The Pragmatic Realspace Raider: Mastering the Multiple Charge

The Pragmatic Realspace Raider: Mastering the Multiple Charge

These guides aim to give bitesize advice on the benefits of being pragmatic when playing 40k. They do not intend to delve into mathematical analysis of whether or not the units used in the example are optimal or cost effective, nor do they intend to cover load outs or configurations. Those will be left for other discussions. It is also worth noting that the examples in these guides are simplified for clarity, of course in practice there will be more units involved.

This article aims to illustrate how to engage multiple unit in assault with the multiple charge rules.

When declaring a multiple charge you nominate a primary target and any number of secondary targets. If the initial charger fails to move into base contact with the primary target the charge is failed. As a result you want your primary target generally to be the closest target, or the target you really want to assault at all costs. The secondary targets can be seen as "stretch goals", or bonus opportunities if you would rather. It's worth noting that if your charging unit shot at a unit in the shooting phase that unit has to be your primary target.

If the initial charger successfully moves into base contact with the primary target, remaining models can charge models belonging to either the primary or secondary target units, as long as they follow the rules for moving charging models. There are two restrictions to this:

• A charging model is not permitted to move into base contact with a model in a secondary target, unless it cannot move into base contact with an unengaged model in the primary target.
• The charging unit is not allowed to break its unit coherency.

Defining Engaged Models

A model is engaged in combat if:

• It is in base contact with one or more enemy models.
• It is within 2" horizontally and/or 6" vertically of a friendly model in base contact with one or more enemy models in the same combat.

Therefore an unengaged model is a model that is not within 2" horizontally and/or 6" vertically of a friendly model in base contact with one or more of your charging models.



In the above example all 12 of the fire warriors are engaged. As they are all within 2" of the two fire warriors that are in base contact with the grotesque.

Example 1:

This example covers the basics with a primary and secondary target.



The Grotesques disembark from the raider and declare the crisis suits to be the primary target of their charge and the fire warriors to be the secondary target.



The initial charger (the closest grotesque to the crisis suits) is moved by the shortest distance into base contact with them. A model is engaged if it is in base contact with one or more enemy models or is within 2” of a friendly model in base contact with one or more enemy models. Therefor any Tau model within 2” of the crisis suit in base contact with the grotesque is engaged (the blue circle). This means there are no unengaged models in the crisis suit unit, as a result we are free to move models into base contact with the secondary target.



The next model moves into base contact with the secondary target and is within 2” of the inital charger so maintains unit coherency (blue circle).



The remaining grotesques and succubus are moved into base contact with the fire warriors. Three of the grotesques and the succubus can allocate attacks to the fire warriors (T3 4+ save), meaning they will inflict more casualties than if they had been allocating attacks to the crisis suits (T4 3+ save). As a result the Dark Eldar are more likely to win combat by a large margin making the Tau flee and catching them with sweeping advance thanks to the succubus' high initiative.

Example 2:

This example adds an additional secondary target for three targets int total.



The Grotesques disembark from the raider and declare the broadside suits to be the primary target of their charge. The fire warriors and crisis suits are declared as the secondary targets. The initial charger moves into base contact with the broadsides ensuring they are both engaged.



With the broadsides engaged the remaining grotesques are free to move into base contact with either of their secondary targets, of course they still need to maintain 2” unit coherency with the initial charger. Keeping this in mind a grotesque is moved into contact with the crisis suits.



Finally the remaining grotesques and the succubus are moved into base contact with the firewarriors. Like the previous example this ensure maximum damage, and relies on the sweeping advance to take out the resilient crisis and broadside battlesuits.

Example 3:

This example covers how to bridge the gap between a primary and secondary target that are quite far apart.



The Grotesques disembark from the raider and declare the broadside suits to be the primary target of their charge. The fire warriors are declared to be the secondary target. The initial charger moves into base contact with the broadsides ensuring they are both engaged.



Here’s the important part. The second grotesque along can't move into base contact with the fire warriors without breaking unit coherency. This means he has to move into contact with the primary target following the regular charge rules: the model needs to try and get into base contact with an unengaged enemy model, or failing that into base contact with an engaged enemy model. This is not what we want as we want to allocate as many attacks as possible against the fragile fire warriors, not the resilient broadsides. Thankfully after moving the initial charger you can move the remaining models in any order. So instead of moving the next nearest grotesque, the grotesque that is furthest away is moved. He doesn’t have enough charge range to make it into base contact with any enemy models from the primary unit, so he only needs to make it within 2” of one of his own unit's models that is already in base contact with an enemy model. This allows us to make a chain towards the fire warriors.



