the_scotsman wrote:

gungo wrote:

Doohicky wrote:
I wonder what defensible will mean...

That could possibly be a bonus save to units being charged or better overwatch.
Scalable I assume means being able to go up floors
Breachable I would assume means walls etc can be moved through
Exposed position I have no idea as is it more exposed than being in the middle of a street?

The preview said terrain will affect to hit
My guess is defensible is -1 to hit from shooting?

Could be, true.

Also my guess defensible will only be player point paid buildings such as wall of martyrs, aegis defense line, bastion etc...
giving a reason to pay for buildings but no one will do unless the aegis Is dirt cheap
Which means we might see aegis defense line spam again :p

gungo wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

gungo wrote:

Doohicky wrote:
I wonder what defensible will mean...

That could possibly be a bonus save to units being charged or better overwatch.
Scalable I assume means being able to go up floors
Breachable I would assume means walls etc can be moved through
Exposed position I have no idea as is it more exposed than being in the middle of a street?

The preview said terrain will affect to hit
My guess is defensible is -1 to hit from shooting?

Could be, true.

Also my guess defensible will only be player point paid buildings such as wall of martyrs, aegis defense line, bastion etc...
giving a reason to pay for buildings but no one will do unless the aegis Is dirt cheap

Ruins are Defensible. Whatever it is, it's free.

Perhaps a reason for taking "large units" will be that they cover enough of a terrain piece/area so as to block move any enemy units trying to enter ? But then several small units will achieve the same result (unless a rule appears like "only one unit can enter")

the_scotsman wrote:
So, so far, our keywords are:

Light Cover - +1 sv vs shooting
Heavy Cover - +1sv vs non-charging melee
Obscuring - Blocks LOS if 5" or taller and not for Flyers or 18W+

Fairly obvious:

Unstable - Probably the dangerous terrain rule mentioned on stream
Scalable - Pretty clearly means you can climb it. It would be super cool IMO if climbing was given some better clearer rules than the current "you can just move up it" system.
Exposed Position - Probably a codification of the recent rule where if you're on top of a thing with no protection you don't get cover from it, given it's on an Armored Container
Breachable - I would guess that Breachable is a codification of the "infantry swarms and beasts can go through this" rule

Non-obvious:

"Dense Cover" - This was described on-stream as "Terrain where the terrain itself is blocking the bullets vs terrain that just makes it harder to see you like a forest which would be light cover." TBH I would LOVE to see the return of the 4+ cover save thru this rule, that would help out light infantry a ton.

"Defensible" - no clue.Could be Apoc-style ruin embarkation. Could be some kind of bonus vs chargers or something. Could be units inside it can shoot out of it?

They also mentioned terrain that slows down movement on stream, so I would expect some kind of "Impeding" keyword for area terrain.

For some reason defensible makes me think of the bunker scene in Starship Troops, it makes me think of units behind barricades still being able to fire into the attacker in melee.

the_scotsman wrote:

gungo wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

gungo wrote:

Doohicky wrote:
I wonder what defensible will mean...

That could possibly be a bonus save to units being charged or better overwatch.
Scalable I assume means being able to go up floors
Breachable I would assume means walls etc can be moved through
Exposed position I have no idea as is it more exposed than being in the middle of a street?

The preview said terrain will affect to hit
My guess is defensible is -1 to hit from shooting?

Could be, true.

Also my guess defensible will only be player point paid buildings such as wall of martyrs, aegis defense line, bastion etc...
giving a reason to pay for buildings but no one will do unless the aegis Is dirt cheap

Ruins are Defensible. Whatever it is, it's free.

Well that’s Dumb... there needs to be a reason to buy buildings or people just won’t do it.
We don’t know the rules but I would think something as strong as -1 to hit vs shooting should be mainly attached to defensible terrains like wall of Martyrs and less ruin like

 BrotherGecko wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

KurtAngle2 wrote:
Hordes are definitely fethed considering that they are keeping the +1 to saving throws

Yup, cover will continue to benefit power armour more than geq or weaker saves. Hordes are going to have it bad.

.

7 editions of people complaining cover saves unfairly benefited low armor save units. 7 editions of people saying a marine in cover should be harder to kill than a guardsmen in cover.

...now we are here.

lol

Well I wasn't one of them, and I play csm. I liked how the old system made marines want to move until the big stuff came out. Marines shouldn't hide from things like lasguns. That's the entire point of power armour.

 addnid wrote:
Perhaps a reason for taking "large units" will be that they cover enough of a terrain piece/area so as to block move any enemy units trying to enter ? But then several small units will achieve the same result (unless a rule appears like "only one unit can enter")

Not if they do the whole "unit of 30 guys costs less than 3 units of 10" gimmick we've seen in a few other systems. That's my hope anyway.

Can monsters and vehicules go through terrain, or not at all, and if they can, under chat conditions ? On a dense table, will it be very hard to reach an objective your opponent will have purposefully placed in the middle of terrain bits so as only infantry can get there ? Quite a few questions about movement + terrain

Shooting we see better now.

For assault, can't remember if they said something like bases can be further appart and still fight one another

 addnid wrote:
Perhaps a reason for taking "large units" will be that they cover enough of a terrain piece/area so as to block move any enemy units trying to enter ? But then several small units will achieve the same result (unless a rule appears like "only one unit can enter")

Yeah, hard to say. They have already done one big thing I wanted - basically, to boil all terrain into two categories that seemingly dictate how you claim cover from the piece (Obstacle and Area). Now, the best thing they can do in my eyes is to make it much more permissive, and to put some kind of rule in place that causes terrain to be beneficial to light troops rather than elites as it currently does.

Cityfight rules in 8th were...decent, but the big issue with them was that elite MSU was even MORE disprorportionately great with cover than it is now. a dev squad on an upper level got +2sv, -1 to hit them, +1AP on all their guns vs everything below them. Bonkers. The universal "Obscured" rule where you basically got intervening cover back was a huge improvement, but I really hated the light/heavy system that gave you even more rewards for being a high-sv unit.want to reduce a marine to a 3+, better have -2AP... Honestly, I'm hugely relieved to see Heavy Cover is not that.

So their attempt at terrain rules are worse somehow than the fairly decent terrain rules from 5th? If tank shock ain't back I can't do it, even command and conquer lets tanks run over infantry... rather than a single grot stopping a baneblade. The pseudo abstract terrain rules interacting with total line of sight just seems silly, I don't love flyers hiding behind los blocking terrain but then again why put them in the game then?

There's a certain principle skinner nature to the terrain rules. We can't let poorly designed/conceived/constructed terrain full of keyholes affect los, no, it's the los that's wrong! This just screams problem. Like sorry, we all bought the cool sector mechanicum refinery terrain only to realize as cool as it looks on the board it really doesn't do much past that for the game save maybe offer a few infantry some cover if you still play a game where terrain matters like 30k. The joke too is given how 5 inch terrain works, the high benefit may be totally gone because they monkeyed too much with los in the abstract direction.





As cool as this thing is, its issues with line of sight are readily apparent by looking at it. GW's route is to re-write los to be subjective as the worse possible way of dealing with objective problems. The answer to bad terrain is having some good terrain too, not have us pretend everything is good los blocking terrain. I mean this terrain piece looks awesome, it should be on a board, just maybe on in the center, get some shipping crates.

 addnid wrote:
Can monsters and vehicules go through terrain, or not at all, and if they can, under chat conditions ?

dunno. All we know is that they seemingly can't (normally) gain cover from Obstacle terrain.

Since area terrain seemingly includes swamps, craters and the like, if you had me guess I"d say vehicles can enter Area by default, and maybe "Breachible' trait is applied to put the usual "Infantry can go thru, tanks cannot" restriction on stuff like ruins.

I would also presume that "impassable' terrain is achieved by making it an obstacle without the scalable trait.

gungo wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

gungo wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

gungo wrote:

Doohicky wrote:
I wonder what defensible will mean...

That could possibly be a bonus save to units being charged or better overwatch.
Scalable I assume means being able to go up floors
Breachable I would assume means walls etc can be moved through
Exposed position I have no idea as is it more exposed than being in the middle of a street?

The preview said terrain will affect to hit
My guess is defensible is -1 to hit from shooting?

Could be, true.

Also my guess defensible will only be player point paid buildings such as wall of martyrs, aegis defense line, bastion etc...
giving a reason to pay for buildings but no one will do unless the aegis Is dirt cheap

Ruins are Defensible. Whatever it is, it's free.

Well that’s Dumb... there needs to be a reason to buy buildings or people just won’t do it.
We don’t know the rules but I would think something as strong as -1 to hit vs shooting should be mainly attached to defensible terrains like wall of Martyrs and less ruin like

Didn't they say something about buildings giving you bonuses? Like Imperial statuary helping with morale or a skull alter helping khorne units somehow.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

gungo wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

gungo wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

gungo wrote:

Doohicky wrote:
I wonder what defensible will mean...

That could possibly be a bonus save to units being charged or better overwatch.
Scalable I assume means being able to go up floors
Breachable I would assume means walls etc can be moved through
Exposed position I have no idea as is it more exposed than being in the middle of a street?

The preview said terrain will affect to hit
My guess is defensible is -1 to hit from shooting?

Could be, true.

Also my guess defensible will only be player point paid buildings such as wall of martyrs, aegis defense line, bastion etc...
giving a reason to pay for buildings but no one will do unless the aegis Is dirt cheap

Ruins are Defensible. Whatever it is, it's free.

Well that’s Dumb... there needs to be a reason to buy buildings or people just won’t do it.
We don’t know the rules but I would think something as strong as -1 to hit vs shooting should be mainly attached to defensible terrains like wall of Martyrs and less ruin like

Didn't they say something about buildings giving you bonuses? Like Imperial statuary helping with morale or a skull alter helping khorne units somehow.

Yeah. No clue how that works into any of this.

the_scotsman wrote:

 addnid wrote:
Can monsters and vehicules go through terrain, or not at all, and if they can, under chat conditions ?

dunno. All we know is that they seemingly can't (normally) gain cover from Obstacle terrain.

Since area terrain seemingly includes swamps, craters and the like, if you had me guess I"d say vehicles can enter Area by default, and maybe "Breachible' trait is applied to put the usual "Infantry can go thru, tanks cannot" restriction on stuff like ruins.

I would also presume that "impassable' terrain is achieved by making it an obstacle without the scalable trait.

Ah yes, I have high hopes that much stuff will be breachable (if your hunch turns out good). I mean I am afraid of vehicle & MC dominance this edition, but I'd rather we move from 8th ED "flying stuff goes everywhere, non flying stuff gets blocked by a brick on the ground". Else it will will be flying vehicle and MC dominance, which is even worse for diversity

Does anyone actually understand the line of sight rules?

I mean, does true line of sight exist at all?

The obscured section would certainly imply that Aircraft and models with 18W and up can be seen even through walls and other obscuring terrain, no matter how high the actual terrain piece is. So, even if you don't see the Knight, you can still always shoot it.

What kind of hybrid LOS are we dealing with? Does everyone else still follow true LOS?

 Therion wrote:
Does everyone else still follow true LOS?

It works well in 30k, provided one uses some los blocking terrain. I mean, I had a bunch of gw ruins with keyholes, I blocked them, instead of trying to write rules around having to model something effectively.

8th being but hurt about los was because 8th lost any sort of wound pool or limitation, you know, only being able to kill what you can see. And gw's been chasing its tail on that one ever since. 30k, if I only see 5 out 30 dudes, I'm only killing 5. Sometimes terrain isn't the only problem, bad rules don't help.

No matter how large your terrain feature, you can't hide a knight. Unless you can somehow get a large enough terrain feature that doesn't have the Obscuring rule? If such things still exist?

I’m starting to notice a pattern of +1-1 on everything. I’m reserving judgment tell I get the full book but it feels like going to need a piece of paper to keep track of all the up down on these 1. What’s the point though if it’s ultimately capt at +-1.

SirGrotzalot wrote:
I’m starting to notice a pattern of +1-1 on everything. I’m reserving judgment tell I get the full book but it feels like going to need a piece of paper to keep track of all the up down on these 1. What’s the point though if it’s ultimately capt at +-1.

Maybe they'll lovingly sell us terrain cards

SirGrotzalot wrote:
I’m starting to notice a pattern of +1-1 on everything. I’m reserving judgment tell I get the full book but it feels like going to need a piece of paper to keep track of all the up down on these 1. What’s the point though if it’s ultimately capt at +-1.

As has been explained multiple times and explicitly called out early on by GW themselves:
Rolls are capped at +/- 1. That does not mean that you cannot cancel out the modifiers however. They also specifically called out that the "+/- 1" cap does not apply to stat blocks. Just to modifiers on rolls.

They specifically used Alaitoc Flyers as an example, citing the -2 to hit from Supersonic and Alaitoc stacking...and then a +1 to hit vs Fly cancelling one of them out, still letting you get a -1 to be hit.

 Abadabadoobaddon wrote:
No matter how large your terrain feature, you can't hide a knight. Unless you can somehow get a large enough terrain feature that doesn't have the Obscuring rule? If such things still exist?

