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This may be a daft question but I hope you'll take it as genuine.

Do tanks get +4 cover save due to having an infantry unit in front of them? Does an enemy unit getting shot at by a tank get +4 cover save if there is friendly infantry screen? The tank is obviously much taller so therefore a clear LOS is possible, unimpeded by grunts. I guess it works both ways which ever the answer and I'm guessing the answer is 'yes' cover save counts?

MODs move this wherever you feel it should go.....

You should get a hold of the rulebook if possible. The answer is right there. It's frowned upon to give out rules wholesale.

But since I'm nice the answer would usually be no. You need to be 50% obscured for vehicles to gain a cover save (or through some other special means...KFF, smoke etc).

Cheers, I've got a rulebook - two including the mini one. Yes sorry, you are right just didn't figure.

No worries.

No?

An imperial guard chimera is about 2.5" tall, and a guardsman is a little shy of 1.5" tall. With a russ, it's close, but still about half. As such, for a big majority of tracked vehicles, I'd say that they do invoke cover being shot at and give cover to the opponent (unless the infantry is right in front of the tank so the turret doesn't need to bother).

I mean, for really tall vehicles like monoliths or land raiders, probably not, likewise for skimmers, but for everything else it appears that over 50% is covered, assuming that you've set up your screen right.

Being half the height of the vehicle isn't enough - half of the vehicle has to be hidden. Are the infantry so packed together that you can't see through any gaps between them?

It's very hard to get 50% coverage from infantry.

So the concensus is you have to make a call on each given situation, seems reasonable. In the case of disputes a roll off would be the way to reslove it.

That or use the reduced save rule.

I think some people are still confused about this and the "Intervening models" section. I'll attempt to help in a pithy manner. The Intervening models only grant a cover save to a vehicle if the vehicle is 50% obscured or more. This is crucial to understanding vehicles and cover saves, you must be able to demonstrate that the majority of the armor facing is obscured in the LoS of the firer. I had a guy tell me that my LRC could not shoot its Multi-Melta at his tank because there was a squad of small troops in between... The vehicles were each on the same flat surface about 10 inches apart and I eventually got him to admit that I could in fact shoot but if he wanted to argue that it got a cover save that it would be 6+ and nothing better. The reality is that this was a compromise on my part to allow the game to continue, the reality is that there was NO cover save at all.

If you want to be a stickler how I have handled close situations is pull out a measuring tape and look from the POV of the firer and count the numbers you can see. If the tank is 3 inches wide and you can see the 1 section and the 3 section then it is 33% obscured and there is no cover save allowed. You can do this for horizontal facing or vertically, it doesn't matter. The reality of the matter is that a tank rarely gets cover from troops, you'd need large troops and a lot of them in B2B contact in order to grant cover to a vehicle.

FYI this is the same way terrain gives cover to a vehicle, you need to show that the trees etc obscure 50% of the vehicle, same method applies and helps clear up arguments.

In the end, if you dont feel like busting out a tape measure, in close situations just make the cover save 5+ or 6+.

no i think you should get cover save of 4+ because in the rulebook it say's that you get the 4+ save because if it was friendly models in the way you are scared to hit your own troops and if enemies then the shooting unit is distracted by the more imediate threat. (soz for bad spelling)

In the vehicles and cover section it says
'The difference from the way cover works for other models is represented by the following exceptionsto the nomal rules for cover .....'
If you then read on you would notice that it does NOT say that it dosnt get the 4+ saave from intervening models

so yes they do get cover saves

Godro... you just contradicted yourself.

Basically, the vehicle rules require that the vehicle be 50% obscured, as other posters have mentioned. Infantry *can* cover up a vehicle, but also as previously mentioned, they have to be packed really close together to do so.

To address another of the OP's points: no, cover saves don't always work "both ways." For instance, if a razorback were 50% obscured by a tactical squad standing in front of it, those same tactical marines would likely obscure none of the razorback's target from the LoS of its turret weapon.

Thats bout the only thing ogryns are actually good for.

Sorry I didn't read the whole paragraph, just skim read it.

Thanks guys, I'm slightly less confused now

Just don't bring up the thing about AOE/non-LOS cover save abilities affecting vehicles. There are already several long threads on that pile of gak.

Sharpasaspoon wrote:So the concensus is you have to make a call on each given situation,

That's pretty much the answer for every LOS issue you might have. The fact that the rules use actual LOS from the models in question means that just about every LOS issue is resolved purely on the basis of what the models in question can actually 'see'...

Yea and the little bastards are very tight-lipped about it