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Ok so i was thinking about using a chaos dreadnought in a couple of lists, I know how dumb this sounds but i was just thinking about one thing. I have a dreadnought in base contact with a friendly unit. The dreadnought fire frenzies with a plasma cannon and a missile launcher, I fire the missile launcher with frag grenades. What i am thinking and i hope some of you could tell me which one will happen,

Option a) the dreadnought fires at the unit that is in base contact, firing both guns twice as normal, Hits it self with both because of the blast templates. everything goes from there.

Option b) The dreadnought fire frenzies, and treats the closest model as an enemy, but can't fire because the blast would hit its self. And i can't place a blast template in such a way that it covers a friendly model. The dreadnought only treats the closet unit as an enemy but it doesn't treat its self like an enemy and thus can't fire because it would hit its self.

The thinking behind this is if i have a plasma cannon missile launcher dreadnought and wrap a unit of havocs around it, the dreadnought would never hit any of my own units with fire frenzy. Of course a blood rage result would make it run forward and screw my plan up. But what would happen in this case? Did i miss another thread talking about this? or has it been faq'd some where that i didn't notice? So once again i seek the wisdom of the dakkadakkaites for help. Thank you.

you would severely gimp the dread if you did this, as you can not place the blast marker over friendly model (The dread in this case) you would make fire frenzy worthless.

It is nice to sometimes get 2 shots at the enemy while advancing across the board.

The FaQ says keep friendlies out of LoS and they are safe.

Q: When working out which targets are visible to a
Chaos Dreadnought suffering from a Fire Frenzy result,
are you limited to those units within the 45 degree line
of sight of its weapons? (p40)
A: Yes.

When you are in melee at the start of your turn, you don't roll, since nothing can happen. You can't fire a ranged weapon in melee anyway unless you have a special rule that states you can.

Base contact witha "friendly" unit is the original post - so not necessarily combat

I was wondering, Just because having rhinos moving across the field and having a dreadnought moving behind them. Seems like a bad thing to have happen. The point is to keep a dreadnought from killing anything of mine. If that means i don't get the 2 shots, and don't get to fire. that is safer than having to shoot at my own people. Marines don't like plasma cannons. But if it won't fire than ok you have answered my question and I thank you all for your help.

I would rule that the dread would still fire, even if the blast would hit himself.

This is because the rule for blast (and template) weapons say you cannot cover friendly models at all. So, if you fire frenzy at a friendly unit, you can't place the marker anywhere.

And, in fact, the Dread wouldn't be able to fire any weapons, as the first step of shooting says "All models in the unit that can see at least one enemy model in the target unit may open fire." Since the dread can't see any enemy models in the target unit (they're all friendlies), the dread can't fire at all.

So, either Fire Frenzy does nothing if you target a friendly unit, or there's an implied "you can ignore all the references to 'friendly' in the shooting rules".

The thinking was that the unit in front of the dread is counted as an enemy, So fire frenzy would happen. But the dread is still a friendly model to its self. It can see the unit in front of it, But couldn't place a blast marker on them because it would hit its self. Like a vindicator trying to fire point blank couldn't happen because it would hit its self. Which as far as i know it can't.

PapaPiggy wrote:The thinking was that the unit in front of the dread is counted as an enemy, So fire frenzy would happen. But the dread is still a friendly model to its self. It can see the unit in front of it, But couldn't place a blast marker on them because it would hit its self. Like a vindicator trying to fire point blank couldn't happen because it would hit its self. Which as far as i know it can't.

... My question is - why are you bothering?
If you put your Dreadnaughts at the front, they can't shoot your troops.

Just put you Dread on the front line and keep friendlies out of it 45 degree fire arc and you shoudl never shoot friendly units anyway.

Don't the dreads pivot to shoot the closest? And its not much work to do. All it takes is a dreadnought and a squad both in the army and a certain way of deploying. Seemed like a simple question. For the sake of asking while this codex is still around. But i thank you all for your help.

PapaPiggy wrote:Don't the dreads pivot to shoot the closest? And its not much work to do. All it takes is a dreadnought and a squad both in the army and a certain way of deploying. Seemed like a simple question. For the sake of asking while this codex is still around. But i thank you all for your help.

Read your newest FAQ. You're welcome.

PapaPiggy wrote:Don't the dreads pivot to shoot the closest? And its not much work to do. All it takes is a dreadnought and a squad both in the army and a certain way of deploying. Seemed like a simple question. For the sake of asking while this codex is still around. But i thank you all for your help.

Read the FAQ, and the 5th edition rules, which are both in perfect synch with eachother