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Lone Dragoon wrote: What you're missing is that to hit is only the first step to "resolve" the entire sequence. Each of these three parts makes up the full resolution of a shooting attack, to hit, to wound/armor penetration, wound allocation. When all 3 of those steps have been completed have you resolved the shooting attack. Your target isn't two points, you simply nominate two points, your target is a unit determined by where the tesla destructor shoots. So first up is the to hit portion, and since the weapon does not use a ballistic skill it cannot be a snap shot. Thus you cannot resolve the death ray shooting at a flyer without the skyfire rule. You claim that it's under the line and it's hit, but the other side has the stronger case because "resolving" the attack is not simply on the to hit portion, it is the entire process of determining the result of shooting at a vehicle. Thus you cannot continue on, as you have not resolved the "to hit" portion following the rules for Hard to Hit, since to resolve a shot without skyfire you have to make a snap shot and the death ray definitely cannot make a snap shot.

So you say i am missing something? that's fair. Every man or woman has the right to their own opinion after all. That said I have a couple of concerns with your opinion, which i hope you'll be able to clear up for me.

1) The Tesla Destructor follows the normal rules for shooting, including wether or not it can be snap fired and when this would apply. I've never disputed this. However it is not relevant to the effects of the death ray as it is a seperate weapon and there is no particular reason the Necron player need ever fire the Tesla weapon if he or she didn't feel like doing so. If they did though? The only way the Deathray interacts with the Tesla weapon is that the latter needs to be aimed at at least one of whatever it was you hit with the Deathray.

2) The Deathray is an auto-hitting attack which is explicitly listed as 'targetting' a couple of points on the battlefield. You can still 'resolve' the shot (ie: allocate wounds / roll for penetration, etc) just fine as long as you keep that in mind. There is basically nothing in the 'to-hit' portion of the shooting phase that applies to the Deathray, as it has it's own rules which bypass/supersede everything in the Shooting Phase prior to the 'Roll to Wound' section.

3) I'm well aware of the fact that the Deathray cannot be snap-shot. My point is that there is nothing requiring it to (well apart from if you have the doomscythe 'jink'), as it never targets anything with the 'Hard-to-Hit' rule.

And, again, you are told that resolving shooting ends with emptying the wound pool, meaning you have "shot at" a unit. If you are "shooting at" a unit with HtH you must have skyfire or snapfire, and you cannot snap fire it.

You are ignoring that you do resolve against models hit by the deathray, and this triggers HtH

 Neorealist wrote:
3) I'm well aware of the fact that the Deathray cannot be snap-shot. My point is that there is nothing requiring it to (well apart from if you have the doomscythe 'jink'), as it never targets anything with the 'Hard-to-Hit' rule.

And this is the problem. You say you didn't target the flier, and that the hard to hit rule will never kick in. The whole thing about hard to hit, unless you have skyfire, to resolve the shooting you need to have made a snap shot. Take it in a step by step process.

1. Roll to hit, the death ray can skip this part. So let's say for arguments sake that it hits the flyer.
2. Roll armor penetration. This is where we run into the glitch with the death ray. It did not fire a snap shot, therefore we are unable to roll armor penetration. The rule for hard to hit is, "Shots resolved at a zooming flyer can only be resolved as snap shots (unless the model has the skyfire special rule as described on page 42). We have to ask, did the death ray resolve the shooting as a snapshot? No, so we cannot continue the resolution and the process would thereby end here.

Here we are again with people believing that codex rules trumphs BRB rules without specifically stating to do so...

Lone Dragoon wrote:
1. Roll to hit, the death ray can skip this part. So let's say for arguments sake that it hits the flyer.
2. Roll armor penetration. This is where we run into the glitch with the death ray. It did not fire a snap shot, therefore we are unable to roll armor penetration. The rule for hard to hit is, "Shots resolved at a zooming flyer can only be resolved as snap shots (unless the model has the skyfire special rule as described on page 42). We have to ask, did the death ray resolve the shooting as a snapshot? No, so we cannot continue the resolution and the process would thereby end here.

