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Here are some question I have in regards to the 5th Edition rules.

1) When it says you get cover from intervening models, I can only seeing this getting very ugly debate here are a few examples of why
a) If a squad of guardsmen are standing directly in front of a LR and it fires the battle cannon would the enemy get a Cover save? The BC doesnt go the the squad rather it goes over it.
b) I have a squad on the top of a 3 story building and a squad outside the building directly in front of them on the ground level, if the squad 3 stories up shoots at something on the other side of the board there is no way possible to hit your own troops. Once again is it thru or over troops?

2) When firing at a war walker standing behind a small wall or fence that only covers up its legs would it get a cover save? I guess would you only need to cover up 50% of the models height or would you need to cover up 50% of its mass since all of that is really above the fence?

3) On page 16 of the rule book it shows a picture of some space marines shooting at some orcs. My question is this would those orcs get a cover save from those people in the tower, since there is no real terrain obscuring the unit but you are shooting through what most would consider area terrain. They are also behind the area terrain and not inside of it.

4) Is there anything preventing a rhino moving 12", the squad jumping out it and moving up to 2" from hatch, then moving d6" during the shooting phase for a total of up to 20" in one turn. If so this is the new Rhino rush and armies that rely on shooting like guard are in grave trouble if they are in combat on turn two with many SM units knocking at the door. This is especially true if they get the rumored bolt pistol, frag, and krak grenades for free as rumored.

5) When you run and go through difficult terrain do you still move the full d6" movement?

6) If you have a line of troops in front of a Leman Russ would it get a cover save from them? Or would it need to be covered more than 50% by them?

The main thing i would like to know is about vehicles especially with turrets shooting over would allow the enemy to get cover saves. This is espeically a big deal with the battle cannon on the LR with some infantry squads in front of it. This will happen frequently

1A) If the LOS from the turret goes completely over a unit (i.e. you can see *all* of the enemy models without any portion of the LOS being obstructed by your models) then the enemy doesn't get a save from your intervening models.

If you are at all in doubt, then the enemy is going to be getting a cover save. As to why, it is because the tank gunner takes an extra precaution in his firing to miss the guardsmen in the way and therefore it compromises the overall effectiveness of his shot.


1B) Again, the rules are clear that line of sight may be drawn OVER an intervening unit if that is what the true line of sight dictates.

Just get down and take a model's eye view. If you can see ALL of the enemy without any issue, then you're good. Otherwise you give your opponent the benefit of the doubt and give them the cover save.


2) The vehicle rule are specific in that 50% of the vehicle facing you are firing at has to be physically obscured by terrain for a vehicle to get cover save. So a chain link fence will never give cover to a vehicle because it won't physically obscure 50% of a vehicle.


3) Yes, as the line of sight passes in between terrain features in a piece of area terrain.

In order for their LOS to pass completely *OVER* that intervening piece of area terrain, the firing unit would have to be high enough up so that their LOS cleanly passed over the highest part of the area terrain.


4) You are correct, but what's the problem? The disembarking unit will have to give up its ability to shoot and will be running right into rapid-fire of the enemy gunline.

I think if you play a few games with the new rules it will help assuage your fears.


5) Yes, running is not slowed by difficult terrain.


6) Only if the intervening models physically obscure 50% of the vehicle facing. In other words, you'd need some pretty big models to achieve this.

I have just got the new book and had a quick read through. they have over complicated the wound allocation section in my oppinion. with allocating individual wounds to models and not the squad as an whole certain models will become tougher to kill just because they are armed differently ( i.e. an ork nob armed with a combi rocket launcher amongst a squad armed with shooters would be given his own saving throws and would not be effected by the saving throws of the rest of the squad.) With this in mind a player would look at giving each model different weapons combinations and redusing the risk of carry over wounds.

on the flip side it makes units like space marine devastators less desirable as you pay an extortionate cost in points for the heavy weapons,with no reason for the extra cost, and you can no longer remove normal marines as casualties to keep the heavys firing longer.i.e a five man dev squad with two lascanons takes ten wounds that two wounds each. If the lascanon armed marines fail the four saves allocated to them they are removed no matter what happens to the rest of the squad. why are we paying the extra points for the heavy weapons.

