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one of my good freinds plays tau. i play orks. i was charging some of his fire warriors with my orks. he had his fire warriors backed up to the base of his devilfish. when i declared my charge he informed me that i couldnt. why.???
the base he informed me that his fire warriors are mounted on is 25mm. you may not assault a unit if your assault move will bring you within a inch of an unengaged enemy unit. since 25 mm amount to .98 inches, the 2 hundreaths of an inch disparity meant that i could not assault his warriors without first destroying the devilfish. next round i blew his devilfish to pieces and succeeded in overrunning most of his army with my one remaining ork unit.
however i want to know if this is a legitimate tactic and if any of you have ever faced the fish of fury. would this be legal in tournment play.

Total BS. Don't let a RAW advocate fool you either.

- G

Very technically your opponent is correct (RAW). But I would refuse to play against any jerk who enforced such a rule.

Fish of fury is meant to be played with firewarriors BEHIND the transport, because the transport is a skimmer they warriros can shoot through it, but because of the 1 inch rule assault enemies have to run around it to to get to the warriors.

This is a well known loop hole in the rules. Technically, that Tau player could have also just had two units mixed together in base to base contact with each other and accomplish the same thing. I personally consider anyone trying to pull crap like that a dirty-rotten- rat-bastard. While it’s technically within the bounds of the RAW, it's blatantly against the overall spirit of the game. Yakface has addressed this issue in his wonderful Independent National Warhammer 40,000 Tournament FAQ.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/208090.page

While not an official FAQ, my local gaming group has adopted these rule changes and clarifications and would suggest you do the same.

Before it starts, please don't start another INAT FAQ witch-hunt in this thread

And the fish of fury tactic is supposed to be played how Russell describes it...the fire warriors behind the 'fish. This helps prevent people from getting to the warriors. Now, why can't we just declare a charge to both the 'fish and the warriors?

Funny, I just took out a ruler and measured some of my GW bases. They're all 1" in diameter. So there's no loophole. Your friend cheated.

i agree that the use of a 2 hundreaths of an inch loophole is kinda junk. just wanted to clarify this with the rest of the reasoning community.
@nurglitch. the reason your ruler didnt really show any difference was because the actual distance that in is question is too small to really matter. gw specifies its bases are 25mm. go on line and find a inches to mm converter. you will see that there is indeed a difference, though so small it is hard to measure acuratley. especially taking into account that many rulers are not manufactured with any degree of acurracy at all. try measuring a battle for mac. ruler some time. gw's own ruler is way off, or at least mine was. by how much i couldnt tell you because once is saw that it was innaccurate i threw it in the trash.

Even if he is right, and the bases are only .98 inches long, it doesn't matter. Next time, just don't shoot before you charge, and declare the charge against the devilfish and the fire warriors. It doesn't matter if you fail to get to the devilfish so long as you contact the fire warriors. It's perfectly legal to charge multiple units, and even to fail to get to some of them so long as you try and stay in coherency. You just can't charge multiple units if you shoot at one, so don't shoot.

sennacherib: No, the ruler is accurate. I checked the calibration and the damn thing really was 1" across the bottom. I was pretty surprised because I'd thought they were 25mm, but it's more like 26-26.5.

sennacherib wrote:gw specifies its bases are 25mm. go on line and find a inches to mm converter.

Just like to note that GW 40mm square bases are smaller than 40mm on a side. Been building movement trays for my ogres, learned first hand ...

- Salvage

I have a bunch of 60mm bases that I've noticed to be considerably larger than 60mm (64.5mm!) across the bottom. I swear it isn't because I've been feeding them bacon.

sennacherib wrote: you may not assault a unit if your assault move will bring you within a inch of an unengaged enemy unit.

The tricky part here is that you don't measure to the Devilfish's base. As per the rulebook FAQ, you ignore the flight base on skimmers... in which case, you measure to their hull, like you would with any other vehicle.

So his tactic might have been technically legal, but depends solely on the height of his flight stands.


While ordinarily I'd point this out merely as another of the screwy holes in GW's current 'Yeah, we couldn't be bothered to write rules that actually take modeling into account' ruleset, anyone pulling this sort of mixed unit tactic to prevent assaults deserves having the RAW thrown back at them...

First of all what you have described is not Fish of Fury.
Fish of Fury IS a legal tactic and it is in no way cheap and is in no way a guarantee.

The rules that your opponent quoted were incorrect. When assaulting a unit you most certainly can assault them even if they are in base to base. IG Close Order Doctrine for example.

A brief description of a single Fish of Fury move:
The intent is to move the Fish so that the fish is directly between the disembarking fire warriors and their intended target so that the Front of the Fish is closest to the enemy and it creates almost 10" of space from the front of the burst cannon to the rear of the vehicle.
Now the rear rank of fire warriors are exactly 12" for rapid fire purposes from the front rank of the enemy.

