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insaniak wrote:

Lowinor wrote: The movement rules (specifically, that friendly and enemy models count as impassable terrain) don't discuss distance to the model, but the model itself; the two are separate concepts.

They're really not. Because in order to determine whether or not one model is standing on the other, you need to determine that there is 0 distance between them. Whether or not you do that in practice simply by looking at it and saying 'Yeah, he's standing on the door' it's technically requiring a measurement of the distance between the two models.

bull-
Distance is measured using the definition of the hull. The assault phase uses the phrase "base contact with an enemy model." Even the section on vehicles and assaults uses the phrase "in base contact with the vehicle" when discussing vehicles being assaulted. Contact, not 'a distance of 0"'.

And for all measurement involving the pod, with the sole exception of the pod's weapon range, you use the hull.


I'm fully aware that this argument sounds like a bit of a stretch. But it's a bit of a stretch that actually allows the pod to function. The alternative is a vehicle that will in a lot of games never make it onto the table due to not having enough room to deploy, and will the rest of the time block an inordinate amount of real estate, be almost impossible to deploy from and almost impossible to assault.

Have you considered the alternative interpretation: If you don't have enough room to open the doors, then you don't have enough room to place the drop pod and you need to adjust the location again? Some suggest that phrases such as "I'm sorry, I've incorrectly placed my model. Excuse me while I correct its position" are helpful in that sort of situation. Or if you really can't tell, hold the model above the table, open the doors and then put the model down?

Doctor Thunder wrote:

Maxus wrote:

Doctor Thunder wrote:

cadbren wrote:Just noticed this bit on the drop pod page p69.

Once deployed the Drop Pod is no longer a sealed environment and is therefore counted as being open-topped.

Pretty clear that the petals do not close and seal the pod up again. Once opened they stay opened.

Doors can close without becoming airtight (which is what sealed means). The doors on your house right now are closed but not sealed.

So all homes are open-topped?

Plus one cannot bring in a real world situation to argue a point in a beer and peanuts, push little metal/plastic army men around, board game. It just doesn't work.

But it's okay for you to take a fluff explanation for a rule and treat it as if it were a rule? Sounds like a double standard.

The rule is "Counts as being open topped." The rest of what you quoted is the fluff reason for the rule.

You argued fluff, so I countered that fluff. Now you are backpedaling and trying to argue rules. The problem is, your rules argument is even weaker then your fluff argument. We have no rules in 40K for when a player may or may not open doors and ramps on tanks, in fact the rules have always allowed for people to glue the doors and hatches shut with no game effect.

Now, if you want to overturn all that, your going to have to come up with a much better argument then what you have so far.

So, who is 'you' referring to, because 'I' did not argue anything, besides asking what rule you referred to, since you did not give a page number or reference to said rule, and pointed out the sillyness of using a 'real world' situation to explain a rule.

You, quote two different people and combine their comments together.

Personally, if someone tried to use the petals as the hull in a game against me, I would punch them in the face. You just halved the distance you scattered by gaining the 5" the petals open. Scatter is there for a reason. Have you ever seen someone measure movement for their land raider from the open assault ramp? I sure haven't; I always seem them measuring from the front of the treads. Then if you measure from the petals you get to go three marines deep when measuring from the back of the base, thus gaining more space. This does nothing but yell cheddar to me.

Maxus wrote:

So, who is 'you' referring to.

Sorry, I got you two mixed up. All you new guys without avatars look alike.

solkan wrote:Contact, not 'a distance of 0"'.

They're the same thing.

To be in contact, the distance between them must be 0.

Have you considered the alternative interpretation: If you don't have enough room to open the doors, then you don't have enough room to place the drop pod and you need to adjust the location again?

Yes. Specifically:

The alternative is a vehicle that will in a lot of games never make it onto the table due to not having enough room to deploy, and will the rest of the time block an inordinate amount of real estate, be almost impossible to deploy from and almost impossible to assault.

This is going slightly off-topic. What if I convert my landraiders to have - say barbed wire hanging a half inch away from my vehicle. It's part of the vehicle, but not part of the hull. Could that prevent someone from assaulting the landraider? How is it different that the pod doors?

And don't expect GW to make a ruling on this. They're a model company, not a game company. I think the bigger question is - what does Adepticon do about it, since that will drive most of the tournies.

insaniak wrote:

solkan wrote:Contact, not 'a distance of 0"'.

They're the same thing.

To be in contact, the distance between them must be 0.

There are two independent things at work here:
1. The base of a regular model has to be in contact with a model to assault.
2. Distance for vehicles is measured to the hull.

