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I'm an occasional gamer. I have an ork army, and tend to play marines, tau or nids.

The marines and tau like to sit inside area terrain made from the imperial ruins; tall walls with, in some cases, solid lower walls. If I want to assault these units, I either go around the wall, or take a difficult terrain test to get up to a level I can climb over, assault the unit occupying that level, then jump on the enemy. Usually, however, that's an easy way to take an extra turn or two of shooting.

I want to put a deff rolla on the front of my battlewagon and smash it into the marines that are hiding in the ruins. (I'm an ork, after all)

I can't see how that would work in the rules, and my opponent would probably dispute it, arguing that the wall stops the battlewagon.

That always seemed fair enough, but there is no way in the rules to knock the wall down. Ironically, if the unit were ensconced in a bastion, I could at least destroy the bastion and then drive through the remains as difficult terrain. There is no way to knock down ruins, though, so his units are better protected in ruins than in a purpose built bastion.

RAW, I can't see a way around this. However, no-one else has ever asked it, so I have the feeling I'm missing something.

Thoughts? Do I accept this as a quirk of RAW? Is there an FAQ I'm missing?

Vehicles can't get to the second floor of ruins, however, by RAW, I think you can tank shock people so long as your hull is tall enough to come into contact with the enemy. If my memory is correct, then you could just build a superhuge deffrolla.

daedalus wrote:then you could just build a superhuge deffrolla.

Do this, You are Orks, you are allowed.

Sorry, to clarify, I'm not bothered about the units higher up. I want to get the ones on the ground floor behind the wall. Essentially, I want to knock the wall down with either a gun or the Deff Rolla itself.

If I can't, I can't. It just seems a bit odd that a weapon can knock down a building, but a ruined wall can stop a battlewagon.

Moving through terrain is a dangerous terrain roll to not become immobilized. That's the only thing in your way as far as I can remember.

doctorludo wrote:I'm an occasional gamer. I have an ork army, and tend to play marines, tau or nids.

The marines and tau like to sit inside area terrain made from the imperial ruins; tall walls with, in some cases, solid lower walls. If I want to assault these units, I either go around the wall, or take a difficult terrain test to get up to a level I can climb over, assault the unit occupying that level, then jump on the enemy. Usually, however, that's an easy way to take an extra turn or two of shooting.

I want to put a deff rolla on the front of my battlewagon and smash it into the marines that are hiding in the ruins. (I'm an ork, after all)

I can't see how that would work in the rules, and my opponent would probably dispute it, arguing that the wall stops the battlewagon.

That always seemed fair enough, but there is no way in the rules to knock the wall down. Ironically, if the unit were ensconced in a bastion, I could at least destroy the bastion and then drive through the remains as difficult terrain. There is no way to knock down ruins, though, so his units are better protected in ruins than in a purpose built bastion.

RAW, I can't see a way around this. However, no-one else has ever asked it, so I have the feeling I'm missing something.

Thoughts? Do I accept this as a quirk of RAW? Is there an FAQ I'm missing?

Cityfight or Cities of Death, both have very useful tables, charts, rules, etc. on doing exactly what you are talking about.

doctorludo wrote:Essentially, I want to knock the wall down with either a gun or the Deff Rolla itself.

If I can't, I can't. It just seems a bit odd that a weapon can knock down a building, but a ruined wall can stop a battlewagon.

You don't have to knock it down. BRB page 14 under moving through dangerous terrain says that models may move through walls, closed doors, windows and similar obstacles unless the players agree before the game taht a certain wall or terrain feature is impassable.

Shooting is different in that a unit could be out of LOS and therefore unable to target if it is behind a wall, but it can be assaulted or tank shocked. All you need do is make the appropriate difficult or dangerous terrain test.

Exactly. By default, vehicles can move into the bottom floor of ruins. They're only impassible to vehicles if you and your opponent specifically agree beforehand that a given wall/structure is impassible to vehicles, but it should be something special.

The practical issue that comes up with a vehicle moving through a (real life) solid wall, is where to place the model. Per Wobbly Model Syndrome, you generally just agree to mark where it SHOULD be, place it as close as you can, and measure to where it SHOULD be.

Thanks everyone. I was starting to think that was the case. I've got cityfight on order, so I'll check it out.

The hard part will be breaking the news to my opponent; I'll have to tell him in advance.

