A situation arose in our last game where a TUG of Carthaginian African Spearmen decided to charge a TUG of Tribal Early German infantry with the Devastating Charger characteristic. The player commanding the German infantry decided not to hold it so it also force charged. Behind the African Spearmen was a SUG of Numidian light horse, very close to its rear table edge which, even though within the German infantry's path of charge, was not contactable by it as the African Spearmen were in between.
The question was whether the Numidian light horse was in the path of charge of the German infantry? Our uncertainty was caused by the wording of the path of charge rule on p120 of the compendium which states that the path of charge is only blocked by 'enemy standing to receive' so by declaring a charge the African infantry TUG on the face of it no longer qualified as blocking the path. It didn't seem right that it should be treated as in the path, and thereby be forced to evade as all SUGs must when charged by enemy TUGs (unless covered by the exceptions on p126 which do not seem to cover this situation) as there was no way the German infantry could contact it, so we decided against.
Were we wrong? If so is this just commonsense or is there a rule which we missed?
Poor wording in the rules perhaps, but I think common sense should apply here. The African spearmen are clearly blocking the charge and the charge path should stop "as if" they had chosen to receive the charge.
If the spearmen had declared a charge which could have taken it out of the path of the chargers then the situation becomes somewhat more complex. In this case I think I would require the Numidians to respond to the charge, even if the subsequent order of charges resulted in the spearmen blocking the early Germans.
Rule writing is complex!
Richard
Probably worth an errata/clarrie depending on what Si thinks - there are a small number of things that have cropped up since the last set and it might be a good time to update them.