Source: Warhammer Armies Project: Unofficial 9th Edition (v2.2)

Supporting Attacks
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Warriors in the second rank do not sit idly by whilst their comrades battle away, but muster forward to strike blows of their own. We refer to the attacks made by these models as supporting attacks.

A model can make a supporting attack if it is in the second rank and directly behind a friendly model that is itself fighting an enemy in base contact.

Supporting attacks cannot be made to the side or rear. Nor can they be made by models that are in base contact with enemies – they must fight the more immediate foe!

Of course, a warrior making a supporting attack is rather more constricted by the press of bodies than one who is face to face with their foe. To represent this, they can only ever make a single Attack, regardless of the number of Attacks on their profile, or any bonus Attacks they might otherwise be entitled to because of special rules or other unusual effects.

Supporting attacks are made against models in base contact with the front rank model that is being fought 'through'. If the front rank model is in base contact with two or more enemies with different profiles, the attacking player can choose which model to direct the supporting attack against (before dice are rolled).

supporting-attacks-1
Models (marked with dotted line) can make supporting attacks as they are directly behind a model attacking normally (marked with full line).
supporting-attacks-2
The models in base contact are fighting to their flank, so no supporting attacks can be made by these two models.

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