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I was paying on monday and ended up having an argument with my opponent.
He was trying to fire a melta (O) at my wave serpent (X's) (excuse the crude diagram )


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It says in the rule book that the AV you go against is determined by where you are stood relative to the vehicle, drawing lines diagonally from corner to corner. I always assumed these corner to be from the two points at the front diagonally back to the opposite engine. Going by this, the melta would be noticably on the side armour (so energy field means no 2D6 penetration) .

My opponent on the other hand said thats wrong. All the example's in the rule book are given on rectangular vehicles so he tried to persuade me that you would determine the AV as if it was, by tracing an imaginary box around it and going from the corners of that. I laughed at that and asked him to find even a hint that that might be the case, written in ang GW book. He then said I was being a d**k and that i'd be getting a hollow victory if I didnt let him get 2D6 pen. His argument then changed to "If its like you say, your front and rear armour would be tiny and nobody would ever be able to hit it". At which point I gave up with him

So my question is where do you measure the facing's from on a vehice that isnt rectanglular?


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well that picture looks a lot worse than before posted it :S

hopefully you still get the idea.

id say the melta will hit the side.

his argument about the front being so small no one would ever hit it is invalid, as the side and front have the same AV any way, however in that case, going from the diagram, it looks as if the melta is hitting the side armour, personally I'd look at where the model shooting is, and then what face appears to be the closest

statu wrote:his argument about the front being so small no one would ever hit it is invalid, as the side and front have the same AV any way

his argument was that the front and the back were really small. The bit about the front is true but irrelevant, its the rear that the issuse is regarding.

As I said originaly, I was asking how the sides are distinguished.

I have always seen it drawn from the wingtips in front to the engines as well. I don't recall the rule book stating that you need to draw an imaginary box around the vehicle, I remember reading to draw an imaginary LINE from corner to opposite corner of the vehicle. The wave serpent is all side. So are the raider and valkryie. Its an advantage to some vehicles, and a disadvantage for others. Off the top of my head, the Battlewagon's side arc is much larger than it's front, but it's side armor is weaker. The rule applies both ways.

Falconlance wrote:I don't recall the rule book stating that you need to draw an imaginary box around the vehicle, I remember reading to draw an imaginary LINE from corner to opposite corner of the vehicle.

Thats all I could find, and I assumed the corners were the same as you suggested. I was just looking to see what the consensus is
Thanks Falconlance

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I think if you connect the outer corners that is the "box" that the BRB recommends. Then make a judgement as to which face of the box your model is in. Clean and no surprises, just might want to discuss this before the game starts. That is how I explain my skimmers when I play.

Homer

it sounds like he was trolling to get his way: the shot could have gone either way, but he was being a bit cheesy.
i go with the 90 degree arcs: looking top down onto the hull the center line that runs from the weapon mount thingy straight forward then takes a 45 deg turn into the techy bits just behind the cockpit. from that turn is where i measure the arcs. it makes all of the arcs roughly the same size and i havent had any complaints thus far.
and for the love of god, any disputes should be either resolved by a neutral 3rd party, or a coin flip/die roll or a deathmatch in the cage.

I think your opponents method of box and lines through the corners is the correct one. 90degree arcs is not correct but it's easy to measure and nearly the same.

Wingtips to engines is incredibly arbitrary. What have you got to suggest that's the case?

in the OP drawing, i would say that the firing unit is right on the line between the rear and side arcs.

i would say the melta player gets to choose.




i always draw the arcs from the center point of the vehicle to the four corners.

on a eldar skimmer that would be the cockpit.

The best way we have found to determine the armor facings of any vehicle is to lay down the Large Blast marker over the center of the vehicle. There is a cross pattern on the Template. Place it so its making an X as centered as you can over the vehicle, then simply look where the line flows out, use a ruler or tape measure to extend the line if you have to.

This method has worked very well for us for vehicles that are roundish or for things like Drednoughts and gives the templates another use.

Honestly, I really prefer the box method for non-rectangular vehicles, but in my gaming group, we play that the owner of the vehicle always has final say. If my friend is firing at my vehicle and it's not clear which facing he's shooting at, he'll just say "call it" and that'll be the end of it. The blast marker thing might also work, though.

evolvingeye wrote:The best way we have found to determine the armor facings of any vehicle is to lay down the Large Blast marker over the center of the vehicle. There is a cross pattern on the Template. Place it so its making an X as centered as you can over the vehicle, then simply look where the line flows out, use a ruler or tape measure to extend the line if you have to.

This method has worked very well for us for vehicles that are roundish or for things like Drednoughts and gives the templates another use.

This.

nkelsch wrote:

evolvingeye wrote:The best way we have found to determine the armor facings of any vehicle is to lay down the Large Blast marker over the center of the vehicle. There is a cross pattern on the Template. Place it so its making an X as centered as you can over the vehicle, then simply look where the line flows out, use a ruler or tape measure to extend the line if you have to.

