Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

We play with varied terrain and almost never have those kind of ‘issues’. YMMV.

As you note, the base rules are mutable enough to allow your house ruling for the game you prefer. That’s great!

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Amazing some of you can defend GW's inconsistent modeling too.

There's a decent sized gap between defense and pragmatism.

Haven't you learned yet, Daedalus? Anything short of blind vitriol is "white knighting".

Some of the fortifications produced by GW are essentially unusable because of TLOS. If you place your models on top the battlements block LOS to anything unless it's several feet away or on an equal elevation. I've had an especially charming person use that against me during a tournament, essentially taking what I thought was a well-placed unit out of the game entirely.

 Saber wrote:
Some of the fortifications produced by GW are essentially unusable because of TLOS. If you place your models on top the battlements block LOS to anything unless it's several feet away or on an equal elevation. I've had an especially charming person use that against me during a tournament, essentially taking what I thought was a well-placed unit out of the game entirely.

Those fortifications have Datasheets and are treated as VEHICLES. Models placed on top are just to show which unit is embarked inside / for aesthetics. If being used as terrain then that all changes, but as written they’re usable as you can draw range and LOS for embarked units from any part of the fortification.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
We play with varied terrain and almost never have those kind of ‘issues’. YMMV.

You said that you sometimes could have models unable to shoot, not for any narrative or game-relevant reason but just because of their sculpts, and just treat it as unimportant.

I doubt that was intended by the designers. I mean, by the same YMMV token, the fact that you haven't had game-deciding issues arise doesn't mean there isn't a problem with the implementation.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Amazing some of you can defend GW's inconsistent modeling too.

There's a decent sized gap between defense and pragmatism.

Pragmatism is telling GW to fix the ruleset, not doing it yourself and praising GW for creating a fun game. A fun game doesn't make you houserule stuff that should already be in place. So no, it is defense, pure and simple.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Amazing some of you can defend GW's inconsistent modeling too.

There's a decent sized gap between defense and pragmatism.

Pragmatism is telling GW to fix the ruleset, not doing it yourself and praising GW for creating a fun game. A fun game doesn't make you houserule stuff that should already be in place. So no, it is defense, pure and simple.

Pragmatic: "Dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations."

Discussing the rules with an opponent for an enjoyable experience is a pragmatic solution. Writing a letter then coming on a forum to bash the company is not.

It's arguably more pragmatic to stop giving GW money until they fix their gak and make a higher quality product.

Having to discuss which house rules you will be using every game is not very pragmatic.

 Lance845 wrote:
It's arguably more pragmatic to stop giving GW money until they fix their gak and make a higher quality product.

Having to discuss which house rules you will be using every game is not very pragmatic.

Or they simply don't fix their gak and you're then out of the game essentially, but if that is your moral stand point then fair enough.

A lack of pragmatism would be not talking to your opponents and arguing every game, since if you're not in agreement on how you want to play, nobody walks away happy.

If I were to believe half this forum, I would have to conclude that they are physically incapable of speaking to their opponent before a game. The act of finding an opponent simply involves approaching a total stranger and communicating their desire for a game via a complicated series of grunts and clicks. Only once the game has begun are they allowed to speak, and even then, all conversation is strictly limited to declaring actions and citing rulebooks verbatim.

 catbarf wrote:
[But houseruling LOS to use base-to-base (with clear definitions of what blocks LOS and what can be seen over) is one of the first things my group did, because if you play with human-sized figures and more realistic terrain than the never-blocks-LOS stuff GW sells, this kind of situation comes up a lot.

This sounds far more complex, exploitable and vague than the actual rules though?

There are a lot of abstract rules in the game. Since we aren't actually commanding armies in real time that kill each other, this is a requirement.

Your complaint seems even more bizarre because you admit to using non GW terrain in your games. Have you tried with GW terrain? Was the experience different? Have you tried not placing your Heavy Weapons team behind walls and sandbags?

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
...This sounds far more complex, exploitable and vague than the actual rules though?...

