Assault question

[rallyfox]

The other day a friend of mine and I were playing a friendly and we came across this situation with my Dark Angels and his Orks.

I drew a picture to help explain.

During his assault phase his orks assaulted and charged my warlord, Ezekiel. At the end of his phase his Ork mob was spread out roughyl as in the picture, with only one Ork in base to base with Ezekiel. I had 2 different tac squads in the approximate position on either side of the now spread out Ork mob.

The rules say that you can't shoot into a unit that is locked in assault for various reasons like not wanting to hit your own guys, etc etc.... Did we miss something because with this layout, it seems kind of stupid to not be able to shoot into the mob of orks that are so spread out.

[Wolfshade]

You didn't miss anything, you can't shoot at them.

What I do find surprising is that the Orks didn't assault either tactical squad at the same time. Unless the whole point was to tie up the warlord and block the movement of the tacticals.

[Denzark]

At the end of his phase should not surviving orks have piled in 3"? Thus as unit coherency is 2" there would have been 1 possibly 2 orks more in btb...

[Wolfshade]

Quite possibly, I am not sure how you could end in that position, though even with the pile in move there would still be in a similar position and they still couldn't be shot.

[John Bower]

Quite possibly, I am not sure how you could end in that position, though even with the pile in move there would still be in a similar position and they still couldn't be shot.

I think I sort of can to a degree, after the first turn maybe they were too spread out to get into b2b, then the tac squads came out too late to be charged; and it hasn't got to their turn to charge yet. I certainly would be charging asap though, for a whole load of reasons it's better to charge orks than be charged by them.

[Da Gargoyle]

There is one more reason to charge like that. In 7th ed rules, if a challenge is issued by the target but there are no other troops in the target's squad, the whole unit still gets to hit him. Where as if the Orks had engaged any other unit only the two characters could strike at each other.