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The more I read this the more I see people not understanding why there is a blast marker at all.

It represents a blast. In real life and this game, things that blast don't always hit their targets strait on. In almost all cases I have seen them first hand it was always out of line of site. Meant to suppress an area. If your guys were unlucky enough to be in that area then the weapon was successful. These are blasts people, not sniper rifles, or assault rifles.

After reading all these post I am a believer in "Blast Templates are their own line of site." Models within the blast template are treated as hit from the blast, which happens to be touching the models. AKA within line of site. If the models hit are not in area cover they are not allowed a cover save, as the blast is within their ranks, and count as within line of site. The model firing the blast weapon must have line of site of his target. If the blast scatters (as is the intention of all blast weapons) the blast marker will determine which models are in line of site of the blast marker. These units will be hit as if they were in line of site and take only the cover save they are allowed as being models located within a blast.

A Town Called Malus wrote:

Dooley wrote:Yes they are hit, yes they are wounded. That is to say they add wounds to the wound pool. Now how do you allocate those wounds?

Then what about Tau Smart Missile Systems which are specifically allowed to target a unit out of sight?

What is the point of that ability if after you've wounded that unit you can't physically see you can't actually kill anything, as wounds caused still follow normal allocation procedures?

RAW there isn't a point. Yes it's dumb. Yes it means that some weapons (Impaler Cannons) are practically useless.
RAI is obvious.

Adrian Fue Fue wrote:
The real question is do the models get any cover at all. Last I checked, when a squad is walking on a road and a rocket flies over the tank they walk behind, they would all be dead dead. IF they went into the terrain like trees, they would be able to hide from the blast.

Impaler Cannons and Smart Missiles only allow cover saves for models in or touching terrain. I suggest playing like that since it is a precedent.

Impaler cannons ignore all cover saves, but the issue here is they also ignore LOS requirements. So without a bit of a logical step here some will say RAW they cannot wound something they cannot see.

As far as blasts go, the rule states to and wound like a normal shot. IE. you can hit, wound and kill enemies out of LOS with a scattered blast.

nosferatu1001 wrote:Again, dooley - can you finally admit the rule has no purpose, under your interpretation? Since you have ignored that question, repeatedly. Rigeld answered it.

Can you finally admit that the rule DOES have a point. The POINT of the rule is to allow blast templates to add wounds to the wound pool even if the template scatters out of los and range. Again YOU are forgetting about the wound pool mechanics. If the blast template froma battle cannon misses a rhino and scatters onto a unit of guys behind it but the Defiler/Leman Russ etc CANNOT SEE the squad of guys the Squad of guys DOES NOT loose any models because as they were HIT AND WOUNDED they had no models in LOS and thus the wounds CANNOT be allocated to them and the shooting attack ENDS. Now if a Devistator squad were shooting at a squad PARTIALLY behind a Rhino any models HIT AND WOUNDED by scattering templates out of LOS or Range of the Plasma cannons they would add wounds to the wound pool and then the wounds would be allocated to the closest models IN LOS to the Devistator squad. Once there are NO MORE MODLES IN LOS THE SHOOTING ATTACK ENDS.

Attacks that dont require LOS (ASTRAL AIM, Seeker Missiles ETC) are covered in their respective FAQs and or Codecies. I do not play Tau so I do not have a copy of their book so I dont know what the rules for them state. Nor have I had a reason to look at their FAQ. However as far as I can remember a Seeker Missile does NOT have the BLAST special rule NOR does it Scatter so I would have to call "OBJECTION IRRELAVANT" on that one and move on.

Also I fail to see how I have provided an "interpritation" of ANY of the rules. I have cited all the relavant rules and have added NOTHING of my own to them. I know ask YOU to do the same. Please show me, with sited sources, how a model will get a wound allocated to it by a NON Barage Blast weapon. I also ask that you stay with the scenario at hand. Meaning, your examples should stick with NON Barage Blast weapons and please leave out any mention of RAI, WAAC etc

Dooley wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote:Again, dooley - can you finally admit the rule has no purpose, under your interpretation? Since you have ignored that question, repeatedly. Rigeld answered it.