I can't get my head round this way of thinking surely its one way or the other. you either allocate wounds or you don't. yet again we are back to writting house rules that make more sense than the published rules.

fatlad2613 wrote:I have just got the new book and had a quick read through. they have over complicated the wound allocation section in my oppinion. with allocating individual wounds to models and not the squad as an whole certain models will become tougher to kill just because they are armed differently ( i.e. an ork nob armed with a combi rocket launcher amongst a squad armed with shooters would be given his own saving throws and would not be effected by the saving throws of the rest of the squad.) With this in mind a player would look at giving each model different weapons combinations and redusing the risk of carry over wounds.

on the flip side it makes units like space marine devastators less desirable as you pay an extortionate cost in points for the heavy weapons,with no reason for the extra cost, and you can no longer remove normal marines as casualties to keep the heavys firing longer.i.e a five man dev squad with two lascanons takes ten wounds that two wounds each. If the lascanon armed marines fail the four saves allocated to them they are removed no matter what happens to the rest of the squad. why are we paying the extra points for the heavy weapons.

I can't get my head round this way of thinking surely its one way or the other. you either allocate wounds or you don't. yet again we are back to writting house rules that make more sense than the published rules.

The previous edition's casualty removal rules were much more complicated when you factor in the mixed armor rules and torrent of fire. Plus, the basic casualty removal rules in the 4th edition rules were actually quite incomplete when it came to many important areas. . .players all over the world were playing different versions of how to remove casualties.

This new system has its eccentricities, but it is MUCH clearer and once you get the hang of it.

As I've said several times over the last few weeks, almost all the doom-and-gloom scenarios people cook up to show off how 'broken' the new system is tend to happen so infrequently in actual games that they are pretty much moot.

Take a look at your two examples. The first one, you say that players are going to take models with differing equipment to abuse the casualty removal rules and then in your second example you say that there is no reason to take Devestators anymore because taking differing equipment makes them too vulnerable!

That's the whole thing. While you may think it's a great idea to have your models all with differing equipment to soak up extra wounds, once you go that route you find yourself losing models you didn't want to lose because the models in your unit all have to take their own armor saves. Sure you're getting to throw out the extra wound here and there but you're also not getting to choose as much which models live and die.

I think they actually cleared up alot of stuff, like saying that you can't FNP perils of the warp. They also point out that dreads can run and still pop smoke. I was afraid that would turn into a big argument.

How does a 5 man dev squad even take 10 wounds? What did that to them? What system of wound allocation would save them? 10 wounds is too many for an example, as few squads can do it, and those that can should in fact be able to mess up 5 marines regardless of wound allocation.

Use real in game examples, not just some scenario with number you made up in your head.

biztheclown wrote:How does a 5 man dev squad even take 10 wounds? What did that to them? What system of wound allocation would save them? 10 wounds is too many for an example, as few squads can do it, and those that can should in fact be able to mess up 5 marines regardless of wound allocation.

Use real in game examples, not just some scenario with number you made up in your head.

Not that rare. Tau Battle suits can do it easily, as can a maxed out gaunt swarm, probably many other things I can't think of atm.

I like how they honk thier own hooter (about allocating hits) by saying on p. 25:

You'll find that it is quite intuitive once you have tried it a few times

So now I have to be told that something is cool?

I do like it, but I don't want to be told that I like it.

Err...I thought "intuitive" meant something like "naturally makes sense" or something similar. So I think what they're trying to say is "after allocating wounds this way it will feel natural and make sense," not "you'll like it."

Lordhat wrote:
Not that rare. Tau Battle suits can do it easily, as can a maxed out gaunt swarm, probably many other things I can't think of atm.

It only really matters for multi-wound models. As such, the three units that have both the ability to take a large mix of weapons/wargear, and have 2+ wounds each are Orks Nobs, Tau Battlesuits, and Nid Warriors.