You don't even have to use the city fight rules. The rules for vehicles moving in ruins are right in the main rule book...

willydstyle wrote:You don't even have to use the city fight rules. The rules for vehicles moving in ruins are right in the main rule book...

Aah, the perils of noobness on an internet forum.

Yes, they are there but counter-intuitive. Driving a truck through a three storey high solid wall without damaging the wall seems a little odd. At no point does it say "vehicles move through walls like troops." or something similar. We had assumed it was impassable.

You have to realize that there's a difference between "ruins" and "buildings."

Ruins are already ruins, their walls aren't too solid to begin with, and the dangerous terrain roll takes into account collapses damaging the vehicle and such.

Yup, the physical walls are (other than for LOS purposes) just there to say 'Here be a ruin'... You can move through the ruin ignoring physical barriers in exactly the same way as you would for any other area terrain.

Yet another reason to make sure to fully discuss terrain before you start playing. It's become a point of mine to make sure to clarify solid walls as impassible solid walls. Nothing ruins a game for me more then someone pulling the magic rhino trick driving through a 2 story solid ruins wall. If you can't make a hole through the terrain to allow LoS, personally I don't think you should be driving through it.

Notice that the deffrolla also allows you to reroll failed Dangerous Terrain Tests.

I drive my orks trukks through ruin walls all the time, dont say false things like "solid" ruin walls. Theres no such thing the walls in shambles, one good kick would send the entire thing crashing down.

If you arbitrarily made every wall solid impassible beforehand just so you can have an advantage not conferred to you by ruins, i.e embarkation for all intents and purposes. (you cant be assaulted/shot without walking to the other side of the building, 1-2 movement phases at the best, so yes you are trying to gain an advantage) its probably not gonna be that fun of a game.

Rules say yes by default, but you can agree to change how normal rule interaction works and give yourself an advantage yea, but youre only enforcing that to gain advantage over an army that needs to chop ya.

kill dem stunties wrote: If you arbitrarily made every wall solid impassible beforehand just so you can have an advantage not conferred to you by ruins, i.e embarkation for all intents and purposes. (you cant be assaulted/shot without walking to the other side of the building, 1-2 movement phases at the best, so yes you are trying to gain an advantage) its probably not gonna be that fun of a game.

Rules say yes by default, but you can agree to change how normal rule interaction works and give yourself an advantage yea, but youre only enforcing that to gain advantage over an army that needs to chop ya.

That is why the rules read the way they do.
I play that walls are not impassable.
BlueDagger plays that they are.
If he and I were plying against each other maybe we would comprimise that half the ruins had impassable walls the other half did not.
This is why it is in the rules to discuss all terrain features with your opponent before the game.
The only "right" and "wrong" for terrain is not deciding beforehand. Other than that, you could put a piece of black felt on the board and agree that it is a lava field and is impassable terrain.

BlueDagger wrote:Yet another reason to make sure to fully discuss terrain before you start playing. It's become a point of mine to make sure to clarify solid walls as impassible solid walls. Nothing ruins a game for me more then someone pulling the magic rhino trick driving through a 2 story solid ruins wall. If you can't make a hole through the terrain to allow LoS, personally I don't think you should be driving through it.

This is how I have been playing, but it makes less sense that a ruined wall is indestructible to an attacking vehicle, and this is why I asked the question. The "magic rhino" trick is no dafter than the "magic ruined wall that can withstand the most powerful weapons" trick. Furthermore, indestructible walls give a big advantage to defensive, shooty armies and a disadvantage to attacking, CC armies.

It's not that detailed a set of rules, to be honest.

If you want, you could assign structure points to ruins, then allow weapons and ramming to damage them until they become even more ruined in some way. Make several stages of ruined model terrain.

Once you start thinking about it you can see how tedious it will be to track the ruin status of every wall in a game which only lasts six turns.

Or just rationalise it differently. IRL tanks raelly haet operating in towns because of the problems of falling into cellars and drainage pipes under what looks like it ought to be solid ground. Meanwhile, a pile of broken bricks provides jolly good cover to an infantryman, and it won't get more broken by any weapon which isn't powerful enough to also kill the guy hiding behind it.

Another option is to look at how you set up the table. If you've got a problem with your H2H armies getting close to shooty armies in ruins, you probably have one or two good sized ruins on an otherwise bare table, allowing the shooters a really nice field of fire.

Fill up more of the table with other cover and your H2H troops will be able to get within charge distance of the ruins without being seen.