Tactics: Protecting Your Independent Characters in Assaults (Part 1)

Sometimes, when assaulting, you don't want to expose your Independent Character to direct attacks by the enemy. This can be for a number of reasons which could include; managing kill points or protecting from the loss of various special abilities.

One example could be protecting your Brother Corbulo, since his bubble of Furious Charge and Feel No Pain are probably valuable to the unit he is in and any unit within 6" of him. Since Brother Corbulo is an Independent Character, it might not be safe to have him on the front line charging the enemy head first.

So for part 1 of this 2 part post, I take a look at how to protect the Independent Character when assaulting the enemy. This assumes that a) you don't want to strand your Independent Character, such that he is standing alone to receive enemy fire, b) there is not another unit nearby he can attach himself to, or c) there is not a transport nearby for him to hide in. Note that assumptions b) and c) are ways to also protect the Independent Character, if those options are available.



The first thing to note in the above illustration is that I have purposefully exaggerated trailing the Independent Character at the back of the squad. This may not necessary when setting up the charge, but will become important in part 2 when I discussed taking a charge. The next thing to note are the rules for assaults using Independent Characters. When assaulting, you do not have to move the Independent Character first to attempt to get into base to base with the enemy. Again, part 2 will deal with the rules regarding being assaulted, which does require the Independent Character to try to move up to the front. Next, we do need to consider that all of my units must still go all out to try to get into base to base with a enemy model in the assault, if possible.

Considering the above illustration, the Blood Angels will be assaulting the Bloodletters. The Blood Angels have a 6" assault range. Being extremely conservative, one can see even if one of the Bloodletters had a place I could put Brother Corbulo in base to base, he cannot physically get there.



Now that the Blood Angels have assaulted the Bloodletters, one can see that all of the Blood Angels moved as far as they could to attempt to get into base to base with one of the enemy models. The unfortunate part about my conservative positioning, is now Brother Corbulo, and potentially one of the other Blood Angels, will not be engaged with any of the Bloodletters and will not be able to contribute any attacks towards the melee.



The last important aspect of protecting the Independent Character as part of the assault is considering the impact of the defenders reaction movement. The two Bloodletters that were not in base to base with any of the Blood Angels can react and move up to 6" to get into base to base with your models. If one was not careful to consider this, the enemy could potentially still get into base to base with the Independent Character. Considering this, Brother Corbulo moved up the middle with other Blood Angels on each of his flanks, knowing it would be more than 6" of movement to get around to him.