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With randomised charges you can engage in risk-taking with the uncertainty that comes with charging/being charged. More weighted decisions to be made, less of a negative "well I have to put myself at a disadvantage and receive a charge 100%" decision to be made. A bit of a silly mental block for some players, but one I can still appreciate. Risking moving into the "average" range that an enemy might roll to charge you is more exciting than knowing for certain what will happen.

Happily I guess it's one thing that should be dead easy to house rule either way your local group wants to play it. It's just one of those things, people either like more random gak or less.

So basically nothing about random charge distance really does anything to motivate people who partake in that dance to continue to do so. Maybe encourage gunline a bit more.

To stop people trying to game the system to much you can use mission design to create a front line mechanics that push players to engage in the middle of the board.

This can also be mixed with mechanics that provide advantages for non engaged units next to units that are engaged.
As well as more robust leadership that allows for a bit more movement without catastrophic failure.
Push back mechanics with failure and feeling being more dangerous but a little less likly.
This also makes mega sized units that cannot support themselves more risky as they have smaller front and can be pushed back, even if they won’t flee in most cases.

Fixed charges opens up a lot more for the movement of the game than I feel random does for other parts of the game.
It also means you can focus on giving reactive and slower units/factions ways to mitigate that, rather than units that can suddenly get a huge boost of speed and blindside good planning out with little thought.

My main wargame is Warmachine and there threat ranges are static, but the game gives players a deep toolbox of things they can do to lessen the impact of the opponent having a few inches of threat range advantage. Baiting, jamming, sacrificing, redirecting, screening, using terrain, buffing/debuffing, clever scenario play ... in WFB you could flee at an angle, or take a charge and force the opponent to overrun and close the trap from a flank... all depending on players' decisions and choices. In my opinion it makes for a much more engaging game than a one where you just generate a random number to arbitrarily tell you whether what you are attempting to do makes any sense or not.

You can call it risk management or weighted decisions, but with high-variance, high-impact rolls like charge range (especially when you want a combined charge to do something) at the end of the day it's just dice arbitrarily punishing one player and rewarding the other for nothing.


I am wondering if playstyle affects this perception. For example recently I've been surprised to watch some of the 6th edition reports from this channel




and, boy, if you played WFB like that no wonder your opponent having a few inches of charge range advantage made all the difference! To copy my comment from underneath this report:

I have watched a few of these reports already, and the saturation of player agency, interesting, meaningful and non-obvious decisions per unit of gameplay time (or per page of rules) seems abysmal. These blocks just get shuffled forward until they meet what was deployed directly across the battlefield from them and then totally random combat Yhatzee gives some result which tips balance in favour of one of the sides...

My memory tells me that the game was far more strategic than that. Or maybe it's the fact that for some reason you don't use a lot of sacrificial units, especially fast cavalry which can redirect these expensive blocks at unfavourable angles. I remember always playing with 3 min. Wolf Rider units in O&G, 3 min. units of Warhounds inChaos, 3 min. Dire Wolves in Vampires etc. Can't imagine just having nothing to throw away to delay this Black Knight Bus for a turn (or to toy with those Khorne Knights all newbies erroneously thought were awesome because stats ;D)!

I remember using your shooting, magic and support units to kill enemy support units, because with more sacrificial support than your opponent you could control their movement (by baiting or redirecting, or taking a charge and overrun into an anvil and countercharging in a flank). With so little support it really feels like blocks shuffling forward and dice deciding everything...simple, shallow gameplay not justifying dozens of pages of rules and 2 hours spent doing it.

EDIT: if at least it was input randomness, ie you first roll the dice and then decide whether to charge or do something else. It indeed makes your opponent think what kind of range they can put their units into, but doesn't replace good/bad moves with randomness. Still not better than fixed charge ranges but at least no invalidating the player and his decisions (who should be most important in a game) with blind luck.

 Just Tony wrote:
So basically nothing about random charge distance really does anything to motivate people who partake in that dance to continue to do so. Maybe encourage gunline a bit more.

I agree with this, obviously - and I feel like if you're going to give people full information in a game, go the whole way and leave out elements like this.

