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Hey all,

While reading up a few 'Siege' tactics and the best way to make use of him, the spell Explosivo comes up.

Now I've read my book very carefully as I thought I might be wrong, but mine definitely says.

If the attacks is AOE, then it becomes AOE 3"....etc.

I thought that the spell was there to add AOE to ranged attacks that lacked it but my version seems to specifically use other wording. Am I in possession of a misprinted book or does siege only work with cannons/grenadiers/trencher grenadierst etc.?

It seems a waste if so because some of them are already AOE 3".

Thanks for any help.

It becomes AOE with magical weapon effect, iirc.

Keep in mind that Explosivo has been ruled on and clarified several times and it doesn't always work how people think it does (or even in accordance with how the rule is written).

Relasine from PP's forum has compiled a pretty good list of the rulings and how it works:

Relasine wrote:The rules for the Explosivo spell aren't exactly the most intuitive, so there's often a lot of confusion about how it works, what it affects, what can benefit from it, etc. In an effort to save people from having to explain how it works every time someone comes asking, I figured I'd just lay it out here:

A model directly hit (i.e. the targeted model being hit by a successful attack roll) by an attack under the effect of Explosivo suffers damage from a Magical Weapon and any other effect of the weapon or attack (i.e. Sniper, Powerful Attack, etc.).

Models under the AOE, either native (i.e. Buster, Barrage Arquebus) or as a result of Explosivo, that were not directly hit suffer only a blast damage roll and no other effects, save effects that specifically effect blast damage (i.e. Bombs Away). These damage rolls do not count as having been made by a weapon with the Magical Weapon ability. Blast damage rolls that are a result of an Explosivo attack cannot be boosted.

Spray attacks gain no benefit from Explosivo, be it AOE or Magical.

Models making Special Attacks (i.e. Carpet Bomb, Scattershot, Both Barrels) receive no beneift from Explosivo.

Thanks for those clarifications.

My question is more core to the basic rule though.

My book writes that if the attack is AOE it becomes AOE 3"

Which means that it does provide a blast for a defender, hunter, long gunners, trenchers or any other unit that does not gain an AOE blast as part of the spell. My impression was that the spell was meant to provide an AOE and so the wording should be ...if the attack isn't AOE...

The wording is if it's an AOE -

The "-" meaning blank. When you read the statline of a weapon that isn't an
AOE, there's still a column for AOE. For non-AOE weapons, however, that stat is "-".

Yeah, Malfred is correct. The dash in Explosivo is not punctuation, but means the same "AoE -" (i.e. AoE "none") as you will see in a weapon's stat line

Ahh, that would be where I'm going wrong

Thanks for the clarification. I'll put it down to not being used to reading warmachine rule wordings like I am with 40k.