I find GW's rules tend to emphasize being short and easy to write over being short and easy to play.

 catbarf wrote:
. . . I think it is profoundly dumb to write a game in which you assume each soldier represented by each model is forever locked into the action pose in which they've been modeled, with no ability to interact with the battlefield. As a rule it is simple, logical, easy to check and apply- and makes little real-world sense sense, is easy to exploit, leads to bad feelings when you lose a whole squad because a single waving arm was visible, and ruins any sense of immersion I might get out of the game. The idea of models as frozen poses isn't even applied consistently, since Captain Tetanus with his sword held above his head can go in a transport without issue- presumably because it's assumed he can put his fething arm down.

The excuse that 'shooting an exposed arm is to represent the squad getting shot as they moved to cover' is bs, too. You brought the Sergeant with his chainsword up, so now your unit can be killed 'while moving to cover', three turns after you actually did so. Bring the Sergeant with his chainsword down and now they can't be shot 'while moving to cover' ever. That's a sloppy post-hoc rationalization for a dumb mechanic.

100% agree with the first paragraph. Somewhat disagree with the second, dealing with thee abstractions is sort of necessary, imo. But I also don't think it should conflict with your first paragraph. Punishing models for waving their arms around isn't something I like.

 catbarf wrote:

I still PLAY the game. I don't think anybody here has said the rules are literally unplayable. But houseruling LOS to use base-to-base (with clear definitions of what blocks LOS and what can be seen over) is one of the first things my group did, because if you play with human-sized figures and more realistic terrain than the never-blocks-LOS stuff GW sells, this kind of situation comes up a lot.

That was not a solution I would have come up with, but it's kinda interesting. I like the shilouette idea that infinity does, but that's just far too complicated for a game where there can easily be 100+ models in an army. This is why I always default back to 4Ed style model "sizes", terrain "sizes", and area terrain rules.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
This sounds far more complex, exploitable and vague than the actual rules though?

Maybe? It's easy to just say that you can see over a sandbag, but anyone behind it (defined by whether a horizontal line from the center of one base to the other passes over the sandbag line) gets cover. It's also easy to say that a 2" tall hill blocks LOS to infantry on the other side, even if there's an outstretched arm sticking over the top. When we use jungle terrain, we say LOS is blocked if tracing a base-to-base line goes through the jungle base, rather than get down to table level to inevitably conclude that some part of the target is visible because it is impossible to 100% block LOS with 6" of model trees.

By having defined height for the jungles (usually 4", sometimes 6" ) and 2" increments for hills, it is also easy to tell whether the jungles block LOS when shooting hill-to-hill. We've played games with a lot of verticality using these heuristics and it's generally worked better than arguing over whether part of a helmet is visible over a slight partition in the trees.

We do resort to TLOS for some oddly sized units or special cases, but generally just to define what their 'true' height is, since base diameter + height is all we need to work out LOS. A Grotesque is measured at 2.5" tall? Okay, so it can be seen by anything else >2" tall on the other side of the 2" hill. Simple. For handling general terrain, we find it easier and more consistent to go by these simple heuristics than to rigidly enforce TLOS.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Your complaint seems even more bizarre because you admit to using non GW terrain in your games. Have you tried with GW terrain? Was the experience different?

In fact, I have. GW's official terrain very neatly and cleanly addresses this problem by being so full of holes that it rarely blocks LOS to begin with, serving as pretty scenery for a functionally bare board.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Have you tried not placing your Heavy Weapons team behind walls and sandbags?

I think the fact that this is a suggested resolution speaks volumes about the mechanic. No, I am not going to simply resort to placing emplaced heavy weapons outside of cover, because their posing is locked into deploying prone behind the sandbags rather than on top of them like any sane person would IRL. That's ridiculous.

Edit: One more thing, regarding this statement:

There are a lot of abstract rules in the game. Since we aren't actually commanding armies in real time that kill each other, this is a requirement.

I agree entirely! Abstraction is good, especially in a game where the ground scale can't be 1:1 without being silly (turns a few seconds long, supersonic aircraft flying at 20mph, artillery pieces with shorter range than IRL longbows, soldiers panicking if their nearest ally is more than ten feet away). That's why TLOS bothers the hell out of me: It is a very un-abstract mechanic, taking the positioning and posing of the models wholly literally. It's contradictory in design principle to how you can fire all of a vehicle's weapons from any point on its hull, which abstractly represents the ability of a vehicle to reposition for fire within a small radius of its 'actual' position.