Can you finally admit that the rule DOES have a point. The POINT of the rule is to allow blast templates to add wounds to the wound pool even if the template scatters out of los and range. Again YOU are forgetting about the wound pool mechanics. If the blast template froma battle cannon misses a rhino and scatters onto a unit of guys behind it but the Defiler/Leman Russ etc CANNOT SEE the squad of guys the Squad of guys DOES NOT loose any models because as they were HIT AND WOUNDED they had no models in LOS and thus the wounds CANNOT be allocated to them and the shooting attack ENDS. Now if a Devistator squad were shooting at a squad PARTIALLY behind a Rhino any models HIT AND WOUNDED by scattering templates out of LOS or Range of the Plasma cannons they would add wounds to the wound pool and then the wounds would be allocated to the closest models IN LOS to the Devistator squad. Once there are NO MORE MODLES IN LOS THE SHOOTING ATTACK ENDS.

Attacks that dont require LOS (ASTRAL AIM, Seeker Missiles ETC) are covered in their respective FAQs and or Codecies. I do not play Tau so I do not have a copy of their book so I dont know what the rules for them state. Nor have I had a reason to look at their FAQ. However as far as I can remember a Seeker Missile does NOT have the BLAST special rule NOR does it Scatter so I would have to call "OBJECTION IRRELAVANT" on that one and move on.

Also I fail to see how I have provided an "interpritation" of ANY of the rules. I have cited all the relavant rules and have added NOTHING of my own to them. I know ask YOU to do the same. Please show me, with sited sources, how a model will get a wound allocated to it by a NON Barage Blast weapon. I also ask that you stay with the scenario at hand. Meaning, your examples should stick with NON Barage Blast weapons and please leave out any mention of RAI, WAAC etc

Actually the Tau FAQ and Codex doesn't cover this situation for either of the two weapons which ignore LOS, the Smart Missile System and Seeker Missile.

The fact that these weapons are not blast weapons is irrelevant. Both can be fired at a target which the firing unit cannot see and the interpretation of wounding units out of LOS not being able to allocate wounds onto models out of LOS makes them useless for that purpose.

Well, then Weapons that "Do not need LOS to fire" and that are NOT Barrage Weapons are a case of "In a game the size and complexity of Warhammer 40,000 there are bound to be occasions where a situation is not covered by the rules,..." (pg 4). For those situations you will have to "roll a die" to see who's interpratation will aply for the rest of the game.

However, weapons that require LOS and ARE blast weapons are clearly covered in the rule book and no "INTERPRETING" is required.

Dooley - "The POINT of the rule is to allow blast templates to add wounds to the wound pool even if the template scatters out of los and range"

UNITS. It allows you to wound UNITS out of LOS. Stop ignoring that it says UNIT

AS in, unit Y is *entirely out of LOS*, yet this rule allows you to wound unit Y

So according to you this cannot work, at all - because a UNIT out of LOS cannot ever have wounds allocated

So, again: under your interpretation they wrote a rule for NO POINT whatsoever.

Stop ignoring facts

Alright NOW I see what you are talking about. It does say you can hit and wound UNITS out of line of sight and range. Sure you can hit them, wound them and they can even fail their saves all day long however, you cant allocate the unsaved wounds to them so they cannot die. Yeah that part is odd? I have sent a question to CustServ@gwplc.com I would also request that others do the same.

Although, getting hit and wounded would STILL trigger a pinning test as the pinning rule says nothing about having to actually loose a model!! So AGAIN IT STILL HAS A POINT!

Special Rules Pg 42 Pinning
"if a non-vehicle unit suffers one or more unsaved Wounds from a weapon with the Pinning rule, it must immediately take a Leadership test. This is called a pinning test"

Notice it just says if the UNIT takes an unsaved-wound. Following the rules for shooting it is still posible for a unit to fail its saves but not take any casualties because they are out of Line of sight. This game is silly

Wrong. Unsaved wounds are not what populates the wound pool.

Populating the wound pool is done when you roll to wound. As soon as you're done rolling to wound, if no models in the unit are in LOS the wound pool is emptied. You have no permission to attempt saves or allocate wounds. No Pinning.

Roll to hit,
Roll to wound
(Wound Pool)
Take Saving throws *
Allocate Unsaved Wounds & Remove Caualties
(No models in LOS Wounds are lost)

*Immediately take pinning test

I still see these examples coming from the idea of a normal shooting weapon. But a BLAST is not a NORMAL shooting weapon. AFTER the blast marker has found its already HIT models, then you treat it as NORMAL.

