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So I was playing a game in which a tomb kings player brought a skullapult, and also the special character who has an undispellable free attack incantation. Turn one, I make a gorgeous grudge thrower shot and wipe out the pult and all but one crewman (also his hierophant and casket of souls… yeah his deployment was, um, suboptimal). Naturally, he immediately raises the pult back but still only has one crew. According to the rules given, the war machine should be able to fire once this turn, and then only once every other turn as the crewman has to spend the intervening turns reloading.

However, since I couldn’t dispel his spell, which would normally mean that the vile engine could fire twice per turn, does it still get to fire every turn? Does it fire for free in the magic phase and then have to reload every other shooting phase (1.5 per turn)? Does it just get an extra shooting phase per turn, meaning it’s reloading in magic and fires during shooting (1 per turn)? Or is it still subject to the rule about only once every other turn (.5 shots per turn)?

We played it the second way and it forced a panic check on some warriors, which they failed but then rallied. Without his hierophant, I rapidly tabled him and scored a massacre. But someday, this might matter. Ready, set, rules lawyer!

If it is a magic item or character who is causing the free shot, I would say it now shoots twice in 1 turn and once in the other and so on.

As for WHEN it fires, it would still shoot in the shooting phase if a magic item was granting it a free shot. If it is an actual spell causing a shot, I would think it would happen during magic, but I'm not sure on that as my experience with TK is limited.

I think there is an explanation somewhere that says that if smiting is used to make it fire when it cannot fire for the next turn, it uses up the "cannot fire" status, so in the next turn you can fire it as normal by giving up the chance to fire when you use the spell.

Not sure where it was written, though.

Read the FAQ - always a good start.

Essentially Smiting gives you an "extra" shooting phase - so, if you cannot shoot next phase due to too few crewman smiting "uses up" that "cannot shoot" - so in the following shooting phase you can shoot again

the incantaion of rightous smiting allows a missile armed unit to fire in the magic phase like the incantaion of movement allows them to move in the magic phase This means a screaming skull catapult can fire twice in one turn if allowed