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I recently played a 1k point game with an Ork friend and learned first hand how powerful 1 unit of 30 boyz can be and he took 3!

I've read a bit about conga lines and feel they have gotten much more powerful in 8th ed and I'm not sure if it was entirely intended. The power IMO comes from the new rules for removing dead models.

In the attached image you'll see the Ork player has a unit of Boyz conga lined between two points, the one in the bottom right and one in the center (behind the mountain). So I understand that according to the rules, he can control 2 command points if he can reach them. This is a little bit annoying but not terrible. What makes this tactic OP is that now, he can choose where to pull a model when it dies, so I effectively cannot shoot him off the point.

Basically what happens is I want to take point A and so I go up and start killing boyz off point A. But since the Ork player can choose where to remove the units, he removes them from Point B and it is not possible for me to shoot him off of either point so it is no longer contested. I would get destroyed in melee because he can just pile in his 30 boys on the point I attack. I may not be understanding something about how this works, and I think perhaps he may be misinterpreting something about his charge/ pile in.

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do about this. With 3 units of 30 boys, if he wanted to be a jerk, he could just string them out between all the different points, and me, being Druhkari, I can't do anything about it but take 3 turns to kill off one of the units and hope I get an objective for that point.

Why can't you shoot him off? Just kill the whole unit.

Killing 30 boys at 1k is hard for Drukhari unless you take a couple of builds. DE just aren't that good at horde killing anymore.

Charge the middle with something irritating, his pile in moves have to be towards the closest target and you should kill enough to force coherency issues if he doesn't.
He has to gamble on moving enough in to kill you after you fight first, or he'll have to pile in again so will probably need to pull forces away from one side. If he doesn't pile in, all casualties come from the edges and struggle to fight you off with just a few orks involved in the fight.

Tastyfish has the right idea. Conga lining makes them vulnerable to close combat.

When the orks pile in, they can only move 3". So such a spread out unit has a hard time directing many attacks against a unit which has focused its charge on a small area of the line.
Usually I'd hit one end of the conga line, rather than the middle. To further reduce the number of models able to hit back.

Tastyfish wrote:
Charge the middle with something irritating, his pile in moves have to be towards the closest target and you should kill enough to force coherency issues if he doesn't.
He has to gamble on moving enough in to kill you after you fight first, or he'll have to pile in again so will probably need to pull forces away from one side. If he doesn't pile in, all casualties come from the edges and struggle to fight you off with just a few orks involved in the fight.

This doesn’t work. He’ll kill off the guys in the middle and forsake any counter attacks, but thereby continue Holding one objective whilst Contesting the other (one unit can’t control two points simultaneously, FYI).

You are not obligated to Pile In nor Consolidate.

Nothing forces you to take casualties from the edges, either.

sieGermans wrote:

You are not obligated to Pile In nor Consolidate.

Except when you've carved the unit in half, the Coherency rule kicks in and the two disparate halves are forced to move back towards each other.

Sterling191 wrote:

sieGermans wrote:

You are not obligated to Pile In nor Consolidate.

Except when you've carved the unit in half, the Coherency rule kicks in and the two disparate halves are forced to move back towards each other.

Not quite. You must establish coherency the next time you move. But if you don't move...

 Kcalehc wrote:


Not quite. You must establish coherency the next time you move. But if you don't move...

You don't get to skip a phase, and a move of zero is still a move.

sieGermans wrote:

Tastyfish wrote:
Charge the middle with something irritating, his pile in moves have to be towards the closest target and you should kill enough to force coherency issues if he doesn't.
He has to gamble on moving enough in to kill you after you fight first, or he'll have to pile in again so will probably need to pull forces away from one side. If he doesn't pile in, all casualties come from the edges and struggle to fight you off with just a few orks involved in the fight.

This doesn’t work. He’ll kill off the guys in the middle and forsake any counter attacks, but thereby continue Holding one objective whilst Contesting the other (one unit can’t control two points simultaneously, FYI).

You are not obligated to Pile In nor Consolidate.

Nothing forces you to take casualties from the edges, either.

