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The rules state a unit has to be within 6" to recieve the 5+ cover save, right? My question is how much of the unit has to be within the 6" range, would a fraction of the models in count the unit as being in? Anyone have any sort of a ruling on this?


Thnx,

Wookie

my understanding is as long as 1 model from a unit is within 6" then the entire unit gets the FF bonus.

Just like anything else in the game, when the rules require something to be within a certain distance as long as part of that thing is within range it is considered within range.

I really think that this is going to be FAQed to have to include at least half of the unit. As the wording for it currently is as other have said, one model only of a unit, its stupidly powerful.

Jayden63 wrote:I really think that this is going to be FAQed to have to include at least half of the unit. As the wording for it currently is as other have said, one model only of a unit, its stupidly powerful.

Really? It more than doubled its points cost from the last codex. If they FAQ'd it as you said frankly it would never be worth taking for the points. You'd only ever see a Mek with a SAG at that point.

I think you'd only see Warbosses on bikes then. Or two weirdboyz.

SAG isn't very good in practice. Quite orky though!

yakface wrote:

Jayden63 wrote:I really think that this is going to be FAQed to have to include at least half of the unit. As the wording for it currently is as other have said, one model only of a unit, its stupidly powerful.

Really? It more than doubled its points cost from the last codex. If they FAQ'd it as you said frankly it would never be worth taking for the points. You'd only ever see a Mek with a SAG at that point.

You don't think that giving 120 models a 5+ cover save from one single piece of wargear is stupidly powerful? Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if you still had to pull models from under blast templates. But unless you have some way of sniping the Mek, that shield is going to be there all day long and there really is no way to break the daisy chain unless you get creative LOS blockers somehow that will allow you to snipe the one or two models that are within 6" of the mek.

The previous Ork codex gave explicit mention of coverage of half the unit to get a benifit. This codex omits that sentence. RAW you only need a piece of one model, like they've said making up for the cost change.

I kinda think they should have put a cap on the number of boys protected by the forcefield but kept the new more generous measurement requirement.

Those things are gonna be golden in APOC games.

Units are composed of models. They are composed of all the models in them. Thus a unit is equal to all of its models.

Therefore if a unit must be within 6" of a Mekboy to receive the benefits of a Kustom Force Field then all of the models in a unit must be within 6" of the Mekboy to receive the benefit of the Kustom Force Field.

This is an orange sitting next to a turd.



The orange is composed of molecules. It is composed of all the molecules in it. Thus the orange is equal to all of its molecules.

The turd is composed of molecules. It is composed of all the molecules in it. Thus the turd is equal to all of its molecules.

There is at least one molecule in the orange that is not within 3" of at least one molecule in the turd, and vice versa.

Therefore the turd and the orange are not actually within 3" of each other.

Nurglitch wrote:Units are composed of models. They are composed of all the models in them. Thus a unit is equal to all of its models.

Therefore if a unit must be within 6" of a Mekboy to receive the benefits of a Kustom Force Field then all of the models in a unit must be within 6" of the Mekboy to receive the benefit of the Kustom Force Field.

This would be fine if there weren't numerous examples of a squad being subject to a rule even though only one member of the squad is touching something. One man in cover, roll for difficult terrain, one man reaches the edge of a board, then the whole unit did remove it.

This codex explicitly left out a sentence in the previous war gear entry.

tegeus-Cromis: If your diagram is correct, then the orange is not within 3" of the turd. It is 3" away. "Within" is inclusive. Even if some of the orange was within 3" of the turd the orange itself would not be because an orange is all of itself.

Dr Phibes: May I request that you list and describe each of these examples? A page number and a sentence would be sufficient.

