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The wound group (which is the whole unit, because they don't have different equipment or statlines to differentiate) suffers an unsaved wound, which doubles to two, and each inflicts Instant Death. As broken down above.

In truth the number of weapons out there capable of doing this AND negating Scarabs' easily-obtained 3+ cover saves are very few, so it's not a crippling liability.

Yes, two instant death wounds occur, but only one matters.

You get hit by a blast, then after all the rolling you need to allocate wounds. Then you roll saves. Because you roll for saves after you allocate wounds you don't allocate them again, which means that model takes a single instant death wound, and another instant death wound that disappears because the model is removed immediately after suffering the first one.

juraigamer wrote:Yes, two instant death wounds occur, but only one matters.

You get hit by a blast, then after all the rolling you need to allocate wounds. Then you roll saves. Because you roll for saves after you allocate wounds you don't allocate them again, which means that model takes a single instant death wound, and another instant death wound that disappears because the model is removed immediately after suffering the first one.

The wound is not doubled upon the individual model, but the unit.

Therefore, it does not "disappear" when a MODEL dies, it can only "disappear" when the UNIT dies, otherwise it will continue to be assigned to otherwise unwounded Scarabs.

juraigamer wrote:Yes, two instant death wounds occur, but only one matters.

You get hit by a blast, then after all the rolling you need to allocate wounds. Then you roll saves. Because you roll for saves after you allocate wounds you don't allocate them again, which means that model takes a single instant death wound, and another instant death wound that disappears because the model is removed immediately after suffering the first one.

You only allocate wounds on complex units.

juraigamer wrote:I won't bother to get the exact quotes due to lazyness, but you only remove a single base from a str 6 template. In effect, the model takes it's save, and fails it, thus getting instant deathed, but it takes another instant death hit as well. It's silly, but that's what happens.

That is incorrect. VtB is a rule applied to units, not models.

] See my post above, as you clearly decided to ignore it.

Lordhat wrote:

juraigamer wrote:I won't bother to get the exact quotes due to lazyness, but you only remove a single base from a str 6 template. In effect, the model takes it's save, and fails it, thus getting instant deathed, but it takes another instant death hit as well. It's silly, but that's what happens.

That is incorrect. VtB is a rule applied to units, not models.

] See my post above, as you clearly decided to ignore it.

It specifically said UNITS, not models. Lordhat is right.

juraigamer wrote:I won't bother to get the exact quotes due to lazyness, but you only remove a single base from a str 6 template. In effect, the model takes it's save, and fails it, thus getting instant deathed, but it takes another instant death hit as well. It's silly, but that's what happens.

Except you are missing the fact that each unsaved wound is doubled, and when you try to take out one base from a wound group for two ID wounds, that is cheating.

Unit1126PLL wrote:

juraigamer wrote:Yes, two instant death wounds occur, but only one matters.

You get hit by a blast, then after all the rolling you need to allocate wounds. Then you roll saves. Because you roll for saves after you allocate wounds you don't allocate them again, which means that model takes a single instant death wound, and another instant death wound that disappears because the model is removed immediately after suffering the first one.

The wound is not doubled upon the individual model, but the unit.

Therefore, it does not "disappear" when a MODEL dies, it can only "disappear" when the UNIT dies, otherwise it will continue to be assigned to otherwise unwounded Scarabs.

So you're saying that I re-allocate the extra instant death wound that appears after the model that failed it's save?

What everyone is saying in regards to failing one save = two dead makes sense for normal wounds, but the wounds caused by the vulnerable to blasts only occur after the wound is incurred. You don't have two allocation phases.

You still allocate wounds to all units being wounded, it's just that you don't have to specify if they all are the same.

I'm not missing the notion that each wound is doubled, you already must place the wounds that are instant death as evenly as possible, and then roll for your saves. An unsaved wound isn't there anymore if the model that took the unsaved wound is removed due to instant death.

I use thunderfire cannons all the time, and would really like to kill 2 scarabs per unsaved wound, but I won't let that cloud my judgement.

If it was a complex unit you would be correct but the BRB says different for units that are all the same

BRB page 20 wrote:If all the models in a unit are the same, and have a
single Wound each, such as a squad of Eldar Rangers
or Necron Warriors, then this is a very simple process.
You roll all the saves for the unit in one go (as
described below), and a model of your choice is
removed as a casualty for each failure.

While that does specify models with a single wound, it sets a good precedence for this.

Exactly what TheAvengingKnee said.

You allocate wounds to wound groups (Only 1 in the case of scarabs.), Roll saves, all failed saved become an unsaved wound. each unsaved wound is doubled to two unsaved wounds. then you remove casualties, and because of ID you remove a base from that wound group for each unsaved wound.

destuctir wrote:well i will show my working

"if a model with the VtB special rule takes an unsaved wound from a blast/template it is doubled to 2 wounds"

"if a model suffers an unsaved wound from a weapon with a strength of double or more the models toughness it is killed outright and immediately removed from the game as a casualty"

This is what I keep thinking of.