To me this is 100% the template itself decides what is within range. If it lands and the Blast Template is placed, every model in that unit is hit. There is no measuring range, no line of site, and no to-hit roles; that blast template is the all knowing decider of what is hit.

All that stuff about what is allocated as wounds... It is referring to a NORMAL shooting weapon being an inch or so out of range AND a unit within range that is not visible to the mussel of that NORMAL weapon.

There is nothing blocking a Blast template from line of site EXCEPT a second and third story. This is the reason your blast template has to choose which floor blows up.

If there is no second and third story; if the models have no roof over their heads, then they are all in line of site of the blast template right above them. The woulds are then treated as normal (as the template already made line of sight and hit them).

You are mistaken in that the special rules for blast tell you they act just like normal shooting attacks. By your logic a plasma cannon is better at snipping characters and special weapons troops than a sniper rifle. It is not as simple as:
Place Marker
Roll Scatter
Models under template are hit, wounded, and removed as casualties

If it were I would be centering ALL of my template weapons on characters and special weapons troops and hoping for a direct hit!

And if you treat a blast that scattered onto a unit that was out of LOS normally, you would hit, wound, and remove those units as a casualty. Your skipping the "normally" part of the rule. Normally you have LOS to shoot.. wound.. etc.

.........I am mistaken........

Quote the rules again, I don't want to read all this all over. I don't understand why they wouldn't be better. Sniper's ignore toughness, add pining, have a chance to delegate wounds, and may hit at a higher AP. AKA they are one for one not a blast for an area of affect.

Blasts weapons are heavy and have weapon profiles like everything else, this means they loose there movement phase. These weapons with Blast Templates cost more then a bolt-gun, sniper rifle, ex. Troops can only wield a very small number of these blast weapons. Blast vehicles, or dedicated blast weapon groups take up a heavy support slot, and cannot claim objectives.

All this together: A Plasma Cannon is better, in that it will get you the most kills. You will have to sacrifice more points, more movement phases, more objective opportunities, and a Heavy Support Slot.... But would it be worth it just to target characters and specular weapon groups? Would this cause such a blast weapon to get targeted by other special weapons?

Seriously, why even compare sniper rifles to plasma cannons? Its like a Rhino versus a Land Raider. Why not snipe with a Lascannon too or field every Troop choice with a ML and hope the template lands on something?

Technically the scatter is the chance of the rocket/plasma/whatever is moved from the point of the original place that it was going to hit for some reason or another. If your, say, rokkit launcha's rokkit got blown by the wind, it would still hit where it hits, no matter how it got there

Let me put forth a hypothetical situation.

A 50 man IG blob squad with 5 missile launchers and 5 grenade launchers shoots at a a enemy unit. Some enemy are in the open some are in area terrain and some are out of LOS.

Pro RAW resolution would involve:
Roll to hit with laz weapons and place and determine scatter on the ten blast markers (counting up total hits under blasts). Now roll to wound in groups of similar strength weapons. Than with this one wound pool (if nothing is APor ID applicable) start applying them to the closest models giving them applicable saving throws. Stop when you run out of wound pools or models in LOS of the unit firing

Pro RAI resolution would involve: (at least how I would see it)
Roll to hit with laz weapons and place and determine scatter on ten blast markers. For each blast marker make note on where it landed, who it hit and what kind cover they can claim. Roll to wound with laz weapons and make a wound pile for them. Now roll to wound for each blast marker, keeping track of which blast went where. You now may have up to 11 wound pools (1 laz and 10 blast groups). Follow standard LOS rules for the laz shots. Now for each blast group go over which models were under each marker applying them closet first, then give them applicable saving throws. Stop when you're out of that wound pool or run out of models that were under that blast marker. Repeat the process for each blast marker.

Now I ask you this.
Do you really want to play the way that adds an extra layer of of complexity, just for the sake that in real life blast weapons can hurt guys unseen?

That being said, I think we can agree this is an unusual circumstance. Most units don't have these kind of blast capabilities. It just highlight the difficulties that can arise when trying to apply ones interpretations of rules across the board evenly. Though it would still slow things down if the example involved just ten guys with a missile launcher.