Strictly speaking, this is true, but it is also common to use "within" more loosely. If I say "one shouldn't build a new city within the limits of harmful radiation from the nuclear disaster of two years ago", I think it will be readily understood that this means that no part of the city should intersect with the fallout zone, not that everything is fine so long as some part of the city extends beyond it. One could perhaps ask for a little more precision in rules, but it is clear that GW has not obliged us. An example: if "within" were being used the way you want us to read it, anything with a base larger than the standard infantry base could contact enemy models freely during the movement phase, since it is impossible for it to be within 1" of another model.

tegeus-Cromis: I don't think it has been established what degree of precision that the GW rules have been written to, although I am currently, in another thread, in the process of demonstrating how such a degree of precision may be judged. That said I believe that it is reasonable to assume that "within" always means something like "inside" when used as a preposition (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/within)

I should address your example though, as it does seem problematic at first glance. If 'within' means something like 'inside' then it seems that any model mounted on a base with a diameter greater than 1" would never come within 1" of an enemy model (since models have their area defined as being the area of their base) because some part of their base will lie outside of that 1" radius.

However, that's not what the rules say. The rules say that: "A model cannot be placed so that it touches an enemy model during the movement phase - this is possible only in the Assault phase." It goes on to say: "To keep this distinction clear, a model may not move within 1" of an enemy model ([yadda yadda]) during the Movement phase.

So, does the second sentence contradict the first since 'within' would seem to require that the entire model be moved into the 1" zone? No, the second sentence does not contradict the first. It does not contradict the first sentence because 'within' is not being used as a preposition, but as an adverb meaning more like 'into' than 'inside'.

The mistake here is called "amphiboly", the result of an ambiguous grammar construction in which a term can act either as a preposition or an adverb. The mistake is assuming that by a strict reading the term has only one role, and that all instances of it are either one role or another. In formal logic this is avoided by restricting terms to a single role. In natural languages this is avoided by remembering that terms have many uses.

However, that's not what the rules say. The rules say that: "A model cannot be placed so that it touches an enemy model during the movement phase - this is possible only in the Assault phase." It goes on to say: "To keep this distinction clear, a model may not move within 1" of an enemy model ([yadda yadda]) during the Movement phase.

So, does the second sentence contradict the first since 'within' would seem to require that the entire model be moved into the 1" zone? No, the second sentence does not contradict the first. It does not contradict the first sentence because 'within' is not being used as a preposition, but as an adverb meaning more like 'into' than 'inside'.

Regardless of how "within" is being used, the second sentence does not contradict the first. Neither meaning of the second sentence is mutually exclusive with that of the first. I was mistaken in saying that a model with a large base would be able to contact enemy models freely; clearly this is not the case.



In any case, from the OED:

7c. Not beyond or outside (a specified distance); at or to a distance of less, or not more, than; nearer or not farther away than.
Often in fig. phrases, as within an ace, a hair's breadth of.

From the dictionary you cite:

9. At or to some point not beyond, as in length or distance; not farther than: within a radius of a mile.

As for the meaning you offer for "within" in the context of the 1" rule, the closest one I could find was this:

{dag}d. (with verb of motion) So as to go in or be inside: = IN prep. 1. Obs. rare.
1297 R. GLOUC. (Rolls) 7951 Hii wi{th}inne turnde a{ygh}en & hom allenome. c1420 Liber Cocorum (1862) 19 Poure hit withinne.

[Edited to remove a serious mistake and make the post less obnoxious.]

Whenever the dictionaries come out, you know it's YMDC.

tegeus-Cromis: How the terms are used is the only way you can tell whether sentences constructed out of them are contradictory (or consistent, or really any property of sentences).

Taken as a preposition the term 'within' in the second sentence definitely contradicts the first sentence because it would allow a model with a base over 2" in diameter to be moved into base-to-base contact with an enemy model, which is prohibited by the first sentence.

Taken as an adverb the term 'within' in the second sentence definitely does not contradict the first sentence because it disallows a model to cross a boundary or limit establishes as 1" away from the base edge of an enemy model, which is consistent with the first sentence.