40K has never attempted to be a 1:1, literalist simulation like Infinity, where weapons have unlimited range and a turn concretely represents a very short amount of time. It's always been abstract as a 28mm game, to the point where if you play the 40K rules using Epic (6mm) miniatures, it actually approaches a fairly realistic ground scale. TLOS is the one mechanic that feels like a massive departure from this design methodology.

Also, have you noticed the abstraction in the cover rules? With ruins, Infantry get a cover save just by being in a piece of terrain designated as cover. It doesn't matter if you're not actually 'in cover' because you're standing in a ruined doorway, you still get the cover bonus by being within the terrain piece. TLOS isn't actually taken into account for most of the cover rules; it's all abstract mechanics- until you start looking at vehicles, where the TLOS-based 50% obscuration mechanic becomes a pain in the rear to objectively assess. So as it stands, we have this hybrid system where we use literalist TLOS to determine if a model can be seen or not, then switch to an abstract system for determining whether it's protected by terrain or not.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Pragmatism is telling GW to fix the ruleset, not doing it yourself and praising GW for creating a fun game. A fun game doesn't make you houserule stuff that should already be in place. So no, it is defense, pure and simple.

I'll tell GW to fix it when I can conjure up a sensible compromise that would likely get implemented - I've already voiced my desires regarding terrain rules. Until then I'll remain nonplussed about the situation as it causes neither me nor my opponents any considerable grief.

 EnTyme wrote:
If I were to believe half this forum, I would have to conclude that they are physically incapable of speaking to their opponent before a game. The act of finding an opponent simply involves approaching a total stranger and communicating their desire for a game via a complicated series of grunts and clicks. Only once the game has begun are they allowed to speak, and even then, all conversation is strictly limited to declaring actions and citing rulebooks verbatim.

Why should I have to negotiate with my opponent to just play a game when none of the other games I could be playing require that? Is it hard to believe I'd rather socialize OUTSIDE the game and not have to talk to my opponent about how to fix the game ourselves because you keep giving money to a company to make bad rules?
This is why nobody should be taming their lists and emailing GW about these issues. Any game should not be broken as easily 40k.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 EnTyme wrote:
If I were to believe half this forum, I would have to conclude that they are physically incapable of speaking to their opponent before a game. The act of finding an opponent simply involves approaching a total stranger and communicating their desire for a game via a complicated series of grunts and clicks. Only once the game has begun are they allowed to speak, and even then, all conversation is strictly limited to declaring actions and citing rulebooks verbatim.

Why should I have to negotiate with my opponent to just play a game when none of the other games I could be playing require that? Is it hard to believe I'd rather socialize OUTSIDE the game and not have to talk to my opponent about how to fix the game ourselves because you keep giving money to a company to make bad rules?
This is why nobody should be taming their lists and emailing GW about these issues. Any game should not be broken as easily 40k.

You keep repeating yourself. Everyone has heard you. If you’re that angry step away from the keyboard and do something you enjoy.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Why should I have to negotiate with my opponent to just play a game when none of the other games I could be playing require that? Is it hard to believe I'd rather socialize OUTSIDE the game and not have to talk to my opponent about how to fix the game ourselves because you keep giving money to a company to make bad rules?
This is why nobody should be taming their lists and emailing GW about these issues. Any game should not be broken as easily 40k.

I grew up with 1 brother and 3 sisters. I can't think of a game where there wasn't some negotiation involved, up to and including which game to play in the first place! This was with people where we knew the house rules that were normally run in the house.

I have step siblings, and I have people my age I have to train with. If the rules were suppose to set up every time it would waste a heck lot of time. Plus how is this suppose to work. You say you want to use the laptop, they say they want to use it. figthing is not allowed. if you don't put up rules, sooner or later someone is going to get smacked, and then everything goes to hell. Rules are there so people don't have to interact with other people. Interactions are random and strange with non regular paterns. The fewer of that in life, the better.

