8th Ed. Reform Question

I have a scenario that happenend last night, not to me I was just watching.

VC was engaged in CC with OK.

The VC had 1 rank of Hex Wraiths in base contact with Mournfangs. Now looking at it from the VC side, 2 of the Hex Wraiths were in base contact in the Mournfangs and could attack, one was out of contact off to the left. A Spirit Host was also in CC with the Mournfangs to the right of the Hex Wraiths but there was enough room for another model to fit.

Can the VC player reform after combat in order to move that 1 out of combat unit down so that it is in combat. Basically shift all his models right. The reform rule talks about moving up, changing the size of the front rank, or the direction you are facing, but that wasn't an issue here. One model just ended up out of combat.


The reason this happened was the VC player pulled one of his Hex Wraiths that died from the right side of the formation. That is why this one was shifted left so far, during the charge there wasn't enough room for it to be in contact. Afterwards we discussed it and the VC played SHOULD have removed the out of combat model for simplicity's sake but we were wondering what the official stance on this was.

 

you can't reform to take models out of combat... I believe that's the rule in the book.

 

Seems strange that the vamps took any wounds at all since both hexwraiths and spirit hosts are ethereal and thus invulnerable to mournfang cav. Ignoring that aspect, as per page 55 of the CRB, a combat reform is permitted if the unit is not flanked and the reform does not take a model out of combat. The rules specifically mention bringing more models into contact by expanding frontage so the VC reform in the instance mentioned seems perfectly fine.

 

They probbably crumbled due to fangs charging.

 

sorry wrong post

 

The catch is though that the frontage size didn't change. I believe the intent of the rule is just to simply get more units into combat, but I was wondering if shifting 3 models to the right was a valid reform maneuver while in CC.

The Hexwraiths were losing due to CR.

 

The reform of "shifting" models is fine since it is a combat reform. A normal reform must maintain the center of the unit in the same location but a combat reform does not have this restriction (see FAQ) .