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This Unit is a Swarm

Canoptek Scarabs
Unit Type: Beasts
Special Rules: Entropic Strike, Fearless, Swarms

This is what Swarms Do

Swarms

If a Swarm suffers an unsaved Wound from a Blast, Large Blast or Template weapon, each unsaved\wound is multiplied to two unsaved wounds.
However, Swarms are adept at crossing terrain that would slow others - they are not slowed by Difficult Terrain, but must test for dangerous terrain as normal.

This is what a template weapon does

TEMPLATE WEAPONS

Template weapons are indicated by having the word Template' for their range instead of a number. Instead of rolling To Hit, simply place the template so that its narrow end is touching the base of the firing model and the rest of the template covers as many models in the target unit as possible, without touching any other friendly models (including other models from the firing model's unit). Any models fully or partially under the template are hit. Against vehicles, the template must be placed to cover as much of the vehicle as possible without touching a
friendly model. The position of the firer is used to determine which armor facing is hit (see page 73). A Template weapon never hits the model firing it.
Template weapons cannot fire Snap Shots.
Multiple Templates
If a unit is firing more than one shot with the Template type, resolve each shot, one at a time, as described above,
determining and recording how many hits are scored by each template. Resolve these, and the rest of the unit's shots,
as normal.
Wall of Death
Flamers and other Template weapons are fearsome when employed against a charging enemy, as the wielder can spray a
cloud of destruction into the path of the assault. Template weapons can fire overwatch, even though they
cannot fire snap Shots. Instead, if a Template weapons fires overwatch, it automatically inflicts D3 hits on the charging
unit, resolved at its normal Strength and AP value. Don't worry about comparing the length of the template with the
distance to the enemy. If the charge is successful, it doesn't matter anyway. If the charge failed, we can assume that the
enemy ran into range of the Template weapon and were driven back.

This is what the FAQ has to say about it
_______________________________

This is how many wounds a template weapon causes to a Scarab unit in overwatch:
1d3x2

From you all's point of view am I missing something, or is there some alternate way I could make this clearer to a local player having troubles with this?

I am not trying to Troll i am honestly wondering if I am seeing this as a simple rule understanding or if there is some complication to it that I do not grasp.
Any comments are appreciated.

Landon

I'll start by saying it is arguable. There are two sides.
Side A claims that the wounds don't double til allocation, as swarm is a model based rule.
Side B claims that the wound are doubled before allocation.

This is of course assuming a unit composed of only Scarabs, with the same save. It also makes a big difference on how ID wounds are applied.

Now that both sides have been down, we do not need another long thread on whether you double before or after allocation.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/497144.page

Unless there is something making the timing important it (like they would inflict ID for example) then doesn't matter when they double.
20 shots x 50% hit rate x 50% wound rate X 50% saved x 2 for swarm is the same as 2 x 0.5 x 20 x 0.5 x 0.5.
Order matters not when its all multiplication.
Its not like rending when you need a 6 at a certain point for it to make a difference.

 psyklone wrote:
Unless there is something making the timing important it (like they would inflict ID for example) then doesn't matter when they double.
20 shots x 50% hit rate x 50% wound rate X 50% saved x 2 for swarm is the same as 2 x 0.5 x 20 x 0.5 x 0.5.
Order matters not when its all multiplication.
Its not like rending when you need a 6 at a certain point for it to make a difference.

It does matter when the double.

3 wound model - Rippers for example.
Doubling before allocation:
2 wounds caused. Doubled in pool to 4. 3 wounds allocated to Ripper 1, 1 wound allocated to Ripper 2.
Doubling after allocation:
2 wounds caused. 1 wound allocated to Ripper 1, doubled to 2. 1 wound allocated to Ripper 1, doubled to 2, Ripper 1 removed. Ripper 2 never suffers wounds.

Since the swarm rule come in to effect when the model suffers an unsaved wound, then definitely it's not 1D3X2 wounds. You roll 1D3 to see how many hits the weapon causes, then to wound, roll saves and then you have the wound pool of unsaved wounds. Each wound that is allocated to a swarm is doubled.

You roll your D3 hits with your flamer, then you roll to wound for how ever many hit you scored. Lets say the swarms armour save is 4+ and you got 3 hits and two wounds from your D3 roll. They roll their saves and fail two, because of the swarms rule they take double the unsaved wounds leaving you with 4 unsaved wounds.

IXLoiero95XI

Those of you that want to debate the rule, please see Mannahinn's link, read the thread, and post in it.

Suffice it to say this is not as clear cut as many people seem to believe.

I'm sending this in an email to GW. Hopefully it will be in the next FAQ.
I'm also sending a question on whether the new rules about allocating wounds affects templates and blasts. It seems that they work on templates (range is pretty well specified) but what about blast templates? They may limit the number of models that can receive wounds.

I appreciate the effort of all the people to educate the guy using an older thread, but his post has nothing to do with Instant Death, he's clearly querying whether wall of death satisfied the requirements to double the wounds.

His question is a subset of the older thread. It comes down to this issue. The swarm rule says wounds from template, blasts etc are doubled when a swarm model suffers an unsaved wound. One side says the model suffers the unsaved wound before allocation so the doubling of the wounds happens in the wound pool, the other side says the model suffers an unsaved after it has been allocated a wound, so the model suffers 2 wounds instead of 1.

And it's pretty clear that the answer to that is being debated.