Kings of War: Vanguard – What are Group Actions?

And we’re back! All this week we’re delving deep into the wonderful world of Vanguard – our hugely popular fantasy skirmish game. We’re exploring the rules in detail and giving you an overview of why it’s so bloody brilliant.

And the great thing is that we’re only getting started. We’ve got a load of great Vanguard content planned for you, detailing the advanced spell list, combat, campaigns, etc. Anyway, before we get ahead of ourselves, what have we got in this blog? Well, following the previous description of Power Dice, now we’re talking about Group Actions.

“WHAT ARE GROUP ACTIONS?”

Oh, it’s the return of the quizzical blog reader! Hello again. Put simply Group Actions are activations that cost power to use, but allow you to activate multiple models at once. Going back to the early days of Vanguard, we always knew that alongside the powerful commanders and support units, there would be Grunts ready to do some dirty work.

However, to give the Grunts a little bit of a tactical advantage, sometimes they need to work together to overpower an enemy. This is where Group Actions come into play. Let’s see what the rulebook has to say about them:

Using Power, you can activate a group of models together. All models in the group must not have already been activated this Round. This is called a Group Action and all models are considered to be performing a long action for the Turn. Once the Group Action is complete, all models in the group are marked as activated.

To make a Group Action, nominate a model and then up to 2 more models within 3” of the first model. The selected models form the group. Some models have Special Abilities that are also Group Actions. The model with the Special Ability must be the nominated model of the group in order to use the ability.

Participating in a Group Action replaces a model’s normal activation for the Turn. You cannot activate a single model, move it to join a group and then attempt a Group Action involving that model, for example.

There are three different Group Actions to perform:

Group Defence – the members of the group each make a Walk and then a Brace action. Brace increases a model’s armour value by 1.

Group Shoot – the group members may all either Walk then Shoot, or Shoot then Walk. Models can then choose to all Shoot at the same target, or choose different enemies within 3” of each other. Group Shoot is particularly useful for some units, like the Dwarf Ironwatch, that actually gain a bonus when performing a Group Shoot action. So it’s important to keep them together.

Group Assault – the group members all make a Run action and Engage an enemy model. This is perfect for overwhelming an enemy with multiple attacks and also gaining a bonus for having friendly models involved in the same action. This will be particularly powerful when combined with the Swarm ability, which grants attackers two bonus dice for the outnumbering bonus, rather than the standard one.

Group Actions give you more tactical options when planning your actions. Do you commit to outnumbering the enemy with Group Actions, or spread out across the battlefield with your various units? It’s definitely worth bearing this tactic in mind when creating your faction list.