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Pun intentional ; I cant find anywhere how this works. Say i shoot a nob squd or other multi wound infantry squad with multiple firing weapon of insta death. How does that work? IS he allowed to place 2 wounds that I made even though they are insta death on 1 model?


For instance; 4 man Lascannon squad shoots nob bikers and makes 3 wounds. Can he place that on 2 models? One guy taking 2 wounds the other taking one even though they are insta kill.

Another example is Fire dragons or Sternguard with combi meltas. I get 6 wounds can he place that on 3 models.


IO cant really find in the rulebook where it states how this works.

Hollismason wrote: Pun intentional ; I cant find anywhere how this works. Say i shoot a nob squd or other multi wound infantry squad with multiple firing weapon of insta death. How does that work? IS he allowed to place 2 wounds that I made even though they are insta death on 1 model?


For instance; 4 man Lascannon squad shoots nob bikers and makes 3 wounds. Can he place that on 2 models? One guy taking 2 wounds the other taking one even though they are insta kill.

Another example is Fire dragons or Sternguard with combi meltas. I get 6 wounds can he place that on 3 models.


IO cant really find in the rulebook where it states how this works.

in theory, each instant death wound inflicted and not saved will result in the removal of a model. However, the addition of complex units can muddy this, for example if you had 2 ork nobz in a unit one with a power klaw and one with a slugga / choppa, and they suffered 2 instant death wounds as well as a single standard wound, both instant death wounds could be applied to the slugga/choppa nob and the final normal one going to the power klaw armed nob.

This would even continue to be valid if the slugga/choppa nob had already suffered a wound regardless of the fact there is an unwounded model in the squad the rules regarding removing unwounded models first with instant death are done "for each group of identical models" so well after wound application.

The thing is this only works in complex squads where you allocate wounds, so in your example of lascannons on nob bikers, if the nob bikers are all the same 3 are dead, but if they are complex and they suffer bolter shots as well as lascannon shots, they may be able to wrap the lascannons around and get all 3 onto a unique "group of identical models" consisting of only a single model because no other bikers are equipped the same.

This is all on Page 26 of the BRB, hope I've helped clear it up a bit and not just been confusing but it's late so hoping is the best I can offer.

Now I had thought the order was this. I shoot a complex unit of 5 nob bikers all differently armed.

I have 5 hits. He has to allocate each hit to each guy I roll to wound seperately for each model he makes saves seperately.


How does this apply to shooting with all insta death weapons such as meltaguns though. If you have 4 wounds of insta death on the squad how can he allocate 2 insta deaths on one model?

The main thing to remember is that no one model can be allocated two wounds until after every other model in the unit has been allocated one wound. So in a unit of three or more nobs with three instant death wounds (and no other wounds to spread around), you're going to wind up with three dead nobs. Period, no getting around it by any fancy wound allocation, etc. Gets more tricky when you start adding in different weapons tho, as Spleen has already shown and explained. It's led to me not shooting lasguns when the unit size is small and I don't want to giv my opponent the opportunity to stack the AP/ID wounds.

Hollismason wrote:How does this apply to shooting with all insta death weapons such as meltaguns though. If you have 4 wounds of insta death on the squad how can he allocate 2 insta deaths on one model?

He can't... each group must have a wound allocated before he gets to allocate a second wound on any of them.

You don't allocate hits, you allocate wounds.

If you're shooting at a complex unit, only shoot weapons that can cause instant death.

Here's an example:
5 Unique Nobz

10 Marines within 12 inches
Two meltagun wounds
9 Bolter wounds

Since there's 11 wounds, everyone has to take 2 wounds, one guy takes 11 wounds.

Nob 1 - 2 Meltagun Wounds, 1 bolter wound
Nobz 2 to 5 - 2 bolter wounds each

Now, if you only did two meltagun wounds, he'd have to allocate them to separate nobz.

It's weird, but it can happen.

Actually, he might be able to, if there are other wounds as well. If there are four melta wounds and some bolter wounds as well, then he might be able to stack the melta wounds. Say there are 6 nobs, each one unique, with 4 melta and 4 bolter wounds.
Nab 1: melta
Nob 2: melta
Nob 3-6: Bolter
Nob 1: melta
Nob 2: melta
Results two dead nobs, 4 nobs with bolter wounds

Dont shoot the boltguns.

That's what I've taken to doing against small units, don't shoot my lasguns, just the plasma, melta, whatever.

I think it is a problem with the rules when it is advantageous to use less firepower...

Yep, it is a problem.

Wound allocation works really well against a 10-man marine tactical squad.

It fails with complex units made of only 'unique' models.

It works great probably 90% of the time. But, it's a mess the rest of the time.

Yep...

It works the same way with DA DW squads. All 5 can be equipped differently, So, if a 10 SM tac sqaud open up with 9 bolters and plasma, it is really easy to stick both ap 2 shots on the same Termie and keep the rest alive, thanks to wound allocation. It is usually better for the SM squad to just rapid fire the plasma and put the bolters on safety.