Rules for minimum distances between units?

[Barbarian Borelord]

Another question from the rookie: I was going over the warscrolls and I saw that Handgunners and Sisters of Avelorn can shoot in the enemy's charge phase when an enemy unit ends their charge within 3 inch of them. I figured that was for their personal defense, but then I thought what if a friendly infantry unit can fit in those 3 inch? Can the ranged units sit so close to the infantry units that they can act in their defense when being charged by the enemy? 

It seems like such an advantage that I want to check if GW hasn't made some kind of rule against it, but so far I have only found rules about the maximum distance between models.

Edited March 11, 2021 by Barbarian Borelord

[GrimDork]

Yes, totally possible to do this!

You could place a melee unit in a line with a unit of Handgunners placed behind within 2.5" of the front of the first unit, so when the front unit is charged, the hand gunners are within 3" and can open fire.

[Kaime]

It does work like that, you can get like 3-4 units reacting to one charge if you mix them up close enough.

Remember they still only get to fire in response to the first charge

[EMMachine]

14 minutes ago, Barbarian Borelord said:

Another question from the rookie: I was going over the warscrolls and I saw that Handgunners and Sisters of Avelorn can shoot in the enemy's charge phase when an enemy unit ends their charge within 3 inch of them. I figured that was for their personal defense, but then I thought what if a friendly infantry unit can fit in those 3 inch? Can the ranged units sit so close to the infantry units that they can act in their defense when being charged by the enemy? 

It seems like such an advantage that I want to check if GW hasn't made some kind of rule against it, but so far I have only found rules about the maximum distance between models.

Let's see it this way. If they wanted that the unit can only shoot if they are the target, the rule would have been within 1" instead of 3" because you have to be in 1/2" that a charge is successful.

[Barbarian Borelord]

Wow, awesome! 

Especially since this pike and shot warfare fits very well with the Empire's -sorry, Freeguild's- renaissance theme!

Thanks for the answers!

[Uziel]

At the moment I am gaining some experince with combining handgunners with freeguild guard with halberds. In my first test it worked great against a first turn charge from seekers. 10 charged the halberdiers, four got shot down in overwatch and because hed had to activate another unit first, because it was more important, the rest got smashed by the halberdiers.

 

Now I am experimenting with bigger pike an shotte blocks. 20 halberdiers, 20 handgunners, a freeguild general for hold the line and 20 crossbowmen behin for ranged firepower. The main problem is, that my last few games were agains stonehorn heavy lists. The impact would have been better against other sorts of lists, but it was the first time I did not lose outright against a stonehorn list, but got a draw.

 

I will test this kind of formation more often in the future, now I got my second unit of handgunners and I will see how it performs against other kinds of lists.