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This post will cover some of the aspects of Conga-lines and how they can be utilized to help your army. This is for newer players, and you might already know how this works.
i was taking some pictured today of a 40k game I had with a friend, and wanted to share this with the tactics community here on Dakka.

Conga-Deployment
This image shows a deployment made using conga-lines. The first Conga-line has half the models given cover from the predator. The squad behind the first squad is protected by the squad in front of it, and the squads behind that are protected, and so forth.

The goal with this deployment is to give every model cover with only the first squad needing extra protection. This allows you to deploy on the board and absorb long range shooting with minimal losses. The deployment works with bikes, orks, marines, even tanks. The goal is just to give each model cover from the model in front of it.


Front view of the deployment



Conga-Movement
This image shows how Conga-lines can be utilized to protect from templates when moving. Each of the templates fired from the IG player were able to hit 2 models total each. This reduces the total amount of incoming fire by a great deal.
As another added effect, its often easy to get cover from a shooter, as the back half of your congo-line will be behind cover. This is because a long congo-line, like the bikes in this picture, can stretch 18 inches long. This also can be done with orks, paladins, etc...



Weapons up Front
Another advantage of Conga-lines is that you can help make sure your special/heavy weapons are where they need to be. For example, the first models in this Conga-line are the powerfist, the special weapons, then the heavy weapon. Since the models at the back of the Conga-line are 'bullet catchers', you can use them to absorb losses without losing your position or firepower.



Lightbulb Assault
A lightbulb assault is when you assault with as few of your models on the inital assault as possible, with the plan to defeat the other unit during your opponenets turn. In the picture below, there is a Conga-line that assaulted 10 IG vets. The conga-line has 3 guys in assault, and the rest behind them. This helps when you don't want to kill the other squad immediately.

The bottom picture shows a Conga-line multi-assaulting. This can be done easily when the Conga line is moving widthwise instead of lengthwise. Remember, the enemy's gate is always down, and your congo-line can change direction.



Conga Assault
With fast moving units, such as bikes, its also easy to conga-line around the enemy models. In this case, I moved my Conga-line around the enemy tank, and blocked the rear hatch so the enemy cound not disembark. When the tank was stunned, the models inside could do nothing the following turn.

Well explained and illustrated, but I'm sure its Conga, not Congo

Flinty wrote:Well explained and illustrated, but I'm sure its Conga, not Congo

This.

Tumultuous country in central Africa aside, this is a very well illustrated and laid out instruction on bike tactics. The pictures really help to give a visual of what you're talking about. Although, I'm not quite sure where that purple pony comes into discussion...

Thanks for the spelling correction. The pony was my opponent's objective.

Again, appreciate the feedback gents.

Eh, Congoa lines don't bother me as a Guard player. Give my templates as much surface area as they need. As much as I want to agree with you, people have been pulling this type of shennanigans on me for years, and even though you have them spread out straight, each squad is basically 4" apart, so even if my arty scatters, I'm still hitting something.

Sure I won't score as many hits in that config, but with only ten bikes per squad, three to seven hits is plenty.

That was very well done!

(I didn't want to say anything until the purple monstrous creature was accounted for.)

Getting cover when you otherwise might not have it (especially while advancing)? Getting the right weapons in the right place? Avoiding templates and blast weapons? This pretty much covers it.

I'd also note that this same principle applies to more circular deployment. Basically a conga line in a loop:



Of course, this really only works best with large squads, compared to your nicely painted bikes. In this case, it's rather easy to keep on advancing the front of the squad, while the back squad keeps shifting around behind various pieces of terrain at various angles to always keep cover somewhere.

I like it, and it is an effective strategy. Other things are you can take about 1 turn to change the formation into a standard formation. This means you can have a screen tarpit unit in front until the turn before the assault and then shape up to launch a tarpit and a protected assault. [covered in grot strategies somewhere on here].

I want to post some possible counters to consider

Mass fire power: The fact that the powerful weapons are in the front means they are less likely to be removed as casualties, so mass fire on the squad will eventually remove is cover save and the closeness of the important models makes it a constant target of fire and possible assault. A well placed charge can overwhelm the squad before it reaches full effectiveness. Outflanking really hurts conga lines as well as the powerfist in the front cannot reach the assault in the back.
Well placed assaults can also pull troops off of objectives.

Tarpits will last a turn longer because of the limited first round attacks.

Tank shocks may hit multiple squads (while irrelevant to space marines for the most part, they can cause issues with other armies). Tank shocks can also (not so much against bikes/jump infantry) force squads out of cohesion and force them to move a certain way due to the easiness to break coherency.

Since every squad has a cover save target priority can shift to units that are purely more threatening as opposed to easy to kill.

The conga line will rarely have all of it's members shooting, also your conga lines at times will also provide cover for enemy squads as well.

The tactic still works well, but when you identify the counters you can limit the weaknesses in the strat.

Ailaros wrote:Getting cover when you otherwise might not have it (especially while advancing)? Getting the right weapons in the right place? Avoiding templates and blast weapons? This pretty much covers it.

I'd also note that this same principle applies to more circular deployment. Basically a conga line in a loop:



Of course, this really only works best with large squads, compared to your nicely painted bikes. In this case, it's rather easy to keep on advancing the front of the squad, while the back squad keeps shifting around behind various pieces of terrain at various angles to always keep cover somewhere.

Really interesting picture there. Kinda looks like the those 5 marines are gonna be hurting soon.

My biggest problem with the line is the inability for all the units to shoot. The special weapons will be fine since they are in the front but those TL bolters should not be underestimated. It will however allow assaults to last longer shielding the unit from unnecessary fire. Haven't ever tried using this however templates aren't at a surplus around here. I feel like doing this in my meta would only hinder my assaults.

The conga line has advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are well put together by the OP although some of them apply for bikes in the most part.

A congaline is useful if:

1. you want to reduce damage by templates or shooting in general if you are in open ground or in area terrain
2. you capture multiple objectives with one unit
3. you want to cover as much space on the board as possible with a single unit

A congaline is not useful if:

1. You are about to get charged (although Ailaros' Formation mitigates that problem a bit sacrificing the ability to capture more objectives)
2. You want to hide the unit