It will speed things up, too, and take out some unneeded brain drain. You can charge or you can't!!

I look at it this way: I have the ultimate power against this mythological 1/8" dick dance. I pick up my models as soon as I see that's the tactic and commit the person to memory so I can refuse to ever play them again. Anybody who tried to game the game was someone that I have no interest in ever playing again. Since some people simply can't grasp tactics, I guess this is about the only other option to throw their way...

it makes you playing against the game instead of playing against the opponent
having that one dice roll that decides if you win or lose the game, rather than the need of planning ahead and set up a multi-charge or the need to take the opponents planning int account

 RustyNumber wrote:
With randomised charges you can engage in risk-taking with the uncertainty that comes with charging/being charged. More weighted decisions to be made, less of a negative "well I have to put myself at a disadvantage and receive a charge 100%" decision to be made. A bit of a silly mental block for some players, but one I can still appreciate. Risking moving into the "average" range that an enemy might roll to charge you is more exciting than knowing for certain what will happen.

Happily I guess it's one thing that should be dead easy to house rule either way your local group wants to play it. It's just one of those things, people either like more random gak or less.

Agree completly with all of this.

I think one big problem with wargames is teaching how to play the game.

Not in a sense of how to roll dice or how to mechanically control units, that's normally covered really well.

No the issue is how to PLAY the game. We have a massive black hole when it comes to this in wargaming, at least for sci-fi and fantasy games. You can find guides and books and articles and long videos and discussions about building models, painting, sculpting, converting, list building and how to mechanically play the game.

But as soon as you turn to game tactics its a deadzone full of generic "play to the objectives" style phrases that don't really tell a person HOW to play to the objectives.




This creates a situation where many people aren't taught and aren't teaching how to deal with things like random charges and such. People just don't know how to deal with it and when they lose to it (or fail to win with it) they instantly discount it. They know how it mechanically works, they just don't know how to work with that mechanic (and all the others) to play the game.
It's really strange and in part I put it down to the fact that a lot of people have learned most areas of the game in a formal sense somewhere and that formality provides a mental structure that has spread through the game community reinforcing itself.
But for actual playing there's no real formal teaching or structure in place, so as a community we don't have the structural nor educational support to convey things in an effective manner.

Heck even with the explosion of "Lets Plays" we don't really have very much in the way of tactical review and when we do its often "oh and look here's where that dice roll really did him in as he failed save after save". So its still focusing on the mechanical aspects of the game rather than the thinking and playing side.

Cyel wrote:
It made planning impossible. Why plan combined charges if the result is random anyway. Taking away my agency just resulted in me not caring about the result plain and simple. "It's just random anyway so whatever".

Do you have any idea how many times, in historical battles, charges failed due to completely unexpected reasons? Did that take away the agency of the generals fighting those battles?

People who dislike the mechanic just don't now how to play. Yep, must be it...

 Just Tony wrote:
People who dislike the mechanic just don't now how to play. Yep, must be it...

No, but it may be a component of it for some.

My post wasn't that no one understands how to play, it was that as a community we have a very poor level of exchange of information and teaching about how to play the game.
It heavily impacts the ability to debate mechanics.



You can see the same thing in people who regularly defend things like the way you can get a double turn in Age of Sigmar.

 Just Tony wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

Cyel wrote:
For me WFB didn't end with the coming of AoS, it actually ended when 8th edition hit, for really one reason above all others - random charge ranges. I'd loved WFB in 5th, 6th and 7th, was an avid fan. I only played a couple of games of 8th and that's only because kids at my school asked me to.

I hope they won't do that again. Kill Team proves that they can.

What about random charge ranges was so bad that it ruined your experience?

I found it quite liberating, as my experience with fixed charge ranges was three to five turns of both sides dancing back and forth a quarter inch just out of charge range trying to bait the other side into charging, failing, and dying. Presuming both sides had the same movement rate, anyway; when one side had a clear movement advantage that side generally won unless the other side went wholesale gunline.

It gets boring and predictable without random charges, in my experience anyway.

