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A question regarding flyers and difficult terrain. By "flyers" I mean any of the few skimmers currently in the game (Valkyries, Vendettas, and Stormravens) that use the 8" flying base. Specifically, this has to do with difficult terrain. Do they make difficult terrain checks? Let us say you park one with part of it over the building, but not in the building. According to cover rules, they can see you (you're not behind the building), but the rules don't specifically state if you have to make a difficult terrain check or not. You're over the terrain but you're not in it, aand 40k has an irritating 2D/3D thing going on right now.

1) According to the BRB page 71, a skimmer has to "land" at the end of its move, there is no hovering over the battlefield, which we can take to mean that you have to set it down on its base (you can't hold it in midair). Likewise, we could take it to mean it settles completely to the ground, and therefore enters the difficult terrain.
2) Slightly lower down, same page, it says that a moving skimmer that starts or ends its move in difficult or dangerous terrain must check as usual. It says "in", which we could assume to mean that the actual model must actually be in the terrain (and not just over it).
3) Finally, slightly lower down it says that you can move over impassable terrain, but you must make a dangerous terrain check.

To me, this would read that if your skimmer is on a tall enough base to not actually touch the terrain, you're not actually in it. However, and maybe I'm just dragging in rules for old 4th ed stuff, the whole "must land" thing makes me feel as if, while we have to use the tall, 8" base for the "no cover save you're getting shot at" thing, we also use "any part of your model is over difficult terrain, therefore make the check" .

What's your argument dakka?

For the purposes of deciding if it's in dangerous or difficult terrain, use just the base. The model itself does not check for difficult terrain or even if it would fit between buildings due to wing size. (just sovlves the headache of deciding where it would fit) at least that's how we do it since some people like to mod in supersized wings to look cool and we don't penalize people for that.

Q: What part of a skimmer on a large oval flying base
is used to determine if it is in/on terrain or if it is on
friendly or enemy models? (p71)
A: Just the base itself.

Taken from here