Hello my cold blooded brethren (and sisteren?) So I have seen the word Redirect thrown around a lot. While I know what it means (to change course or make something change direction), I was wondering if someone could give me a better explanation exactly on how we use our units (skinks, terradons etc.) to redirect the enemies. Thank you in advance!
an enemy make a charge near two targets, you successful flee with the first, (Optionaly) he now has the choice to "Redirect" (charge): into the second valid target, hopefully that one flees as well. If you positioned your troops carefully, hopefully you placed your troops so that your opponent is no somewhere he doesn't want to be, like having his flank exposed to one of our better troops.
You place your sacrificial-troop in front of an enemy, but at an angle and to one side. The unit it will either kill your unit and because of the way you positioned your troop they can choose to overrun, but then end up in a bad position, or reform. If your unit survives the enemy can choose to pursue or reform, and there's always a chance they fail the restrain-test. It's extremely useful against frenzied units.
The two previous posts are both describing different ways that "redirect" is usually used. the first is the rule from the rulebook, where you can opt to "redirect" a declared charge if your fist target flees. the second is a more casual usage describing a popular tactic for small, fast units (skinks, terradons, high elf ragles, harpies, cheap fast cav units, etc) so, depending on the context, redirecting can be referring to either of those definitions (and in the case of a "double flee" possibly both definitions are in play)
Also it's important to remember that the charger has to wheel to come into contact with the unit it's charged. Can make enemy units expose their flanks by angling the unit the are charging which forces them to wheel into an awkward position.
One more potential meaning is in the case of frenzied units that must overrun or pursue. You can sacrifice a cheap unit, angled so that its rear is in the direction you want the enemy's unit to go. After your unit is defeated in combat, the frenzied enemy unit will be forced to overrun or pursue into a position that is advantageous to you. There is a very good article on Ogre Stronghold about using [Sabre Tusks as Redirectors: http://www.ogrestronghold.com/forum/index.php?topic=28353.0 Ulthuan.net the High Elves Forum also has a very good article on using Eagles: http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=33028 Skinks, Jungle Swarms and Terradons can all fill these roles ver well.
I like using my Skink Priest as a redirector as well once he's made use of his scroll/cube. They never expect you to throw him under the bus! The eagle tactica from the High Elves is, I think, the best written ridirecting article I've yet to see. Trying one or two tricks at a time, and going back and re-reading it has been a humongous boon to my skinks doing their jobs.
I'd just like to emphasize this. It might be common knowledge, but as a relatively new player I think one of the mistakes we did was that both units wheeled to get into combat. Knowing that it's just the charging unit that does the wheel it gives a much easier time understanding how to properly place skink skirmisher units in a beneficial way. Besides that it's all about learning by doing. IMO redirecting units isn't as straight forward as pummeling some sort of death star through one unit after another. Something funny about that, another example of being a new player, was that when I played my friend who used to be an Empire player he usually made a unit with 13 Inner Circle Knights (lances) including a champion and a Warrior Priest and Lord, aiming it at my saurus unit. With superior WS, Hatred and S6. A charge like that can easily remove 10-15 models on the charge before the slow-responding Saurus would ever twitch. Anyway after several games of this (sometimes he would go with great weapons, yay!) I came to realize how important redirecting is. As a Lizzie player we're more or less forced to move up the board due to lack of artillery and long ranged archers. Against cannons this is even more important. The sad thing is that I argued to my friend that it would always be harder for me to move up the board and learning to redirect his heavy-hitter compared to just waiting, charge and kill. Today he's playing High Elfs and is sort of, kinda, complaining about my Scar Vet Bus and how they're impossible to kill. Well fair enough then, learn to redirect! Point being; I learned the hard way how important redirecting is because there are many nasties out there. And there is only one way to learn and that's by trying and learning by doing.