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Hello,

How far away from each other must your own units be (not locked in combat)? We've been playing 2", but I can't find any rule in the BRB that says that.

Thanks for any help!

They can be base-to-base if you want, there is no set distance for separation...

The only space restriction I can think of is for independent Characters. They must stay more than 2" away from friendly units they do not intend to join. To my knowledge there is no restriction on regular units standing near each other. Just be careful that units of the same type don't get mixed together due to losing track of which unit they're in.

If your units are battle brothers or the same faction, there is no space requirement. You can tailgate your vehicles and brohug your squads together all you want. This may make things awkward if you have similar units that are supposed to be separate (such as two different units of bolter marines,) so facing an entire unit a certain direction can help if you haven't already squad-marked them in painting.

OK

...FWIW, there should be a rule. Otherwise if you have multiple units of, let's say, Space Marines right next to each other, there is no way for an opposing player to differentiate units except the good faith of the opposing player. (Painting and facing may help here as suggested above)

But I agree the rules do not address this so far as I can tell. Page 127 even implies that they can be base to base because Allies of Convenience have only a 1" restriction.

And thank the Chaos gods there isn't a minimum distance you need to be from you own units. Keeping 1" from friendly units was one of the things I HATED about Fantasy 8th ed.

Was there ever a rule for this in 40K? Just wondering where my gaming buddies got this idea from...they've been playing for decades so I wonder if this is a vestige from a previous edition of the rules.

You can go even further by intermingling the units while remaining in coherency, and thus allowing a lot of your guys to claim cover.

One thing to note is that non-Battle Brother allies are still considered "enemy units" and thus need to remain 1" away from each other.

So if I have an army of Eldar with GK allies, my Eldar units are fine to be in B2B with each other, but any Eldar units must remain 1" away from my own GK units and vice versa.

It is possible that is where your gamming buddies are getting the idea. That, or from the old Fantasy rules as I mentioned before.

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Best method if you play close formations is to use squad markers either with unique shoulder markings or magnetized base markers to differentiate them. Anyone trying to confuse their opponent to their advantage is a cheat..

Beyond just cheating (let's pretend most people are honest) there is simple forgetting. Absent some kind of differentiating factor, a player could just plain forget that Space Marine X belongs to Unit A instead of Unit B.

Shoulder markings are good for marines but beyond that not sure you can do that with, let's say, a bunch of Termagants.

Not sure I know what you mean by "magnetized base markers"

 jasper76 wrote:
Beyond just cheating (let's pretend most people are honest) there is simple forgetting. Absent some kind of differentiating factor, a player could just plain forget that Space Marine X belongs to Unit A instead of Unit B.

Shoulder markings are good for marines but beyond that not sure you can do that with, let's say, a bunch of Termagants.

Not sure I know what you mean by "magnetized base markers"

The 'forgetting' scenario has happened to me a few times.

The worst situation I've run into was five units of boyz (some as large as 20 strong) in one gigantic multiple combat with a Draigo star and a Dreadknight. I honestly had almost no idea which orks belonged to which unit, and it had nothing to do with intentionally cheating or being terribly forgetful. There were just.. so many there, and no real way to tell.

I've always been a bit harsh with my view that not marking your units is pure laziness. It is so easy to put simple squad markings on shoulders/canopies etc.
Heck, even my Daemons have slight gradations in shade so that no 2 units can be easily confused with each other.
Another option I have used is basing elements. I have 6 units of Nurlings and each group of 3 has a different colored SM helmet lying in the snow.

 Galef wrote:
I've always been a bit harsh with my view that not marking your units is pure laziness. It is so easy to put simple squad markings on shoulders/canopies etc.

Whereas I've always liked the idea of that, I just can't get around the logistics of it. I play CSM and 30k and try to use the same models for both. So I'm working anywhere from 5-20 man squads. Special/Heavy weapons are anywhere from 1-10 per squad. I simply don't have enough models, in enough variety, to make squad markings viable. If I used the same list multiple times it wouldn't be an issue, but I am typically playing a different list every game.

