Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Can we hit flyers with our death ray?

Someone in my Local GW store (actually the black shirt) was adamant that flyers which zoom, cannot be hit with a death ray because it was a special template weapon.

I didn't have my rulebook at the time and was too lazy to look it up in the one from the shop.

Once I came home I searched it up in both the faq and the rulebook, nowhere it states that "special template" weapons cannot be used against flyers.

So now I resort to the internet, tell me fellow dakka members, what do you think?

You can use it against against flyers I think, as the rules specify that templates and blast weapons cannot be used against flyers.
The death ray is neither.

However, as it does not use the BS skill, you cannot use it for snap shots, which is probably what the black shirt may have been thinking of.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:You can use it against against flyers I think, as the rules specify that templates and blast weapons cannot be used against flyers.
The death ray is neither.

However, as it does not use the BS skill, you cannot use it for snap shots, which is probably what the black shirt may have been thinking of.

I was under the impression that weapons which do not requite a "To Hit" roll couldn't hit fliers?

Did I make that up?

Iranna.

Iranna wrote:

CthuluIsSpy wrote:You can use it against against flyers I think, as the rules specify that templates and blast weapons cannot be used against flyers.
The death ray is neither.

However, as it does not use the BS skill, you cannot use it for snap shots, which is probably what the black shirt may have been thinking of.

I was under the impression that weapons which do not requite a "To Hit" roll couldn't hit fliers?

Did I make that up?

Iranna.

Only if you require a snap shot to hit them, iirc.
I don't have BOB with me at the moment. Its currently in another city.

Well, if the Death Ray counts as a "Template" weapon, it couldn't hit the zooming flyer...

What does the Death Ray count as?

Iranna.

It only states that you cannot hit zooming fliers with blast and template weapons, so yeah it would seem you can. It does not state anywhere what type of attack the death ray is.

As I get how the death ray should work, you just shoot a laser beam of DOOM ray action from one point on the board to the next.

If the doom ray is on the flier level (like when you have to pick a floor in ruins / buildings to shoot at) though that does indicate it uses template rules (kind of like how warscythe has the same rules as power weapons but never says it is one)

It is interesting about that doom ray can't snap fire because it doesn't use bs, I've been all excited about using it that way but I guess it makes sense, maybe.

Death Ray is defined as a Beam weapon, like blood lance, IIRC, Necron FAQ.

Think of the Deathray as the ultimate Limbo bar and the flyer is the next contestant...

GW really needs to Errata all these silly line weapons as far as Flyers are concerned.

IMO, you should house rule them as follows.

These weapons may be declared to be shooting at a Flyer, but if you do this then the line can only hit Flyers. So you basically choose between hitting stuff on the ground or in the air.

I like that. Sort of like how Templates and blasts can only hit one.level of a ruin.

My thoughts:

As a Doomscythe is a flier, it may opt to use either Skyfire or not.

If it uses Skyfire then it cannot target non-fliers as it would need to snapfire.

Conversely if it does not use Skyfire, it cannot target fliers as that would be snapfire.

So:

if it Skyfires then the first target clearly must be a zooming flier. If the line is then drawn throughnon-fliers then it depends on whether they are also targets. if so the weapon can't be fired as they'd be targeted with snapshots, which are disallowed. If they're not, then it must work as Grey Templar suggests.

And vice versa.

It can, but only if you choose to use skyfire.

However the line cannot hit anything on the ground, as you would have to snap fire the ground.

If you choose to not use skyfire and fire on the ground, you can't hit air.

I actually found nothing about this in the faq of rulebook so I'd say RAW a flyer would get hit along with any ground units... pretty lame though and I'll probably not push that against my gaming buddies for fair play's sake

I think he's confusing them with Bouncing Cannonballs in 8e Warhammer Fantasy, which are a 2 dimensional template as defined in the rules.

