A group of 5 Terradons lands near a Skaven Warp Cannon. The rat filth cannon malfunctions blowing up the cannon and the subsequent template also kills one of the Terradons in the MIDDLE of the Terradon unit thus forcing a gap greater than 1" between the remaining Terradons. The rules as far as I could see doesnt really address the apparent "out of coherency" issue. Question: Do the Terradons have to essentially use their next movement phase to first get back into coherency, or can they all move "ending in coherency", or does one simply "tidy up" the unit at the end of the shooting phase and be done with it? tx all
Coherency is maintained when removing shooting casualties. You would never remove the middle model in that case, the rules for casualties from shooting say that you remove models as evenly as possible from both ends of, or the back of a unit. Obviously with skirmishers this just means you wouldn't remove the middle model(s). Going by fluff I'd probably just remove the model closest to the malfunctioning cannon. But in the rare case that the model killed is a unique one, like a skink chief on terradon, I'd say you just remove him and make sure that your terradons are back in formation after your next move. The 1" apart rule is more to discourage cheesy formations in warhammer. I think you may be coming into the game from a Warmachine background? I haven't played much but I know keeping your units spaced properly is a big part of that game.
Actually zero Warmachine background...anyway the wierd thing was that the exploding Warp Cannon was 1" away from the middle of the Teradon skirmish line...when the ratboy rolls badly, the cannon can explode killing the operator but it also requires the use of the big round blast template to placed over the center of the dead cannon and anything caught under it takes a s4 hit as I recall...because of the nature of the template it killed a terradon in the MIDDLE of the skirmish line....however you point is well taken that for SHOOTING purposes (which was the phase that we were in when the Cannon was trying to shoot and blew up) casualties are taken from the ends of a single line (which skirmishers essentially are)...we'll go with that.... Incidentally, Tiktakto was under the blast plate too, but his 6+ ward save saved him (lucky roll...phewwww) tx
Now that I think of it...I wonder if Ticktakto should have done a Look Out Sir roll first since the blast plate is template weapon per the Look Out Sir rules...hmmm I'm thinking so...
Depends how big the unit was... remember you need at least US 5 (not including character) to benefit from LoS, so if there were 5 terradons plus him you would be fine. Ahh I think terradons have US 2 anyway, so it should be fine. I'm somewhat dazed.
Just a correction to this: you need 5 rank and file models (champion does not count), not unit strength. So if you had a character in a unit of 5 Saurus but one of those is a champion, you do not get a look out sir. If you have 6 Saurus and one is a champion, you do get look out sir. Regarding the OP's question, if it's just a regular rank and file model that gets killed, just remove an outlier to maintain the unit formation. It's the same as if a template hits a ranked unit, you'd just remove from the back row to maintain the appearance of the unit. Edit: Pg 74. I forgot to add a page reference for LoS
Ya I looked that over tonight and your right...to use Look Out Sir you have to have 5 "rank and file"...unit strength is irrelevant...however there is a Catch-22 here that I think got missed...maybe...it says clearly that Characters cannot join flyers...however the Lizzy book makes Tikktakto an exception (he is cool isnt he?)...anyway I think when they might have kinda forgot about the Look Out Sir rule in regards to this because you are correct...you technically would need 5 regular Terrys excluding Tik to allow him to duck the shot at him or to use Look Out Sir when whacked with a template weapon...maybe they intended that but wow...6 total Terrys is a big gulp to pull it off...I dont think I'd care to commit to that many...maybe thats why there is the extra -1 to hit him while shooting (doesnt help much with a template weapon tho...ok I'm rambling now...