The Densest Most Beautiful Cover, So Dense

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**Seabass**

AngryAngel80 wrote:

Do you know the difference between a legal document and rules for a game designed for fun ? I mean one thing can be life and death and the other thing is, ya know, a game. I would point out even those sweet legal documents can have loop holes, precedents, exceptions etc. So if I will have all of that anyways, I'd rather it be elegant for my " fun " game. I don't go out and read legal documents for " fun " for a reason. That is all I'm saying. Trying to act like GW can't do better is really keeping them to an awfully expectation level. I would say some games can have good and loop hole free rules. I still bet even with these rules people will still rules lawyer them as much as any edition.

The rules, are fine, I just wish they read better. I really don't see why people have to argue that point as even the arguments tend to agree its cumbersome to digest. Feels like just sticking up for poor ol GW because we wish they made it flow better. Why so serious ?

Because the rules read fine. I have zero problems comprehending what they have spoiled so far. And, to be fair, I probably am sticking up for "poor old GW" a bit, and I'm not sure I should feel bad about doing so. This community, whether Dakka, Reddit, FB Groups, whatever, just like to gak on GW for the enjoyment of gaking on GW. So many comments about their products being overpriced or not worth the value, I mean, those are personal opinions, just like mine. so I figure if it's cool to gak on GW, then its probably cool for someone to take a step back and say "wait a minute, this is getting stupid". Everything people are complaining about here is based on the assumption that the final product will only be what we see. Just that blurb. But we already know that isn't the case. There will be graphics, there will be bullet points, but instead of even trying to take that with even the smallest grain of salt is asking this community to just simply do too much. After all, its a LOT easier to just complain about the rules, with no context, under the assumption that anyone could do it better.

As someone who has done technical writing in the past, I can tell you that every one of these "anyone could do it" types in here would choke on it. Everyone saying that technical writing is not wordy and clearly understood hasn't spent enough time engaging with the process. Technical writing for a simple or mechanical subject like changing the font in Word, or for explaining how to do a search in an SQL DB, or the LO/TO procedures on a piece of industrial equipment are not difficult subjects to write a technical explanation/process too. They are quite easy. Writing something that can be interpreted in multiple different ways requires more specific and often far longer wording.

**Vankraken**

Tycho wrote:
Yes it did. Did you play 6th? 7th? 8th at its absolute worse was still MASSIVELY superior to both previous editions, even at their best. I've heard 5th was really good so maybe that was legitimately a superior edition to 8th, don't know never played it. Point is that the new direction saw massive improvements from the previous two editions. Sure, it didn't make the game perfect and there were some definite flubs and ugly patch jobs on the way, but it's still been (outside of the Ironhands era) the most diverse and subjectively, most fun, edition we've had in a very long time(Even during Castellan spam Castellans weren't anywhere near the only things making it into the top 16s. As opposed to 7th where the top 16 was 8 eldar armies, 7 chaos soups and a space marine or tau list.

Also, people who have terrible reading comprehension always throw out that 'Most play tested edition ever' like the fact that the game still has flaws automatically invalidates that. The reality of it is that that phrase is 100% true, GW didn't really playtest other editions. Wasn't really a huge bar to get over.

Saying 8th was better than 6/7th is, imo objectively accurate, but it's also a bar so low you could trip over it. The reason so many say the play testing didn't really work is because they still had incredibly obvious "day 1" flaws across every rule set they released for this edition.

For example:

GW: "Fastest playing edition ever" *two weeks post release of 8th* the community "No - no it isn't ..." We saw almost immediately that the number of rerolls was causing even Index 40k to take longer. This is not one of those "wow no way anyone could have foreseen that" kind of things. Playtesting should have pointed out the invalidity of that statement almost immediately. Maybe it did? Maybe they called it out but GW ignored it? Like I said before, it's NOT necessarily the fault of the testers themselves, but a lot of really obvious things got through.

Multiple rules and books were called out almost instantly on Day 1 and again, these aren't things you need thousands of games to detect - they were immediately obvious to a huge chunk of even the casual player base. The reason so many call BS on their play testing is because proper play testing SHOULD prevent them from making the classic "GW" style mistakes (mistakes that are indeed often inherent to GW - other companies frequently manage to avoid these), and yet even with play testing, they still had massive disconnects with the player base, multiple problems with rules confusion and many other issues that only became compounded as time went on. I actually LIKED 8th, but it's pretty clear it was rapidly approaching the debacle of 7th. I don't really see them properly correcting that yet either. With GW it's often a case of "We've learned from our mistakes!" followed by them repeating a different, older mistake in an attempt to fix the more recent one ...

