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"I don't think facing has anything to do with LOS for any model in the game. "

You would be wrong, then. Infantry does NOT have 360 degree LOS. Vehicle hull-mounted weapons only have a 45 deg arc of fire, so the facing of the vehicle certainly does matter. Etc.

erikwfg wrote:The company was dumb enough to make non-round bases for 40k outside of bike/cavalry?

Yes

erikwfg wrote:Do you automatically pivot when you assault?

Yes, but only after measuring distance to see if you are in charge range.

erikwfg wrote:
Other than vehicles and walkers, facing is irrelevant,
Fail. I thought infantry don't have a facing
I don't think facing has anything to do with LOS

Non-vehicle models have to trace LOS from the eyes*. So the facing does actually matter. Just that for models on round bases it makes no difference at all whether you turn to face the target or not, so people don't tend to bother.

*Some do not have eyes. So by RAW they can't trace LOS, but everybody traces LOS from where the eyes would be.

Mannahnin wrote:

TheGreatAvatar wrote:A couple of things to note:
1) This is limited to those models designated as Infantry (page 11).
2) The target the models are turned to face is the only target available for assault since that's the target "shot at" by the models.

Point 1 is meaningless, since the rules for Infantry are the baseline rules for the game, and all other models follow them except where they have their own more specific rules to supplant them.

Fair play. Rereading the movement rules indicates "Infantry" is just a blank term. My bad.

I would thus be inclined to think that page 11 doesn't help Walkers or other vehicles, but could allow oval-based Dreadknights and Trygons and such to functionaly gain or lose movement relative to the shooting target, depending on their facing.

That's the question at hand and I believe those models can turn in the shooting phase and not shoot.

The more I think about this though, isn't turning and not shooting the same as running? Those models of concern can run anyway so is this discussion moot?

insaniak wrote:

Evil Lamp 6 wrote:... but would not want to fire and use up the Combi-Melta at the intended assault target.

So just fire the bolter instead...?

Fine insaniak, I didn't see anything under TWC that made their riders Relentless, but I'll admit that I didn't look too hard.

Be that as it may, replace the Combi-Melta in my scenario with a Plasma Pistol that replaces the Wolf Lord's Bolt Pistol so he has nothing else to fire and the Wolf Lord only having 1 wound left due to previous shooting and the controlling player not wanting to risk getting wounded and failing a save due to "Get's Hot!" for the almost assured victory in CC.

That is another reason to "shoot" without firing any weapons for the free turn towards the target unit.

I realise that this topic is even more irrelevant because it's hypothetical, this should never matter.

pffffttttttt! Utter irrelevance has never slowed down a ymdc thread in the short time I've been hanging about here.

kmdl1066 wrote:pffffttttttt! Utter irrelevance has never slowed down a ymdc thread in the short time I've been hanging about here.

I know, or I figure as much. It would be a whole lot less entertaining if the behavior guidelines were actually enforced.

My response was going from the end of page 1 though, I didn't notice all this page 2 stuff.

What non-apocalypse sized models don't have round bases (ignore bike bases)?

I want to disbelieve that the rules really mention LOS coming from the eyes. I'm just hoping that is an assumption, but I probably don't want to know. If a model walked up to something about an inch off the ground, it's head would be fully blocked while it's body is entirely visible, if he really can't kneel to see that's slowed. I figured unless you were in an enclosed vehicle or had a weird body design, LOS can come from any part of the model (within reason).

In 2nd you could ignore squad members in cover to shoot those that aren't. I dynamically posed TFG's in my hormagaunt squad that kept breaking, putting them on skimmer poles. A friend who likes to not use common sense shot at it with an area effect, because it was the only one not in cover. That type of logic is the same as LOS from eyes.

What the game does not need is more things to ruin the immersion, which actually includes anything having to do with bases, and arguing for that matter. It should be armies fighting, not statues sliding around on discs. When you sit there realising it's just you sitting behind some models you spent way to much money on, you start to realise all the fun you're not having... Now while i'm all about sentience, and disliking how most people don't use it, in this case I say ignorance is bliss.