From my understanding, you can still hide models behind cover even if they're over 18 wounds, you just need to be 100% hidden.

So an enormous solid building with no gaps would block the Knight, because even though the obscured rule doesn't work for it, you literally can't draw LOS to it.

Might be wrong though.

 Kanluwen wrote:

SirGrotzalot wrote:
I’m starting to notice a pattern of +1-1 on everything. I’m reserving judgment tell I get the full book but it feels like going to need a piece of paper to keep track of all the up down on these 1. What’s the point though if it’s ultimately capt at +-1.

As has been explained multiple times and explicitly called out early on by GW themselves:
Rolls are capped at +/- 1. That does not mean that you cannot cancel out the modifiers however. They also specifically called out that the "+/- 1" cap does not apply to stat blocks. Just to modifiers on rolls.

They specifically used Alaitoc Flyers as an example, citing the -2 to hit from Supersonic and Alaitoc stacking...and then a +1 to hit vs Fly cancelling one of them out, still letting you get a -1 to be hit.

That was regarding to-hit rolls.

While I like the "Obscuring" terrain to get more straight LoS blocking in there, the rest of it just seems like more rules details, rather than anything that will particularly meaningfully impact many of the game's more pressing issues with lethality and alpha strikes, or taking shots as silly things like banners or sword tips. Hopefully we'll see more detail on that front, and wound allocation.

So, now you have to debate with your opponent about every piece of terrain, which type of cover it gets, and what trait(s) it gets ?? There are two cover types, and at least four traits

 Vaktathi wrote:
While I like the "Obscuring" terrain to get more straight LoS blocking in there, the rest of it just seems like more rules details, rather than anything that will particularly meaningfully impact many of the game's more pressing issues with lethality and alpha strikes, or taking shots as silly things like banners or sword tips. Hopefully we'll see more detail on that front, and wound allocation.

I think there may be more detail about LoS stuff to come later. I want to say I remember something in one of the streams where "Winged Carnifexes" were called out about the wings.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
As others have said, just being present on the board has an intrinsic value, regardless of Stats and relative ability.

Cultists, even at 6 points are pretty cheap, especially in their wider army setting (another factor). They’re pretty much ideal for holding backfield objectives, and deflecting charges. That in turn affects what I can do with the rest of my force.

It’ll also factor in to how terrain works in the new rules, which I believe is today’s topic?

Consider the humble Gobbo in WHFB. Traditionally they were dirt cheap, because you needed a lot of them. They largely relied on static combat res bonuses, and their Fanatics. But, they were also for a long time highly vulnerable to Routs.

See, it used to be in WHFB that if your General snuffed it, your whole army had to take a panic test. Every unit not immune to breaking had to test. When you had maybe Ld6 at most, that was a real problem for Gobbos.

Then....the death of the general was toned down. And as a result, Gobbos went up in points, because without that interaction, they were a slightly nastier prospect to fit, as I couldn’t ripple panic most of their army off the board.

I am reminded of that battle report where one gobbo fanatic killed over 1000 points.

 Kanluwen wrote:

SirGrotzalot wrote:
I’m starting to notice a pattern of +1-1 on everything. I’m reserving judgment tell I get the full book but it feels like going to need a piece of paper to keep track of all the up down on these 1. What’s the point though if it’s ultimately capt at +-1.

As has been explained multiple times and explicitly called out early on by GW themselves:
Rolls are capped at +/- 1. That does not mean that you cannot cancel out the modifiers however. They also specifically called out that the "+/- 1" cap does not apply to stat blocks. Just to modifiers on rolls.

They specifically used Alaitoc Flyers as an example, citing the -2 to hit from Supersonic and Alaitoc stacking...and then a +1 to hit vs Fly cancelling one of them out, still letting you get a -1 to be hit.

Even if you didn't have the bonus to hit though it's still capped at a -1.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

SirGrotzalot wrote:
I’m starting to notice a pattern of +1-1 on everything. I’m reserving judgment tell I get the full book but it feels like going to need a piece of paper to keep track of all the up down on these 1. What’s the point though if it’s ultimately capt at +-1.

As has been explained multiple times and explicitly called out early on by GW themselves:
Rolls are capped at +/- 1. That does not mean that you cannot cancel out the modifiers however. They also specifically called out that the "+/- 1" cap does not apply to stat blocks. Just to modifiers on rolls.

They specifically used Alaitoc Flyers as an example, citing the -2 to hit from Supersonic and Alaitoc stacking...and then a +1 to hit vs Fly cancelling one of them out, still letting you get a -1 to be hit.

Even if you didn't have the bonus to hit though it's still capped at a -1.

But if it wasn't an Alaitoc flyer, you'd be rolling To Hit as normal.

 p5freak wrote:
So, now you have to debate with your opponent about every piece of terrain, which type of cover it gets, and what trait(s) it gets ?? There are two cover types, and at least four traits

GW terrain will have that all spelled out in the book. Tournaments that use non-GW terrain will have it all spelled out in the tournament pack.

If I'm having a friendly home game, I'm probably not playing against someone I have to debate about that sort of thing anyway.

So by the new obscuration rules this two miniatures can't see each other?

Anyone else notice that Obscuring also turns ruins into big pillars of nope?

That's a fairly solid solution to the wings n' banners problem.Saves you having to specifically call out 'wings and sails and spikes and antennas and sloths and fruit bats and bananas and pool noodles that extend over a model cannot be drawn LOS to"

Imagine just using terrain that obscures los instead of having to write that it does somewhere. I mean why use your eyes when you can argue over whether you guys defined terrain piece x as having obscure rule during y our lengthy pre game discussion of terrain.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galas wrote:
So by the new obscuration rules this two miniatures can't see each other?

Spoiler:

That's my reading of it as well ya.

 Galas wrote:
So by the new obscuration rules this two miniatures can't see each other?

Spoiler:

Correct, assuming that middle thing has "obscuring" and is over 5" high.

the_scotsman wrote:
Anyone else notice that Obscuring also turns ruins into big pillars of nope?

That's a fairly solid solution to the wings n' banners problem.Saves you having to specifically call out 'wings and sails and spikes and antennas and sloths and fruit bats and bananas and pool noodles that extend over a model cannot be drawn LOS to"

I feel that's extra less necessary when it comes to at least the new gw ruin models. even a two level one is massively tall compared to the old gw ruins. If anything this seems to mean making one more than one level isn't very useful.

the_scotsman wrote:
Anyone else notice that Obscuring also turns ruins into big pillars of nope?

That's a fairly solid solution to the wings n' banners problem.Saves you having to specifically call out 'wings and sails and spikes and antennas and sloths and fruit bats and bananas and pool noodles that extend over a model cannot be drawn LOS to"

Only if the wings etc are vertical rather than horizontal. If your wing tip is hanging off the ruin horizontally, you can still be shot to oblivion even if it has obscuring. It's only if the wing tip is vertical that you're safe.

yukishiro1 wrote:

 Galas wrote:
So by the new obscuration rules this two miniatures can't see each other?

Spoiler:

Correct, assuming that middle thing has "obscuring" and is over 5" high.

True, which 5 inches isn't much in terms of a lot of terrain thats out there.

Clearly, the best example of obscuring vs non-obscuring.

yukishiro1 wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Anyone else notice that Obscuring also turns ruins into big pillars of nope?

That's a fairly solid solution to the wings n' banners problem.Saves you having to specifically call out 'wings and sails and spikes and antennas and sloths and fruit bats and bananas and pool noodles that extend over a model cannot be drawn LOS to"

Only if the wings etc are vertical rather than horizontal. If your wing tip is hanging off the ruin horizontally, you can still be shot to oblivion even if it has obscuring. It's only if the wing tip is vertical that you're safe.

Ya true. So tall slender models get more help than the larger wider ones.

Ultimately the reveals have been very small and not very revealing. More like appetizers if anything. Problem is that I am hungry and these meager reveals are not enough.

This also means that, for example, a land raider will be able to sit on one side of a ruin and fire all its weapons at a knight, which is unable to shoot back. For the first time ever in 40k to my knowledge, we have non-reciprocal LOS.

It also that RAW a flyer can always be shot at because it's up in the air and can be seen...but it can't shoot back at the land raider on the other side of the building, because even though it's up in the air way above the building, it's a flyer and is therefore blind.

I.e. take that guy's picture from a few posts back with two infantry models standing on buildings on either side of a low wall. If they're both infantry, neither can see the other. If one is a flyer, the infantry model can see it, but the flyer can't see the infantry model.

yukishiro1 wrote:
This also means that, for example, a land raider will be able to sit on one side of a ruin and fire all its weapons at a knight, which is unable to shoot back. For the first time ever in 40k to my knowledge, we have non-reciprocal LOS.

It also that RAW a flyer can always be shot at because it's up in the air and can be seen...but it can't shoot back at the land raider on the other side of the building, because even though it's up in the air way above the building, it's a flyer and is therefore blind.

I.e. take that guy's picture from a few posts back with two infantry models standing on buildings on either side of a low wall. If they're both infantry, neither can see the other. If one is a flyer, the infantry model can see it, but the flyer can't see the infantry model.

Why even have flyers if we're all gonna be asked to pretend that they're somewhere they're not at all times. The old rules worked well enough back in 6-7th, you actually had to care about arc of fire and angle of attack.

yukishiro1 wrote:
This also means that, for example, a land raider will be able to sit on one side of a ruin and fire all its weapons at a knight, which is unable to shoot back. For the first time ever in 40k to my knowledge, we have non-reciprocal LOS.

Not true, if the land raider is in obscuring terrain. It cant be seen, but it can still be targeted

I like it, less punishment for people modeling things to look cool is a bonus IMO.

People were trying to do this with how they made the terrain anyway, it’s nice that they saved us time and made it the rules.

Also limits fliers and super heavies a bit more which is nice. Especially since I expect the super heavy rule will become they are allowed to shoot out of combat,

 Asmodai wrote:

GW terrain will have that all spelled out in the book. Tournaments that use non-GW terrain will have it all spelled out in the tournament pack.

If I'm having a friendly home game, I'm probably not playing against someone I have to debate about that sort of thing anyway.

But thats what you have to do. When setting up a battlefield, you and your opponent(s) decide which terrain traits will be applied to each piece of scenery. And there are at least 7 traits shown, there may be more.

 Leth wrote:
I like it, less punishment for people modeling things to look cool is a bonus IMO.

People were trying to do this with how they made the terrain anyway, it’s nice that they saved us time and made it the rules.

Also limits fliers and super heavies a bit more which is nice. Especially since I expect the super heavy rule will become they are allowed to shoot out of combat,

Um, that's already what most super heavys do. At least the tanks.

Now that vehicles can fire ranged weapons into combat I assume if you are behind an obsticle you would still get the bonus to saves?

Pretty sure most people will go “this is hill, this is ruins, this is forest, sound good? Okay cool”

 Leth wrote:
Pretty sure most people will go “this is hill, this is ruins, this is forest, sound good? Okay cool”

And what if my melee army opponent wants only light cover for everything, and i with my shooting army want light and heavy cover for every 10-15 terrain pieces ? And thats just two traits. We dont know what scalable, breachable, defensible, exposed position is, yet. There could be even more traits.

Now i know why points are going up, and the battlefield size is reduced, to give you time to debate about terrain traits.

So. No help to hordes in terrain. As is it became easier to get los compared to 8th ed past couple years(actually from the start. The 1st floor blocks los was used here from the get-go).

Very dull "update" for Sisters of Silence....

 p5freak wrote:

 Leth wrote:
Pretty sure most people will go “this is hill, this is ruins, this is forest, sound good? Okay cool”

And what if my melee army opponent wants only light cover for everything, and i with my shooting army want light and heavy cover for every 10-15 terrain pieces ? And thats just two traits. We dont know what scalable, breachable, defensible, exposed position is, yet. There could be even more traits.

Now i know why points are going up, and the battlefield size is reduced, to give you time to debate about terrain traits.

I mean what if your opponent currently wants zero terrain on the table?

Personally, my solution to this person would be the same as what I assume is probably yours: Don't play that guy.

I think we need to see the full terrain rules before compliments or criticism, as this is not enough to really assess the situation. I could definitely see there being rules to address models on top of terrain seeing one another, for example. I could also see GW overlooking something like that. All it would take is a single sentence somewhere to dramatically change how a given terrain rules works or interacts.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I like that cultists don't get the benefit. It is very fluffy and underlines their role as expendable scrubs. Plus, if it would not benefit them much anyway it is also not much of a loss. If it would benefit them significantly... well, there's the reason for them not to have it.

I could see a strategem for 'veteran cultists' that lets a unit get included though, maybe with some other benefit to represent CSM-aspirants.

Fluffy he says:
Alpha legion, and IW would disagree.
As should you know, the bile ones because bile would make them into new man, respectively should make them into new man.

That you described those as exceptions already proves my point. And is a bit willfully obtuse to pretend factions could not simply be given a rule that includes cultists in their benefits.

 Galas wrote:
So by the new obscuration rules this two miniatures can't see each other?