So what about random charges motivated people to stop doing this mythical 1/8" dance? Hmmm? If you're even LESS likely to pop a charge off it strikes me that you'd be less likely to play to that weakness.

It's a lot harder to totally avoid a 16" potential charge range for M4 infantry than an 8" charge range... especially given there's only 24" between the deployment lines. And if don't charge until you get to the 6" guaranteed sucessful charge, you're going to lose a lot of games to people who made the slight gamble to charge you at 10"

Long and short, once charge ranges became random, the "just out of range dance' disappeared from the meta. There was no longer a 'just out of range' line to dance around, just gradually increasing of probability. It was the 'all or nothing' nature of the fixed charge range that seems to have been the whole problem.


A question: How do you resolve combat? Shouldn't Chaos Chosen just automatically slaughter X number of lesser troops without taking any casualties in response because they're just THAT hard? Or do you roll dice because even in combat sometimes luck happens?

 Overread wrote:
I think one big problem with wargames is teaching how to play the game.

for Warhammer, yes
the content on tactics is jut not there compared to building, painting and the background

for wargaming in general, not really as there the "playing" part is more important

of course it depends on the rules, as the tactics from one game hardly work with another one, but the content is available

not the mechanical how to play videos but on basic tactics
as how set up flanking charges, how to beat a specific army etc.

PS: and people defending Double Turn for the same reason as Random Charges, this is a unique feature of the GW game and therefore it must be the only legit way to play
and no matter what GW finally chose to use in TOW, people will defend it as the only right way to play


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 Vulcan wrote:
Long and short, once charge ranges became random, the "just out of range dance' disappeared from the meta. There was no longer a 'just out of range' line to dance around

not really
at least here, instead of staying 8" out of the way it was 12" and the dancing around and "avoiding" was still played, except for the Deathstar units that were just pushed forward as they would kill anything anyway

 Vulcan wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

Cyel wrote:
For me WFB didn't end with the coming of AoS, it actually ended when 8th edition hit, for really one reason above all others - random charge ranges. I'd loved WFB in 5th, 6th and 7th, was an avid fan. I only played a couple of games of 8th and that's only because kids at my school asked me to.

I hope they won't do that again. Kill Team proves that they can.

What about random charge ranges was so bad that it ruined your experience?

I found it quite liberating, as my experience with fixed charge ranges was three to five turns of both sides dancing back and forth a quarter inch just out of charge range trying to bait the other side into charging, failing, and dying. Presuming both sides had the same movement rate, anyway; when one side had a clear movement advantage that side generally won unless the other side went wholesale gunline.

It gets boring and predictable without random charges, in my experience anyway.

So what about random charges motivated people to stop doing this mythical 1/8" dance? Hmmm? If you're even LESS likely to pop a charge off it strikes me that you'd be less likely to play to that weakness.

It's a lot harder to totally avoid a 16" potential charge range for M4 infantry than an 8" charge range... especially given there's only 24" between the deployment lines. And if don't charge until you get to the 6" guaranteed sucessful charge, you're going to lose a lot of games to people who made the slight gamble to charge you at 10"

Long and short, once charge ranges became random, the "just out of range dance' disappeared from the meta. There was no longer a 'just out of range' line to dance around, just gradually increasing of probability. It was the 'all or nothing' nature of the fixed charge range that seems to have been the whole problem.


A question: How do you resolve combat? Shouldn't Chaos Chosen just automatically slaughter X number of lesser troops without taking any casualties in response because they're just THAT hard? Or do you roll dice because even in combat sometimes luck happens?

I'll take false equivalencies for a thousand, Alex.

Random charge length rolling is like rolling to establish your ballistic skill or weapon skill before shooting or fighting in close combat. We don't need to roll on a random chart to figure out what random chart we need to roll randomly on with our randomly random roles. The bloat was just too far. Random charge link is for people who lack Tactical mindsets, and was a false solution to a false problem with Cavalry being the uber-killy thing that it was not. I have demonstrated this mathematically on multiple occasions. The big problem is that in order to combat the Cavalry units they made infantry units ridiculously lethal with multiple attacks from multiple ranks and step up to make sure that you get those multiple ranks of combat attacks regardless of whether you should or not. There is not a redeemable thing about 8th Edition in my mind. Everything about game balance left and it became a gigantic game of Yahtzee essentially.


