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Maybe an example will help?

Unit 1 has 5 models. Models A, B, C, D, E.

Movement phase: Choose a unit to move. Unit 1 is chosen.
Unit 1 is moving. Now move each model on an individual basis.
Model A moves 2"
Model B moves 3"
Model C moves 1"
Model D does not move.
Model E does not move.

Unit 1 has completed it's move and may not be selected to move again. However, only 3 of 5 models actually moved.
If you choose to advance with Unit 1, all 5 models may move an additional D6.
If you do in fact advance, even if the individual models have not moved or advanced further, Unit 1 still counts has having advanced.
If Unit 1 did not advance, you may shoot.

Shooting Phase:
Unit 1 is chosen to shoot. Unit 1 did move, but shooting doesn't care about the Unit moving, it only cares about the models moving.
Model A moved. It gets a -1 to hit with its heavy weapon when firing.
Model B moved. It gets a -1 to hit with its heavy weapon when firing.
Model C moved. It gets a -1 to hit with its heavy weapon when firing.
Model D did not move. It had no penalties to hit with its heavy weapon when firing.
Model E did not move. It had no penalties to hit with its heavy weapon when firing.

This is how the rules are written.

 deviantduck wrote:
Maybe an example will help?

Unit 1 has 5 models. Models A, B, C, D, E.

Movement phase: Choose a unit to move. Unit 1 is chosen.
Unit 1 is moving. Now move each model on an individual basis.
Model A moves 2"
Model B moves 3"
Model C moves 1"
Model D does not move.
Model E does not move.

Unit 1 has completed it's move and may not be selected to move again. However, only 3 of 5 models actually moved.
If you choose to advance with Unit 1, all 5 models may move an additional D6.
If you do in fact advance, even if the individual models have not moved or advanced further, Unit 1 still counts has having advanced.
If Unit 1 did not advance, you may shoot.

Shooting Phase:
Unit 1 is chosen to shoot. Unit 1 did move, but shooting doesn't care about the Unit moving, it only cares about the models moving.
Model A moved. It gets a -1 to hit with its heavy weapon when firing.
Model B moved. It gets a -1 to hit with its heavy weapon when firing.
Model C moved. It gets a -1 to hit with its heavy weapon when firing.
Model D did not move. It had no penalties to hit with its heavy weapon when firing.
Model E did not move. It had no penalties to hit with its heavy weapon when firing.

This is how the rules are written.

What the OP is claiming is that if a unit has moved, then it's models have moved.

Pieceocake wrote:
I understand the concept BaconCatBug, I just don't see a rule that says "moving" does not apply to the unit.

I don't see a rule that says I can't 'throw an Egg and Cress Sandwich at a statue of Issac Newton to automatically pass a morale test' either. "It doesn't say it doesn't apply" is not an argument. You have to show that it DOES apply. The rule for Moving and Firing Heavy weapons only cares if the model itself firing moves, not any other models in its unit.

I don't see a rule that says I can't 'throw an Egg and Cress Sandwich at a statue of Issac Newton to automatically pass a morale test' either. "It doesn't say it doesn't apply" is not an argument. You have to show that it DOES apply. The rule for Moving and Firing Heavy weapons only cares if the model itself firing moves, not any other models in its unit.

"UNITS
Models move and fight in units, made up of one or more models." p.176 BRB

This statement in the rule book says that models move in units, and units are made up of one or more models. I don't know how much more clear I can be. I'm not making gak up BCB, look at the p. 176 of the basic rule book.

What you all have been saying is that for some reason Moving a unit ignores this statement. There is no statement that says "Models in a unit that you have chosen to move, but remain stationary, do not count as having been moved." It just specifies that when you move a unit, you don't have to actually move every model.

The above quote though still says that models MOVE ... in units (and then follows by defining what a unit is). Meaning that a unit move applies to the whole unit, not to each model.
What's better is that this method is actually consistent with EVERY other action a unit can take. Again, Units advance together, fall back together, fight together, charge together, consolidate together, shoot together, pile in together.

Yes, they move and fight in units. The rules then go on to specify how they move and fight in units (i.e. pick a unit to move, then individual models in the unit move or don't). Nothing in that original sentence says that all models move if any model in the unit moves, they say they move "in units". They're still in units, they move individually within the unit when the unit is selected to move.

