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At the root of many of my lingering 8th edition questions is this one: who counts as "in base contact" in 8th? Is it really just the model whose base is actually in contact with my model? Or is there a line somewhere about second ranks (or even anybody that can fight my model) counting as in contact?

I ask because there are a lot of effects from our 7th edition books that affect models "in base contact," which used to be decent when only those models were attaking - now that models behind them can attak, yet perhaps not suffer any ill effects, those powers all become a bit less great. The skaven book has a bunch of examples - plague censers, abomination flesh avalanches (which don't need the boost!) - and a few in its magic items, such as the shield of distraction:

"Any models in base contact wishing to strike the bearer of this shield suffer -1 Attack, to a minimum of 1."

Do the guys behind those in base, wishing to strike the bearer and assassinate his ratty self, suffer -1A as well? (I understand most models can only supporting attak with 1A anyway, but let's say it's a ranked ogre unit.)

And let's turn this around and look at troll vomit (in this case, chaos troll vomit):

"Instead of attacking normally, the whole unit of Trolls can choose to vomit on the enemy. Each Troll model in base contact with an enemy model inflicts one automatic Strength 5 hit with no armour saves allowed. These attacks are treated as magical."

Do the trolls in a second rank get to vomit? They get to lend supporting attaks, but as they aren't "in base contact" they simply stand around and dry heave as the front line empties its stomachs on some knights. The answer to this base contact question is directly that of the distraction shield ...

There are many more examples, a good number of which involve LD tests (Slaanesh demons, 'Lahmian' vamp powers, etc) for those in base contact with X character. Am I missing something in the big book about supporting attakers also being vulnerable to "in base contact" effects? Or does everybody really RAW this and nerf all of these powers when able? (For the curious, I've been playing RAW in all cases as well, though the troll deal I've seen played both ways.)

- Salvage

This is a good question...

pg. 49 has an interesting quote "Supporting attacks cannot be made to the side or rear. Nor can they be made by models that are ***in base contact*** with enemies - they must fight the more immediate foe!"

Although this rule is supposed to be about attacking with a model with a support attack when it is being attacked in the side or the rear, the wording makes it so that you cannot consider the second or third ranks to be in base contact with the rank in front, otherwise it wouldn't be able to use a supporting attack.

Its shady at best, but thats the only thing I could find.

No you don't count as being in base contact if you're in the 2nd rank. As for the shield no the ogres would not get a -1A since they are not in base contact. As for trolls the chaos trolls cannot use their vomit in the 2nd rank but the Orcs and Goblins ones can since their rule doesn't mention base contact.

I've been struggling about this too, Salvage, but I think more things go a little haywire if you say models giving supporting attacks are in base contact than saying they are not.

Some items hurt everything in base contact. Plague monks / censer bearers / etc. are a good example- let's say you've got a horde unit of them vs. a horde enemy unit. Now basically everybody's getting hit by that plague thing that only affects units in base contact! Since the whole horde would count as being in base to base.

Even the trolls thing, although it makes that ability rather obsolete, having trolls vomiting from the 3rd rank when in horde formation seems more wrong. They'd be vomiting on their fellows in the front two ranks, rather than the enemy :-/

So I think RAW is going to be the only way to go here... although it would've been nice if they'd done more in the FAQ to alleviate some of the more obvious negations of abilities.

The shield especially is a bummer, since that should be (imho) any model striking the bearer. But that's not how it's written...

Well the shield matters little, seeing as supporting attacks can be 1 only.

Oscarius - except for Monstrous Infantry of course,as was mentioned

In base contact means exactly that. In. Base. Contact. Nothing more or less.

My bad, goes to show that you should read thewhole post before commeting.

Ok, well it's good to get some confirmation. After the rare batrep with two ranks of vomiting trolls or PCB stink tests for supporting attakers I started to wonder. My real concern was for those defensive items that use to be nice for keeping characters alive in lieu of a ward or decent armor: distraction shield, but also yhetee's aura of cold too.

With the yhets, it's so weird to me that the enemy's front rank is nerfed, while the support attaks just lay into them. All the bastards have is that -1 to hit, which in 7th might have done something but now is even less effective ... And as for those items affecting only the front rank, I suppose there's a reason we never see them, unless challenge shenanigans are anticipated

Anyway, thanks for the confirmation

- Salvage

Boss -

Pg. 99 - "Enemy models in base contact with both the character and one or more models from the character's unit can choose to attack the character or the unit."

Second and third ranks are not in base contact with the character, and can therefore only attack the unit. It works both ways

Whoa really?? This could change character assassination hugely ...

... though now that I've got my BRB out it's pretty clear that supporting attaks still can allocate. 99 makes no mention of supporting attaks and instead says "in base contact" over and over, which got my hopes up too! But check out 48-9 on supporting attaks:

"Supporting attaks are made against models in base contact with the front rank model that is being fought 'through'. If the front rank model is in base contact with two or more enemies with different profiles, the attacking players can choose which model to direct the supporting attak against (before dice are rolled)."