Can you explain to me why you need to follow the 'hard-to-hit' rule to 'resolve the shot' if you are not targetting a model that has it? It seems pretty critical to your point; and there is no part of the 'armour penetration' rule that specifically indicates that the shot needs to be resolved against the flier itself to be 'resolved' in the general sense so far as i've found.

nosferatu1001 wrote: You are ignoring that you do resolve against models hit by the deathray, and this triggers HtH

I'm not 'ignoring' it, i just haven't found any rules-evidence that 'supports' what you are saying. Specifically there is nothing that indicates that the shot fired by the Deathray is ever 'resolved against' the 'hard-to-hit' model rather than simply 'resolved' as part of the last step in either the wound allocation or penetrating hit process.

 Neorealist wrote:

Lone Dragoon wrote:
1. Roll to hit, the death ray can skip this part. So let's say for arguments sake that it hits the flyer.
2. Roll armor penetration. This is where we run into the glitch with the death ray. It did not fire a snap shot, therefore we are unable to roll armor penetration. The rule for hard to hit is, "Shots resolved at a zooming flyer can only be resolved as snap shots (unless the model has the skyfire special rule as described on page 42). We have to ask, did the death ray resolve the shooting as a snapshot? No, so we cannot continue the resolution and the process would thereby end here.

Can you explain to me why you need to follow the 'hard-to-hit' rule to 'resolve the shot' if you are not targetting a model that has it? It seems pretty critical to your point; and there is no part of the 'armour penetration' rule that specifically indicates that the shot needs to be resolved against the flier itself to be 'resolved' in the general sense so far as i've found.

Quite simple actually. You need to target the skimmer to be able to hit it. Ask yourself this, if flyers didn't have the specific immunity to blast markers could they be hit by a blast marker targeting a ground unit that scatters onto it? The answer would be no, as the attack was not made using the rules for snap shots. For the shot to hit the flyer it needs to be resolved as a snap shot. Is the death ray using a snap shot? It's never capable of it. You have to have very explicit permission to override the rules, rules will tell us if they break another rule or not. For a perfect example of this see melta weapons. Armor penetration is only ever rolled on 1d6, but the melta rule tells us we roll 2d6 when at half range or under. There is explicit permission. Where is the explicit permission that the death ray does not need a snap shot to hit a flyer? Auto hitting is well and good, but you need to provide solid incontrovertible proof that overrules the hard to hit rule, and as there has been such a big discussion about this already, that proof is certainly not incontrovertible.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Neorealist wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote: You are ignoring that you do resolve against models hit by the deathray, and this triggers HtH

I'm not 'ignoring' it, i just haven't found any rules-evidence that 'supports' what you are saying. Specifically there is nothing that indicates that the shot fired by the Deathray is ever 'resolved against' the 'hard-to-hit' model rather than simply 'resolved' as part of the last step in either the wound allocation or penetrating hit process.

One hint for you, you have to follow the full process for the death ray. You have to determine if the HtH flyer is hit before you can ever move on to the armor penetration rolls, as the death ray does not meet the criteria for hitting a zooming flyer with the HtH rule it does not hit the target, and the attack is concluded against that unit. What you're suggesting here is that every unit in the game would never have to make a snap shot against a HtH model, because the HtH rule doesn't come into effect until after the armor penetration roll is made. HtH is not applied at the last step, it must be applied to the first step. You're saying that nothing specifically tells us to resolve Death ray against HtH, so it must ignore HtH. It's the other way around, we need specific permission to bypass HtH rather than the codex not mentioning it. Your whole argument is a variation on the, it doesn't say I can't (death ray doesn't say to resolve against HtH), so I can (if it doesn't resolve against HtH it must hit the model) argument which doesn't work with the rules.