Try reading page 6 of the Battle Primer, OP. BRB 180. That’s where it tells you it’s model by model.

It's too bad their other rules are so broken. Since you have to fill a gap to allow models to advance and shoot, it hurts my argument.

Here are the conditions that make these combinations of rules awkward and unplayable:
When a unit advances, even though it never mentions models specifically being affected by this "Advance action" only in that their maximum move increases for the phase. The rule calls out that the UNIT is considered to advance, not any model.

"When you pick a unit to move in the Movement phase, you can declare that it will Advance. Roll a dice and add the result to the Move characteristics of all models in the unit for that Movement phase. A unit that Advances can’t shoot or charge later that turn"

Now this unfortunately breaks the game and is ignored, but if you play the model by model shooting rules and IGNORE the "advancing effecting a unit" issue, you can select a unit that has a mix of assault weapons and heavy weapons to shoot. If the heavy weapons stood still, according to your logic of rules, they can fire with no penalty. They may have an extended move characteristic, but the heavy weapon models did not actually move.

I'm not trying to "gotcha" on rules. GW needing a rewrite is something we can ALL agree on. i'm just trying to make sense of these weird differences in how people play. It appears that everyone wants to move models in units attached to heavy weapons and keep their heavy accuracy though.

The -1 for moving or not moving is a specific property for Heavy Weapons, which specifies models and not units. For movement, you are given the option of models moving or not moving when the unit is considered to move. This means you go to the individual models to determine whether they moved or not.

If you advance, there is no similar provision for you to be able to consider whether individual models advanced.or not. This means that all models are considered to have advanced since you do not have the provision for advancing only individual models. This means the restrictions from advancing would apply to all models .

The -1 for moving or not moving is a specific property for Heavy Weapons, which specifies models and not units. For movement, you are given the option of models moving or not moving when the unit is considered to move. This means you go to the individual models to determine whether they moved or not.

If you advance, there is no similar provision for you to be able to consider whether individual models advanced.or not. This means that all models are considered to have advanced since you do not have the provision for advancing only individual models. This means the restrictions from advancing would apply to all models .

This is where we differ in opinion. The heavy weapon being on a model by model basis is a necessity for mixed units to work, other wise everyone would be -1 to hit if any model with a heavy weapon in the unit moved. That's just crazy.

For your second point - you are given options to move when you advance as well. The move characteristic is added to all models, but the restriction to firing is ONLY on the unit, not any model. Most people ignore (rightly so) that because it would prevent assault weapons from working as is obviously intended.

My question is why is the advancing of a unit treated differently than the moving of a unit? In the rule book there are 2 different statements that say that both scenarios should be treated the same:

"Models move and fight in units, made
up of one or more models. A unit must
be set up and finish any sort of move
as a group, with every model within 2"
horizontally, and 6" vertically, of at least
one other model from their unit: this is
called unit coherency. If anything causes
a unit to become split up during a battle,
it must re-establish its unit coherency the
next time it moves."

"When you pick a unit to move in the
Movement phase, you can declare that
it will Advance. Roll a dice and add the
result to the Move characteristics of all
models in the unit for that Movement
phase. A unit that Advances can’t shoot
or charge later that turn."

One says units move together, the other says a unit advances together. Neither mention things on a model by model basis. Hell the only reason I think they mention model by model is because it's not feasible to pick up an entire unit and move it at the same time.
What really gets me here is that after advancing you just go back to the Moving step to complete your move. You can choose any models to move or not after adding the additional advance number to their move.

Pieceocake wrote:

The -1 for moving or not moving is a specific property for Heavy Weapons, which specifies models and not units. For movement, you are given the option of models moving or not moving when the unit is considered to move. This means you go to the individual models to determine whether they moved or not.

If you advance, there is no similar provision for you to be able to consider whether individual models advanced.or not. This means that all models are considered to have advanced since you do not have the provision for advancing only individual models. This means the restrictions from advancing would apply to all models .

This is where we differ in opinion. The heavy weapon being on a model by model basis is a necessity for mixed units to work, other wise everyone would be -1 to hit if any model with a heavy weapon in the unit moved. That's just crazy.

For your second point - you are given options to move when you advance as well. The move characteristic is added to all models, but the restriction to firing is ONLY on the unit, not any model. Most people ignore (rightly so) that because it would prevent assault weapons from working as is obviously intended.

