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This question is about line of sight to flyers on a friend's (still in progress) custom made board that may be designed on purpose so that when his Flyers arrive they will be safe. He uses lots of Imperial Guard Flyers, including a FW Vulture with punisher cannons. I think it may be unfair in how he is doing this but the rules seem to assume that Flyers will be mostly visible to their opponent's guns because if the height of the Flyer's basic flying base and the stand that goes with it.

How this may be done is by making tall pieces of terrain that have enough height so that when a Flyer comes on from reserves my line of sight will be often blocked to target it with my units, possibly always blocked. The idea behind this is to prevent anyone using skyfire weapons and (perhaps specifically) skyfire weapons with interceptor from shooting these Flyers when they appear. Then my opponent will move his Flyers forwards over htis tall terrain in his turn when the threat of the interceptor rule is gone and use the Flyers to destroy my skyfire weapons and deploy his troops from his Flyers to mop up the rest and take objectives.

I don't have a problem with playing his army when I get my new Marines up and running. I also think that terrain should at times help and hinder all units that exist in the game. This seems to suit his units alone. My problem is this custom game board he's got in mind sounds like it is designed to suit his style of play and make it certain he gets his chance to use his units how he wants them used before any of my units can stop them. I understand we all have our plans about how we will unleash our armies and how things should work out, however often our opponent will stop many of these plans.

I do want to play his army but I believe it is unfair to have to deal with games where the odds are always in his favour and the games plays out the same every time. Everybody has their armylist affected by what their opponet uses but in this case I feel that my only option can be to go for just another Flyer-only list which I don't want. I, just like him and everybody want to be able to control what I use in my list, what I have to spend money on and what I have to paint to at least some degree.

Would insisting on a House rule that no Flyers ever get cover or line of sight to them blocked except by another Flyer be a good idea? This would negate the skyscraper problem.

Is there something in the main rulebook I have missed about a limit on this type of terrain? As far as I can tell there are some limits on how close terrain can be and how many pieces of terrain. But there is nothing to limit height of the terrain which is the real issue here.

Please tell me what you think, thank you.

There are several things you can do.

One: bring lots of Flyers in response, to take advantage of the nice cover saves you'll get!

Two: don't play Narrative terrain setup, play Alternating. That will allow you to push all the big buildings to one side of the board. While he'll also get to set down some large buildings, you'll have a good chance of negating a lot of the terrain abuse he's trying to pull.

Three, explain your concerns. If you're friend, you should be able to have a good conversation about it.

Remember, if there's that much tall terrain going on, there's a good chance a Zooming Flyer won't even be able to draw LoS to what it wants to shoot! It might actually work to your advantage.
Really press him on the vertical angle of Flyer weaponry, which is ~22.5 degrees (it's in the vehicles weapons section). This will also severely limit what his Flyers can target.

Thanks, that's helpful.

It's entirely possible that your friend is doing it to get an advantage. Honestly, I am often horrified by the sorts of things that I read here on Dakka, with friends cheating and doing other shady stuff in casual games with their buddies. At the same time, he also just may like a certain type of board in terms of aesthetics.

Some of the GW scenery pieces can be pretty tall. Then there are things like Bastions which can block Line of Sight to just about any unit, depending on the angle. Not only that, but there's a whole game type (Cities of Death) in which fairly tall terrain pieces are actually recommended. I'm pretty sure that the authors were aware of the possibility that Line of Sight to flyers might be blocked; there's really no reason to believe that they wrote the rules with the assumption that Line of Sight would never be blocked, or that it would rarely be blocked.

Basically, if it's something that's bothering you, you might want to talk about it with your buddy.

Several of the ruins and buildings GW sell are big enough to give a flyer cover.
I don't see how him making his own structures of roughly the same size would be all that different.

When playing a friendly we never use the terrain placement rules. We just take some terrain and shift around until both are happy. Do the same. If he insists on using the big buildings just dont let him set it up as an additional advantage.

Games where my opponent cant do anything against my army normally bore me to hell and therefore arent fun anyway so if someone insists on terrain placement being unbalanced hes free to shift it around.

