Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Kilgore19d wrote:Slightly off topic here, but if you can pop smoke in the scout move, then wouldn't that justify popping smoke in a consolidation move? My understanding is that my dreadnoughts can not consolidate and pop smoke. So I don't see how you can scout move and pop smoke.

Just pop smoke before you assault/break a unit with your Dread.

Maybe. Don't underestimate the effect more information has on making the correct choice. e.g. you killed a unit that was giving you cover. or maybe you're consolidating somewhere where you'd be exposed to fire. You never know...

Page 92 BRB
Under the main heading Deploy Forces:
Infiltrators and Scouts - In all three types of deployment, the sequence is the same. First the players deploy their forces (apart from any unit left in reserve or that chose to use their 'inflitrate' special rule). Then they deploy their infiltrators, and finally they move units with the 'scouts' special rule.

This inclines me to believe that the Scout Move is actually part of the deployment and as such per the Organizing a battle chart on page 86 of the BRB:

4: Deploy Forces
5: Start the game!

would mean that the move occurs before the game begins thus Smoke cannot be used before the game begins, because it can only be used Once per game and the game has yet to start.

Ok to play Devils advocate here, it says Once per game, and not Once During the game. The only thing that prevents you from using smoke during deployment is you have not moved, which is corrected by the scout move.

As to if the Scout move is part of Turn 1, i am silent as I do not know.

if you want to be that technical, then how about this:

'per' means 'through'. Now, 'once through the game' makes very little literal sense, but you get the idea. I'm sorry, but that language twist doesn't work.

That is just one possible meaning. It's amazing how people try to take things out of context.

1.for each; for every: Membership costs ten dollars per year. This cloth is two dollars per yard.
2.by means of; by; through: I am sending the recipe per messenger.
3.according to; in accordance with: I delivered the box per your instructions.

Per has several meanings. It would seem reasonable to accept one which makes sense.

Once per game or once during the game both preclude the popping of smoke outside the game.

jbunny: yes and no. of your menaings:
1. breaks the game, as it allows me 'one free smoke' if I go a game without using them.
2. 'through, by means of' is precisely the definition I was working by.
3. makes no sense.

Basically, what Kilkrazy said.

Lordhat wrote:

Gwar! wrote:I just woke up.

I agree that it says move, and not movement phase, so it is unclear (unlike Flat out and Scout Moves).

However, the rule also says "The vehicle may not fire any of its weapons in the same turn as it used its smoke launchers, which could be interpreted that you cannot use the smoke launchers outside the normal turn sequence, which the scout move is.

-Shrug- Chalk this one up to GW being run by lobotomized chimps rather than having 3 or 4 internet fans proofread their products.

I agree here.
Either the Scout move is:
1. NOT part of any turn, in which case Smoke launchers may not be used
Or
2. The scout move is included as part of turn one, in which case the launchers may be used afterwards, but firing may not be conducted by the vehicle until the start of that player's second turn shooting phase.

I would be inclined to play it as 2.

While I think the issue at hand is ambiguous, the option 2 that you have described is definitely not how it should be played. The scout move is pre-game, and is not part of any turn, as both players have to make scout moves before the first turn starts.

All Scout moves happen before Step 5: Begin the Game.

Simply put, the game does not start until AFTER all Scout moves are finished; therefore, you cannot use any ability that is used "once per game", including smoke during this step. There is no game taking place, yet, during which they can be legally be used. After all Scout moves are over, and the game/first turn actually begins, you are free to use anything that can be used "once per game".

I still don't see how this is still being debated. This is one place where RAW is very clear. We are told when the game begins, which is after all Scout moves are over.

No game=No smoke

Back when I was young, before the internets and when dinosaurs roamed the earth, we played 40k. It was 2nd ed and we used sticks and rocks for our miniatures.

When we found something ambiguous in the rules, we used a variety of skills to work out solutions. These skills included common sense, context, and interpreting the spirit of the rule. Most importantly, we tried to figure out what was most realistic, what would happen on the battlefield.Then we made it a houserule. Some of you guys may have heard of them; they save your games from devolving into jackassery when strict RaW creates slowed situations.

We didn't whinge about GW staff being crap at writing rules, we simply accepted that 40k is a complex ruleset with new stuff being added all the time. We didn't expect them to figure out every possible extrapolation of every concievable rule conflict or ambiguity, as we preferred them bringing out new codexes and miniatures over spending all their time octo-checking every sentence they wrote.

