Vehicules not engaged in melee

By Viperhook, in Rules

Went to my first tourney and this came up. I charged a flamer AT-RT with wookies but did not kill him. Then he activated, aimed and flamed me. I know he's not engaged, but the way I read the rules reference, since he was in base contact, he should have used the melee weapon, or he could have moved backward and flamed but he would have lost his aim right ?

8 minutes ago, Viperhook said:

Went to my first tourney and this came up. I charged a flamer AT-RT with wookies but did not kill him. Then he activated, aimed and flamed me. I know he's not engaged, but the way I read the rules reference, since he was in base contact, he should have used the melee weapon, or he could have moved backward and flamed but he would have lost his aim right ?

You're right, if it's in base contact it can only use it's melee weapon. To use the flamer he had to move out of melee.

These are the extracts from the RRG related to this case:

When two miniatures from opposing players’ units are in base contact, those units are in a melee.
...
When a unit performs an attack against a unit that it is in a melee with, that attack is a melee attack. Melee attacks follow the same rules as ranged attacks with the following exceptions:
»» The attacker can use only weapons that have the melee (󲉫) icon.
»» The target of the attack must be in the same melee as the attacker.

Thanks. Mistakes were made as it was the first tournament for a couple of the players, but everyone loved the experience.