I went looking through the rules for definitions of various things, and while there is are definitions of both distance and range for vehicles, there is no definition of "base contact", leaving us with common English usage. A definition of "base contact" which includes the base of one model being in contact with another model seems entirely reasonable. That leads us to a possibly surprising situation: two models can be touching and have a non-zero range between them. Does my reasoning fail me? Does someone need to start a "What does base contact mean?" thread here?

But all of that is actually unimportant compared to the other part...

Have you considered the alternative interpretation: If you don't have enough room to open the doors, then you don't have enough room to place the drop pod and you need to adjust the location again?

Yes. Specifically:

The alternative is a vehicle that will in a lot of games never make it onto the table due to not having enough room to deploy, and will the rest of the time block an inordinate amount of real estate, be almost impossible to deploy from and almost impossible to assault.

How is it difficult to deploy from the drop pod? It counts as an opened topped vehicle, so you can "disembark within 2" of any point of the vehicle" (which you may note is not the same as 'within 2" of the vehicle'). So, it doesn't even matter whether the doors are part of the hull or not, they are part of the vehicle so you can disembark from them. Does this mean that a model can deploy more than 2" from the vehicle (by the definitions quoted above)? Yes, and the same situation would happen to any non-open topped vehicles which happened to have an access point not on the hull.

Is it a big model? Maybe.
Is it hard to place? I don't see how, given that you're allowed to move it as much as necessary until it's on a spot where there's room.
Is it hard to deploy from it? No.
Is it hard to reach to assault? No, because you don't need to be in contact with the hull.

solkan wrote: A definition of "base contact" which includes the base of one model being in contact with another model seems entirely reasonable.

Of course it is. But to be touching, there has to be no distance between them. And to determine the distance between them, you measure to the vehicle's hull.

How is it difficult to deploy from the drop pod?

It's difficult to deply from it if you prohibit models from standing on the doors because you measure all distances to and from the vehicle using the vehicle's hull as the reference.

Is it a big model? Maybe.
Is it hard to place? I don't see how, given that you're allowed to move it as much as necessary until it's on a spot where there's room.

You're allowed to reduce the scatter by as much as necessary to place it. If you're counting the doors, you still need a clear spot 11 or 12" in diameter with no other models in it in order to place it in the first place.

If you're using as much scenery on the table as you should be, then getting more than 1 or two pods on the table is going to be practically impossible. On some tables even getting those first one or two is going to be impossible.

Is it hard to deploy from it? No.
Is it hard to reach to assault? No, because you don't need to be in contact with the hull.

Both of these rely on measuring to and from the hull.

Thank you, Insaniak, your sophism has quite entertaining. Luckily, where I play Xeno's arrow arrives at its destination.

I don't think you need to be that far away from things - I'm sure drop pods land next to 1000 year old trees or fortified buildings from time to time. That door just doesn't open, and the marines on that side just climb over the datasphere to get out where they can. No big deal.

I'm curious how everyone is seeing through drop pods. Having just built one, that center area is almost completely filled up by the harnesses and datasphere. There's a small gap, but depending on the angle it'll be blocked by one of the other harnesses or you'll just get 2 models shooting.

solkan wrote:How is it difficult to deploy from the drop pod? It counts as an opened topped vehicle, so you can "disembark within 2" of any point of the vehicle" (which you may note is not the same as 'within 2" of the vehicle'). So, it doesn't even matter whether the doors are part of the hull or not, they are part of the vehicle so you can disembark from them. Does this mean that a model can deploy more than 2" from the vehicle (by the definitions quoted above)? Yes, and the same situation would happen to any non-open topped vehicles which happened to have an access point not on the hull.

Yes you can disembark within 2" from any point of an open-topped vehicle. But you still need to measure that 2" distance. Measuring distances to vehicles are described on page 56. You measure to the hull. So practically you can disembark within 2" from any point of a an open-topped vehicle's hull.

Spellbound wrote:I'm curious how everyone is seeing through drop pods. Having just built one, that center area is almost completely filled up by the harnesses and datasphere.

Wishful thinking, mostly.

Thanks for all the discourse guys...

This thread really helped me because it never dawned on me that the petals might not be part of the hull, and not considered relevant for measurement ad movement purposes. Were no FAQ to present itself, that would be the suggested course of action for myself and my opponents in the games I play, both casual and tourney.

If you haven't built one yet... the doors when properly assembled snap closed. you won't have to make decisions on painting the interior for a while. After playing some games you will probably be more confident in whatever decision you make.