 Charistoph wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Why should I have to negotiate with my opponent to just play a game when none of the other games I could be playing require that? Is it hard to believe I'd rather socialize OUTSIDE the game and not have to talk to my opponent about how to fix the game ourselves because you keep giving money to a company to make bad rules?
This is why nobody should be taming their lists and emailing GW about these issues. Any game should not be broken as easily 40k.

I grew up with 1 brother and 3 sisters. I can't think of a game where there wasn't some negotiation involved, up to and including which game to play in the first place! This was with people where we knew the house rules that were normally run in the house.

Funny because my siblings, step siblings, and cousin never needed negotiation because modifying rules that work correctly means it doesn't have to happen. I fail to see how this helps that mindset.

 catbarf wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
This sounds far more complex, exploitable and vague than the actual rules though?

Maybe? It's easy to just say that you can see over a sandbag, but anyone behind it (defined by whether a horizontal line from the center of one base to the other passes over the sandbag line) gets cover. It's also easy to say that a 2" tall hill blocks LOS to infantry on the other side, even if there's an outstretched arm sticking over the top. When we use jungle terrain, we say LOS is blocked if tracing a base-to-base line goes through the jungle base, rather than get down to table level to inevitably conclude that some part of the target is visible because it is impossible to 100% block LOS with 6" of model trees.

I don't think there's a "maybe" in it. TLOS is simple. The way you play I need to draw imaginary lines, from the "centre" of the base (wherever that is), while remembering that "hills are 2 inches tall" and "x is y inches tall". Sounds tedious and confusion.

In fact, I have. GW's official terrain very neatly and cleanly addresses this problem by being so full of holes that it rarely blocks LOS to begin with, serving as pretty scenery for a functionally bare board.

So what do you want? To be able to shoot through scenery with your heavy weapons teams or not? By your own rules can your HWT fire through walls and sandbags? That sounds pretty un-intuitive. Or do you want your teams to be able to fire without taking shots themselves? Doesn't sound very fair?

I think the fact that this is a suggested resolution speaks volumes about the mechanic. No, I am not going to simply resort to placing emplaced heavy weapons outside of cover, because their posing is locked into deploying prone behind the sandbags rather than on top of them like any sane person would IRL. That's ridiculous.

Not as ridiculous as expecting to be able to fire, unimpeded, always in cover?

TLOS is the one mechanic that feels like a massive departure from this design methodology.

The "design methodology" of 8th is to allow faster, easier, intuitive gaming. TLOS helps this. Abstract LOS rules do not, as we have seen from past editions. That is why it was implemented. Abstract rules well where they need to convey complex things in a simple way. LOS is not a complex thing. As I've said a few times now - if you can see the thing, you can shoot the thing. It couldn't be simpler.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Why should I have to negotiate with my opponent to just play a game when none of the other games I could be playing require that? Is it hard to believe I'd rather socialize OUTSIDE the game and not have to talk to my opponent about how to fix the game ourselves because you keep giving money to a company to make bad rules?
This is why nobody should be taming their lists and emailing GW about these issues. Any game should not be broken as easily 40k.

I grew up with 1 brother and 3 sisters. I can't think of a game where there wasn't some negotiation involved, up to and including which game to play in the first place! This was with people where we knew the house rules that were normally run in the house.

Funny because my siblings, step siblings, and cousin never needed negotiation because modifying rules that work correctly means it doesn't have to happen. I fail to see how this helps that mindset.

It's about learning how to set your ego aside to negotiate and compromise. Tabletop games are full of negotiations, not the least of which is which system to use and how large of a game you are willing to have.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

AngryAngel80 wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
The LOS rules are a simple practicality to cover all models, as I’ve already noted. They don’t ‘care about posing’, they’re designed to work with it. If you and your opponent want to say “hey this crouching guy... if I treat him as being able to fire over that sandbag wall to shoot is that OK? Obviously you can shoot him back.” then you can. In friendly games you can made little rules edits all over the place if it’s more fun for you, without even having to whine online.

All day this. It's almost as if some of the people here don't actually play the game because I don't think I've ever played a game of 40k without some discussion around an aspect of the rules. I ask my opponents the charge distance they think I need. I ask them if I can see something or not. I ask them if we're playing ITC, Maelstrom or EW missions (or another specific ruleset). I ask them what mission we're playing.