Lone Dragoon wrote: Quite simple actually. You need to target the skimmer to be able to hit it. Ask yourself this, if flyers didn't have the specific immunity to blast markers could they be hit by a blast marker targeting a ground unit that scatters onto it? The answer would be no, as the attack was not made using the rules for snap shots. For the shot to hit the flyer it needs to be resolved as a snap shot. Is the death ray using a snap shot? It's never capable of it. You have to have very explicit permission to override the rules, rules will tell us if they break another rule or not. For a perfect example of this see melta weapons. Armor penetration is only ever rolled on 1d6, but the melta rule tells us we roll 2d6 when at half range or under. There is explicit permission. Where is the explicit permission that the death ray does not need a snap shot to hit a flyer? Auto hitting is well and good, but you need to provide solid incontrovertible proof that overrules the hard to hit rule, and as there has been such a big discussion about this already, that proof is certainly not incontrovertible.

Actually no, you do not need to target the skimmer to hit it. There are a number of effects which inflict an automatic hit without 'targetting', 'being resolved against', 'shooting at', etc the model. The Deathray never 'targets' the skimmer (or any other model on the board for that matter), and yet it 'hits' them just fine. I'm pretty sure blast , template, and large blast markers landing on fliers would also wound or roll to penetrate them if the 'Hard-to-Hit' rule didn't specifically say that wasn't allowed. Otherwise why include that latter prohibition against doing so?

Lone Dragoon wrote: One hint for you, you have to follow the full process for the death ray. You have to determine if the HtH flyer is hit before you can ever move on to the armor penetration rolls, as the death ray does not meet the criteria for hitting a zooming flyer with the HtH rule it does not hit the target, and the attack is concluded against that unit. What you're suggesting here is that every unit in the game would never have to make a snap shot against a HtH model, because the HtH rule doesn't come into effect until after the armor penetration roll is made. HtH is not applied at the last step, it must be applied to the first step. You're saying that nothing specifically tells us to resolve Death ray against HtH, so it must ignore HtH. It's the other way around, we need specific permission to bypass HtH rather than the codex not mentioning it. Your whole argument is a variation on the, it doesn't say I can't (death ray doesn't say to resolve against HtH), so I can (if it doesn't resolve against HtH it must hit the model) argument which doesn't work with the rules.

I'm saying that 'Hard-to-Hit' requires that the shot be 'resolved against' the model. if the Deathray is never 'resolved against' the model, then the 'hard-to-hit' rule has no way of triggering and therefore no way of effecting it. I do not believe i need to find a specific rule that states 'The Deathray Ignores the normal rules for Hard-to-Hit' as that as likely (read: 'as impossible') as finding a rule which says "The Deathray is effected by the normal rules for Hard-to-Hit". In other words it's a wild goose chase to look for such a rule instead of following the rules that are present in the Deathray itself.

 Neorealist wrote:
I'm saying that 'Hard-to-Hit' requires that the shot be 'resolved against' the model. if the Deathray is never 'resolved against' the model, then the 'hard-to-hit' rule has no way of triggering and therefore no way of effecting it. I do not believe i need to find a specific rule that states 'The Deathray Ignores the normal rules for Hard-to-Hit' as that as likely (read: 'as impossible') as finding a rule which says "The Deathray is effected by the normal rules for Hard-to-Hit". In other words it's a wild goose chase to look for such a rule instead of following the rules that are present in the Deathray itself.

First I'll point out all vehicles are units and models, the word you should actually use is unit not model. Actually the death ray DOES resolve against the units (it doesn't resolve against individual models, but does resolve against units), despite your insistence to the contrary. If it does not resolve against units, how does it apply wounds to an infantry unit under it?

 Neorealist wrote:
I do not believe i need to find a specific rule that states 'The Deathray Ignores the normal rules for Hard-to-Hit' as that as likely (read: 'as impossible') as finding a rule which says "The Deathray is effected by the normal rules for Hard-to-Hit". In other words it's a wild goose chase to look for such a rule instead of following the rules that are present in the Deathray itself.

