Single File Wheels

[Toonces]

I'm pretty much the most obnoxious person I know. That said, I'm still not obnoxious enough to put my skaven slaves in one line file and then wheel them around the board.

Looking at the rules, you measure wheeling distances from the distance traveled by the model on the outside of a wheel. There's no definitive call-out for single file units - which makes me wonder how you actually measure their wheels since one guy can rotate around himself infinitely and he's never moving any distance.

Now, the jerkface application of this would be to make a long line of anything (slaves or night gobbos for maximum dickery), and use combinations of 90 facing changes and wheels to move across the board in one turn.

It's safe to say that such a move is entirely rules as written but also the sort of thing that makes you zero friends.

Now, I'm curious how this is ruled in less obnoxious cases. If you are moving a single file unit and need to wheel, what's the convention for it? I would think adding a phantom second model and measuring that would be one way to do it - or just make an arbitrary call that a single file unit uses a 1/4 on any wheel regardless of what that wheel distance is. If one wanted to chose the least favorable interpretation and measure a wheel from the longest side wheeling... well, then Bretonnian lances would be ponderously slow to wheel.

Anyway, I'm curious if folks have good house rules for this, or if you've had a tournament experience where someone tried some crazy wheel action.

[Lord Mortimer]

the cloest thing ive seen in line with your question is a bretonnian lance wheeling as they get really really suspect and unrealistic.

chances are if you were a unit cheap enough to try this you would end up being charged flee and panic the rest of your army and you would hinder your own movement from the rest of your army.

you would also have to give this single file unit alot of room depending on its size as you cant wheel through annother one of your units, and using a unit like this would be rather confusing and messy.

The other point is that skaven slaves are pretty much useless so the real qyuestion is what are you going to acheive on the other side of the board?.

night goblins with fanatics on the toehr hand would be crazy if you load them with fanatics then wheel in behind your opponent.

in terms of tournaments f you tried this id expect your opponent to be calling in an umpire who to get the game back on track would probably tell you that you cant do this, but as i say its never come up here and people are generally wary of skaven tricks.

[jamesTFL]

Well in WHFB a wheel is measured by holding the inside edge of the unit stable and measuring the distance that the outside edge travels, so they do not pivot infinitely. Though they would get alot of turning from their 8 inches.

As far as actually being useful it seems to me to be mostly useless and a good way to get a 0 in sportsmanship.

[Wannabe_Hero]

It's also possible to do this with a rat pack for skaven. It's used to take away enemy rank bonuses and stop them from getting many attacks back.

Pretty cheap tactic if you ask me.

[Dingareth]

No guys he's talking about the Slayer Slingshot. You deploy a unit of 20 Slayers in a single RANK facing one of the short table edges, reform along the guy farthest to the left- hald move, and then reform again to make a 20x1 line of Slayers 4" away from your opponet's deployment zone. Then use the Anvil to charge them into the units infront of them, creating a huge combat that the Slayers will lose, but they're unbreakable, so it gives you a turn to advance your army foward, while they army has to stay in that one large combat, shuffling into the center of the table, bunching them up for the Stone Throwers.

It's one of the most ridiclious abuses of RAW ever, and was popular in last years GT's. Direwolf, Adepticon, and a few of the other FAQs have come out now to stop it in their realms.

[Randroid]

But it isn't legal so it doesn't need a FAQ or special ruling. Reforming uses all of your movement.

[Joker's Wild]

Also when you reform no model in the unit can travel more than double its base movement rate.

[Dingareth]

Yes, I'm glad that's the case. I'm not sure how it was, but a couple of the Direwolf guys were complaining a lot about it happening, I can't remember exactly how it was done...

[Toonces]

Yes, the slingshot is what I'm getting at. And it's not done by using a reform. It's done by taking a 90 turn (1/4 of your movement value) and then wheeling. And the evilness comes in the fact that a single FILE wheel is measured by how far the front guy turns, not the giant train behind him.

So you could deploy Night gobbos facing 'up' like so...

************************************************** *

Then they all turn to their right and wheel RIGHT (facing you) so they'd be climbing up along the short table edge. And suddenly the back end of your unit is 8" near the enemy deployment zone and out come the fanatics.

I think everybody who isn't a giant wanked understands that this an abuse of the rules. But I guess I wonder how people handle the obviously-not-abusive cases. When you have units deployed in single/double files (Giant Rat packs in a skaven army are such a unit that is almost always deployed only 2 wide), do people just let these units wheel for next to nothing, assess a minimum 1/2 cost per wheel... just wondering how other people play it or how they've seen it ruled at GTs.

[Randroid]

Turning is just that - turning in place. I don't see how a wheel after that 1/4 of your movement is gone allows for anything like you are describing.