Meh 8th is not objectively better than 7th. Core rules of 7th actually resembled a functioning game where as the core rules of 8th are so minimalistic that the game has the complexity and depth of a kiddie pool. 8th is the point and delete (aka bloodbath) edition where as 7th started with some potential before GW went mad on power creep. 7th is not without huge flaws (psychic deathstars being a biggie) but the core problem of 7th was the bat gak insane stuff GW released down the road. Problem with 8th is that the initial rule set was a poor foundation for a game that tried to plaster on layer after layer of bonus rules to cover up the lack of actual game mechanics under the hood. But ultimately I can subjectively say that 8th is boring to play while 7th is fun despite it's massive pile of issues.

As to the actual dense cover rule..... Why does GW keep trying to do dumb flat to hit modifiers on a D6 system when races have large variance in base stats. Ork shooting gets disportionately worse from trees being in the way than say Space Marines. Never understood why they can't just bring back actual cover saves (even if it's something like a secondary FNP type save). That way it doesn't overly penalize low BS units.

**PenitentJake**

Zustiur wrote:

So what does this do if the dense train is not at least 3" in height? What's going on with including that as a clause in the same sentence? I think the obstacle rule had the same issue.

There should be a statement, "Terrain of at least 3" in height may be classed as dense terrain." If it's not at least that high, it can't be dense. Ergo no need to have 'if' in the sentence.

**H.B.M.C.**

Seabass wrote:
This community, whether Dakka, Reddit, FB Groups, whatever, just like to gak on GW for the enjoyment of gaking on GW.

Yep. Not a one of us has a single valid criticism of GW's rules. It's all just to gak on them. Every last one of us.

**Seabass**

H.B.M.C. wrote:
Seabass wrote:
This community, whether Dakka, Reddit, FB Groups, whatever, just like to gak on GW for the enjoyment of gaking on GW.
Yep. Not a one of us has a single valid criticism of GW's rules. It's all just to gak on them. Every last one of us.

there's a big difference between criticism and just gaking on them. I can say that mechanically the iron hands codex was bad, without talking about how I could do it better, how I expect more, how the game isn't worth the money, how evil GW is, how incompetent they are... I mean, this list goes on for a while. I can offer critique and feedback on what I would suggest to fix it without reminding everyone of how poor/awful/terrible/evil/incompetent/<insert insult here> GW is.

**AngryAngel80**

Seabass wrote:
H.B.M.C. wrote:
Seabass wrote:
This community, whether Dakka, Reddit, FB Groups, whatever, just like to gak on GW for the enjoyment of gaking on GW.
Yep. Not a one of us has a single valid criticism of GW's rules. It's all just to gak on them. Every last one of us.

there's a big difference between criticism and just gaking on them. I can say that mechanically the iron hands codex was bad, without talking about how I could do it better, how I expect more, how the game isn't worth the money, how evil GW is, how incompetent they are... I mean, this list goes on for a while. I can offer critique and feedback on what I would suggest to fix it without reminding everyone of how poor/awful/terrible/evil/incompetent/<insert insult here> GW is.

In all seriousness, some of us do find the poor reading of the rules to be a legitimate issue. Some of us do even understand the rule, yet don't like the way it reads and still think they could do better.

As well, it may mean nothing to you, to some of us it does. You can keep trying to make it a small thing all you want but not one of us is saying GW are terrible at everything forever, I'm just saying they can do better and wish they did better. I'm being very moderate right now in my assessment.

As well, no matter how little you think of the community, I do think a good number here could write well enough to make the rule less cumbersome. I'm sorry you just can't accept that. I disagree with some of those here, often, but I tend to still respect them. Even if sometimes I want to toss them over those mountains like Uncle Rico would toss a football to win State.

Just because you don't want to express disagreement like we are doesn't mean we are wrong and you are somehow right in an opinion based forum. Nor does it make our dislike of it somehow lessened because you disprove of our feelings on it.

The rules written poorly, some people will find it difficult to read, others will read it ok but find it awful reading and others think its the best thing since sliced bread. That is why it fails. Not because the rules intent is on its face awful, because it isn't, it's just written terribly from an ease of reading stand point. Leaving it to not be easily taken in by everyone and a poor offering for a game that is trying to be universally beloved by its fan base.

**JawRippa**

Could someone point me to the part of the rule that makes it invalidate a -1 protection for the squad if one model is not obscured?

**Lance845**

JawRippa wrote:
Could someone point me to the part of the rule that makes it invalidate a -1 protection for the squad if one model is not obscured?

It doesn't. Because it's not a squad based -1. It's per model based -1.

I.E. If you have 5 marines and 4 of them cannot trace LoS without passing through or over the terrain feature in some capacity when targeting the enemy, but 1 of them can trace a LoS from anywhere on their base to every part of the enemys base then 4 marines get a -1 and 1 marine does not.

**JawRippa**

Lance845 wrote:
JawRippa wrote:
Could someone point me to the part of the rule that makes it invalidate a -1 protection for the squad if one model is not obscured?

It doesn't. Because it's not a squad based -1. It's per model based -1.

