Because there may not be more distant troops with LoF, or it will cost too many Orders to get there, or the approaches are covered by your ARO troops/Mines etc. It may be different playstyles, but this is a situation I already actively aim for if it's not costing me many Orders, because of how disruptive it is to the opponent's plans. For Fireteams I find this is especially true, it's much better to have a DTW covering them in the reactive turn (combined with other AROs) than giving them a 'free' Dodge in their reactive turn.
If you're not covering your troops that are pushing forwards to stop them from getting jumped by warbands in either active or reactive that you can clearly see are withing range of threatening you, that's a failure on your behalf. I wouldn't be worried about getting ARO engaged by said warband from 3" away anyway, if you're letting them waltz up into your face like that it's way more likely they'll just push into CC in their turn and beat the ever loving shit out of you in their turn.
My answer is it doesn't make them functionally better because it doesn't change how people approach removing them. Yes they can now CC Engage, are they ever going to use it? Not against a half decent player so it might as well not even have changed for them. The models this gets more interesting for is stuff with that questionable CC range and stats that are still squishy and don't like getting shot at particularly by templates.
This seems a little silly, people are already annoyed at Oniwaban without letting them dodge engage on a 27. Coincidentally my final round game at the Welsh Satelitte I basically won from a daturatzi dodge engaging into a Squalo stopping it from advancing into a zone (epic tackle). dodge engage has always seemed pretty fine to me.
Just checking: are we talking warband as in actual warband or are we talking warband as in "this cheap unit I don't give a toss about whether it lives or dies"?
Pretty sure they are talking about actual warbands that are also following the "standard" warband theme of decent CC, low cost and Irregular. Shaolin, Highlanders, Kum, Morlocks, that kind of thing.
Right, because typically when people talk "Warband" they mean Shaolin, Morlocks, Kuang Shi, Muttawiah, Caledonian Volunteers, etc
I've never ever heard Volunteers described as warbands, online or offline. And they generally use their Shotguns more often.
Then you haven't. The defining feature has always been a chain rifle and low expectations of survival or achievement whenever they're complained about.
Given the context of expensive non-WB troopers with high CC skill (see OP), I wanted to know which kind of warband people were referring to when they were casually referring to warbands.
I frequently consider Ghazi Muttawiah to be WB, because they have all the traits except the CC score and the actual unit classification. I’ve never put Volunteers in that bucket, nor have I seen them used the same ways. Disposable speed bumps, sure. Warbands? Not really.
Yeah, Kuang Shi and Muttawiah are often called warbands because of the point cost/load-out/battlefield-role but there are some factors like low CC for each that make them outliers (despite the fact they are not tagged as actual "Warbands"). Regular is a big stand out one forme on the Kuang Shi and Volunteers (who I don't personally consider to be warbands in the way I might Kuang Shi). I would personally put (Chain Rifle) Volunteers into the bucket of "order battery with a non-zero ARO" along with flash pulse bots.
One reason we liked the idea of using CC for Engaging (vice say, the very elegant MA buff concept proposed above) was that it would make CC a bit more valuable for everyone, not just MA masters. Beyond "Warbands" (however you choose to define that term) and MA types, it could also help out anyone with a higher than average CC attribute - provided they're attacked from 2 - 4 inches away. And since every army has folks that could benefit from this, one way or another, we didn't think it would give any faction an unfair leg up - just make CC (and Engaging) a bit more of a thing, at least at Close Combat distances..