This method has worked very well for us for vehicles that are roundish or for things like Drednoughts and gives the templates another use.

This.

Not very many vehicles are truly square. Most are longer front to back, so this method will always make the hit box on the front and rear armour larger than they should be.

Yah, that's a good approach.

Given that the front and side armour is the same, and the diagram in the rulebook is unclear whether you're supposed to be ruling from corner to corner, or from the centre out to the 'corners'... For Falcons and variants, I'd draw a triangle from the cockpit (more or less centre) to the back corners of the vehicle to find the rear arc. Anything outside this is front or side.

I don't think I'd play with anyone who took the armor facings from the tips of the Eldar's tank's 'wings', The rulebook shows in a diagram, how to check the facing. (Going from the middle and imagining an X over the vehicle) You could do it the large blast way, or create your own paper 'Vehicle Facing Template'.

I read this with interest and didn't see any solid generalizations that I could follow; this happens with DE vehicles as well. A raider is long and thin. I thought you drew from the front left to the back right, and front right to back left; giving you an X over the vehicle where opposite corners touch.

I personally do it like so:

Dashofpepper wrote: I thought you drew from the front left to the back right, and front right to back left; giving you an X over the vehicle where opposite corners touch.

That's the thing: The rulebook gives us, as the sole explanation for how facings work, a diagram showing a rectangular vehicle with lines drawn from corner to corner. How that applies to non-rectangular vehicles is anybody's guess.

Gwar! wrote:I personally do it like so:

That looks pretty legit. It sounds like people want the X to be very narrow from the tips of the wings on the front to the corners of the back part. Making the front and rear archs super narrow.

While the rulebook has a corner to corner... I still thing the best way for irregular vehicles is a true 90 degree arch over the center of the vehicle. Do it from where the model is standing, not from some non-existent corners that no one agrees on. Also, all Walkers should be 90 degree facings based on the blast template.



From the OP's description, He wanted the GREEN interpretation while his opponent wanted the BLUE interpretation. Red is the Blast marker example.

Of the 3, I think Blue is probably the closest to the rulebook but I think the key is consistency. Which is hard in a rule that isn't really clear and people always interpret for personal advantage.

insaniak wrote:

Dashofpepper wrote: I thought you drew from the front left to the back right, and front right to back left; giving you an X over the vehicle where opposite corners touch.

That's the thing: The rulebook gives us, as the sole explanation for how facings work, a diagram showing a rectangular vehicle with lines drawn from corner to corner. How that applies to non-rectangular vehicles is anybody's guess.

^ this

Personally, I try to find the closest thing to a right angle which could delineate an armor facing edge, then i take the next adjacent one and call that an armor facing. Then I try to find the center of the model, and draw a line between the center and the edges and extend that line out to find the models shooting at the tank. That then demonstrates which armor facing that model is shooting at. This is an imperfect method designed to fill in the gap for the imperfect rules but I think just putting an X over a model and making 4 90 degree quadrants is worse.

HiveFleetGoliath wrote:I don't think I'd play with anyone who took the armor facings from the tips of the Eldar's tank's 'wings', The rulebook shows in a diagram, how to check the facing. (Going from the middle and imagining an X over the vehicle) You could do it the large blast way, or create your own paper 'Vehicle Facing Template'.

Well if you don't like the wings being part of the equation, I suppose you could pull the D-bag valkryie move and claim that "wings aren't part of the hull," which would give you a very short and fat tank with a massive front and rear arc.

The blue example is the most correct. Imaginary box without a doubt.

Falconlance wrote:

HiveFleetGoliath wrote:I don't think I'd play with anyone who took the armor facings from the tips of the Eldar's tank's 'wings', The rulebook shows in a diagram, how to check the facing. (Going from the middle and imagining an X over the vehicle) You could do it the large blast way, or create your own paper 'Vehicle Facing Template'.

Well if you don't like the wings being part of the equation, I suppose you could pull the D-bag valkryie move and claim that "wings aren't part of the hull," which would give you a very short and fat tank with a massive front and rear arc.

I never said I don't want them part of it, I said I wouldn't play with anyone who took the green interpretation because that isn't how you check the facing.

The blue interpretation is the correct way, although Gwar's ('eyeball it'?) example or the blast template will work well enough, if it really is that close then you'll have to do the box.

-Also, never heard of the Valkryie's wings not counting as it's hull.

Just adding something to the corner-to-corner approach.

Which is the back corner? The front and the back doesn't *have* to be symmetrically the same, am I correct?

Is it the corners of the troop compartment? This would make the facing of the Wave Serpent and the Falcon different, especially the front section would have differing angles on the two, even though the look the same in the front.
Is it the edges of the engines? This is where Gwar!'s lines touch.
Is it the edges of the wings?