Now having everything always have 360, ala D&D 3.5 stupidity is pretty stupid, but I thought it was just game laziness. Even shields in these games seem to cover 360 now. Though I can understand the stress of coming up with a way to represent otherwise, that all goes to crap if the game really has facing matter. Not much different from vehicles armor facing is it?

So if facing (non-vehicles) does exist in this game then i'll go and look it up in detail, because that makes your turn decisions a bit more relevant. It may be more realistic, but not sure if it's necessary. Still, I'd like it. It existed in 2nd, never played 3rd (1 game), started 4th, 5th came out almost immediately, so I don't know at what point facing didn't matter. Maybe that was just my assumption because instead of models only moving in movement phase, I saw it let you turn before shooting.

erik - stated clear as day in the rules. LOS drawn from the eyes

erikwfg wrote:
I want to disbelieve that the rules really mention LOS coming from the eyes.

pg. 16 Check Line of Sight and Pick Target. First sentence in second paragraph in the right hand column reads "Line of sight must be traced from the eyes of the firing model ...."

erikwfg wrote:What non-apocalypse sized models don't have round bases (ignore bike bases)?

There are a few Tyranids on oval bases, the Mawloc/Trygon comes to mind (Okay maybe just two)


As for LoS and turning to face:

Facing does not matter since "Firing models can always draw line of sight through members of their own unit"

so if a model is faced 180 degrees away from its target, just start at the eyes of the firing model and trace LoS through the back of its head to the target.

Surely the firing model is a member of their own unit so the LoS can be traced through that models own head/shoulderpads/banners etc.

erikwfg wrote:What non-apocalypse sized models don't have round bases (ignore bike bases)?

Aside from the Tyranids mentioned above, there is also the GK Dreadknight and SW TWC mounts to name at least two more.

Oh and at least one of the CSM mounts for the Lord.

DeathReaper wrote:Surely the firing model is a member of their own unit so the LoS can be traced through that models own head/shoulderpads/banners etc.

The rulebook FAQ entry dealing with pintle fire arcs makes it fairly clear that the model can't trace LOS through itself.

If LOS and the eyes thing was in the rulebook I didn't want to know, because that is totally stupid. Lately I've been doing a very simple 40k project and it has uncovered so much failure in the system that I'm wondering why they bothered to expand it past the absolute basics they could've used. Who knows how many more things I can discover before it becomes too much and I play something more clear.

By random coincidence I saw some things yesterday in the BRB about walkers and it made me think of how fail this is, but I don't really want to start that again. What I will mention is the things I said a model should be able to do to draw LOS from (for models in which it is realistic, they should be able to draw LOS from any portion of their body), is reinforced by other rules that allow models to be in other places they obviously aren't (so kneeling to see clearer shouldn't be too much harder).

Models aren't where they are supposed to be anyways. Many things are not represented on the battlefield, and for models this can be seen in the consolidate rule, wound allocation, those within 2" fighting in assault, all those things that say "the model is assumed to be...", and a bunch of others I don't feel like describing. Now I can understand why things are measured from models, because there's no need to make it complicated, but if they can be assumed to be in a much different location then firing without standing perfectly upright sounds fair.

After reading through all the posts Im still not seeing the reason this matters. The only important point seems to involve changing the facing to possibly gain distance?

But the model has just HAD a movement phase, so it could have turned in any direction it wanted at that time, yes?



Sliggoth

Which is pretty much what the very first response said.

Imagine you've finished movement and are in the shooting phase. And you suddenly realize that your bikes (or other rectangle based non-vehicle) forgot to change facing during movement and are just out of charge range to a target to the side of the bikes. So you declare you will shoot the unit and pivot to face them, gaining the extra fraction you need. But then, there is actually only one model in charge range. So if you do shoot, that one model will be taken as a casualty and you won't be able to charge. So you don't actually shoot.

And then the unicorn* you're playing against calls you a rules lawyer.

* While we're making up unbelievably unlikely situations, there may as well be a mythical creature involved.

Edit, whoops, my mistake

Even though I can see the situations in which someone would want to do this, it's less beardy to just go back do things out of sequence because you forgot.