The remaining models can now move into base contact with the secondary target as they can now maintain unit coherency with the models that have already been moved. Like the previous example this ensure maximum damage (by allocating the majority of attacks against the fire warriors). Note that the grotesque in the middle of the chain can chose to attack either the fire warriors or the broadsides.

In conclusion, using multiple charges can really help increase the effectiveness of your assault units by allowing them to engage multiple enemy units in a single assault phase. For an example of the above in practice checkout this battle report.

Hope you enjoyed this guide!

For more guides checkout #ThePragmaticRealspaceRaider

Very nice guide, I've never payed much attention to the rules for multicharging, since I haven't fielded potent assault units in a long long time. This makes me want to build some grots though. Thank you very much for the nice pictures and explanations, they go a long way in visualizing the rule text.

In example 3, doesn't the third Grotesque you moved have to try to charge the Broadsides as well? I don't quite understand how it would be free to move to the Firewarriors after the second Grotesque built a "bridge". :-/

I never really understood nor used multicharges, so after understanding this part, I might be finally able to do so!

Kinnay wrote:

In example 3, doesn't the third Grotesque you moved have to try to charge the Broadsides as well?

No, because both Broadsides are engaged by the initial charger. The rest are therefore free to charge the Fire Warriors as long as they maintain unit coherency.

Thanks, guys.

@Count Adhemar one of the reasons I post these guides is so that you can triple check my understanding of the rules! I know if there is something I have missed, you will catch it. So as always your presence is like a seal of regulatory approval.

Updated: I tidied up some of the paragraphs and added a paragraph explaining primary and secondary targets at the top of the article.

Very nice guide Mush, thank you for imparting your wisdom on us.
However owerwatch IS a bigger threat this way.

Ah, okay, got it. The second Grotesque in example 3 only had to move there because it wasn't able to reach the secondary target without breaking unit coherency. My mistake!

Thanks, Count, for clearing this up and thank you very much, Mush, for writing these articles!

Duke Daedric wrote:

Very nice guide Mush, thank you for imparting your wisdom on us.
However owerwatch IS a bigger threat this way.

Yes, it does mean you will take more overwatch shots (so resilient coven units like grotesques are better for this kind of tactic). However, in the examples above against Tau you would take overwatch from all three units regardless of whether you multiple charge or not due to the supporting fire special rule (as the tau units are all within 6" of each other).

Kinnay wrote:

Ah, okay, got it. The second Grotesque in example 3 only had to move there because it wasn't able to reach the secondary target without breaking unit coherency. My mistake!

You got it. It's not the easiest set of rules to get your head round, partly why I decided to write an article on it.

Just going to toss in my little piece of loophole abuse . Sometimes I've been caught out by rolling a really high charge range, which is actually enough to get all my models into contact with unengaged models in the primary target, meaning I can't charge the second unit. If such a situation occurs, remember you can re-roll your dice with Fleet hoping for a LOWER result, making it impossible to get everyone into the primary target.

Another option there is to move your models in such a way as to block access to some of the primary target for other models preventing them from being able to engage the primary and freeing them up to charge the secondary.

Some great extra tidbits there;

Re-roll for lower dices
Blocking yourself with a combination of model order and such

Multi-charging certainly does seem a tricky beast. I tried it in a couple games ago which was my 3rd or 4th game ever, I charged a unit of 18 boyz at some scouts getting a really low dice roll (which resulted in only 1 in B2B as I had to move up a floor too), this allowed the nob to get into contact with 1 chimera and my warboss the other. However, after pile in and because I had put some boyz too close to one chimera and the pile in got 2 more scouts into B2B I ended up killing like 3 of them and he promptly failed LD, fell back and the 2 flamer units inside gave me a good roasting!

I should have thought about how many I would get into B2B after pile in, as I could have easily put them still in B2B with the tank but far enough to prevent pile in.

Was a good lesson learnt, and i'll definitely be using some of mush's advice before my next defeat!

Great article again! There are so many small details that can help you if you know them and I just learned another one: closing the gap. Or subtile things like the max-size of a grot unit. Never thought about that option before
Thanks for sharing your wisdom and experience!

solar shock wrote:

Re-roll for lower dices
Blocking yourself with a combination of model order and such

Those are definitely tricks worth remembering if you roll really high on your charge dice.

solar shock wrote:

Multi-charging certainly does seem a tricky beast.

Yeah it's not straight forward, the bit people often misunderstand is "unengaged model". People tend to  think they need to move into base contact with any model if they can. But unengaged models are those that are not within 2" of a model in base to base contact with one of your charging models. Effectively you can engage an entire 10 model unit with 1-2 models.



In the above image all 12 of the fire warriors are engaged.

Think about this in the movement phase when positioning your closest model to the unit you plan to charge as he will be the initial charger.