The INTENT of this move is to now Rapid fire the front rank of your enemy and create enough casualties so that he removes only those models that could have charged him. The fish also acts as a buffer so that an enemy unit can not charge because it would be forced to come within 1" of the fish. This move is very similar to meltagun and other rapid fire sniping.

This is an incredibly legitimate tactic and in no way cheesy. It requires skill, a good eye for measuring, and risk as it could easily back fire.

What your opponent did was not Fish of Fury.

Funny to say it is not cheap or anything.. that it requires skill makes me laugh really hard. There is no skill involved in learning that "pattern" at all.. you even got the ship for determining the "range".

Other then that, you can declare charges for 2 units at the same time wich normally stops the 1" rule.

Kallbrand wrote:Other then that, you can declare charges for 2 units at the same time wich normally stops the 1" rule.

The 1" rule is only negated if you actually charge those multiple units, though.

There is an argument (that's been thoroughly hashed out in the past) for declaring a charge against the unit being enough to allow you to disregard the 1" rule, regardless of whether you make it into btb with them or not, but the general convention seems to be that it's only actually a charge if you actually make it into btb with them.

That's why the mixed formation 'works'... it's possible to position two units so that you can not physically get to unit A, while being unable to charge unit B because it would bring you within 1" of A.

It's even easier to do with skimmers, since (by strict RAW) you can't ever actually charge them... it's physically impossible unless they're not on a flight stand. So using them to deny assaults on a nearby friendly unit is possible... just not generally accepted as good practice.

*yawn*

Missile launchers pop the fish.

Assault troops then club the Tau.

*yawn*

Isnt there some rule that a model may be placed on a base equal to or larger than the one they were supplied with?

Sine there are no GW 40k models that are supplied with bases smaller than 1" (even if the box claims its 25mm) then the player would actually have illegal models if he claims they are based on 25mm bases.

Just a thought...

Given that the bases in practice slightly exceed 25mm anyway it doesn't really matter, but in general in an opponent attempts to try and get you with something like that you should simply inform them that the game is over and that behaviour like that is not acceptable.

Either that or you could be less mature and give them a taste of their own medicine. The bases are in reality slightly more than a inch rather than slightly less, but suppose that were not the case, you could have insisted on measuring each individual models base looking for slight warps that will make the size great enough. That kind of thing though, while being witty in its own way tends to poison the atmosphere in a game even further. Generally it is better not to play against people so lacking in sportsmanship that they regard behaviour like that to be acceptable.

I do the "fish of fury" tactic with my Eldar, and I agree with paidinful in regards to the statement that what was described by the OP is NOT the same thing, at least as far as I understand it. What I do, and please tell me if it is exploiting RAW, is to simply use the wave serpent as a physical obstacle that you have to go around to charge the deployed infantry, and has nothing to do with the 1" rule. If I position it right, then even if you can be within 1" of the wave serpent you can't charge. Note that I am making the assumption that you cannot run "under" a skimmer; I am making the correct assumption, no?

Also, I think the guy destroyed his own argument by saying " 25mm is about .98 inches". The important word here is "about". Was he really claiming that he could carry that many digits on whatever he was using to measure with? Correct me if I'm wrong, but when you write 98 hundredths of an inch that implies that you are measuring to the nearest thousandth and rounding to the hundredth, right? Does GW even specify or care how many decimal places are to the right of 25mm? It isnt like you can add precision using a metric to English conversion.

Seriously, is the equipment used in the game specified exactly? What do they say in the BGB? Do they use the word "tape measure"? How many tape measures out there can tell you if you're measuring hundredths of an inch?

Nurglitch, did you really measure the bases? I found that interesting, Ive never done it before. What exactly did you use? As someone who measures things all day during the week, it kind of grabbed my attention.

Grignard wrote:Also, I think the guy destroyed his own argument by saying " 25mm is about .98 inches". The important word here is "about". Was he really claiming that he could carry that many digits on whatever he was using to measure with? Correct me if I'm wrong, but when you write 98 hundredths of an inch that implies that you are measuring to the nearest thousandth and rounding to the hundredth, right? Does GW even specify or care how many decimal places are to the right of 25mm? It isnt like you can add precision using a metric to English conversion.

Seriously, is the equipment used in the game specified exactly? What do they say in the BGB? Do they use the word "tape measure"? How many tape measures out there can tell you if you're measuring hundredths of an inch?

Nurglitch, did you really measure the bases? I found that interesting, Ive never done it before. What exactly did you use? As someone who measures things all day during the week, it kind of grabbed my attention.

I am a machinist by day and using a piar of digital brown & sharp calipers the base size of a "25mm" 40k round base made in 2003 is exactly .9783 but I strongly argee if someone tried to use this RAW rule lope hole on me I'd ask the player to find another table to pull his BS on.

Grignard wrote:Nurglitch, did you really measure the bases? I found that interesting, Ive never done it before. What exactly did you use? As someone who measures things all day during the week, it kind of grabbed my attention.

The bases are 1" or as close to 1" as GW can make them.

