My first and most important lesson for you is redirecting with Fast Cavalry. The first question that should have entered your tiny brains is: why use Fast Cavalry for redirecting?

Answer:

• Fast Cavalry are (you guessed it) fast. This includes their ability to Reform as often as they want during their normal movement. These ‘free’ Reforms can be used to create disadvantageous angles for your opponent’s units.
• They have Feigned Flight. This means that they can rally after voluntarily choosing to Flee from an enemy charge and move as normal in their following turn.
• They’re usually cheap. If something goes wrong, you can afford to lose them.

Just look at this:

The yellow unit of Fast Cavalry have placed themselves in front of a problematic enemy unit. They do this because they want to both slow down the blue unit AND change their facing. Also note that if the blue unit wanted to charge something they now cannot, and are left with the option of charging the Fast Cavalry (diverting them) or sitting still.

Our blue unit has chosen to charge their harassers. Of course, the yellow (bellied) unit chooses to flee, so they are moved first. They must be moved in a line relative to the center of both units.

The charging unit must move towards their target. They don’t reach them with their short movement, so shuffle forward at half their charge distance.

As with most brilliant tactical maneuvers, there are risks involved:

The unit of Fast Cavalry may be caught by their chargers. In reality, this only happens if the Fast Cavalry roll abysmally low for their flight move. Due to the fact that in the glorious 7th Edition of Warhammer Fantasy fleeing units are pivoted on the spot and then moved, the distance between units can be exaggerated when the pursuing unit is forced to wheel towards the fleeing unit.

Panic! The fleeing Fast Cavalry unit could cause Panic in friendly units given its Unit Strength of > 5. This is easy to circumvent most of the time, just plan for the flight path of the redirecting unit.

And if that wasn’t enough for you, this is how you redirect an enemy unit to turn a bad situation into a good one!

In this highly hypothetical situation, I’ve added another nice yellow unit. They are men holding pointy sticks that don’t like to get charged.

Our brave unit of Fast Cavalry has jumped in the way of the menacing blue unit before it crashes into its target. Wheeling around the unit of Fast Cavalry will take up too much of their movement during a charge, forcing them to take another line of action.

The blue unit charges the yellow Fast Cav, wheeling towards them as before. The extended shadowy zone shows where the unit would continue had they moved their full charge distance. This is important to know, because if the unit of yellow infantry were in this area, the blue unit could have declared Enemy in the Way on them and charged them as well.

Thanks to careful planning, the blue unit cannot reach either of their targets, and so is stuck in the open. They have also left their flank open to the yellow infantry. Success!

Obviously, this situation isn’t entirely realistic, but it does show how you can actually use your brain and the longwinded movement rules for Fantasy (as opposed to the ‘move wherever within 6″ rule’) to outplay your opponent. It’s a great answer to your enemy’s hammer units that rely on getting into combat earn their keep. Although this stuff may seem simple, only the better players actually manage to pull these kinds of moves off successfully with any consistency.

If the two of you that read this out there (hi mom!) want more of this kind of stuff, let me know. I can show off other nifty tactics like the ‘Skirmish Skedaddle’ and the ‘Hated Hold’ as well as ways to defeat them in future posts.