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Here's the situation we're playing on a city fight board with lots of buildings. The buildings are exactly 2mm shorter than the head on my defiler, also I modeled one arm on the defiler to be reaching so the spikes on its claw also show about 2mm higher than the building. Basically I told my friend your shooting at antennas (the term for cheesy shot) the question I have is, he had a dev squad on another building, below is my horrible drawing of the situation. So on Building 1 (B1) you have a dev squad, the you have a 2nd building (B2) and behind that building is the defiler. Now if you take the models eye view, you can see part of 2 of the spikes on its forearm claw and part of one of the horns on the defilers head. Both buildings are identical height.


B1[DEV] B2[ ]Defiler

Is it a legal shot? In the game we said it was, though I was pretty sure it wasn't. I could have lowered the claw, but I didn't make the head moveable (maybe I will or I'll just remove it) however I did model the thing so the torso rotates.

You are going to see a LOT of debate on this.

It's a little gray, but most people seem to think it's an OBVIOUS interpretation... THERE way.

Bottom line is to just decide before the game.

We play it: If the building is level3 and the defiler is level3, then you cannot be seen over it.

Easiest to do that way, so you aren't drawing lines to... well... antennas.

Otherwise, mount 4 legs, a cannon & some claws to a terminator Torso, place him on a Dreadnought sized base, and hide him behind Rhinos. Call him a defiler and run him into combat.

If someone can do the extreme AGAINST you with modelling, then turn about is fair play.


Eric

--Who thinks you should NOT use modeling to your advantage.

I always wonder about people "sniping" the toes off my defilers and blowing them up somehow - in fact that chain reaction death has bothered me since I got my defiler way back when.

I rarely have to argue spikes, but when it's like 1 leg sticking out I've been able to work out a modifier to the obscured (or whatever the name) 4+ roll, or had gracious opponents admit that anything that matters on the bug is behind terrain, so glances at best.

And I did make a dread into a defiler at one point, but I felt the small size was a no go given that a real model exists, so I mounted him on a CD and said if you could hit the base you could hit him. Course he's still nice and short, and only as big as a CD

- Salvage

I'm just looking for what a fair ruling is. My defiler is modeled as closely as possibly to have its legs the same height as you see on the box picture, I spent a lot of time getting the angles right, and making the thing as balanced as possible. I'm not trying to hide it at all with modeling, now in game play, beleive me when I say this.... I'll use the terrain and beat you to death with it if I can, and I try to follow the rules where possible. I don't subscribe to shooting at antennas, but the head on the defiler though small and probably consistent with being an "antenna" its also a solid peice so I was sorta fence sitting on allowing it to be a target. My friend was basically saying, dude its a freaking defiler with indirect, I gotta shoot it. (Yes we were running things under the old codex, the new one is lame and until they release something to bring back the flavor of the old codex I'm officially protesting)

MagickalMemories: We were running things as size 3 building and size 3 vehicle, use true line of sight. Is it more correct to say the building is area terrain and blocks LOS to vehicles because of that, as you suggest?

"Obvioulsy a unit can't draw a bead on their target if there is a hill, a building, or some other large object in the way that stops them. In some cases, it will be difficult to tell if line of sight is blocked or not , so a player might have to stoop over the table for a model' eye view. This is the best way to determine whether or not a line of sight exists. The only time you don't use this method is when you want to draw a line of sight into or past Area Terrain (see page 21, line of Sight & Area Terrain), or an assualt combat - this is dealt with later(20, BGB)"


"Sometimes, all that may be visible of a model is a toe or antenna or some other minor part. In these cases, the line of sight is considered blocked. Line of sight must be traced to the body of the target model. This rule is intended to ensure that players don't get penilised for having mpressive banners, blades, gun barrels, spectacularly posed models, etc (21, BGB)."

You were right to play by true line of sight, and as the building blocked line of sight to the body of your defiler, your opponet couldn't shoot it.

Well quoted, Imriel. Those were the exact passages I was thinking of.

Imriel wrote:
"Sometimes, all that may be visible of a model is a toe or antenna or some other minor part. In these cases, the line of sight is considered blocked. Line of sight must be traced to the body of the target model. This rule is intended to ensure that players don't get penilised for having mpressive banners, blades, gun barrels, spectacularly posed models, etc (21, BGB)."

Spikes are just spikes, and if you think about it they're just decorations anyway. You can't blow up a tank by scorching it's flag.

Don't forget there's also the Hull Down rule if all you can see is a Defiler's arm or something.

Got to love TOSALR. As quoted earlier, the rule book does state that you need to draw line of sight to the body of the model and not just some minor part of it. That having been said, if they can see you, you can see them. So if they want to pull that sort of junk, just direct fire on them the next turn. See how they like it.

Ahhhhhhh thanks Tyfe, I spent about 10 min yesterday trying to find that comic but gave it up. Great stuff though

- Salvage

If I scratch build a smaller defiler from GW bits, and don't include any parts from an actual defiler, is it a legal model?

For normal gameplay, anything you want to use is legal... so long as your opponent doesn't object to it.

If you're angling for the 'but I can build something smaller and that gives me an advantage in LOS' you're absolutely correct. The rules do not take 'creative' modeling into account. There are all sorts of ways that the rules can be abused by the way you have modeled your miniatures. It's one of the more well known gaps in the current ruleset... and rather ironic that a company that is so fixated on the modeling side of the hobby would completely neglect to account for it in their rules.

Tournaments will sometimes get around this by insisting on official GW models where they exist. Friendly games will get around it by the simple expedient of people refusing to play you if your miniatures are clearly intended to abuse the rules.

washout wrote:If I scratch build a smaller defiler from GW bits, and don't include any parts from an actual defiler, is it a legal model?

Yes.

However, expect to be tanked on sports and modeling if you do this in a tournament, or have opponents refuse to play you in "friendly" games.