Spoiler:

I anxiously await the new "I'm not touching you!!!" exception to the rule for determining who is in range for close combat.

 p5freak wrote:

 Leth wrote:
Pretty sure most people will go “this is hill, this is ruins, this is forest, sound good? Okay cool”

And what if my melee army opponent wants only light cover for everything, and i with my shooting army want light and heavy cover for every 10-15 terrain pieces ? And thats just two traits. We dont know what scalable, breachable, defensible, exposed position is, yet. There could be even more traits.

Now i know why points are going up, and the battlefield size is reduced, to give you time to debate about terrain traits.

Well if you actually read the article you'd know that GW has included a series of presets in the rulebook for things like Ruins and Armoured Containers that give designated terrain a set of the traits, it really shouldn't be hard to decide on whats a ruin, whats a forrest and whats a barricade. As for your example, the two people in it are acting like a pair of pig headed jerks that no one else in their right mind would want to play against, so they deserve each other.

Maybe to solve this kind of immersion issue, you could just...not give the tiny little block the "Ruins" trait, therefore not giving it the "Obscuring" trait because clearly, it's not a thing you could normally see through, so why would you need to use the abstracted obscuring rule for it...?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Is this just like gunline players who don't want to give up their "I can see you through a tiny window/hole in that ruin so I can shoot with all my guns" thing? Like, I don't get it. I do not get the complaint with including an OPTIONAL abstracted LOS blocking trait that you CAN apply to your terrain if it doesn't satisfactorily block TLOS.

 Imateria wrote:

Well if you actually read the article you'd know that GW has included a series of presets in the rulebook for things like Ruins and Armoured Containers that give designated terrain a set of the traits, it really shouldn't be hard to decide on whats a ruin, whats a forrest and whats a barricade. As for your example, the two people in it are acting like a pair of pig headed jerks that no one else in their right mind would want to play against, so they deserve each other.

You didnt read the article. It says

When setting up a battlefield, you and your opponent(s) decide which terrain traits will be applied to each piece of scenery.

What you see later are guidelines, those arent mandatory.

To make life easy, the Warhammer 40,000 Core Book includes some handy guidelines for which terrain traits to apply to the most common pieces of terrain.

Honestly I quite like what I've seen from todays article, it seems there's going to be a lot more nuance in terrain than we currently have.

It seems that most of the criticisms are coming from people that either haven't read properly or think that ITC's magic boxes plus massed giant L shapes cancer is a good thing. Sure, I don't think it's going to be perfect, GW seems to struggle to get near ideal at the best of times, but it's defintiely a step up.

Well 8th already needed tons of los blocking to work. 9th is just increasing so actually reducing it feels weird. Well would except since gw wants to kill light infantry from game makes sense

 p5freak wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
This also means that, for example, a land raider will be able to sit on one side of a ruin and fire all its weapons at a knight, which is unable to shoot back. For the first time ever in 40k to my knowledge, we have non-reciprocal LOS.

Not true, if the land raider is in obscuring terrain. It cant be seen, but it can still be targeted

Not if it's inside the ruin. But if it's on the other side, it can shoot away to its hearts content at the knight, which cannot shoot back.

I.e. this photo, replace the big mek with a land raider. Land raider can shoot wazbom, wazbom cannot shoot back at landraider.



Non-reciprocal LOS is a big can of worms they are opening here that is very unlikely to lead to good places.

Add to that that melee is getting a further nerf compared to the current ITC rules - to the point that you basically never actually want to be inside a ruin instead of on the other side of it - and this is really looking like the tank edition.

 p5freak wrote:

 Imateria wrote:

Well if you actually read the article you'd know that GW has included a series of presets in the rulebook for things like Ruins and Armoured Containers that give designated terrain a set of the traits, it really shouldn't be hard to decide on whats a ruin, whats a forrest and whats a barricade. As for your example, the two people in it are acting like a pair of pig headed jerks that no one else in their right mind would want to play against, so they deserve each other.

You didnt read the article. It says

When setting up a battlefield, you and your opponent(s) decide which terrain traits will be applied to each piece of scenery.

What you see later are guidelines, those arent mandatory.

To make life easy, the Warhammer 40,000 Core Book includes some handy guidelines for which terrain traits to apply to the most common pieces of terrain.

It's almost like you don't understand that is a thing already. I haven't had a tournament game where I didn't have a quick conversation with my opponent (usually lasting seconds) about what does and does not count as ruins. As long as you are not playing against a complete jackass then this is never a problem and generally follows common sense, and if your opponent is a jackass then the problem generally isn't the rules to start with.

 Mr Morden wrote:
Now that vehicles can fire ranged weapons into combat I assume if you are behind an obsticle you would still get the bonus to saves?

This is probably a fair question. I'm going to assume that the answer is yes until we see an exception saying otherwise.

I must admit the no-reciprocal LoS thing is nondoubt going to cause issues.
I'm sure as I have seen some of the playtesters think this way before with Magic Boxes being described as "great for the game". They weren't this feels like more of that faulty logic, aslong as it's been considered and such models have seen smaller point increases fine, otherwise they are going to be heavily overcosted I suspect.

 Imateria wrote:

It's almost like you don't understand that is a thing already. I haven't had a tournament game where I didn't have a quick conversation with my opponent (usually lasting seconds) about what does and does not count as ruins. As long as you are not playing against a complete jackass then this is never a problem and generally follows common sense, and if your opponent is a jackass then the problem generally isn't the rules to start with.

Its very simple now. Ruin yes, or no. What a ruin does is clearly defined. Now you, and your opponent have to decide which from at least 7 traits you assign to that ruin.

 Imateria wrote:

 p5freak wrote:

 Imateria wrote:

Well if you actually read the article you'd know that GW has included a series of presets in the rulebook for things like Ruins and Armoured Containers that give designated terrain a set of the traits, it really shouldn't be hard to decide on whats a ruin, whats a forrest and whats a barricade. As for your example, the two people in it are acting like a pair of pig headed jerks that no one else in their right mind would want to play against, so they deserve each other.

You didnt read the article. It says

When setting up a battlefield, you and your opponent(s) decide which terrain traits will be applied to each piece of scenery.

What you see later are guidelines, those arent mandatory.

To make life easy, the Warhammer 40,000 Core Book includes some handy guidelines for which terrain traits to apply to the most common pieces of terrain.

It's almost like you don't understand that is a thing already. I haven't had a tournament game where I didn't have a quick conversation with my opponent (usually lasting seconds) about what does and does not count as ruins. As long as you are not playing against a complete jackass then this is never a problem and generally follows common sense, and if your opponent is a jackass then the problem generally isn't the rules to start with.

I have to say, I don't understand this point at all. Why not also leave it up to the players to determine who goes first? Why not let the players decide what that model's armor save is? Players can come to an agreement about what the result of the D6 roll was. Why do we need these silly rules things, everything should just be based on player agreement!

Including terrain rule with only guidelines and no actual rules for how to resolve disputes isn't going to minimize disputes. It's always the rule in 40k that you can decide whatever you want. That's not a rationale for not providing a balanced framework for how to set up tables when the players have trouble agreeing because one person has a shooty army and the other has a melee army. "You have to bank on terrain doing nothing when building your list unless your opponent agrees otherwise" is not going to promote predictable and balanced list construction.

Basically it just means that TOs have to come up with rules for how to do terrain because GW didn't bother to do it themselves. And while that's ok...it's completely at odds with the rest of the philosophy of 9th about spelling things out and unifying the game.

It also naturally creates a potential flashpoint at the start of every single game. Most people won't argue because most 40k players are gentlemen. But why create that potential for argument when you could have resolved it by just having a base set of rules to apply in the absence of agreement, like they have for literally every other part of the game?

Surely a tournament would define the rules for particular terrain on a table?

There are bunch of pre-written terrain categories. The agreeing thing is for when you have some custom build terrain and doesn't neatly fir into any of those categories.

Anyway the terrain rules seem good, the edition continues to look promising.

IanVanCheese wrote:

 Abadabadoobaddon wrote:
No matter how large your terrain feature, you can't hide a knight. Unless you can somehow get a large enough terrain feature that doesn't have the Obscuring rule? If such things still exist?

From my understanding, you can still hide models behind cover even if they're over 18 wounds, you just need to be 100% hidden.

So an enormous solid building with no gaps would block the Knight, because even though the obscured rule doesn't work for it, you literally can't draw LOS to it.

Might be wrong though.

"Models that are on or within this terrain feature can be seen and targeted normally. Aircraft models, and models with a Wounds (W) characteristic of 18 or more, are visible and can be targeted even if this terrain feature is in-between it and the firing model (note that the reverse is not true)."

It doesn't say aircraft and models with 18 wounds can be targeted normally if the terrain feature is in-between. It says they are visible and can be targeted if the terrain feature is in-between. So if you're shooting at an 18 wound model, any Obscuring terrain is treated as if it weren't there.

 Abadabadoobaddon wrote:

IanVanCheese wrote:

 Abadabadoobaddon wrote:
No matter how large your terrain feature, you can't hide a knight. Unless you can somehow get a large enough terrain feature that doesn't have the Obscuring rule? If such things still exist?

From my understanding, you can still hide models behind cover even if they're over 18 wounds, you just need to be 100% hidden.

So an enormous solid building with no gaps would block the Knight, because even though the obscured rule doesn't work for it, you literally can't draw LOS to it.

Might be wrong though.

"Models that are on or within this terrain feature can be seen and targeted normally. Aircraft models, and models with a Wounds (W) characteristic of 18 or more, are visible and can be targeted even if this terrain feature is in-between it and the firing model (note that the reverse is not true)."

It doesn't say aircraft and models with 18 wounds can be targeted normally if the terrain feature is in-between. It says they are visible and can be targeted if the terrain feature is in-between. So if you're shooting at an 18 wound model, any Obscuring terrain is treated as if it weren't there.

That’s my reading of it too. But I think it could do with being clarified.

Its sounds like 9th has no definition of LOS at all, but is instead defined by the terrain placed on the board. If you remove all terrain from the board, all models are visible and in LOS. it is when you start placing "Obscuring" terrain on the table that you start creating firing lanes. If the Obscuring object is between you and my army, my army cannot fire at it, unless it is a Flyer or has 18+ Wounds.

Just some thoughts. Obviously, we haven't seen 9th's LOS rules or targeting rules, so hopefully there are more rules that make these distinctions come more into focus.

Ok, so the brand new 'immersive' terrain rules are...

Hills... do nothing.
Obstacles... +1 save vs ranged
Area terrain and buildings (I guess) are whatever their many possible traits say they are.

Being in 'heavy cover' protects against melee, except against chargers... which actually hurts my brain a little. Sheltering behind spiked battlements doesn't protect you against charging loonies, but does protect you when they carefully consolidate past the spikes. Ok then.

Obscuring is... a function of terrain height, not density. OK... so if I have a unit of 1.5" tall models behind a group of three 4.5" trees, they can be seen, but if they're behind three 5.4" trees, they're completely hidden. >.>

Similarly, if I've got a 10" tall model with 16 Wounds on its profile, it can't be seen behind 5" trees, but if it has 18 wounds but is only 4" tall, it can be seen. Right.

I get that this is for gameplay, not tabletop appearance, but this is absurdly gamey nonsense.

And of course, if a model's base slightly overlaps with the terrain feature, it can be seen. Of course it can.



Bonus points for traits not appearing in the same order in the example ruins and armored containers.
If you're going to have that many traits, alphabetize them, or order them somehow. 'Scaleable, Breachable, Light Cover etc' and 'Light Cover, Scaleable, Exposed Position' makes my teeth ache.

Voss wrote:


Obscuring is... a function of terrain height, not density. OK... so if I have a unit of 1.5" tall models behind a group of three 4.5" trees, they can be seen, but if they're behind three 5.4" trees, they're completely hidden. >.>

Similarly, if I've got a 10" tall model with 16 Wounds on its profile, it can't be seen behind 5" trees, but if it has 18 wounds but is only 4" tall, it can be seen. Right.

Didn't they say something about terrain having footprints?

 puma713 wrote:

Voss wrote:


Obscuring is... a function of terrain height, not density. OK... so if I have a unit of 1.5" tall models behind a group of three 4.5" trees, they can be seen, but if they're behind three 5.4" trees, they're completely hidden. >.>

Similarly, if I've got a 10" tall model with 16 Wounds on its profile, it can't be seen behind 5" trees, but if it has 18 wounds but is only 4" tall, it can be seen. Right.

Didn't they say something about terrain having footprints?

They didn't use that term specifically in the article, but I assume so. Why?

It does make me wonder though, couldn't TFG just argue that none of this terrain is "Obscuring" and therefore, his flyers and/or knights can't be targeted by the rules now?

 puma713 wrote:
It does make me wonder though, couldn't TFG just argue that none of this terrain is "Obscuring" and therefore, his flyers and/or knights can't be targeted by the rules now?

No, because non-Obscuring terrain doesn't block line of sight. All that would mean is his entire army can be targeted.

If, for example, your ruins aren't 5" tall (which includes a lot of ruins from older starter sets, which you'll find in store terrain collections), they don't block LOS.

