My friend runs blood knights against me in 2250 Personally I think the blood knights are harsh to run, but my friend makes it work by having loads of dispel and scrolls to protect them from magic and essentially hate drafts against me in that respect. The engine usually creams them, but this game he charged the stegadon I thought was in his flank by noting that he could see a little sliver of the stegadons base and wheeling to it. Can you premeasure someone's facing when moving? I really wanted to be outside of his arc, but didn't want to whoop out the little facing device and check, what are the statutes on measuring your movement? Further, I had a pretty terrifying moment, a lord on a carnosaur and his BSB scar vet in a unit of saurus cav that were a rank deep got charged by blood knights, who were flank charged by an EOTG, in the magic phase I shot off the Engine and he pulled the guy the engine was touching and said, "you aren't in combat any more". Needless to say I felt a little dumbfounded, and didn't feel the need to argue since my other Engine was 3 inches away enganged with some Wight knights, and the Blood Knights were gonna get Engined again. Anyone know off hand what the rules are for casualties pulling someone out of combat?
No that last point was a bit wrong, you are still in combat with him and would have moved closer to fit back in. If, however, you had destroyed the whole unit you were in contact with you would be out of combat. Leaving some means you are fine. And yeah you cannot premeasure anything before declaring charges, but after that you are free to measure to several different points, and basically measure anything while moving. I also find nothing wrong with telling my opponent what I am doing sometimes and getting an agreement. Like "I am trying to move this model out of your charge arc, I think it is out here, what do you think?" Because when there is fractions of an inch in it, it can be very hard to tell and leave things a bit up to interpretation.
I don't trust those line of sight arcs.. they seem to exaggerate a bit and give better LOS than usual. I don't see anything against the spirit of the rules in measuring things after the charges are done. Enemy units still are compelled to maximize contact, so the steg still would have been in combat.
Only time I can ever really see a unit being left out of combat is in the case of three units all charging the same side of the enemy. If the enemy is reduced down to one model, only two of the three units engaged to it would be able to fight.
There are always those 'special' cases when no-one knows what to do, but usually using your head makes all your problems go away.
If you maximized, you can always get 2 of your bases against one of theirs so you could technically get two of those units still on combat. But really, if they are reduced to 1 model and you have 3 units they are pretty screwed anyway so the outcome probably wouldn't matter at all whether you have 1, 2 or 3 in contact.
what about units that have to charge (frenzy) do they measure first or do you have a failed charge result if it is close
Well if the frenzying unit doesn't declare a charge, it has to be measured if it can reach any enemies. If someone is within the unit's charge distance, they charge, if not, then they work as normal. However if they declare a charge and they can't reach their enemy -> failed charge.