My question is why is the advancing of a unit treated differently than the moving of a unit? In the rule book there are 2 different statements that say that both scenarios should be treated the same:

"Models move and fight in units, made
up of one or more models. A unit must
be set up and finish any sort of move
as a group, with every model within 2"
horizontally, and 6" vertically, of at least
one other model from their unit: this is
called unit coherency. If anything causes
a unit to become split up during a battle,
it must re-establish its unit coherency the
next time it moves."

"When you pick a unit to move in the
Movement phase, you can declare that
it will Advance. Roll a dice and add the
result to the Move characteristics of all
models in the unit for that Movement
phase. A unit that Advances can’t shoot
or charge later that turn."

One says units move together, the other says a unit advances together. Neither mention things on a model by model basis. Hell the only reason I think they mention model by model is because it's not feasible to pick up an entire unit and move it at the same time.
What really gets me here is that after advancing you just go back to the Moving step to complete your move. You can choose any models to move or not after adding the additional advance number to their move.

True. It never once mentions moving an individual model... except for this whole part where it very clearly describes how you move individual models that belong to a unit that has been chosen to move.

"Start your Movement phase by picking one of your units and moving each model in that unit until you've moved all the models you want to. You can then pick another unit to move, until you have moved as many of your units as you wish. No model can be moved more than once in each movement phase" p.177 BRB

But other than that clearly expressed section of the rules that explains exactly what everyone has been telling you, you're right.

Okay, so ignore the entire advancing example, deviantduck. Thanks for adding to the discussion.

Pieceocake wrote:

The -1 for moving or not moving is a specific property for Heavy Weapons, which specifies models and not units. For movement, you are given the option of models moving or not moving when the unit is considered to move. This means you go to the individual models to determine whether they moved or not.

If you advance, there is no similar provision for you to be able to consider whether individual models advanced.or not. This means that all models are considered to have advanced since you do not have the provision for advancing only individual models. This means the restrictions from advancing would apply to all models .

This is where we differ in opinion. The heavy weapon being on a model by model basis is a necessity for mixed units to work, other wise everyone would be -1 to hit if any model with a heavy weapon in the unit moved. That's just crazy.

You are making assumptions on RAI here, not necessarily unwarranted, but still RAI. The weapon says that if the model moved it gets a -1. If you don't move the model, the model didn't move, so it doesn't get the -1.

Pieceocake wrote:
For your second point - you are given options to move when you advance as well. The move characteristic is added to all models, but the restriction to firing is ONLY on the unit, not any model. Most people ignore (rightly so) that because it would prevent assault weapons from working as is obviously intended.

You miss the point. Whether or not you move, you still advance. You don't have the option to turn off the advance part by not moving; you still get the bonus to potential movement of the model whether or not you choose to exercise the option. It states "Units that advance", not "units that move", There's no opt-out for a single model from advancing, so the penalties from advancing still apply. Whether or not you move, if the unit advanced you can not shoot or charge. You have the explicit exception of models with assault weapons being able to fire, but their exception would not extend to models without assault weapons in the unit.

Pieceocake wrote:
For your second point - you are given options to move when you advance as well. The move characteristic is added to all models, but the restriction to firing is ONLY on the unit, not any model. Most people ignore (rightly so) that because it would prevent assault weapons from working as is obviously intended.


You miss the point. Whether or not you move, you still advance. You don't have the option to turn off the advance part by not moving; you still get the bonus to potential movement of the model whether or not you choose to exercise the option. It states "Units that advance", not "units that move", There's no opt-out for a single model from advancing, so the penalties from advancing still apply. Whether or not you move, if the unit advanced you can not shoot or charge. You have the explicit exception of models with assault weapons being able to fire, but their exception would not extend to models without assault weapons in the unit.

You aren't "turning off the advance". A heavy weapon never asks if you advance or otherwise. It specifically just asks if your model has moved. If you take it at face value, the model can shoot with no penalty if its unit advanced but it stood still. The advancing applies ONLY to the unit. [I'm not arguing that this SHOULD be the case, just the way everyone's logic follows down the chain if you treat every scenario in the same manner]

This is why I think moving applies also to the unit. If you look at falling back, the same language is used. Every other step is done by units. I can quote every instance in the entire battle primer if you'd like.

