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First post ever!

Forgive me if any of what I'm about to say can be solved/furthered by reading the full blown 40K rules. I stepped away from 40K during 3rd edition but Kill Team has managed to get me back into the fold.

I think the Kill Team rulebook is fair well written, but like a few other folks I think the whole Charge section needs a FAQ to address questions that have arisen. While reading and cross referencing rules to figure out other issues with the Charge rules, I came across another interesting item that I don't think has been brought up yet.


Falling Back and Retreating are two different types of movement in the game. Falling Back is the (only) movement you do if in melee and you get to move your entire movement away from the enemy in melee.

Retreating you do as a reaction to being Charged and you only get to move 3" regardless of your actual movement stat.

The rulebook instructs you to place Fallback tokens on a model that either FellBack or Retreated.

However under the Retreated section it states a model can not Shoot or React once it Retreats. While in the Fall Back Section it says it can't Advance, Ready, Shoot, Charge, or React.

So let's have an example.

We're on turn 3. I've got two space marines, you've got two orks. One of my SM is in melee with one of your orks. The other SM is say 7" away from your other ork. I won initiative, I get to move first.

1. I leave my SM in melee with your ork.
2. I charge my other SM at your ork. You retreat with it, mark it with a Fallback token, and manage to stay out of melee

Now it's your turn to move.

1. You Fallback out of melee with your ork that's in combat. You mark him with a Fallback token.
2. At this point, you have two orks, both with Fallback tokens. But each of them have different restrictions.
a.) You have your ork that actually Fellback out of melee. This ork can not Advance, Charge, Ready, Shoot, or React. (not that React matters anymore, you moved second)
b.) You have your second ork that retreated. However by a strict reading of the rules, this ork could Advance, Charge, or just move normally.

My question is, is this actually intended? Are models that retreated capable of movement during their move phase? My gut says a solid "maybe?" simply because an actual Fallback uses your entire move while a Retreat is an arbitrary 3" regardless of your move stat. If this is intended, how are we suppose to tell apart those models because they're all marked with the same token? Move all the retreated models first THEN move models out of melee? At least that way you wouldn't have mixed restriction tokens on the board at the same time. (I know model count isn't high and you could possibly just remember everything without tokens, I'm just trying to parse the rules as written.)

Thoughts?

Yeah, it's almost as if the game wasn't QA-ed or something...but of course that would never happen.

I don't think I can offer you much here other than talking it over with your opponent. I mean nine times out of ten that solves all problems. It's just that when you have to do it every couple of minutes (every time you play with a new opponent) it can really add up. And a game that is supposed to take 40 min to play takes 1.5+ hours...

Basically you and your opponent need to decide whether you are going to explicitly read the rules and follow them to the letter no matter what stupid outcome that creates, or whether you are going to try to arrive at the intended spirit of the rules. Either way it is likely you will disagree and need to do a little bit of jockeying back and forth to arrive at an answer that feels good to both of you, or in many cases just the least bad to both of you.

Again, no game is perfect, but GW does have a real history (that seems to be an ongoing problem) of using imperfect and inexact language that leads to rules misunderstandings and misinterpretations. Not to mention flat out errors that should be caught by competent QA...but I digress.

TL;DR - My thought is, until an FAQ/Errata exists, just do your best to hammer these things out with your opponent on a game-by-game basis. The power to have fun or not with an imperfect ruleset is in your hands.

Agreed on all points about discussing it with your opponent. Luckily I play with a guy who really won't care either way, as long as we're consistent with the application of it.

The more I think about this particular issue the more I feel like there's two competing implications to the Retreat rules. (I know I'm reading way too much into it, but hey work is slow today.)

Implication #1 You will always have access to your full movement during your move phase. This means any unit that Retreated during your opponents move phase will still have access to their full move during your own move phase. (Notably this could include charging the very model you retreated from so you can attack first)

OR...

Implication #2 When they wrote the Retreat section they unconsciously wrote it from the point of view of your movement phase already being over. So there was no need to mention not being able to Advance, etc since by that point your move phase had ended.

I lean towards the first implication, but it does have an impact on objective based missions and occupying them. But I can't completely discount the second implication. It'll be interesting to see the FAQ for this when it lands.