Honestly I can't remember a time since 8th has dropped where I've had an argument about the rules. People are so polite these days (in my experience) that they'll always err on the side of caution. If my opponent and I can't figure out a particular rule(s) interaction, we either flip a coin or roll dice and move on with our lives. And here's something that will probably blow people's minds - both myself and my opponents purposefully take weaker lists so we have a more enjoyable game.

I'm genuinely baffled why some of you play as you seem to find no enjoyment from the game whatsoever. If I didn't enjoy playing, I would stop, personally.

I'm far from a power gamer, so let me chime in real quick. Is discussion during a game good ? Yes it is. That said, the game is quicker, easier and cleaner when the rules work in such a way that they are easy to understand, implement and memorize. A tighter rules system where the game mechanic discussions arise out of want to do something new and not because we just have to talk about it to continue is just better over all as an experience. The fact that GW tend to not make rules as crisp as some would like leads to bad feelings and I can say as a player I like knowing exactly what I'm looking at with rules and not need to beg for my kneeling guy to see over that sand bag just because he happens to be kneeling for instance.

You do realize people can disagree with GW rules and not be some beardy WAAC player right ? Even casual for life players can find a game easier to enjoy and quicker to engage in when it's a cleaner system already. Having to argue about the nuance of the rules because something was left unclear or confusing just isn't very enjoyable a use of time and I hate to be surprised with " Oops, I can't do this because, reasons of poorly written rules. "

Though don't let me stop the hyperbole of everyone not liking crap rules being a salty hater who plays nothing but rage in the cage games as WAAC as we can, if we play at all. Obviously only someone who doesn't even know what a D6 is could possibly question the elegance of GW.

You're confusing "badly written rules" with "rules I don't like" I'm afraid. TLOS is clear, concise and simple. I don't think it could be simpler. There is nothing confusing or unclear with it at all. By the rules, your dude kneeling behind a sandbag cannot shoot something he cannot see, this isn't difficult to understand, it is logical and it is intuitive. If we were playing and you wanted to house rule that he could see, I wouldn't have a problem with it, but understand that the rules are not to blame here, merely the fact that you disagree with them in this particular instance. If anything is throwing in ambiguity and tedium into the game - it is you as a player, not the rules.

I think you're being somewhat hyperbolic and disingenuous above. My argument isn't that players who disagree with GW rules are 'beardy WAAC players'. I couldn't care less if you disagree with the rules or not, as mentioned above I house rule things with opponents all the time. My argument is that it would be difficult (if not imposisble) for GW to implement a clearer and more concise rule insofar as drawing LOS is concerned. Can you see the model? Job done. This isn't ambiguous. It isn't difficult to understand. It takes no time to resolve. You might think it's unfair for your dude who's kneeling behind a sandbag. That's completely irrelevant.

I also think the examples here of the magical sandbags that seem to perfectly block LOS for crouching models are vastly exaggerated. It's not a problem I've experienced ever, I don't think.

So my kneeling guy is always ever kneeling and that is intuitive and logical ? I find it moronic and dumb. At that point abstraction based line of sight based on height values is much less cumbersome. You may find it super immersive to lean all around on a table to see what see's what where but I've had more than I'd like arguments over what can see what where in this elegant line of sight system where a tank can fire his cannon from his rearmost tank tread, which yes has happened and feels anything but intuitive. I shouldn't need to house rule my man with legs can use them to stand. This clear and simple rule is why we have such pointless drivel as modeling for advantage which shouldn't even be a thing.

The rules for LoS were much cleaner and clearer back in 4th I believe. I get that not everyone played most every edition but I never had even one discussion over line of sight then. Just because you haven't encountered such a thing or can't understand it is irrelevant to it happening. So I find your own argument to be overly dismissive and equally disingenuous. As you confuse a rule you appreciate with one that is good when it is pants, and lazy to boot.

An Actual Englishman wrote:I don't think there's a "maybe" in it. TLOS is simple.