So: not in base contact, but still can target as if in base contact.

- Salvage

Good catch, didn't read that part of the BRB...

Guess characters are still in a bit of trouble. Placement in the front rank is one of the important factors now to keep track of.

Being able to kill characters is one of the saving graces of the new rules... before without "step up" and supporting attacks they were nigh unstoppable!

The vomit thing came up today in a game, my opponent actually offered to let me use supporting attacks from the back rank while the front vomited if I wanted to (obviously a nice guy!). But that's not what the rules say, and it's not FAQ'ed, so no vomiting for me until I'm down to one rank...

Still depends on what you're doing. If you have a wide [4 or 5] unit of trolls versus, say, chaos knights, your odds may still be better just vomiting. 8x3=24 attacks, 12 hit, 8 wound, but that's a 3+ save they're working with now. Odds are you kill 3, but that's the same as with vomit [thereabouts] and if you have throgg [often the case] he should definitely vomit.

A question I've always had is can Throgg choose to vomit while his unit does their regular attacks?

Yes, because characters can choose different weapons to the attached unit.

Spellbound, I had that exact same question today! We decided "yes", partly because he was in a challenge. But nosferatu's reasoning makes sense to me, too.

I was also unclear on the wording if when he uses his vomit as a breath weapon in close combat, if he got his regular attacks or not. I think "no" because earlier in the paragraph it says that he forgoes his regular attacks when he vomits (and the breath attack is still a vomit if used in close combat).

The breath weapon is not a vomit attack (fluff wise maybe, but ruels wise it isnt) so you get both his 2D6 hits breath weapon AND his normal attacks.

AND his stomp.

Really? Wow... I'm going to start a dedicated thread about that so as not to hijack this one.

Salvage, new WoC faq is out, and trolls are amended to say that ANY troll that can attack or give supporting attacks can vomit instead. So rock on bulimic trolls!

Yep, good to hear that cleared up. Troll horde with three ranks of projectors? Yes.

- Salvage

It is stated in the LRB (IOB rulebook.) page 48 figure 1 "models in base contact with an enemy, even just Corner-to-corner, can attack." This would indicate that corner to corner contact counts as base to base contact.

on the next page figure 1 it is stated that "Models can make supporting attacks as they are directly behind models attacking normally." I would suggest this means that supporting attacks can be targeted at any model that the model in front of them can target, or maybe specifically the same model.

So sorry to resurrect this, but I guess it shows that I still don't get how to deal with the issue

I'd like to use The Other Trickster's Shard ("Models in base contact (friend or foe) must reroll successful ward saves"), but outside of characters how does it work? Let's set the scene ...



A unit of (pink) clanrats is fighting some (baby blue) phoenix guard, except the clanrats have a chieftain (red) in their corner with the OTS. As he is riding the corner - to minimize incoming enemy attaks - the chieftain has only two models in base contact (blue).

In order to make the shard work, does the chieftain really have to allocate his 3 attaks between the two in base? 2 for the left, 1 for the right (or vice versa)? And then the 5 clanrats eligible to attak really have to allocate their attaks on the 2 corner PG (separately!) if they want to force rerolls? With PG it's probably worth just killing 2 dudes, but how about vs bloodletters, where I'd like to get more than 2-3 rerolls in?

Or what about if the shard character is an uber-killer, can he even choose to not fight sharded opponents? Everyone in base with him will automatically be sharded, so must he always allocate all of his attaks across that tiny group of models, rolled individually because there are no rules for allocating to a group?

And the other side: the enemy wants me to reroll my parry saves, must he allocate to the 1 clanrat next to the chieftain, while the two behind him go free?

- Salvage

The item says that models in Base contact with the bearer must reroll ward saves. It does not state that the attacks must come from a particular source (in this case the bearer)

So only the models that are in base contact with the bearer actually have to reroll. I had this item in my list, reread it the other day, noticed the distinction of being in base contact, and decided its not as great as I had originally thought.

How it would work out is that the two - three models that the shard bearer attacks must re-roll their ward saves. Every other model that suffers wounds due to attacks would not be forced to re-roll as they are not in base contact.

You would roll all your dice to attack, figure out the number of wounds, then separate the two piles of dice for ward saves. Those outside base contact, and those in base contact. Those outside roll ward saves and move on, those inside base contact roll, and reroll. Remember, although you may roll them separately, they are happening simultaneously on the battlefield. Its best to use 2 different colours of dice, and roll them all at the same time.

There is no wound allocation. You reroll strictly for the number of models in base contact, and you roll once for each. Unless of course your unit is taking more wounds than its unit size, then you determine which models are suffering more than 1 wound, and proceed in the same manner.