There's no opt-out for a single model from advancing

I would like to emphasize this point - I totally agree. There is NEVER a way for a single model in a unit to opt out of ANY unit action. Special weapons allow you to treat actions differently, but when a unit moves heavy gets a penalty. its the same thing as a unit advancing and assault weapons getting a benefit.

Pieceocake wrote:
I'm not arguing that this SHOULD be the case, just the way everyone's logic follows down the chain if you treat every scenario in the same manner

The thing about 40k ruleset is that its written very inconsistently and considers everything on a case-by-case scenario.

1. Not every phase has same number of steps to resolve it, and at each phase, it can ask you to check at model level or unit level.
2. The "Units" heading you keep referring to is a description/definition of what comprises of a "Unit". How movement, or "Move", is defined and governed, can be found elsewhere under the heading "Movement Phase".
3. You insist our points are irrelevant to the discussion by referring to a segment of a paragraph - see my example to see what happens when you take a sentence out of context and read it at it's own facevalue only.

Pieceocake wrote:
There is NEVER a way for a single model in a unit to opt out of ANY unit action. Special weapons allow you to treat actions differently, but when a unit moves heavy gets a penalty. its the same thing as a unit advancing and assault weapons getting a benefit.

Rules for heavy weapon clearly states you check it at model level.

As Dr. Tom points out, this is a RAI argument on the wording/order of appearance on the battle primer.

you can house rule it as you see fit, but this is how it works RAW.

Pieceocake wrote:

Pieceocake wrote:
For your second point - you are given options to move when you advance as well. The move characteristic is added to all models, but the restriction to firing is ONLY on the unit, not any model. Most people ignore (rightly so) that because it would prevent assault weapons from working as is obviously intended.


You miss the point. Whether or not you move, you still advance. You don't have the option to turn off the advance part by not moving; you still get the bonus to potential movement of the model whether or not you choose to exercise the option. It states "Units that advance", not "units that move", There's no opt-out for a single model from advancing, so the penalties from advancing still apply. Whether or not you move, if the unit advanced you can not shoot or charge. You have the explicit exception of models with assault weapons being able to fire, but their exception would not extend to models without assault weapons in the unit.

You aren't "turning off the advance". A heavy weapon never asks if you advance or otherwise.

Because as a unit you can't fire if you advanced. Assault weapons in specific deal with that for individual models,

Pieceocake wrote:
It specifically just asks if your model has moved. If you take it at face value, the model can shoot with no penalty if its unit advanced but it stood still.

Wrong. The penalty of not shooting is there whether or not you move. Now, on a model by model basis you can go through and select the ones with assault weapons because those ones get to specifically ignore the ban.

Pieceocake wrote:
The advancing applies ONLY to the unit. [I'm not arguing that this SHOULD be the case, just the way everyone's logic follows down the chain if you treat every scenario in the same manner]

Wrong. You have no model by model mention for advancing. As I explained, whether or not you choose to move, you have advanced. When the unit advances, when you roll a die to determine the extra amount of movement is possible, that applies to all models in the unit. Here's the quote -

"Roll a dice and add the result to the Move characteristics of all models in the unit for that Movement Phase." There's no opt out, it is applied to all models. Choosing not to move does not prevent that die from being added to the movement stat for how much you could potentially move. You could declare you are advancing, have everybody move only 1", or for that matter stand still, and all the models would still have advanced because that number was added to the movement characteristic. Since each model got the extra movement potential, each model also gets the restriction of not being able to shoot or charge.

Assault weapons - "A model with an Assault weapon can fire it even if it Advanced earlier that turn." You can see that that gets you back to looking at whether models advanced. A model with a Heavy weapon that Advanced doesn't get that permission to shoot that the Assault weapon gives. This means a model with a Heavy weapon doesn't get to fire it if the model Advanced. And, as I showed above, if the unit Advanced all the models in it Advanced.

The description of units on p2 of the Battle Primer describes the concept of unit coherency and how models are organised on the battlefield. Once that concept is described it can be used, or modified, by later rules.

The rules for moving clearly show that movement is done on a model-by-model basis within a unit. The rules for Units on p2 still apply, specifically the coherency rules. The basic movement rules are an example of model-by-model rules. They require you to pick a unit, but the rules under the heading "Moving" clearly specify they are applied at the model level. The Advancing rules are an example of a rule that affects an entire unit. There is no contradiction here. Rules can be applied to different game elements.

