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I'm fairly new to Fantasy. When casting Tempest from High Magic (provided my lvl 4 mage can manage to roll enough on 4d6 anyways... lol), it says I 'place' the (large blast) template within x inches (and then scatter).

Do I need Line of sight?
If so, do I need line of sight to the center of the template, any part of the template, or the entire template?

Can I place it on a unit? If I do so, must it be on the front rank, treating them as fully blocking LoS? (HE mages tend to be tall, so they would clip most enemy ranks via 'true los')? If I can see a second unit through gaps in the first, can I target that one instead?

Seems like an awesome spell, but I can't seem to make magic work for me at all.

As I understand los, if your caster can physically draw los to a model then he can see it regardless of base sizes and models in the way.

Books sometimes say things like 'place template entirely within x'. If it doesn't say you need los then you don't. The only stipulation would be if the spell is defined as a 'magic missile' or hex' etc. In which case you would check the magic section of the brb for targetting rules.

Tempest is a Direct Damage spell, but not a Magic Missile, so does not need Line of Sight (BRB, page 31).
The entirety of the template needs to be within the 30" range (extrapolated from the stonethrower rules, and the wording of Tempest).
You can place it further back than the front rank (and indeed, you'll normally hit more that way!).

Thanks for the info (and the citation)! It seems so simple now...

Didn't the stonethrower rules get re-written to only need the centre of the template in range?

 B0B MaRlEy wrote:
Didn't the stonethrower rules get re-written to only need the centre of the template in range?

Ah, if it's been FAQ'd then I don't know. The WHFB FAQ is quite a few pages and I'm not as familiar with it as the 40K one.

Pretty sure it is centre that you measure to / that needs to be in range, but also can't rem the ref....