Engaging in melee combat and enemy response

[pancakeonions]

I may not be reading this correctly, but is an enemy unit with an available action able to interrupt your charge or your melee attack with an enemy response by melee'ing you first?

Section 4.3 ("who acts first") of the html rules suggests that the minifigs engage in a duel of skills, each rolling their skill die, minus the use rating for the weapon they're tossing about, with the highest roller going first. So does that mean the attacker can suddenly become the defender?

I played my first game tonight, with just 10 figs to a side, and when the armies met in the middle, everyone had their actions to use. So even if you charge, you still have to do a skill check against the enemy line to see who goes first?

This seems like it would slow down gameplay. Am I misreading this?

And on a side note, how do others track their actions? Seems as the games get bigger, it gets tougher to track this information from turn to turn... But I haven't yet engaged in a mighty clash of more than 10 wee dudes thus far.

[Theblackdog]

Welcome to the forum! Do you have pics of this battle? Our battle reports page has had a shortage of good battles lately.
Response actions... the rules say that a minifig can take a response action on an enemy's turn but then has to sacrifice his action on his next turn. I feel like this slows down gameplay too much, so I say that a minifig can only take a response action on an enemy's turn if he hasn't used an action on his previous turn -- that way, the number of minifigs who can take response actions is reduced.
To roll to see who acts first, I just have both sides roll their Skill die against one another, and whoever rolls highest attacks first (a tie means that the person whose turn it is attacks first)
Melee combat between two troops with melee weapons generally isn't an issue for me, because I play with sci-fi armies. I know that there's something called a parry and riposte which is different from a response action, but that's never a problem for me so I don't really remember much of it.
See the "Squads" page for help with coordinating large numbers of minifigs.

[stubby]

Response actions... the rules say that a minifig can take a response action on an enemy's turn but then has to sacrifice his action on his next turn. I feel like this slows down gameplay too much, so I say that a minifig can only take a response action on an enemy's turn if he hasn't used an action on his previous turn -- that way, the number of minifigs who can take response actions is reduced.

Actually the rules already say this: http://www.brikwars.com/rules/2005/4.htm#3
So good work, you house-ruled yourself all the way back around to the standard rules again.

I may not be reading this correctly, but is an enemy unit with an available action able to interrupt your charge or your melee attack with an enemy response by melee'ing you first?

This should really get a mention in the response actions section, right now it's just in the Charge rules:

The Counterattack
If a minifig is Counterattacking in response to another minifig's Charge, if one minifig's weapon has at least one inch more reach than the other's, then the longer weapon strikes first, and the other minifig is able to complete his attack only if he survives. Otherwise, both Attacks occur simultaneously, with no Counterattacks. This may result in two minifigs successfully killing or Shoving each other at the same moment.

What I really need to do is extend this to all close combat attacks; if an opponent can strike you for at least an inch before you can strike him (including his own Angry Inch), then he automatically gets first response, no need for rolls.

And on a side note, how do others track their actions? Seems as the games get bigger, it gets tougher to track this information from turn to turn... But I haven't yet engaged in a mighty clash of more than 10 wee dudes thus far.

In bigger games it can get tough to track this just across the span of your own turn. Once this starts becoming a problem, I start pointing units' weapons up in the air to indicate that they've already used their action for the turn.

[Lt. Krus]

Accualy, what if the minifig uses his counter to counter a charge and so minigif X is going east, but minifig Y is south and plays baseball by just taking a few steps and just swinging?

[stubby]

Sounds good to me. The only real question is whether the Charging minifig would be able to respond to the attack in any meaningful way, or just be forced to continue with the Charge. I don't have anything in the rulebook for it; my instinct is that if he tries to Counter the incoming attack from the side, he no longer gets to complete his Charge attack, even if the horse keeps moving and he is Carried Away out of combat.

[Theblackdog]

I think it should depend on whether he just parries the attack, or Parries and Ripostes.