Until you have an argument. Or until you need to get down to the model's perspective every time you want to shoot, due to possibly intervening terrain that needs to be checked. Or spend time while you move going 'hey, do you have line of sight from here?', because shifting a model a quarter inch in any direction might impact its visibility.

My idea of simple is a system where I know, as soon as I move a model, exactly what it has LOS to and what has LOS to it, instead of needing to guess and check to avoid unexpected 'gotchas'.

An Actual Englishman wrote:So what do you want? To be able to shoot through scenery with your heavy weapons teams or not? By your own rules can your HWT fire through walls and sandbags? That sounds pretty un-intuitive. Or do you want your teams to be able to fire without taking shots themselves? Doesn't sound very fair?

I want the table to have terrain that functions as cover for units occupying it, and terrain that blocks LOS. I don't want the terrain intended as cover to unintentionally be LOS-blocking for units that logically should be able to fire from it, but are barred from doing so because of an unintuitive, unrealistic, immersion-breaking mechanic. And I don't want units to be able to shoot through terrain that is intended to be LOS-blocking, either, just because you can see a model's outstretched sword through a crack in the wall from the other side of the table.

By my rules any unit can fire over sandbags, because sandbags are defined as cover that doesn't block LOS. That means both the heavy weapon teams, and anything shooting at them, simply trace LOS as if the sandbags weren't there. On the flipside, if your LOS traces through a building or other structure defined as LOS blocking, you don't have line of sight, regardless of what you can see from the model's perspective.

Lots of wargames work this way. ITC adopted that latter rule for handling first-story windows. You honestly sound like you're actively trying to construe it as more complicated than it is.

An Actual Englishman wrote:Not as ridiculous as expecting to be able to fire, unimpeded, always in cover?

If you are saying that it is ridiculous to expect a crouching model to be able to fire from a sandbag line because all the imaginary man would have to do is stand up, then I really am at a loss for words.

Edit: For what it's worth, Bolt Action (written by Alessio Cavatore and Rick Priestley) uses TLOS as well, but since it is acknowledged that a kneeling or prone model isn't stuck in that pose, you're allowed to sub in a standing model to determine LOS.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Why should I have to negotiate with my opponent to just play a game when none of the other games I could be playing require that? Is it hard to believe I'd rather socialize OUTSIDE the game and not have to talk to my opponent about how to fix the game ourselves because you keep giving money to a company to make bad rules?
This is why nobody should be taming their lists and emailing GW about these issues. Any game should not be broken as easily 40k.

I grew up with 1 brother and 3 sisters. I can't think of a game where there wasn't some negotiation involved, up to and including which game to play in the first place! This was with people where we knew the house rules that were normally run in the house.

Funny because my siblings, step siblings, and cousin never needed negotiation because modifying rules that work correctly means it doesn't have to happen. I fail to see how this helps that mindset.

Okay, so I asked it in another post and it was ignored. Here we go again:

When you play poker what's your draw, your maximum bet, your ante and what's wild?

When you play crazy eights, does the queen of spades make you pick up five and can you stack twos through a reshuffle of the deck?

When you play monopoly, do you take the pot when you land on free parking and do you auto auction all properties?

When you play D&D do you Grey Hawk, Forgotten Realms, Eberron? Any there excluded races or classes?

Cuz guess what: if you tell me you've played any of these games without having these conversations and more, I might have to call shenanigans. And the conversations you have to have about LOS need be no more complex than any of these.

Why should you have to have a conversation to clarify things before the game? Because if you do, you'll have fun like we do, and if you don't, you won't; instead, you'll continue to make yourself miserable by whining about it on the internet.

You know, some people do actually like to discuss things they dislike or disagree with yes ? Not everyone who talks about a topic they disagree with is a snarling rage beast that has no fun doing it. They can even not be upset as they discuss it and instead just offer the counter point to those who agree with it.

I mean maybe some people are pained to have to deal with disagreement but I think a great many of us here either A) like it or B) aren't upset by it and just want to debate it. Perhaps that is why there is often people on both sides of the argument. Just a wild idea.