Pretty sure you still have to be in coherency.

Drager wrote:
Killing 30 boys at 1k is hard for Drukhari unless you take a couple of builds. DE just aren't that good at horde killing anymore.

Uhh.....................what?

Played DE a couple weeks ago as orks and they took like 60 boyz off the table turn 1, even with KFF and painboy. Their shooting is stupid.

I was tabled turn 2. And I had a decent list - ~120 boyz, mek gunz, and support characters.

I suppose it was at 2K, so maybe things are different at 1k, but I find that hard to believe.

Drager wrote:
Killing 30 boys at 1k is hard for Drukhari unless you take a couple of builds. DE just aren't that good at horde killing anymore.

12 dark lance shot 300 models from me in 5 turns. That's with ice cold deck t1.

Anyway keep in mind if he can't move into coherency he can't move at all period

Yeah if he cant move it helps you, again you can keep wittling down his guys by shooting at them. Ork shooting back with boys is laughable vs what dark eldar can do. 75 pts of warriors give you 24 shots at 12", hitting on 3's, wounding on 4's, with a 6+ save thats still 6 or 7 dead boys on average isnt it? He pulls from the middile and puts his boys so that they are too far appart they are stuck there and you can kill them at your leasure.


What kind of list are you running?

What about morale?
If you keep shooting them they will run out of mob rule eventually.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
What about morale?
If you keep shooting them they will run out of mob rule eventually.

Yep. And if he has another unit shooting both heavily rather than 1 will start to cause morale casualties to both. Plus cuts attack from both units

All Moves are optional. If you elect not to move, you do not have to.

If moves of 0 were moves, then Heavy penalties would always apply etc. Check YMDC for further queries if needed.

sieGermans wrote:
All Moves are optional. If you elect not to move, you do not have to.

If moves of 0 were moves, then Heavy penalties would always apply etc. Check YMDC for further queries if needed.

You can elect not to move individual models, which is how Heavy can normally choose not to take a penalty (compare a unit moving with a model moving). Coherency applies at the unit level, and overrides that choice.

Sterling191 wrote:

sieGermans wrote:
All Moves are optional. If you elect not to move, you do not have to.

If moves of 0 were moves, then Heavy penalties would always apply etc. Check YMDC for further queries if needed.

You can elect not to move individual models, which is how Heavy can normally choose not to take a penalty (compare a unit moving with a model moving). Coherency applies at the unit level, and overrides that choice.

Where does it say all units have to move? Rules say stuff like can pick another unit and untill you have moved as many of your units as you wish. As you wish. Not all your units

If you had to move all units way to avoid loss if you are losing. Pick casualties so unit can't restore coherency. They would according to you have vo move and if they move have to restore coherency. Can't do it, game instantly ends as rules don't cover that situation

tneva82 wrote:


Where does it say all units have to move? Rules say stuff like can pick another unit and untill you have moved as many of your units as you wish. As you wish. Not all your units

"Move any units that are capable of doing so".

Unless there is a special rule preventing a unit from moving (like for instance the Wych anti fallback rule, or Skarboy) it has to move. The models within that unit can be moved 0" on an individual basis unless another rule overrides that (like coherency).

Sterling191 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:


Where does it say all units have to move? Rules say stuff like can pick another unit and untill you have moved as many of your units as you wish. As you wish. Not all your units

"Move any units that are capable of doing so".

Unless there is a special rule preventing a unit from moving (like for instance the Wych anti fallback rule, or Skarboy) it has to move. The models within that unit can be moved 0" on an individual basis.

Where that is? Section movement has

Start your Movement phase by picking
one of your units and moving each model
in that unit until you’ve moved all the
models you want to. You can then pick
another unit to move, until you have
moved as many of your units as you wish.
No model can be moved more than once
in each Movement phase.

But ok. Good to know. Whenever i'm going to lose game i try to remove casualties so i can't restore coherency. Automatic draw.

tneva82 wrote:

If you had to move all units way to avoid loss if you are losing. Pick casualties so unit can't restore coherency. They would according to you have vo move and if they move have to restore coherency. Can't do it, game instantly ends as rules don't cover that situation

Incorrect. Coherencey wording allows a fail state within itself, as the end result is the compulsion to move back into coherency the next turn.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

tneva82 wrote:


Where that is?