I.E. If you have 5 marines and 4 of them cannot trace LoS without passing through or over the terrain feature in some capacity when targeting the enemy, but 1 of them can trace a LoS from anywhere on their base to every part of the enemys base then 4 marines get a -1 and 1 marine does not.

Does this mean that if all 5 marines see an ork model without obscurement, they get to shoot without penalty, even if the rest 29 orks are obscured?

**Slipspace**

PenitentJake wrote:

Spoiler:

Zustiur wrote:

So what does this do if the dense train is not at least 3" in height? What's going on with including that as a clause in the same sentence? I think the obstacle rule had the same issue.

There should be a statement, "Terrain of at least 3" in height may be classed as dense terrain." If it's not at least that high, it can't be dense. Ergo no need to have 'if' in the sentence.

Terrain cannot have the Dense trait if it isn't 3" tall.

It can't have the Obscuring trait if it isn't at least 5" tall.

It CAN still be Area or Obstacle terrain; area terrain can be shot into, or out of but not through.

Whether it's area terrain or an obstacle, it can also be light or heavy cover, or even both.

It's going to take some getting used to, because the customization options for terrain are very plentiful, and they're likely to stack and synergize in very interesting ways. I make my own terrain, because while I find GW's ready made stuff beautiful, I don't think it does the job as well as purpose-built stuff. These traits give me so much to work with! Like if I want one building that's heavy cover, one building that's light cover and one building that's both, it's an awesome thing for a modelist to think about how to represent that visually.

There are twelve traits in total; we know Light, Heavy, Dense, Obscuring; we've been given hints, but I don't think anything printed about Defensible; we've heard Unstable and Scalable mentioned. So that's seven of the twelve.

There are two types of terrain (actually four, but I think most terrain will be one of two)- area and obstacle. Some traits will probably only be able to applied to one type or the other, other traits will be able to be applied to both. Some traits will have additional conditions- like the height restrictions for Dense and Obscuring.

**Spoletta**

JawRippa wrote:
Lance845 wrote:
JawRippa wrote:
Could someone point me to the part of the rule that makes it invalidate a -1 protection for the squad if one model is not obscured?

It doesn't. Because it's not a squad based -1. It's per model based -1.

I.E. If you have 5 marines and 4 of them cannot trace LoS without passing through or over the terrain feature in some capacity when targeting the enemy, but 1 of them can trace a LoS from anywhere on their base to every part of the enemys base then 4 marines get a -1 and 1 marine does not.

Does this mean that if all 5 marines see an ork model without obscurement, they get to shoot without penalty, even if the rest 29 orks are obscured?

It means that you ask your opponent to resolve his marines one by one. As soon as one kill that ork, you remove it and the other marines shoot at -1.

**ewar**

Vankraken wrote:As to the actual dense cover rule..... Why does GW keep trying to do dumb flat to hit modifiers on a D6 system when races have large variance in base stats. Ork shooting gets disportionately worse from trees being in the way than say Space Marines. Never understood why they can't just bring back actual cover saves (even if it's something like a secondary FNP type save). That way it doesn't overly penalize low BS units.

I do find this funny though. Ever since 3rd edition removed hit modifiers and put in flat saves, the player base has moaned consistently for more than 20 years (!) that it's unrealistic allowing models to shoot through dense cover at the same effectiveness as shooting something in the open. Now they get hit modifiers, it's 'not fair' that being bad at shooting means you're also worse at shooting through dense terrain.

PenitentJake wrote:
Zustiur wrote:

So what does this do if the dense train is not at least 3" in height? What's going on with including that as a clause in the same sentence? I think the obstacle rule had the same issue.

It's pretty simple right? It needs an IF clause because 'dense terrain' trait can be applied to terrain of any height. The -1 to hit just doesn't apply if the terrain isn't 3" tall.

If they didn't include an IF then they would need an exception elsewhere as to how we deal with a 2.5" tall ruin with the dense terrain trait.

Personally I find the new rules more complicated to read for sure, but not insurmountably so. Better this than dealing with pages of FAQs (which may or may not be required yet, we'll have to wait and see).

**Slipspace**

ewar wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:
So what does this do if the dense train is not at least 3" in height? What's going on with including that as a clause in the same sentence? I think the obstacle rule had the same issue.

It's pretty simple right? It needs an IF clause because 'dense terrain' trait can be applied to terrain of any height. The -1 to hit just doesn't apply if the terrain isn't 3" tall.

If they didn't include an IF then they would need an exception elsewhere as to how we deal with a 2.5" tall ruin with the dense terrain trait.

My question then would be is there any point in classifying terrain as Dense (or Obscuring) if it doesn't meet the height requirements? IMO, you should either not have the height requirement at all or only allow the trait to be applied to terrain that meets the height requirement in the first place. GW seems to have gone for a halfway house, worst of both worlds, approach. Outside of some potential edge cases where a unit's special rules interact with a terrain trait, why would we bother attaching the Dense trait to a piece of terrain that can't have any of the rules for Dense terrain applied to it?

