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Imagine this scenario. Two separate 5 man space marine squads attack a 30 man strung out Ork mob. The Ork bases are evenly spaced at about 2”. One squad attacks the left flank, the other the right flank like below.

O=Orks
M=Marine

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O
MMMMM____________________________________MMMMM

Now what happens when the Orks counter attack?
To be able to move the Ork bases to pile in, the unit cohesion would have to be broken.

My ork opponent quite often plays his Orks like this and an trying to figure out some tactics.

Cheers Vim

Why would coherency be broken if everyone can pile in 3"

They are not forced to pile in any direction. The boyz on the right could pile-in to the left and the entire group can only focus 1 unit so those boyz would be useless unless they somehow got in range.
The mob isnt "split" into two just because you assaulted from both ends *snickers*

Literally the marines on the right would just pile in at their initiative to "chase" the boyz on their side of the battle. Barring you killing enough and his own 3in pile in, you could even end up out of range and they cannot fight either (ive seen it happen, unlikely but it happens) but dont forget theyre still stuck in combat even if not b2b unless there is a 6inch gap between models...which is next to impossible lol

wouldn't they split because they have to "attempt to get as close as possible to one or more enemy models"

pp 23-

If this holds true tactically you can pull the nob in one direction and then have a harder hitting unit eat through the boyz.

I think unit coherency is checked during the movement phase, and in your example if you have a squad in the middle of their line you can break their coherency with enough dakka to where he will lose forward momentum.

Thanks Vineheart01. I thought it would be
L squad charge and make base contact, R squad charge and make base contact, L does CC, R does CC, Orks counter now due to lower Imitative. However imagine for some reason no Orks are killed. The bases on the L and R are locked but the rest have to counter thus the problem. Are you saying they are not compelled to counter. Coherency is more important?

Cheers Vim

Ruphi wrote:
wouldn't they split because they have to "attempt to get as close as possible to one or more enemy models"

pp 23-

If this holds true tactically you can pull the nob in one direction and then have a harder hitting unit eat through the boyz.

I think unit coherency is checked during the movement phase, and in your example if you have a squad in the middle of their line you can break their coherency with enough dakka to where he will lose forward momentum.

Yes, but units can only target one unit. So they must move as much as they can towards the same unit.
And what do you mean by counter? that is an actual rule in the game thats why im confused...do you mean at their initiative?
Initiative and position have nothing to do with which target your attacking unless you have nothing in btb with one unit whatsoever after a pile-in is done. A single unit can still only attack one unit, and at I2 for the ork boyz you choose which group to go after and move towards it. Nothing deters that (unless theres some other random MEQ rule that forces you to attack this squad...which i wouldnt doubt since they seem to have every damn rule there is and then some)
Coherency during an assault really doesnt mean anything because you dont have direct control of your models. After a consolidate you must be in coherency again, though.
No idea how you would get knocked out of coherency if you got pinched though...unless you pile'd in two directions which is illegal as you are acting as 2 separate units then.

The initiative step pile in implies individual model movement as opposed to unit movement.

Full rule " any remaining models that are not in base to base contact with one or more enemy models and have yet to pile in must now do so and must attempt to get as close as possible to one or more of the enemy units locked in this combat."

I am not seeing where it says that a single unit has to target a unit in hand to hand (multiple charges allow this to happen as well), even though I know the exact opposite is happening in this situation.

Ruphi has it fairly correct.

The first issue here is that you can never voluntarily break unit coherency. For the argument at hand, the entire ork mob is at full (2") coherency at the beginning of the combat.

Both units of marines charge in, and leave about half of the mob in the middle not in base to base. The marines then swing at initiative 4. For arguments sake lets assume that both squads kill 3 orks, so that only a few (~3) orks are in btb at the end of initiative step 4.

Next the orks swing at initiative 3. They get to pile-in move 3". However, since you can never break coherency voluntarily, you can't separate the unit. You can pile in however you would like. The best the ork player can do is inch his orks towards one squad or the other, and leave a single ork on the other end in btb, with all the other orks at max coherency. Chances are that the next round, the marine unit that was moved away from will kill their one ork and be left out of btb, so they will disengage.

Initiative 2 actually.

What i wouldn't give for I 3 these days

OK, cheers PraetorDave. That makes the most sense.
Also
I got my terminology wrong. When I said ‘counter’ I meant ‘react’.

Yeah for a CC orientated army an initiative of 2 is pretty lame. However. Do you really want a mob of 30 Boys going first in CC?


Cheers Vim

Hence why the hurting of PK's really means almost nothing. Do remember that for sweeping advances n such, the Nobs are i3 not i2.

Its both a balance and a curse. Yea, for boyz group its kinda balanced because 30boyz attacking first would be broken as hell...even simo is kinda painful (necrons are also i2) but because almost our entire army is based off of the Boy statline even our more elitist models suffer an i2 when they really shouldnt. Till i realized this i always wondered why the fething hell Stormboyz were i2....you'd think they'd atleast be i3 with an i4 nob since theyre surging in so fast compared to foot units they should have a bonus of some sort.

 Vineheart01 wrote:
Hence why the hurting of PK's really means almost nothing. Do remember that for sweeping advances n such, the Nobs are i3 not i2.

Its both a balance and a curse. Yea, for boyz group its kinda balanced because 30boyz attacking first would be broken as hell...even simo is kinda painful (necrons are also i2) but because almost our entire army is based off of the Boy statline even our more elitist models suffer an i2 when they really shouldnt. Till i realized this i always wondered why the fething hell Stormboyz were i2....you'd think they'd atleast be i3 with an i4 nob since theyre surging in so fast compared to foot units they should have a bonus of some sort.

They have hammer of wrath now right? Thats your bonus for speedy speed
Though Zagstruk is effectively broken because of the FCH ini loss..

I agree dat boyz hitting at same ini as marines would be crazy sick... Though since orks are feral and fight on instinct they should make an adjustment for some squads to hit faster...
I hate it that kommandoz are broken now since you cant charge when coming out of reserve... I miss my Sneaky Ghazkull real bad ;P

But, im hoping for a codex update this year

 Waaghboss Grobnub wrote:

 Vineheart01 wrote:
Hence why the hurting of PK's really means almost nothing. Do remember that for sweeping advances n such, the Nobs are i3 not i2.

Its both a balance and a curse. Yea, for boyz group its kinda balanced because 30boyz attacking first would be broken as hell...even simo is kinda painful (necrons are also i2) but because almost our entire army is based off of the Boy statline even our more elitist models suffer an i2 when they really shouldnt. Till i realized this i always wondered why the fething hell Stormboyz were i2....you'd think they'd atleast be i3 with an i4 nob since theyre surging in so fast compared to foot units they should have a bonus of some sort.

They have hammer of wrath now right? Thats your bonus for speedy speed
Though Zagstruk is effectively broken because of the FCH ini loss..

I agree dat boyz hitting at same ini as marines would be crazy sick... Though since orks are feral and fight on instinct they should make an adjustment for some squads to hit faster...
I hate it that kommandoz are broken now since you cant charge when coming out of reserve... I miss my Sneaky Ghazkull real bad ;P

But, im hoping for a codex update this year

I thought they were int 3 because I played a friend fairly often in 5th who used a big squad of nobz. Because furious charge back then gave +1 int, they would hit at the same time as my marines. Hence why I thought they were initiative 3. I agree boyz hitting at the same time would hurt bad. Then again, my tau never hit at the same time, so I'm really not concerned with intitative any more lol