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So, I finally got one of my friends all the way into 40K (which is good!) but he has been reading the rules carefully and says I have been making mistakes (which is bad!) so demanded I get clarification. Here are the questions that need clarification or correction. Please use a number 2 pencil, and fill in the bubbles completely. Thank you.


1.) Page 25: Actually performing saves: A hypothetical unit of 10 identical space marines is hit with 20 wounds. They are entitled to armor saves.
A.) How we're doing it: Rolling 20 dice.
B.) How the book seems to explain it: It is one dice per model no matter how many wounds, i.e. 10 dice for 10 marines whether it's 10 or 50 wounds.
C.) How do people actually do this in practice?


2.) page 26: Multi-Wound models: hypothetical unit of 5 ork nobs is hit with 5 wounds, and can't or failed saves. OK, this is less ambiguous and we're clearly doing the first part of this wrong...
A.) How we're doing it: Each Nob gets one wound regardless of how they are individually geared.
B.) How the book explains it: Remove whole models when possible, so remove 2 nobs and give a wound to one. (Fine.) Furthermore, assign the wounds different depending on which weapons they have. Wait, what??
C.) How do people actually do this in practice?

3.) Page 42: Two single handed weapons: A hypothetical marine sergeant with two close combat weapons performs a close combat attack on an Ork. Are the attacks cumulative?
A.) How we've been doing it: The sergeant gets his base attack value (2) plus one bonus attack for having 2 CCW, so 3 attacks.
B.) How that's maybe wrong: If the sergeant has 2 lightning claws, he gest 2 base attacks, plus 1 for 2 CCW, plus 1 for 2 special weapons for a cumulative total of 4, not 3.

4.) Page 46: Regrouping: A unit falling back can attempt to regroup unless they are below half half strength, enemies within 6", or not in coherency. The latter 2 are clear, but for the first one - does this mean that if you have a unit of 10 space marines, if they take 5 casualties, then they're essentially done and must retreat every turn until they are off the board?

Thank you again, Dakka, for your seemingly limitless patience.

For the first, the rulebook wants you to assign one wound on all your space marines until they each have one wound, and then continue assigning the excess wounds until they all have two wounds, et cetera. Then roll all the dice for each group of identical marines together.

In short, rolling twenty dice.

For the second, yes, you remove two Nobs and assign one wound because they are all identical. If, say, two Nobs had Powa Klaws and three Big Choppas(Or two had 'eavy armour, three without, whatever), assign two wounds to the Klaws(two failed saves, remove one whole Nob) and three to the Choppas(three fails, one whole Nob taken off and one wound suffered by another). If the whole unit had Nobs different from each other, it's one wound on each Nob and therefore no casualties!

Assigning wounds is only neccesary when the unit being hit has models that are different from each other in any way.

The marine character does recieve an extra attack, as does the one with two lightning claws. The character with lightning claws does not get two extra attacks, but a character with one lightning claw and one vanilla CCW only recieves his base attacks.

space marines dont retreat each turn. because of they shall now no fear in the codex. read it

Ouze wrote:So, I finally got one of my friends all the way into 40K (which is good!) but he has been reading the rules carefully and says I have been making mistakes (which is bad!) so demanded I get clarification. Here are the questions that need clarification or correction. Please use a number 2 pencil, and fill in the bubbles completely. Thank you.


1.) Page 25: Actually performing saves: A hypothetical unit of 10 identical space marines is hit with 20 wounds. They are entitled to armor saves.
A.) How we're doing it: Rolling 20 dice.
B.) How the book seems to explain it: It is one dice per model no matter how many wounds, i.e. 10 dice for 10 marines whether it's 10 or 50 wounds.
C.) How do people actually do this in practice?

I'm sure the book says to assign dice to each model, so in your example you would assign two dice per model and roll each model one at a time, this way you may get ten failed saves against your ten marines but some models may have lost both armour saves and others passed both armour saves, meaning even taking 10 wounds you could have 2 guys left standing.

1) You are allowed to roll all 20 dice together if you want. Since all the models are identical you don't have to allocate wounds. The rule on pg 25 is for complex units which this example is not. The rule you are looking for is on pg 20.

2) You have to allocate wounds to different groups of armed models if they are not all the same. This is covered in the complex rule on pg 25.

3) If you have 2 lightning claws you get +1 attack since the rule specifically says Power Fists, Thunder hammers and Lightning claws only get an extra attack if armed with 2 of them.

4) The marines have a special rule called 'And they shall know no fear' which allows them to regroup when they shouldn't be able to. The rule is on pg 51 C:SM. The rule is also in the Blood angels codex and the Space wolf codex.

italiaplaya wrote:space marines dont retreat each turn. because of they shall now no fear in the codex. read it

OK, I was using marines as a generic example. Yours and Synnister's answers shows why I should never any faction as a generic example - oops.

To rephrase, if a unit of 10 guys takes 5 fatalities, must they spend the rest of the game retreating until they leave the board - i.e they can never pass a regroup test?