The fact that it often states that they are 25mm is a rounding issue, in reality they are 25.4mm.
Putting on the box in metric countries that a base is 25.4mm or that a pistol can shoot 30.5cm or that the max range of a las cannon is 91.4cm would be just silly thus they simplified the math so that 1"=25mm.
Thus pistols can fire 30cm, 24" range is 60cm and a Las cannon has a range of 90cm. As GW mesuring sticks are notoriously flawed and not only can, but usually do differ greatly I wouyld say it is very understandable rounding 1" to 25mm.

The only problem I can see is that this one person decided that rather than accepting that the metric rules do not allow you to move closer than 25mm he chose to use metric for the base size and imperial english for the charge rules, a very odd thing to do in my opinion.

If he was right how would CC armies ever be able to charge a unit? All the shooty units would have to do is to use a tight formation and they will never be charged.

Ex:
X fire warrior unit
YY Broadside unit (4 Y's to a model as its on a large base)
YY


X.....XX
XYYYYX
XYYYYX
.XXXXX

Or the even simpler

X fire warrior unit 1
Y fire warrior unit 2

...YYYYY
XYYYYYYYX
XXXXXXXXXX
If all models are in BTB then all are in coherency and they are unchargable.

In short, your oponent tried to pull a cheesy one on you, dont stand for it the next time, demand that he measures each and every base and then claim that any base not atleast 1" is illegal and not usable as GW supplies all its TAU models on 1" or larger bases.

See, that is exactly why I take my digital calipers to games. I can measure contentious distances extremely accurately, and the calipers are pointy enough that I can jam them into someone's eyes when they claim you can't charge a unit because they are too close to the unit behind them.

I am all for RAW, but if someone said that in a game, I would start packing up my stuff. I might not gouge out their eyes, but I would fervently hope their first born child had the head of a goat.

Depending on a distance difference too short to measure, if it exists at all, is an awful idea. There is no good resolution to a situation like this--if the argument fails, the Tau player (in this instance) will feel cheated, and if it works, the other player (in this case you) is left with a very bad taste in his mouth. Of course, there are times when you can't help but use such an argument (like when you're proving that a model that infiltrated "more than 18" away" couldn't possibly pull off a first turn charge with standard 12"+6" movement), but knowingly creating such a situation when you can avoid it is just asking for trouble. He should have known better and just FOFed the usual way.

Wehrkind, what would their firstborn ever have done to you?
I meen it isnt the firstborn that is silly.

I would hope for somthing more directly such as his soda bottle opening and spilling soda all over his minis.

As for being too accurate, I usually play with an accepting attitude, 3mm off on the charge, fine let him charge, its a tough call if my guns have range... its just for fun so I didnt have range.

This works great when playing with people of the same mindset, I have even once argued with an oponent where he claimed I did have charge range while I said I didnt, odd that, both arguing against their own best interest, in the end we D6ed it.

If I however play against one of those people that just have to cheat... just a little... then I keep very good tabs on every distance measured and call them on it.
Common things that happen in such situations is that in my shooting I am not close enough to shoot (12" range) but oddly enough when he moves (6") and tried to charge (6") he makes it.
That is actually the most common "honest mistake" done, accidently move your models 6.5" or even 7".
Like wise units spread out deeply for such individuals magically form upp towards the front when the charge is about to happen, in my shooting the unit is 7" deep, the front models all move max distance forward and at the end of the move the unit is only 3" deep.

As soon as I spot such irregularities, and they are usually easy to spot, I bring it upp, if it is a real honest mistake then all moves on and we both have fun, if its the "honest mistake" however I clamp down and become very strict.

Now if someone had tried to pull the a base is only 0.98" on me I would just have looked at him untill he repented, not moved my models, not said anything just waited.
If he did not alter his position I would simply state that I forfited as its impossible for me to charge and not play him again.

This problem is why the Field of Glory rules for ancients measure distances in "movement units" of 1 inch or 25mm each according to player or tournament organiser choice.

he had his fire warriors backed up to the base of his devilfish

This would have placed at least some of his firewarriors UNDER the devilfish wouldn't it??
Since models can't occupy the same space he couldn't legally do it now could he.

But then anyone who would try to pull a stunt like that is a cheat anyway.

Grotsnik wrote:Since models can't occupy the same space he couldn't legally do it now could he.

Sitting under something is not the same as occupying the same space as something.

insaniak wrote:

Grotsnik wrote:Since models can't occupy the same space he couldn't legally do it now could he.

Sitting under something is not the same as occupying the same space as something.

Does tis meen that you only have to take into consideration the actual base of a skimmer when moving past it or do you have to consider the whole model?

A devilfish as an example is after all alot larger than its base.

Grignard: I measured the bases using my measuring tape, a wooden ruler, and my metal ruler.

insaniak wrote:Sitting under something is not the same as occupying the same space as something.

You are kidding, right??
You can't move under a skimmer to start with. As per the rule book FAQ you use the hull of the skimmer not the base to measure distances for shooting & thus establish the "size" of the vehicle.