Voss wrote:

 puma713 wrote:

Voss wrote:


Obscuring is... a function of terrain height, not density. OK... so if I have a unit of 1.5" tall models behind a group of three 4.5" trees, they can be seen, but if they're behind three 5.4" trees, they're completely hidden. >.>

Similarly, if I've got a 10" tall model with 16 Wounds on its profile, it can't be seen behind 5" trees, but if it has 18 wounds but is only 4" tall, it can be seen. Right.

Didn't they say something about terrain having footprints?

They didn't use that term specifically in the article, but I assume so. Why?

Your examples made it seem that you thought it was silly that a forest (footprint) of shorter trees couldn't obscure something, but a forest of taller trees could. Also, you and your opponent could easily say that a forest isn't obscuring and just forego these details.

 p5freak wrote:

 Imateria wrote:

It's almost like you don't understand that is a thing already. I haven't had a tournament game where I didn't have a quick conversation with my opponent (usually lasting seconds) about what does and does not count as ruins. As long as you are not playing against a complete jackass then this is never a problem and generally follows common sense, and if your opponent is a jackass then the problem generally isn't the rules to start with.

Its very simple now. Ruin yes, or no. What a ruin does is clearly defined. Now you, and your opponent have to decide which from at least 7 traits you assign to that ruin.

I'm sorry, but not. You currently play only with ruins? that's because you're ignoring the bespoke rules for:

Statuary
Barricades
Craters
Forests
Tank Traps
Sector Mechanicus Terrain
Promethium Pipes
Haemotrope Reactors

And I'm sure several more. All of them have slightly different ways that units can claim cover from them.

 puma713 wrote:

Voss wrote:

 puma713 wrote:

Voss wrote:


Obscuring is... a function of terrain height, not density. OK... so if I have a unit of 1.5" tall models behind a group of three 4.5" trees, they can be seen, but if they're behind three 5.4" trees, they're completely hidden. >.>

Similarly, if I've got a 10" tall model with 16 Wounds on its profile, it can't be seen behind 5" trees, but if it has 18 wounds but is only 4" tall, it can be seen. Right.

Didn't they say something about terrain having footprints?

They didn't use that term specifically in the article, but I assume so. Why?

Your examples made it seem that you thought it was silly that a forest (footprint) of shorter trees couldn't obscure something, but a forest of taller trees could. Also, you and your opponent could easily say that a forest isn't obscuring and just forego these details.

Yeah. It was an example. Pick any terrain that IS obscuring. The Ruins for example. The two story ones from the third? (fourth?) edition box set do block LOS, but the one story ones don't. Even though most infantry models are shorter than both.

They happily make this declaration:

However, the days of drawing line of sight through a gap in the wall and three consecutive windows to a unit on the opposite side of a huge building are over!

But if the 'obscuring' terrain is 4.9999" tall, you can still do exactly that.

I just find the combination they picked out for how the rules interact to be really bizarre. For the terrain, its height, for models, its wounds and or a specific type (aircraft, though that seems reasonable enough to give a pass). The mismatch makes for weird situations, and the minimum height requirement for terrain is so much bigger than the average infantry model that I don't know why they settled on it.

Voss wrote:
Ok, so the brand new 'immersive' terrain rules are...

Hills... do nothing.
Obstacles... +1 save vs ranged
Area terrain and buildings (I guess) are whatever their many possible traits say they are.

Being in 'heavy cover' protects against melee, except against chargers... which actually hurts my brain a little. Sheltering behind spiked battlements doesn't protect you against charging loonies, but does protect you when they carefully consolidate past the spikes. Ok then.

Obscuring is... a function of terrain height, not density. OK... so if I have a unit of 1.5" tall models behind a group of three 4.5" trees, they can be seen, but if they're behind three 5.4" trees, they're completely hidden. >.>

Similarly, if I've got a 10" tall model with 16 Wounds on its profile, it can't be seen behind 5" trees, but if it has 18 wounds but is only 4" tall, it can be seen. Right.

I get that this is for gameplay, not tabletop appearance, but this is absurdly gamey nonsense.

And of course, if a model's base slightly overlaps with the terrain feature, it can be seen. Of course it can.



Bonus points for traits not appearing in the same order in the example ruins and armored containers.
If you're going to have that many traits, alphabetize them, or order them somehow. 'Scaleable, Breachable, Light Cover etc' and 'Light Cover, Scaleable, Exposed Position' makes my teeth ache.

I mean, you do have that wrong. You have no idea whether a Forest would have the Obscuring keyword or not.

Obstacle and Area appear to be ways in which units claim cover from terrain. Given the way they've worded it (not the actual rule, but from their description) you claim cover from an Obstacle type of terrain by an enemy targeting you and the terrain being between you and the enemy.

Once you've claimed cover from the terrain, you can then claim all the benefits of whatever rules that terrain type offers. If you had an Obstacle that had the Light Cover trait, you'd get +1 to save. If you had an Obstacle that had the Obscuring trait, you could not be targeted if the obstacle was over 5" tall.

There are also several benefits that they mentioned, such as to-hit roll penalties and "Terrain that blocks bullets rather than making you harder to hit" that we don't know, probably hidden in the traits like Defensible and Dense Cover that have not been revealed yet. So, you may have an Obstacle that grants -1 to hit but not +1 to save, like a forest. Or an Obstacle that provides +1 to save but not -1 to hit...like I don't know, a forcefield or some gak, forge the narrative.

Obscuring is a trait that SOME TERRAIN HAS, NOT ALL TERRAIN. Not every piece of 5" tall terrain is an infinitely tall cone of nope. All the pictures people post saying "This doesn't make sense lolololololololololol" are missing the fact that a little object like a perfectly square, LOS blocking tin DOES NOT NEED TO HAVE THE OBSCURING TRAIT. There's no point it already blocks LOS just fine. The obscuring trait is there to fix the issue of GW terrain (or other terrain) that has tiny little window holes in it that you can *technically* see through.

yukishiro1 wrote:

 p5freak wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
This also means that, for example, a land raider will be able to sit on one side of a ruin and fire all its weapons at a knight, which is unable to shoot back. For the first time ever in 40k to my knowledge, we have non-reciprocal LOS.

Not true, if the land raider is in obscuring terrain. It cant be seen, but it can still be targeted

Not if it's inside the ruin. But if it's on the other side, it can shoot away to its hearts content at the knight, which cannot shoot back.

I.e. this photo, replace the big mek with a land raider. Land raider can shoot wazbom, wazbom cannot shoot back at landraider.

Spoiler:

Non-reciprocal LOS is a big can of worms they are opening here that is very unlikely to lead to good places.

Add to that that melee is getting a further nerf compared to the current ITC rules - to the point that you basically never actually want to be inside a ruin instead of on the other side of it - and this is really looking like the tank edition.

Altought I share your worry, I want to point out 2 fundamental thigs:

- We don´t know how flyer works yet.
- The object in the middle must be 5" tall at least, do try to take a picture with an object 5" tall and see how much more intuitive it is.

Still we need more boost to infantry to not cancel blobs from 40k. I get it playing 180+ models is torture for both players, but this is supposed to be a game where all aspects of warfare are rapresented and 99% of the lore talks about swarms of infatry vs Power armour, or heroes in the middle of the battlefield, or courageous guardsmen taking a last stand. I like the boost to tanks and monsters, I do not like a game of big robots vs big tanks.

The non reciprocal issue only targets fliers and 18W or more models (so knights etc), so not completely terrible (especially for air who can basically move around it). It does seem odd with knights though as you could get a situation that a vehicle is hidden behind an "Obscured" piece of terrain, freely firing at a knight and that knight cannot touch it, at all. That does seem rather ganky for knight players.

Overall though, this terrain identification really helps my new Maiden World table as it has large "tree" like structures that have a lot of gaps, but are well over 5" tall. Now I don't have to buy a whole bunch of foliage to fill these gaps.

the_scotsman wrote:

Voss wrote:


Obscuring is... a function of terrain height, not density. OK... so if I have a unit of 1.5" tall models behind a group of three 4.5" trees, they can be seen, but if they're behind three 5.4" trees, they're completely hidden. >.>

I mean, you do have that wrong. You have no idea whether a Forest would have the Obscuring keyword or not.

... give me an ounce of credit and read it as an example of obscuring terrain. Change 'forest' for the example 'ruins' listed, if you can't grasp that.

Once you've claimed cover from the terrain, you can then claim all the benefits of whatever rules that terrain type offers. If you had an Obstacle that had the Light Cover trait, you'd get +1 to save. If you had an Obstacle that had the Obscuring trait, you could not be targeted if the obstacle was over 5" tall.

Well, no. If you're claiming cover from it, you'd be on or within the terrain feature, so can be seen and targeted normally, per the first sentence of the second paragraph of obscuring.

Reading the goonhammer article, I must have misheard during the stream - apparently Dense Terrain is supposedly terrain that blocks sight, rather than stopping bullets.

That is extremely unfortunate because it means that Dense Terrain is then almost certainly -1 to hit.

That means we'll have two possible Cover effects that both disproprotionately benefit Elites over Hordes.

-1 to hit penalizes you more the worse your Ballistic Skill is (units with 5+ BS lose 50% of their effectiveness, units with 2+BS lose 17%) and +1sv benefits you more the better your base Sv is (starting from a 3+ going to a 2+ gives you a 50% durability boost, vs starting from nothing oing to a 6+ gives you a 17% boost).

Unless "Defensible" is where the rule that benefits hordes is hiding, that does not bode well for light infantry in this edition either.

But if you made me guess, Defensible is a trait that means units on or within the terrain piece can freely fire out of that terrain piece as if it's not there, and Breachible is a trait that applies to area terrain that allows Infantry Swarms and Beasts to move thru it freely while other unit types cannot.

Since for example Swamps and Craters are area terrain, I would assume area terrain does not by default prevent vehicles from entering

 bullyboy wrote:
The non reciprocal issue only targets fliers and 18W or more models (so knights etc), so not completely terrible (especially for air who can basically move around it). It does seem odd with knights though as you could get a situation that a vehicle is hidden behind an "Obscured" piece of terrain, freely firing at a knight and that knight cannot touch it, at all. That does seem rather ganky for knight players.

Overall though, this terrain identification really helps my new Maiden World table as it has large "tree" like structures that have a lot of gaps, but are well over 5" tall. Now I don't have to buy a whole bunch of foliage to fill these gaps.

It also encourages staying away from terrain as if you even touch it you are seen freely regardless can you physically see enemy or not.

And i'm just almost done painting triumph and it got hit with nerf bat. Lol. It's not even competive option as it was

 Emicrania wrote:

- The object in the middle must be 5" tall at least, do try to take a picture with an object 5" tall and see how much more intuitive it is.

The object in the middle is 5" tall. That's why I used it. Do try not to assume the person you're talking to doesn't know what they're doing.

Voss wrote:
Ok, so the brand new 'immersive' terrain rules are...

Hills... do nothing.
Obstacles... +1 save vs ranged
Area terrain and buildings (I guess) are whatever their many possible traits say they are.

Being in 'heavy cover' protects against melee, except against chargers... which actually hurts my brain a little. Sheltering behind spiked battlements doesn't protect you against charging loonies, but does protect you when they carefully consolidate past the spikes. Ok then.

Obscuring is... a function of terrain height, not density. OK... so if I have a unit of 1.5" tall models behind a group of three 4.5" trees, they can be seen, but if they're behind three 5.4" trees, they're completely hidden. >.>

Similarly, if I've got a 10" tall model with 16 Wounds on its profile, it can't be seen behind 5" trees, but if it has 18 wounds but is only 4" tall, it can be seen. Right.

I get that this is for gameplay, not tabletop appearance, but this is absurdly gamey nonsense.

And of course, if a model's base slightly overlaps with the terrain feature, it can be seen. Of course it can.



Bonus points for traits not appearing in the same order in the example ruins and armored containers.
If you're going to have that many traits, alphabetize them, or order them somehow. 'Scaleable, Breachable, Light Cover etc' and 'Light Cover, Scaleable, Exposed Position' makes my teeth ache.

Pretty good way to sum it up. But these are the most playtested terrain rules ever in any GW game, and everyone (on GW's payroll or in business with them) is saying this is the best edition ever and everything is awesome and works. So we shouldn't be critical.

the_scotsman wrote:


Obscuring is a trait that SOME TERRAIN HAS, NOT ALL TERRAIN. Not every piece of 5" tall terrain is an infinitely tall cone of nope. All the pictures people post saying "This doesn't make sense lolololololololololol" are missing the fact that a little object like a perfectly square, LOS blocking tin DOES NOT NEED TO HAVE THE OBSCURING TRAIT. There's no point it already blocks LOS just fine. The obscuring trait is there to fix the issue of GW terrain (or other terrain) that has tiny little window holes in it that you can *technically* see through.

But this leads to even more absurd results.

Take my picture:



So you're saying that we shouldn't give these obscuring, which means that the flyer could shoot the big mek - but if we cut some holes in those boxes for windows, then we'd need to give it obscuring, and then the flyer COULDN'T shoot the big mek because we cut some holes and that means the flyer sees worse than if we hadn't cut holes?

