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Not cut "off", but a "cut on" your arm.

Medically speaking the arm ends at the wrist joint....

I have seen this come up a few times at the table. I have always played that you need to see the actual arm or leg to take a shot as you get less table debate because more of the model is visible. When we played it under the idea that the hand and foot were extensions, it boiled down to this after awhile:

"By checking TLOS, I can see the extended finger of your assault marine (assembled with the pointed finger power fist), so I am firing at them."

Nos,

Would you call your nose part of your head?

How would you answer the question of a cut on your head/nose?

A hand is part of an arm, just like a finger is part of a hand and a fingernail is part of a finger.

Think of it from a military standpoint. I can see your hand so i can accuratly guess where the rest of you is. The reason why you cant shoot a model you dont have los to is because you cannot be sure just where they are in the terrain. personally i think anything that can hurt someone can take them out of a fight. Blowing off your hand (or even your fingers though i dont play that as being los) means you are not using that hand for anything the rest of the fight. I've taken you out of the fight therefore in all respects to the battle you are dead.

This argument here is part of what makes me HATE this game that I love.

Okay let's break it down:

TLOS = you see it, you shoot it. No guns, antennae, wings. Got it. Wait...here's a list of applicable body parts as well (D'oh! They should have just left it out).

Johnny here wants to win the game VERY BADLY... he will not be happy with himself unless his dudemens kill every enemy dudesman on the table. Unfortunately, his opponent is being very squirrelly and using terrain *gasp* to his advantage! But wait! Johnny's opponent ineptly allowed sergeant gunhaver's pointing finger to be seen from behind the fortress of redemption they were holding an objective behind. Well well, a-ha! I have about 36 poisoned venom shots heading your way, sergeant gunhaver! Surely your entire squad can be killed because you decided to pick your nose at an inopportune time!

/end rant

Basically speaking, yes by the rules a finger or hand will allow the shots to go through but from a gameplay and storytelling point of view, why would you need to do that when it is very clear your opponent is *trying* to use terrain the way we all should be - it needs to be a game of strategic movement and counter-movement, not a shoot out at the blood gulch corral.

*sigh* Play how you want fellas but if it's me and all i can see is a finger, a knuckle, or a boot, i'll shoot something else or run into a better firing position.



quick counterpoint - at the first failed save, sgt. gunhaver will probably have to die...but thanks to wound allocation even that isn't guaranteed.

And what if you the rest of you is behind a giant rock or some other impenetrable obstacle? Not everyone in 40K is a crack shot, it is a lot harder to hit a hand than it is an entire body among other bodies.

Also, if you're comparing it to real life, that hand would be moving, making it even more difficult to hit. Unless you really think that people in a warzone just go sticking their extremities out into the line of fire for the hell of it.

The reason I see for excluding wings / hands / tails etc is that these are the most common items that "overhang" the base - and are thus the easiest to see (or conversely the hardest to effectively hide) - so by not shooting hands (as the rules dont let you do) you are keeping consistency with this.

So, is "hand" on the list? No? Then you cannot shoot it Very simple.

Also tetris agree with everything except your "by the rules" part - by the rules a hand is not an arm, so is not a target.

Daichaller - your argument leads down to "everything is connected via skin, so everyhing is part of everything else".

what about making it easier to decide where the non moving parts are like I stated before? Bolters fire exploding shells which can easily penetrate trees, walls, ect. Even lasguns would be able to penetrate more than the modern assualt rifle (which can penetrate quite alot as it is). A rock is not going to stop a bolter shell, just make it easier for your opponent to miss you. If I can see your hand then I can guess with some certainty where the rest of you is even if i am not a crack shot. Lets reexamine shall we?

Roger the space marine sergeant has hidden his men inside a building away from the big bad necron destroyers. Roger is currently making battle plans to ambush a unit of warriors currently searching for his unit. He sadly sticks his hand out too far when indicating the direction he wants his unit to go in and the destoryers see this. green guass blasts rip through the walls obliterating half of his unit and taking all of him but the delinquint hand.

you dont use the hand as a target, you use it as a guideline of where your target is.

