Charges, overlaps, and getting round the back

If i have a group of say 3 goblins, and an enemy is well within charge range, can all three get into base to base contact, by the second and third chargers going round the sides, or back?

The rules say you need an unobstructed line, but then say you can charge round a corner if you know the target is there. This implies you can bend your charge, but is there a limit on the degree you can do this?

Or is the unobstructed line blocked by the first charger?
This obviously isn't a problem if your charging a large base size model, but if all models are the same base size, in theory if you offset the bases, two chargers can make contact with the front of an enemies base, but then the third and fourth etc are slaloming round friendly models to get to the sides/back of the enemies base.

We've always played that you can, indeed, charge in the way you've described. My reasoning is that you declare all charges before measuring, then move models that are found to be in range. When the model charged, he HAD an unobstructed line to the enemy and all the models involved charge simultaneously.

I'm sure there are people who play it differently - but it has worked fairly well for me!

So have we, though nothing is stated either way in the rulebook.

We seldom practice the "unobstructed line" rule, it's kind of to unclear to use properly, so we go more for, if you can see and reach the enemy you can charge...

Thanks for the answers fellas, good to know we aren't getting everything wrong.

qboid wrote:

If i have a group of say 3 goblins, and an enemy is well within charge range, can all three get into base to base contact, by the second and third chargers going round the sides, or back?

The rules say you need an unobstructed line, but then say you can charge round a corner if you know the target is there. This implies you can bend your charge, but is there a limit on the degree you can do this?

Or is the unobstructed line blocked by the first charger?
This obviously isn't a problem if your charging a large base size model, but if all models are the same base size, in theory if you offset the bases, two chargers can make contact with the front of an enemies base, but then the third and fourth etc are slaloming round friendly models to get to the sides/back of the enemies base.

We've always played that all three warriors can charge. The exception to this is if the first warrior means that the remaining warriors have to move further than their charge range to move around the first (e.g. 8 inches for goblins). We treat this as a failed charge for the remaining warriors. If the remaining warriors can move around the first warrior that charged and still reach the enemy then we let them do that even if they end up attacking from the opposite side of the enemy to where they started.

You might consider doing an initiative test for the model that has to go around to the back if it breaks line of sight significantly.

I've actually been writing some overly complicated but very specific rules about this sort of thing (it's ok my group is into that kind of thing).

Basically models charge directly toward the enemy even if there are friendly models in the way, but we have a "pile in" move that allows up to two friendly models blocking a charger to be move up to 1" in order to make room.

The pile in move cannot take a model out of combat. Models can only move to make room for the charger. Thus a model cannot be moved in order to allow a second model to be moved to make room for a charger, and two models cannot be moved simultaneously to circumvent this restriction. (prevents a player from snaking his chargers along one side of a model

If the there is no way to move the models following the pile in rules the charge counts as failed, move the model half way etc.

So with these rules in order to charge the rear of a model I guess you'd have to position your charger so that charging the rear would be the most direct route. Kind of complicated, but it prevents vague charge shenanigans, especially with multiple chargers. It means the direction models charge from becomes relevant and it becomes more difficult to swarm a model. I don't know if these are good things or bad to be honest

Like a lot of Mordheim rules you've got to use your own reasoning a bit. We've always played that if you can reach the distance to get into combat with your charge then you can move round other figures to get there, as long as you remember you are oblged to take the most direct route to combat.

We houseruled it that you charge in the order you declare the charges in (alternatively, you could go by initiative and/or roll-off), so that when warrior nr. 3 wants to get in on the action, he may be out of luck after 1 and 2 took up all the room.

Not a bad idea, though it takes some extra time defining such things right?

Our battles take ages
Yesterday I had a friend over and we spent about 7 hours doing two battles (with an hour break to get some dinner), including all the post-battle stuff. But then, it also took some time to set up the board, lemme show you why...

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_-RMe0ZyeSeY/S70A4HFV2YI/AAAAAAAAACo/Ol3kDDQ2Zlk/s1600/DSC00895.JPG

Wow lovely board mate! Im a bit jealous, I've only got the boxset and blood on the street buildings on mine!