@miral wrote:

Great article again! There are so many small details that can help you if you know them and I just learned another one: closing the gap. Or subtile things like the max-size of a grot unit. Never thought about that option before
Thanks for sharing your wisdom and experience!

Thank you for the kind words! Good to hear you are finding these articles useful.

Third example is amazing, never thinked about, thanks!


But Tau aren't the best enemy choice. They can snapshot with all of the 3 units

Thanks for this Mush. Multi-charging has always been one I've struggled to get my head round so your examples have helped a great deal!

Cerve wrote:

But Tau aren't the best enemy choice. They can snapshot with all of the 3 units

This is actually why they are a good candidate to multicharge. If you charge in on one unit, you'll catch overwatch from the extra units anyway, so there's no real downside to multicharging, and tau suck so bad in assault even splitting up your attacks and not getting bonus attacks for charging, you'll still likely cripple all three.

With tau, things to watch out for are markerlights. If you multicharge (or they're using supporting fire) and a unit has marker lights in it the MLs can benefit the other units' overwatch. That and sometimes the units are SO bad in assault, even multicharging you can tear through them and be stranded for the opponent's shooting phase.

Thank you very much for this. I missread a part of it and this helped clarify it!

Thanks for all the feedback everyone!

Update: Added a section at the beginning of the guide defining engaged/unengaged models. As that seems to be a common thing people overlook.

I'll also be adding another example illustrating the blocking that @Count Adhemar mentioned.

I have two questions regarding the topic.
First of all, it's moving the distance you rolled. As I understand the rules, if you have rolled 10" you are not obliged to go the whole distance. Here is what written in the BRB

Quote :

All of the models in a charging unit make their charge
move – up to the 2D6 distance you rolled earlier – following the same rules as in the
Movement phase, with the exception that they can be moved within 1" of enemy
models.

So I don't understand these tricks with picking the farthest model in your unit to keep the coherency or rerolling the charge distance. Why don't tell - "I put the guy here, it's just for the unit coherency" and just to move the rest of your squad in B2B with the secondary target? You have already declared disordered charge and ate an overwatch from both units, moreover the guy is within 2" from models in B2B so he will strike.
No rule breaking, we just put the priority of keeping the unit coherency above the priority to move as many models as possible in B2B in order to perform multiple charge as we declared.

And second, during the fight sub-phase we will make pile-in moves, which tend to break the unit coherency. Should we still keep the distance 2" between models or it doesn't matter at this step?

SERAFF wrote:

I have two questions regarding the topic.
First of all, it's moving the distance you rolled. As I understand the rules, if you have rolled 10" you are not obliged to go the whole distance. Here is what written in the BRB

Quote :

All of the models in a charging unit make their charge
move – up to the 2D6 distance you rolled earlier – following the same rules as in the
Movement phase, with the exception that they can be moved within 1" of enemy
models.

So I don't understand these tricks with picking the farthest model in your unit to keep the coherency or rerolling the charge distance. Why don't tell - "I put the guy here, it's just for the unit coherency" and just to move the rest of your squad in B2B with the secondary target? You have already declared disordered charge and ate an overwatch from both units, moreover the guy is within 2" from models in B2B so he will strike.
No rule breaking, we just put the priority of keeping the unit coherency above the priority to move as many models as possible in B2B in order to perform multiple charge as we declared.

There is this:

BRB wrote:

If possible, a charging model must move into base contact with an enemy model within reach that is not already in base contact with another charging model. If there are no such enemy models in reach, the model must move into base contact with an enemy model that is already in base contact with a charging model.

The need to move btb limits the movement quite alot. And having those fron row models unmoved while backrow makes it to btb lets you move them more freely.

SERAFF wrote:

And second, during the fight sub-phase we will make pile-in moves, which tend to break the unit coherency. Should we still keep the distance 2" between models or it doesn't matter at this step?

No need to keep coherency.

Vasara wrote:

No need to keep coherency.

I thought pile in moves follow the same rules as charge moves?

Mushkilla wrote:

Vasara wrote:

No need to keep coherency.

I thought pile in moves follow the same rules as charge moves?

They do, so you still have to maintain coherency.

I learned that it is not the case from a "Viking looking" top Brittish player who plays seer council. I try to find where that interpretation comes.

edit:

And there is this:

GW FAQ wrote:

ERRATA
page 46 - Charge Move, Moving Chargeing Models
Change the first bullet point to read:
'If possible, a chargeing model must end its charge move in unit coherency with another model in its own unit that has already moved. If it is not possible for a chargeing model to move and maintain unit coherency, move it as close as possible to another model in its own unit that has already moved.

Thanks a lot gw again. Still haven'tfound anything on pile-in moves though.