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So, tonight I'm playing a space marines vs tau game with a friend, and knowing that tau's strength lies at a range, I send a squad of scouts to engage my opponent's fire warrior's quickly. I take some light casualties, but in the first assault phase I wipe out half his squad. He passes the moral test, but removes the first couple lines of fire warriors. Then he reasons that the combat is over since no more units are in base to base contact, so he can shoot at me next turn. This strikes me as ridiculous, but we don't have a rule book handy. Its getting late so we go our separate ways and agree to resume the game at a later date. My question is, don't both sides file in 2 inches at the end of an assault phase, and if not, isn't there some rule to prevent this from happening?

No. Even if he manages to get out of base to base by removing models, that unit if firewarriors is still in combat until it retreats or is destroyed. He must make a pile in move 6" toward your models and attempt to get into base to base as much as possible when the combat ends.

The combat only ends if after both sides move 6 inches there is still no one in base contact. Thus, after casualties there needs to be a 12 inch gap between the closest models to end the combat.

IIRC, you have to remove casualties from unengaged models first, excluding complex units (such as specifically targetting an IC means he gets removed).

Rulebook, pp 40:

Pile-in!
After the combat been resolved, it might happen thatsome models from units that did not fall back from the combat are not in base contact With an enemy. These models must make a pile-in move. Just like when defenders react to being assaulted, these models movee up to 6" in an attempt to move into base contact with an enemy or, if not possible, in to a position in which they all' engaged and will be able to fight.

Emphasis mine. If they could move 6", they could have moved into base contact.

Leigen_Zero wrote:IIRC, you have to remove casualties from unengaged models first, excluding complex units (such as specifically targetting an IC means he gets removed).

No such requirement exists. You may be thinking of fantasy where you remove from the bakc.

Leigen_Zero wrote:IIRC, you have to remove casualties from unengaged models first, excluding complex units (such as specifically targetting an IC means he gets removed).

You have the choice to remove from unengaged models, and it is said that you should do that in order to make sure that all of your engaged units at a lower Init step will still be able to attack.

To continue the quote from pg40.

When making pile-in moves, the player whose turn it currently is moves first. if for some reason (mass carnage, usually), his pile-in moves are insufficient to move into base contact with any enemy that was involved in that fight, the player must still move them as close as possible to such enemies. The opponent will then execute his own models' pile-in moves, back into contact with the enemies they were fighting. If both units' pile-in moves combined (that's more than 12" - very unlikely) would be insufficient to bring combatants back together, the assault comes to an end and both sides may make consolidation moves instead, as described below.

So yes, it is technically possible to make the moves at the end of assault, and NOT have assault carry over, allowing him to then shoot...however the odds of that happening are very VERY slim. You are forced to move everything you have left the full 6" forward to try to re-engage the rest of his FW. Then he is forced to move everything he has left the full 6" towards you too. Even with 2 squads of 30 Ork boys going against each other with massive casualties taken from the middle of the fight, I doubt the distance between the closest survivors on both sides is more than 12" away. as everyone was forced to make assault moves as far as possible making base-to-base contact as much as possible before combat even began.

It becomes much more plausible if one of the units was in a conga line and there's intervening terrain/models in the way.

Or, you can set this up yourself for defensive reasons. Have 2 squads in solid lines like the following:

.........AAAAAAAA
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB
.........AAAAAAAA

Then, when enemy unit C assaults unit A, remove all casualties on that side, forcing the consolidation moves to go all the way around unit B.

.........AAAAAAAA
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB
.........AAAAAAAA
...........CCCCCC

Resulting in:

.........AAAAAAAA
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

...........CCCCCC

I don't really see that scenario working often. You'd have to end your movement phase with the 2 "parts" of the unit in cohesion with each other, but also make it so that it's would take more than 12" for the back part to be able to move and reach the front part (as you're forced to move 6" when reacting to an assault, and then another 6" to pile-in after.

Unit A wouldn't be able to move itself around the terrain/models and get far enough away so that when the combat ended the survivors were more than 12" from the attackers, (after assault moves, defender react moves, and pile-in moves). Unless of course they broke unit cohesion (2") when moving, which you can't.

Also they couldn't set themselves up and then have unit B move in between then as the unit cannot pass through friendly units. Unless unit B was jump infantry, or otherwise allowed to make such moves.

I could see it happening with a Necron army. 10 Scarab bases (60mm bases, moves as jetbikes) in a straight line at max cohesion takes up quite a lot of room (a little over 3', or half the table). A tactic I employ a lot to screen my firing line, especially nice when you turbobost for a 2+ Cover Save).

Again it's plausible, just like the rules says, but highly unlikely. In MechMage's OP, I don't really think it was the case. His friend was correct in that they were no longer in assault and thus could fire, but they forgot they were both forced to make pile-in moves to close the gap.