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Hi,

I'm new to 40k and have yet to play a game as I'm trying to finish painting my Ultramarines first so apologies if this seems a silly question or is in the wrong part of the forum. I have been reading the rulebook about rolling dice during the attack phase and was wondering how each dice roll is allocated. For instance if five Space Marines were firing on five Orks and there are two hits from the five dice that were rolled how do I decide which model had a hit?

You will want to read up on the wound allocation rules, but it goes something like this...

1) Pick one of your units to fire
2) Pick up and roll 1 die for every shot (some weapons get more than one shot) from 1 type of weapon.
3) Compare your rolls to the BS chart which will tell you what number you need to roll in order to hit.
4) Pick up all the dice that roll hits and roll to wound
5) Compare the weapon's strength with the target's toughness to figure out what you need to successfully wound.
6) Keep track of how many wounds are scored.
7) Go back to step 2 if there are any other weapons in the squad that you haven't shot yet (a tac squad might have bolters and a las cannon or some other mix of weapons).
8) The player being shot at then distributes the wounds amongst the squad that's being shot at following the wound allocation rules (every model must take 1 wound before any can take 2). These rules can get complex in some situations so read the rules carefully.
9) The player being shot rolls any saves that his models are entitled to. Saves are rolled in batches for all identical models (a marine squad might have 8 basic bolter marines, 1 marine with a las cannon and 1 sergeant with a power weapon. Each of these groups would be rolled separately if they were all assigned wounds).
10) Models are removed from the groups that failed (or didn't get) saves. In our example, if 3 bolter marines and the sergeant all failed their saves, any 3 bolter marines could be removed (chosen by the player getting shot) and the sergeant would also have to be removed.

Thanks for such a clear answer Phoenix. I understand now.