So why dont tails, wings and guns count? A gun waving around tells you JUST as much as a hand does.

ALso rocks do stop bolter shells - they explode on impact.

IDK. Ask GW. I think it should all count. That is my justification of why you should be able to do it. GW does that so as to not penalise players from making extoridinary additions to their models. (I belive that is a direct quote) In my inconcequential opinion you should be able to target a model if you can see anything.

You say that, but there are plenty of things in the 40k universe that are impenetrable, the rock was a bad example. Say those marines are behind a fortified bastion, the gauss blasts aren't getting through. So, being able to figure out where the enemy is via their hand does nothing, unless you actually blow their hand off, which again you would need to be a good shot to do.

I voted yes, as I believe that the hand/foot is part of the arm/leg. This actually came up at 'Ard Boyz (as I could see feet on some models), but it was disputed and I let it go.

This discussion should really move away from real life/pseudo-medical definitions on general principal alone.

The reality of 40K is defined by the rules.

And this is said without taking any sides whatsoever.

It is threads lik this that make me weep for 40K/wargaming and what it has become...

nosferatu1001 wrote:So why dont tails, wings and guns count? A gun waving around tells you JUST as much as a hand does.

This is the post that probably should have been second, to avoid the pseudo-medical rabbit trail we went down.

Why don't tails, wings, guns, banners, ....., count? They don't because GW does not want to punish (discourage) really cool modeling, so instead of modeling my guys so they have the smallest profile possible, I can make them look really cool with weapons waving, banners flying, tails scrawled out, wings fully unfurled and still be able to play.

Hands and feet are not mentioned (probably for the same reason that tails and wings aren't on the allowed target list) so that settles it. As for the groin (as was asked), most of my models do not have a definite groin, but if you were building an army that had very pronounced testes or an extended groin-type feature that was large enough to have the targeting question, I would hold the same view. It's not a valid target. (However, unlike protruding hands, there is a chance that I wouldn't play with you if groin-type-components were protruding, but that's just me)

nosferatu1001 wrote:

Dracos wrote:Hands are part of the arm, not an extension of it. Feet are also part of the legs. Same way as the ears are part of the head. Of course you can shoot it if you see the hands or feet.

Erm, no. Your hands are a distinct feature seperate from your arm. Your arm ends at the wrist joint.

Would you truly, honestly state that you had cut your arm if you had cut your hand? Really?

I always thought that the hand would be considered part of the arm, but after you opposed this view I decided to check several sources, from dictionnaries to wiki. All souces state the hand begins at the end of the arm, meaning the hand is necessarily not part of the arm.

I stand corrected, hands and feet do NOT count.

The Tenets of YMDC wrote:3. Never, ever bring real-world examples into a rules argument.
- The rules, while creating a very rough approximation of the real world, are an abstraction of a fantasy universe. Real world examples have no bearing on how the rules work. So quit it.

People need to pay more attention to these. Dracos, thank you for finally acknowledging *my* argument. Nosferatu always adds to rules discussions constructively, and I know that even when he disagrees with me he has a solid foundation for his argument, but you really should be paying attention to the argument itself, rather than the person posting it.

So, basically, you are angry that I cited the wrong person when I posted my retraction of the previously held position?

The reason I cited nos was because he cited me, and directed a comment towards me. Yeeesh.

Dracos wrote:So, basically, you are angry that I cited the wrong person when I posted my retraction of the previously held position?

The reason I cited nos was because he cited me, and directed a comment towards me. Yeeesh.

Why did you read anger into what I wrote?

willydstyle wrote:finally acknowledging *my* argument [...] but you really should be paying attention to the argument itself, rather than the person posting it

How else should I read that?

As an informative statement. We all should be evaluating the arguments posters make on the merit of the argument, rather than on the "authority" of the person making the argument.

I never claimed that Nos has any authority. Your "informative" (i.e. condescending) statement is unnecessary. Just because I directed a statement at Nos in response to a statement directed at me in no way implies that I consider him an autority.