Phase descriptions.

tneva82 wrote:


But ok. Good to know. Whenever i'm going to lose game i try to remove casualties so i can't restore coherency. Automatic draw.

And you'll be laughed out of the shop for being an ass. Coherency rules contain multi-turn contingencies for you trying to do just that, as mentioned before.

Sterling191 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

If you had to move all units way to avoid loss if you are losing. Pick casualties so unit can't restore coherency. They would according to you have vo move and if they move have to restore coherency. Can't do it, game instantly ends as rules don't cover that situation

Incorrect. Coherencey wording allows a fail state within itself, as the end result is the compulsion to move back into coherency the next turn.

But they weren't able to do that. Thus either they can't move, game ends undecided or i can move anywhere i wish at which point coherency is irrelevant. I can even move awav from rest of unit

Rules are semi-clear on this. Either:

a) if you can't move within coherency there's no legal move you can make and ergo models have to stay at their places
b) you can move but if you can't move into coherency you are free to move as you wish. Next turn same check. But at this point unit can legally move even away from each other.

Any other requirement is house ruling and inventing stuff up. Nowhere for example does it say anything about having to move toward rest of the unit...

Ergo pick either a or b above. Either that or you are doing house rules or cheating.

tneva82 wrote:


But they weren't able to do that. Thus either they can't move, game ends undecided or i can move anywhere i wish at which point coherency is irrelevant. I can even move awav from rest of unit

"If anything causes a unit to become split up during battle it must re-establish its unit coherency the next time it moves".

Failing to re-establish coherency is by definition "something that causes a unit to become split up". Return to the beginning of the flow chart, and make your compulsory move to re-establish coherency.

Sterling191 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:


But they weren't able to do that. Thus either they can't move, game ends undecided or i can move anywhere i wish at which point coherency is irrelevant. I can even move awav from rest of unit

"If anything causes a unit to become split up during battle it must re-establish its unit coherency the next time it moves".

Failing to re-establish coherency is by definition "something that causes a unit to become split up". Return to the beginning of the flow chart, and make your compulsory move to re-establish coherency.

Yes. But if it can't do that then either it must stay still as it can't make legal move or it can move freely if it can't reach coherency.

So if you are 16" away from each other and can only move 12" total that's not enough to move into coherency. Then depending on how you interpret it you either HAVE to stay still as you can't make legal move or you can move freely. Including away from other models...Any other result is either house ruling or cheating.

tneva82 wrote:


Yes. But if it can't do that then either it must stay still as it can't make legal move or it can move freely if it can't reach coherency.

So if you are 16" away from each other and can only move 12" total that's not enough to move into coherency. Then depending on how you interpret it you either HAVE to stay still as you can't make legal move or you can move freely. Including away from other models...Any other result is either house ruling or cheating.

*facepalm*

Moving to re-establish coherence is the legal (and compulsory) move. Whether you're actually *in* coherence at the end is irrelevant because the coherency rule recycles itself. You would be required to move a second time to re-establish coherency the next turn.

Which is why having the center of your conga line annihilated is so bad, because it screws that unit's capacity to do anything beyond moving repeatedly to re-establish coherence.

Kap'n Krump wrote:

Drager wrote:
Killing 30 boys at 1k is hard for Drukhari unless you take a couple of builds. DE just aren't that good at horde killing anymore.

Uhh.....................what?

Played DE a couple weeks ago as orks and they took like 60 boyz off the table turn 1, even with KFF and painboy. Their shooting is stupid.

I was tabled turn 2. And I had a decent list - ~120 boyz, mek gunz, and support characters.

I suppose it was at 2K, so maybe things are different at 1k, but I find that hard to believe.