 Elric Greywolf wrote:
Remember, if there's that much tall terrain going on, there's a good chance a Zooming Flyer won't even be able to draw LoS to what it wants to shoot! It might actually work to your advantage.
Really press him on the vertical angle of Flyer weaponry, which is ~22.5 degrees (it's in the vehicles weapons section). This will also severely limit what his Flyers can target.

Can you give me the page? I'm looking for that section because I always wondered about that myself

Page 72; Vehicle weapons and LOS. If a gun cannot be moved(or does not look like it would have a set angle) it has a limited 45* left right and up down effective "cone" of LOS. That is 22.5* in any direction

Cheers everybody. Thanks for the help.

Talk about shadey... I think flyers should never have been introduced in the first place. if he insists on that make a piece of terrain for yourself that every single troop of yours can hide behind that blocks LOS and then play eldar and move out of terrain to shoot and use battle focus to run back behind LOS cover. see how he likes the cheese.

I to have a custom table with a ton of terrain. What i do to solve the fairness issue is have a 3rd party lay the table out(wife another players even my kids) then we roll for deployment. So far we have never had an issue with an unfairly arranged table

We take turns setting terrian, dicing off to see whoplaces first. When placing a terrain piece down it must be more than 50% on your table half.
So if he has these tall LoS blocking sections, grab them first and place them close to your board edge...with barrage weapons hiding behind them. Set the shorter items midfield. Sure, he will get something where he can hide a flyer behind. But you'll be dropping templates on his troops with impunity....IIRC, flyers have to keep their wings within the boundaries of the table edge...so if your barrage weapons are far enough back and behind LoS terrain, he wont be able to place his flyer in position to get a clear shot.
(EDIT) And it is a dick-move building your own terrain to give your specific army specific rules advantages. That would be like a Nid player setting down a hollow box with no openings, placing his shooty bugs inside the box, (the ones who can shoot through LoS blocking terrain) then claim since you can't see them you cant shoot OR assault them...ever.

To answer the rule questions here:

1) Flyers use LOS normally. If 25% of the model is obscured then it has a cover save from terrain. The "flyers are always above terrain" rule was how it worked in 5th, that rule no longer exists. This means that even standard GW ruins can give cover to flyers.

2) To deny shooting a flyer must be absolutely 100% invisible to the shooting unit. If even a single wingtip is visible you can shoot at it (with the appropriate cover save from the intervening terrain). This means that, while cover saves for flyers are common, complete LOS blocking is going to be rare.

3) There is no limit to how tall terrain can be (or how wide, etc). The only limit on what terrain can be used is what you are willing to play against.

4) There are no rules for what is allowed as built-in terrain on a table. The terrain placement rules only include terrain that is added to the table, not built-in hills or whatever. Like placed terrain, the only option if you don't like a given table layout is to refuse to play.

5) To state the obvious, if your opponent is bringing their flyers on out of LOS then they will have to suffer the LOS blocking during their shooting phase. Your opponent can not bring them on, stop all of your interceptor fire, and then move them again into the open so they can shoot that turn. Protecting the flyers like that means forfeiting a shooting phase with them.

I use the method in the book myself, rolling a D3 for each quadrant to figure out the 'density.' Then rolling off to see whom places the first piece of terrain that is available, which we usually have quite a bit laying around. Alternate between the players until all the quadrants have reached their density. This helps to elevate some of the problems of people having key terrain pieces designed as part of their tactics, because you can place a terrain piece on their side of the board which completely ruins their plans... for example, a large pool of water or even a field of small rocks.

I would also bring your attention to Peregrine's 3rd point as it is spot on: Terrain is something both players have to agree on before they can be used. You are well within your right to state 'I do not want to use ruins/buildings above 6 inches tall' and he would either have to abide or find another player to go up against. Should he be pulling this terrain trick out on too many people he will quickly find himself without opponents to go against.

It also sounded like he said when the flyer comes out it hides behind terrain then flies over it on his next turn. If so is that legal. Can you fly over it if its taller then the model?

the GOAT 765 wrote:
It also sounded like he said when the flyer comes out it hides behind terrain then flies over it on his next turn. If so is that legal. Can you fly over it if its taller then the model?

Yes, Flyers ignore intervening terrain while moving.

They could even stop on top of the terrain if they wanted to(WMS)