Whether the term is described as obsolete or rare is irrelevant to how the term is being used, particularly when the use to which it is being put is rare (albeit permissible). How the term is being used is described by the grammar of the text that it is embedded in.

In the case we're concerned with, the Kustom Force Field text, the term 'within' is being used as a preposition. But being a preposition is not what makes it refer to the unit rather than a part of the unit. Being a preposition is what distinguishes it from how the term is used in the rules describing movement, and thus the problem that would have been raised concerning the size of bases. Since we have moved on from that objection, that the movement rules seem to use 'within' to refer to parts of things inside a limit as well as whole things, let us address what relationship the preposition denotes between a noun or pronoun in the sentence and another term.

That noun is "units", modified by the adjective "all" to quantify which units. So what is a unit? The rulebook tells us that a unit is one or more models. That is to say one or more models is all the models in a unit.

So let us apply the term 'unit' in the context of entry 7a of the OED for 'within'

A kustom force field gives all units not beyond or outside 6" of the Mek...

A kustom force field gives all units at or to a distance of not more than 6" of the Mek...

A kustom force field gives all units not farther away than 6" of the Mek...

In each of these cases the 'unit' is what must be within the distance cited. A unit is composed of all of its models.

The sentence in the previous codex, allowing units partially within the range allotted, is not there. The scope of the term 'unit' is thus complete.

As an aside, I'd be interested in knowing which edition and year the OED that you're referring to is, because the dictionary referenced via dictionary.com (which is better to reference since it is publicly available) doesn't mention the use of 'within' to be obsolete or rare. Since English dictionaries are descriptive, rather than prescriptive in the manner of French dictionaries, it's quite possible for them to be wrong when they are out of date or citing a regional dialect, or simply over-generalizing use. That said I suspect your copy of the OED is up to date and appropriate to the regional dialect.

You asked for some examples of where the word unit means any one model in a unit.

Page 49 Under the heading "Leaving the battle."
"Once a unit reaches the table edge it is considered to have left the immediate battle and may not return. Not that there is no need for individual models in the unit to move 'off' the table - once a model reaches the edge that unit is gone!"

They say once a unit reaches a table edge. What they mean is any model in the unit.

They use the same one model = the whole unit convention for night fighting as well. Pg 84.

It seems quite common for GW to apply the convention that they mean any model in a unit when they say unit.

The same convention is used in difficult terrain. Pg 17 They say unit, meaning if any model in the unit wants to enter or leave difficult terrain they whole unit is subject to the terrain test.

Where it is necessary for a given number of models to do something to gain a benefit rather than just a single model in a unit GW usually provides something like how many people have to meet a condition for the benefit or penalty. Fifty percent is a common figure used in this way. GW altered the war gear from a previous codex, specifically omitting a previous qualifier of 50%. If this is a typographical error it will need to be corrected, otherwise KFF stands as an expensive but useful piece of wargear.

Hell, I lose to Orcs all the time and I would feel bad if they had upped the price and still kept the old ruling. Too many codices are filled up with garbage wargear anyhow.

Nurglitch:

A more concise example would be page 62 of the rulebook:

"When the unit disembarks, each model must be deployed within 2" of one of the vehicle's access points, and within unit coherency."

The diagram on page 62 clearly shows that only a portion of a disembarking model must be within 2" of the access point.


Also the rules state on many occasions that models are not allowed to move within 1 inch of an enemy model. If you somehow think that "within" means "entirely within" then you could easily move models with bases larger than 1" into base contact with enemy models.


But more importantly, you are simply wrong about the basic usage of the word. If I say that I live "within" 1 mile of San Francisco that means I live up to a mile away from the outmost edge of San Francisco, it does not mean that my house is within 1 mile of all of San Francisco.

I'd just like to point out that the difficult terrain example is not a good one to use because of the rule that the unit can only move as fast as the slowest model. It actually is just that one model taking the difficult terrain test, but the whole unit can only move as fast as that one guy, so it is the same thing as if the whole model had to make the test.