I think the problem with any other approach than using true 45 degree arcs for non-retangular vehicles is that you're always going to have arguments over exactly where you should be measuring to.

Since the rules don't say that you measure from 'corner to corner' when you're dealing with something like a Dark Eldar vehicle, you're going to get argument from people playing with it as to why exactly they have to measure 'corner to corner' when the rules never say that.

And if you go with the 'imaginary box' concept as shown above, then it can be difficult for both players to agree exactly where the 'points' are for the imaginary box that you're using to base your measurement on.


So personally I think the only way to go is with non-retangular vehicles is to use true 45 degree arcs, because that is an easily quantifiable measurement that both players can see is being measured properly, especially since many after-market combination blast markers have 45 degree arcs built into them (which is much of the reason we ruled that way in the INAT FAQ).

Using a "square" approach for any vehicle that is non-rectangular has one major problem... it is going directly against the very clear example shown in the brb.


If a vehicle is not square (as the vehicle illustrated in the brb is obviously longer than it is wide) then the rules quite clearly show that the arcs are different sizes. Thats definetely RAW, and as difficult as RAI is to determine we would have to think that its also RAI at this point.

There simply arent that many vehicles out there that arent rectangular (all of the eldar vehciles use the falcon basic body, at least for the moment there arent many different DE shapes) so why not simply provide a couple paper templates for INAT that can be printed out and held over the model in question?

A paper diagram with a couple dotted lines would be fast, easy, and settle all questions in an instant.

It would have the plus of being able to adhere much closer to RAW than a square which wxpands the front/ rear arcs and squeezes the side arcs.


Because Im certainly not going to want to apply the square idea to a converted ork bw that is built on a falcon body shape.



Sliggoth

Sliggoth wrote:Using a "square" approach for any vehicle that is non-rectangular has one major problem... it is going directly against the very clear example shown in the brb.


If a vehicle is not square (as the vehicle illustrated in the brb is obviously longer than it is wide) then the rules quite clearly show that the arcs are different sizes. Thats definetely RAW, and as difficult as RAI is to determine we would have to think that its also RAI at this point.

There simply arent that many vehicles out there that arent rectangular (all of the eldar vehciles use the falcon basic body, at least for the moment there arent many different DE shapes) so why not simply provide a couple paper templates for INAT that can be printed out and held over the model in question?

A paper diagram with a couple dotted lines would be fast, easy, and settle all questions in an instant.

It would have the plus of being able to adhere much closer to RAW than a square which wxpands the front/ rear arcs and squeezes the side arcs.


Because Im certainly not going to want to apply the square idea to a converted ork bw that is built on a falcon body shape.



Sliggoth

Most vehicles are not rectangular. Eldar, Tau, Dark Eldar, Drop Pods, Valkyries, all walkers, Land Speeders, etc, etc, etc.

There is absolutely no way you could try to come up with some sort of scheme that would appease all these vehicles, especially if you're talking about trying to make something for people to print out...nobody would ever go for that.


The fact is, if players can agree on what the arcs are, they're going to play that way in a tournament no questions asked. But if there is a disagreement, using true 45 degree arcs for all non-retangular vehicles is the only way that is 100 percent verifiable in all situations for a judge to rule on.

yakface wrote:
There is absolutely no way you could try to come up with some sort of scheme that would appease all these vehicles,

the previously mentioned imaginary box does it for any vehicle:

Assuming a vehicle has finite dimensions, its hull has a maximum length and a maximum width.
Therefor you can draw a rectangular box around this hull which neatly fits it. (If we made the box any smaller the hull would stick out somewhere.)
Now connect the corners of this box and extend the diagonals outside of the box, tadaaa consistent vehicle facings for any vehicle of finite dimensions.

The resulting is always consistent, meaning if the 2 different people follow these instructions they should end up with identical diagonals:

The length and width of a particular vehicle remain the same => the imaginary rectangle is always the same shape & size => the angles between the 2 diagonals is always the same and the point where they intersect is always the same.

What more can you ask for?

yakface wrote:
using true 45 degree arcs for all non-retangular vehicles is the only way that is 100 percent verifiable in all situations for a judge to rule on.

This does not work on a rhino or any other rectangular shaped vehicle, so you cannot claim it's applicable to all situations.
Also your method does not define where you should center those 90° diagonals, if i shift the center to the back i increase the table area defined by my front facing, even though the 90° angles don't change. If i can get a different result using the same method you can't call it verifiable either.
To eliminate this possible centering inconsistency you would have to define a method to determine the centerpoint of an irregularly shaped object. Easiest way of doing that is to connect the diagonals of the imaginary box, and if you got this far, you may aswell use the true diagonals instead of a 90° approximation...