Thursday, May 16, 2013

6th ed Rules of the Game: Refusing a Challenge Edition, requesting feedback

What happens when a challenge is refused has plagued me since the first time reading it.  Seems there's a huge hole in specifically how the rest of the models behave.  Please someone help me out.  I'm thinking there's something printed in the book that I continue to overlook or am just not getting it.



JJ typing, Refusing a Challenge 40k6 pg 64

Alternatively, you can simply refuse the challenge and choose to have your character slink away with sullied honour but beating heart(s).  If you refuse, your opponent gets to nominate one of your characters from those that could have accepted.  The chosen model cannot strike blows at all this turn, as he is thereafter putting all of his effort into staying clear of the vengeful enemy character.  Furthermore, his Leadership cannot be used by the rest of the unit for the remainder of the phase - skulking amongst the ranks is not the stuff of heroism!

Once a challenge has been refused, the model that issued it fights normally.

Heroic Stand

A unit that consists of only a single character cannot refuse a challenge.  He's go nowhere to hide.

Context: Crowe assaulted Dire Avenger squad that had an Exarch and Yriel.  Crowe issued a challenge.  Yrield refused.

Here lays my confusion.  What happens?  Does Crowe get to pick a character, the Exarch, and fight him?  So that they duke it out while the other Dire Avengers watch?  Or with Yriel running away does Crowe fight the Dire Avengers?  Or does Crowe get to attack the squad and the squad doesn't get to attack back?

Adding to this quadmire.  What happens when there are two squads lead by characters.  One issues a challenge.  The other accepts.  What do the squads do?  Example: Orikan is with 10 Immortals and is assaulted by Eldrad with 10 Warlocks.  Eldrad issues a challenge, Orikan accepts (not sure why, this is a hypothetical situation).  What do the 10 Warlocks and Immortals do?  Besides Moral Support 40k6 pg 65.

Had a good 10 min chat with Shawn about this.  We are of the same mindset on all the rules and that one sentence of clarification can clear all this up.  We ran it the way he said it should be ran.  I was, and still am, confused exactly how assault happens when a character refuses a challenge.  Suijin and I actually had a discussion about Heroic Stand shortly after reading it.

This is where I'm requesting info about how this is ran.  If you have book and page numbers to support your info please drop some education on me.


slainte mhath

9 comments:

  1. He doesn't get to choose who refuses the challenge.
    You declare that you wish to challenge, he has to accept or deny.
    If he denies the challenge, then you get to pick which one is "out"

    You choose Yriel to be out.

    You would then treat everything else as a normal assault, and it would be Crowe vs the dire avengers and the Exarch.

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    1. I think Makers has it. And in the case that the challenge is accepted, the two characters fight while any squads fight as normal as if the characters were not in the combat at all. This makes, I think, the Heroic Stand rule a little irrelevant since 9 times out of 10 I think a sole character would benefit, generally, from being in a challenge since he can't get surrounded and beat up by a full squad, but just the leader. That said, if he's a CC monster, he'll only get to kill one guy that round, but I believe still counts all wounds to combat resolution, so will at least win combat.

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    2. Makers, I can see that happening. Do you have a book reference supporting that?

      Evan, also great info. Do you have reference from the book indicating that the squads fight it out while the challenge occurs?

      Wish they would've explained these two things further.

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    3. I agree with Makers. You can only deny the challenge, he then gets to pick.

      About the other part. Let me make an example: 10 Ork nobs with a warboss attack Draigo and 5 Paladins.
      Warboss challenges Draigo and he accepts. In first round of combat the nobs kill all the paladins with their claws, but the challenge of Draigo and the warboss ain't over it. So in the second round of close combat the nobs can't do anything but watch and grant their warboss rerolls.

      About your example with Orikan and Eldrad, they fight their challenge, and the rest is standard close combat, nothing fancy about that.

      But since you mention challenges. I sometime hate them, because the enemy character's armor save can still be taken when they decline a challenge.

      e.g. I attacked with an interceptor squad a unit of 5 immortals and Zahndrekh, my squad leader challenged Zahn, he declined, but since he was in the centre of the cc fight, he put all the wounds on Zahn and his 2+ armor save ... it sucks.

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  2. OK, going to take another shot at this:
    Challenges on page 64 change assault slightly but don't make the entire assault just about the challenge (meaning the assault takes place as normal except for the changes as stated by the challenge). Nothing stated in the challenge section says the rest of the assault stops (except where stated for 1 single character in a challenge).

    One thing to get hung up on is the Heroic Stand "A unit that consists only of a single character". Does this mean a bunch of infantry with their sarge being the only character in the unit, or a single character totally alone? Look at the beginning of the phrase - "A unit that consists of only" meaning that is all there is in the unit. If a unit has infantry in it along with a single character does not consist of "only" a single character but instead of a single character and infantry models. Not definitive, but they do have an example of a unit that consists of only a single character model (last sentence of page 64), "such as a Daemon Prince". Another way to work it from the other way around is to ask yourself this question: "What does that unit consist of?” If it has infantry models in it in addition to the character then can you really say that it only consists of a single character? It only has a single character, but it does not consist of only a single character.

    The other part you are talking about the rest of the squads and whether they stand and watch their characters fight the challenge, or they strike blows against each other. Last paragraph hints at the correct way, "Whilst the challenge is ongoing, only the challenger and challengee can strike blows against one another. Wounds from other attackers cannot be allocated against either character - simply resolve the Wound allocation step as if the two characters were not there." Reading into this, there are other attacks and other wounds so the squads must be fighting each other (otherwise there would not be other attacks and wounds) and you resolve it as if the characters were not there, as it says.

    Also as Makers has said and page 64: Refusing a Challenge "If you refuse, your opponent gets to nominate one of your characters from those that could have accepted. The chosen model cannot strike blows at all this turn, ... " etc. etc.

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    1. Suijin, I get it now. Nicely said regarding challenge outside of standard assault. Also the Outside Forces entry on 40k6 pg 64 helped me wrap my head around this.

      Damn GW wording and not being more clear. I'm on the same page as Makers and Evan. Thanks guys!

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    2. The Heroic rule works along the lines of "Forging a Narrative" and refers to if there is only one person in the unit.

      Notable examples would be Crowe, an Emperors Champion, Mephiston, or if its just a Sgt or something similar left in the unit.

      Since he is the only person, there is really no where for him to run and hide, or someone else to dive behind. He has to accept the challenge.

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    3. Also don't forget that if a unit is assaulted by one character, and a challenge is issued and accepted, the Character from the "unit" will get re-rolls for every 5 models in the unit.

      Example: In the above stated scenario, if the challenge was accepted, Yriel would get 1 dice re-roll to use per round, as the dire avengers are cheering him on.

      If the unit total was 10 (not including the person in the challenge) then you would get 2 per round to use on hits, wounds or saves.

      This is to help balance in scenarios such as a Daemon Prince assaulting a horde of boyz or something.

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    4. Had that opportunity with Crowe a couple of battles ago. Completely forgot it.

      Thanks for the feedback!

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