Having a list of suggested traits for different types of terrain seems to be the only reason, but that's just messy and needlessly complicated. Players already have to determine a terrain type pre-game for each piece so why bother with extra restrictions in the form of required height?

**dhallnet**

Slipspace wrote:

Having a list of suggested traits for different types of terrain seems to be the only reason, but that's just messy and needlessly complicated. Players already have to determine a terrain type pre-game for each piece so why bother with extra restrictions in the form of required height?

They want the middle ground between abstracted and "realistic" (based on what the terrain looks like next to your model).
If they didn't there would be people using the "dense" trait on tall grass and asking why this terrain is able to provide cover when it doesn't even reach the knee of a primaris.

**Slipspace**

dhallnet wrote:
Slipspace wrote:

Having a list of suggested traits for different types of terrain seems to be the only reason, but that's just messy and needlessly complicated. Players already have to determine a terrain type pre-game for each piece so why bother with extra restrictions in the form of required height?

They want the middle ground between abstracted and "realistic" (based on what the terrain looks like next to your model).
If they didn't there would be people using the "dense" trait on tall grass and asking why this terrain is able to provide cover when it doesn't even reach the knee of a primaris.

That works both ways. Now we'll have people arguing that terrain pieces are 2.9" high so can't be dense. Technically you can determine the height of a terrain piece accurately but that won't stop people arguing over it if they want. Terrain rules in the past often worked on the basis of hard rules tied to general guidelines about how to define different types of terrain. I don't see a problem with that system. If you're playing a game with someone and they're going to drag out an argument about whether that grass should be Dense or not it's a pretty good sign you're not going to have an enjoyable game. The abstract nature of terrain is exactly the reason you need to take a non-restrictive approach to the rules for it.

**dhallnet**

Slipspace wrote:
dhallnet wrote:
Slipspace wrote:

Having a list of suggested traits for different types of terrain seems to be the only reason, but that's just messy and needlessly complicated. Players already have to determine a terrain type pre-game for each piece so why bother with extra restrictions in the form of required height?

They want the middle ground between abstracted and "realistic" (based on what the terrain looks like next to your model).
If they didn't there would be people using the "dense" trait on tall grass and asking why this terrain is able to provide cover when it doesn't even reach the knee of a primaris.

That works both ways. Now we'll have people arguing that terrain pieces are 2.9" high so can't be dense. Technically you can determine the height of a terrain piece accurately but that won't stop people arguing over it if they want. Terrain rules in the past often worked on the basis of hard rules tied to general guidelines about how to define different types of terrain. I don't see a problem with that system. If you're playing a game with someone and they're going to drag out an argument about whether that grass should be Dense or not it's a pretty good sign you're not going to have an enjoyable game. The abstract nature of terrain is exactly the reason you need to take a non-restrictive approach to the rules for it.

It's not accurate, it's completely arbitrary. They needed a cut off value and they used 3.
They can't win anyway, if they didn't put a value, we would be asking why small pebbles can partially hide a leman russ instead of why a 2.5" tall piece of terrain can't be "dense".
Edit : What if I think that terrain IS dense and you think it's not and we both have valid reason to think the way we do ? My marine can kneel or whatnot after all. Putting a cut off value just removes any potential for argument, even though I too think players should be reasonable in the first place. And I'm not saying they are right or wrong to do this in the way they do, it's just A way to do it.

**ewar**

Slipspace wrote:
dhallnet wrote:
Slipspace wrote:

Having a list of suggested traits for different types of terrain seems to be the only reason, but that's just messy and needlessly complicated. Players already have to determine a terrain type pre-game for each piece so why bother with extra restrictions in the form of required height?

They want the middle ground between abstracted and "realistic" (based on what the terrain looks like next to your model).
If they didn't there would be people using the "dense" trait on tall grass and asking why this terrain is able to provide cover when it doesn't even reach the knee of a primaris.

That works both ways. Now we'll have people arguing that terrain pieces are 2.9" high so can't be dense. Technically you can determine the height of a terrain piece accurately but that won't stop people arguing over it if they want. Terrain rules in the past often worked on the basis of hard rules tied to general guidelines about how to define different types of terrain. I don't see a problem with that system. If you're playing a game with someone and they're going to drag out an argument about whether that grass should be Dense or not it's a pretty good sign you're not going to have an enjoyable game. The abstract nature of terrain is exactly the reason you need to take a non-restrictive approach to the rules for it.

I honestly don't understand the issue you have with this... They gave a guide as to the characteristics of different types of general terrain e.g. ruins should have Light, Hard, Dense etc.

The rules then allow those traits to be applied to any kind of terrain the player could imagine, all they have to do is agree 'that is a ruin' and then the rules apply.

Within those rules, to stop silliness like a 1" pile of rubble giving -1 to hit, they qualify precisely the criteria that terrain needs to meet to apply the rules.

