101 - Free Strikes
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- This article is part of Warmachine University's Crash Course (101) series, which is "Basic Training" aimed at new players who are still learning the core rules.
- The 101 series is intended to help you understand the rulebook, but you shouldn't be reading this instead of the rulebook.
Recap
If you try to walk out of someone's melee range, they get a free strike at you as you leave. It's a melee attack with +2 to hit and +d6 damage. They count as behind you for the attack, so stuff like Shields don't work vs free strikes. Also, even though you count as behind them, the free strike bonus doesn't stack with the back strike bonus.
Triggering a free strike
There are two ways a free strike can be triggered:
- If you advance out of their melee range.
- If they have multiple melee weapons with various ranges, you only worry about the longest-reaching one.
- If you advance out of their LOS.
- See diagram.
Avoiding a free strike
There are a few ways a model can get out of melee without triggering a free strike:
- Get placed (such as with Jump, Crane, or Flicker). A place is not an advance.
- Have an involuntary move (such as being pushed or slammed). An involuntary movement is not an advance.
- Have the enemy take control of you. While the enemy is in control, your model is their model and they cannot take free strikes vs friendly models.
- On the flip side, while your model is under the enemy's control, you can make free strikes against your own model.
- Use other models to block LOS before you move. This is more of a "trick" of how LOS works, and we cover it in the intermediate article LPG - LOS Oddities.
Free strikes with Guns
Most models can't shoot in melee, but some have an ability that means they can. There are a few different abilties which do this (we cover them all in the intermediate article LPG - Shooting in melee), but only one ability lets a model make a free strike with a gun - Gunfighter.
When a Gunfighter model makes a free strike:
- They get the +2 to hit and +d6 damage
- If they're firing an AOE weapon or a spray weapon, they get to put the template down as per normal, but they only get the +2 to hit and the +d6 damage vs the one model that actually triggered the free strike.
Core Rules
- Page 42 of the 2020.02 edition of the rules
When an engaged model advances out of an enemy’s melee range or line of sight, the enemy model can make a free strike against it just before it leaves. The model makes one normal melee attack with any melee weapon that has sufficient melee range to reach the moving model and gains a +2 bonus to its attack roll. If the attack hits, the damage roll is boosted.
When the free strike is made treat the free striking model as being in the advancing model’s back arc. Free strikes do not benefit from the back strike bonus (p. 40).
When a model with the Gunfighter advantage (see p. 50) makes a free strike with a ranged weapon, it only gains the +2 to hit bonus against the model targeted by the attack. Likewise, if the attack hits, the damage roll against the model targeted by the free strike attack is boosted.