In fact, I find myself in disagreement with Nos more than agreement. I decided to find evidence to support my argument since there was a challenge directed at my position. Since I only found evidence to support the challenge, I retracted my supported of the disproved position.

You have inferred too much sir.

I apologize.

But seriously, if you disagree with Nosferatu more often than not, you're on the wrong side of a lot of rules dscussions

willydstyle wrote:I apologize.

But seriously, if you disagree with Nosferatu more often than not, you're on the wrong side of a lot of rules dscussions

.... now who is making him out to be an authority figure?

Well, the way the rules are written a casualty is not dead per say, just incapacitated. So if your hand or foot is blown off, wouldn't you be incapacitated and taken out of the battle? I would say yes, feet and hands may be targeted.

Ascalam wrote:I actually had this come up with the Nightbringer at a tournament recently.

*snip*

The question of the Nightbringer's robes was also raised, as his leg is actually about half way up the model, with the robes making about a 1/3 of his height. Are they his body (there is fluff justification that they could be, but no rules) or are they 'decorative elements' (rules seem to lean this way)..

We diced off and he won on this one, and I wasn't overly fussed either way, but i'd be interested in people's views.

I wouldn't have rolled the dice on this one and just would have let the guy shoot.

Your option on that. We both decided that dicing it off was fine.

I take it that you would also allow someone to shoot the big-ass cloaks hanging off some models, counting it as part of the body automatically? Or that if i can see one of Mephiston's shoulder skulls it counts as his body, being an extension of his armour ? Didn't think so, but it's pretty much the same thing..

It could be ruled either way, so we diced it. If it had been a model that didn't constitute 1/5 of my total points i'd be more likely to say yeah,whatever to the idea of directing half his army's firepower at an empty fold of a skirt, in order to wound the guy wearing it

In a friendly game i'd allow it if the other guy wanted (probably), but this was the final battle of a tournament, and TLOS was being taken seriously (including in an earlier battle guns being shot through a wall because there was a row of tiny bullet holes in the wall that showed light blocked when a model was on the other side, allowing a battle cannon to target them. The holes were probably about lasgun shot sized, but still enough to wrangle TLOS with if you wanted to be a TFG.).



I've also had folk claim that if they can see one of the scarabs on his base it counts to shoot him, even if none of him is visible

tetrisphreak wrote:This argument here is part of what makes me HATE this game that I love.

Okay let's break it down:

In the real world, you shoot at knuckles and feet because that's the target presented. Bullets go through cover, so if you see a knuckle, you shoot through the stucco to where you think center mass will be behind it. In 40k terms this is accounted for by the cover save.

In other cultures, the hand is considered to be part of the "arm". There's no Hebrew word for "Hand". "Yad" means everything from your shoulder to your fingertips. Without an FAQ ruling, I'd say the fairest way to rule this is to dice it off BEFORE the game.

Krellnus wrote:Yes, upon physically checking this for myself, I found that my hand is as much a part of my arm as my arm is in turn a part of my body.

FTW! Love this sentence

However... Seriously though... NO!, if all you can see is the hand, model is in cover... no way I would ask to take a kill shot based on fingernail as the contact point (silly). If someone insisted on taking a shot at a model for this, I'd allow it with a 2+ cover save, after a roll off to see if it can be done (RAW ish)... if they're trying to target a whole squad, unless I'm kicking the crap out of them, I'd say no... if they persist, make it a roll off and I'd still keep the 2+ cover save. I will say that I have never had anything close to this come up in a game though

NuggzTheNinja wrote:

tetrisphreak wrote:This argument here is part of what makes me HATE this game that I love.

Okay let's break it down:

In the real world, you shoot at knuckles and feet because that's the target presented. Bullets go through cover, so if you see a knuckle, you shoot through the stucco to where you think center mass will be behind it. In 40k terms this is accounted for by the cover save.

In other cultures, the hand is considered to be part of the "arm". There's no Hebrew word for "Hand". "Yad" means everything from your shoulder to your fingertips. Without an FAQ ruling, I'd say the fairest way to rule this is to dice it off BEFORE the game.

Our books are written in English, where hand the hand and arm are defined as separate parts of our body.