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The arms of a defiler or a soul grinder are up high enough that the models can physically touch models on the second floor of a GW cities of death ruin model from the ground floor.

Here's the scenario:

The soul grinder standing so that its left arm is three inches away from a raptor on the second floor of a ruin. For the sake of discussion, the standard 3" height between ruin levels is in use, so if the soul grinder needs to climb up a level, it will need to move 5" (the legs make make measurement funky ). The soul grinder charges and rolls its difficult terrain.

Does the soul grinder need to roll a 3 or better (it can assault from the ground floor if it can reach), or a 5 or better (it needs to get its feet up a level) on its difficult terrain test?

First off, remember that the rules state a model can only move up to an upper level of a ruin if it could actually physically fit up there, so I think you're going to be hard pressed to find a ruin that could accommodate a soul grinder/defiler model.

But assuming that the model could normally fit on that level, I would say the defiler/soul grinder needs to be on the same level of ruins to engage the enemy in base contact, so it would have to roll a 5+. 2" to move forward and 3" for the vertical movement needed.

Yak, for rule for it actually to fit up there, does that include if models are already occupying the space? I've been trying to tell some regulars the same thing and I cannot find a specific rule for it, do you have a page ref?

AffliKtion wrote:Yak, for rule for it actually to fit up there, does that include if models are already occupying the space? I've been trying to tell some regulars the same thing and I cannot find a specific rule for it, do you have a page ref?

The rule about being able to fit on the floor is on the first paragraph of page 83, but only seems to apply in general (i.e. is the upper level ever big enough to fit the model if there were no enemy models up there?).

If enemy models are what is preventing the model from being placed on an upper level this does not apply, as dictated by the last paragraph on page 85.

Hrmm, I wonder if the sentence stating space being limited is only on the actual ruin and not including models. I always treat models as impassable terrain so therefore if I occupy an entire floor of a ruin, then I can only be assaulted by being directly below the defending model, because there simply is no terrain that an assaulting model can stand on.

That paragraph on page 83 also clarifies that devilfish using sensor spines to do the spider fish move I had mentioned in another thread is illegal, because a devilfish using sensor spines counts as moving "through" difficult terrain and cannot go on other floors of a ruin.

A walker without a base only needs to get its hull into contact with the enemy model, though, right? In the original post, I had been assuming that both arms of the soul grinder were part of the hull.

The terrain which originated this question is sitting in front of me along with the soul grinder and chaos marine which originated the situation, but my camera is taunting me by having dead batteries. Anyway, there's a balcony in the ruin, and I can arrange the soul grinder so that he's punching the chaos marine in the gut with the three fingered claw. Doesn't that count as base to base contact?