This really doesn't help anything, but I just thought I'd throw it out there.

I will concede that point. However the rule also uses the word unit and implies any model in the unit when it talks about having to take the test. It says unit however a whole unit doesn't have to be in terrain in order to take the test. It's an example of the interchangeable use of the words.

Nurglitch:

Taken as a preposition the term 'within' in the second sentence definitely contradicts the first sentence because it would allow a model with a base over 2" in diameter to be moved into base-to-base contact with an enemy model, which is prohibited by the first sentence.

No. It merely fails to prevent a model with a base over 1" in diameter from moving into btb with an enemy model. It does not grant premission to break the no btb rule stated previously. There is no "contradiction" of the previous sentence, except insofar as it would then fail to "keep the distinction clear".

-

That aside, I realise now that, by the premises you have stated, you are actually correct, and I am wrong. The real heart of the issue is not what "within" means (for as you've shown, there's a problem whichever definition we use), but what "unit" means. I ought to have started by challenging the claim that a unit is in all cases equal to its constituent models. This is not self-evident. It is not even true. Consider:

Dresden, the city, is composed of all its districts. it is composed of all the districts in it. Therefore it is equal to all of its districts.

I am in Altstadt. I am not in Neustadt. Therefore I am not in Dresden.

Bombs struck some districts during the war. There is at least one district which was not struck (let's assume for this example). Therefore Dresden was not bombed.

The district of Dresden closest to my current position is within an hour's drive from me. The district furthest from my position is not within an hour's drive from me. Therefore Dresden is not within an hour's drive from me. (Basically yakface's example.)

This seems quite out of step with commonly accepted usage, wouldn't you say? In some instances, I submit, a thing is not equal to its constituent parts, but to any one of its constituent parts.

-

My OED is the online edition, for what it's worth.

I agree with T-C, Yak, and Phibes' eloquent and cogent arguments.

GW has used the meaning "at or closer than" for "within" very consistently in (at least) the most recent two editions of the game. Furthermore, they also use the term "completely within" in some circumstances, for example, in the different victory conditions for different missions or levels of missions.

I have the previous codex here, and it is worded any model wholly under the 6" radius gains the benefit. Why would they change the wording and more than double the points cost if they did not intend for it to work this way. Besides they had other armies in mind when designing it as well. Imagine how long 2 30 man ork squads would last against 3 carnifex with barbed stranglers and a hive tyrant or two. Not long enough to matter thats for sure. Its the only way to compete on a fair scale.

Fair? I don't think fairness has anything to do with it. 60 orks is only 360 points. Now for an additional (X) points you get to add an additional 20 wounds to the pile. In most cases thats an extra 30-40 shots that need to come from somewhere.

The game is still only 6 turns long. Now, don't get me wrong, I love my Orks, I want them tough, but I also have 3 other armies that I can field. So I look at the bigger picture, and seriously, I don't see them being able to take down a pure green tide army that have that sort of survivability in the 6 turn game limit. Throw in a Wierd boy and the basic one turn fleet move and those orks will be on you before you really want them to. And it gets even worse with the proposed forced march rules of 5th ed.

Nurglitch wrote:Units are composed of models. They are composed of all the models in them. Thus a unit is equal to all of its models.

Therefore if a unit must be within 6" of a Mekboy to receive the benefits of a Kustom Force Field then all of the models in a unit must be within 6" of the Mekboy to receive the benefit of the Kustom Force Field.

I'm suprised no one has pointed out that the coherency rules use the same 'within' language.

By nurglitch's logic a unit composed of models on 2" bases would always have to be in base with each other.

