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After a good read through of the 5th edition leak, I can’t seem to find any mention of skimmers not blocking line of sight. So, assuming that this isn’t an oversight that’s going to be corrected, what are the ramifications of skimmers now blocking line of sight?

Fish of fury tactics will have to be modified or abandoned.

Getting out of wave serpents isn’t suicide anymore.

You’ll have to watch the positioning of land speeders, vipers, piranhas and other little fast skimmers so you don’t accidentally block your line of sight.

Wave serpents and devil fish can be used as very mobile cover for their armies.

What else?

Lol back in 3rd edition my friend would use vypers to "escort" his serpents.
I'd be kinda sad to see serpent/falcon fury go but I could deal with it. now I can "create" my own terrain by taking a serpent for my guardians and hiding important stuff behind it.

Tau own face, but get your piranhas while they're still 25$.

Zoom up, no more running, and you can't see me anymore but I can see exactly what I want to.

Hope you have mobile terrain!

Oh darnit, I was right about this strategy too. /sigh

if Skimmers stop blocking LoS again in 6th after everyone changes their armies around I'm going to start believing the conspiracy theories.

Losing fish of fury tactics would be a shame.

The thing is, they might not. If your skimmers are on the high flying bases, you should be able to see underneath them.

So when you try to shoot me, I take them off the bases?

And when it's my turn, they go back on the bases so I can shoot under?

Yeah, good thinking!

Again this is why declaring this stuff in advance is better. I know GW like to make players take some of the responsibility for the rules so jack asses can take advantage of it all.

The way I see it. You're able to shoot though skimmer or not. tell me which and I'll deal with it.

Even if you can see under the skimmer, the models on the other side are definitely going to be "obscured" - so no shooting at non-vehicle units and vehicles get a 4+ cover...

Not really liking it.

Yup, sucks rocks. The real killer is that falcons, waveserpents, devilfish, hammerheads, and raiders actually have a pretty big profile, if compared to rhinos, preditors and other tracked variants. If they do block LOS, thats a large chunk of ground no one will see around.

I don't think anyone could say that landspeeders or vipers are all the big, but a wall of three devilfish is pretty damn big.

stjohn70 wrote:Even if you can see under the skimmer, the models on the other side are definitely going to be "obscured" - so no shooting at non-vehicle units and vehicles get a 4+ cover...

Not really liking it.

Actually, as long as none of the weapons in your unit can hurt the skimmer you are allowed to shoot past it if you can see models beyond it that are partially obscured by it.

Which makes it really interesting, as your enemy might be able to shoot at your guys hiding behind your skimmer, but your guys, behind the same skimmer, cannot fire back, because there's no exception for firing through your own unit.

Stelek wrote:So when you try to shoot me, I take them off the bases?

And when it's my turn, they go back on the bases so I can shoot under?

Do people actually play like this? Since when are you allowed to unbase your models midgame to get an advantage?

"Oh, you can see my marines because that hill is only 28mm high? Let me take the base off of them. OK, you can't see them now."

If skimmers go back to blocking LOS like in 3rd, my DE might start fielding Raider Squads and Incubi again

So let me get this straight: one can shoot under a skimmer, but troops on the other side get cover? What if the skimmer is like 6" high on an extended flying base?

This will not help Dire Avengers.

And I am so building three different heights of flying base:
"Shooting under with Avengers": 6-inch high
"Normal movement": Regular flight stand
"Obscurathon": 1mm off the base-stand.

Normally I wouldn't deign to do cheesy modelling tricks like that, but if that's going to be standard in 5th, I'll jump off the bridge too.

yakface wrote:

stjohn70 wrote:Even if you can see under the skimmer, the models on the other side are definitely going to be "obscured" - so no shooting at non-vehicle units and vehicles get a 4+ cover...

Not really liking it.

Actually, as long as none of the weapons in your unit can hurt the skimmer you are allowed to shoot past it if you can see models beyond it that are partially obscured by it.

