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If a group of howling banshees assaults a tyranid (hive tyrant or other) with a lash whip, who assaults first?

Howling banshees mask states 'in the first round of an assault banshees will strike at initiative 10 and negate any bonuses from assaulting through cover or grenades"

While a tyranid lash whip states 'any model in base to base contact with a tyranid model equipped with a lash whip strikes at initiative 1'

Maybe they just cancel out.




This came up in a game yesterday where a group of 9 banshees assaulted a hive tyrant (alone, tyrant guard already dead) 5 of the bashees were in base to base and 4 banshees were behind those 5. The 4 out of base to base were definitely going to strike first and they ended up killing the tyrant, so there was no clear resolution to the question above.

This was addressed in the Tyranid FAQ. Like the tremendous majority of the rest of the FAQ the answer was 'screw you'. Lash whip effect is applied, reducing banshee initiative to 1, then banshee mask takes effect cranking it back up. Banshees go first.

RaW Banshee Masks don't work, so the RaW answer is the Lash Whips win.

If you want to house rule it though, the GW FAQs offer advice.

EDIT: My bad, Misread the OP. Answer is below. xD

why mask dont work?

Devastator wrote:why mask dont work?

Because it specifically states that it "negates any bonus conferred by cover..."

Since in 5th, you don't get bonuses (rather, the assaulting unit becomes I1), while the Banshees may be I10, they strike at I1 because of the rules for Assaulting through cover.

That being said, assaulting a unit in the open still allows the Banshee masks to work.

Gwar! wrote:

Devastator wrote:why mask dont work?

Because it specifically states that it "negates any bonus conferred by cover..."

Since in 5th, you don't get bonuses (rather, the assaulting unit becomes I1), while the Banshees may be I10, they strike at I1 because of the rules for Assaulting through cover.

That being said, assaulting a unit in the open still allows the Banshee masks to work.

I am confused at what you said Gwar.

Recap, both banshees and lash whip holder are both in the open... what happens?

MellowYellow wrote:I am confused at what you said Gwar.

Recap, both banshees and lash whip holder are both in the open... what happens?

RaW, the Lash Whips win, because it makes them I1 "regardless of their actual Initiative value."

Banshee Masks make them actually I10, not count as I10, so the Lash Whips override this since they strike at I1 "regardless of their actual Initiative value."

Edit: I type too slow.

EDIT: doh! ninja'd

Gwar! wrote:

MellowYellow wrote:I am confused at what you said Gwar.

Recap, both banshees and lash whip holder are both in the open... what happens?

RaW, the Lash Whips win, because it makes them I1 "regardless of their actual Initiative value."

Banshee Masks make them actually I10, not count as I10, so the Lash Whips override this since they strike at I1 "regardless of their actual Initiative value."

Thanks Gwar! I think this actually clears it up because in the Eldar rules it says. "In the first round of an assault a model wearing a banshee mask HAS I10 and negates any I bonus conferred by cover and grenades" So RaW, banshees ARE I10, not counts-as I10, and the lash whip takes I10 to I1.


P.S. thanks for commenting on a bunch of my other posts too

The Tyranid FAQ says otherwise...

Q: If a model with Lash Whips is attacking a model with an Initiative-boosting rule/piece of wargear (e.g. Furious Charge, an Eldar Banshee Mask etc.), which order are the Initiatives modified?
A: The Lash Whips will reduce an enemy model’s initiative to 1 before any other modifiers are applied. So, a model with Furious Charge that assaults a Tyranid with Lash Whips will strike at Initiative 2, and an Eldar with a Banshee Mask will strike at Initiative 10 in the first round of assault.

RAW it works differently, but apparently the gents at GW decided that eldar need a bit of a boost vs the bugs

MellowYellow wrote:

Gwar! wrote:

MellowYellow wrote:I am confused at what you said Gwar.

Recap, both banshees and lash whip holder are both in the open... what happens?

RaW, the Lash Whips win, because it makes them I1 "regardless of their actual Initiative value."

Banshee Masks make them actually I10, not count as I10, so the Lash Whips override this since they strike at I1 "regardless of their actual Initiative value."

