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And yet, skirmish order is a real thing with a long and storied history. Seems like the wrong fix to the problem...

 Flinty wrote:
And yet, skirmish order is a real thing with a long and storied history. Seems like the wrong fix to the problem...

There's no real need for skirmish order when you're playing a game that isn't a simulation. Maybe when the Old World comes back.

 Elbows wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Risk with the “8 o o o o o o o o o o o o o 8” deployment?

Shooting casualties. With that one, even a single casualty is immediately breaking your unit coherency.

Only rules which allow the shooting/attacking unit to "pick" the exact model - something a few psychic powers could use. Beyond that, the targeted player simply picks a model at the end of its row. If you "push" models slightly closer together, they're still in 2" coherency.

What it does is limit which models can be chosen as casualties, and strongly discourage single line congas.

For instance, and only for example, a mob of 30 Ork Boyz. Right now, their bases are what, 1” wide or so? At maximum spacing right now, they can conga 86” wide - I came to that number based on 30 1” bases, with 28 28” gaps. I’m pretty sure my calculation is correct, but my brain has been a bit wonky.

In 8th, when shooting up that unit, my opponent can select his casualties from either end without concern. He could also pick them from a single end.

Now? The conga line can be a maximum of (oh god this hurting my brain, apologies if my numbers are off) 82”. Yet, the second they start taking casualties, I’m breaking his unit coherency. Even a single ded Boy is setting that off.

To have a single conga line, where each model remains within 2” of two others at all times drastically reduces that board control potential.

Now my example is silly. Very silly indeed. It seems incredibly unlikely anyone would do such a conga line, other than for a laff.

But, it does help limit ‘Dave, sit on the objective whilst Bob and Barry smash up that bloke’ type things. This in turn helps limit how much a single unit can control.

Melee auras from Deep Strike (unless they're CHARGE related) are completely dead as of 9th, unless they're upped to 9" to make up for the >9" deep strike rule whereas Shooting auras are for the most parth left untouched by the new coherency rules

Deleted.

Check the actions and you have your answer.

Only one unit can perform the action, so if it is a small one the opponent will have an easy game negating your victory points.

 Elbows wrote:
So the question is...is GW intentionally trying to kill units of models over five? We see that blast weapons resolve more hits...and there is a completely arbitrary coherency penalty applied to larger model units. They also, more or less, suffer more from coherency death issues, etc.

I don't know what the new detachment style rules are or will be, but I see almost zero reason to take aspect warriors over a unit of five. Have GW released any information that suggest benefits of hordes or even simply "normal" sized squads?

Blast weapons hardly produce more hits for 10 man units.

 Elbows wrote:
So the question is...is GW intentionally trying to kill units of models over five? We see that blast weapons resolve more hits...and there is a completely arbitrary coherency penalty applied to larger model units. They also, more or less, suffer more from coherency death issues, etc.

I don't know what the new detachment style rules are or will be, but I see almost zero reason to take aspect warriors over a unit of five. Have GW released any information that suggest benefits of hordes or even simply "normal" sized squads?

The only new rules that seem to give any sort of benefit to larger units are attrition (insofar as morale us less deadly to larger units than it was in 8th, but it doesn’t actually make larger units “better”, just “less bad”), look out sir (larger units are able to better provide characters with protection) and the detachment CP rules which might encourage larger units to prevent taking multiple detachments and so spend CPs if you run out of slots.

The existing benefits of more effective use of buffs, auras and strategems for large units seem to be unchanged. Overall it looks to me that smaller units is still better in most cases.

This is what’s going to stop daisy chains

Think its mixed tbh.

This rule will prevent X-X-X-X-X bubblewrap by say Guardsmen round tanks.
They'll have to go
X-X-X-X-X
-X-X-X-X-X
Or so.

But if I've got say 20 GSC Acolytes charging, where before I might have conga lined 3 back to get into buff range, now I'll have to use 4. Sure those 4 are at risk - but I can decide whether I want to remove them as casualties, or remove a couple of casualties from the 16 guys in the front.

Its probably a good idea all the same - but yeah. In my experience at least conga lining was more filing back 6-8 inches, often because the unit had made a charge and the buff bot character had failed, or you wanted to buff numerous units at once. It wasn't about having units go 40" across the table.

