When a Pursuit Becomes a Teleport: Boar Boyz, a Cannon, and the Rudest Rule in The Old World
When a Pursuit Becomes a Teleport: Boar Boyz, a Cannon, and the Rudest Rule in The Old World
Sometimes a battle report is about a grand strategy coming together exactly as planned.
And sometimes it is about charging a cannon with boar-mounted lunatics, failing an “easy” Leadership test, rolling double fives, and accidentally vanishing off the table at the single funniest possible moment.
This one is definitely the second kind.
The trap was real
As Stas put it after the game: it really was a well-prepared trap. And now that he knows how brutally those axe-wielding dwarfs can hit, he probably would not make that charge again.
But the key phrase here is after the game.
At the time, we were still in the glorious phase of decision-making known as: “this is Warhammer, not BetterNotRiskItHammer.”
So the boar boyz went in.
The charge on the cannon
The target was a cannon parked dangerously close to the battlefield edge. If it had been dug in, the whole thing probably would have gone very differently — the boars might not have made the charge at all, and then they would have been left horribly exposed to the flank counter-charge that was clearly part of the plan.
Instead, the charge connected.
And honestly? It went even better than expected.
The general and three boyz from the front rank were ready to get stuck in, but the combat did not even need all of them. The first four attacks from the general were enough to wipe out the cannon crew by himself and win the fight outright.
A very orcish solution to a very dwarfish problem.
The plan after combat
At this point, the follow-up seemed straightforward.
The idea was to restrain pursuit, reform, and turn to face the waiting axe warriors. With Leadership 8, that felt very manageable. Then the boar boyz would sit there, daring the dwarfs to charge them.
And why be so eager for that charge?
Because of Counter Charge.
The dream was beautiful: the dwarfs declare, and during Andrzej’s turn the boars get to surge forward as a charge reaction and smash into them with momentum. A proper brutal setup.
The dice had other ideas
The general, however, had no interest in this elegant plan.
He failed the Leadership test.
And in Warhammer: The Old World, that means business. No restrain, no careful reform, no tactical pose for the camera. If you must pursue, you pursue — even if the enemy unit has already been completely destroyed.
So the dice came out for pursuit distance.
2D6.
Double fives.
Which would already be dramatic enough, except for one tiny detail:
the unit was standing maybe two inches from the edge of the battlefield.
The funniest rule interaction of the game
That led us straight into one of those rules moments that feels slightly illegal even when you know it is correct:
Should any part of a pursuing unit move into contact with, or cross beyond, the edge of the battlefield, it is removed from play but is not destroyed. The unit returns to the battlefield during its controlling player’s next Compulsory Moves subphase as if it were a unit of reinforcements, and must be placed as close as possible to the point at which it left the battlefield.
So yes.
The boar boyz pursued so enthusiastically that they ran clean off the table.
Which meant that on Andrzej’s turn they were simply… gone.
The axe dwarfs, who had been preparing to deal with this very obvious threat, suddenly found themselves staring at empty space. And, much more importantly, presenting their backs to goblins and black orcs advancing from the middle of the battlefield.
That is not how the trap was supposed to work.
Peak Warhammer energy
What we love about moments like this is that they sit exactly at the crossroads of tactics, rules knowledge, and complete nonsense.
Was the original charge risky? Absolutely.
Was failing the Leadership test at the worst possible time painful? Also yes.
Did the resulting accidental self-removal from the battlefield somehow become a huge positional advantage? Incredibly, yes again.
It is one of those sequences that no one would script on purpose, but once it happens, it becomes the story everyone remembers from the game.
Also, Michał’s summary in chat was perfect:
“Ej jakie chamstwo”
“W sensie ten rule że znikaniem”
Fair.
Final thoughts
This was a tiny moment in the battle, but it had everything we want from a good report: a bold charge, a trap, a failed “easy” test, a ridiculous pursuit roll, and a rule interaction so mean that it feels made up.
The best part is that none of it was really planned that way. We just followed the sequence, checked the rules, and suddenly the boars had turned into temporary reinforcements.
Warhammer remains, as always, a game where bravery, violence, and bizarre technicalities can combine into absolute magic.
And apparently sometimes the correct tactical move is to leave the battlefield entirely.