Since to me it doesn't seem like you understand the concept of how the rules interact, I'll explain.. We have a rule that constitutes how to handle shooting at flyers. All shooting at the flyer must follow those rules, unless it has a rule stating otherwise. In other words, unless the death ray has that exceptionary clause, it MUST follow the rules for shooting. We don't get to say, it doesn't have to follow this rule because it doesn't say it does. You follow the broad rule unless you have an exception, and the death ray does not have a specific exception.

Lone Dragoon wrote: First I'll point out all vehicles are units and models, the word you should actually use is unit not model. Actually the death ray DOES resolve against the units (it doesn't resolve against individual models, but does resolve against units), despite your insistence to the contrary. If it does not resolve against units, how does it apply wounds to an infantry unit under it?

I think 'model' is appropriate, but to be honest i don't really care one way or the other as it's not really relevent to my points. As for how it applies wounds? it follows the 'Allocate wounds and Remove Casualties' section of the shooting phase, which i will reiterate never requires the shot to be 'resolved against' the models that the wounds are inflicted on.

Lone Dragoon wrote: Since to me it doesn't seem like you understand the concept of how the rules interact, I'll explain.. We have a rule that constitutes how to handle shooting at flyers. All shooting at the flyer must follow those rules, unless it has a rule stating otherwise. In other words, unless the death ray has that exceptionary clause, it MUST follow the rules for shooting. We don't get to say, it doesn't have to follow this rule because it doesn't say it does. You follow the broad rule unless you have an exception, and the death ray does not have a specific exception.

yes we have a rule that shows how to handle shooting at fliers. What we 'don't' have is a rule that applies the 'Hard-to-Hit' to shots 'resolved against' the battlefield...

 Neorealist wrote:
What we 'don't' have is a rule that applies the 'Hard-to-Hit' to shots 'resolved against' the battlefield...

And there's the rub, we are NOT resolving shots against the battlefield. We are resolving a shot that stretches from point A to point B and interacts with models in a unit that fall beneath the line. If the shot was "resolved against the battlefield" as you put it, then it would have little to no interaction with the units that the line passes over, as the units are not part of the battlefield they are on it. You said it was resolved against the battlefield, thus it would ignore all intervening models that compose a unit. That's the wrong interpretation. It is a weapon that does not target a unit per se, but it DOES interact with them. How do we handle what happens? We resolve the shooting attack (because let's call it what it really is) as per the rules. The rules for the death ray are special on the to hit portion, if a model is under the line it is hit. However the flyers have an additional rule on how to handle shots at them. The death ray's damage is worked out on a unit by unit basis, and still follows all rules for purposes of granting cover and the like. Thus to determine the damage on a unit (this is why I pointed out to use that word) you determine if models in the unit are under the line. Thus we'll use this example, the death ray passes over 4 units in one shot not using skyfire, a zooming flyer, a unit in cover, a unit out of line of sight, and a unit in the open. On the unit in the open the line passes over 3 models, by the death ray's rules, and since the unit has no special rules to counteract having those hits allocated, 3 hits are inflicted. Now we determine the unit in cover and 4 models lie under the line (again no rule counteracts those hits), thus the shooting attack inflicts 4 hits on the unit. Next we go to the unit that is out of LoS, and find the line passes over 5 models. Since the unit is hiding fully behind a wall, and out of LoS the death ray is unable to hit that unit, and thus the hits against this unit are discarded. Here is an example of there being a rule that counteracts the death ray, while there are models under the line there are none of the unit in LoS thus the shooting attack fails against that unit. Finally we come to the zooming flyer, and we'll say it falls under the line. Again there is a rule that counteracts the death ray rule on hitting with the weapon, and we'll go step by step.


