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Take the following scenario as an example:

Let's say I have a squad of 5 Space Marines that are locked in close combat with some Genestealers. The Genestealers punch first and they do 5 regular wounds and 2 rending wounds. Are you allowed to allocate wounds that allows you to "hide" the rending wounds? Rending wounds will automatically kill a Space Marine as they only have one wound and no invulernable save, so can the Space Marine player allocate his wounds like this:

M1: Rend, Wound
M2: Rend, Wound
M3: Wound
M4: Wound
M5: Wound

Thus, making it where the Space Marine player only needs to take 3 armor saves? It seems really awkward that a player can do this in order to bypass two of the saves he has to make from the regular wounds?

What if, instead of rending, the two wounds we're instant death wounds caused by a special ability? Not necessarily double-your-toughness instant death, but a special rule (like Skulltaker, for example)? Can the player hide regular wounds inside of the "instant-death" wounds in order to prevent having to take armour saves?

If the marines are all the same, you don't allocate the wounds. In your example, you would roll 5 saves, and then remove a model for each failed save and for the 2 rending wounds.


Assuming that you are allocating, though... it comes down to the specific example.

Wounds aren't applied to models until you have rolled saves. You allocate to individual models, but then you roll saves and remove the casualties as a group. So whether or not the extra wounds are being 'hidden' here depends on how many of those marines are the same.

If all five were different, so each rolled their saves separately, then the second wound applied to each of the guys with a rending wound would indeed be 'lost'

You are missing a step.

1) Assign wounding hits to models
2) Group wounding hits into groups of LIKE models; i.e. like in game terms
3) Take saves as a group

So yes, if you had 2 unique marines, e.g. sarge and special weapon, then you can assign both rending wounding hits to those two models and the other 3 marines would only take "normal" wounding hits.

If the marines are all the same then you still have to take all 5 armor saves. IIRC

Sorry, I forgot to add the stipulation that all of the marines are unique. So, you can do this with instant death wounds as well?

The first question is: Is this a complex unit? If so, the following would occur.

Page 25 BRB [Complex Units]
Para. 4 [The player must allocate one wound to each model in the target unit before he can allocate a second wound to the same model.]

Some details will continue on pg. 25 about how those things work too, if you have further questions.

Kurce wrote: So, you can do this with instant death wounds as well?

Yes.

Alternatively, if they're all unique, you could have put two normal wounds onto M1, and both rending/ID wounds onto M2.

OK, how do you get 5 marines from a tact squad to be unique? I can get 4 but not 5.

jbunny wrote:OK, how do you get 5 marines from a tact squad to be unique? I can get 4 but not 5.

You can't. You don't have the option to give them all separate wargear. The wound allocation rules only heavily come into play when facing diversified Nobz, command squads, honour guard, etc.

I only asked because the OP said they were.

from the example you listed, provided they are diverse, he could have put both rending wounds on one marine, and taken saves on the other 4.

Rend w w w w
Rend w

Well in the OP example you cant but if it was a sergeant flamer and 3 normal marines you could put both rends on the flamer and take the other saves on the other marines and sergeant

Sounds cheesy. No wonder mixed Nobs are so powerful. Typically, we do wounds with no armor save first, and then armor saves. But that might have to change.

If you had one marine who was different, you could put both rends on him, and take five saves over the other four guys, basically burying a rend.