Coherency Trickery & Your Stories of it

[butter]

Now maybe this isn't all that useful, and it may not be an original idea, but I had an odd thought while laying here awake all night.

So one broken thing this edition is coherency....you can kill off any models you want and intentionally break coherency. This may not seem very useful, but one way of using this is to keep one model in synapse (or in the Malanthrope's cover-bubble), stretch your large unit of...whatever as far as you can to hold an objective and/or block movement and then killing off the models in-between.

As per the FAQ, you can't make any movement if you can't get back into coherency, but you don't need to try to get back into coherency. You could even stretch one unit of termies between two separate ruins you've placed objectives in, and once the links in the chain are dead, the whole unit would be in cover. The FAQ doesn't say your unit must be in the same cover to get the benefit of it, so this could lend itself to some trickery..

In most instances I think you'd just want to take multiple units, but I've been in a couple of situations in games now where making a huge stretched line and splitting the unit really saved my booty, especially in regards to protecting characters. If there are ruins which are close together, warriors would make a great split unit, getting a 3+ from cover (obv even more survivable with a mal or venomthropes).

Has anyone else experimented with this? Do you find it totally unnecessary or useful? Has it been pivotal in a game for you? Am I being silly and this has already been discussed and I totally missed it?

[No One]

Not necessarily a good idea (it's stuffed me over being unable to move), but fun, finicky and amusing even when it's not useful . Usually use it for combat - just stretch coherency for multi-charges, then kill off the stuff in between doing nothing (last game, multi-charged 3 guardians and an Autarch. Autarch had banshee mask, went first and killed 2 stealers - 2 stealers weren't in range to fight, so they died ). Have used it on an objective though - neophytes with mining lasers, front guys had wandered forward to be in ranged. Killed off the guys in between, leaving one guy on the objective (in cover) and the mining lasers in range (and in cover).

[gigasnail]

It's kind of on the list of "new stuff people aren't used to" yet. I've been able to do something nearly every game by being aware of placement and casualty removal.

[N.I.B.]

I charged Arjac with 3 Pyrovores yesterday. They couldn't kill him with their attacks. Arjac attacks back and kill 2 Pyrovores, freeing himself from combat because now he's more than 1" away from enemy models, and he opted to not Consolidate (he later died to Acid Blood, lolz).

[meavar]

With the splitting units in multiple cc I am really doubtfull. While in a rare case it might work, the problem is they cannot move, no consilidation etc is very painfull for units that deal so much damage. Suddenly next round you can only fight with a few stealers. You did a significant amount of damage probably and now most of your stealers are out of range, but you can not get back into the fray because you have to get closer to the nearest enemy thus being unable to get coherency back.

[No One]

meavar said:

With the splitting units in multiple cc I am really doubtfull. While in a rare case it might work, the problem is they cannot move, no consilidation etc is very painfull for units that deal so much damage. Suddenly next round you can only fight with a few stealers. You did a significant amount of damage probably and now most of your stealers are out of range, but you can not get back into the fray because you have to get closer to the nearest enemy thus being unable to get coherency back.

Hint: people don't like to stay in combat with stealers . Leaving that aside, with how you charge, it's often possible to get basically everything into range on their own anyway (i.e. within 1"). Casualties on their side might bring out of range, but not always, especially once you go to 1" of something within 1". It's a risk - but it's an option.