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View Full Version : Army Builder odds and ends



King Chud
07-03-2014, 09:20 PM
I have a friend of mine who uses army builder for dwarves and wood elves. I don't play either army, so I don't have either codex. My friend told me that army builder prevents you from giving more than one wood elf unit the same type of magical arrows. I didn't see that rule when I read through the codex. Is this true that magical items can't be replicated for units? Armybuilder also allows dwarves to get two spelleater runes. Is this legal also?

My last question has to do with incomplete rear ranks being attacked in melee. If I have a unit locked in a flank attack with another unit, and then my unit gets attacked in the rear, how do you allocate the troops to defend the back incomplete rank? I know the rear attacker gets all of his attacks, even if he is contact with an incomplete rear rank. Do I pull men from a middle rank up to the rear to fight back? That is what my friend is claiming.

Normally I interpret it as when I have an incomplete rank defending from a rear attack, only those models in base contact to the rear get to strike back. If I have five models in the rear rank, those five are the only ones that can fight, assuming they don't get wiped out first due to initiative and so forth. My friend is claiming I have to pull men from a middle rank, and lets say add five more men to the rear to fight. That interpretation really isn't jiving with me, and my friend is stubborn as a goat when he rules lawyer. Which interpretation is correct?

Wildeybeast
07-05-2014, 04:59 AM
I'm afraid he isn't rules lawyering and is entirely correct. The second rank in from the back 'step up' to fight in their rear. You don't actually move them (unlike with a flank) but they do fight. If you look at the incomplete ranks section on p49 it explains it clearly and there is a handy picture which shows exactly how it works.

The wood elf thing is a contentious one. The magic arrows are technically enchanted items and you can never have more than one of the same magic item. Some people argue therefore that you can only give a single unit each of the different types of magic arrow. However, it seems fairly certain this is not how the rules were intended. For a start, if you go down this route then technically only one model in the unit should be able to have that arrow. Furthermore, if GW wanted it to work like that, they would have put a 'one unit in the army' restriction, like they do with magic banners or certain other unit upgrades. If army builder is playing like that, then that's their choice, but in my gaming group we use common sense.

As for the dwarfs, I haven't read their book so can't help