1. Does the weapon being fired currently have skyfire? If yes go to 3, if no go to 2.
2. Was the attack resolved as a snap shot? If yes go to 3, if no attack misses end here.
3. If the attack was made using skyfire, or resolved as a snap shot, armor penetration may be rolled as normal.'

You need to have it spelled out in the rule that it overrides any other rule for it to do so. A perfect example, the template weapons. Template weapons cannot snap fire ever (until we get one that tells us it can and gives rules for it), but they are allowed to overwatch. Overwatch requires a snap shot to do, and template weapons are not able to make a snap shot. However template weapons override the needing to make a snap shot by inflicting d3 hits automatically. Why is it template weapons are able to do this? They have a specific rule that overrides the general snap shot rule, because it says it overrides it. Rules that are supposed to ignore (or alter) other rules will tell us specifically what rules they ignore (or alter). If there is no mention there is no overriding the rule. The death ray overrides the "to hit" roll because it specifically overrides the to hit roll. It does not specifically override the Hard to Hit rule, because the death ray does not specifically say it does not.

You've gone pretty far..the question was if you can hit models in close combat.
Regarding the flyer rules i will shoot with skyfire rule so I can shoot a flyer with the death ray

Skyfire or no, the codex rules will win out for the short term. If the codex says it hits the Flyer, then it gets hit. Same with Blood Lance etc.. In the long term, I can see those abilities getting the Beam type for PSAs and this argument coming back up. Hopefully a FAQ will come out about it before then.

A model with this special rule, or that
is firing a weapon with this special rule,
fires using its normal Ballistic Skill when
shooting at Flyers, Flying Monstrous
Creatures and Skimmers. Unless it also
has the Interceptor special rule, it can
only fire snap shots against other targets.

So, Death Ray can´t shoot at flyers, because don´t use BS.

*sigh*, Sorry that is incorrect. You are not prevented from firing normally with weapons that do not require a ballistic skill roll, just snapshots.

 Neorealist wrote:
*sigh*, Sorry that is incorrect. You are not prevented from firing normally with weapons that do not require a ballistic skill roll, just snapshots.

yeah yeah Very cool to ignore the rules that do not like.

A model with this special rule, or that
is firing a weapon with this special rule,
fires using its normal Ballistic Skill when
shooting at Flyers[u], Flying Monstrous
Creatures and Skimmers. Unless it also
has the Interceptor special rule, it can
only fire snap shots against other targets.

I'm familiar with the skyfire rule, having quoted from it already previously in this thread. Are you familiar with the 'normal' rules for firing?

According to some people this game is tougher than Rocket Surgery. I will say that I read the posts in these threads and others, to laugh at the sad state of affairs our education system has had on the general reading comprehension of our society as a whole.

It's an international forum; you get folk here from 'all' over our fine planet.

I don't intend to comment much in 'You Make Da Call' as I'm definately no rules lawyer, but I can't help myself on this occasion. I'm personally impressed at the amount of logical argument in this thread, and the fact that it hasn't degenerated into name-calling and general nerd-rage as so many others tend to do! After reading through the arguments and re-reading the rules, here's my 2 cents:

I originally supported Neorealist, as the Death Ray special rule states 'every unit (friendly or enemy) under the line suffers hits...', so since the Death Ray doesn't roll to hit than it can automatically hit anything it wants, provided it is within range. (And no, I'm not a Necron player. In fact, I intensely dislike Doomscythes in their entirety!)

However the rule book states in the hard to hit rule that 'shots resolved against a zooming flyer can only be resolved as snap shots unless the model has the skyfire special rule'. This does not stop the Death Ray from hitting, however as 'resolving damage against vehicles' on page 74 suggests, 'resolving' is not just hitting, therefore anything wishing to penetrate a flyer's armour must be fired as a snap shot (unless it has the skyfire special rule) - so as the Doomscythe cannot fire snap shots ('any shooting attack that does not use a ballistic skill - like a Necron Monlith's Portal - cannot be fired as a snapshot') if it chooses not to have the skyfire special rule then it cannot target air targets and vise versa.