I don't know about other people but I like my games to go quick and without a lot of record keeping on what hit what where and under what models. I know it sucks not to have a blast kill those guys the marker is over, but I find those circumstances actually don't arise that often. At least not enough to make me want to over complicate the game to compensate.

pie zuri wrote:
Now I ask you this.
Do you really want to play the way that adds an extra layer of of complexity, just for the sake that in real life blast weapons can hurt guys unseen?

Anyone who wants to play at all with Impaler Cannons, Smart Missiles, or line based powers/weapons must play this way.

Do you really want to play the way that makes those weapons completely worthless?

DarknessEternal wrote:

pie zuri wrote:
Now I ask you this.
Do you really want to play the way that adds an extra layer of of complexity, just for the sake that in real life blast weapons can hurt guys unseen?

Anyone who wants to play at all with Impaler Cannons, Smart Missiles, or line based powers/weapons must play this way.

Do you really want to play the way that makes those weapons completely worthless?

I think "worthless" is kind of a over statement. They may have lost capabilities from 5th but it's not like they can't hurt anyone now. Worse case scenario you play those weapon systems less now.

I don't know about you but I find situations involving total LOS blocking to be infrequent. Generally some target can be seen by the firing unit. And if someone has gone through the trouble hiding a unit behind LOS blocking things they've done so too the detriment of the unit, seeing as it potentially doesn't have as good of a firing lane or is just bunched up begging for a barrage.

It says UNITS, because if it said MODELS, we'd be having a silly discussion about Blast markers sniping. That is all.

pie zuri wrote:Let me put forth a hypothetical situation.

A 50 man IG blob squad with 5 missile launchers and 5 grenade launchers shoots at a a enemy unit.

Full Stop.... Totaly hypothetical..... ive never, ever seen it............. its been vets in chimys and vendettas for the last 4 years...

Actually, my hive guard did quite well the other day popping open two land raiders while night fighting was in effect. It was quite beautiful.

A Town Called Malus wrote:

Dooley wrote:Yes they are hit, yes they are wounded. That is to say they add wounds to the wound pool. Now how do you allocate those wounds?

Then what about Tau Smart Missile Systems which are specifically allowed to target a unit out of sight?

What is the point of that ability if after you've wounded that unit you can't physically see you can't actually kill anything, as wounds caused still follow normal allocation procedures?

A special rule granting the ability to wound a unit out of sight overrides the requirement to have LOS to allocate a wound and the wounds just go on the nearest models, as per page 15.

This. Good luck telling all the Tau players their Smart Missiles can't wound a model out of LOS.

Captain Antivas wrote:

A Town Called Malus wrote:

Dooley wrote:Yes they are hit, yes they are wounded. That is to say they add wounds to the wound pool. Now how do you allocate those wounds?

Then what about Tau Smart Missile Systems which are specifically allowed to target a unit out of sight?

What is the point of that ability if after you've wounded that unit you can't physically see you can't actually kill anything, as wounds caused still follow normal allocation procedures?

A special rule granting the ability to wound a unit out of sight overrides the requirement to have LOS to allocate a wound and the wounds just go on the nearest models, as per page 15.

This. Good luck telling all the Tau players their Smart Missiles can't wound a model out of LOS.

Again, if I was playing strict RAW I'd tell them that.

In this instance, RAI is absolutely obvious in my opinion, so I'll play that way.

Captain Antivas wrote:

A Town Called Malus wrote:

Dooley wrote:Yes they are hit, yes they are wounded. That is to say they add wounds to the wound pool. Now how do you allocate those wounds?

Then what about Tau Smart Missile Systems which are specifically allowed to target a unit out of sight?

What is the point of that ability if after you've wounded that unit you can't physically see you can't actually kill anything, as wounds caused still follow normal allocation procedures?

A special rule granting the ability to wound a unit out of sight overrides the requirement to have LOS to allocate a wound and the wounds just go on the nearest models, as per page 15.

This. Good luck telling all the Tau players their Smart Missiles can't wound a model out of LOS.

Honestly if I ran into this situation. Or any other situations in which the weapon specifically said it can target out of LOS. I would offer my opponent the house rule of giving the weapon the barrage special rule. It would probably come with the caveat that wounds still need to be taken closest first so it didn't become a super sniper.

I personally wouldn't want people to feel their gear has been stripped of viability especially if the background of the weapon seems to contradict how RAW is played out. It's really for best, if both players don't feel cheated.