No matter how you cut it, these rules lead to some really strange, nonsensical interactions - very similar to the grot on the crate being immune to melee from the carnifex.

Now that's not necessarily the end of the world to have interactions in game that defy our normal intuitions about what makes sense. But it's wrong to try to argue that isn't a nonsensical interaction, because it obviously is.

 Therion wrote:

Voss wrote:
Ok, so the brand new 'immersive' terrain rules are...

Hills... do nothing.
Obstacles... +1 save vs ranged
Area terrain and buildings (I guess) are whatever their many possible traits say they are.

Being in 'heavy cover' protects against melee, except against chargers... which actually hurts my brain a little. Sheltering behind spiked battlements doesn't protect you against charging loonies, but does protect you when they carefully consolidate past the spikes. Ok then.

Obscuring is... a function of terrain height, not density. OK... so if I have a unit of 1.5" tall models behind a group of three 4.5" trees, they can be seen, but if they're behind three 5.4" trees, they're completely hidden. >.>

Similarly, if I've got a 10" tall model with 16 Wounds on its profile, it can't be seen behind 5" trees, but if it has 18 wounds but is only 4" tall, it can be seen. Right.

I get that this is for gameplay, not tabletop appearance, but this is absurdly gamey nonsense.

And of course, if a model's base slightly overlaps with the terrain feature, it can be seen. Of course it can.



Bonus points for traits not appearing in the same order in the example ruins and armored containers.
If you're going to have that many traits, alphabetize them, or order them somehow. 'Scaleable, Breachable, Light Cover etc' and 'Light Cover, Scaleable, Exposed Position' makes my teeth ache.

Pretty good way to sum it up. But these are the most playtested terrain rules ever in any GW game, and everyone (on GW's payroll or in business with them) is saying this is the best edition ever and everything is awesome and works. So we shouldn't be critical.

Why am I just seeing Emilia Clark over and over "Best season ever!"


Automatically Appended Next Post:

yukishiro1 wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:


Obscuring is a trait that SOME TERRAIN HAS, NOT ALL TERRAIN. Not every piece of 5" tall terrain is an infinitely tall cone of nope. All the pictures people post saying "This doesn't make sense lolololololololololol" are missing the fact that a little object like a perfectly square, LOS blocking tin DOES NOT NEED TO HAVE THE OBSCURING TRAIT. There's no point it already blocks LOS just fine. The obscuring trait is there to fix the issue of GW terrain (or other terrain) that has tiny little window holes in it that you can *technically* see through.

But this leads to even more absurd results.

Take my picture:

Spoiler:

So you're saying that we shouldn't give these obscuring, which means that the flyer could shoot the big mek - but if we cut some holes in those boxes for windows, then we'd need to give it obscuring, and then the flyer COULDN'T shoot the big mek because we cut some holes and that means the flyer sees worse than if we hadn't cut holes?

No matter how you cut it, these rules lead to some really strange, nonsensical interactions - very similar to the grot on the crate being immune to melee from the carnifex.

Now that's not necessarily the end of the world to have interactions in game that defy our normal intuitions about what makes sense. But it's wrong to try to argue that isn't a nonsensical interaction, because it obviously is.

I guess part of me is saying "why is the flyer on a large piece of terrain like that?" why even have it there, juts place it on the ground for the representation.

Because that way we don't get into arguments about what TLOS shows. I wanted to create a situation where something is targetable via TLOS - here, the big mek can see part of the flyer and the flyer can see part of the big mek - but not if the piece has the obscured trait.

If I had had a box with holes in it it that you can see through it would replicate the same thing, but I am too lazy to cut holes in the boxes just to make a point on the internet.

I also could have put the flyer closer to the piece and the big mek further back, but that would have required taking a much wider photo and would have made it harder to see what was going on.

Regarding vehicles vs. infantry... did you guys notice all the 50% hidden rules are gone, so if a tank is behind an obstacle, it's getting cover, no matter what's the size of the tank or the obstacle.

 bullyboy wrote:

 Therion wrote:

Voss wrote:
Ok, so the brand new 'immersive' terrain rules are...

Hills... do nothing.
Obstacles... +1 save vs ranged
Area terrain and buildings (I guess) are whatever their many possible traits say they are.

Being in 'heavy cover' protects against melee, except against chargers... which actually hurts my brain a little. Sheltering behind spiked battlements doesn't protect you against charging loonies, but does protect you when they carefully consolidate past the spikes. Ok then.

Obscuring is... a function of terrain height, not density. OK... so if I have a unit of 1.5" tall models behind a group of three 4.5" trees, they can be seen, but if they're behind three 5.4" trees, they're completely hidden. >.>

Similarly, if I've got a 10" tall model with 16 Wounds on its profile, it can't be seen behind 5" trees, but if it has 18 wounds but is only 4" tall, it can be seen. Right.

I get that this is for gameplay, not tabletop appearance, but this is absurdly gamey nonsense.

And of course, if a model's base slightly overlaps with the terrain feature, it can be seen. Of course it can.



Bonus points for traits not appearing in the same order in the example ruins and armored containers.
If you're going to have that many traits, alphabetize them, or order them somehow. 'Scaleable, Breachable, Light Cover etc' and 'Light Cover, Scaleable, Exposed Position' makes my teeth ache.

Pretty good way to sum it up. But these are the most playtested terrain rules ever in any GW game, and everyone (on GW's payroll or in business with them) is saying this is the best edition ever and everything is awesome and works. So we shouldn't be critical.

Why am I just seeing Emilia Clark over and over "Best season ever!"


Automatically Appended Next Post:

yukishiro1 wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:


Obscuring is a trait that SOME TERRAIN HAS, NOT ALL TERRAIN. Not every piece of 5" tall terrain is an infinitely tall cone of nope. All the pictures people post saying "This doesn't make sense lolololololololololol" are missing the fact that a little object like a perfectly square, LOS blocking tin DOES NOT NEED TO HAVE THE OBSCURING TRAIT. There's no point it already blocks LOS just fine. The obscuring trait is there to fix the issue of GW terrain (or other terrain) that has tiny little window holes in it that you can *technically* see through.

But this leads to even more absurd results.

Take my picture:

Spoiler:

So you're saying that we shouldn't give these obscuring, which means that the flyer could shoot the big mek - but if we cut some holes in those boxes for windows, then we'd need to give it obscuring, and then the flyer COULDN'T shoot the big mek because we cut some holes and that means the flyer sees worse than if we hadn't cut holes?

No matter how you cut it, these rules lead to some really strange, nonsensical interactions - very similar to the grot on the crate being immune to melee from the carnifex.

Now that's not necessarily the end of the world to have interactions in game that defy our normal intuitions about what makes sense. But it's wrong to try to argue that isn't a nonsensical interaction, because it obviously is.

I guess part of me is saying "why is the flyer on a large piece of terrain like that?" why even have it there, juts place it on the ground for the representation.

Because hills exist?

 Therion wrote:

Voss wrote:
Ok, so the brand new 'immersive' terrain rules are...

Hills... do nothing.
Obstacles... +1 save vs ranged
Area terrain and buildings (I guess) are whatever their many possible traits say they are.

Being in 'heavy cover' protects against melee, except against chargers... which actually hurts my brain a little. Sheltering behind spiked battlements doesn't protect you against charging loonies, but does protect you when they carefully consolidate past the spikes. Ok then.

Obscuring is... a function of terrain height, not density. OK... so if I have a unit of 1.5" tall models behind a group of three 4.5" trees, they can be seen, but if they're behind three 5.4" trees, they're completely hidden. >.>

Similarly, if I've got a 10" tall model with 16 Wounds on its profile, it can't be seen behind 5" trees, but if it has 18 wounds but is only 4" tall, it can be seen. Right.

I get that this is for gameplay, not tabletop appearance, but this is absurdly gamey nonsense.

And of course, if a model's base slightly overlaps with the terrain feature, it can be seen. Of course it can.



Bonus points for traits not appearing in the same order in the example ruins and armored containers.
If you're going to have that many traits, alphabetize them, or order them somehow. 'Scaleable, Breachable, Light Cover etc' and 'Light Cover, Scaleable, Exposed Position' makes my teeth ache.

Pretty good way to sum it up. But these are the most playtested terrain rules ever in any GW game, and everyone (on GW's payroll or in business with them) is saying this is the best edition ever and everything is awesome and works. So we shouldn't be critical.

+1

the_scotsman wrote:
Reading the goonhammer article, I must have misheard during the stream - apparently Dense Terrain is supposedly terrain that blocks sight, rather than stopping bullets.

That is extremely unfortunate because it means that Dense Terrain is then almost certainly -1 to hit.

Unless "Defensible" is where the rule that benefits hordes is hiding, that does not bode well for light infantry in this edition either.

I genuinely don't recall "Dense" being addressed at all, but I might have missed it when my phone rang.

But if you made me guess, Defensible is a trait that means units on or within the terrain piece can freely fire out of that terrain piece as if it's not there, and Breachible is a trait that applies to area terrain that allows Infantry Swarms and Beasts to move thru it freely while other unit types cannot.

Since for example Swamps and Craters are area terrain, I would assume area terrain does not by default prevent vehicles from entering

I'm actually wondering if "Breachable" is going to be with regards to vehicles being able to enter the terrain.

I wouldn't be shocked, personally, if Defensible is going to be a trait where any infantry units on/within can act as though it's not there.

 Therion wrote:
Regarding vehicles vs. infantry... did you guys notice all the 50% hidden rules are gone, so if a tank is behind an obstacle, it's getting cover, no matter what's the size of the tank or the obstacle.

The rule said obstacles only give cover to beasts, infantry, and swarms. So vehicles can't get cover from them.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Therion wrote:
Regarding vehicles vs. infantry... did you guys notice all the 50% hidden rules are gone, so if a tank is behind an obstacle, it's getting cover, no matter what's the size of the tank or the obstacle.

The rule said obstacles only give cover to beasts, infantry, and swarms. So vehicles can't get cover from them.

My bad. I didn't actually mean obstacles at all. My point was regarding terrain that does give cover to vehicles, whatever that is, the size is irrelevant, since we don't play with line of sight anymore. I think the best way to understand terrain is like a poster above described: Everyone can always see everything, unless an exception comes into play. You get cover saves if some gak is on the way. It's essentially 2D.

I don't see that TLOS is no longer a thing. Just that we have this additional thing in addition to TLOS that is the obscuring keyword.

In fact in the rules for hills they specifically say that TLOS is still a thing.

yukishiro1 wrote:

 Emicrania wrote:

- The object in the middle must be 5" tall at least, do try to take a picture with an object 5" tall and see how much more intuitive it is.

The object in the middle is 5" tall. That's why I used it. Do try not to assume the person you're talking to doesn't know what they're doing.

Mine was a suggestion not an assumption but, given how much you seems on the defensive about 20 lines of preview, I don't see much room for discussion and I will leave it at that.

 Therion wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Therion wrote:
Regarding vehicles vs. infantry... did you guys notice all the 50% hidden rules are gone, so if a tank is behind an obstacle, it's getting cover, no matter what's the size of the tank or the obstacle.

The rule said obstacles only give cover to beasts, infantry, and swarms. So vehicles can't get cover from them.

My bad. I didn't actually mean obstacles at all. My point was regarding terrain that does give cover to vehicles, whatever that is, the size is irrelevant, since we don't play with line of sight anymore. I think the best way to understand terrain is like a poster above described: Everyone can always see everything, unless an exception comes into play. You get cover saves if some gak is on the way. It's essentially 2D.

Unless your a LoW at which point it just screws you seven ways from Sunday with invisible incoming fire etc while doing diddly for you but stop you moving.

yukishiro1 wrote:

 Emicrania wrote:

- The object in the middle must be 5" tall at least, do try to take a picture with an object 5" tall and see how much more intuitive it is.

The object in the middle is 5" tall. That's why I used it. Do try not to assume the person you're talking to doesn't know what they're doing.

Am I missing something here, if both items have obscured keywords then the mek not the plane can see each other as the intervening terrain blocks it? If you don't then true los kicks in and they can see each other.

 Emicrania wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:

 Emicrania wrote:

- The object in the middle must be 5" tall at least, do try to take a picture with an object 5" tall and see how much more intuitive it is.

The object in the middle is 5" tall. That's why I used it. Do try not to assume the person you're talking to doesn't know what they're doing.

Mine was a suggestion not an assumption but, given how much you seems on the defensive about 20 lines of preview, I don't see much room for discussion and I will leave it at that.

I wasn't being defensive. Just tongue-in-cheek returning your "do try" language. You can't really protest that I'm being defensive when I'm literally using the same words you did.

So, thank you for your kind suggestion, but the picture had already incorporated it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dudeface wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:

 Emicrania wrote:

- The object in the middle must be 5" tall at least, do try to take a picture with an object 5" tall and see how much more intuitive it is.

The object in the middle is 5" tall. That's why I used it. Do try not to assume the person you're talking to doesn't know what they're doing.

Am I missing something here, if both items have obscured keywords then the mek not the plane can see each other as the intervening terrain blocks it? If you don't then true los kicks in and they can see each other.

What you're missing is the exclusions of flyers (along with 18W+ models) from the obscured keyword.