AngryAngel80 wrote:
So my kneeling guy is always ever kneeling and that is intuitive and logical ? I find it moronic and dumb. At that point abstraction based line of sight based on height values is much less cumbersome.....As you confuse a rule you appreciate with one that is good when it is pants, and lazy to boot.

 catbarf wrote:
Until you have an argument. Or until you need to get down to the model's perspective every time you want to shoot, due to possibly intervening terrain that needs to be checked. Or spend time while you move going 'hey, do you have line of sight from here?', because shifting a model a quarter inch in any direction might impact its visibility.

My idea of simple is a system where I know, as soon as I move a model, exactly what it has LOS to and what has LOS to it, instead of needing to guess and check to avoid unexpected 'gotchas'.

The things that the two of you are failing to convey are as follows;

1. What exactly is confusing about TLOS to you? How have you had an argument about something so cut and dry?
And
2. How can you claim a system, where we have to remember arbitrary numbers and values for units, terrain features and other items, as well as how they compare to each other, is SIMPLER than a system where I literally look at what my model can see?

You’re both suggesting more complex and less intuitive systems for something that works. Now I’m not saying the system couldn’t be improved with the house rules you both suggest, as you note ITC house rules all ground level terrain is LOS blocking, which I’ve used many a time. But the thing I think you’re failing to consider is that your proposals make the system more complicated and this is something GW/the majority of 40k players have wanted to move away from. In my experience the more complicated a system the more potential arguments it can cause.

Neither of you have answered why you don’t just place models where they can see what they want to shoot. You’re moaning that your crouching dudes can’t see the opponents models when you placed them in such a position. I’m struggling to empathise with such a complaint, to be honest. Why not just place the models elsewhere?

I can only speak for myself but there is nothing intuitive about shooting a tanks weapons from a rear track. Nor is it intuitive that a kneeling model, that would be using cover, can't see over the cover they need to survive so need to instead stand out in the open because they are modeled kneeling in the first place.

You can like the TLOS system all you want, but they had better LOS systems editions past and they also had worse systems. In some ways the company feels like square enix and need to reinvent the wheel more often than is necessary as opposed to actually fine tune a good system.

Just because you love the system doesn't make it this pinnacle of grace, it was lazy and a bother on its first re roll out and it still is now.

How can you remember size categories of terrain ? It was really easy, we did it and I believe could do it again while we also have to remember a ton of other things from 2, 3 or even 4 books we run our one army from these days. Saying remembering terrain sizes and model sizes is the step too far is just laughable.

He has said, if you want to have cover, which you would with a squishy shooting unit, just putting them out in a field isn't really a good option or an answer to a crap LOS system. Unless you love giving out free kills to the other guy that is.

Removing TLOS does not make the game more complicated.

Its easy to trace a straight line from a birds eye view. Intervening elements do what the intervening elements do (units/terrain/whatever). Every model is capable of doing all the things it's allowed to do in the rules with the only factors that effect it being what is between it and it's target. Not trying to dip your head down behind a model to see what it could see. Especially when those models could be in the middle of the table with terrain between you and the model you are trying to "look through the eyes of".

It's ACTUALLY easier to use the abstracted rules.

Model x want to shoot at model y. When you draw a straight line between their bases it crosses over Aegis Defense Line style wall z. Model x gets -1 to hit.

Thats as simple as it could possibly get.

It’s completely irrelevant whether I love the TLOS system or not. We’re not going to get anywhere comparing our preferences. I also said above that I have played many a game where I house rule different LOS systems myself.

There’s a bit of straw manning going on here topic, which is worrying. I’m not saying ‘it’s intuitive for a tank to fire from its rear tread’ or ‘it’s intuitive you can shoot my unit because a single Ork top knot is visible’. What I am saying is as follows, for clarity;

”The TLOS system is a quick, easy and intuitive mechanic for determining LOS and what units can shoot what”.

I believe the mechanic is much more intuitive for a new player for example. Consider the following conversation that I have heard more than once in my LGS;

New player - “What can these guys shoot?”
Store hand - “Its really simple, you just check their range, which is 30”, then see what enemy models they can see.”

Quick, easy and simple. Minimal steps, minimal fuss.

As to the crouching dudes argument I have no sympathy. Place them somewhere more sensible or use alternative terrain that provides cover but doesn’t block LOS. It couldn’t be easier.