The fact that I can, very easily, and with almost no decrease in my own unit's ability, make a unit that can soak the first ten wounds it takes without losing a model is pretty impressive.

I know orks best. Here's a nob setup that enables this:

(All get armour)
1: Nob: Combi-skorcha, powerklaw
2: Nob: Combi-skorcha, big choppa
3: Nob: Combi-skorcha, big choppa, bosspole
4: Nob: Powerklaw, slugga
5: Nob: Powerklaw, slugga, waaagh banner
6: Nob: Slugga, Big choppa
7: Nob: Slugga, Big Choppa, Bosspole
8: Nob: TL big shoota, powerklaw
9: Nob: TL big shoota, big choppa
10: Painboy.

You inflict 10 wounds on my unit with bolters. I follow the rules on page 26:

"If the unit includes different modes, first allocate the wounds suffered. Then take wounds for identical models at the same time as normal." - Well, there are no identical models, so we've got one wound allocated to each nob.

In the next paragraph: "Mutliple-wound models in the unit that are unique are rolled for individually and their unsaved wounds must be recorded separately."

So, let's say I fail half those saves. I now have 5 unwounded nobs, and 5 with a wound each. Now another unit shoots them, and I take 5 more wounds. But, as all the models are unique, I'm free to assign these wounds as I see fit as well. So, I put one on each of the unwounded nobs... Now I've soaked two volleys of fire without even the risk of losing a model.

In the ork case, the cost of doing this is very little. If I want a squad with 4 powerklaws and 5 big choppas, I'm spending a total of about 30 points more than I'd spend for the basics in order to make them all unique, and a handful of combi-skorchas and big shootas is hardly a bad idea anyway.

I predict that people will find the minimal points required to pull this off when they're already using these units. Afterall, if I only have to drop 5 extra points on something that may well be useful anyway to turn off the requirement of removing whole models, why wouldn't I?

2 other points so far:

1. When placing a blast marker over a non-vehicle model, the center whole doesn't have to be centered on the model any more.
(believe it was centered in 4th) but this could become very useful against large base models (like a hive tyrant) where before you would never get a partial on anything, you could now get some extra hits. (I like the resurgence of blast weapons in 5th)
oh, there is a diagram on the blast page that clearly shows a non-centered blast.

2. In the assault section i saw that all models in an assault will fight "and use any special close combat attacks they have"

Does this imply that they MUST use their special weapons (e.g. Powerfist) in close combat?
Or is this referring to Bio-Plasma and stuff like that?

The reason i bring this up is that in 4th I believe that you could opt to not take a powerfist at initiative 1, and attack at your regular Initiative without the powerfist benefit and avoid being "timed out" in some situations... (or maybe to avoid the CC ending on your turn if you wanted to take that risk)

Zoned wrote:Err...I thought "intuitive" meant something like "naturally makes sense" or something similar. So I think what they're trying to say is "after allocating wounds this way it will feel natural and make sense," not "you'll like it."

No way can GW use the phrase 'make sense'. In that case a lot of thier rules are so not intuitive.

all very fair comments so far. so with the new wounds allocation system can someone tell me why I am paying extra points for devs heavy weapons. when I have asked at GW they state it due to increased survivability

fatlad2613 wrote:all very fair comments so far. so with the new wounds allocation system can someone tell me why I am paying extra points for devs heavy weapons. when I have asked at GW they state it due to increased survivability

The same reason you've always paid extra points for heavy weapons in devestator squads:

Because multiple heavy weapons in a single unit makes those heavy weapons much more useful than a single heavy weapon in a unit filled with standard weaponry.

For example, a unit with 4 Lascannons is almost guaranteed to destroy any vehicle it fires at and it is perfectly tailored to do just that. On the other end of the spectrum, a Tactical squad with a single Lascannon has a much lower chance of destroying any given vehicle each turn and when it fires at the vehicle all of the bolters in the unit are effectively wasted that turn.


In other words, you pay a premium for a unit that has extra potency.