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Hey all,

Have a few questions about an interesting game I played yesterday. Everyone seems to have a slightly different way to play the rules at my FLGS (oh it's fun) but I'd really rather know how you all would play these situations and see how my own gut feelings and interpretations measure up.

1) Deathwind drop pod comes down and a Dreadnought pops out. Dreadnought sees a Valkyrie behind my blob squad of guardsmen and says "I'll fire at the valkyrie and get some guardsmen too! He started to measure the template from the arm of the Dread and touches the base of the Valk but I said he should measure up to the vehicle itself.

Was I correct or should he measure to just the base? I know they FAQ'd assaults and disembark that it counts as the base but would that also count for template weapons? And do the antennae at the front count for range? Where does the 'hull' actually end? (if can of worms... sorry)

2) His skimmers weren't on flying bases and he was firing at that same Valkyrie the next turn. From the actual model, there was enough other models, intervening buildings and a clump of area terrain with trees and such that 50% of the Valk was concealed (crazy huh?) but he said "well they're supposed to both be flying so no you don't get it."

I figured that was a fair point at the time, but was that incorrect?

3) I blew both weapons off his Landspeeder so he wanted to move flat out and rammed a Chimera. I asked if the Landspeeder was a tank and he said no.

What's the deal with Tank Shock and Ram nowadays? Is it only vehicles with the 'Tank' special rule that can perform them or is it any vehicle? I say this because in the rules section both events are listed under the subheading 'Tanks' and any reference says "The tank can do blah blah, but the Tank has to do blah blah." In addition, do Orks have a special rule that allow them to do so without being a tank?

4) Last but not least, I had a LRBT on the edge of the board. It was clear terrain to the east but to the west the board edge was 1" away from his librarian that had just tried to eat the LRBT last turn. I wondered if I could Tank Shock him by moving straight forward along the edge and stopping on top of his model with the shortest distance towards the board edge, thereby forcing his Librarian off the board.

We ended up playing that since he cannot go off the board, the Librarian would go the long way and move to the east side of the Tank rather than the west and avoid being run off the board. That made sense to me but I figured I'd check. Hypothetically, if there was impassable terrain to the east would the Librarian have been removed in that manner?

Thanks for the help and sorry for any potential pasta issues. It's not important enough to spark another debate or anything, just curious as to how most people would play those situations.

DoW

1. The vehicle.
2. Incorrect as TLOS = TLOS.
3. No - only tanks
4. They can move through the tank.

DogOfWar wrote:1) Deathwind drop pod comes down and a Dreadnought pops out. Dreadnought sees a Valkyrie behind my blob squad of guardsmen and says "I'll fire at the valkyrie and get some guardsmen too! He started to measure the template from the arm of the Dread and touches the base of the Valk but I said he should measure up to the vehicle itself.

Was I correct or should he measure to just the base? I know they FAQ'd assaults and disembark that it counts as the base but would that also count for template weapons? And do the antennae at the front count for range? Where does the 'hull' actually end? (if can of worms... sorry)

It is a can of worms I think the GW Unofficial FAQ covers it, but I am not 100% sure. In any case, RaW you have to reach the hull.

2) His skimmers weren't on flying bases and he was firing at that same Valkyrie the next turn. From the actual model, there was enough other models, intervening buildings and a clump of area terrain with trees and such that 50% of the Valk was concealed (crazy huh?) but he said "well they're supposed to both be flying so no you don't get it."

I figured that was a fair point at the time, but was that incorrect?

Well, it's supposed to be coming on the flying base. You have to agree pre game how to deal with it.

3) I blew both weapons off his Landspeeder so he wanted to move flat out and rammed a Chimera. I asked if the Landspeeder was a tank and he said no.

What's the deal with Tank Shock and Ram nowadays? Is it only vehicles with the 'Tank' special rule that can perform them or is it any vehicle? I say this because in the rules section both events are listed under the subheading 'Tanks' and any reference says "The tank can do blah blah, but the Tank has to do blah blah." In addition, do Orks have a special rule that allow them to do so without being a tank?