Robbietobbie wrote:I actually found nothing about this in the faq of rulebook so I'd say RAW a flyer would get hit along with any ground units... pretty lame though and I'll probably not push that against my gaming buddies for fair play's sake

You can't use auto hit weapons when you must snap fire. Fliers snap fire the ground when using skyfire, and they snap fire the air when they aren't using skyfire. Figure the rest out yourself.

Grey Templar wrote:GW really needs to Errata all these silly line weapons as far as Flyers are concerned.

IMO, you should house rule them as follows.

These weapons may be declared to be shooting at a Flyer, but if you do this then the line can only hit Flyers. So you basically choose between hitting stuff on the ground or in the air.

Blood and Slaughter wrote:My thoughts:

As a Doomscythe is a flier, it may opt to use either Skyfire or not.

If it uses Skyfire then it cannot target non-fliers as it would need to snapfire.

Conversely if it does not use Skyfire, it cannot target fliers as that would be snapfire.

So:

if it Skyfires then the first target clearly must be a zooming flier. If the line is then drawn throughnon-fliers then it depends on whether they are also targets. if so the weapon can't be fired as they'd be targeted with snapshots, which are disallowed. If they're not, then it must work as Grey Templar suggests.

And vice versa.

juraigamer wrote:It can, but only if you choose to use skyfire.

However the line cannot hit anything on the ground, as you would have to snap fire the ground.

If you choose to not use skyfire and fire on the ground, you can't hit air.

All this ^^^

That's exactly how I interpret the rules. If you choose skyfire, then the hits are resolved only against flyers.
If not, the hits are resolved only against ground targets.

juraigamer wrote:

Robbietobbie wrote:I actually found nothing about this in the faq of rulebook so I'd say RAW a flyer would get hit along with any ground units... pretty lame though and I'll probably not push that against my gaming buddies for fair play's sake

You can't use auto hit weapons when you must snap fire. Fliers snap fire the ground when using skyfire, and they snap fire the air when they aren't using skyfire. Figure the rest out yourself.

Good point, I concede

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/280663.page

Moving to YMDC.

Thanks for all your ideas and opinions, I'll use it in the most sane way proposed, which all my gaming buddies will think of a fair and fair solution.

thanks all

CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:GW really needs to Errata all these silly line weapons as far as Flyers are concerned.

IMO, you should house rule them as follows.

These weapons may be declared to be shooting at a Flyer, but if you do this then the line can only hit Flyers. So you basically choose between hitting stuff on the ground or in the air.

Blood and Slaughter wrote:My thoughts:

As a Doomscythe is a flier, it may opt to use either Skyfire or not.

If it uses Skyfire then it cannot target non-fliers as it would need to snapfire.

Conversely if it does not use Skyfire, it cannot target fliers as that would be snapfire.

So:

if it Skyfires then the first target clearly must be a zooming flier. If the line is then drawn throughnon-fliers then it depends on whether they are also targets. if so the weapon can't be fired as they'd be targeted with snapshots, which are disallowed. If they're not, then it must work as Grey Templar suggests.

And vice versa.

juraigamer wrote:It can, but only if you choose to use skyfire.

However the line cannot hit anything on the ground, as you would have to snap fire the ground.

If you choose to not use skyfire and fire on the ground, you can't hit air.

All this ^^^

That's exactly how I interpret the rules. If you choose skyfire, then the hits are resolved only against flyers.
If not, the hits are resolved only against ground targets.

The game doesn't know what it's firing at until whatever is under the line gets hit. Death Ray circumvents both the "Choose a Target" and the "Roll to Hit" sections of the page 12 Shooting sequence.

The only time you're going to hit a "does this need to be snap-fired" check with a line/beam attack is if you were stunned/shaken in the previous turn, or if you evaded.

Since you never select a target and it's not a template, it indiscriminately hits everything under the line. Weapons that don't use BS can't be FIRED as snap shot, but by the time you draw the line, the weapon has already fired. If it hits both a ground and flying target, you'd have to retroactively invalidate the shot to satisfy the snapfire rule if it was true that you were 'targeting' units hit by it. However there is NO evidence to suggest that either of those cases are true.

