At the start of the Melee phase, the player whose turn it is declares which of his units wish to Charge.
The player then moves the models in his Charging unit.
Models which fired in the Firefight phase may not Charge.
The closest Charging model may move up to 8" towards the nearest unengaged enemy model. Then the next closest, etc. If all enemy models in range are engaged, then the charging model must try to reach base to base contact with a friendly model engaged in melee. Continue until all models have moved.
The opposing player now must Pile In. He moves any his models within 8". They must move towards enemy models in the same fashion as above. Only units with engaged models may so move into Melee. (So it doesn't pull in units farther away.) They may move even if they fired in the Firefight phase.
Divide
the board into individual Melee. A Melee contains all
opposing units that have a models engaged with each other or any other enemy unit. A Melee may thus daisy chain many units. If A is in Melee of B, and B is in Melee of C, then A B and C are all in one Melee . You may find that you have one giant Melee across the
whole board, or you may find you have several small Melee, each
having only two units. Either is fine; we are only dividing them up for
ease of resolution.
The player whose turn it is
chooses the order in which to resolve each Melee. (Again this
should make no difference to the outcome; it's just courtesy.)
All hits and wounds in the Melee is assumed to occur simultaneously. Each
player rolls To-hit for their models involved in the Melee. Both
players then allocate hits. Each player should roll To-Wound. Finally,
the players roll Saves for their models. If there's any dispute over
who rolls dice first, defer to the player whose turn it is. It should
make no difference to the outcome anyway.
You may be
able to to simplify the dice rolling by combining rolls or stages, but
you should only do this if you and your opponent agree.
At
the end of the Melee phase, test Leadership for units that are
eligible to Break.
Moreover, test Leadership for any Suppressed unit that was engaged in either Firefight or Melee in this player's turn. If they fail, they must Fall Back. If they succeed, they may chose to remain where they are or they may voluntarily Fall Back. Units that remain in Melee must make a Pile In move as described above, bringing as many more models as possible into base to base contact. Units which fought in Melee in this players turn, but are no now longer engaged in Melee may make a Follow Up move. Resolve Fall Back before Pile In Before Follow Up.
A unit that Falls Back makes an immediate normal move directly away from as many enemy models as possible, ending as far away as possible.
A unit that Follows Up makes an immediate normal move in any direction. However, its models may not end closer to any enemy models.
Geek Notes
I've tried here to write sensible rules for Melee, but I'm sure there will be all sorts of questions about coherency and charging during play-test. I expect significant expansion to cover all kinds of melee weirdness.
