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If I roll a 1-4 and hit the artillery and its in 50 percent blocked do i get a cover save.

Hmmm... I would think so as it is a Vehicle... I would not take my post as the final answer unless Dash, Gwar, or Nurglitch Agrees... they are more intimately familiar with these hard corner cases...

It's pretty unclear, My opinion on the matter is that if 50% of the unit or more is in cover, all the models get a cover save (both vehicles and non-vehicles obey this rule) and then you determine the artillery model's cover by 50% obscured (per vehicle rules) and the crewman's cover is based on if any part of them is obscured just like normal infantry.

This means, following my interpretation, if you for example had two crewmen who were obscured and thus entitled to a cover save, and the actual artillery gun was not obscured at all, it would still get a cover save for shots that are randomised to it because 50% or more of the unit is in cover.

The alternative I have seen some people postulate is that you don't determine cover until after you randomise the hits, meaning the guns and crewmen have their own seperate "cover pools" and 50% or more of the guns have to be 50% or more obscured for the guns to have a cover save.

I think the special artillery rule, where you determine with a dice throw which part of the unit is hit, is the difficult thing here. I don't have the rulebook at hand, so the following interpretation might be flawed:

We have a vehicle and two infantry models. Nobody gets a wound or hit until it is determined whether the vehicle or the infantry is hit. To this point it is only "this or that might suffer a wound OR suffer a glance/pen" - since you need to follow completely different procedures for wounds and glance/pens, I think it is reasonable to assume that no real "hit" was made before it is clear whether gun or crew were actually hit.
After that, it gets more clear: If the vehicle is hit, you determine cover by normal vehicle rules: If 50% of the vehicle model is obscured from the shooter's point of view, the it gets a cover save. If the infantry is hit, you determine cover by normal infantry rules - if one limb or body part of the model is obscured, the model gets a cover save.

So, it is wise to try and put the artillery gunners behind the gun shields and heavy parts of your artillery gun, because those parts can provide cover saves for the gunners. This would, incidentally, make some real-life comparison sense, too.

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Again, just an interpretation, feel free to prove me wrong.

Artillery cover is determined the same way as any other unit: 50% of the unit needs to be in cover. For the crew, they need to be obscured by terrain/units (other than their own unit), and the guns need to have at least 50% of their bulk obscured. Any combination of crew/guns in cover that add up to 50% means the unit is in cover.

Witzkatz wrote:So, it is wise to try and put the artillery gunners behind the gun shields and heavy parts of your artillery gun, because those parts can provide cover saves for the gunners. This would, incidentally, make some real-life comparison sense, too.

I won't bother arguing with most of what you said, because while I don't share the opinion I acknowledge that the rules situation is decidedly unclear and both interpretations are valid. However this statement I have quoted is incorrect, and not really open to interpretation, the rules for determining cover clearly state "models can always shoot, and be shot at, through members of their own unit without conferring or receiving a cover save."

Even if you don't count the artillery gun for the purpose of determining if 50% of the crew members are in cover it still remains part of their own unit and they cannot claim cover from it.

Drunkspleen I believe has it right.

Cover saves are done based on the unit as a whole- and you can't claim a cover save from part of your own unit.

On a second thought, I have to agree on that. While the situation that vehicle and infantry are in the same unit is quite a speciality, it probably is not able to ignore the rule about "models can never get cover saves by being obscured by other models from the same unit".

As a note for play though it seems like a good idea to treat artillery as providing cover for their crewman, and the pieces themselves gaining cover like vehicles.

Nurglitch wrote:As a note for play though it seems like a good idea to treat artillery as providing cover for their crewman, and the pieces themselves gaining cover like vehicles.

Are you suggesting that a unit can give cover to itself?

No, I'm suggesting that it would be good to play as if the infantry component of artillery gained cover from the vehicle component of artillery. That's rather different from whatever the rules might permit.

Ah, understood.