Only Tanks may Tank Shock and Ram. Orks have a vehicle Upgrade that allow non-Tank Vehicles to Rank Shock only.

4) Last but not least, I had a LRBT on the edge of the board. It was clear terrain to the east but to the west the board edge was 1" away from his librarian that had just tried to eat the LRBT last turn. I wondered if I could Tank Shock him by moving straight forward along the edge and stopping on top of his model with the shortest distance towards the board edge, thereby forcing his Librarian off the board.

We ended up playing that since he cannot go off the board, the Librarian would go the long way and move to the east side of the Tank rather than the west and avoid being run off the board. That made sense to me but I figured I'd check. Hypothetically, if there was impassable terrain to the east would the Librarian have been removed in that manner?

You move the librarian the minimum Distance to be legaly placed, even if that means he moves "through" the leman russ.

DogOfWar wrote:3) I blew both weapons off his Landspeeder so he wanted to move flat out and rammed a Chimera. I asked if the Landspeeder was a tank and he said no.

What's the deal with Tank Shock and Ram nowadays? Is it only vehicles with the 'Tank' special rule that can perform them or is it any vehicle? I say this because in the rules section both events are listed under the subheading 'Tanks' and any reference says "The tank can do blah blah, but the Tank has to do blah blah." In addition, do Orks have a special rule that allow them to do so without being a tank?

Only Tanks can Tank Shock or Ram.
Orks can buy Reinforced Rams for some vehicles that allow them to Tank Shock as if they were a Tank.

EDIT: ninja'd!

Wow, interesting game. Here's my thoughts;

1. This is perhaps a bit of a can of worms, but I would note that pg. 72 says that if your Walker is on a base all distances and ranges to and from it are measured using the base 'like an infantry model'. This includes movement and coherency effects (say, for a squadron) and it also seems to clearly effect if I were to fire a lascannon at the walker. I see no reason why this would not apply also to a template weapon. Without a base then the template weapon would need to be touching part of the hull.

2. TLOS is TLOS. There are certain advantages and disadvantages to having his skimmers not on flying bases. How high is he when he's hiding behind a low wall and you want to shoot at him? RAW he's not allowed to not be on a flying base, and so was breaking the rules already - but I would have played it as TLOS from whatever position the skimmer was occupying and not try to justify it being up or down whatever amount of distance. Both of you "flying" makes no difference whatsoever, LoS is found using TLOS so you were playing it correctly, you look at what the models can see.

3. Tank Shock and Ramming are special vehicle movement actions restricted to Tank vehicle types barring special wargear. Only on pg. 69 is ramming discussed, and that is, as you surmised, the Tank section and not a generic vehicle movement section.

4. Pg. 68 requires them to be moved out of the way by the shortest distance available. A model cannot move off the table (barring falling back or other special movement actions) therefore it would move to the shortest distance to the nearest legal space it could occupy on the board.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Gwar! wrote:Only Tanks may Tank Shock and Ram. Orks, and the totally awesome Dark Eldar who have amazing boobage, have a vehicle Upgrade that allow non-Tank Vehicles to Tank Shock only.

Fixed.

How do you feel question #1 is affected by pg. 72?

I have to disagree about the template needing to aim up at the hull. The rules never indicate that flame templates need to be held diagonally. This is a mistake I see lots of people making when they flame into ruins.

As for the skimmer that wasn't on a flying base, this actually works both ways for you. If he can't see you clearly because he's too low, you get a cover save. If he's too low to shoot at clearly, you can force him to put it on a flying base. You just have to abide by whatever you do first. That's what he gets for cheating.

Thor665 wrote:

Gwar! wrote:Only Tanks may Tank Shock and Ram. Orks, and the totally awesome Dark Eldar who have amazing boobage, have a vehicle Upgrade that allow non-Tank Vehicles to Tank Shock only.

Fixed.

How do you feel question #1 is affected by pg. 72?

Ah yes, I had forgotten about the Epic Dark Eldar Boobage

And Thor, you are getting confuzzled, he is firing the Flamer at a Valkyrie with a Dreadnought.