In other words, obscured blocks the big mek, but it doesn't block the plane. So the big mek can shoot the plane, while the plane can't shoot the big mek.

I.e. if it has obscured, the big mek gets to draw TLOS to the plane because obscured doesn't protect the plane, but the plane doesn't get to draw TLOS to the big mek because the big mek gets the protection of obscured.

(In fact, RAW, the Big Mek can shoot at the plane even if it can't draw TLOS, because RAW the big mek can ignore the terrain piece with obscure entirely if the target is a flyer or 18W+ - but that seems like the sort of thing that probably isn't intended and will be getting FAQ'd, so I deliberately created the photo in such a way that this was not an issue)

I have to say the more I think about these, the more I feel they over thought this a lot. They should have dropped TLOS and abstracted the whole process for either side. On the terrains foot print you can shoot out and be shot, behind it and neither is allowed can see past it like previous editions.

Now If I have two two ruins loaded with doors and windows with obscure, one 4.5" tall and one 5" tall because of the way I modeled them (maybe a manufactorum chimney on one) but otherwise identical. A model can be shot through the 4.5" tall ruin, but can't behind the 5" even if he's visible via TLOS.

It's as if the height restriction tied to wounds is some veiled way of clipping certain models like knights, but they should have just called them out as an exception. I mean, I thought bespoke rules only benefit was just that. You can specifically target certain models with rules. Instead they tried to be very none specific and we get absurd situations.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
How on earth did that survive play testing?

 Red Corsair wrote:
I have to say the more I think about these, the more I feel they over thought this a lot. They should have dropped TLOS and abstracted the whole process for either side. On the terrains foot print you can shoot out and be shot, behind it and neither is allowed can see past it like previous editions.

Now If I have two two ruins loaded with doors and windows with obscure, one 4.5" tall and one 5" tall because of the way I modeled them (maybe a manufactorum chimney on one) but otherwise identical. A model can be shot through the 4.5" tall ruin, but can't behind the 5" even if he's visible via TLOS.

It's as if the height restriction tied to wounds is some veiled way of clipping certain models like knights, but they should have just called them out as an exception. I mean, I thought bespoke rules only benefit was just that. You can specifically target certain models with rules. Instead they tried to be very none specific and we get absurd situations.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
How on earth did that survive play testing?

Yes, it's a bit of a conceptual mess. TLOS for horizontal shooting in all cases, TLOS for vertical shooting in some cases, non-TLOS for vertical shooting in other cases - unless it actually is TLOS for vertical shooting in this case because your target is 18W+ or aircraft and then you get TLOS to them but they get non-TLOS to you...

What a headache. This is arguably worse than the old TLOS "I can see his ribbon! he's so dead!" That was stupid, but at least it was straightforward and the rule applied the same in every circumstance. Now we have to consult a flow chart to figure out whether we're using TLOS or not for this precise interaction, and even whether we're using TLOS for the horizontal part but not the vertical part. So it's "I can see his ribbon! he's so dead" if you can see the ribbon horizontally, but it's "I gotta pretend I can't see his whole upper torso!" if it's vertical - unless of course he has a hair ribbon that happens to far enough horizontally to take him outside the shadow, in which case, he's so dead again.

Also, what does taller than 5" mean? What if you have a terrain piece of variable heights - some of it is over 5", but some isn't. Can you draw TLOS vertically over a part of it that is less than 5", or does it block completely for the whole piece - so the little .5 inch tall bit of rubble on the side blocks a land raider? If not, and it's only pieces of the terrain model that are over 5" that you can't draw TLOS vertically over - we're going to need to be measuring every mm of the terrain piece to decide which bits are over 5" and which aren't?

yukishiro1 wrote:

 Emicrania wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:

 Emicrania wrote:

- The object in the middle must be 5" tall at least, do try to take a picture with an object 5" tall and see how much more intuitive it is.

The object in the middle is 5" tall. That's why I used it. Do try not to assume the person you're talking to doesn't know what they're doing.

Mine was a suggestion not an assumption but, given how much you seems on the defensive about 20 lines of preview, I don't see much room for discussion and I will leave it at that.

I wasn't being defensive. Just tongue-in-cheek returning your "do try" language. You can't really protest that I'm being defensive when I'm literally using the same words you did.

So, thank you for your kind suggestion, but the picture had already incorporated it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dudeface wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:

 Emicrania wrote:

- The object in the middle must be 5" tall at least, do try to take a picture with an object 5" tall and see how much more intuitive it is.

The object in the middle is 5" tall. That's why I used it. Do try not to assume the person you're talking to doesn't know what they're doing.

Am I missing something here, if both items have obscured keywords then the mek not the plane can see each other as the intervening terrain blocks it? If you don't then true los kicks in and they can see each other.

What you're missing is the exclusions of flyers (along with 18W+ models) from the obscured keyword.

In other words, obscured blocks the big mek, but it doesn't block the plane. So the big mek can shoot the plane, while the plane can't shoot the big mek.

I.e. if it has obscured, the big mek gets to draw TLOS to the plane because obscured doesn't protect the plane, but the plane doesn't get to draw TLOS to the big mek because the big mek gets the protection of obscured.

(In fact, RAW, the Big Mek can shoot at the plane even if it can't draw TLOS, because RAW the big mek can ignore the terrain piece with obscure entirely if the target is a flyer or 18W+ - but that seems like the sort of thing that probably isn't intended and will be getting FAQ'd, so I deliberately created the photo in such a way that this was not an issue)

Yep missed flyers sorry, I'm actually ok with that though, it would be a bit weird to have to sit in the open on order to shoot a plane, firing a shot through the smoke of a collapsed building via heatseeking scope or w/e fits

The issue is that it isn't reciprocal. The big mek can target the flyer, but the flyer can't target the big mek. It's hard to make sense of that. The point is that the flyer is up in the air, so you can see it no matter how tall the building is, right? But why is it up in the air when the big mek wants to fire at it but not when it wants to fire at the big mek?

Non-reciprocal LOS - where one model can shoot another model but that model can't shoot back - is a massive can of worms to be opening. The very limited non-reciprocal LOS we have in 8th - pretty much all from stratagems - is so powerful that whole lists are built around it.

yukishiro1 wrote:
The issue is that it isn't reciprocal. The big mek can target the flyer, but the flyer can't target the big mek. It's hard to make sense of that. The point is that the flyer is up in the air, so you can see it no matter how tall the building is, right? But why is it up in the air when the big mek wants to fire at it but not when it wants to fire at the big mek?

Non-reciprocal LOS - where one model can shoot another model but that model can't shoot back - is a massive can of worms to be opening.

Ork gunner hundreds of meters in the air won't spot a single fella hiding in rubble through a cloud of smoke dust and fire, the ork has an easier tim looking up and seeing a plane. The imagery makes sense in a cinematic way.

Dudeface wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
The issue is that it isn't reciprocal. The big mek can target the flyer, but the flyer can't target the big mek. It's hard to make sense of that. The point is that the flyer is up in the air, so you can see it no matter how tall the building is, right? But why is it up in the air when the big mek wants to fire at it but not when it wants to fire at the big mek?

Non-reciprocal LOS - where one model can shoot another model but that model can't shoot back - is a massive can of worms to be opening.

Ork gunner hundreds of meters in the air won't spot a single fella hiding in rubble through a cloud of smoke dust and fire, the ork has an easier tim looking up and seeing a plane. The imagery makes sense in a cinematic way.

Ok, but why does the big mek suddenly become targetable if he's in the rubble instead of behind it? Because that's what the rule says. Move that big mek 1mm inside the ruin, and now the plane can shoot him. Move him back 1mm outside the ruin, and now he's invisible. Why does being outside a ruin provide better LOS blocking than being inside it?

I think at this point I might have to stop reading the previews as I seem to come away with more anxiety than excitement, even understanding that I haven't seen the 9th rulebook in its entirety. Previewing rules piecemeal is not really an effective marketing strategy, imo. I would, instead, have liked to see one entire part of the rules previewed (like the entire shooting phase) and then someone said, "and there are more changes like this coming soon!"

Well i guess the cover rules will be the nail for my cultists.

Time to perma shelf my R&H infantry Part and buy more tanks i guess....
Rip light infantry , you'll be missed.

yukishiro1 wrote:

 Red Corsair wrote:
I have to say the more I think about these, the more I feel they over thought this a lot. They should have dropped TLOS and abstracted the whole process for either side. On the terrains foot print you can shoot out and be shot, behind it and neither is allowed can see past it like previous editions.

Now If I have two two ruins loaded with doors and windows with obscure, one 4.5" tall and one 5" tall because of the way I modeled them (maybe a manufactorum chimney on one) but otherwise identical. A model can be shot through the 4.5" tall ruin, but can't behind the 5" even if he's visible via TLOS.

It's as if the height restriction tied to wounds is some veiled way of clipping certain models like knights, but they should have just called them out as an exception. I mean, I thought bespoke rules only benefit was just that. You can specifically target certain models with rules. Instead they tried to be very none specific and we get absurd situations.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
How on earth did that survive play testing?

Yes, it's a bit of a conceptual mess. TLOS for horizontal shooting in all cases, TLOS for vertical shooting in some cases, non-TLOS for vertical shooting in other cases - unless it actually is TLOS for vertical shooting in this case because your target is 18W+ or aircraft and then you get TLOS to them but they get non-TLOS to you...

What a headache. This is arguably worse than the old TLOS "I can see his ribbon! he's so dead!" That was stupid, but at least it was straightforward and the rule applied the same in every circumstance. Now we have to consult a flow chart to figure out whether we're using TLOS or not for this precise interaction, and even whether we're using TLOS for the horizontal part but not the vertical part. So it's "I can see his ribbon! he's so dead" if you can see the ribbon horizontally, but it's "I gotta pretend I can't see his whole upper torso!" if it's vertical - unless of course he has a hair ribbon that happens to far enough horizontally to take him outside the shadow, in which case, he's so dead again.

Also, what does taller than 5" mean? What if you have a terrain piece of variable heights - some of it is over 5", but some isn't. Can you draw TLOS vertically over a part of it that is less than 5", or does it block completely for the whole piece - so the little .5 inch tall bit of rubble on the side blocks a land raider? If not, and it's only pieces of the terrain model that are over 5" that you can't draw TLOS vertically over - we're going to need to be measuring every mm of the terrain piece to decide which bits are over 5" and which aren't?

The rule clearly specifies that you measure the volume of a piece of terrain from its highest point, so you don't need to measure individual sections.

The gist of things here is that they wanted to make a distinction between larger pieces that would likely block los to most common models and smaller pieces that wouldn't. They decided this arbitrary point might as well match the terrain they're currently putting out, which makes as much sense as any number and prevents clashes between "official" terrain and the rules. Likewise, the 18W cutoff is what they're defining as a "large" model that they felt was big enough to not benefit from that abstraction (titans and aircraft are going to have a harder time crouching behind 40k scale rubble, after all).

We'll have to see what the rest of the los rules are, as for all we know they've switched that to btb measures (hulls for things without) with "banner-targeting tlos" being left behind. I wouldn't count on its total demise, though, as people seem quite attached to the "idea" of tlos rather than a more abstract system, regardless of the messy consequences.

There has to be a break point somewhere, and the edge of the building is where they put it.

To be honest for flyers it's going to almost never be an issue, they have such great movement that the reciprocal firing really isn't an issue is it?

If you have placed your flyer in a spot that it can't shoot something, but it can be shot you have really messed up

I really like the cinematic of it. I'm imagining like in films etc where ground troops are hiding from the big nasty and taking pot shots at it.

yukishiro1 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
The issue is that it isn't reciprocal. The big mek can target the flyer, but the flyer can't target the big mek. It's hard to make sense of that. The point is that the flyer is up in the air, so you can see it no matter how tall the building is, right? But why is it up in the air when the big mek wants to fire at it but not when it wants to fire at the big mek?

Non-reciprocal LOS - where one model can shoot another model but that model can't shoot back - is a massive can of worms to be opening.

Ork gunner hundreds of meters in the air won't spot a single fella hiding in rubble through a cloud of smoke dust and fire, the ork has an easier tim looking up and seeing a plane. The imagery makes sense in a cinematic way.

Ok, but why does the big mek suddenly become targetable if he's in the rubble instead of behind it? Because that's what the rule says. Move that big mek 1mm inside the ruin, and now the plane can shoot him. Move him back 1mm outside the ruin, and now he's invisible. Why does being outside a ruin provide better LOS blocking than being inside it?

Because its the most common flaw in area terrain rules, regardless of game system and company. GW has done it before, Privateer Press has done it, as have others.
A lot of game designers are absolutely convinced that allowing attacks against units 'touching' terrain blocks some sort of super-sneaky exploit.

In this particular case, a non-reciprocal nerf against aircraft and effectively titans, superheavies and lords of war (of 18+ W) is the least egregious corner case they could have ended up with. (For flyers, I largely agree with Doohicky- if its an issue at all, its because the player made a poor move). But then I also don't think aircraft and the big stuff has any business being in 40k in the first place. The can redo Epic and bring AI and Titanicus into a more appropriate scale game.