So for most you'll have to line up 2 units side by side, each one two ranks deep, instead of two units one in front of the other each 1 model deep.
Not really super hard to achieve, but yes it does reduce some of the silliness from long lines of models with 1 guy in an aura passing it to the rest. Not stop it, but reduces the spread of the effect.

"The furthest two models can't be more than 8" apart."

There I did it better.

This post ignores the other part of unit coherency that was posted on WH community:



This means that a single casualty (i.e. controlling player removes a model as a result of casualty) can cause such congaline (8-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-8) to continue to lose models until it reaches 5-man unit as this formation relies on having two models, and only two models, in coherency.

So conga line is officially curtailed with this rule.

EDIT: Sorry, didn't read 2nd page of this post.

Tyel wrote:
Think its mixed tbh.

This rule will prevent X-X-X-X-X bubblewrap by say Guardsmen round tanks.
They'll have to go
X-X-X-X-X
-X-X-X-X-X
Or so.

But if I've got say 20 GSC Acolytes charging, where before I might have conga lined 3 back to get into buff range, now I'll have to use 4. Sure those 4 are at risk - but I can decide whether I want to remove them as casualties, or remove a couple of casualties from the 16 guys in the front.

Its probably a good idea all the same - but yeah. In my experience at least conga lining was more filing back 6-8 inches, often because the unit had made a charge and the buff bot character had failed, or you wanted to buff numerous units at once. It wasn't about having units go 40" across the table.

I think the bigger "abuse" was stringing 30 gretching 2" apart across your whole backfield.

Now that reserves are a thing there needs to be more of a cost. Additionally it really helps melee slip in which was needed.

I feel like this was a total missed opportunity for the GW rules writers. If the rules writers think this is going to change much, it shows they really don't play the game the same way as most of their players.

I feel a better change would have been:

"Models must stay within 2" of each other, and within Ld range of the unit leader"

Would have made it so units can't conga line, and abilities that increase the Ld of a squad matter for more than just morale rolls, it would allow squads to spread out a bit more.

 NH Gunsmith wrote:
I feel like this was a total missed opportunity for the GW rules writers. If the rules writers think this is going to change much, it shows they really don't play the game the same way as most of their players.

I feel a better change would have been:

"Models must stay within 2" of each other, and within Ld range of the unit leader"

Would have made it so units can't conga line, and abilities that increase the Ld of a squad matter for more than just morale rolls, it would allow squads to spread out a bit more.

This will not change much?

You sure that you have read the full rules? Conga lines are history.

The idea is good, but the implementation is seriously flawed. It doesn't actually stop conga-lining back to buffs, it just means you have to use one additional model to do so. The models in the chain theoretically become vulnerable if you take casualties, but only if you choose to pull one of them, so the situation doesn't change very much vis-a-vis how it works now. At max you maybe lose 2-3 more models than you otherwise would have if you commit to a chain and then have to start pulling models from the chain.

It does make conga-lining with large units to screen board space more difficult and risky. This is the part of the rule that more or less works.

And then it also leads to this wonderful stupidity:

This unit is in legal coherency:


But this unit is performing an illegal conga line:

\

Now does this situation come up often? No, not really. But it is undeniable stupid when it does.

I don't care much about conga lines, but how are models like termintors suppose to do melee now, if being out of cohorency kills models, everything is going to have to move as a blob.

Karol wrote:
I don't care much about conga lines, but how are models like termintors suppose to do melee now, if being out of cohorency kills models, everything is going to have to move as a blob.

Has anything changed for terminators? Aren’t they normally in units of 5, and in 8th they had to maintain coherency too, including in melee.

Paladins are run in units fo 10. The fringe models are never close to 2 models. So do termintors suppose to move in a two row phalanx or something?

Karol wrote:
Paladins are run in units fo 10. The fringe models are never close to 2 models. So do termintors suppose to move in a two row phalanx or something?

I’m not super familiar with GKs, didn’t realise they have 10 model terminator units. Can they combat squad? It looks like moving them in 2 ranks would be the best way to deal with the new coherency rules.

Aash wrote:

Karol wrote:
Paladins are run in units fo 10. The fringe models are never close to 2 models. So do termintors suppose to move in a two row phalanx or something?

I’m not super familiar with GKs, didn’t realise they have 10 model terminator units. Can they combat squad? It looks like moving them in 2 ranks would be the best way to deal with the new coherency rules.