Maybe the quality of rules written has deteriorated in recent years. I suspect it has, although perhaps it was always like this and we only now realise it because we have internet forums where we can pool our collective experience. Back in the old days, we were only aware of situations which had arisen during games we had played with our troglodyte buddies, by firelight, in our cave, with the sabertooth tigers lurking in the darkness beyond.

Which brings me to my point.

The 'once per game' clause isn't necessarily (or imo even likely) intended to limit when you can do a thing. Yes, that reading is certainly there, but I suspect the intent of the sentence is to limit how many times you can do a thing and nothing else. How else are you going to word a rule that stiplutes you can only do something once over the course of a battle? 'Once per game' is the most obvious phrase that fits the bill.

In the absence of a FAQ ruling from GW, whether or not you want to allow smoke (and similarly flat-out saves) in Scout moves is a matter for you and your gaming group to decide. Make a houserule that says you can or you can't. My group plays that you can benefit from these things. Why the hell not? What's stopping the crewman popping smoke? Dudes is moving, sounds the battle has started to me!

"Hold on Octavius, we can't smoke yet because the game hasn't begun, even though we are tear-assing towards the Eldar position!"

Why wouldn't a Vendetta get a flat-out save if it moved 18" in its Scout move? Just because strict RaW doesn't say it can? The damn thing is barelling along at top speed, RaW can go hang as far as I'm concerned. Fast vehicles gain a cover save from moving fast. Pretty straightforward stuff really, and a clear case where common sense and applying the realism principle will grant you a satifactory ruling without the need for a 2-page forum thread.

My little mangs are not aware that they are but pawns in a game, they are soldiers fighting for their lives and they will be popping smoke and jinking and weaving and all that jazz, whether or not the game has technically begun. They don't give a rat's ass about strict RaW.

As for scout-smoking/scout-flatouting, then moving 6" and firing all guns, and then trying to claim the save in the enemy turn, anyone trying to pull that must be smoking crack and is getting kicked out of my gargage with their miniatures case suplexed. The spirit of the rule is clearly intended to mean that if the vehicle has smoked/moved fast in it's last move before they enemy started pointing guns and pulling the trigger at it, it gets a save. Anything else is some real cheesy-ass rules lawyering.

I saw a thread where people were trying to claim that certain named characters wearing certain specialised terminator suits can ride in rhinos. Or that a Meltabomb isn't a melta weapon. GTFO. It's Terminator armour. The description says it's terminator armour. Just because it has a different name doesn't change a damn thing. A rose by any other and whatnot. Its a melta weapon. It's str8 with 2D6 penetration. You know it is. At least, you know it's meant to be, and that's what's important.

I swear some people pore over the rulebooks looking for inconsistencies just so that they can make a thread about it.

Strict adherence to rules in situations where they are clearly not functining in a good way is not a good thing. That's how you get Nazi Germany and Holocausts and stuff. If the rules are bad, throw them out the window!

TLDR: use your brain, figure out the intent of the rule and what is most realistic on the battlefield, and make a housrule. And don't ever try to scout/smoke/fire/save or jam termy-calgar into a rhino unless you are totally fine with the idea of being a supreme jackass.

There's a huge difference between 2nd edition and nowadays. In 2nd ed, the rules were much looser, and the game was intended to be more of a combat simulation.

Nowadays, the rules are much more abstract, and so you can't really make rules calls based on what's "realistic."

I call bs. Of course you can. Show me how you can't in this situation.

The scout move itself is a huge abstraction. Is the vehicle just very fast and gets to move quickly but only before the battle starts? Is the vehicle a recon element that arrived at the battlefield first? Does the vehicle have some sort of camouflage that allowed it to hide while the armies prepare themselves for contact?

The rules don't really say, and so making a ruling about a scouting vehicle using smoke launchers cannot be based on "realism."

I think it could be any of these things, depending on the unit. If it was sentinels, they have probably arrived first. If it is penal troops, they are sent forward of the main line as cannon fodder/skirmish line.

Of course, in this case we are only concerned with fast scout units, so I would suggest that your first example applies. In which case it would seem realistic to apply the fast save, as we can assume that the vehicle moved fast.

I'm not trying to say that GW rules are realistic - they never have been. That doesn't mean that we can't try to figure out the most realistic choice and apply it rather than relying on RaW.

Of course, RaW is important in tournament play, but a good tournament will have its own supplemental ruleset to cover ambiguities like this, and by entering you agree to accept those rules.

Jimole wrote:I think it could be any of these things, depending on the unit. If it was sentinels, they have probably arrived first. If it is penal troops, they are sent forward of the main line as cannon fodder/skirmish line.

IF the rules don't specifically say it happened/can happen, it is the impossible!