The same applies to shooting. Heavy weapons only care about the model, not the unit. This is specified very clearly. In order for it to work how the OP is asserting the rule would have to say something like "if a unit has moved, models armed with Heavy weapons suffer a -1 to hit penalty". Incidentally, this is how the rules used to work, and how they used to be worded in previous editions. For further clarification look at the rules for Grenades. These specifically deal with units, not models.

The problem seems to be that the OP has failed to understand the rules work perfectly well dealing with models or units as the rules require. There is no contradiction involved.

I have not failed to understand anything. I just find it curious that when everyone selects units to move, they instead drill down to the model level instead of applying the consistent UNIT selection that applies to EVERY other choice in the game. I understand how everyone plays the game currently, I just think its wrong. There is a SINGLE action that is taken on a model by model basis - how does that seem like a correct interpretation of the rules?

Also, its hilarious that a special weapon rule is dictating how people play a movement rule.

Pieceocake wrote:
I have not failed to understand anything. I just find it curious that when everyone selects units to move, they instead drill down to the model level instead of applying the consistent UNIT selection that applies to EVERY other choice in the game. I understand how everyone plays the game currently, I just think its wrong. There is a SINGLE action that is taken on a model by model basis - how does that seem like a correct interpretation of the rules?

Also, its hilarious that a special weapon rule is dictating how people play a movement rule.

Shooting is also done model-by-model. As is close combat. Plenty of things in the game are done on a model-by-model basis, not unit-by-unit. In fact, pretty much every major rule in the game is consistent with the movement rules, just not in the way you think. In both shooting and close combat we select a unit to act, but the actions are resolved model-by-model (albeit we often roll all the dice together for the sake of convenience). A weapon rule isn't dictating a movement rule at all. You're the only one here who thinks that. The concept is really, really simple: it is entirely logical and consistent to have a situation where a unit can be said to have moved but a model within that unit can simultaneously be said to have not moved. That's not contradictory and that seems to be the problem you're having when it comes to understanding the rule.

Shooting is also done model-by-model. As is close combat. Plenty of things in the game are done on a model-by-model basis, not unit-by-unit. In fact, pretty much every major rule in the game is consistent with the movement rules, just not in the way you think. In both shooting and close combat we select a unit to act, but the actions are resolved model-by-model (albeit we often roll all the dice together for the sake of convenience). A weapon rule isn't dictating a movement rule at all. You're the only one here who thinks that. The concept is really, really simple: it is entirely logical and consistent to have a situation where a unit can be said to have moved but a model within that unit can simultaneously be said to have not moved. That's not contradictory and that seems to be the problem you're having when it comes to understanding the rule.

This is where you are just wrong. I'm talking about UNIT actions. Moving is clearly a unit action. You NEVER select models to move by themselves. You select a unit and then choose to move the unit, which allows you to adjust each model up to its given move distance with the restriction of staying in coherency. This follows with the fact that you CANNOT select a UNIT to move again if ANY of the models in the unit have moved.

While different weapons shoot at different ranges and account for moving/advancing/LOS/S/AP/D/etc differently, the act of SHOOTING is a UNIT action. You CANNOT select a UNIT to shoot again after even one model has shot, and you've moved to the next unit.

While you may want to keep a unit daisy chained back to a buffing character and as such forfeit the full charge move of several models, even the model farthest from the fight has charged. There are NO models in a charging unit that are considered to have NOT charged.

While you may be attempting to wrap a guard squad with a death company squad and have only put 2 models within 1" of an enemy model or 1" of a model within 1", the other 8 are still considered to have FOUGHT when the UNIT is selected to FIGHT. No one can opt out of the action and no one can be selected again, because the UNIT has already fought.

Outside of the way everyone seems to see moving, tell me ONE instance where a single model can be selected for some action that is completely separate from its UNIT action. Or even show me an action a unit can take where models can "Opt out" and ignore the penalties of.

Stratagems like Hellfire round even make you select the UNIT and then activate the stratagem. The model never shoots outside of the group action to shoot.

You're only looking at it from the top level. Moving and shooting is initially selected by unit, but then drills down to model by model after said unit is chosen.

I't s like saying you read a book only by chapters and not paragraph by paragraph. When actually the rules for reading the book are Choose Chapter 1. Then read paragraph 1, paragraph 2, paragraph 3, then choose Chapter 2...

You're only looking at it from the top level. Moving and shooting is initially selected by unit, but then drills down to model by model after said unit is chosen.

