Moving or walking out of engagement

[Giovanni Canzanella]

Hello guys!

During last game (Tormented vs Mercenaries) , my adversary came out with an interesting problem.
He activates Bishop, which was engaged with Montresor. He declares Bishop's Bonus Action Chain gang, which allows him to move a target friendly model (in that case a Midnight Stalker) and then moving Bishop himself up to 3".
He does so, and proceed to move Bishop out of Montresor's engagement zone, since the Action is not a Walk Action
The rules, in fact, states (pag. 26)

Engaged models cannot leave an enemy model’s  engagement range with a Walk Action

Meaning that, since Bishop didn't actually perform a Walk Action, he can actually leave Montresor's engagement zone without consequences.

Is this correct? A move that is NOT a Walk Action can allow a model to leave an engagement zone?

Sorry for my bad english, but I hope  everything is clear

 

[santaclaws01]

Correct. If it's not a walk action then it can leave engagement range.

[Maniacal_cackle]

Also you cannot charge while engaged, so you can't use that to leave engagement.

Other than that, moves will generally allow you to leave engagement.

[Adran]

A charge action will let you leave an engagement, it's just you can't normally declare a charge while you are engaged. ( by which I mean you can't even walk through an engagement, but you could charge through one). 

[Jesy Blue]

11 minutes ago, Adran said:

A charge action will let you leave an engagement, it's just you can't normally declare a charge while you are engaged. ( by which I mean you can't even walk through an engagement, but you could charge through one). 

.... which is just weird. 

[Adran]

12 minutes ago, Jesy Blue said:

.... which is just weird. 

I'm much happier to stand in the way of someone walking, than someone who looks like they are running at me with a weapon, so it's not all that weird

[Jesy Blue]

I meant if you're within swinging distance, it shouldn't matter if they're moving fast or slow, you get swung at.  Charging through engagement ranges just seems silly.

I'll take the ruling, but the reasoning is poor.

[solkan]

23 hours ago, Jesy Blue said:

I meant if you're within swinging distance, it shouldn't matter if they're moving fast or slow, you get swung at.  Charging through engagement ranges just seems silly.

I'll take the ruling, but the reasoning is poor.

That's because you were given a post hoc rationalization rather than the reason.  

Here's the real reason that you can push through an engagement range but can't Walk through one:  The developers made the distinction in the interest of creating tactical situations.  The same reason a model can't use Interact while engaged normally.  (Compare Chatty and Don't Mind Me, or the Scheme specific interaction in Don't Mind Me.).  How come a model can't take Interact to drop a scheme marker if that's supposed to be the most important thing for most of the game?  Tactical complications. 

In M2E, the situation was even more convoluted, where the restriction on Walk was that it couldn't leave engagement range that it started in.  (Walk could be used out of engagement if you didn't start the movement engaged; and you could break engagement if you could break lines sight without leaving range.). That got changed to 'Walk can't leave any engagement range.' and Charge ended up with the same result it had before:  If you can manage it, you can charge through engagement range.  That's harder to do now because the distance for charges has reduced (M2E charge ranges were usually about 2 or 3 inches further than the model's Mv, I think.)

At this point, I think the real reason Charge gets away with it is a combination of the 'once per turn' limitation, and a dislike of the idea of melee screens.  I mean, occasionally you're going to want to charge past one model to get to another one.

Disclaimer:  "Reasonable" for game mechanics is a matter of having been conditioned to accept that way of doing things.  Some things may be easier to get conditioned towards than others, but there's a whole lot of arbitrary choices being used.