I mean, doesn't that seem like an easy work flow to apply a set of specific terrain rules to an infinite combination of possible games tables?

**Gitdakka**

I think the 3"height is slightly weird indicator of how dense a terrainpiece is. Like a high grassfield would not qualify, but a high grassfield with an attached lamp post does?

Sure rules are rules and are there so we can agree how to play, but I would have prefered some examples of terrain types here and let the players decide.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Although on second thought 3" is not that high, so maybe a high grassfield would qualify regardless

**dhallnet**

Gitdakka wrote:
I think the 3"height is slightly weird indicator of how dense a terrainpiece is. Like a high grassfield would not qualify, but a high grassfield with an attached lamp post does?

Sure rules are rules and are there so we can agree how to play, but I would have prefered some examples of terrain types here and let the players decide.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Although on second thought 3" is not that high, so maybe a high grassfield would qualify regardless

You can agree to not use "dense" on "the grass field with a lamp post". It's eligible to the "dense" trait but it doesn't mean it should be used on it.
Also 3" is kinda tall, it used to be the height of a building floor.

I think they do a decent job at normalising stuff while still allowing you to cover whatever weird terrain you might have bought/build before.

**Karol**

Gitdakka wrote:
I think the 3"height is slightly weird indicator of how dense a terrainpiece is. Like a high grassfield would not qualify, but a high grassfield with an attached lamp post does?

Sure rules are rules and are there so we can agree how to play, but I would have prefered some examples of terrain types here and let the players decide.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Although on second thought 3" is not that high, so maybe a high grassfield would qualify regardless

Am assuming that the 3" come from some GW original terrain size, they have at the company. There maybe even a world wide model size for trees made by companies for all I know, wouldn't be suprised if there was something like that.

What I like about it all is that now you can just plop down a pice of flat cut out on the table and say it is a 3" wood or a 5" ruin, and it can be just that. The less true LoS the better for me .

**Lance845**

Spoletta wrote:
JawRippa wrote:
Lance845 wrote:
JawRippa wrote:
Could someone point me to the part of the rule that makes it invalidate a -1 protection for the squad if one model is not obscured?

It doesn't. Because it's not a squad based -1. It's per model based -1.

I.E. If you have 5 marines and 4 of them cannot trace LoS without passing through or over the terrain feature in some capacity when targeting the enemy, but 1 of them can trace a LoS from anywhere on their base to every part of the enemys base then 4 marines get a -1 and 1 marine does not.

Does this mean that if all 5 marines see an ork model without obscurement, they get to shoot without penalty, even if the rest 29 orks are obscured?

It means that you ask your opponent to resolve his marines one by one. As soon as one kill that ork, you remove it and the other marines shoot at -1.

We don't know the order of operations for the shooting phase yet so we don't know that.

@Jawrippa, Right now, if you maneuvered your marines so that they all had a clear LoS from any point on their base to every point on one orks base then they would all be rolling to hit like it was Open Ground. But again, we don't actually know how the shooting phase is structured RAW.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Karol wrote:
Gitdakka wrote:
I think the 3"height is slightly weird indicator of how dense a terrainpiece is. Like a high grassfield would not qualify, but a high grassfield with an attached lamp post does?

Sure rules are rules and are there so we can agree how to play, but I would have prefered some examples of terrain types here and let the players decide.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Although on second thought 3" is not that high, so maybe a high grassfield would qualify regardless

Am assuming that the 3" come from some GW original terrain size, they have at the company. There maybe even a world wide model size for trees made by companies for all I know, wouldn't be suprised if there was something like that.

What I like about it all is that now you can just plop down a pice of flat cut out on the table and say it is a 3" wood or a 5" ruin, and it can be just that. The less true LoS the better for me .

Without the 3" specification you could have already done that.

Throw down a cardboard birds eye image of some trees and go "This wood is Dense Cover".

The 3" specification is useless and pointless except as a not-a-rule guideline that they should have had separate in the part of the book where they talked about building your own terrain.

**Seabass**

AngryAngel80 wrote:
Seabass wrote:
H.B.M.C. wrote:
Seabass wrote:
This community, whether Dakka, Reddit, FB Groups, whatever, just like to gak on GW for the enjoyment of gaking on GW.
Yep. Not a one of us has a single valid criticism of GW's rules. It's all just to gak on them. Every last one of us.

there's a big difference between criticism and just gaking on them. I can say that mechanically the iron hands codex was bad, without talking about how I could do it better, how I expect more, how the game isn't worth the money, how evil GW is, how incompetent they are... I mean, this list goes on for a while. I can offer critique and feedback on what I would suggest to fix it without reminding everyone of how poor/awful/terrible/evil/incompetent/<insert insult here> GW is.

In all seriousness, some of us do find the poor reading of the rules to be a legitimate issue. Some of us do even understand the rule, yet don't like the way it reads and still think they could do better.

