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I was playing a game with my mate the other day and upon him passing a load of cover saves that he needed to make from my lootas firing at his death guard I got thinking about the cover save rule. In the current system you can fire a Lascannon at a unit behind a hedge (not that you would very often) and they would still get a cover save from the hedge, I mean, surely the Lascannon would burn through the hedge. Does anyone else think that the rules should be changed in the next rulebook to allow for certain weaponary penetrating cover or are we happy with the present rule?

A cover save doesn't necessarily mean the shot was block by the cover, it could be that you jumped behind it at the last second, obscuring the shot, so it misses. In the respect of lascannons and the like I think it's fine.

However, I do think that ordinance and large blasts should do something to the cover, or the save at least. Hiding behind a wall won't protect you from a massive shell landing in your midst.

Yes, I agree with you that there should be something like a save modifier etc when it comes to Ordanance and Blast weaponary. But surely go to ground represents jumping out of the way at the last second (albiet, Go to ground doesn't really represent the last second), although I can also see the point for cover saves that come from speed or smoke etc, as they are going to obscure the vision of whoevers firing.

I think that one of the main issues with cover is that people run everything as 4+. This obviously leads to some silly situations.

Cover doesn't always absorb the fire, it just makes it harder to shoot the target.

For intervening models, it says in the BRB that the intervening unit doesn't get hit, it merely shows that the firers decided that they didn't have a shot. Hedges and other things like them could very easily be explained by that too.

-cgmckenzie

geza55 wrote:However, I do think that ordinance and large blasts should do something to the cover, or the save at least. Hiding behind a wall won't protect you from a massive shell landing in your midst.

There already are rules for ordinance. For barrage weapons, you determine cover saves from the point of impact, not the firing unit. So if a squad hunker down behind a barrier and a mortar lands in the middle of the unit, they don't get cover saves.

true, but Ordinance and Barrage are 2 different things.

Foo wrote:

geza55 wrote:However, I do think that ordinance and large blasts should do something to the cover, or the save at least. Hiding behind a wall won't protect you from a massive shell landing in your midst.

There already are rules for ordinance. For barrage weapons, you determine cover saves from the point of impact, not the firing unit. So if a squad hunker down behind a barrier and a mortar lands in the middle of the unit, they don't get cover saves.

BRAINIAC
good idea...

AlmightyWalrus wrote:I think that one of the main issues with cover is that people run everything as 4+. This obviously leads to some silly situations.

Precisely. Msot of the problem with cover saves is that the average person is a lazy bastard who doesn't want to use their tiny brainmeats to determine if a shrub is a 6+ save or a 4+ save, and just choose the latter by default.

Cover shouldn't have a save separate from other saves, it should have a to-hit modifier. However, GW decided after 2nd edition that these modifiers were a slippery slope and removed them from 40k, so the cover rules are quite abstracted at this time. Personally, I'd love to see rules that allow cover to actually benefit Marines and the like, but we'll just have to wait and see what 6th Edition has in store.

They're Marines. They ARE cover.

I was fairly certain the IG filled that role... mainly for the IG tanks and big guns, but filling the role nonetheless.

-cgmckenzie

It's like Space Marine the game, cover is for pansies. Your power armor is your cover.

That being said, yes. The cover save is an abstraction. It not only represents the intervening terrain or whatever taking the hit for the guy, but also represents the possibility of the shooter just deciding its not worth the shot, or being distracted by supressing fire, or whatever.

That and people play the cover rules wrong. That hedge should be a 6+ cover save, not a 4+ cover save. A LOT of thigns are 4+ but not things like a hedge or thin wall.

I don't think cover should be a save at all, but rather reduce the opponent's accuracy.

-1 for light, -2 for heavy

This is how it used to be, this is how it is in fantasy, and this is how it should be in the future.

Melissia wrote:

AlmightyWalrus wrote:I think that one of the main issues with cover is that people run everything as 4+. This obviously leads to some silly situations.

Precisely. Msot of the problem with cover saves is that the average person is a lazy bastard who doesn't want to use their tiny brainmeats to determine if a shrub is a 6+ save or a 4+ save, and just choose the latter by default.

Funny the rulebook says most things you commonly see on the table are 4+ and that's how most tourneys are played. I tend to think that it's not really laziness on our part when the people who make and run the game seem to think most cover is 4+ cover.

Cover saves are fine as they are now. However, cover for barrage should only apply if a unit is in area terrain, eg woods, ruins etc.