Jayden63 wrote:I'm planing on converting mine. Split the door in half at the natural seem horizontally. Now the lower part opens down (as normal) and the top part will hing upward.

This will do two things. First and most importantly look cool, second unless GW comes out with a specific statement, it will remove any question on how to deal with the petals as they will be not in the way.

Anyway. If the petals are infact part of the pod, and it is ruled by GW in a FAQ when the codex is actually released it will cause a bunch of problems. Neither friendly or enemy models may stand on the petals. Just like you can't disembark ontop of your rhino. Its obvious that the access is not the petals itself but the five giant holes in the pod. Thus you will have to fit 10 marines within 2" of the five pod holes, and not ontop of the petals. If the pod petals are more than 2" across you will have a difficult time deploying 10 models and maintain unit coherency. There just isn't enough room between the petals.

Cool model, hell of a rules issue. The best, simplest, and cleanest bet would be that the petals are ignored for everything.

Quoted for the usual truthiness.

The bold part I especially agree with.

I am going to remove the pegs on the doors and replace them with magnets. They can still open and close, but I see no use in actually having the doors present during the game. Remove the doors/hatches when deployed, measure from the hull like the rules say instead of trying to gain a 35+ point advantage by claiming the doors are part of the hull when deployed and denying the opponent large swathes of space due to the profile of the petals.

Seriously. Ignoring the doors is the best way to resolve the issue.

Hellfury wrote:

Jayden63 wrote:

Cool model, hell of a rules issue. The best, simplest, and cleanest bet would be that the petals are ignored for everything.

Seriously. Ignoring the doors is the best way to resolve the issue.

Agreed. Now here's a question in a similar vein: I'm going to run Drop-Podding Dreadnoughts and Drop-Podding Sternguard.

I intend to remove/leave the doors open on the pods with Sternguard, because they will be able to see through and use the pod as a cover-granting firing platform (the way I have the interior modeled) and benefit from the protection afforded by this piece of 'place my own terrain' so to speak.

I intend to leave the doors closed on the pods with Dreadnoughts, because I can easily block Line of Sight to anti-armor weapons, which tend to be stationary unless mounted on vehicles, thereby protecting them on the turn they land before they can get into an assault.

Is this cheese? I have not changed the fundamental structure of either model, simply used it to my advantage.

Frankly, yes, I'd see that as a little dodgy.

If you're choosing to model the pods a given way to grant you a perceived advantage, you're stretching the rules in a way that is going to upset people.

Be consistent. If you're having the doors open on one pod, they should be open on all of them.

sourclams wrote:

Is this cheese? I have not changed the fundamental structure of either model, simply used it to my advantage.

I think it is a bit cheesy. Its best to remain consistent, one way or the other.

Webbe wrote:

solkan wrote:How is it difficult to deploy from the drop pod? It counts as an opened topped vehicle, so you can "disembark within 2" of any point of the vehicle" (which you may note is not the same as 'within 2" of the vehicle'). So, it doesn't even matter whether the doors are part of the hull or not, they are part of the vehicle so you can disembark from them. Does this mean that a model can deploy more than 2" from the vehicle (by the definitions quoted above)? Yes, and the same situation would happen to any non-open topped vehicles which happened to have an access point not on the hull.

Yes you can disembark within 2" from any point of an open-topped vehicle. But you still need to measure that 2" distance. Measuring distances to vehicles are described on page 56. You measure to the hull. So practically you can disembark within 2" from any point of a an open-topped vehicle's hull.

The line is specifically "Models can embark or disembark within 2" of any point of the vehicle." yet you seem to want to read the word hull instead of vehicle. If it said that you could disembark within 2" of the vehicle, then you would have to measure from the hull, but it doesn't say that. It says any point of the vehicle without qualification and as a result that point doesn't actually have to be on the hull.

Yes it says any point. But as I said there is a diffrent rule telling you to measure distances involving vehicles to the hull.

So to follow both rules that means any point of the hull.

solkan wrote:The line is specifically "Models can embark or disembark within 2" of any point of the vehicle." yet you seem to want to read the word hull instead of vehicle.

That's because page 56 tells us that "...for distances involving a vehicle, measure to and from their hull (ignore gun barrels, dozer blades, antennas, banners and other decorative elements)."

Is measuring the distance for disembarking a distance measurement involving a vehicle?
Yes it is.
Therefore, we use the vehicle's hull as the reference point for that measurement.

The rules list a single specific exception to this rule: measuring weapons ranges. All other measurement is from the hull.