Skyfire or not will determine what will or won't be snap shots with the Tesla destructor though.

I think your reaching, by your argument jaws would hit flying monstrous creatures.

Red Corsair wrote:I think your reaching, by your argument jaws would hit flying monstrous creatures.

JotWW is a separate power that works differently, and has its own errata. It's not applicable to the death ray.

Namely, JotWW errata explicitly states that the first model under the line is the target, and that the power itself is a PSA. As a PSA that doesn't require BS to hit, a FMC is not a legal target.

Flyers can only be hit if you fire at it with snapfire. And any weapon that doesn´t use its BS cannot be used to snapfire. So a death ray cannot target or hit the Flyer because they dont use BS to hit.

Then comes the skyfire rule. Which simply states that against flyers you snapfire with your base BS instead of BS1. so it means you are still snapfireing so template weapons and blasts can still not be used against flyers and therefore the death ray cant aswell.

kombat46 wrote:Flyers can only be hit if you fire at it with snapfire. And any weapon that doesn´t use its BS cannot be used to snapfire. So a death ray cannot target or hit the Flyer because they dont use BS to hit.

Then comes the skyfire rule. Which simply states that against flyers you snapfire with your base BS instead of BS1. so it means you are still snapfireing so template weapons and blasts can still not be used against flyers and therefore the death ray cant aswell.

Don't paraphrase rules. That's not what it says, and the conclusion is invalid.

It says that that shots at a flyer (i.e, shots that target a flyer) are resolved as snap shots, not that they can only hit if they were fired as snap shots. There is currently no other language in the game that uses this phrasing (aside from Hard to Hit for FMCs).

So how do you 'resolve' a shot as a snap shot anyway? Fire it at BS1, or disallow the firing if it's a template, blast, large blast, or otherwise doesn't use BS. The problem is, how do you un-fire a weapon that is already fired? By the time the line is drawn you've already determined what is hit by it. Nothing in the codex or FAQ says it can't hit flyers, and the codex trumps the BRB in all cases. The death ray is in a unique class of attacks not currently covered adequately by what they intended the rules to be, but the rules we do have do not disallow hitting flyers with it. Snap shot doesn't change that. Hard to hit doesn't change that. It's time people start accepting this.

Even if 'resolve' was intended to mean 'hits by non-snap-fired weapons don't count,' this language isn't present in the rules for skyfire, only that you can only fire at ground targets with snap fire. So if you have skyfire, you can get around the problem of hitting ground and air units at the same time if you're adamant about that definition of 'resolve'.

Having read the rules all over again,

there's nothing against, truly, nothing, and it seems we only have pro's.

I'm just gonna solve it this way and, for a fun game's sake, I advice all of you to do the same ;D

If you wanna death ray flyers = you are skyfire'in

^
|
|

Well said this thread was looking like a dud and @ ostrekon well said. Ivthink you covered it. Line weapons are not templates.

Line weapons arent templates, unlike in fantasy

So you CAN fire but not using a snapshot, so you must declare sky fire. That means you can only "snap shot" against ground targets, and as the weapon does not use a BS it cannot hit any ground targets, but can hit flyers.

nosferatu1001 wrote:Line weapons arent templates, unlike in fantasy

So you CAN fire but not using a snapshot, so you must declare sky fire. That means you can only "snap shot" against ground targets, and as the weapon does not use a BS it cannot hit any ground targets, but can hit flyers.

RAW doesn't support this. RAW, it'll hit everything under the line if you declare Skyfire.

RAI, this is probably the sanest way, and how I plan on playing it so people who don't read the rules don't pack up their minis.

No. to hit a flyer you must be using skyfire, and to hit ground targets you must only snap shot. Snap shot cannot use weapons that dont use BS.