I think its weirder that they used 5" high terrain and 18 W as the limiters for the clauses of obscured. They feel plucked out of a hat.

Dudeface wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
The issue is that it isn't reciprocal. The big mek can target the flyer, but the flyer can't target the big mek. It's hard to make sense of that. The point is that the flyer is up in the air, so you can see it no matter how tall the building is, right? But why is it up in the air when the big mek wants to fire at it but not when it wants to fire at the big mek?

Non-reciprocal LOS - where one model can shoot another model but that model can't shoot back - is a massive can of worms to be opening.

Ork gunner hundreds of meters in the air won't spot a single fella hiding in rubble through a cloud of smoke dust and fire, the ork has an easier tim looking up and seeing a plane. The imagery makes sense in a cinematic way.

Okay a more dumb version of the issue of having a get out clause based on wounds.

A Repulsor can shoot a sparton through said 5 inch high obsuring terrain (even if it can not actually see the sparton) but the spartan can't shoot the Repulsor (even if it could actually see the Repulsor).

An Armiger Knight can shoot a Baneblade through said 5 inch high obsuring terrain (even if it can not actually see the Baneblade) but the Vaneblade can't shoot the Armiger (even if it could actually see the Armiger).

GW done goofed unless they have dropped a huge part of the rules to fix the above absurdity out of the preview.

 puma713 wrote:
I think at this point I might have to stop reading the previews as I seem to come away with more anxiety than excitement, even understanding that I haven't seen the 9th rulebook in its entirety. Previewing rules piecemeal is not really an effective marketing strategy, imo. I would, instead, have liked to see one entire part of the rules previewed (like the entire shooting phase) and then someone said, "and there are more changes like this coming soon!"

The 2020 marketing playbook says that all attention is good attention, and that the object of marketing is to generate "interactions" on social media that raise the profile of what you're trying to market, whether those interactions are positive or not.

I agree it's terrible for actually giving people a good idea of what the rules will be, but that's not the point, the point is to generate responses.

I'm totally self-aware that I'm feeding into this, btw, before anyone calls me on it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Trimarius wrote:


The rule clearly specifies that you measure the volume of a piece of terrain from its highest point, so you don't need to measure individual sections.

Good catch. So we do have the situation where a .5 inch pile of rubble on the side of a ruin blocks LOS to a land raider, because a part of the ruin 10 inches to the right of that is taller than 5" (or you say it doesn't have obscuring, and then the bit that is 5" tall doesn't block anything if it has a tiny window).

Ice_can wrote:
Okay a more dumb version of the issue of having a get out clause based on wounds.

A Repulsor can shoot a sparton through said 5 inch high obsuring terrain (even if it can not actually see the sparton) but the spartan can't shoot the Repulsor (even if it could actually see the Repulsor).

An Armiger Knight can shoot a Baneblade through said 5 inch high obsuring terrain (even if it can not actually see the Baneblade) but the Vaneblade can't shoot the Armiger (even if it could actually see the Armiger).

GW done goofed unless they have dropped a huge part of the rules to fix the above absurdity out of the preview.

What's absurd about it? The abstraction?

I can maybe see the argument that it should be tied to a codeword (say... titantic) rather than a specific number of wounds but by and large it works the same.

Voss wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:


Ok, but why does the big mek suddenly become targetable if he's in the rubble instead of behind it? Because that's what the rule says. Move that big mek 1mm inside the ruin, and now the plane can shoot him. Move him back 1mm outside the ruin, and now he's invisible. Why does being outside a ruin provide better LOS blocking than being inside it?

Because its the most common flaw in area terrain rules, regardless of game system and company. GW has done it before, Privateer Press has done it, as have others.
A lot of game designers are absolutely convinced that allowing attacks against units 'touching' terrain blocks some sort of super-sneaky exploit.

But the perplexing thing here is that ITC did this right, and they proved it doesn't create any sort of exploit or game problem. ITC's "first floor blocks LOS" rule works great. Nobody has issues with it. It creates good gameplay, and it's easy to apply. They proved there is no reason to be afraid about this. GW clearly paid a lot of attention to ITC in crafting 9th - the missions are clearly copied - so why do you think they decided they needed this particular piece of nonsense, when it so obviously contradicts basic intuitions about how physical space works, and when it also has such negative gameplay results?

I'm starting to think that maybe the developers really do think that the problem with 8th as it was played competitively at tournaments was that melee was too strong and stuff needed to die faster to shooting, which is an incredible take on how competitive 8th edition actually worked.

yukishiro1 wrote:
But the perplexing thing here is that ITC did this right, and they proved it doesn't create any sort of exploit or game problem. ITC's "first floor blocks LOS" rule works great. Nobody has issues with it.

A lot of people had a problem with it. ITC houserules mean that a soldier peeking out of first floor window cannot shoot at the enemy nor can be shot at. This doesn't make sense. Furthermore, it turned many ruins into bizarre unassaultable bunkers. GW rule is way more sensible.

yukishiro1 wrote:
But the perplexing thing here is that ITC did this right, and they proved it doesn't create any sort of exploit or game problem. ITC's "first floor blocks LOS" rule works great. Nobody has issues with it. It creates good gameplay, and it's easy to apply. They proved there is no reason to be afraid about this. GW clearly paid a lot of attention to ITC in crafting 9th - the missions are clearly copied - so why do you think they decided they needed this particular piece of nonsense, when it so obviously contradicts basic intuitions about how physical space works?

The magic black box never made any sense. There's no reason why a 40k army wouldn't just bring the ruins down on top of whoever's hiding in them and call it a day.

Honestly, cover should degrade rapidly the moment shooting starts given the sheer power of 40k weaponry. That ruin seems safe now, but once an assault cannon tears into it you should be looking for new cover asap. The whole hide in the big obvious piece of terrain goes against established military thinking where they advise you to avoid sheltering in an obvious and isolated area such as a stand of trees. They advise you to hide in a small depression in the ground, along the tall grass growing next to a fence, etc. once the engagement starts then you move into suppress and flank and only hug hard cover if you've messed something up.

Voss wrote:

Because its the most common flaw in area terrain rules, regardless of game system and company .

not really
LOS rules are always a tricky thing but I have rarily seen something similar like that outside of a GW game

From what we have seen now there are either some important parts of the rules missing, or those will make more trouble during games than all the house rules used during 8th

 puma713 wrote:
I think at this point I might have to stop reading the previews as I seem to come away with more anxiety than excitement, even understanding that I haven't seen the 9th rulebook in its entirety. Previewing rules piecemeal is not really an effective marketing strategy, imo. I would, instead, have liked to see one entire part of the rules previewed (like the entire shooting phase) and then someone said, "and there are more changes like this coming soon!"

I might just do the same. A lot of my anxiety is coming from the lack of context and information to correlate what we're being shown. I'll check back either when they start doing major previews, for the box set preview on Saturday, and I'll probably wait until the contents are leaked before I make any judgement. Seems the most fair way to asses it.

 Crimson wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
But the perplexing thing here is that ITC did this right, and they proved it doesn't create any sort of exploit or game problem. ITC's "first floor blocks LOS" rule works great. Nobody has issues with it.

A lot of people had a problem with it. ITC houserules mean that a soldier peeking out of first floor window cannot shoot at the enemy nor can be shot at. This doesn't make sense. Furthermore, it turned many ruins into bizarre unassaultable bunkers. GW rule is way more sensible.

But yet if he's standing at the corner, and there are two big windows for him to see through, he can't see through them, and that makes more sense? Step into the ruin - anybody can see you. Step out of the ruin - nobody can see you? You think this does make sense?

I don't see how the LOS has any impact on whether something is assaultable or not, either. It is completely irrelevant.

yukishiro1 wrote:
But yet if he's standing at the corner, and there are two big windows for him to see through, he can't see through them, and that makes more sense? Step into the ruin - anybody can see you. Step out of the ruin - nobody can see you? You think this does make sense?

I don't see how the LOS has any impact on whether something is assaultable or not, either. It is completely irrelevant.

How often can you see clear through one window of a house and out another when you're out and about in your neighborhood? There's almost always going to be curtains or blinds in the way or even something like a wall or bookcase in the way that doesn't prevent people inside from seeing out or you from seeing them but does stop somebody from seeing through. Ruins in 40k aren't just solid walls and empty window frames, they'd be smoking, filled with dust blacken shards of lingering glass, and you'd need to keep your head on a swivel so you can't just linger on any window you see to make sure there isn't an enemy there.

yukishiro1 wrote:

But yet if he's standing at the corner, and there are two big windows for him to see through, he can't see through them, and that makes more sense? Step into the ruin - anybody can see you. Step out of the ruin - nobody can see you? You think this does make sense?

Yes, it makes sense that if you you're standing near a window you can shoot from it and be shot at return. It makes way less snese that you could shoot and be shot at through several windows and an entire building!

I don't see how the LOS has any impact on whether something is assaultable or not, either. It is completely irrelevant.

ITC houserules in combination with the box terrain their tournaments often use creates a situation where unit in a ruin can neither be shot or assaulted, being pretty much invulnerable. This is utterly terrible game design and should have been blatantly obvious to them.

yukishiro1 wrote:

 puma713 wrote:
I think at this point I might have to stop reading the previews as I seem to come away with more anxiety than excitement, even understanding that I haven't seen the 9th rulebook in its entirety. Previewing rules piecemeal is not really an effective marketing strategy, imo. I would, instead, have liked to see one entire part of the rules previewed (like the entire shooting phase) and then someone said, "and there are more changes like this coming soon!"

The 2020 marketing playbook says that all attention is good attention, and that the object of marketing is to generate "interactions" on social media that raise the profile of what you're trying to market, whether those interactions are positive or not.

I agree it's terrible for actually giving people a good idea of what the rules will be, but that's not the point, the point is to generate responses.

I'm totally self-aware that I'm feeding into this, btw, before anyone calls me on it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Trimarius wrote:


The rule clearly specifies that you measure the volume of a piece of terrain from its highest point, so you don't need to measure individual sections.

Good catch. So we do have the situation where a .5 inch pile of rubble on the side of a ruin blocks LOS to a land raider, because a part of the ruin 10 inches to the right of that is taller than 5" (or you say it doesn't have obscuring, and then the bit that is 5" tall doesn't block anything if it has a tiny window).

Feeding into this would be if you didn’t represent 30% of the posts in some (most ?) pages of this thread. I would say you are shovelling metric tons into it

yukishiro1 wrote:
But yet if he's standing at the corner, and there are two big windows for him to see through, he can't see through them, and that makes more sense? Step into the ruin - anybody can see you. Step out of the ruin - nobody can see you? You think this does make sense?

I don't see how the LOS has any impact on whether something is assaultable or not, either. It is completely irrelevant.

yeah but in the ruin you'll get cover, outside you wont.

still those rules are fethin idiotic and convoluted as hell... just say obscure trait means you cant see through (but you can still see above and around ....and for god sake forget the 5" crap) plus titanic models and flyers can always be seen.


BTW... yes i never understood why a terminator would want to hug every wall and bush it sees, where my orkboyz treat terrain as it would be filled with angry bees.......

 Galas wrote:
So by the new obscuration rules this two miniatures can't see each other?

Spoiler:

The single best post in all 146 pages of this thread

 kodos wrote:

Voss wrote:

Because its the most common flaw in area terrain rules, regardless of game system and company .

not really
LOS rules are always a tricky thing but I have rarily seen something similar like that outside of a GW game

Ok, but see Warmachine Mk3, page 79

When a model outside a forest attempts to draw line of sight to another point also outside that forest, the forest blocks line of sight to anything beyond it. Thus, a model can see 3˝ into or out of a forest but not completely through one regardless of how thick it is.

Forests do not block line of sight to huge-based models.

So, now you have. Even to the point of clear LOS to huge models (but not from)

Sticking to "cover as a bonus to saves," instead of going back to cover as its own form of save, is one of the biggest missteps of 8th and 9th.

Hankovitch wrote:
Sticking to "cover as a bonus to saves," instead of going back to cover as its own form of save, is one of the biggest missteps of 8th and 9th.

Yeah, cover being useless for high save models was soooo nice.

 Crimson wrote:

ITC houserules in combination with the box terrain their tournaments often use creates a situation where unit in a ruin can neither be shot or assaulted, being pretty much invulnerable. This is utterly terrible game design and should have been blatantly obvious to them.

This has nothing to do with LOS, though. This is just as true or not true under GW's 9th edition LOS rule. It makes no difference.

I mean if you want to modify your statement like that and say "this gives you the option to shoot them, even if you can't assault them" - fine, but that's just tilting the balance of the game against melee in favor of shooting. It's not a solution to the issue of not being able to assault into a ruin.

GW has seemed to have taken some cues from other game's terrain. I'm pretty used to infinite height LoS blocking features from Infinity. Takes a second to get used to but improves the effectiveness of close range units.

Also I wouldn't be even a little surprised by and advanced terrain rule page that takes in account relative heights. Like Cityfight rules for when buildings are taller than each other but also obscuring.