GK go all in on paladins, heck I'm sure GK players would take units of 20 or 30 if they could as that way they can stack all the psychic powers and strategums on their paladin deathstar.

Yeah you'll be running them in the stagered line or a triangle or diamon formation from now on.

 NH Gunsmith wrote:
I feel like this was a total missed opportunity for the GW rules writers. If the rules writers think this is going to change much, it shows they really don't play the game the same way as most of their players.

I feel a better change would have been:

"Models must stay within 2" of each other, and within Ld range of the unit leader"

Would have made it so units can't conga line, and abilities that increase the Ld of a squad matter for more than just morale rolls, it would allow squads to spread out a bit more.

*Looks at 30 model units with LD4/5 and no access to LD increase*
*shakes head*

From the wording, it looks like the coherency check takes place after the morale is resolved? This is a big deal if its the case, because under the new morale system, units lost to attrition are random. You roll per model. So if you had a loose formation and took several attrition losses, and happened to roll the ones in the middle, you could end with a squad split in half, and then lose one half to the coherency check.

Certainly not so. You roll for attrition losses randomly per model, but it is a global roll like the current losses for a unit inside a destroyed transport : you still get to choose who goes away.

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:
From the wording, it looks like the coherency check takes place after the morale is resolved? This is a big deal if its the case, because under the new morale system, units lost to attrition are random. You roll per model. So if you had a loose formation and took several attrition losses, and happened to roll the ones in the middle, you could end with a squad split in half, and then lose one half to the coherency check.

I hope that's not correct because that seems really time consuming (going model by model in say a cultist unit), and can lead to some very awkward rules interactions. However, you know what they say, the best way to get the right answer on the internet is to post the wrong one, so I'm sure someone will mention if that's not the consensus interpretation.

One thing people haven't mentioned yet, is this gives us a way to kill our own units. Remember you can't fall back and shoot, but you don't need to if all of the units in CC died due to lack of unit coherency. There are probably more than a few edge cases where killing your own units would be desirable, and since it happens after morale units killed in this way don't affect morale. I suspect there will be great potential for janky rules interactions.

So, again, why am I taking units above 5 models in 9th?

And I have real problems with rules that just outright remove models regardless of what they are (Gretchin vs Custodes). They do not scale well at all.

 Grimgold wrote:

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:
From the wording, it looks like the coherency check takes place after the morale is resolved? This is a big deal if its the case, because under the new morale system, units lost to attrition are random. You roll per model. So if you had a loose formation and took several attrition losses, and happened to roll the ones in the middle, you could end with a squad split in half, and then lose one half to the coherency check.

I hope that's not correct because that seems really time consuming (going model by model in say a cultist unit), and can lead to some very awkward rules interactions. However, you know what they say, the best way to get the right answer on the internet is to post the wrong one, so I'm sure someone will mention if that's not the consensus interpretation.

One thing people haven't mentioned yet, is this gives us a way to kill our own units. Remember you can't fall back and shoot, but you don't need to if all of the units in CC died due to lack of unit coherency. There are probably more than a few edge cases where killing your own units would be desirable, and since it happens after morale units killed in this way don't affect morale. I suspect there will be great potential for janky rules interactions.

Yeah, I'm not sure. I thought that was what people had concluded before. Do we have the full combat Attrition rules somewhere? I can only find the bullet points.

And good point about choosing to let things die.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
So, again, why am I taking units above 5 models in 9th?

Simply put I'm with you on the you just don't unless its a throwaway screen you expect to loose T1 anyway.

Karol wrote:
Paladins are run in units fo 10. The fringe models are never close to 2 models. So do termintors suppose to move in a two row phalanx or something?

This is what upset me too. So my Blightlords when taken in a 10 man squad now have to move in a phalanx when a 5 model unit can spread as much as they want? How does that make any sense? As for someone who said this was a boon for melee, how exactly? Before I could consolidate/pile in to my hearts desire and now I have to make sure all of my models are at least holding hands with 2 others. Yet another unnecessary nerf to melee who already seem hamstrung so far in 9th. Now as with all things 9th so far, I'll withhold full judgement until I see the full picture but this seems another clumsy attempt at fixing something that A) wasn't that big a problem to begin with (daisy chaining), B) seems to needlessly nerf a bunch of unrelated units that didn't need one to begin with.