They must keep on falling back each turn unless they have rules to say otherwise (such as the space marine know no fear, or an IG return to the fight order).

This is of course assuming that they failed the initial leadership test and started running away.

deejaybainbridge wrote:

Ouze wrote:So, I finally got one of my friends all the way into 40K (which is good!) but he has been reading the rules carefully and says I have been making mistakes (which is bad!) so demanded I get clarification. Here are the questions that need clarification or correction. Please use a number 2 pencil, and fill in the bubbles completely. Thank you.


1.) Page 25: Actually performing saves: A hypothetical unit of 10 identical space marines is hit with 20 wounds. They are entitled to armor saves.
A.) How we're doing it: Rolling 20 dice.
B.) How the book seems to explain it: It is one dice per model no matter how many wounds, i.e. 10 dice for 10 marines whether it's 10 or 50 wounds.
C.) How do people actually do this in practice?

I'm sure the book says to assign dice to each model, so in your example you would assign two dice per model and roll each model one at a time, this way you may get ten failed saves against your ten marines but some models may have lost both armour saves and others passed both armour saves, meaning even taking 10 wounds you could have 2 guys left standing.

That's not completely right. That would only be the case if each model was unique. What is likely (using the marines as an example), is that you have 1 special weapon, 1 heavy weapon, 1 sarge and 7 regular marines. So, with 20 wounds, we first assign 1 to each individually equipped model, and then 7 to the identical marine group, and then do it again.

Now, we roll the saves. Either using 4 different sets of colored dice (2 for each unique model and 14 for the regular marines) or rolling in 4 batches, we roll the saves. Let's say that the sarge and heavy weapon pass both saves, the special weapon fails one and the regular marines bite it hard and fail 10 saves. So, we remove 1 model from each group for each failed save that group made. So, all 7 regular marines die (with three wounds that go bye-bye) and the heavy weapon guy bites it, leaving the sarge and special weapon to take a morale test, etc.

To answer 4) first - yes, if you lose MORE than 50% of your unit you keep running unless anotyher rule intervenes. For example if you get assaulted you may still regroup.

Wounding process - again...

1) ASsign wounding hits equally to all models in the targetted unit. So if you have 20 wounds and 10 models each model is initially assigned 2 wounding hits.

2) (and the bit a lot of people forget...) GROUP all models that are *identical in game terms* together, and pool ALL the assigned wounding hits on each model in the group.

So if all 10 marines are identical (possible if chaos...) then you have 1 group of identical models with a pool of 20 wounds.

If you instead had 1 unique model (say, a Sarge) you would have 2 groups: 1 of 1 model and 1 of 9 models. As the number of wounding hits is equal on all models this gives the sarge on 2 wounding hits and the other 9 18 wounding hits

If instead you had 10 nobs, ALL unique compared to each other then you would have 10 groups of 1 model each, and each model would have 2 wounding hits assigned.

3) Make saves for each groups collection of wounding hits, and remove models appropriately from WITHIN the group only.

So in the trivial all identical 10 marines example you roll all 20 dice, removing 1 model for each failed save.

Where you have a Sarge you roll his 2 saves seperately - if he passes both, he lives, if he fails 1 he dies, however IF he fails *both* saves the extrra "wound" is lost - the other 9 guys dont take the wound. Same deal if the 9 guys fail 10+ saves - only the 9 normal marines die, the sarge doesnt get hit as well.

In the 10 unique nobz example you roll 2 dice 10 times, meaning you could have a number of nobz with 1 wound on them, some dead (failed both their saves) nobz and some entirely untouched, all at the same time.

A quick note on ATSKNF: if an enemy model is within 6" when they check to regroup they WILL keep falling back, as they only ignore some restrictions on making the test.

WOrking out attacks: you only get a bonus for having 2 ccw: having 2 special weapons of the same type does not give you an ADDITIONAL bonus, it simply prevents you from *losing* the bonus when armed with specific weapons such as LCs, THs, etc.

Thanks!

I don't see it corrected (ignore me if I missed it), but since this is the rules forum...

If a squad of 10 models loses 5 guys, they can regroup. If they lose 6, they fall *below* half strength, and can no longer regroup in the absence of a special rule.

oh, good clarification. I had not noticed that.

Well I *did* say MORE than 50%, I just didnt say this means 6 guys

+1 to zatchmo

With the half strength thing, I always thought it said less than 50%, so a 10 man unit can test until it has 4 guys left (since 5 guys left is at 50%, not below!)

Which is what we said - the unit has to lose *more* than 50% before it is unable to regroup, normally anyhow

italiaplaya wrote:space marines dont retreat each turn. because of they shall now no fear in the codex. read it

ATSKNF only allows a Marine unit to regroup if they are below 50% capacity. All other criteria still apply as far as requirements before being able to regroup (ie - Not in coherency or if the units within 6" on an enemy unit).