"Avoiding a character challenge - to live another day" Topic

Background: I live in the boonies, so never get a chance to play anyone else. I just game with my teenage sons on occasion – most recently my 13 year old. We play kind of loose with the army lists. I have the 8th edition rules, but the army books are a little older 6th or 7th?). We usually do 3000 points. More often than not, the units are made from those that are fun to paint, or ones I could find cheap on EBay, rather than because they are the best ones.
My son uses Warriors of Chaos, which includes Archaon – or however you spell that. He tends to have very few, but high powered units. I tend to use alternate armies (so I can use my historical figs), such as Norse or a fun Empire/mercenary list. We have fun.
Anyway, the whole point is how does one avoid a character challenge? His main guy automatically does a challenge, and is so powerful my guys end up destroyed before they know what hit them (too dead to counter attack).
I reread the challenge rules. I guess a champion can take the hit, so my character can fight the other guys and give me a chance.
Does one challenge per combat mean once per round, or once no matter how many rounds? (In which case, my unit champion may be the sacrificial lamb)

I believe you can always refuse a challenge OR allow another character (including a unit champion) to fight in your stead. If there isn't another character there and you refuse to fight then you place the character at the back of the unit and fight on without him and any bonuses he might give to the unit from magic items, etc. If there is a champion then he gets slaughtered (and gives your opponent Overkill) while your bigger character can wade into troops and try and balance the combat results.

Your unit champion is ablative armour for any independent character within the unit.

Thanks guys. And how about this question:
Does one challenge per combat mean once per round, or once no matter how many rounds?

Once per round, if there are multiple characters to challenge. But if neither parties in the challenge dies then it continues from round to round.

Thing is he will still destroy your Champion and even if you survive the first round of combat with your unit your better character is dead meat in the 2nd round.

So the best thing to do if his unit charges in is to flee and then shoot the hell our of that unit or hit it in the flanks/rear.

The player whose turn it is can challenge with any character or champion (some are forced to). There has to be an eligible character or champion to accept. If all refuse, the challenger picks a character (not champion) to go to the back, taking that character out of the fight.

If the player whose turn it is passes, the opposing player can issue a challenge if he wishes.

Why to challenge? It's cool roleplaying.

What's the game value? To target attacks on the other character for scoring victory points, and to redirect those attacks away from rank and file. People make much of the Overkill wounds scored against a character, but otherwise those wounds (possibly more) would have gone on rank and file, and reduce rank bonus.

What if you are challenged by a very killy character? Unless a character is kitted out with a trick, or can otherwise expect to occupy, confound, or kill the challenger, accept with your weakest, usually the champion. This frees the other characters to score wounds on rank and file or at least postpones losing their victory points.

The challenge continues from turn to turn until the fight ends or one combatant dies. If the fight continues after the challenge ends, the a new challenge may be issued as long as there are suitable characters.

Which is why for most of my rank & file units there are no characters in them.

The OP was talking that his son uses Warriors of Chaos and there are very few normal characters that can go toe-to-toe with a Chaos Lord.

True there are certain migic items that can help but even with those the likelihood of killing that Chaos Lord is still unlikely.

No the best thing to do is avoid the unit that has a Chaos Warlord in it and shoot the hell out of it or misdirect it.

I too usually face the overpowered characters and do everything I can to avoid direct contact.

Tactics I use to combat these character killers
1 Shoot and Scoot. Just harass the unit and avoid combat
2 Assassination. Build a character with magic items made to kill that Lord I know I will face.
3 Feed the beast. Just a few throw away units that will occupy the Chaos Warlord while you concentrate on destroying the rest of the army.
4 Shock and Awe. As I usually play Empire, sometimes I just try to kill the big nasties with my Cannons.

And lastly when setting up games, we sometimes just limit what characters can be deployed. Like No named characters. No level 4 Wizards. We want units to fight, not play paper/rock/scissors/lizard/spock with Army creation.

Xin

We want units to fight, not play paper/rock/scissors/lizard/spock with Army creation.

This is how it should be but GW is not very good at writing rules.

Plus you have the WAAC'ers who expect that big bad Chaos Lord or similar character to win them the game.

Army creation should be more about the troops and not the Characters.

Like:

Minimum 50% Troops
Up to 25% in War Machines
Up to 20% in Characters
Up to 20% in Speacial Units
Up to 10% in Rare Units

Plus a Minimum and Maximum size of units.

Like Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Orks etc… minimum 15 models and no more than 25 models per unit.

Goblins minimum 20 and no more than 35 models.

They tried to make 8th more like that with 25% minimum core and bonuses for massed foot troops but the sheer cost of the minis themselves made that prohibitive to play (for some, I still managed it somehow and it was a lot of fun but I totally understand people balking at the price). Of course GW's solution was not to reduce the price of the core troops but instead make it easier to field more expensive character models :(

I'm not going to dump on GW like some (lol) as I have had a ton of fun with their games in the past and I am sure I will continue to do so even if it means playing with an older edition; for now however with the uncertainty regarding 9th Ed I've gone back to my historical roots and are back to trying to complete my 28mm Gallic and Marian Roman armies and 15mm French Napoleonics :)

They tried to make 8th more like that with 25% minimum core and bonuses for massed foot troops but the sheer cost of the minis themselves made that prohibitive to play

Not if you got into the game 23 years ago like I did.

I have large armies for:

Empire
Elves
Ork & Goblins (I have over 400 Goblins & over 150 Orks)

But you are right I would not be able to do this today.

Because GW prices for miniatures are far too high.