It is pretty clear, despite abstractions, that the reason a smokin' vehicle can't shoot is the same reason it gets a cover save -- there is smoke all over the place that it's hard to see through. So -- if you can shoot, you don't get a cover save after shooting.

And that's realistic.

Ian Sturrock wrote:It is pretty clear, despite abstractions, that the reason a smokin' vehicle can't shoot is the same reason it gets a cover save -- there is smoke all over the place that it's hard to see through. So -- if you can shoot, you don't get a cover save after shooting.

To me, it has absolutely nothing to do with realism and everything to do with game balance (such as it is with GW). The player controlling the vehicle needs to decide between the durability of having the cover save for the next turn or having the offensive ability to fire the vehicle's weapons. You don't get both. It's that way 'cuz the rules say so. Realism doesn't matter.

I mean, do people on horses really trot around like Knights on a chess board do?

Oh, yeah, game balance is even more crucial, certainly.

Hang on if it says after its move, dose that mean if it dosnt move it cant pop smoke?

Excuse me if i am being stupid.

EagleArk wrote:Hang on if it says after its move, dose that mean if it dosnt move it cant pop smoke?

Excuse me if i am being stupid.

No, because you can declare "Vehicle V is moving 0"" or "Vehicle V is Pivoting" then pop smoke.

Gwar! wrote:

EagleArk wrote:Hang on if it says after its move, dose that mean if it dosnt move it cant pop smoke?

Excuse me if i am being stupid.

No, because you can declare "Vehicle V is moving 0"" or "Vehicle V is Pivoting" then pop smoke.

Okay thank you.

Jimole has a very good point in exactly the wrong environment. A lot of YMDC is shameless rules-lawyering.

But the man has a point. What makes sense? IMO, it makes sense that:

1) There's no reason the crew can fire the smoke during 'the game' and can't 'in the Scout move'
2) When the tank is covered in smoke, though, it can't see. Either:
2a) Everything it shoots at gets the obscured save, or
2b) It can't shoot at anything at all. I mean, there's a difference between 'Shoot at that cloud of smoke' and 'Sir, our forward cameras are completely whited out.'

Or, you know, RaW; the game doesn't start until Step 5, after the scout move. Unless you're willing to tell me that I can pop smoke AFTER the last turn. Say, in our next game...

(quick sanity check: when does the smoke 'wear off'? At the beginning of your 'next turn'?)

A good tip for spotting rules lawyering is, "Who gets a cunning advantage from this"?

In the case of the scout move smoke, it's obvious. The player evades the penalty of not being able to shoot in his shooting phase, and retains the advantage of a 4+ cover save.

At this stage we start arguing RAW to support the positions we took based on some idea of fairness. I made this point earlier in the thread.

Jimole wrote:Back when I was young, before the internets and when dinosaurs roamed the earth, we played 40k.

We didn't whinge about GW staff being crap at writing rules,

I suspect it has, although perhaps it was always like this

Yes, it's always been like this. And we did whinge on about the gaping holes in the rules, the disparity between the fluff and the table performance, lack of proper editing, the first edition rule books that fell apart because the binding was crap, about need to make so many house rules that gamers in different areas couldn't play one-another because were were effectively playing different games, and mostly about the idiots at GW who didn't think things through before the published them.

We buy the figures and books, it's our God-given right to whinge... the only problem is that the internet just means that more people have to listen! ... er, read... you get the idea.


Edit: Just dawned on me that this probably comes off as a bit harsh. I actually agree with Jimole's general premise... that common sense should never be casually abandoned for the sake of rules-lawyering... just wanted to point out that bitching about the rules/GW staff is as 40k as space marines are.... which come to think of it were snagged from Starship Troopers (not the movie, the book)... hmmmm.... where does that leave my argument? Ha-rumph.

Jimole wrote:Back when I was young, before the internets and when dinosaurs roamed the earth, we played 40k. It was 2nd ed and we used sticks and rocks for our miniatures.

When we found something ambiguous in the rules, we used a variety of skills to work out solutions. These skills included common sense, context, and interpreting the spirit of the rule. Most importantly, we tried to figure out what was most realistic, what would happen on the battlefield.Then we made it a houserule. Some of you guys may have heard of them; they save your games from devolving into jackassery when strict RaW creates slowed situations.

We didn't whinge about GW staff being crap at writing rules, we simply accepted that 40k is a complex ruleset with new stuff being added all the time. We didn't expect them to figure out every possible extrapolation of every concievable rule conflict or ambiguity, as we preferred them bringing out new codexes and miniatures over spending all their time octo-checking every sentence they wrote.

