No Fly while charging

Dear Archons,

according to the new FAQ units with fly only ignore terrain during the movement phase.

‘If the datasheet for a model says it can Fly, then during
the Movement phase it can move across models and
terrain as if they were not there.’

This means that units with fly do not have this benefit while charging.

My question is: How are you measuring movement distances for units with fly? The picture below shows two possible ways.
Green: The line of sight distance.
Blue: How normal troops have to walk.

Example: Talos is standing on a building. If you move to a point on the ground in the movement phase, you take the line of sight path, right? But what distance do you have to measure in the charge phase now?

You now have to use the blue line.

I can't get over the unintended (I hope) consequences of this ruling. Does this mean if I have a squad of reavers that wants to charge an ork fighta-bomba, I could be blocked by a protective line of grots? Or reavers want to charge a unit and wrap around, they'd literally have to measure the distance the full way around? (The first issue is absurd to me, the second just annoying but I can live with).

Yes, it looks like that is exactly what this section of the FAQ tells us. Basically, fly does not give you any benefits in the charge phase, except that you can charge flyers.

This really sucks for DE as so many of our units have fly.

I think everyone is just jealous/DE must be cleaning up in some games. 2 FAQs and they've hit DE 4x. 3 Patrols are now 1 CP less than a batt (instead of +1), can't farm with the Archon as much, the Agents of Vect increase (ok. I do get that one), and now the CC Fly hit.

Will just have to find a new way to hit our Tau player...

Indeed, in that example the talos cannot charge, because is not capable to be on close combat. The talos must be moved behind the red circle, but now the talos can't fly over it so the charge will fail always.


But returning to the example, your image shows two diferents stuffs. The green line is the distance that mark if you can charge or not, and the second one is how the must move. For example. the green line could be 10", and the talos could declare a charge 100% valid, but the distance that the talos must move is the blue line.

I have been looking through other forums for this when I stumbled over the statement that units with fly ignore vertical distance. This was in some FAQ, but I could not find it.

But this would basically mean that for a normal move a unit with fly would move along the blue line in the picture of the first post, but not counting the distance of the vertical line. E.g. a unit with a movement of 7" could move up a building 20" tall because it does not count the vertical distance???

This sound weird. The way I always played was that a unit with fly uses the direct path (pythagorean theorem). What's correct now?

@Ragnos

In the movement phase you ignore vertical distance, so just measuring the horizontal part of the blue line in the picture. But with the new faq only in the movement phase, in the charge phase or any other phase (like with the stratagem Fire and Fade), you measure the whole blue line in the picture.

GW wanted to stop 0 inch charges from units that appeared from reserve with this, and i think the side effects are too big. I would have preferred, if they had instead changed the reserve rules, that the have to keep 9'' horizontal distance. But that is my personal opinion.

And for understanding, yes a movement 7'' unit can move up a 20'' building in the movement phase, but if you would measure the direct path, green line in the picture, it would mean that the distance a plane can move high above the battlefield would be influenced by the buildings it crosses over, that would also be weird. Basically GW decided here for simpler playable rules vs complex rules with alot of book keeping, where units with fly would need to keep information in which height they are flying right now.

Ahh, thanks a lot.

Do you know in which FAQ and what page this was? I could not find it.

Teach a man how to fish...

https://www.warhammer-community.com/faqs/
Fly is a rule from the core rule book, so you will find most erratas and faqs for it in the rule book errata.
Ctrl+F lets you search in the pdf

I already searched in there but could not find anything saying that units with fly ignore vertical distance. Not in the rulebook errata nor in the two Big FAQs. I was looking for "fly" and "vertical".

Koldan wrote:

GW wanted to stop 0 inch charges from units that appeared from reserve with this, and i think the side effects are too big. I would have preferred, if they had instead changed the reserve rules, that the have to keep  9'' horizontal distance. But that is my personal opinion.

That is my opinion as well. However, I suspect that the reason why they did this is because it would require them to errata every single datasheet that has some form of deepstriking (because GW abandoned USRs for 8th edition - which, IMO, was a bad move). Instead they decided to change the FLY rule, which only require errata'ing one line. Though, for some reason, they decided to nerf flip belts in the same manner... I'm guessing out of some misplaced sense of consistency, though Harlies don't benefit from any of the other aspects of FLY (can't fall back and shoot).

Ragnos wrote:

I already searched in there but could not find anything saying that units with fly ignore vertical distance. Not in the rulebook errata nor in the two Big FAQs. I was looking for "fly" and "vertical".

Widen your search a bit. If you just search for any new changes regrading FLY, you'll find that it only applies to movement during the movement phase now.

krayd wrote:

though Harlies don't benefit from any of the other aspects of FLY (can't fall back and shoot).

Rising Crescendo? Rising crescendo and flip-belts together are like an advanced fly rule, just seperated into two rules.
And the harlies got the debuff too, because they were also capable of deepstriking into a charging distance below 9''.

@Ragnos
They don't use the word vertical, the rule states that for the movement phase you ignore every terrain piece or miniature. You have no vertical distance, if you ignore everything except the flat table, so why should they write about vertical in addition?

GW created the problem of 0" charge them selves in the previous FAQ in the spring. Everything was fine when people were measuring the distance base to base but they introduced the ignore vertical distance part in that FAQ document.

all they had to do was redact that statement or replace it with 'measure base to base'

I wonder who actually wrote and/or approved the clarification of the intent of fly in the previous FAQ and whether they still have their job as this RAI is in total opposition to it, whereas most of the world was playing the original RAW which implied the sensible situation of mainaining the bonuses of fly but measuring base to base for charge distances.