The notion that the wound taken is instead two wounds, but that wound is still taken. Also page 26 it tells you:

"remove one unwounded model for each unsaved wound"

My understanding is you can't double a wound on a model already taking an unsaved instant death wound, as it's removed before that happens.

juraigamer wrote:My understanding is you can't double a wound on a model already taking an unsaved instant death wound, as it's removed before that happens.

You're not doubling the wound on the model. You're doubling the wound on the unit. You then remove one model per wound.

When the unit takes wounds, if the unit is a complex one, you allocate the wounds to models solely for the purpose of doling them out evenly. You then roll saves in wound groups, total up the number of unsaved wounds, and remove the appropriate number of models. It's only at that final step (removing the models) that the wounds are actually assigned to specific models. The initial step of assigning them to models for wound allocation doesn't actually assign them to that specific model... it just totals up the wounds by wound group.

If the unit is solely comprised of scarabs, you don't allocate at all. You just total up the wounds and remove a model for each unsaved ID wound.

Ya know, GW did FAQ this once upon a time. So people quit arguing about it and then they dropped it from the FAQ because nobody was asking about it any more. Looks like they need to put it back in.

It's two dead bases.

Two things - one is that VtB never mentions models, it concerns units. You roll to wound the unit, the unit rolls saves. Since they're identical there is no change to single out a model through Complex Units.

And number two, it's only when you know how many unsaved wounds you have that you start assigning them and checking if any cause Instant Death. By that time you've already failed X saves and take 2X wounds.

juraigamer wrote:

destuctir wrote:"if a model with the VtB special rule takes an unsaved wound from a blast/template it is doubled to 2 wounds"

This is what I keep thinking of.

My understanding is you can't double a wound on a model already taking an unsaved instant death wound, as it's removed before that happens.

There is no wound allocation on a unit of scarabs as its not a complex unit.

3 S6+ hits
3 failed saves.
Doubled to 6 failed saves.
6 ID wounds on the unit, so 6 swarms removed.

This is why i dropped my ripper based army very quickly.
Its amazing how quickly even things like Acannons strip bases -_-

If this wernt the case, swarms would be absolutely brillant to play. Whats that? Your army is comprised of just swarm units? Oh, you mean i dropped a str 10 ap 1 blast on your and all it did was insta death 1 base because that one base took 2 insta deaths.

Just like i like to use this all the time as a joke.

Did you know that necron warriors gauss flayers cause instadeath to ALL 1 wound models who fail all their saves and fnp? Its true, look it up.


Its not even really an argument, its extremely clear. The units wounds are doubled from blasts and templates. Let take a look at an alternative situation.

10 scarabs. A unit causes 2 regular bolter shots and 2 instadeath on the scarabs. What happens? Does that mean you can place the 2 instadeath wounds on 1 base, and allocate the 2 regs on 2 separate scarabs, so now you have 9 scarabs, 2 of which have 1 wound apiece? Negative! 2 bases die, and one base has 2 wounds. That means you have 8 scarabs with one base with 2 wounds. Not hard.

The blasts are doubled after unsaved. just like someone said, 2y is dealt to the unit. In case the y was unclear, take this as an example.

10 scarabs. 5 hit with a str 10(or 9, 8, 7, 6) ap 1 (2, 3, 4, 5). 4 3+ saves. 1 fails. Thats wound is doubled (multiplied by 2, made from 1, to 2) and now you do with the wounds as you would to the unit. 2 bases dead from 2 instadeath wounds.

Anything else is simply trying to get around your 15 point apiece scarabs bases from dying.

Here you go, found the old (but still 5th ed) FAQ:

Q. How do the Instant Death and Vulnerable to Blasts/Templates rules interact? In other words, what happens when you shoot a swarm with a plasma cannon?

A. Each wound inflicted is multiplied by two and consequently every wound inflicted kills two models in the unit Vulnerable to Blasts. I.e. if a plasma cannon hits and wounds against a swarm with T3 or lower, it Instantly Kills two bases.

Hey, where'd you find that, do you have a link, don?

Randall Turner wrote:Hey, where'd you find that, do you have a link, don?

It's from the main rules FAQ about 2 years ago, got it saved on my hard drive.

Got it. My stance on this has changed.

Yeah, I remember the old FAQ as well. For whatever reason, at some point, the question was removed. Currently, the RaW is actually pretty clear. Each base will suffer two ID wounds and die, but multiple bases will not die for each wound.

Not sure why they changed it, but apparently they did.

Kitzz wrote:Yeah, I remember the old FAQ as well. For whatever reason, at some point, the question was removed. Currently, the RaW is actually pretty clear. Each base will suffer two ID wounds and die, but multiple bases will not die for each wound.

Not sure why they changed it, but apparently they did.

Except you're exactly wrong, and in opposition to the old FAQ. Did you mistype or something, or is this an effort at humor? Because otherwise your response makes no sense.

Apologies, I forgot to check the mutliple-wound models section. jwolf is right.

That said, I am vehemently against using old FAQs for current rules disputes. That way lies madness.

Posting the old FAQ was just to illustrate how it had been rules before... Given that nothing has changed, it's not unreasonable assume that it's still a good indication as to how to play it. The FAQ didn't change the existing rules, just clarified them.