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Situation that occurred from which the question arose. Daemons vs Eldar - round 1 the eldar player only had his pathfinders on the table. A group of flamers landed close to them and opened up with breath of chaos. Due to some poor roling, only 2 of the 8 got wounded/died. They failed their morale check and are forced to run. Due to being spread out over multiple floors in a building and having poor rolls on their fall back, their still too close to to the flamers to regroup after their movements. Next round, flamers move closer and open up again, wiping out 4 more (not my day, time to buy new dice. 18 hits, 4 4+'s...).

Here comes the question, main rulebook states that any unit falling back automatically fails all moral checks except those to regroup. Does this mean that the pathfinders now have to fall back again, even though they've been falling back last turn, at the beggining of this turn, and would have to do so on the beginning of theirs being under half, or is that too much movement, and since they're already falling back they aren't subject to doing so again. I believe they are (only once from all shooting that round), but that it is possible to walk the target unit further toward the edge of the board by doing so. Opponent was of the opinion that since they'd already fallen back in their turn, and were still considered to be falling back, that they couldn't fall back again.

The rulebook clearly states you fall back immediately upon failing a morale check and additionally fall back in subsequent movement phases until they regroup.

This means that yes, if a unit that is falling back suffers 25% casualties, it will automatically fail the relevant morale check, make a fall back move immediately and continue to fall back when appropriate.

Note that this morale check is for 25% casualties in a phase, not in a single act of shooting, so it can't be forced more than once in a single shooting phase on a single target.

It would be so much easier if they would use a term like 'broken' instead of 'falling back' to describe the unit state.

But in any event, each time the falling back has to take a morale check it will automatically fail and immediately have to make a fall back move. That move is in addition to the mandatory fall back move the unit does during its movement phase.

This does mean that you can tank shock a unit which is Falling Back with multiple vehicles and it will run away with every successive shock. Fast skimmer armies can use this to force a unit off the board quite easily.

Why wouldn't you just escort them off? They can't rally if you're within 6"?

because if you try and escort them off with a single fast skimmer instead of rapid successive tank shocks with multiple fast skimmers you run the risk of having the solo one shot down or immobilized.

Unless the unit is right on the board edge, escorting them is a risk

thats actually a really smart tactic. i lost a rather large mob of boyz a few weeks ago because my opponent did just that. i laughed with annoyance because it worked WAY better then charging or shooting them lol

Sounds like a bit of a loophole (Go GW), but I'd stick by the 1 fallback per phase, the rest of the time they just get out of the way. Besides, do you really want to move all of your tanks to just chase one unit off the board?

But yes, it's possible for a deepstriking unit to lose a couple guys, and have to take a morale check, and fall back when failing, then you could tank shock them, causing them to fall back, then shoot them and cause them to fall back, assuming they're still on the table after 6d6 of movement (perhaps 9d6 if they're jump infantry), they're probably not something your going to have to worry about for a while anyhow.