I was reading Goatboy's article on How Not to Be a Douche over on BoLS and one of his bullet points stood out to me.
8. When you know your opponent has a unit that can't shoot or will never be in range, tell him he can roll the run at the same time before he moves. It is frustrating and a time consumer to wait have to move a unit beyond the 2 times that is normal (movement, assault). This one little thing can help speed along the game and give you both more time after the game to check out other armies or get a better lunch.
This is a very valid point, and one that a lot of people get caught up on, but too many people take this method for speeding up the game as a carte blanche pass on doing it every time. Too often I see guys stating that they're going to roll for runs - even when it matters - and their opponents don't worry about it. I suppose that's up to each person if they want to make a big deal over it or not, but let me share with you what happened in my game against Tyranids at the recent Ard Boyz tournament.On turn two, I had moved my left flank up on my turn. On his turn, he brought in Reserves right next to my left flank, and decided to bring two units of Hormagaunts up to run interference, prevent counter-charges on my turn, and perhaps inflict some damage at the same time. He rolled the run distance (6") for his first group and brought them into assault range of my TWC unit, he then rolled the run distance (4") for the second group, decided it wasn't enough and instead moved the group away so that my free units couldn't assault them.
We had to have a discussion at this point. It was amicable, and he understood what he had done wrong, and I understood what I had done wrong by allowing it when he was clearly in assault range with a good run roll. We ended up having him resolve the move as if he had moved 6" towards me, then 4" back for a net of 2" towards my units. And we were both happy with this result.
If I had been proactive about it, it never would have come to that.
I highly encourage you both as the player needing to run multiple units and as an opponent to make sure, right at the beginning of the game, to state that run rolls in the movement phase are okay only when abundantly clear that they're not in range of shooting/assaulting/anything. Yes, it can make a small difference in the game allowing an opponent to roll run in the movement phase, but the gain in game speed and fluidity are much better than any real tactical loss.
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