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I also consider a mechanic to be flawed when there is a situation where it is possible regardless of how unlikely that dwarves can outrun Cavalry on the charge.

 RustyNumber wrote:


Happily I guess it's one thing that should be dead easy to house rule either way your local group wants to play it. It's just one of those things, people either like more random gak or less.

We’ve been playing with the following house rule over the last few years that maintains the importance of the movement value for charging but still maintaining a slight fog of war with the randomness.

A unit charges at MOVE x2 plus the sum of 2 special charging dice.

The charging dice faces are as follows; 1x fumble (-1”), 2x blank, 2x Extra Move (+1”), 1x Extra Move (+2”).

A unit containing a champion may re-roll one fumble result.

 Vulcan wrote:


Do you have any idea how many times, in historical battles, charges failed due to completely unexpected reasons? Did that take away the agency of the generals fighting those battles?

I don't care about historical battles, I care about an interesting gameplay experience where I can get my intellectual satisfaction from playing well and being consistently rewarded for it. It's a game not real life.

Also any aspect of warfare could be subject to "unexpected random reasons" not just charges. Why not just have a game where you just sit and roll and consult random result tables. Such a blissful experience with no sign of this tiring thing called 'thinking'. Do you like Snakes&Ladders? I don't. I don't like it when random luck pulls me out of bad decisions, it's the opposite of satisfying for me.

In Mayhem, charge/movement range (like other stats) is represented by an RPG die type. When you move, you can choose to either take the safe, concrete default of half the die value, or roll the die for a random result, potentially doubling your reach. (E.g. movement status of D12 moves either 6" default, or anywhere from 1 to 12")

I don't see how it couldn't be applied or houseruled in some way with WFB mechanics. Infantry charges either 6" or 2D6". Cav charges 12" or 3d6".

Risk vs. reward: it contains an element of luck and chance, but you don't have to rely on it. Both static and random charge playstyles catered to!

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/151678/mayhem-fantasy-mass-battles

Cyel wrote:
I don't like it when random luck pulls me out of bad decisions, it's the opposite of satisfying for me.

I have bad news for you, you've been playing dice based wargames involving chance the whole time

Seriously though can everyone tone it down a bit. This is an aaaaage old subject and there's no need for people to dress up their subjective opinions as THE ONLY OBJECTIVE ONE POSSIBLE

It's fine to enjoy a wargame with fixed movement and also fine to enjoy one with random charges.

I think there's no way to reduce the randomness whilst keeping it (move + D6 or whatever) that will keep the fixed-value crowd happy.

 mindrobber wrote:

 RustyNumber wrote:


Happily I guess it's one thing that should be dead easy to house rule either way your local group wants to play it. It's just one of those things, people either like more random gak or less.

We’ve been playing with the following house rule over the last few years that maintains the importance of the movement value for charging but still maintaining a slight fog of war with the randomness.

A unit charges at MOVE x2 plus the sum of 2 special charging dice.

The charging dice faces are as follows; 1x fumble (-1”), 2x blank, 2x Extra Move (+1”), 1x Extra Move (+2”).

A unit containing a champion may re-roll one fumble result.

These new custom dice are now also involved in cannon fire - the aim point scatters 2dF before calculating the line and bounce. The old arty. die is still used for the bounce and for catapults, spells etc.

 Just Tony wrote:
I also consider a mechanic to be flawed when there is a situation where it is possible regardless of how unlikely that dwarves can outrun Cavalry on the charge.

Ever see a horse encounter the territory of prairie dogs? Goes from full gallop to a VERY cautious walk in a couple seconds. A person just runs right through without concern. Under those circumstances, yes, a dwarf will charge faster and farther than cavalry.



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Cyel wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:


Do you have any idea how many times, in historical battles, charges failed due to completely unexpected reasons? Did that take away the agency of the generals fighting those battles?

I don't care about historical battles, I care about an interesting gameplay experience where I can get my intellectual satisfaction from playing well and being consistently rewarded for it. It's a game not real life.