Wow, crazy though. I move up my falcon, disembark its passengers and turn it so that the rear is faceing the enemy. Now since my troops are facing the front armor (which I can't hurt if I'm not running fire dragons) I can shoot past the falcon to the enemy (maybe a marine tac squad) behind. The marines, however are now looking at AV10 falcon rear armor which they can hurt, so they can't shoot past the falcon to hit the squad behind. Interesting possibility.

Correct, Phoenix.

This is why I'm upgrading my long-neglected Dark Eldar to a warrior based army.

Oh no, I *can* shoot you. Always.

Until they put AV9 tractor trailors in the game for marines to get cover with. lol

I'm starting to come around on the idea of skimmers not blocking LOS, but giving cover saves. It's sort of realistic: jetwash and blocked shots make sense for cover there. And if you're shooting at something with 4+ saves, it's not really going to end FOF anyways.

That "only shoot past a vehicle if you can't hurt it" rule is totally bunk, though.

Just not blocking LOS was quicker and easier, and strained verisimilitude less. It seems like they're throwing some of the "quick and dirty" mechanics out in favor of much more complicated, equally sloppy rules. Of course it was just the playtest version, so maybe as many chances were taken as possible. Jeez I hope they reign most of them in.

Phoenix wrote:
Wow, crazy though. I move up my falcon, disembark its passengers and turn it so that the rear is faceing the enemy. Now since my troops are facing the front armor (which I can't hurt if I'm not running fire dragons) I can shoot past the falcon to the enemy (maybe a marine tac squad) behind. The marines, however are now looking at AV10 falcon rear armor which they can hurt, so they can't shoot past the falcon to hit the squad behind. Interesting possibility.

If this is accurate in the final game than I would say that the game has become abstracted into silliness. GW either needs to become a lot more clever in their rule design, or stop trying to be clever with it.

Savnock wrote:
Just not blocking LOS was quicker and easier, and strained verisimilitude less. It seems like they're throwing some of the "quick and dirty" mechanics out in favor of much more complicated, equally sloppy rules. Of course it was just the playtest version, so maybe as many chances were taken as possible. Jeez I hope they reign most of them in.

I agree.

If skimmers block LOS then my Dark Eldar Raider Rush army just got a lot more interesting. I think I need to start running 2-3 min Raider Squads to block the Wych and Incubus squads zooming behind.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

xenite wrote:

Phoenix wrote:
Wow, crazy though. I move up my falcon, disembark its passengers and turn it so that the rear is faceing the enemy. Now since my troops are facing the front armor (which I can't hurt if I'm not running fire dragons) I can shoot past the falcon to the enemy (maybe a marine tac squad) behind. The marines, however are now looking at AV10 falcon rear armor which they can hurt, so they can't shoot past the falcon to hit the squad behind. Interesting possibility.

If this is accurate in the final game than I would say that the game has become abstracted into silliness. GW either needs to become a lot more clever in their rule design, or stop trying to be clever with it.

If the Phoenix's idea weren't predicated on the illegal maneuver of moving a tank, disembarking the squad, then moving the tank again, I might be worried.

If you do it legally by moving up, then in the following turn disembarking the squad and pivoting the tank, the tank's not Moving Fast and it's easier for your opponent to kill it.

Mannahnin wrote:
If the Phoenix's idea weren't predicated on the illegal maneuver of moving a tank, disembarking the squad, then moving the tank again, I might be worried.

If you do it legally by moving up, then in the following turn disembarking the squad and pivoting the tank, the tank's not Moving Fast and it's easier for your opponent to kill it.

Humm, good catch. Guess it requires 2 seperate units to do it. You could move up foot sloggers (or units from a wave serpent or infiltrators or something) and then have the falcon fly over them and spin around to moon the enemy. Trickier manuver to pull off though.

Yeah. And remember that it won't work if they can draw LOS around the tank or just move to be in the side arc. With how narrow the rear arc is compared to the sides, I don't foresee this happening much, even if people weren't self-conscious about the visual silliness.