Granted this is personal take on how I would do it. TFG's and WAAC players are within their right to say no to those weapons from actually killing anything, but it seems a petty thing to do and not very sportsmanlike.

pie zuri wrote:Honestly if I ran into this situation. Or any other situations in which the weapon specifically said it can target out of LOS. I would offer my opponent the house rule of giving the weapon the barrage special rule. It would probably come with the caveat that wounds still need to be taken closest first so it didn't become a super sniper.

I personally wouldn't want people to feel their gear has been stripped of viability especially if the background of the weapon seems to contradict how RAW is played out. It's really for best, if both players don't feel cheated.

Granted this is personal take on how I would do it. TFG's and WAAC players are within their right to say no to those weapons from actually killing anything, but it seems a petty thing to do and not very sportsmanlike.

If the weapon ignores line of sight for shooting, just simply remove any LOS restrictions on wounds. You cant really give "Barrage" to an Impaler cannon (although that would be awesome for Nid's).

Fragile wrote:

pie zuri wrote:Honestly if I ran into this situation. Or any other situations in which the weapon specifically said it can target out of LOS. I would offer my opponent the house rule of giving the weapon the barrage special rule. It would probably come with the caveat that wounds still need to be taken closest first so it didn't become a super sniper.

I personally wouldn't want people to feel their gear has been stripped of viability especially if the background of the weapon seems to contradict how RAW is played out. It's really for best, if both players don't feel cheated.

Granted this is personal take on how I would do it. TFG's and WAAC players are within their right to say no to those weapons from actually killing anything, but it seems a petty thing to do and not very sportsmanlike.

If the weapon ignores line of sight for shooting, just simply remove any LOS restrictions on wounds. You cant really give "Barrage" to an Impaler cannon (although that would be awesome for Nid's).

It all seems reasonable to me. Plus, how many "direct fire" weapons have the ability to target out of LOS? From what I can tell, not many.

Any weapon carried by a purgation squad, and SMS for Tau

I've never come across the interpretation that a scattered blast can't kill things outside of LOS. If a blast scatters, then it moved to that area the blast template ends up, anything under it whether its in LOS or out of it, has been 'hit'. If I was working on multiple units, Marines with bolters firing and a missile launcher, then the bolters are restricted by what they see, the missile launcher hits whatever the blast template ends up on.

If I came across someone saying my scattered blast couldn't kill, then I'd happily concede and call the player a cheat, scratching the game from the record. Its like saying if I threw a frag grenade into a room and shut the door, since I can't see it going off, then it never exploded and can't have killed anything.
Since that scenario wouldn't work, unless the frag was a dud, then even with the door closed, even though I can't see it, if it went off, chances are it killed or wounded.
A scattered blast, if it lands on something or not, has scattered and landed in that area. You don't roll for empty land, but the blast would still occur, it doesn't have a to hit, to wound, or saving throw though. But if the blast landed on a friendly or enemy unit, then they get the surprise of explosion sauce to the face.

SkyD wrote:I've never come across the interpretation that a scattered blast can't kill things outside of LOS. If a blast scatters, then it moved to that area the blast template ends up, anything under it whether its in LOS or out of it, has been 'hit'. If I was working on multiple units, Marines with bolters firing and a missile launcher, then the bolters are restricted by what they see, the missile launcher hits whatever the blast template ends up on.

If I came across someone saying my scattered blast couldn't kill, then I'd happily concede and call the player a cheat, scratching the game from the record. Its like saying if I threw a frag grenade into a room and shut the door, since I can't see it going off, then it never exploded and can't have killed anything.
Since that scenario wouldn't work, unless the frag was a dud, then even with the door closed, even though I can't see it, if it went off, chances are it killed or wounded.
A scattered blast, if it lands on something or not, has scattered and landed in that area. You don't roll for empty land, but the blast would still occur, it doesn't have a to hit, to wound, or saving throw though. But if the blast landed on a friendly or enemy unit, then they get the surprise of explosion sauce to the face.

As rigeld has pointed out those of us arguing that RAW the scattered blast can not allocate Wounds to a unit out of sight, do not play this way. In a game this would not even come up. I think everyone agrees that RAI at least the unit is allocated Wounds even if out of sight. RAW, however, which is what this forum is for "discussion"-wise, is slightly more ambiguous.

It's a similar situation as what happens when an Init 5 model is in base contact with a Wraith that is then killed at Init 4?