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Did I hear the rumors correctly, that the spear thrower on the new stegadon will have poison? As some else just pointed out with respect to Goblins, a poisoned bolt thrower equals a bunch of dead models every time a six is rolled on the hit roll... (i.e. it will autowound everything in its line of fire, and the bolt throwers don't allow armor saves) Will this apply with the new stegadon rules?

As it is now, I believe it would (my question is more whether the Banner giving the poison works on the Bolt Thrower)

However, as this is quite a rare occurence, we might find the rules made clear with the Steggie...

And your point was a good one (I don't know how your issue works out, sorry). I do wonder if the Steggy bolt thrower denies armor saves. This becomes a very scary item, when you consider the possibility of 6-9 steggies on the table. Ouch!

Yarp! I just like the idea of a single dice roll involving the removal of entire Cavalry Units.

Up yours Blood Knights! (unless they have Regen of course)

Maybe it would be an upgrade? I don't know. Guess I should start surfing.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Up yours Blood Knights! (unless they have Regen of course)

If you're going to invest in Blood Knights...

WHy not make them an even bigger target? Indeed!

Do Stegadons elevate though? Seems like there'd be lots of Dire Wolves
surrounding a Blood Knight unit.

Haven't fought one, so this is just theory.

Oooh, it is as well! Large Target can see over intervening units.

Bitching!

Nice. Also, how fast do they move? Seems like it would be easy to set up flank shots on those heavy cavalry - a 6" move to one side could change the arc of fire.

Indeed. Monsters, like Chariots, don't wheel either unless in a regiment.

Ergo, you could just scoot you 6" and then let loose. However, one rather fears it's a lot of unnecessary fannying around on the offchance of a 6 to hit, when you could just send Stompy straight into the buggers...

After looking at my pictures of the rulebook, the rules for the "Giant Bow" does state, "No Armour Saves, Poison Attacks" and it penetrates ranks. Oh and d3 wounds.

MMMmmmmmm.... Yummy.

So how many bow-carrying Steggies will you be able to get? Not including any Steggy Ancients?

That army has a lot of charm for the person running it - it is a shooty army that moves very fast while shooting, causes terror, and obliterates cavalry.

I've always had a soft spot for the giant bow, of course it being poisoned just makes it better. What I want to get my hands on tho are those steggie ancients. Giant blowguns! 2d6x2 poison shots FTW! And the engine of the gods looks really promising as well.

Dear Lord it's been so long since I played fantasy I forgot bolt throwers ignored armor.

I'm going to be buying a lot of Stegadons...

I wander if they will rule that it auto wounds the 1st model or every model in the rank..

Here's hoping that the next revision of the dwarf army book will include a Rune of Poison. Mwaa haa haa!

Oh lord....look what I've started! NOOOOOO!

And indeed, as it stands now, it auto-wounds ALL models hit. Any poisoned attack which rolls a 6 to hit wounds automatically....

Just a very rare occurence (well, it was if rumours are anywhere near accurate) that it can affect multiple models in a single hit!

Neat

I'm going to have to do this now. Is just too funny a trick to pass up. What I might do is invest in a LARGE (think 30+) unit of Stikkas, and have the Banner Bearer with them, well withing joining distance of a Spearchukka. That way I can really make the most of my crappy BS!

In your face enemies!

well regarding the blood knight thing, i only took them once or twice and decided i didn't like the frenzy since the enemy can start controlling your unit if they are smart but from what I see with many vampire counts players that blood knight unit will have a banner and a BSB so you are facing one banner giving a ward save to shooting attacks and the BSB giving regen so they would have two saves against your bolt of impending doom. Not saying a lot won't die...just saying they stand a chance of a few angry vamps living through it.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:And indeed, as it stands now, it auto-wounds ALL models hit. Any poisoned attack which rolls a 6 to hit wounds automatically....

Why would it wound all the models? I thought that the bolt throwers rolled a S6 hit against the first model, then S5 against the next, then S4 against the following, etc. until it runs out of models, or fails to wound. Is this correct?