Also any aspect of warfare could be subject to "unexpected random reasons" not just charges. Why not just have a game where you just sit and roll and consult random result tables. Such a blissful experience with no sign of this tiring thing called 'thinking'. Do you like Snakes&Ladders? I don't. I don't like it when random luck pulls me out of bad decisions, it's the opposite of satisfying for me.

Then you are not interested in playing a game about war, where luck and chance regularly affects events. One horse trips in a gopher hole and a whole charge stalls, leaving the cavalry stranded in front of archers.

Heck, look at Agincourt. The French charged up the slope in the full expectation of being able to make it up, but had mistaken just how boggy and slick it would be. Where is the room for that in a game where units ALWAYS charges the same distance every time?

If you want abstract movement, play chess.

I much prefer my war games to NOT allow me to control every inch/mm of what my forces do. I appreciate whatever friction can be added in so that I have to adapt and deal with unknown and uncertainty.

I hope ToW isn't so mapped out that it - again - comes down to list building and set up to decide games.

I prefer to play against an opponent and not against the game

A lot of that is covered by terrain features and weather, and good command and morale rules.
As well as not allowing for pre measure and a orders phase. But I think for GW that has sailed away.

Apple fox wrote:
A lot of that is covered by terrain features and weather, and good command and morale rules.
As well as not allowing for pre measure and a orders phase. But I think for GW that has sailed away.

Yeah GW does not bother with any of those but also no-pre-measuring just means people cheat in my experience

 Mr Morden wrote:

Apple fox wrote:
A lot of that is covered by terrain features and weather, and good command and morale rules.
As well as not allowing for pre measure and a orders phase. But I think for GW that has sailed away.

Yeah GW does not bother with any of those but also no-pre-measuring just means people cheat in my experience

No pre measuring I think depends on how it’s done. If you are declaring March orders and no measuring at all done beforehand, then it’s much harder to cheat effectively over just paying attention.
Place a dice down for everything means can’t be dodgy as well ! At least no more than most other forms of cheating in games like this.

Apple fox wrote:
A lot of that is covered by terrain features and weather, and good command and morale rules.
As well as not allowing for pre measure and a orders phase. But I think for GW that has sailed away.

I prefer the simplicity of a D6 roll rather than "Well you moved HEAVY cavalry into this patch of ploughed field, so they suffer -3 after the +2 they got from crossing the firm road" type complexity.

 Mr Morden wrote:

Apple fox wrote:
A lot of that is covered by terrain features and weather, and good command and morale rules.
As well as not allowing for pre measure and a orders phase. But I think for GW that has sailed away.

Yeah GW does not bother with any of those but also no-pre-measuring just means people cheat in my experience

Not in my experience. The cheating used to come when someone would use a long-range measurement to illegally premeasure range for a subsequent action. I also didn't see laser guided cannons in 6th when everyone supposedly had ranges by sight memorized. Some people are taking their preferences and writing revisionist history to justify it or validate it as the "One True Way To Play"tm when there's no need to explain or justify preference.

Apple fox wrote:
A lot of that is covered by terrain features and weather, and good command and morale rules.
As well as not allowing for pre measure and a orders phase. But I think for GW that has sailed away.

"No premeasuring" is just another name for noob trap. Rule favoured by those who want to curbstomp noobs with tricks rather than real tactics.

It makes no difference past noob level beside whether you want to waste time or not. Want to waste time? "deny" pre-measuring.

tneva82 wrote:

Apple fox wrote:
A lot of that is covered by terrain features and weather, and good command and morale rules.
As well as not allowing for pre measure and a orders phase. But I think for GW that has sailed away.

"No premeasuring" is just another name for noob trap. Rule favoured by those who want to curbstomp noobs with tricks rather than real tactics.

It makes no difference past noob level beside whether you want to waste time or not. Want to waste time? "deny" pre-measuring.

I was referring to premeasuring before a orders phase, it can be as simple as a walk, run, charge, stand. Hardly noob traps.
And can even just be a dice for movement, walk 2. Run 8. Charge!
The movement is what makes rank and file interesting, it needs to be robust and interesting.