Retreating is a wildly underestimated tool in Age of Sigmar. Even though it costs you a few attacks, it is a great way to get your units out of a tight spot and surprise your opponent by pressuring key targets and objectives.

In this article, I will discuss a few cool things you can do with your retreat. I hope this will help and inspire you to do more cool stuff in Age of Sigmar!

The rules

Units that are in combat must stay stationary or retreat, retreating units can run, but not shoot or charge in the same turn.

The ability to run and retreat allows you to retreat you movement plus one D6. You do not have to move directly away from your enemy, but you do need to end your move 3″ outside of any enemy models.

This means that you can retreat around enemy units towards a better position, or over the enemy if your unit can fly.

Here are the rules as written by the Games Workshop:

Units starting the movement phase within 3″ of an enemy unit can either remain stationary or retreat. If you choose to retreat, the unit must end its move more than 3″ away from all enemy units. If a unit retreats, then it can’t shoot or charge later that turn.

When to Retreat in Age of Sigmar

When you retreat from a fight, your and your opponent will get their units out of combat, allowing your opponent to move and charge in their next turn as well.

This means that you should always be aware of the repercussions of your retreat. You should only retreat if you can prevent a unit from being wiped out, if you need to use a movement ability in your next turn or if you can apply more pressure by retreating.

Retreating to apply pressure

The most fun reason to retreat from combat is to surprise your opponent with some unexpected pressure. This can be done more often than you would think.

Because the retreat is such an underused move, people rarely expect you to pull your units out of a combat where you have the upper hand. Use this to your advantage!

Once you are aware what you can do with a retreat, more opportunities will start to present itself.

When you understand how you can impact the game with a retreat before you charge, the real magic starts to happen.

In most scenarios where you retreat to apply pressure, it does not really matter if you can directly impact the game. The danger of the impact you could have in future turns is often enough to throw your opponent off their game.

Pressuring objectives

Age of Sigmar is an objective based game, so retreating out of combat to capture or protect an objective is pretty much always a good idea.

This is especially good in games in which a last-minute capture can bring you the win. Think of tied games or scenarios such as Blood and Glory, take and hold and Gifts from the heaven.

Before any charge, friend or foe, you need to know how you can impactfully retreat with your unit. This way you can use your pile-in move to improve your position for when you want to retreat.

Once you declare you will retreat with a unit, you need to follow through. This means that you cannot rely too much on the result of your run roll. Try to figure out where you need to go with your retreat and if you movement plus the 3.5″ average of your run move will get you there.

It is important to think about how you can prevent your opponent from following up. Since all objectives have a minimum distance you need to be in to capture it, you can simply screen the distance with the unit you just retreated. Be careful that your opponent does not obliterate you on the charge.

By charging the Bloodletters with my Liberators, I prevent my opponent from capturing the objective behind them. With my charge and pile-in, I try to get as close to the objective as I can. In my next turn I retreat my Liberators towards the objective and postion them so that only the edge of my bases are in capture range. This way, if the Bloodletters charge me, they will not be able to capture the objective since they cannot charge through my Liberators.

Pressuring key targets

The same as with retreating towards objectives can be done with key targets, except you would need to be able to charge next turn.

When you retreat towards an enemy unit, you need to have a clear goal in mind. Do you need to destroy the enemy unit, or is forcing it out of position enough?

Most support units need to be within a certain range of their allies, forcing these units away from others can sometimes be enough.

Since you need to be able to charge in your next turn to pressure your opponents key targets, it is important the opponent can not lock you in combat in their next turn.

When you plan to charge a unit with the goal of retreating from it in your next turn, make sure you have means to stay ahead. Have another unit standing by that can charge in as well, or do it with fast or flying units.