That was the first thing I looked to, but I was dismayed to find that the coherency rules actually state that coherency exists when 'the distance between one model and the next is no more than 2"'. It's congruent with our interpretation, but it's also congruent with Nurglitch's.

yakface: You could have also mentioned the unit coherency rules where the models in the check-marked diagrams are clearly 2" away from each other rather than within 2" of each other. In fact the entire unit is out of the unit coherency described in the text! In each of these cases there is the curious disagreement between the text and the diagram, which makes it rather difficult to use the diagram to clearly show what the text describes.

All that the diagram on page 62 clearly shows is that a portion of a model is not within 2" of the access point, and that the diagram contradicts the text. Which is unfortunate because it means we can't just solve this disagreement via reference to these diagrams.

Also I've already explained how the term 'within' in the movement rules is an adverb and not a preposition, and that treating them as the same was an error of amphiboly. As such if one thought that the sentence in question indicated that models with bases larger than 1" could come within 1" of enemy models because they could not come within 1" of enemy models, then one would be wrong. Since the 'within' in the sentence in question is an adverb the sentence expresses a rule about approaching limits, not about enclosure as it would if the 'within' in question were a preposition.

Now, if you're going to claim that I'm "simply wrong" about the common ("basic") usage of the term 'within' you should at least note that the term has many common usages, which can be categorized by the grammatical role the term is employed in. That way you can explain to me which common usage you're referring to, and how I am misusing it, and I can learn a lesson if I am indeed wrong about that "basic" usage. I'd like to point out that I explained at least two common usages of the term 'within', that of a preposition and that of an adverb, and how to tell the difference.

Likewise if you're going to explain to me how I am misusing the particular usage, it might help if you employed a better argument. After all, if you say that you live "within" 1 mile of San Francisco, intending to mean in English that you live up to a mile away from the utmost edge of that city, you could be mis-speaking yourself and saying that you live within 1 mile of all of San Francisco when you don't mean it. Merely asserting that you don't use the word that way begs the question of whether you yourself use it correctly.

Think of it like this: Suppose when engage in basic arithmetic I was asked to add 2 and 2 together I wrote down 5. Now, that would be incorrect, assuming the usual terms "2", "+", etc. If you pointed that out to me, and I said that when I write down 5 I mean next natural number after three, then you would be wrote to point out that I should have written down 4. By writing 5 instead of 4 when I mean the next natural number after three I would be making a mistake. The mistake would be assuming that 5 means what I want it to mean, rather than having its meaning fixed by objective mathematical and linguistic structures.

Dr Phibes: Thanks! Hopefully we'll be able to put these examples to good use. However to really make citing these examples worthwhile we really need all of them. In particular we need all references to 'units' that denote not all the models in the unit and which do not have a rider attached pointing out that 'unit' in that particular case refers to some of the unit rather than all of the unit as nouns lacking adjectives like 'some' referring to their parts do.

mauleed: I think there's been some miscommunication here because I've presented an argument showing that the grammatical construction of the sentence containing the 1" limit conclusively shows that the term "within" is being used as an adverb. Since it is being used as an adverb it expresses a logical structure that is entirely consistent with the previous sentence that prohibits models from moving into base contact in the movement phase. It is not only consistent, but it extends the boundary that rule is concerned with so that no model can be moved past a larger boundary line: the 1" boundary. Indeed, I have argued that if we commit the error of amphiboly and misread the term as a preposition as it is used in another rule, then we end up with the contradiction that: although no model can move within 1" of an enemy model in the movement phase, models with bases larger than 1" can move within 1" of an enemy model in the movement phase because

Let me make myself clear:

By Nurglitch's logic a unit composed of models on 2" bases would not always have to be in base to base contact with each other because Nurglitch's logic doesn't make the error of amphiboly in over-generalizing the usage of a term in sentence to a grammatically different sentence.