It is very different at 1k. At 2k DE have no problem with hordes, as they will have plenty of disintegrators plus some other stuff. At 1k you have to drop good units if you want to keep a battallion, also if you take Covens or Cult it really damages your shooting. Let's say at 5k you take 3 units of Kabalites with blasters in Venoms and 2 basic Archons. This is ~520 points and kills only 18 boys a turn. This also assumes you are within 12" with half your amry, which will get shot, charged and killed in the next turn (probably, venoms don't stand up well to Orky assaults). Now if the rest of your list is ravagers or razorwings, you're fine, but if it's Reavers, Hellions, Wracks, Beasts, Talos or similar you can't shoot 30 boys to death and they will Green Tide back.

tneva82 wrote:

Drager wrote:
Killing 30 boys at 1k is hard for Drukhari unless you take a couple of builds. DE just aren't that good at horde killing anymore.

12 dark lance shot 300 models from me in 5 turns. That's with ice cold deck t1.

No they didn't. 12 Dark lances, hitting, wounding and killing every turn for 5 turns kills a maximum of 60 models and this is very unlikely. If you mean Disintegrators, then they still max out at 180 in 5 turns even killing with every shot and getting 12 disintegrators in 1k is.... hard. 2x Dissies Ravagers and 3 Razaorwings... I guess. 12 is a weird number to have it's usually 6, 9, 10 or 13. Anyway, 2 Dissie Ravagers and 3 Razorwings is 655 points, which means you aren't putting all of your troops in transports at 1k. It's a very skew build, though great against orks.

Sterling191 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:


Yes. But if it can't do that then either it must stay still as it can't make legal move or it can move freely if it can't reach coherency.

So if you are 16" away from each other and can only move 12" total that's not enough to move into coherency. Then depending on how you interpret it you either HAVE to stay still as you can't make legal move or you can move freely. Including away from other models...Any other result is either house ruling or cheating.

*facepalm*

Moving to re-establish coherence is the legal (and compulsory) move. Whether you're actually *in* coherence at the end is irrelevant because the coherency rule recycles itself. You would be required to move a second time to re-establish coherency the next turn.

Which is why having the center of your conga line annihilated is so bad, because it screws that unit's capacity to do anything beyond moving repeatedly to re-establish coherence.

Both: I recommend taking this to YMDC if you’d like to discuss specifics, but otherwise keeping this to a Tactics discussion.

Sterling191 wrote:


*facepalm*

Moving to re-establish coherence is the legal (and compulsory) move. Whether you're actually *in* coherence at the end is irrelevant because the coherency rule recycles itself. You would be required to move a second time to re-establish coherency the next turn.

Which is why having the center of your conga line annihilated is so bad, because it screws that unit's capacity to do anything beyond moving repeatedly to re-establish coherence.

We're still back to my original issue, if I try to shoot the middle or even assault the middle of the conga line, he can still take the dead models away from anywhere and you cannot disrupt coherency.

sieGermans wrote:
I recommend taking this to YMDC if you’d like to discuss specifics, but otherwise keeping this to a Tactics discussion.

Yes please. Thanks!

 RedTigerPro wrote:

Basically what happens is I want to take point A and so I go up and start killing boyz off point A. But since the Ork player can choose where to remove the units, he removes them from Point B and it is not possible for me to shoot him off of either point so it is no longer contested. I would get destroyed in melee because he can just pile in his 30 boys on the point I attack. I may not be understanding something about how this works, and I think perhaps he may be misinterpreting something about his charge/ pile in.

If a unit is charged, he can pile in 3" and consolidate 3" every turn to 'feed' more models into the fight. However, they're advancing on the fight single file - you don't have to outnumber the ork mob, just that 'end' of his line which is in the vicinity of the objective, to take it off him.

Other option, charge one unit into the middle of a line: the boyz at the end have to pile in to the closest - them - not the guys at the end contesting the objective.

Finally - hordes are by definition footslogging, and a stretched out line has to pass through any intervening terrain. Placing an objective in the centre of the board, or behind something the mob has to move around, can buy you 1-2 turns before they can get to it, maybe 2-3 if he roll badly on run moves, and maybe even more than that if you're prepared to sacrifice the odd transport to block a 'choke point'