Thanks Gwar! I think this actually clears it up because in the Eldar rules it says. "In the first round of an assault a model wearing a banshee mask HAS I10 and negates any I bonus conferred by cover and grenades" So RaW, banshees ARE I10, not counts-as I10, and the lash whip takes I10 to I1.


P.S. thanks for commenting on a bunch of my other posts too

Right, before you settle on the fact that Lash Whips win, be sure to consult the Tyranid FAQ which addresses it. Gwar! doesn't like to pay attention to the FAQs, but tournaments aren't run by Gwar! and the TO's (in every case I've encountered so far) most certainly do.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Corndoggy wrote:The Tyranid FAQ says otherwise...

Q: If a model with Lash Whips is attacking a model with an Initiative-boosting rule/piece of wargear (e.g. Furious Charge, an Eldar Banshee Mask etc.), which order are the Initiatives modified?
A: The Lash Whips will reduce an enemy model’s initiative to 1 before any other modifiers are applied. So, a model with Furious Charge that assaults a Tyranid with Lash Whips will strike at Initiative 2, and an Eldar with a Banshee Mask will strike at Initiative 10 in the first round of assault.

Most tournies I know tend to use the FAQ when they actually do their job and answer ambiguous RaW, rather than pretending to be Errata or just flat otu ignoring the rules.

I really do want to know who was 'Frequently Asking' some of the things that were answered in the Tyranid FAQ. So much of that thing came out of the blue and made no sense. It doesn't even feel like an FAQ, it feels like they told the newbie intern everyone's been hazing to take a pile of sticky notes off the door of the office where people were writing down all the stupid stuff they could think of and had him put it on their website.

I still maintain it's the only army that has the dubious distinction of needing an errata for it's FAQ.

Astronomicon specifically says it follows errata but not the faqs.

SumYungGui wrote:I really do want to know who was 'Frequently Asking' some of the things that were answered in the Tyranid FAQ. So much of that thing came out of the blue and made no sense. It doesn't even feel like an FAQ, it feels like they told the newbie intern everyone's been hazing to take a pile of sticky notes off the door of the office where people were writing down all the stupid stuff they could think of and had him put it on their website.

I still maintain it's the only army that has the dubious distinction of needing an errata for it's FAQ.

This is something that gets re-hashed everytime there's a new FAQ. GW FAQS are approximately:

33.3% questions that no-one asked because they were obvious
33.3% questions where the answer is exactly what the rules said
33.3% questions where the answer contradicts the rules
33.3% genuinely tricky questions that don't get answered at all because there is no answer that makes sense and the rules should have been improved and errata'd.

So the FAQs are roughly 133.2% questions?

What?

Yep, because of the important questions that they actually fail to address

Did you not read it? There is another chunk of questions of roughly equal size (the genuinely tough questions) that the FAQs generally do not answer at all.

If it's 33% of something that doesn't exist (or 33% of it is something that doesn't exist) it wouldn't be 33% of something. It would be 0%.

So your list should be something more along the lines of:

33.3% questions that no-one asked because they were obvious
33.3% questions where the answer is exactly what the rules said
33.3% questions where the answer contradicts the rules
0% genuinely tricky questions that don't get answered at all because there is no answer that makes sense and the rules should have been improved and errata'd.

Then it'd make sense.

Mostly.

SaintHazard wrote:If it's 33% of something that doesn't exist (or 33% of it is something that doesn't exist) it wouldn't be 33% of something. It would be 0%.

So your list should be something more along the lines of:

33.3% questions that no-one asked because they were obvious
33.3% questions where the answer is exactly what the rules said
33.3% questions where the answer contradicts the rules
0% genuinely tricky questions that don't get answered at all because there is no answer that makes sense and the rules should have been improved and errata'd.

Then it'd make sense.

Mostly.

Ah, but you're assuming the categories are mutually exclusive! If a question is both one that no-one asked because it was obvious, and the answer is exactly what the rules said, you can get the total of those 4 catagories to add over 100%.

SaintHazard wrote:Then it'd make sense.

Except that it entirely fails to make the point that the important questions that weren't answered as just as numerous as the other categories.

Scott-S6 wrote:

SaintHazard wrote:Then it'd make sense.

Except that it entirely fails to make the point that the important questions that weren't answered as just as numerous as the other categories.

Well, to be fair, I'm not certain your first list does either, but I do get what you're going for here.