As well, it may mean nothing to you, to some of us it does. You can keep trying to make it a small thing all you want but not one of us is saying GW are terrible at everything forever, I'm just saying they can do better and wish they did better. I'm being very moderate right now in my assessment.

As well, no matter how little you think of the community, I do think a good number here could write well enough to make the rule less cumbersome. I'm sorry you just can't accept that. I disagree with some of those here, often, but I tend to still respect them. Even if sometimes I want to toss them over those mountains like Uncle Rico would toss a football to win State.

Just because you don't want to express disagreement like we are doesn't mean we are wrong and you are somehow right in an opinion based forum. Nor does it make our dislike of it somehow lessened because you disprove of our feelings on it.

The rules written poorly, some people will find it difficult to read, others will read it ok but find it awful reading and others think its the best thing since sliced bread. That is why it fails. Not because the rules intent is on its face awful, because it isn't, it's just written terribly from an ease of reading stand point. Leaving it to not be easily taken in by everyone and a poor offering for a game that is trying to be universally beloved by its fan base.

Again, context is everything. It will not just be the rules in the blurb as your only outlet. GW has already said that they will include bullet points and graphics to help explain the rules. In this light, it is possible that they may have intentionally chosen a more elaborate wording as to attempt to clarify points that we do not yet know about.

And in terms of context, have you read this thread? You're making it out as though I have no justification for the position I'm taking like I'm some community grifter that is railing on the community for absolutely no reason. Read the comments, my dude. I think there is a dramatic difference between those who WANT to enjoy their hobby and those who hate it, and it honestly begs the question (and yes, I'm aware that's a logical fallacy, but I'm also a naturally inquisitive person) as to whether or not people actually like this game or even play it. If the rules are written so poorly that they are unusable for the masses, then sure, I could get that, but more complex rules exist in widely accessible games to a much larger demographic (look at the combat step layering rules in M:TG as a wonderful example).

We are circling the drain here, for sure, so ill cut it short and leave it here.

People refuse to give GW any kind of credit, or even the smallest benefit of the doubt, or the smallest grain of salt because reasons, and the hatred towards them is obvious through just even this thread (though any thread on the topic of this game is FULL of "GW hates us, GW is awful, not worth it, etc. etc.") There is a line between trying to be helpful, and just being overly gakky. Not everyone is this way, there are some truly great people on here that i tend to look for on topics because i like their input and they have been beneficial to me to read. I lurk 99% of the time, but even this topic has come to a fever pitch.
BUT
My intention is not to be disrespectful to others, and I certainly know I likely have done so regardless of my intent, so for that, I do apologize sincerely.
Honestly, I apologize, no sarcasm.

**H.B.M.C.**

Bullet points don't excuse poorly written rules.

Seabass wrote:
I mean, this list goes on for a while.

And said list assumes that all criticism of GW is like that, starting with "this is bad" and ending with "GW ARE HORRIBLE PEOPLE!".

There is a big difference between criticism and gaking on them.

Saying that I, you, we or someone could do a better job isn't gaking on them.
Saying how you expect more for your money isn't gaking on them.
Saying that the game isn't worth the money is a judgement call for each person, and isn't necessarily gaking on them.
Saying that GW is evil is silly, because Hanlon's Razor exists.
Saying GW is incompetent isn't necessarily gaking on them, because most of us here have pattern recognition and expect a company that has been doing this one thing for so long to maybe have improved somewhat, yet they disappoint so many of us at every turn.

My biggest criticism of GW, outside of their ludicrous pricing structure (this includes the fething horrible international sale embargo and things like FW selling things in different countries for higher prices despite it all being shipped from the same factory), is that they never realise their potential. They are always full of good ideas and always execute those ideas in the most half-assed ways.

You can call this an example of "gaking on the company", but I call it criticism of a company that should be better at what it does because it's been doing it for 30 years and still writes terrible rules.

**Tycho**

Yep. Not a one of us has a single valid criticism of GW's rules. It's all just to gak on them. Every last one of us.

there's a big difference between criticism and just gaking on them. I can say that mechanically the iron hands codex was bad, without talking about how I could do it better, how I expect more, how the game isn't worth the money, how evil GW is, how incompetent they are... I mean, this list goes on for a while. I can offer critique and feedback on what I would suggest to fix it without reminding everyone of how poor/awful/terrible/evil/incompetent/<insert insult here> GW is.

