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Hi, I played my first 40k game using DA against Tau. During the game in his shooting phase my opponent caused 1 wound on my attack bike with gun driones. Then later during the same phase he caused a instant death wound with his hammerhead. I aloceted the wound to the attack bike. He insisted I also kill another normal biker acourding to page 26 of the rule book, Units of multiple- wound models, second to last paragraph. I told him that to my understanding I can still alocete the hammer head instant death wound on the all ready wounded biker as it was a diffrent unit that caused it.

Who was right ?

Your friend would be right if each model was identical. As the attack bike is not the same as the normal bike (if im understanding that as what you had, an attack bike + normal bikers) you may allocate the wound onto the attack bike if you wish. What unit shooting your troops has no effect at all, so you were wrong in that aspect.

You are correct in how you did this. The wound allocation restrictions only apply to one round of shooting and your attack bike is allowed to take one for the team.

Also, it is deceptive to call it an instant death wound. It is really just a wound from a strength 10, AP (is it 2? I forget) weapon. If it happens to wound a model with toughness <=5, it will cause instant death.

Edit: Viper - In this case the rule for identical models only means he would have to put the wound on the already wounded biker.

Edit 2: His opponent is not correct you do not need to equally spread wounds across a squad from multiple sources of shooting. For example, if I inflict 9 wounds to a 10 man SM squad and my opponent puts them on 7 normal marines and 2 special/heavy weapons and then later in the round shoot a plasma at the squad, he does not need to put that on his sergeant to 'equally allocate' caused wounds. I am sure this is not what you meant, but I want to be clear since wound allocation can be confusing.

Whoops you are correct, I misread what was occurring completely and thought something else had happened. well, at least you can take my answer to explain what happens when multiple wounds, some ID hit a group of models who aren't identical I guess

Edit: Viper - In this case the rule for identical models only means he would have to put the wound on the already wounded biker. Therefore, the shot is actually technically 'less' effective than if it was assigned to a biker w/o any wound which it would then kill via the ID mechanic.

Had the unit been say 3 attack bikes all identically armed and one had taken a wound from shooting. Then a Railgun hits them it would mean an unwounded attackbike would be destroyed and you'b be left with 1 unwounded attack bike and another wounded one.

However when you allocate wounds you are always free to put them on differently armed models first (should you choose) just remember you assign and deal with ID wounds first before assigning and dealing with non-ID wounds.

I'm not sure why you wanted to put the wound on your attackbike anyway? The normal bikers only have 1 wound each so eitherway you're losing a model and 1 wound but the attack bike has better weapons and more attacks so why assign the wound to it?

You are requiered to remove already wounded multiwound models from the *group* of identically armed models that you assign the wounding hit to.

So, if you had chosen to assign the wound to the "attack bike" group, and there were more than a single attack bike in that group, then an *unwounded* bike must take the hit. If there is only one model in the group, then only that model can take the wound, regardless of its status.

Flingitnow - it may be to make sure of an assault next turn. possibly...

Flingitnow - it may be to make sure of an assault next turn. possibly...

Suppose so still seems a weird decision but yeah in the event that removing a bike would prevent you from assaulting (I can't see how this would be the case unless he only had one bike left) then that is the only reason to do it.

Staggered "V" formation with the closest being a normal bike, LHS is the powerfist champion and the RHS being the attack bike. IF you wanted to assault something next turn, with only the lead "Normal" bike in range, removing the attack bike is preferable.

Edit: Oops, sorry Nos I grabbed the wrong quote, meant this one.

Had the unit been say 3 attack bikes all identically armed and one had taken a wound from shooting. Then a Railgun hits them it would mean an unwounded attackbike would be destroyed and you'b be left with 1 unwounded attack bike and another wounded one.

I may be reading this wrong or I may have interpreted the rules incorrectly. If there are, for example, 2 attack bikes in a unit identically equipped.

Shooting Pulse Carbines puts an unsaved wound on the bike. You now have one healthy bike and one with a wound. If a railgun is shot at the two attack bikes, causing 1 unsaved wound, the bike with a single wound on it already is removed, correct? The remaining bike has 0 wounds on it. -this is incorrrect as per pg 26 of the BRB, last paragraph - the whole model is removed.

I was under the impression that ID is applied once the model actually takes the wound and the allocation rules force the already wounded model to take the railgun shot.

No, you are reading this incorrectly.

Instant Death forces you to remvoe UNwounded models within the Group of like models that have wounds allocated to them.

So two attack bikes, one on 1 wound 1 on 2 wounds, both identically armed, are 1 group for wound purposes. If you cause an Instant Death wound to this group of like models, and the saving throw is failed (you make saves for the group, not by model) if one is allowed, then you MUST remove an unwounded model.

