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I only collect and never played, but enjoy watching battle reports now and then. But recently I noticed something odd, that I don't quite understand.

Lets say we have the following situation: Player A (red) has a unit that wants to charge unit B (green) that is lets say 5 '' away. What he really wants though is to get BEHIND unit B, so as far to the right of the picture as possible. Maybe to get into range of an objective, maybe for a follow up charge whatever. He rolled an 11 on his charge roll which is more then enough.


so multiple times now I saw that the player A did this:


while I don't understand why he didn't do this:


Is there a rule I missed that says upon charging I have to go a straight line as short as possible regardless of my (successful) roll?

Edit: in every case there was more then enough room for Unit A to go "around" unit B and still only move <11''

The final pic having the models be behind the others in legal in your example.

Only requirements are: have to go b2b if model can, stay in coherency, end closer to target than started and not within engagement rangn(1") of unit you didn't declare charge against

Prior editions had rules where you needed to go the shortest distance with the first charged model, not sure when that was cut.

 Nevelon wrote:
Prior editions had rules where you needed to go the shortest distance with the first charged model, not sure when that was cut.

"Simple, not logical."

OK, then I likely just misjudged what the battleplan of player A in those battle reports was. Or he had some other reason to keep to the closer side of unit B

Does flying allow the red models to get behind the greens in a straight line in 10th?

Either to consolidate into another unit, or surround them for whatever the 'trapped' result is now.

That was a thing Harlequins could do.

There are a few things that might cause the unit to charge straight in rather than around to the back.

All models in the charging unit must get into B2B with the target unit if possible.

The models in the charging unit cannot move within Engagement Range of model not in the target units

 Nevelon wrote:
Prior editions had rules where you needed to go the shortest distance with the first charged model, not sure when that was cut.

It's also a common rule in a lot of other wargames.
I wonder if its an accidental omission by GW because they just always play test games the same way so the rule not being there isn't something they've spotted as missing; or if its intentional and a tactic that they want people to have access too.

It doesn't feel right that you could charge around behind a unit without some kind of ability.

Well it's been couple editions like this. It's now stricter than it been for over half a decade minimum.

Not expecting change

Also, you may wanna make way for more units to charge. CC is already pretty gimped. Moving shortest route possible, would gimp it even more.

It's also a viable tactic to get to objectives or beeing in a better position for the next turn.
And this iteration, still guarantees that all can fight who can fight. No holding back. It's kinda the best of both worlds, at least in this regard

 Overread wrote:
I wonder if its an accidental omission by GW because they just always play test games the same way so the rule not being there isn't something they've spotted as missing; or if its intentional and a tactic that they want people to have access too.

Given GW's track record, this is almost certainly something they didn't put in the rules because they play it a certain way and just assume everyone plays it like they do.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Overread wrote:
I wonder if its an accidental omission by GW because they just always play test games the same way so the rule not being there isn't something they've spotted as missing; or if its intentional and a tactic that they want people to have access too.

Given GW's track record, this is almost certainly something they didn't put in the rules because they play it a certain way and just assume everyone plays it like they do.

IIRC their designers have basically stated exactly this on previous occasions around rules issues, when asked why "x" is allowed they have noted they just don't do "x" so why would they disallow it, and suggested players agree among themselves

now that would be fine for a 3-4 page set of free to download rules, but when the rulebooks cost what GW likes to charge for them I want slightly more thought

the current 40k seems to have been written down to a page count for set costs for the books, hence the requirement for the commentary document, which isn't in the box, to make sense of it