A rules question

[thesanityassassin]

Randy and I were playing tonight, and ended up questioning a ruling that had been passed on to us by several other players regarding ongoing assaults. We both remember having been told that models that were previously engaged in an assault HAD to continue fighting the first squad they were engaged with and could not engage a newly charging unit. This led to some silly situations (like a squad deciding to continue not to be able to hurt a Dreadnought instead of fighting back against marines), and got us both wondering where it had come from.

We looked through the rulebook and couldn't find anything regarding this, though we both seem to recall being shown the rule that causes it. I know he and I both get stuck back an edition or two now and again, so we had kind of just went with what we had been told, but I'm starting to wonder if it is in fact a real rule, or if some wires got crossed somewhere.

The closest thing I could see is under multiple combat rules where it says that models can only fight units they were engaged with at the start of combat (before attacks are resolved), and could freely choose to split their attacks. This suggests they could attack whomever they want so long as they were engaged with them (base to base or within 2 inches and not in base with another model).

[shasodnarb]

Interestingly, I think this came up when a small unit of my Kroot scrapped against a couple of Randy's Daemon units...

Anyway, I didn't bring my rulebook into work with me tonight but I do remember very specifically looking this up not too terribly long ago. Despite the lack of clarity in the rules (surprise, surprise), my understanding and conclusion was similar to the end of your post: the unit being assaulted by a new enemy unit could only attack that new unit if it was in base contact. Otherwise, it had to direct its attacks towards the initial enemy unit.

Having said that, I'll check this when I get home.

[BewareOfTom]

found it, pg 41 under attacking the first point, lol couldn't find it among vets but one newbie found it

[shasodnarb]

Also, something came up during someone else's game recently... if a unit can re-roll failed to wound rolls, can they also reroll damage attempts against vehicles? I see absolutely no reason why this would be the case but it was ruled that they could.

[BewareOfTom]

I dont think so as it says specifically to wound

[redshirt2375]

I'm pretty sure that hits on vehicles aren't wounds (only counted as wounds for determining combat resolution) so wouldn't allow re-rolls.

You only inflict wounds against models with a toughness stat