This does not count attacks strictly aimed at targets that can be aimed at. So your champion might have to reroll more than 1 ward save if your opponent targets him with more than 1 attack. Same goes for your Chieftan.

Nice diagram, Salvage .

Lehnsherr- what if there are multi-wound models involved? Change the PG to treekin (and pretend the attacks aren't magical so they actually get their ward save!). I would think that I would roll all my ward saves together, as it's going to take on average 4 wounds to kill that one model in base contact... it wouldn't make sense to give 3 wound rolls to the one in base contact, and the rest to others. Seems to bring in a mechanic that is not there...

Don't I at least have to re-roll wards until the model in base contact is dead? In thise case, a 3-wound model...

I also wasn't aware that you could designate attacks to individual models within a unit other than a champion. I thought you could only give them to the unit. In my mind, that means the PG are re-rolling their ward saves...

Never thought of Multi wound models RiTides... good point. This is a tricky one. If I remember correctly, you only add up the wounds AFTER the saves are taken, and then apply them all to one model at a time, removing casualties. Is this correct?

As for the PG unit:

You aren't allocating attacks, you are allocating wounds. I worded that poorly in my previous post. Once you have figured out the number of hits, and the number of wounds you roll your saves. Any model that has taken a wound, and is in BTB with the bearer must now reroll their Ward save. The other wounds that have been applied to models that aren't in BTB will not reroll the ward save.

The only time you can allocate an attack is to a character / champion. Then you work out the rule based on how you have allocated your attacks. Or unless otherwise specified

Let me see if I get this. You're saying that both the chieftain and 9 clanrats attak the PG in one batch of hits, then roll wounds, then the PG player tosses his ward saves (let's pretend skaven are S5 ), two of which will have to be rolled separately or marked in someway for possible rerolling? Frankly that seems pretty generous to the shard (2 of X total wounds will always be sharded), though it works in return by having 3 of X total clanrat parry saves having to be rolled separately too.

I do like that, though I'm not totally sure I could prove it vs an opponent. Much quicker than the allocation madness method I was trying to figure out, if advantageous to the shard. Particularly the shard bearer, as his 3 I6 attaks will most likely always be rerolled against (though that makes sense, they are fighting him!)

EDIT

Re: your second post, maybe I no longer get it! So you're actually allocating wounds now? Which means the rats have to do 14 wounds before a sharded PG is allocated to? Or is it 4 wounds (the front rank) until a PG is sharded? What about when the character attaks @ I6, does he actually never get his opponent to reroll unless the unit is nearly gone? That is distinctly unsatisfying, as the models in base are directly in front of the shard character - is he really not fighting who he is touching???

- Salvage

Edit: Ninja'ed! Responding to Lehnsherr here:

Yes, the tricky thing is that since you remove models from the back, you don't really distinguish between rank and file models that are in base-to-base.

For treekin / etc, they might already be carrying a wound, and if you take 2 from combat, you'll remove a whole model. Not sure how that interacts with how many wounds would have to be re-rolled, etc... but I don't think you can distinguish between rank and file models for allocating attacks and/or wounds.

Waiting for the cavalry to get here and make this clear

I have a feeling I'll play the OTS like this, opponent willing:

- Any character or champion in base with the shard is rerolling their wards (friend and foe)
- Enemy RnF the shard-bearer fights are rerolling their wards

And that's it, no benefit or detriment to the shard-bearer's unit. Luckily my clanrats never kill anybody, so it's no loss

Figure this gets around any complicated allocation mechanics and is a fairly conservative interpretation, which is IMO always a good choice to go with.

- Salvage

I think thats the way I would also play it Boss...

The conservative approach is the best method for an otherwise problematic item.

As far as the multi wound models go RiTides... I so rarely deal with them in my gaming scene that I would have no clue how to work it. Someone with more experience in that area would have to chime in.

I think if you take how step up works, and what it is representing, you get a more clear view of how to implement this.
Anyone who can throw attacks at models touched by the shard should have the re-roll enforced. Why?
Because step up would force a new model into the hot-zone as soon as the previous one dropped.

The reason you pull kills from the rear, is because models step up as soon as they die. If this weren't the case, a chaos lord with 10 attacks (daemon sword), would only be able to kill 2 models if deployed in the corner.


This makes the process of the item pretty simple. The chieftain, and 2 rats in the front rank, along with 3 in the 2nd rank can attack into the zone affected by the shard.
Of course, this would happen after the phoenix guard did their always strike 1st thing. Of the 5 in the front rank, 3 are touching the shard zone; two are not; same goes for supports.
So 6 attacks (with re-rolls for being elfy) that force re-rolls to the parry, and 4 normal attacks. Then the clan rats do the same.


While this sounds really good, in practice it isn't all that overwhelming. The real question should be, how the hell did the chieftain survive the phoenix guards attacks to use that trinket at all?

-Matt