Ouch, that is true. Well...I feel solid on my other three answers still and he can disregard my Walker faux-pas.

The template issue gets more sticky, because guns default to a 45 degree swivel. (Not sure if that is a 45 arc, or a 90 arc) But it likely means you can't get to the valk at all.


The speeders *have* to be on a stand. Once you two decide to skip that rule, it means the two of you have to decide how to handle other rules affected, such as how to handle LoS issues.
Either way is fine, as long as you guys are consistent. And I would say that any iffy situations go in your favor, since he is the one without the stands.

coredump wrote:The template issue gets more sticky, because guns default to a 45 degree swivel. (Not sure if that is a 45 arc, or a 90 arc) But it likely means you can't get to the valk at all.

Templates do not swivel vertically. They are held flat above the table, which means the height of the Valkyrie will not make it impossible to hit.

I can't find anything in the rules, but how would firing a template at a high-flying skimmer (e.g. Valkyrie) interact with the firing-a-template-into-ruins rules, that rule that only one floor of the ruin is affected?
If firing at a Valkyrie, does it only affect other models that are on the same level as the valkyrie?

If the valkyrie is not in a ruin, it is on the ground level. Therefore, hitting it would involve hitting the infantry on the ground as well.

If the valkyrie is actually in a ruin, the template will hit the level that the valkyrie's base is on and anything else on that level touched by the template.

The way I play it when people bring skimmers, that have no bases. I tell them, go ahead and use it, but we are going to use TLOS. So since your skimmer in on the ground, if something if blocking the TLOS, your just going to have to deal with it.
The way I see it is, every skimmer comes with a skimming base. Also, its easy enough to stick them on the bases with pins/nails/metal rod to hold them up better. Its much to simple to put them on correctly, then to just not do it. I might be a little stingy on that rule, but its just how I play it

thebetter1 wrote:Templates do not swivel vertically. They are held flat above the table,

Held flat is how they tend to be used in common practice, but it's not how the Template rules actually say to do it.

They're supposed to be placed so that the narrow end is touching the firer's base, with the template covering enemy models. That does require the template to be held at an angle, unless your opponent is using very short models.

I've always interpreted the template rules as being planar, from a top-down view. The example supports this. If it had to be held diagonally in almost all cases, the picture of the template would be shorter.

thebetter1 wrote:I've always interpreted the template rules as being planar, from a top-down view.

The fact that they explicitly tell you to touch the narrow end of the template to the model's base disagrees with this interpretation.

The example supports this. If it had to be held diagonally in almost all cases, the picture of the template would be shorter.

It's an example pic, not a scale representation.

thebetter1 wrote:I've always interpreted the template rules as being planar, from a top-down view. The example supports this. If it had to be held diagonally in almost all cases, the picture of the template would be shorter.

The template illustrated in the picture on page 29 actually have a much wider angle than a real template. It's easy to see if you hold a template over the picture.

In the small RB the template in the picture is 50 mm long and 18 mm wide. A real template is 208 mm long and 60 mm wide meaning the length to width ratio is about 2.8 in the picture and about 3.5 for real. If the picture is in scale this would indicate an upwards (or downwards) angle of approximately 37 degrees.

From my experience with GW and their rules I seriously doubt the creators of the rulebook were this elaborate and don't think the shape is meant to be in scale but it still disapproves your argument.

1) It's a GW grey area, use INAT FAQ and your life will be less complex

2) He can't have the best of both worlds. True LOS is True LOS, either he gets a base or he's firing off the ground.

3) Only tanks can tankshock unless they have gear that confers the ability

4) he can move through the tank to legal place the model.

Sounded like a messy game

The problem with the Flamer RAW is that, if you actually insisted on touching it to the base and saying that it hits any models it is above (thus requiring you to place it at an angle) the closer you get to the enemy squad the "shorter" the template becomes due to the increasing angle, and if you were right in the enemies face, it would be almost vertical.

I personally consider this reason enough to use the flame template horizontally at all times and have it affect any models below it, the small end merely needs to match the horizontal plane co-ordinates of the firing model's base.