Are you going to ignore my post? It seems somewhat unkind.

tegeus-Cromis: Sorry, I was hoping you'd see I was addressing your comments along with Yakfaces and mauleeds. To address your post:

When we misread the second sentence in the movement rules, such that the 'within' is mistaken as a preposition, the rule it expresses grants permission to break the rule stated in the first sentence, that models may not move into base to base contact during the movement phase, by failing to prohibit a model with a base over 1" in diameter from crossing the 1" boundary since that model cannot be inside that boundary. Since the first sentence prohibits this and the second sentences grants permission to do this we have a classic bivalent contradiction of A and not A in direct opposition.

As I said to Dr Phibes in the previous post we need to find all of the instances in which the term 'unit' is used to refer to whole units, rather than partial units. Usually an unmodified noun refers to a whole object, but often it can be used to refer to whole or partial objects, and to move ahead it would help matters if we had all of the relevant textual evidence at hand.

Insofar as challenging the claim that a unit is in all cases equal to its constituent models it might be something to consider the scope of the quantifier "all". In the case of Warhammer 40k, regardless of what we might think in other domains, the rulebook states that units are composed of models (P. 8 "Units" and that their models are the unit.

But I should address the argument you put forward, just on principle:

tegeus-Cromis wrote:Dresden, the city, is composed of all its districts. it is composed of all the districts in it. Therefore it is equal to all of its districts.

I'm going to use some symbols so the semantics of Dresden don't distract from the logic of the argument. What you're stating here is that there is some object, call it d for Dresden, which has the property C of being a city. Let's say there's some objects, call them a, b, c (since I don't know Dresden) which have the property of being districts, call that S. So Cd = U[a, b, c] which is to say the City of Dresden is equal to the sum of its districts.

tegeus-Cromis wrote:I am in Altstadt. I am not in Neustadt. Therefore I am not in Dresden.

I'm going to assume Alstadt and Neustadt are districts in Dresden. They'll be a and b, respectively. Let's also say that there's some object with the property of being you, call it i. We'll use the letter M to denote the membership relation. The logical structure of the argument should be: iMa & ~iMb, aMd & iMd, => iMd. Yours is: iMa & ~iMb, aMd & iMd, => ~iMd. So given the assumptions you've made about the membership relation of districts to Dresden, and the assumptions you further make about the membership relation of you to districts, your conclusion ("Therefore I am not in Dresden") is false and the quoted argument is deductively invalid.

tegeus-Cromis wrote:Bombs struck some districts during the war. There is at least one district which was not struck (let's assume for this example). Therefore Dresden was not bombed.

Again an unsound argument (an argument in which the truth of the premises is not matched by the truth of the conclusion, usually because it is logically invalid).

tegeus-Cromis wrote:The district of Dresden closest to my current position is within an hour's drive from me. The district furthest from my position is not within an hour's drive from me. Therefore Dresden is not within an hour's drive from me. (Basically yakface's example.)

Here's a new relation, that of within an hour's drive. Let's call that D. So: ~iMd & iDa, aMd, ~iDb, => ~iDd. That's again deductively invalid. What would be valid would be ~iMd & iDa, aMd, ~iDb, => iDd. Note that aMd, that district a is a member of Dresden is a premise given earlier but left out in the specific arguments. Fortunately they fall within the scope of that premise and it can be explicitly reiterated with logical validity to prove validity in sub-arguments.

Each of these argument commits a fallacy of composition which relies on a confusion between Dresden and its components. When you say that in some instances a thing is not equal to all of its constituent parts, but to any of its constituent parts all of the cases I think you need to give examples that do not include the fallacy of composition, and examples from the information contained in the rulebook. Dr Phibes has given us a head-start in that regard.

I would wish it were out of step with common usage, but my experience of being a teaching assistant has left me that it is at least appallingly common with undergraduate university students. That said we're not concerned with undergraduate university students who can't even bother to read their easy-reader textbooks, or even with highly intelligent people who carefully read and analyze much more advanced texts. We're concerned with how the term 'unit' is used to denote objects in the game of Warhammer 40k.

I'll check out the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary. Sounds handy.