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We were assuming that on fast, open-topped, skimmers, the passengers can fire if the vehicle moves up to 12" (Trueborn in Venoms is the unit under question). No where in the rulebook can we find anything stating that fast or skimmer vehicles change the cruising speed, which is from 6" to 12". No passengers can fire their weapons if a vehicle moves at cruising speed, so while it looks like fast skimmers get shooting bonuses to the weapons on the vehicle at flat-out speed, those bonuses are not applied to any embarked passengers?

That is correct.

Exactly so - the passengers are not the transport.

yep. For some reason they have to leave transport to shoot at something if the transport moved more than 6.

The "some reason" being that drive by's were rather powerful. Lots of advantages, no real disadvantages.

Its a game balance thing

I hate to bring reality to the game, but I assume it would be rather difficult to hit anything while cruising along at a quick pace with hand held weapons.

spireland wrote:I hate to bring reality to the game, but I assume it would be rather difficult to hit anything while cruising along at a quick pace with hand held weapons.

Do you think it would be more or less difficult than disembarking and/or embarking at the same speed? Because that's totally legal...

Oaka wrote:We were assuming that on fast, open-topped, skimmers, the passengers can fire if the vehicle moves up to 12" (Trueborn in Venoms is the unit under question). No where in the rulebook can we find anything stating that fast or skimmer vehicles change the cruising speed, which is from 6" to 12". No passengers can fire their weapons if a vehicle moves at cruising speed, so while it looks like fast skimmers get shooting bonuses to the weapons on the vehicle at flat-out speed, those bonuses are not applied to any embarked passengers?

No you are wrong, they can shoot out the OPEN-TOPPED vehicle regardless of how far it travelled.
The 6" is a restriction on FIRE PORTS, which it doesn't have, so it doesn't apply.
Have fun doing first turn drive by shootings.

The rules for open topped transports say that all of the rules for a normal vehicle are w/ the exception of what is mention in the open topped the section. The open topped transport section does not specifically remove the restriction of passengers firing after driving cruising. While this restriction is indeed mentioned in the fire points section of the normal vehicle rules, I believe you may have a rather hard time arguing this point at a tournament.

Do you have a page number to back that up?

Open topped vehicles do not have a specific fire port, but the only rules that really discuss embarked units firing limit you to cruising speed.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
I suppose if you wanted to argue that way, you could also argue that if you move flat out, you get to fire as well...

I believe pages 66 and 70 contain the relevant sections.

@ nostromo riiiiight....

It is on page 66 and the paragraph says:
"Models firing from a vehicle .... may not fire at all if the vehicle has moved at Cruising speed that turn"

Nowhere does it state that this counts for fire ports only.

Fortunately, when describing flat-out speed, it specifically says it counts as cruising speed, so no shooting. It turns out everyone in our area was playing this wrong and just assumed that fast vehicles bumped all the rules up into the next speed bracket. Now all I can think about is the tournament game I lost months ago due to a full unit of burna boyz shooting out of a battlewagon all game that certainly moved more than 6" each turn.

If you could move an open topped vehicle 12" and fire, Battlewagons would just be cheap as all heck.

But you can't, because it counts as cruising.

Oaka wrote: No passengers can fire their weapons if a vehicle moves at cruising speed

Correct

Oaka wrote: so while it looks like fast skimmers get shooting bonuses to the weapons on the vehicle at flat-out speed, those bonuses are not applied to any embarked passengers?

NO...If a vehicle moves at Flat-out, it cannot fire at all. The special rule that the DE now have allows ithe "transport" to fire everything at "IT's" cruising speed, which is 12". It can Flatout between 18" and 36" and can fire nothing if it moves over 12"(not including aethersails, b/c I didn't read the rule on that one, so I'm not sure there). Flatout is treated as moving at cruising speed as far as embarked passengers are concerned and also cannot fire.

This is why the discussion on the trueborn carrying 4 blasters was viewed as almost a kamikaze, alpha strike type of unit. Deploy 12, move 12, disembark 2, and fire 18" allows 4 S8 AP2 attacks round 1 with an effective range of 38". However, they're sitting ducks afterwards. If they were in a Raider, then the Raider can also fire it's dark lance, giving you 5 shots, or you can fire it at something else if you so desire. Since you disembarked, there's now 2 targets to contend with, not just 1.

Flatout is >12", not 18" + - you're thinking of turboboosting.

OTherwise exactly correct. And trueborn should be in venoms for 2 x cannon goodness

Whoops. Good call. You're right. I was thinking turboboost.

The rule on page 66 (paragraph 10) that "models may not fire at all if the vehicle moved at cruising speed that turn" is under the FIRE POINTS section.

And the first sentence of the OPEN-TOPPED section (page 70, paragraph 2) says "Open-topped vehicles do not have specific fire points."

I think this is what is confusing, since the cannot shoot rule is under the FIRE POINT section and Open-topped vehicles do not use fire points. This came up in a tournament today with my Dark Eldar. Half the judges and players said they can't shoot if you move the vehicle over 6" and the other half said that they could. I googled it and in forums it's about the same, half say yes, half say no. There is no FAQ on the GW site that I could find to clarify this "gray area". If the "cannot move more than 6" and shoot" rule were under a generic vehicle shooting section there would be no arguement, but since it's placed in the fire point section it becomes debatable.

...No open topped vehicles do not use specific fire points....
Seriously? =_=

pinkcarson wrote:The rule on page 66 (paragraph 10) that "models may not fire at all if the vehicle moved at cruising speed that turn" is under the FIRE POINTS section.

