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Whilst I was thinking about using reserve hydras as my anti air option, I came across a potentially ambiguous rule interpretation.

The way I have been playing up to this point is that a moving hydra gets to fire a single gun at full BS against a flier, whilst the rest fire snapshots. This conforms with the rules on page 71. However, the skyfire rule on page 42 states that the normal BS can be used against fliers. This seems like an advanced rule (skyfire) overriding a basic rule (snap shots are at BS1), giving a snap shot at BS3.

This does seem like a bit of a rules twist to me, so I thought that I would canvas some opinion on the subject.

Skyfire means you ignore hard it hit, not the vehicle movement restrictions, sounds like you are looking for a loop hole

Skyfire, page 42:

...fires using its normal ballistic skill when shooting at...

I do see the point that it could be regarded as loophole exploitation though.

Your vehicle moves, thus your weapons must snap fire due to their rules.

Your vehicle chooses to shoot at a flier, which requires snap shots, but you have sky fire, thus you ignore this restriction.

You only ignored half of the problem with the rules.

 Trickstick wrote:
Skyfire, page 42:

...fires using its normal ballistic skill when shooting at...

I do see the point that it could be regarded as loophole exploitation though.

And what's the "normal" ballistic skill of a cruising-speed Hydra?

 juraigamer wrote:
Your vehicle moves, thus your weapons must snap fire due to their rules.

Your vehicle chooses to shoot at a flier, which requires snap shots, but you have sky fire, thus you ignore this restriction.

You only ignored half of the problem with the rules.

Well, the shots would still be snap shots. However, the skyfire rule could be understood as changing the BS1 of a snap shot to the normal BS3 of the hydra.

 Janthkin wrote:

 Trickstick wrote:
Skyfire, page 42:

...fires using its normal ballistic skill when shooting at...

I do see the point that it could be regarded as loophole exploitation though.

And what's the "normal" ballistic skill of a cruising-speed Hydra?

I would take the "normal" ballistic skill as that of the model before any additional rules are applied, so BS3.

Also, I would just like to take this opportunity to state that I am still undecided on this topic, and am simply arguing the 'for' case to open up debate.

 Janthkin wrote:

 Trickstick wrote:
Skyfire, page 42:

...fires using its normal ballistic skill when shooting at...

I do see the point that it could be regarded as loophole exploitation though.

And what's the "normal" ballistic skill of a cruising-speed Hydra?

Sorry, this remknds too much of asking the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow...

This is just like the devastator sergeant's signum over-riding snapfire. A hydra may fire at full BS at flyers. However, when it moves at cruising speed, all of its wewpons are reduced to snap fires. If that weren't the case, it would have some pretty good defense against Shaken and Stunned damage rolls, wouldn't it?

Nice try...

Q: Can the BS1 of a Snap Shot ever be modified by special rules that
modify the BS of a model’s Shooting attack (such as Tau
markerlights, Space Marine Signums or Sergeant Telion’s Voice of
Experience)? (p13)
A: No.

Problem solved! I thought it would end up being false.