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After looking at the burning chariot or tzeentch model and rummaging around the rulebook, I've come to an interesting question. So far as RAW is concerned, would you include the herald/flamer as part of the vehicles hull or not?

With a profile as small as this thing is, I could easily see situations where the hull (minus the rider) is completely obscured, but having full line of sight from the rider for shooting. An Aegis line is almost enough to completely cover the thing on an even level.


Bringing this up with a few friends, we couldn't come up with a good reason that the rider would be "part" of the hull, even if that could lead to game play that could render the model fully obscured without any penalty to it's own shooting.

While in game, I think most folks would agree that it could be shot at in the above situations, but what would the hard raw answer be for such a thing?

Do you consider the rider part of the hull or turret? If no, then you do not have LOS.

Also the model cannot be "fully obscured" and not have a penalty to its shooting, as it is a vehicle and therefore draws LOS from either the weapons (which are obscured) or if its open topped any point on the hull (which your not counting the rider as)

The Chariot is an Open-topped transport right?

So LOS and firing wouldn't come from the "rider". Personally I wouldn't consider the rider model "hull" and would ignore it for all purposes.

The riders often have their own profiles as well, and are recognized by the rules as being separate from the vehicle they are mounted on. This makes it a very strong case to argue that the rider is a separate model entirely. The fact this model is visible, when normally the model inside a transport is simply left on a side table, doesn't change how the rules interact with it.

In fact, the rules clearly state that you can not target the rider and must resolve all attacks against the vehicle itself on page 82. If you are drawing your line of sight to the rider, and not to any other part of the vehicle, the argument can easily be made that you are targeting the rider. Given that the rules clearly deny you the ability to do this you can not even draw LOS to the rider. If you did, then you wouldn't be able to assign the hit to the vehicle which would still be out of sight, nor can you assign it to the rider because you simply are not allowed to.

Interestingly enough, you could make an argument that the rider is able to be killed with indirect methods. The rules also clearly state that the rider can be targeted when it comes to wounds issued via close combat. In these cases the rest of the chariot is left operating just as if it had a rider, while the model has been removed as a casualty. It is one of those humorous outcomes thanks to the rules as written for while many chariots have 'remove rider if chariot is removed from play' the reverse is not even mentioned....

Grendel:
Good catch on the fact you wouldn't be able to use the rider for LOS purposes when returning fire, as it isn't part of the hull and all open top vehicles draw LOS from the hull.