 Galef wrote:
I've always been a bit harsh with my view that not marking your units is pure laziness. It is so easy to put simple squad markings on shoulders/canopies etc.

Some of us are not very talented at detail painting. I've never been able to paint a squad marker on a shoulder pad without it looking horrible (and sadly that includes "easy" stuff like Roman numerals)

 jasper76 wrote:

Not sure I know what you mean by "magnetized base markers"

Glue a penny under the base, attach a magnet to the base as needed to differentiate the squad, count wounds (magnets painted red), etc.

 Overheal wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:

Not sure I know what you mean by "magnetized base markers"

Glue a penny under the base, attach a magnet to the base as needed to differentiate the squad, count wounds (magnets painted red), etc.

That's a really good idea, thanks. Fixes my typical issue with squad markings. It would allow a player to alter which squad a model belongs to between games without affecting the actual model.

I've also seen players paint a tiny square of color on the back of their bases. Red for unit 1, Blue for unit 2, etc.
If you can dip a brush into paint, you can do this. If that is too hard for you, then most likely you are paying someone to paint your army anyway, so have them do it.

If you can't remember which unit is which and it is that important to you, there are tons of ways to fix it.
But punishing everyone else's movement is not one of those ways.

I'm not in anyway trying to impose anything on anyone, though I admit, the thought of intermixed models from different units occupying the same space does ruin the game for me a bit. That's probably just because I've never played a game where that was considered a legal deployment.

Geronimo509 wrote:

 Overheal wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:

Not sure I know what you mean by "magnetized base markers"

Glue a penny under the base, attach a magnet to the base as needed to differentiate the squad, count wounds (magnets painted red), etc.

That's a really good idea, thanks. Fixes my typical issue with squad markings. It would allow a player to alter which squad a model belongs to between games without affecting the actual model.

I've found it useful especially given that my squad size and loadout varies. Some people with too much money go out and collect a whole SM chapter instead. I am not rich, or patient, or a human player vanilla goon.

 jasper76 wrote:
I'm not in anyway trying to impose anything on anyone, though I admit, the thought of intermixed models from different units occupying the same space does ruin the game for me a bit. That's probably just because I've never played a game where that was considered a legal deployment.

Well, you could pack the units in like sardines, alternating between members from two units making a square formation in order to try to claim the cover save no matter which unit gets shot at, but the downsied for packing them in like that is if one unit loses a morale test and has to fall back, but because of the other unit being in their way they end up getting hoisted by the Trapped! rule and end up destroyed.

they can move through friendly models for that.

 Galef wrote:
I've always been a bit harsh with my view that not marking your units is pure laziness. It is so easy to put simple squad markings on shoulders/canopies etc.
Heck, even my Daemons have slight gradations in shade so that no 2 units can be easily confused with each other.
Another option I have used is basing elements. I have 6 units of Nurlings and each group of 3 has a different colored SM helmet lying in the snow.

Problem with that is that it kinda assumes your units are static...What if one day you want to play one big unit and another two smaller unit?

Albeit that does help a bit because if you have 4 squads of 10 with 4 set of squad markings then that means there's only one unit you can mix if you run them as 8 units of 5 rather than 7.

I never play two games with same lists and units are hardly ever carbon copies with equipment and/or size(except with IG where it's bit harder to alter size of unit). Well albeit for me it's lesser issue as 2nd ed has rarely enough models to be real issue nor is there much reason for say intermingling. Close combat is only time this would be issue but 2nd ed close combats don't tend to be that big it would become an issue.

With permanent unit markers , I also run into the problem that my army is very much designed to be used in both Horus Heresy games using the Crusade Army List and 40K games using Space Marines codex. The two armies have pretty different rules as to what guns can be taken and how many, so my units in my army are also not static.

 jasper76 wrote:
Was there ever a rule for this in 40K? Just wondering where my gaming buddies got this idea from...they've been playing for decades so I wonder if this is a vestige from a previous edition of the rules.

No, there was never such a rule in 40k.