Why would poisoned attacks cause an auto-wound on every model (on 1 roll) when it normally requires multiple rolls (normal bolt thrower)? Wouldn't the first one auto wound, then require another wound to roll on model 2?

I'm a little confused...

*edited for spelling

well its like this, you roll a D6 to see if you hit at all, and a weapon that is poisoned autowounds on a roll of a 6 to hit, so if you shoot the bow and roll a six to hit the first guy it autowounds, and as you dont have to reroll the "to hit dice" again i would assume it is still a six autowounding the next guy and so forth. it seems too good to be true doesnt it?

bleedge wrote:well its like this, you roll a D6 to see if you hit at all, and a weapon that is poisoned autowounds on a roll of a 6 to hit, so if you shoot the bow and roll a six to hit the first guy it autowounds, and as you dont have to reroll the "to hit dice" again i would assume it is still a six autowounding the next guy and so forth. it seems too good to be true doesnt it?

Yes. Yes it is.

But let me throw this out there. On pg 90 it says "If the first model hit is slain [which it would be, because it was hit and slain with a poisoned attack, autowounding, with no save], the bolt hits the trooper directly behind in the next rank, resolve damage on the second model using a Strength of 5. Etc."

Wouldn't that mean that while the first would autowound, the second hit (and subsequent hits) are resolved normally? There doesn't seem to be any indication that the additional "hits", are the same as the first roll to hit. The standard bolt thrower rule does say there are additional "hits", but they are specifically "automatic". I don't interpret that to mean all of the hits count as poisoned. I would think that since there is specifically no further "to hit" roll, that poison would not be in effect after the first shot.

But, I'm sure this will likely not end up in an FAQ any time soon.

Thanks for explaining the interpretation to me.

The reduction in strength on additional ranks is immaterial, however. (also note that the rule doesn't indicate the strength, and items such as Dwarf bolt throwers actually have a higher strength). Also, hits on the second and beyond ranks are still poisoned, so at that point you look back to the to-hit roll, which was originally a 6. The bolt thrower hits the unit, and then the bolt goes through the entire unit.

I would argue that very strenuously, it requires a seperate wound roll for each rank, so yes the first model would be hit and wounded automatically but then you would still need to roll to wound the next model, it says that you roll to wound the next model with -1 str until there are no more models or you fail to wound.

PapaSmurf

yea it does seem good, perhaps a seperate to hit roll would be required to test for poison on subsequent models? otherwise reverting back to normal bolt thrower rules

Papamurf...

The thing is, it doesn't matter how many standard rolls to wound there normally are. For the Poison to do it's work, you need roll a 6 to hit.

Ergo, as long as it's hitting a model with a single wound *every* time, in this instance, they die automatically (barring Ward and Regen). The Poison simply makes any to wound roll an automatic success.

HOWEVER, this is the main area I'm worried about, and where it gets extremely silly.... as has been pointed out, normally the Bolt continues dropping in S as it goes through the unit. BUT, with the Auto-Wounding, does this mean the shot can in fact kill any number of models, even if it's S drops to 0, -1, -2, -3 and so on? I would argue not.

As I mentioned above in this post, Poison simply wounds automatically. Now I would take this to suggest that the intention of the rules, is that in any situation where I could wound you (i.e. I hit, and my S is sufficient to hurt you) I do so, the Poison effectively being my 'to wound roll'. And since sometimes you *cannot* wound something (S3 V T7 for example, I cannot wound) poison cannot help there, as there is no dice roll normally, ergo the Poison cannot make it a success.

Hope that wasn't too confusing!

It's a good thought, but poison doesn't care about Str v. Toughness - skinks can harm a Giant. So there's no reason a -1 Str poison hit can't wound a dragon, for instance.

Hmmm. Interesting. Never going to be that much of a problem, as it requires a seriously deep or wide regiment, possibly an enfillade shot, and of course, hitting on a six.

Though having said that, we did have one High Elf player who deploy 20 odd Silverhelms in a single line...