I think the issue is that, unlike 7th, where, by the end, I think it's safe to say the community (what was left of it) was largely on the same page - 7th ed is not working. 8th brought a breath of fresh air across all things GW related IMO and we now have people who like it (I for one really enjoyed 8th until we started creeping up on the "end") and people who don't. A lot of the people who like it are trying to give GW the benefit of the doubt and get upset with anyone who has a criticism. If you go back through my post history (admittedly pretty critical lately) you will see posts where I criticise and posts where I defend them. It's a pretty even split. And I haven't once said "OMG THEY'RE SO EVIL AND DUMB!". I have, like others pointed out valid concerns and used specific examples of where they've previously gone wrong, repeated mistakes, and failed to follow basic best practices, while, at times also saying what they could have done instead. In areas where I don't have professional experience, I tend to keep quiet. Yet I'm "needling the gak out of things" or "being too picky" etc etc. A lot of those folks giving GW the benefit of the doubt right now seem to see any and all critique as needlessly pedantic and out of line and while some is, a lot isn't.

Like I said earlier, there are at least three distinct "camps" in this thread. Each one seeing this in a very different way. This is not just my opinion. Read through the thread. It is objective fact. If you can't see how there might be a problem with something that causes that much of an instant split, you may be looking at this through extremely rose-tinted glasses.

**auticus**

You need densely worded rules, because rules lawyers want to tear apart every rule and twist it into some abomination that suits them and their whims.

**Martel732**

auticus wrote:
You need densely worded rules, because rules lawyers want to tear apart every rule and twist it into some abomination that suits them and their whims.

This is how real law works, too.

**ewar**

Lance845 wrote:

The 3" specification is useless and pointless except as a not-a-rule guideline that they should have had separate in the part of the book where they talked about building your own terrain.

Why is this useless? It is a rule... and is there presumably to maintain visual consistency so flat terrain doesn't confer benefits that look incongruous.

**Lance845**

auticus wrote:
You need densely worded rules, because rules lawyers want to tear apart every rule and twist it into some abomination that suits them and their whims.

Once again, no you don't.

Lots of games with more complex rules have less wordy more clean and clear language in their rules writing.

Magic the Gathering has 6 phases in a turn with 10 steps scattered throughout. And the language is clean, clear, and concise.

Consider this. Rules writing is kind of about trimming the fat. You want NO, NONE, ABSOLUTELY ZERO, wasted words. It's about efficiency. Every word in the sentence needs to have a purpose. Also, each statement should be clear and exacting with no ambiguity. And that should be accomplished with as few words as possible. If you have run on sentences or ", (exceptions)", or your statements are in an illogical order that makes the rule circle back in on itself then your wasting page space, complicating something that shouldn't be complicated, and generally having bad rules writing practices.

Here.

Lance845 wrote:
So this was originaly part of the Beyond the Gate of 40k project (Located here https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/733472.page ). I have had a few games that have utilized this recently and it works great so it should also work well in normal 40k. A lot of this is ripped from Beyond the Gates of Antares and then adapted to fit within the context of 8th 40k.

Line of Sight Rules

You can trace Line of Sight from any part of your model to any part of the target unit. For the purpose of targeting I recommend using 7ths targeting rules (I.E. wings, antennae, banners) do not count as a part of the model, meaning you cannot draw los from or too these bits. That is just my personal preference, do what you want.

Targeting Occupied Terrain Occupied Terrain is any terrain that has a unit within the terrain feature. Units that occupy a Terrain feature can see and be seen through it. Units that Occupy Terrain gain Cover from the terrain. A unit is considered to be occupying the terrain if all of it's models bases are at least partially within the terrain or meet it's other requirements. Models that do not have a base must be at least 50% within the terrain to be considered to Occupy it.

Intervening Terrain Intervening terrain is any terrain that sits between you and the target unit but is not occupied by the target unit. You can trace LoS over a single piece of Light terrain. A second piece of Light terrain and/or Dense terrain will block LoS normally. Targeting a unit over intervening Terrain confers a -1 to hit penalty.

High Ground If your unit is on a piece of raised terrain they may have high ground. A unit with high ground can ignore all terrain and los blocking terrain features when targeting units on a lower level so long as they can still actually trace line of sight to the unit. To repeat, you still need to be able to trace line of sight, but the target unit would gain no benefit from any intervening terrain. I personally use a lot of the Mantic Battlezones. So each layer up in my terrain is 3". So we use that 3" marker to determine height. Again, do what you want.

Intervening Units If you cannot trace LoS to your target unit without tracing a line through an enemy unit the intervening unit counts as Light Terrain. That means if your target unit is behind both an enemy unit and a piece of Light terrain that unit is untargetable because your LoS is blocked (just like 2 pieces of light terrain). For this you are counting the entire unit and the spaces between models as 1 object. You cannot trace LoS between models in the same unit to get around this. You would need to actually be able to trace LoS around the entire unit to not be effected by the unit.

Monsters, Vehicles, and Titanic When targeting any unit with the MONSTER or VEHICLE Keyword you ignore any intervening units when tracing Line of Sight treating them as Open Ground. When targeting any unit with the TITANIC keyword you ignore all intervening units and Light Terrain treating them as Open Ground. In addition treat all Dense Terrain as Light Terrain for the purpose of tracing LoS on TITANIC units.