And the first sentence of the OPEN-TOPPED section (page 70, paragraph 2) says "Open-topped vehicles do not have specific fire points."

So since nothing says when the passengers may fire they can't fire at all. Simple solution.

Or just assume that the lines about using the normal rules if the vehicle type doesn't say different apply.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

Spetulhu wrote:

pinkcarson wrote:The rule on page 66 (paragraph 10) that "models may not fire at all if the vehicle moved at cruising speed that turn" is under the FIRE POINTS section.

And the first sentence of the OPEN-TOPPED section (page 70, paragraph 2) says "Open-topped vehicles do not have specific fire points."

So since nothing says when the passengers may fire they can't fire at all. Simple solution.

Or just assume that the lines about using the normal rules if the vehicle type doesn't say different apply.

Well, the second sentence of OPEN-TOPPED says "Instead, all passengers in an open-topped vehicle may fire, measuring range and line of sight from the hull of the vehicle." So if everyone can fire, and the vehicle doesn't use fire points, why is the 6" rule under fire points applied?

This is a breakdown of language. "No specific fire points" means that it has fire points (an infinite amount, in fact) but they are not clearly defined because there is no way to define them (one on each side, one in the front, what have you). On the other hand, if the book said "Open topped vehicles do not have fire points" it would be a different matter. On an open-topped vehicle, EVERYWHERE is a fire point; there's no reason to specify.

I looked this up the other day, wondering if I could perform drive-bys out of my Battlewagons and Trukks. I was disappointed.

If I really wanted to be a jerk, it says "All passengers in an open-topped vehicle may fire." May I disregard the rule that says that if the vehicle moves, my passengers are considered to move for the purposes of firing heavy weapons? I mean, it says I may fire, right? Okay, I'll put 15 Lootas in a Battlewagon, move 13" a turn, staying comfortably out of Assault range and firing avg. 30 Str 7 AP 4 shots at you.

It's like you say Frosty, a language dispute. It's a really gray area that needs to be addressed one way or the other by GW. Every forum I check and every player I ask there seems to be a split decision. I don't want to argue one way or the other I just want to know what the rule is and be done with it. I'm currently playing it as "if I move over 6" with my raiders I can't shoot with passengers unless they disembark" to be safe. I'd hate to find out I was cheating by moving 12" and firing out.

One thing I like about Malifaux and Wyrd mini's is that they have active rules marshall's in the forums to settle these kinds of disputes, unlike GW.

Pink, I am on a few different forums, and I have never seen this "split decision" on this topic. IME there is a pretty clear consensus that you simply can't shoot if going over Combat Speed.

The rule says you can't shoot, it doesn't say you can't shoot out of Fire Points.

Pinkcarson; please read the last sentance under Open topped vehicles on page 70.

And the 6" ban on move and fire is not necessarily the case anyways; it is vehicles moving at Cruising speed that denies the occupants shooting.

For Orks with RPJ combat speed extends to 7"

coredump wrote:The rule says you can't shoot, it doesn't say you can't shoot out of Fire Points.

I think the thing that I'm hung up on is that the rule that says you can't shoot, is the last paragraph of the FIRE POINT section. As I said before, if there were in a generic TRANSPORT section I wouldn't have issue.

I guess it's just silly to me that models can't fire out of a vehicle that has no sides or top if it moved 12", however they can hop out 2", shoot their weapons, and then assault after it moved 12". That seems more unlikely a scenario if the vehicle is moving "so fast it disrupts shooting".

Or its a balance thing.

In 4th ed you could fire after moving 12", and drive bys were fairly horrid. Now if you want to move quickly you have to take the risk of getting out.

It doesnt alter that the *only* rules allowing you to fire out of a vehicle are in the fire point section, and open topped transports state they dont have a particular fire point - so if you disregard the firepoints section you cannot ever fire.

pinkcarson wrote:

coredump wrote:The rule says you can't shoot, it doesn't say you can't shoot out of Fire Points.

I think the thing that I'm hung up on is that the rule that says you can't shoot, is the last paragraph of the FIRE POINT section. As I said before, if there were in a generic TRANSPORT section I wouldn't have issue.

But that is not uncommon with the rules. Fire Points is the section that it first became relevant, so they included it there, they stated it as a general rule, not one specific to Fire Points. It didn't warrant its own section of the rules, but still applies generally.

pinkcarson wrote:

coredump wrote:The rule says you can't shoot, it doesn't say you can't shoot out of Fire Points.

I think the thing that I'm hung up on is that the rule that says you can't shoot, is the last paragraph of the FIRE POINT section. As I said before, if there were in a generic TRANSPORT section I wouldn't have issue.

I guess it's just silly to me that models can't fire out of a vehicle that has no sides or top if it moved 12", however they can hop out 2", shoot their weapons, and then assault after it moved 12". That seems more unlikely a scenario if the vehicle is moving "so fast it disrupts shooting".

Don't forget that models cannot assault the turn they disembark from a vehicle unless that vehicle has the 'Assault Vehicle' special rule (ie land raiders etc etc). If you are thinking of Ork Trukks, these are not assault vehicles so those 12 boys can move 6" and shoot, or move 12", disembark and shoot. The disadvantage being that disembarked orks are vulnerable to flamers and the like. They cannot assault however, as they just dont cost enough points to be that amazing.

Remember, its not you make the rules fit the fluff. You come up with the rules first and then write the fluff to fit them!