Maybe the quality of rules written has deteriorated in recent years. I suspect it has, although perhaps it was always like this and we only now realise it because we have internet forums where we can pool our collective experience. Back in the old days, we were only aware of situations which had arisen during games we had played with our troglodyte buddies, by firelight, in our cave, with the sabertooth tigers lurking in the darkness beyond.

Which brings me to my point.

The 'once per game' clause isn't necessarily (or imo even likely) intended to limit when you can do a thing. Yes, that reading is certainly there, but I suspect the intent of the sentence is to limit how many times you can do a thing and nothing else. How else are you going to word a rule that stiplutes you can only do something once over the course of a battle? 'Once per game' is the most obvious phrase that fits the bill.

In the absence of a FAQ ruling from GW, whether or not you want to allow smoke (and similarly flat-out saves) in Scout moves is a matter for you and your gaming group to decide. Make a houserule that says you can or you can't. My group plays that you can benefit from these things. Why the hell not? What's stopping the crewman popping smoke? Dudes is moving, sounds the battle has started to me!

"Hold on Octavius, we can't smoke yet because the game hasn't begun, even though we are tear-assing towards the Eldar position!"

Why wouldn't a Vendetta get a flat-out save if it moved 18" in its Scout move? Just because strict RaW doesn't say it can? The damn thing is barelling along at top speed, RaW can go hang as far as I'm concerned. Fast vehicles gain a cover save from moving fast. Pretty straightforward stuff really, and a clear case where common sense and applying the realism principle will grant you a satifactory ruling without the need for a 2-page forum thread.

My little mangs are not aware that they are but pawns in a game, they are soldiers fighting for their lives and they will be popping smoke and jinking and weaving and all that jazz, whether or not the game has technically begun. They don't give a rat's ass about strict RaW.

As for scout-smoking/scout-flatouting, then moving 6" and firing all guns, and then trying to claim the save in the enemy turn, anyone trying to pull that must be smoking crack and is getting kicked out of my gargage with their miniatures case suplexed. The spirit of the rule is clearly intended to mean that if the vehicle has smoked/moved fast in it's last move before they enemy started pointing guns and pulling the trigger at it, it gets a save. Anything else is some real cheesy-ass rules lawyering.

I saw a thread where people were trying to claim that certain named characters wearing certain specialised terminator suits can ride in rhinos. Or that a Meltabomb isn't a melta weapon. GTFO. It's Terminator armour. The description says it's terminator armour. Just because it has a different name doesn't change a damn thing. A rose by any other and whatnot. Its a melta weapon. It's str8 with 2D6 penetration. You know it is. At least, you know it's meant to be, and that's what's important.

I swear some people pore over the rulebooks looking for inconsistencies just so that they can make a thread about it.

Strict adherence to rules in situations where they are clearly not functining in a good way is not a good thing. That's how you get Nazi Germany and Holocausts and stuff. If the rules are bad, throw them out the window!

TLDR: use your brain, figure out the intent of the rule and what is most realistic on the battlefield, and make a housrule. And don't ever try to scout/smoke/fire/save or jam termy-calgar into a rhino unless you are totally fine with the idea of being a supreme jackass.

Based on this post, I have decided that Jimole is the most brilliant person to ever post on YMDC.

I'm intrigued by your ideas, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

The problem is when people have different opinions, house rules break. So it's all fine if there's a democracy, so John and Simon rule that Jack can't pull this with his smoke. However what happens when Simon picks up Necrons, John dislikes WBB, so he petitions Jack to ban Necron WBB, because the game designers obviously didn't intend for something so broken to be there, and it's ruining John's fun, as per TMIR. Now we've got a comp onion situation.

It's in this case that John gets out his Sword of RAWtious Fury and says that the rules allow him to use WBB. John then starts going on about his smoke, and we've come a full loop.

Both systems are imperfect.

I'm highly confused as to how Necron WBB is relevent here. Something that does feel relevant is the turboboost scout move argument, but its not worth starting that one as well. I think Jimole has the truth of it here,

Jimole wrote:use your brain, figure out the intent of the rule and what is most realistic on the battlefield, and make a housrule. And don't ever try to scout/smoke/fire/save or jam termy-calgar into a rhino unless you are totally fine with the idea of being a supreme jackass.

Realism is certinally very difficuly in a fantasy/si-fi game but we are asked to draw line of sight from the models perspective perhaps we can look for solutions from their perspective as well.

Wolftaoist wrote:I'm highly confused as to how Necron WBB is relevent here.

It's not, really. I was just bringing it up as an example of why houseruling according to 'common sense' doesn't always work.