8th Ed. Decimated TG charged in rear...

Basicly after my unit of TG's with Slann had been fighting Blackorcs for most of the game, they were pretty decimated and moving away from a large pack of Savage orcs... Unfortunatly the orcs succeded with their charge and ended up in the TG's/Slanns rear looking like this:


OOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOO
..... SS
.. TTTTT

Now of course he didnt want to direct his attacks against my Stubborn Slann with 5wounds 4+ward but as long as i have 5 Tg he has to, right? I ended up holding for 2 full turns thanks to some light/heavens magic.

Did we play it right? Or can he elect to fight the temple guards? If not, when can he do so? When does the Slann end up in the first rank? When only the command models are left? Or does it depend on how wide the temple guard were to begin with?

 

The orcs CAN attack across the intervening distance between them and the back rank of TG (same with you). This is found in the BRB for just this instance, those guys don't just stop back there, they move up to fight so the entire back rank was attackable by the orcs. So yes he could have attacked your temple guard instead of the slann. The slann ends up in the first rank when there is room for him. If you are running 5 wide, he moves up when 3 temple guard are left.

 

Thank you good sir . Luckily the fight didn't have much to do with the total outcome of the game!

 

Yeah essentially if you get charged in the rear, and have an incomplete rank there, you fill the back rank with models in front.

This unit of O charged in the rear by X:

XXXXXX
OO
OOOOO
OOOOO
OOOOO

Would look like:

XXXXXX
OOOOO
OO
OOOOO
OOOOO

During the combat.

 

5 wide TG mean that the slann would move to front rank when the TG get down to 4. Although the slann counts as 2 wide, you have to maintain the 5 MODEL wide formation. The slann moves to the front rank making it 5 models wide (counting as 6 wide for rank bonus/steadfast). If you regrow a TG you only need 1 to allow the slann to return to 2nd rank.

If you do regrow a TG there is then an issue about when/if you can return the slann to the 2nd row while unit is in combat! In this case there is also the issue of whther the unit is now 5 or 6 wide.