I will wait and see. It doesn't bother me either way.

 puma713 wrote:
I think at this point I might have to stop reading the previews as I seem to come away with more anxiety than excitement, even understanding that I haven't seen the 9th rulebook in its entirety. Previewing rules piecemeal is not really an effective marketing strategy, imo. I would, instead, have liked to see one entire part of the rules previewed (like the entire shooting phase) and then someone said, "and there are more changes like this coming soon!"

I don't think that would really help, you'll still get a load of people pointing out problems (justified or not), 9th will only settle into a better/worse/different game in the gaming publics mind once it's been played for a few months by the masses.

If it's better most of the grumbling will settle,
if it's worse there will be lots of grumbling as GWs sales will start to slip back as at least some of the players stop (or reduce) their involvement
if it's just different (which is where I think we'll end up) people will begin to get their heads round the new meta, rebuild their lists with a new balance of minis (and maybe abandon their previous faction if winning was more important than lore to them)

 addnid wrote:


Feeding into this would be if you didn’t represent 30% of the posts in some (most ?) pages of this thread. I would say you are shovelling metric tons into it

This is a message board. Who comes to a message board not to post?

Seems like a really weird reason to attack someone - for discussing things too much on a discussion board?

DanielFM wrote:

Yeah, cover being useless for high save models was soooo nice.

By comparison, it absolutely was.

Ice_can wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
The issue is that it isn't reciprocal. The big mek can target the flyer, but the flyer can't target the big mek. It's hard to make sense of that. The point is that the flyer is up in the air, so you can see it no matter how tall the building is, right? But why is it up in the air when the big mek wants to fire at it but not when it wants to fire at the big mek?

Non-reciprocal LOS - where one model can shoot another model but that model can't shoot back - is a massive can of worms to be opening.

Ork gunner hundreds of meters in the air won't spot a single fella hiding in rubble through a cloud of smoke dust and fire, the ork has an easier tim looking up and seeing a plane. The imagery makes sense in a cinematic way.

Okay a more dumb version of the issue of having a get out clause based on wounds.

A Repulsor can shoot a sparton through said 5 inch high obsuring terrain (even if it can not actually see the sparton) but the spartan can't shoot the Repulsor (even if it could actually see the Repulsor).

An Armiger Knight can shoot a Baneblade through said 5 inch high obsuring terrain (even if it can not actually see the Baneblade) but the Vaneblade can't shoot the Armiger (even if it could actually see the Armiger).

GW done goofed unless they have dropped a huge part of the rules to fix the above absurdity out of the preview.

That's one thing I don't like. If 5 inches is the break point then models shorter than 5 inches should be obscured. A quick check shows both my Cerberus and Fellblade under 4.

 Kanluwen wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Reading the goonhammer article, I must have misheard during the stream - apparently Dense Terrain is supposedly terrain that blocks sight, rather than stopping bullets.

That is extremely unfortunate because it means that Dense Terrain is then almost certainly -1 to hit.

Unless "Defensible" is where the rule that benefits hordes is hiding, that does not bode well for light infantry in this edition either.

I genuinely don't recall "Dense" being addressed at all, but I might have missed it when my phone rang.

But if you made me guess, Defensible is a trait that means units on or within the terrain piece can freely fire out of that terrain piece as if it's not there, and Breachible is a trait that applies to area terrain that allows Infantry Swarms and Beasts to move thru it freely while other unit types cannot.

Since for example Swamps and Craters are area terrain, I would assume area terrain does not by default prevent vehicles from entering

I'm actually wondering if "Breachable" is going to be with regards to vehicles being able to enter the terrain.

I wouldn't be shocked, personally, if Defensible is going to be a trait where any infantry units on/within can act as though it's not there.

I thought that too about defensible but thats already within the text of obscuring.

Dont know at this point. Probably something thst screws melee like full bs overwatch.

DanielFM wrote:

Hankovitch wrote:
Sticking to "cover as a bonus to saves," instead of going back to cover as its own form of save, is one of the biggest missteps of 8th and 9th.

Yeah, cover being useless for high save models was soooo nice.

It doesn't have to be either. There's an easy solution here: after hitting but before wounding, if a model is in cover, roll a dice for each hit; on a 6, the hit is absorbed by the cover and the attack sequence ends. Then go on to wound with the rest of your hits.

This means that cover gives equal benefit to everyone. It involves very slightly more dice rolling, but it's not as much as you'd think, because for each 6 you roll, you avoid the need to roll to wound, to save, and to FNP for that hit, and you don't have to calculate what cover does to the armor save either, so the total time spent is actually about the same.

I think at some point you have to take a step back, realize you don't have all the information with how 9th works as a whole, and think maybe this will actually work. I can't imagine the playtesters playing all of their games, and not returning to GW saying that the terrain rules are really janky, confusing and don't help at all. So at some point, in gameplay, this must all come together and work reasonably well. Anything else currently here is pure speculation, and not well informed as it stands.

GW writes janky rules all the time so this isn't exactly new.

yukishiro1 wrote:

This has nothing to do with LOS, though. This is just as true or not true under GW's 9th edition LOS rule. It makes no difference.

I mean if you want to modify your statement like that and say "this gives you the option to shoot them, even if you can't assault them" - fine, but that's just tilting the balance of the game against melee in favor of shooting. It's not a solution to the issue of not being able to assault into a ruin.

That you can shoot them indeed means that the unit is not completely invulnerable, which is important. It also means that you can make room for your assaulters to get into base to base by first killing some enemies via shooting. GW rules are massively more functional than ITC ones. It is not even a close contest.

Granted, I wish they have streamlined and cleared rules about assaults and close combat in terrain. The 8th edition rules for those are unnecessarily fiddly and sometimes lead to unintuitive results. And I think they said that at least some changes have been made.

 bullyboy wrote:
I think at some point you have to take a step back, realize you don't have all the information with how 9th works as a whole, and think maybe this will actually work. I can't imagine the playtesters playing all of their games, and not returning to GW saying that the terrain rules are really janky, confusing and don't help at all. So at some point, in gameplay, this must all come together and work reasonably well. Anything else currently here is pure speculation, and not well informed as it stands.

I very much hope your optimism is justified.

What makes some of these changes difficult for some folks I think is that rules that previously were ostensibly more “realistic” ie true line of sight, are now explicitly abstracted. This can be distracting in some respects as it can seem to break immersion, it can make things much clearer in playing the game. If some of these idiosyncrasies remain unresolved in the full rules, such as standing on a hill vs infinitely tall terrain, I think they would easily be resolved by either TOs in that setting or simply having a discussion with your opponent. If your opponent is not someone you can have a reasonable discussion regarding terrain and come to a reasonable agreement on how to play, perhaps that isn’t someone that it’s worth playing with?

 bullyboy wrote:
I think at some point you have to take a step back, realize you don't have all the information with how 9th works as a whole, and think maybe this will actually work. I can't imagine the playtesters playing all of their games, and not returning to GW saying that the terrain rules are really janky, confusing and don't help at all. So at some point, in gameplay, this must all come together and work reasonably well. Anything else currently here is pure speculation, and not well informed as it stands.

Neither can i, I can imagine them doing all of that and GW just doing what they want regardless though XD

The obscured rule previewed today is pretty clear cut, not sure what extra gubbins can remove the mental examples the fine members of dakka came up with in 3 hours.

Either/Or wrote:
What makes some of these changes difficult for some folks I think is that rules that previously were ostensibly more “realistic” ie true line of sight, are now explicitly abstracted. This can be distracting in some respects as it can seem to break immersion, it can make things much clearer in playing the game. If some of these idiosyncrasies remain unresolved in the full rules, such as standing on a hill vs infinitely tall terrain, I think they would easily be resolved by either TOs in that setting or simply having a discussion with your opponent. If your opponent is not someone you can have a reasonable discussion regarding terrain and come to a reasonable agreement on how to play, perhaps that isn’t someone that it’s worth playing with?

I find it immensely more realistic that you no longer can shoot someone through four tiny gaps in two separate buildings.

One interesting thing about having all these playtesters come out and tell everybody it's the best edition ever is that they are putting their reputations on the line. Previously, when GW said "this will be the best edition ever! everything is totally perfect!" it didn't really matter because it was GW, and nobody trusts them to be impartial.

Now, we have a bunch of respected people in the community telling us this really is great in every way and there are no downsides at all, it's better than 8th in every way. If that doesn't turn out to be the case, their credibility will suffer. The optimist in me says this means it actually is a lot better in practice than this piece-meal rule revealing has made it look. The pessimist says maybe they just got paid.

yukishiro1 wrote:
One interesting thing about having all these playtesters come out and tell everybody it's the best edition ever is that they are putting their reputations on the line. Previously, when GW said "this will be the best edition ever! everything is totally perfect!" it didn't really matter because it was GW, and nobody trusts them to be impartial.

Now, we have a bunch of respected people in the community telling us this really is great in every way and there are no downsides at all, it's better than 8th in every way. If that doesn't turn out to be the case, their credibility will suffer. The optimist in me says this means it actually is a lot better in practice than this piece-meal rule revealing has made it look. The pessimist says maybe they just got paid.

You'd think that their reputation would be on the line, except that Reece is still being defended for his crap statements about 8th still.

yukishiro1 wrote:
One interesting thing about having all these playtesters come out and tell everybody it's the best edition ever is that they are putting their reputations on the line. Previously, when GW said "this will be the best edition ever! everything is totally perfect!" it didn't really matter because it was GW, and nobody trusts them to be impartial.

Now, we have a bunch of respected people in the community telling us this really is great in every way and there are no downsides at all, it's better than 8th in every way. If that doesn't turn out to be the case, their credibility will suffer. The optimist in me says this means it actually is a lot better in practice than this piece-meal rule revealing has made it look. The pessimist says maybe they just got paid.

These are the same guys that get free books from GW every month and make a living from their product being popular. I love table top tactics etc, but they are never that critical of GW.

So obscuring terrain is an infinitely high and complete LOS blocking, even if there are things on either side that are far beyond the height of the intervening terrain?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
So obscuring terrain is an infinitely high and complete LOS blocking, even if there are things on either side that are far beyond the height of the intervening terrain?

yep, appears that way for now if the terrain has the obscured rule. I'm gonna re-quote galas because of his epic example

 Galas wrote:
So by the new obscuration rules this two miniatures can't see each other?

Spoiler:

In fairness, I think GW assumes “hills” are and inch or two of insulation foam. We also don’t know scaleable. It might allow units on top to see over intervening terrain.

someone posted this on the WH40k facebook thread for the preview, another legend.

bloodletter is safe

 Latro_ wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
One interesting thing about having all these playtesters come out and tell everybody it's the best edition ever is that they are putting their reputations on the line. Previously, when GW said "this will be the best edition ever! everything is totally perfect!" it didn't really matter because it was GW, and nobody trusts them to be impartial.

Now, we have a bunch of respected people in the community telling us this really is great in every way and there are no downsides at all, it's better than 8th in every way. If that doesn't turn out to be the case, their credibility will suffer. The optimist in me says this means it actually is a lot better in practice than this piece-meal rule revealing has made it look. The pessimist says maybe they just got paid.

These are the same guys that get free books from GW every month and make a living from their product being popular. I love table top tactics etc, but they are never that critical of GW.

Well, sort-of. They were quite critical of some of the PA releases (the GSC one, for example). They don't say "OMG GW you suck @#%@%@#%@" but they have been pretty upfront in the past about rules they think miss the mark.

In contrast, Lawrence actually said in a video the other day that there is not a single downside to 9th edition, that it is better in literally every single way. That's going far further into hype territory than you could reasonably say they are obligated to do in order to continue their cushy relationship with GW. It honestly surprised me, because it was going so far that it seems almost certain to come back to bite him at least a little bit.

 Crimson wrote:

Either/Or wrote:
What makes some of these changes difficult for some folks I think is that rules that previously were ostensibly more “realistic” ie true line of sight, are now explicitly abstracted. This can be distracting in some respects as it can seem to break immersion, it can make things much clearer in playing the game. If some of these idiosyncrasies remain unresolved in the full rules, such as standing on a hill vs infinitely tall terrain, I think they would easily be resolved by either TOs in that setting or simply having a discussion with your opponent. If your opponent is not someone you can have a reasonable discussion regarding terrain and come to a reasonable agreement on how to play, perhaps that isn’t someone that it’s worth playing with?

I find it immensely more realistic that you no longer can shoot someone through four tiny gaps in two separate buildings.

But you still can. You only can't if one or more of the buildings is 5" tall AND classified as obscuring terrain. Obscuring terrain does nothing unless specifically built to be tall.
If you've got a collection of GW Ruins from old starter sets? Obscuring rarely kicks in.

Either/Or wrote:
What makes some of these changes difficult for some folks I think is that rules that previously were ostensibly more “realistic” ie true line of sight, are now explicitly abstracted.

Well some of them are, which is the real problem. They've gone 'either/or' in multiple cases- some are 'true line of sight,' some are abstracted, and in some cases its bafflingly both.

And in a couple, like heavy cover, you get a situation where a defended position doesn't protect against charges, which is simply wrong whether you're going for abstracted OR realistic. It's like having pikes be bad against cavalry charges and good against infantry.