This is an exception to the rule that you must remove wounded models first, and only kicks in when Instant Death is involved. So, for example if the group took a non-ID wound you must allocate it to the wounded bike, leaving the other alive. As soon as you have an ID causing wound you must then remove whole models where possible. The idea being you cant "avoid" Instant death by, say, allocating an ID wound to the wounded model and a non-ID unsaved wound to another healthy model, thereby leaving yourself with 1 wounded model where you would have had none.

See the example in the BRB about Nob (complex multiwound units)

Thanks for the clarification, it seems local Tyranid Warriors have been dodging my Exorcist Missiles.

-Making a note in the previous post to prevent confusion.

nosferatu1001 wrote:No, you are reading this incorrectly.

Instant Death forces you to remvoe UNwounded models within the Group of like models that have wounds allocated to them.

So two attack bikes, one on 1 wound 1 on 2 wounds, both identically armed, are 1 group for wound purposes. If you cause an Instant Death wound to this group of like models, and the saving throw is failed (you make saves for the group, not by model) if one is allowed, then you MUST remove an unwounded model.

This is an exception to the rule that you must remove wounded models first, and only kicks in when Instant Death is involved. So, for example if the group took a non-ID wound you must allocate it to the wounded bike, leaving the other alive. As soon as you have an ID causing wound you must then remove whole models where possible. The idea being you cant "avoid" Instant death by, say, allocating an ID wound to the wounded model and a non-ID unsaved wound to another healthy model, thereby leaving yourself with 1 wounded model where you would have had none.

See the example in the BRB about Nob (complex multiwound units)

So to see if I understood, my squad 2 bikes with a melta gun, 1 attack bike witha a multi melta( 1 wound) and a sarg with a powerfist suffers a instant death wound I kill the healthy biker NOT the wounded attack bike ??

Yes. Instant death must be allocated to an unwounded model of the same type in the unit if possible.

This case is actually different because you have three unique wound groups. (Meltas, MM and Segeant). You can either kill the attack bike, the sergeant or a Melta depending which wound group you assign it to.

If you have, for example 3 nobs that were all uniquely equipped and a wound on two of them, then assigning a shot that causes ID to one of the already wounded nobs is okay provided you follow the normal wound allocation process.

Mightmagic wrote:
So to see if I understood, my squad 2 bikes with a melta gun, 1 attack bike witha a multi melta( 1 wound) and a sarg with a powerfist suffers a instant death wound I kill the healthy biker NOT the wounded attack bike ??

Not in this case, since the attack bike, sergeant and normal bikers are all different, you can assign the instant death to any one of the three groups. What you did was perfectly legal.

Say for example you have two attack bikes (both equipped the same, one wounded, other one healthy) and a 5 man bike squad. (I know you can't do this but it's a easy example for space marines). The unit suffers one instant death attack. You can have the attack go against either the attack bikes or against the normal bikes since they are different.

If you choose the bikes, one dies.

If you choose the attack bikes, you would remove the unwounded, healthy bike. This would leave you with a wounded attack bike and 5 normal bikes. Instant death is a little trickier than normal wound allocation as I believe it makes you select unwounded models first, unlike normal wound allocation.

Also remember that a strength 8 hit will also instant death a bike (unless they have changed it, I know Black Templar bikes suffer this). Their toughness is still 5 but counted as 4 for instant death purposes. They may have updated this for marines, I don't own the vanilla codex so...

So I was right Thanks all for your help.

I understand that sergeant is something different but the rest of them are normal bikers and only differences between them are their weapons.

and because they have differences they are .... different!

Mordreth wrote:I understand that sergeant is something different but the rest of them are normal bikers and only differences between them are their weapons.

And, if you follow the wound allocation rules, means they are "different in game terms", and therefore are different groups when it comes to rolling for saves.

Mightmagic, which codex are you playing your DA as? If you're playing Codex Dark Angels, this question should never arise anyway. It's clearly stated that the attack bike in a Ravenwing Attack Squadron is always a separate scoring unit of one model, so it would have to be targeted separately from the normal bikes.

Dave

Mightmagic wrote:So I was right Thanks all for your help.

actually, lol, you did it right for the completely wrong reason. first off, if you're playing dark angels, you'll NEVER have a unit with both regular bikes and attack bikes. attack bikes (according to the ravenwing attack squadron rules) function as an independent unit after deployment, much like the landspeeder you can attach. so, basically, when you take your hand off the model during placement, it is no longer part of the bike squad. also, the rules everyone is quoting wouldn't apply in this case anyways (even if you were using a vanilla marine bike squad with an attack bike). the rule is for "Units consisting of models with multiple wounds on their profile, such as Tyranid Warriors and Ork Nobz, are quite rare". the example of several bikers and an attack bike is NOT a unit consisting of models with multiple wounds on their profile, as the regular bikers have only a single wound. in order to (ab)use this particular rule, every member of the unit has to have multiple wounds. so, technically, you should have removed a normal biker. hope that helps.

p.s. yet another example of why this is the most confusing and completely unwarranted new rule in 5th edition that needlessly confuses wound allocation.