I't s like saying you read a book only by chapters and not paragraph by paragraph. When actually the rules for reading the book are Choose Chapter 1. Then read paragraph 1, paragraph 2, paragraph 3, then choose Chapter 2...

I'm looking at the general actions at the top level because they are top level actions... What I'm saying is that you guys are calling the Move Chapter Heading, Paragraph 1, instead of the Move action being a Chapter Heading.

H=Move
P1=Select Unit to move
P2=Select model, move up to Move distance
P3=Repeat until move as many models as desired
P4=Repeat with UNITS that HAVE NOT Moved until complete

H=Shoot
P1=Select Unit to Shoot
P2=Select model, Shoot up to gun distance
P3=Repeat until you Shoot as many models as desired/possible
P4=Repeat with UNITS that HAVE NOT Shot until complete

H=Charge
P1=Select Unit to Charge
P2=Select model, move up to Charge distance
P3=Repeat until move as many models as desired
P4=Repeat with UNITS that HAVE NOT Charged until complete

I don't know how many ways I need to organize the information for you guys to catch on to the pattern.

Can you answer this question:

If a model armed with a Heavy weapon doesn't move, but other models in its unit do, does the Heavy weapon model get -1 to hit? If so, why does the shooting section specifically mention models when talking about Heavy weapons? According to you that distinction would be meaningless.

I can answer your question:

A Unit is selected to have moved in the movement phase. 4 bolter models move and a heavy weapon remains stationary. The unit is designated as "Moved" and can no longer be selected in this phase.

In the shooting phase the bolters look at their rapid fire weapons and see that they have no benefit or penalty for the Unit moving.

The heavy weapon looks at it's rules and sees that being in a unit that moved causes a -1 to hit penalty.

If the whole unit does not move, the heavy weapon receives no penalty.

Similar scenario:
Choose to advance with 4 bolters and 1 assault weapon

In the shooting phase the bolters look at their rapid fire weapons and see that they cannot override the "if a unit advances, it cannot shoot" restriction.

The assault weapon looks at it's rules and sees that being in a unit that advanced causes a -1 to hit penalty, but it can still shoot.

The reason to mention the special rules is so that you can make the choice up front to move the unit to get in rapid fire range, at the expense of the heavy weapon or sit still to fire the heavy more accurately. At that moment, which action is more valuable?

Pieceocake wrote:
I can answer your question:

A Unit is selected to have moved in the movement phase. 4 bolter models move and a heavy weapon remains stationary. The unit is designated as "Moved" and can no longer be selected in this phase.

In the shooting phase the bolters look at their rapid fire weapons and see that they have no benefit or penalty for the Unit moving.

The heavy weapon looks at it's rules and sees that being in a unit that moved causes a -1 to hit penalty.

You're wrong. I really can't say it any other way, though myself and others have tried. The rules for Heavy weapons apply to models, not units. I have a unit of 5 Marines. 1 has a Lascannon. In the Movement phase I move 4 of them, but not the one with the Lascannon. In the shooting phase I check to see if the model with the Heavy weapon has moved. It has not. It doesn't get the -1 to hit. The rule for Heavy weapons specifies models. It's there in black and white. The concept of a model having moved if it's unit has is simply not present in the rules. This idea that the unit is designated as having "Moved", and then having that status apply to all the models in the unit is something you've come up with yourself.

I'll repeat what I said in an earlier post: it is 100% possible to have a situation where a unit is considered to have moved but the individual models within the unit have not. That's completely consistent with the way the rules are written. It's how the rules work.

Pieceocake wrote:
A Unit is selected to have moved in the movement phase. 4 bolter models move and a heavy weapon remains stationary. The unit is designated as "Moved" and can no longer be selected in this phase.

False. There is no such thing as being designated to have "Moved". Lack of such designation does not result in being able to selected to move again.

Pieceocake wrote:
In the shooting phase the bolters look at their rapid fire weapons and see that they have no benefit or penalty for the Unit moving.
The heavy weapon looks at it's rules and sees that being in a unit that moved causes a -1 to hit penalty.

False. Heavy weapon checks if the model has moved.

It doesn't matter if you think the rule should be something else. RAW is RAW. What you're constant arguing for is "I think the rules should be like this, so this is HIWPI."

This is so stupid, how are people arguing over the handful of rules in 40k that are actually written very clearly and have nothing to confuse.

