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Hello everyone, I have a question regarding wound allocation. Forgive me if this is searchable, I just picked up my 5th book and this forum moves fast!

How do you resolve shooting when you have a mixed unit with 1 W and 2+ W models? On the one hand we have the rule where each model has to take one wound before any can have a second, and on the other we have to remove entire multi wound models when possible.

Let's say I attach a space marine captain to 5 tacticals and they take 7 wounds that don't allow any save of any kind (for sake of argument) but are not instant death.

Do I have to give 3 wounds to the captain and 4 to the tacticals, following the 'remove entire models' rule, or 1 on each with a second on a tactical and the captain walks away only losing one wound.


Now lets say I take 5 wounds, none allow saves, 1 is instant death. Would I have to kill the captain with the instant death wound, or do the rules allow me to assign it to a tactical?

I'm sorry if this is a really easy question - the rule book provides good explanations for pure 1 W and pure multi wound squads, but nothing for mixed. Thanks

Okay, how do I explain this.

First of all, its always 1 on each before allocating another. Ergo, with your example, you could easily do 6 to tactical and 1 to captain.

For your second example, you can assign the instant death wound to tactical, and only 1 to the captain (another 5 can be placed on tactical).

The reason this is confusing you is because you don't understand that "removing whole models" only occurs within identical models.

Example, A commissar, an Ogryn Sergeant, and 4 Ogryns. The squad takes 8 wounds, all non-instant death, saves allowed. You assign one wound to each model (1 to commissar, 1 to ogryn sergeant, and 6 to the ogryns). Then you roll saves; 1 for the ogryn sergeant, 1 for the commissar, and 6 for the ogryns. You then remove as many models from EACH CATEGORY (ie, sergeant, regulars, and commissar are each a category). In fact, you can assign 2 wounds to your ogryn sergeant, and 5 to your ogryns (1 to commissar) and it would still be legal.

Whats important to remember is that saves occur after you allocate the wounds; you don't know if anyone is dead until AFTER the wounds have been allocated.

In the first scenario (5 marines, captain, 7 wounds with no armor save), you could put 1 wound on the captain, and the rest on the marines.

You would go like this:

Marine, marine, marine, marine, marine, captain, marine. The marines would take 6, and the captain would take 1.

The rule talking about removing multi-wound models when possible is talking about when you have a unit of identical multi-wound models, such as ork nobs.

If 7 ork nobs took your 7 wounds, you could not take 1 wound from each model and still have 7 models left, you would have to kill off 3 of the nobs (6 wounds), and give a 4th nob a single wound.

In the second scenario with 1 instant death wound you still get to choose what group the wound is allocated to, whether it be the captain or the squad. Once it is allocated to a group, you have to remove whole models if possible.

In your example, you would put all 5 wounds on the 5 marines in the squad, and none on the captain.

To go back to the ork example, if you had 5 nobs (2 wounds each) and a warboss (3 wounds, i think) in a unit, and it got hit the 5 wounds, one of which caused instant death, you could still put them all on the squad, and would lose 1 whole nob from the instant death wound, and then 2 more nobs from the other 4 unsaved wounds.

I hope that was a clear enough explanation.

Thanks for that, I assumed that's what it was but if it ever came up in an actual game I didn't know how to defend it.

I understand that you assign the wounds and roll for saves, perhaps my example with the 'no save at all' weapon was too simple to demonstrate that.

A good way to handle wounds that you have no saves against in situations like this is to pretend you can save them, but that you will automatically fail that save.

Andy:

You allocate wounds as normal. So, one wound per model (regardless of how many wounds that model has) until every model has one wound, you then go round again.

Then, no matter what - you GROUP the wounds into pools of wounds with groups of like models.

You then take saves within this group, and follow the rules for multiwound models at this point.

So, to an example:

5 bolter tac marines with a power weapon sarge and a captain. 6 models take 7 wounds

you allocate everyone 1 wound, and as you dont want to lose any more marines than you have to, 2 onto the captain

You then group the wounds - one wound group is the bolter armed marines: 4 models with 4 wounds. You have another group of one model, the sarge, with one wound assigned to the GROUP, and 2 on the captain who is also his own group.

You then take saves, and remove wounds from within the group - remember that wounds are now against the group, NOT the model you first allocated it to!