Charging without orders

[ottomanmjm]

I was thinking of a situation like this:

__AAAA

BBBB
__CCCC

A is the enemy BG. B is a non shock BG that declares a charge on A. C is shock mounted which fails a CMT not to charge A.

B charges home; C charges home but has some bases that can not drop back to avoid friends B (by now already in contact with A) as no formation changes are allowed in a charge. So what happens to C - surely its charge is not cancelled?

This is the situation that I was describing in my original question, except that CCCC was shock foot. I agree that CCCC should not have its charge cancelled.

[bbotus]

I think MikeK has it right except that as ottomanmjm says

I would have thought that the fact that troops who fail their CMT to not charge "MUST" burst through friends is a good indication that the rules are not silent on who should charge first.

.

It is making sense to play it as the charger failing a CMT to not charge must move first. The author did mention in the TIP on page 58 that shock troops testing to charge are probably in the wrong place.

Again, I'm not crazy about having shock foot charge through non-shock mounted but maybe that is the penalty for putting those troops in such un-historical formations.

Has anyone found a passage in the rules that says how to determine who moves first in charges?

[zoltan]

Has anyone found a passage in the rules that says how to determine who moves first in charges?

Page 68, "Each charge and any responses to it must be actioned in the order listed in the full turn sequence at the end of the book, but if there is more than one charge the active player chooses the order in which they are actioned."

[expendablecinc]

This would seem to indicate that the charging player cannot decide the order of charges in this instance. The mounted charge would then be cancelled as it could not avoid the friends that burst through it to make contact.

I disagree. In a situation where we have one declared charge and one failed CMT not to charge, we simply have two charges. We then move to the Charge moves sequence and the rules appear to be silent on who moves first; so the charging player choses. Say he moves the declared charge first into contact with the enemy. Next, the failed CMT charge moves with full rights. Of course the failed CMT charge can only drop by one file to avoid the friends (already in contact). If this is insufficient to allow the failed CMT charge to pass by then it will burst through the declared chagers already in contact, flicking the burst through bases out the back.

It seems very counterintuitive that chargers can cause opther battlegroups to break contact with people they are fighting. I suspect that a slight tweak is required to restore sanity.

change "cannot burst through those in contact <delete> with enemy"

or the FAQ defining in mellee as not the end of the impact phase.

on a related note I wonder at the rationale behind why shock troops will burst through non shock troops (even if they are all charging together in the same impact phase) but will not charge through other shock troops

[philqw78]

on a related note I wonder at the rationale behind why shock troops will burst through non shock troops (even if they are all charging together in the same impact phase) but will not charge through other shock troops

Simplicity

[bbotus]

expendablecinc wrote:
It seems very counterintuitive that chargers can cause opther battlegroups to break contact with people they are fighting.

Agree. That's is where the last bullet on page 58 comes in, "If it fails, it must burst through the friends." So in this instance only, unless you can figure out a way to get the non-shock troops in front out of the way (like wheeling to charge another unit and contacting it with at least the same number of bases), seems to me that the shock troops ought to move first and burst through.


P.S. to Zoltan: Thanks. I knew that passage was there somewhere but I couldn't find it.