Putting it simply - To resolve damage (hit+wound/armour pentration+remove casualties) against a flyer with auto-hit weapons (such as the Death Ray) you must have the skyfire special rule. So one cannot target both ground and air targets at once with the Death Ray.
Am I correct?

As for hitting units in CC, the rulebook specifically states you cannot shoot units locked in combat, unless you are shooting a blast weapon and it accidentally ends up over the combatants. I find it hard to believe that the thin, precise line you choose to draw from a Deathray could accidentally end up hitting units in close combat.


Sorry if I'm completely wrong, or have just re-opened a closed case, but after reading through such finely presented arguments I couldn't help myself!


40k Pirate

EDIT: Just curious, but how many people that support this point of view are actually Necron players?

 40k Pirate wrote:
As for hitting units in CC, the rulebook specifically states you cannot shoot units locked in combat, unless you are shooting a blast weapon and it accidentally ends up over the combatants. I find it hard to believe that the thin, precise line you choose to draw from a Deathray could accidentally end up hitting units in close combat.

Right, you're trying to equate shooting with hitting. Thatd be awesome for orks - shoot 90 times and they all hit!

The real problem with saying that the Doomscythe cant hit flyers is that the weapon gets all the perks of being a beam with none of the detracts. It says in the weapon rule it hits all models under the line, It dosent say all models but flyers, It says all models. This means that because it hits all models, unless you have a rule that specifically counters this weapon (Which the flyer rule does not) then the more specific rule (This weapon htis ALL models) wins out. Its not codex v rulebook, it is in fact specific v general.

And neo, I think ive said this every time youve posted but I'm going to say it again, please stop using yellow. It is killer to read.

Hard to Hit is the more specific rule, and states the requirements to resolve the shot against anything with HtH. If you do not resolve according to HtH you CANNOT affect the model.

But the Death ray resolves the htis itself. HtH dosent matter because the Death Ray says it automatically hits. HtH is inconsequential b/c I automtically hit you. Are you a model? yes. Are you under my line? yes again. All requirements to the death ray to AUTOMATICALLY HIT are fulfilled. So that means I AUTOMATICALLY HIT. I know people find it hard to lose a bit of their OP'ness of their flyers but this is not a grey area. Its black and white as the words in the necron codex.

Yes, and any weapon that automatically hits is not allowed to resolve against a HtH model. That is black and white in the Snapfire rule

Are you resolving against a flyer, without Skyfire? Then you must snap fire, and if you snapfire you cannot automatically hit.

Deathray tries to automaticaly hit, so must use Skyfire to hit a zooming flyer, otherwise the shot cannot resolve.

And there is a complete and concise argument that works. Point conceded. So I can death ray it, If I skyfire?

Yes, which has always been the argument - what you cannot do is skyfire against a flyer and also hit ground targets (as that would be a snapfire) or vice versa.

Some people are claiming that beam types can do both - which is not possible under the current rules.

Vindicare-Obsession wrote:And neo, I think ive said this every time youve posted but I'm going to say it again, please stop using yellow. It is killer to read.

It reads just fine on my PC, perhaps consider adjusting yours rather than giving me instruction?

Is it impossiable to maybe... I dont know.... Stop coloring your text? Yellow is about as easy for me to read on a white background as hebrew.

 Vindicare-Obsession wrote:
Is it impossiable to maybe... I dont know.... Stop coloring your text? Yellow is about as easy for me to read on a white background as hebrew.

Hebrew is easy to read. You just have to remember, right to left, not left to right.

Vindicare-Obsession wrote:Is it impossiable to maybe... I dont know.... Stop coloring your text? Yellow is about as easy for me to read on a white background as hebrew.

Not impossible, no. But it is an imposition on me, and therefore a problem which you should try and fix on your own before asking me to change something.