Of course, some people would rather play by the strictest RAW and have a near useless weapon type, and that's thier choice.

Drunkspleen wrote:Of course, some people would rather play by the strictest RAW and have a near useless weapon type, and that's thier choice.

I've never had a problem with flamers being touched to the model's base. But then, I usually try to position my flamer-equipped models so that the widest part of the template is over the enemy unit, which gives you enough room to place the template without having it sticking up at too sharp an angle to be useful.

Thanks for all the replies! And yes, it was a bit of a messy game. Ended in a tie though with both objectives contested. I had a Chimera squatting on both of them, however, so I feel it was a moral victory

Seems like questions 2-4 were very straightforward so I'll keep that in mind for next time. To my opponent's credit, we were using some weapon/model proxies so the lack of flying bases wasn't really cheating per say. The TLOS issue is a good thing to discuss prior to starting the game, however, so I'll remember that for next time.

Question 1, however, does seem to be a little bit confusing still. It makes sense to me that the procedure would be to place the template on the actual flamer on the Dreadnought and angle it up to the Valkyrie but the fact that a flamer would not be a strictly two-dimensional weapon means it very well could be placed horizontally to touch a part of the base and be believed that the spray would hit everything in a vertical cone as well as horizontal.

I think that's stretching it a little, though, since there's no way to actually measure that vertical aspect (unless you just assumed the flamer template was three-dimensional and rotated it 90 degrees to check) as per the rules. To be fair, it says to count any vehicles hit that are partially or wholly under the template so RAW I'd say you almost can't hit a Valkyrie unless you're on the second storey of a building.

I think a fair compromise would be to assume that you just have to touch the hull of the Valkyrie with the template rather than the base (since that does limit your range, and it makes it fair since it is a skimmer, after all) but that you don't need to fire so high that the model is actually under the template. It might not be the best solution but I think it's a reasonable way to play a bit of a strange situation.

Again, thanks for the replies. I appreciate the help!

DoW

BlackSpike wrote:

DogOfWar wrote:3) I blew both weapons off his Landspeeder so he wanted to move flat out and rammed a Chimera. I asked if the Landspeeder was a tank and he said no.

What's the deal with Tank Shock and Ram nowadays? Is it only vehicles with the 'Tank' special rule that can perform them or is it any vehicle? I say this because in the rules section both events are listed under the subheading 'Tanks' and any reference says "The tank can do blah blah, but the Tank has to do blah blah." In addition, do Orks have a special rule that allow them to do so without being a tank?

Only Tanks can Tank Shock or Ram.
Orks can buy Reinforced Rams for some vehicles that allow them to Tank Shock as if they were a Tank.

EDIT: ninja'd!

Wait, what?

Why is there a +1 to ram "if the vehicle is a tank", then? That wouldn't make much sense if only tanks could ram, right?

DogOfWar wrote:
Question 1, however, does seem to be a little bit confusing still. It makes sense to me that the procedure would be to place the template on the actual flamer on the Dreadnought and angle it up to the Valkyrie but the fact that a flamer would not be a strictly two-dimensional weapon means it very well could be placed horizontally to touch a part of the base and be believed that the spray would hit everything in a vertical cone as well as horizontal.

I think that's stretching it a little, though, since there's no way to actually measure that vertical aspect (unless you just assumed the flamer template was three-dimensional and rotated it 90 degrees to check) as per the rules. To be fair, it says to count any vehicles hit that are partially or wholly under the template so RAW I'd say you almost can't hit a Valkyrie unless you're on the second storey of a building.

I think a fair compromise would be to assume that you just have to touch the hull of the Valkyrie with the template rather than the base (since that does limit your range, and it makes it fair since it is a skimmer, after all) but that you don't need to fire so high that the model is actually under the template. It might not be the best solution but I think it's a reasonable way to play a bit of a strange situation.
DoW

The way I see it, if the Flamer is aiming at the vehicle behind the guards, it would be aimed higher and the guards would instinctively crouch and cover themselves or something, so it kinda makes sense. In any case, that's how the rules say it works.

