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An interesting thing happened during a game i watched last week, Tyranids vs Space marines. i would have posted this question sooner, but i've been asking my friends and we aren't sure of the answer, so i pose it to you guys.

Heres what happened:

Essentially, a Devastator Squad was up on the roof of a single floor building, only a narrow ledge facing the centre of the table able to have models placed on with defined area terrain serving as the ground floor, which was filled with gene-stealers, then in the Tyranid players turn, the space marines take 25% casualties from shooting and fail their leadership test. they roll for fall back and get a 6 and a 4.

Note the roof was hardly large enough for the squad, and as i mentioned the entire lower level was filled with rending-claw nastiness, and outside the building is a horde of guants with the only clear patch of table is to the squads left. (Parallel to the table edge)

What should happen? Where do they fall back to? Could they have leapt from the building to the outside (where there was a clear space to their left, away from their table edge or where they forced to use the access points they used to get up there? (towards their table edge, but blocked by genestealers.)

We ruled that they were caught in a crossfire and destroyed, but several onlookers said they could have jumped into the clear space.

They are destroyed by the "Trapped!" rule, you played it correctly. You may not skip a floor when moving.

I'd have thought that as long as they can stay more than one inch away from the rending nastiness in the building and the gaunts outside they take the shortest possible route (which in this case is the only route) to their board edge. Does this count as doubling back? I'd imagine it does but not sure. If not was the space accesbile from the second floor at all?

In all fairness i'd have probably played the same result, poor devastators :(

AS long as there is a route available to them, they are not trapped. IF they had room to go off to the left, they could have scaled down the outside wall, especially if it was only one story tall. Yes, I know, they wouldn't actually scale the wall, but they could have moved off from the left edge where there was room, all of them running parallel to the board edge until they were able to move back to the table edge. Now, you would of course have to take the vertical movement into account for their descent to the bottom floor, but there is nowhere that I know of that says they have to moved down a level inside the ruin instead of outside it. So if there was a avenue to the left as was stated, they would have all run to the left on the level they were on as far as they needed to, then measured down to the bottom floor, and as long as they had their 1" between them and the two units on the bottom level, they would have been fine. If that could not have been done, then yes, they were trapped and destroyed.

Meh, skipped the "single floor building" part, I was thinking second floor and up. Galador is right in that case.