Flier Units with the Flier battlefield role can be targeted freely treating all terrain and intervening units as Open Ground so long as you can still trace Line of Sight. Do the same for any LoW with the FLY Keyword.

Terrain

All terrain has 3 features.

1) Line of Sight
2) Cover
3) Difficulty

1] Line of Sight

There are 3 degrees of effect terrain has on LoS.

-Open Ground: No effect on LoS. This terrain piece can be shot over as though it was not there. Example: A water pool or river.

-Light: Blocks LoS to some extent. You can draw Line of Sight over a single piece of light terrain. A unit cannot draw LoS over 2 pieces of light terrain. Barricades, grassy hills, light copse of trees, smaller ruins/

-Dense: Dense Terrain blocks LoS entirely. Dense cops of trees, ruined whole buildings.

2) Cover

All terrain has a cover value that is a bonus to your Sv roll (Ex. +1). This bonus is granted to any unit entirely within or meets the requirements of the terrain feature.

3) Difficulty

All terrain has a difficulty value. This value is a penalty to the Movement Value of any unit that enters or attempts to move through the terrain. It is possible the Difficulty of the terrain is a 0 meaning it does not impact movement at all. They may also have special considerations such as "Impassible to VEHICLES".

So for example, the baricades that make of a Aegis Defense Line and thus AGLs themselves would be

LoS: Light
Cover: +1 - The unit must be within 1" or within 1" of a model from their unit that is within 1" of the terrain to occupy the terrain. This unit only gains the benefit of cover from units targeting them from the opposite side of the terrain.
Difficulty: 1

Thus tracing LoS over these baracades would impose a -1 to hit to any unit that is not occupying it. Provides a +1 Sv bonus to any unit that is occupying it, and eat up 1" of Movement to cross over it.

Ruined Building could be.

LoS: Dense
Cover: +1
Difficulty: 1 non-INFANTRY

You could not target units on the other side of the building even if you could trace LoS. Units that occupy the terrain gain a +1 SV bonus and any noninfantry would loose 1" of movement by entering or trying to pass through the terrain. Driving some bikes over the rough surface of the ruins is hard on them and the ruins make navigating the landscape difficult for anything that is too big and/or lacking the dexterity that Infantry have.

In addition. I propose that Character Targeting is changed to make it so a character cannot be targeted with shooting if the character is not the closest visible unit and within 3" of another visible friendly unit. This way they need to maintain a semi unit coherency to keep their protection AND a closer unit behind some LoS blocking terrain won't save them.

Any unit with Sniper Weapon/rules will also ignore intervening units when tracing LoS.

Those are rules I wrote down like... 2 years ago. (just checked. 3 years ago in August)

What about that is unclear or needs to be more "dense"?

Automatically Appended Next Post:

ewar wrote:
Lance845 wrote:

The 3" specification is useless and pointless except as a not-a-rule guideline that they should have had separate in the part of the book where they talked about building your own terrain.

Why is this useless? It is a rule... and is there presumably to maintain visual consistency so flat terrain doesn't confer benefits that look incongruous.

1) The "rule" is useless because it has no bearing on the game play WHAT SO EVER if the terrain looks incongruous. Terrain being 3" tall isn't going to make a 14w 10" tall Tyranid Dimacheron any harder to hit by any stretch of logic. But the rule DOES allow it.

2) It's useless because the point of these tags is that we are supposed to be able to take our terrain which does not come in standard sizes and apply tags to them to give them rules.

3) it's useless because a piece of terrain that is 9" wide 1/16" tall and has a 4" light post in the middle of it is also dense terrain by this rule. Remember that massive monstrous creature, or a deamon prince, or a blob of 30 Ork Boyz? Yeah... you can hide 30 Ork Boyz behind a lamp post by these rules.

4) It's useless because it doesn't add anything to the game and now it needlessly restricts.

**Crispy78**

The restriction / recommendation should be outside the rule.

The rule itself should just say "Subtract 1 from the hit roll when etc etc". The "If the terrain is at least 3" in height" bit is redundant. If Dense Cover must be over 3" in height, then if it's not at least 3" in height it can't be Dense Cover in the first place, so the rule doesn't apply.

Personally, I only play within my own group, and I see no problems with us classifying a piece of terrain as Dense Cover if it seems appropriate to do so, regardless of its height...

**Lance845**

Crispy78 wrote:
The restriction / recommendation should be outside the rule.

The rule itself should just say "Subtract 1 from the hit roll when etc etc". The "If the terrain is at least 3" in height" bit is redundant. If Dense Cover must be over 3" in height, then if it's not at least 3" in height it can't be Dense Cover in the first place, so the rule doesn't apply.

Personally, I only play within my own group, and I see no problems with us classifying a piece of terrain as Dense Cover if it seems appropriate to do so, regardless of its height...

Right! And I imagine most people will. But every word about terrain height in that rule is wasted words. It's redundant as you say. It adds or clarifies nothing. It's bad rules writing.