Because the same table is used for the unit getting rammed.

InquisitorBob wrote:Wait, what?

Why is there a +1 to ram "if the vehicle is a tank", then? That wouldn't make much sense if only tanks could ram, right?

It's for when a vehicle gets rammed, if it is a tank, it gets +1.

InquisitorBob wrote:
The way I see it, if the Flamer is aiming at the vehicle behind the guards, it would be aimed higher and the guards would instinctively crouch and cover themselves or something, so it kinda makes sense. In any case, that's how the rules say it works.

Now this is just getting out of hand. Flamers cannot miss something by being too high. There is no rule to indicate this at all.

Also, I found another indication that flamers are placed parallel to the table. Check the ruins section. The only argument I can see against this is that the ruin rules completely override template rules, which would mean templates allow cover saves in ruins, so this can be applied to non-ruin situations.

thebetter1 wrote:

InquisitorBob wrote:
The way I see it, if the Flamer is aiming at the vehicle behind the guards, it would be aimed higher and the guards would instinctively crouch and cover themselves or something, so it kinda makes sense. In any case, that's how the rules say it works.

Now this is just getting out of hand. Flamers cannot miss something by being too high. There is no rule to indicate this at all.

Except for the rules on page 85. A template weapon can only target enemies on the same level, or 1 higher or lower. If you are on the ground, you can't target a unit on the 3rd floor of a ruin, it is too high up!

thebetter1 wrote:Also, I found another indication that flamers are placed parallel to the table. Check the ruins section. The only argument I can see against this is that the ruin rules completely override template rules, which would mean templates allow cover saves in ruins, so this can be applied to non-ruin situations.

Ruin rules don't override template rules. Ruins are difficult terrain conveying 4+ cover save and cover saves are ignored by template weapons. I can't find anything in the ruins section that changes the template rules.

thebetter1 wrote:

InquisitorBob wrote:
The way I see it, if the Flamer is aiming at the vehicle behind the guards, it would be aimed higher and the guards would instinctively crouch and cover themselves or something, so it kinda makes sense. In any case, that's how the rules say it works.

Now this is just getting out of hand. Flamers cannot miss something by being too high. There is no rule to indicate this at all.

Also, I found another indication that flamers are placed parallel to the table. Check the ruins section. The only argument I can see against this is that the ruin rules completely override template rules, which would mean templates allow cover saves in ruins, so this can be applied to non-ruin situations.

I don't see anything getting out of hand here, I was merely trying to give a cinematic explanation to a Rule.
The end of it is, you only affect whatever you're shooting at, unless the weapon description specifically says otherwise (like draw a line and everything touched by the line is it, for exemple).
Flamers have no such special rules.

"anything under the template is hit" Sounds like permission to hit anything under the template to me. Which is why there is the added restriction of covering as much of the target unit as possible....

nosferatu1001 wrote:"anything under the template is hit" Sounds like permission to hit anything under the template to me. Which is why there is the added restriction of covering as much of the target unit as possible....

I agree.

My problem is that you must place the template with the narrow end touching the base of the model that is firing the template and such that the rest of the template covers as many models as possible in the target unit. Then it states that any models fully or partially under the template are hit.

To me this means that if you do not actually touch the base of the firing model, you are not abiding by the first part of the rules. If you believe the template must be held horizontally then you can never force another model to be under the template unless the firing model is on terrain that is at least one model high. And if you don't believe templates must be held horizontally, you still could not ever hit a skimmer unless you were very close, or on high enough ground such that you could place the template over the skimmer.

Maybe I'm missing something?

DoW

RaP: When firing at enemy models on the same level, I place the template horizontally parallel to the table just over the models to see how many it covers. I recognize that Insaniak's description more accurately matches the RaW, but it's too counter-intuitive for me for the flamer to hit fewer guys if the firing model is standing an inch away from them.

RaW: For hitting a skimmer, or models elevated on substantially higher ground than the firer, I do actually place the template in contact with the firing model's base. Flamers have short range, and the literal procedure described in the book more accurately models its "realistic" limitations.