You can't attribute how 1 rule works to how a different rule works. Rules function independently unless they explicitly override other rules.

If you declare a unit advancing that unit cannot shoot unless you have another rule that explicitly allows you to override this prohibition, no arguments, no buts. Assault weapons explicitly say you can fire them even though you declared a unit will advance, with a -1 penalty.

Heavy weapons say they take a -1 penalty to hit if the model carrying them moved.

These rules are completely independent and have nothing at all to do with each other. There's no interaction, there's no way to rules lawyer around rules this clearly written. If you had some rule that would explicitly allow you to shoot a heavy weapon even though you advanced, the heavy weapon rule would still apply. If that model moved you take a -1 penalty. That's why most units with an ability like that say something like "This model may shoot after moving and/or advancing as if it were stationary" to allow you to avoid the -1 from the heavy weapon rule.

Someone in the thread said "penalties based on movement are model by model". That's not true. The specific heavy weapon rule is model by model. Each rule has its own specific conditions and we can't make blanket statements about how they all work.

You can't say "Well this is model by model so then everything is model by model" when the rules very clearly state what is model dependent and what is unit dependent. There are a lot of vague rules in 40k but they did a good job of making most of the core rules extremely clear.

This weird oscillation between model and unit based activation is what really gets me. According to the rules I can activate units to move AS MANY times as I want in the move phase. Now, I can only move each model once, but it just says to select another unit. No restriction on the whether the unit has moved. There is no logical way to get the rules to follow this statement that everyone seems to follow if movement is done solely model by model:

Each unit can be selected once in the movement phase.

If you consider the Unit to have moved, then, guess what, it actually works where when you move a unit, everything is considered to have moved. At that point, who cares if you can select the unit, because you cannot move any models after they are considered to have moved.

But hey, it appears we are at an impasse. I've not seen any evidence of another action that acts in a similar way to cause me to doubt, and y'all don't agree with the basic premise of Move being equivalent to Advance/Fall Back/Charge/Shoot/Fight/Consolidate/Pile-in

It says to select a unit to move and then move all the models in that unit that you want to move. It doesn't say select a unit and then move every single model in it.

Shooting is exactly the same thing. You pick a unit, and then shoot every model's guns that you want/are able to shoot.

Fighting is exactly the same way.

Heavy weapons say "If a model with a Heavy weapon moved
in its preceding Movement phase, you
must subtract 1 from any hit rolls made
when firing that weapon this turn."

It doesn't say "If a model with a Heavy weapon was in a unit that was selected to have some of its models move
in its preceding Movement phase, you
must subtract 1 from any hit rolls made
when firing that weapon this turn."

" There is no logical way to get the rules to follow this statement" That's the problem. Rules don't work like that. You don't make a logical argument of If X then Y, you follow exactly what the specific rule says.

You can make an argument about whether you can activate a unit to move more than once RAW, I think RAI is pretty clear. You however cannot use that argument to change how an extremely clear rule like the heavy weapons penalty rule works.

"Unless otherwise stated, each model in
the unit attacks with all of the ranged
weapons it is armed with. After all of the
unit’s models have fired, you can choose
another unit to shoot with, until all
eligible units that you want to shoot with
have done so"

"First, you must pick the target unit, or units, for the
attacks. To target an enemy unit, the attacking model
must either be within 1" of that unit, or within 1" of
another model from its own unit that is itself within 1"
of that enemy unit. This represents the unit fighting in
two ranks. Models that charged this turn can only target
enemy units that they charged in the previous phase.
If a model can make more than one close combat attack
(see right), it can split them between eligible target units
as you wish. Similarly if a unit contains more than one
model, each can target a different enemy unit. In either
case, declare how you will split the unit’s close combat
attacks before any dice are rolled, and resolve all attacks
against one target before moving on to the next. "

Shooting is exactly the same thing. You pick a unit, and then shoot every model's guns that you want/are able to shoot.

Fighting is exactly the same way.

Please read above. Where does it say you can opt out of fighting or shooting? Oh wait, it says you must shoot with everything and that you have to declare your targets (no option to declare NO target.)

Its almost like the first sentence of the rules opens with the game philosophy of "Models move and fight in units".

Pile in is an optional 3" movement done on a model by model basis which happens during a Fight Phase.

You can "Opt out" of moving the said 3".