the unit to fall back.

Of course when it comes to shooting all of these "intangibles" of realism are ignored.

@StarTrotter - for nids and daemons you could call it some kind of psychic interruption or instability that causesbthe constructs to lose focus for a short time. With orks its easy, Zogwart keeps nicking Krumpy's shells and Krumpy aint gonna takes it no more (cue squabbling and arguments).

xD ORKS WAAAAGH! To be honest the nid and daemon thing feels rather forced and really stretching my suspension of disbelief. Unless it buffs my invuln save to represent how I'm fading in and out of the warp

Then again I still can't explain how bloody terminators might run 12" and daemonetts might only 2" and pretty much every assault unit can charge 12"

 Psienesis wrote:
Sometimes, you trip.

Made it eight posts before this came up.

Get ready to charge men. Let us send these warp spawned beasts back to the abyss! On the count of three. We charge. One. Two. Th- wait, Wait. My shoe laces are untied. *gumbles and groans from the IG as the Inquisitor ties his laces and those off to a flase start dive for cover.

Flip the question and ask what is the fluff explanation why with a finite charge distance all charges make contact?

 Psienesis wrote:
Sometimes, you trip.

This , which is especially humiliating for that one dude (or chick) who pulled the whole team back

Actually it makes a lot of sense. Considering if one model charges through cover everybody decides to move I1 for some bloody reason xD

 StarTrotter wrote:
xD ORKS WAAAAGH! To be honest the nid and daemon thing feels rather forced and really stretching my suspension of disbelief. Unless it buffs my invuln save to represent how I'm fading in and out of the warp

Then again I still can't explain how bloody terminators might run 12" and daemonetts might only 2" and pretty much every assault unit can charge 12"

So how long is a turn? The charge distance, as with all dice rolls in the game, is an abstraction related to how likely a unit is to be successful. It does not necessarily represent speed of unit, just that they got into contact. Maybe the enemy unit decided to meet the charge, maybe the assaulting unit threw grenades causing the target to escape towards them making them easy to catch maybe the daemonettes spent so long trying to glamour the target they couldn't get to them within the poorly defined confines of a turn. There are any number of viable explanations

 Flinty wrote:
@StarTrotter - for nids and daemons you could call it some kind of psychic interruption or instability that causesbthe constructs to lose focus for a short time.

Tyranids is easy - they have a hickup in the connection to the Hive Mind and lose their chance listening to the "no carrier" tone.

"Cover" is not just some pansy shrubs and tall grass, it's some serious foliage that is actively blocking, stopping and deflecting bullets (this is why it is "cover" and not just "concealment"). Moving through or over this kind of stuff is not easy for one guy, let alone a whole squad, platoon or company of guys, and if you're trying to stab someone through it, then you're getting your weapons tangled, waiting on someone to step near the gap, etc.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Flip the question and ask what is the fluff explanation why with a finite charge distance all charges make contact?

Easy, you know how far you can run, they are close enough for you to run over there so you do, and you hit them, lots. That being said if there is pot holes, or walls, or slick mud, or any other obstruction that's when you take difficult terrain test and might not make it because of those things. Or since this is sixth you get over watched first and that might kill enough guys that they couldn't make it in to close combat.

 NL_Cirrus wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Flip the question and ask what is the fluff explanation why with a finite charge distance all charges make contact?

Easy, you know how far you can run, they are close enough for you to run over there so you do, and you hit them, lots.

But how long have you got to get there? The time represented by a "turn" is undefined and not ncessarily consistent between turns, or even phases.

 Flinty wrote:

 NL_Cirrus wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Flip the question and ask what is the fluff explanation why with a finite charge distance all charges make contact?

Easy, you know how far you can run, they are close enough for you to run over there so you do, and you hit them, lots.

But how long have you got to get there? The time represented by a "turn" is undefined and not ncessarily consistent between turns, or even phases.

True that the time between turns is undefined but every thing in the game from having a set speed that is identical (except in the case of running and assault moves) from turn to turn to all reliable weapons (ie not lootas) get the same number of shots every turn, indicates (or at least heavily implies) that every turn representing is the same amount of time.

 Psienesis wrote:
Sometimes, you trip.

How does a C'tan Shard fail a charge?

And how much time you have to get there is one assault phase, how far you can move in one assault phase is your charge distance, and if your try to say that charge range varies because the time one turn represents varies, then should not movement, how many times your weapon fires, and how many attacks you get in close combat also vary?

It snags its Necrodermal tendril on a rock and spins out.

C'tan can't get snagged on stuff, they are immune to natural laws. They'd just phase through anything they'd get snagged on.

They "die" to enough dakka, so that is obviously not true.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Or, to take it another way, the C'Tan does not fail its charge.... the rest of the galaxy fails to draw closer.

Because its more realistic that way.

Yes far more realistic for the bio-engineered monster to fail its charge against the squad of genetically engineered supersoldiers who then shoot it with impunity with their laser cannons and rifles that shoot rocket propelled ammo with no regard to any weather, battlefield smoke, or other debris that might harm shooting.

I for one am glad they got rid of this one non-realistic thing and fixed close combat.

-sarcasm off-

There is no fluff justification that makes sense when you look at the fact that shooting does not have any of these same "realistic" qualifiers to drag it down.

The simple answer is its been awhile since Gunlines were on top what with 5ths vehicle shenanigans, so they nerfed CC to the point that only really skilled players could reliably win with it so that people would flock to the shooty armies.

Is there anyway to check the sales of GW products?

I have a feeling Tau is outselling or a close second to SM right now as the top selling army.

Not any way to check sales of individual armies, no.

Random charges are indeed a bit odd to me. Explaining the charge extremes is difficult not just because the potential variable is so huge but also because it uncannily hits a whole squad at once. I can totally buy brother Bob got his greave caught on some debris but I struggle with the idea that Bob's whole squad got caught on something and none of them made it 3". The 'whole squad' aspect of 40k is one of the most off putting aspects of the game.