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Please clarify this, not sure. Got into a game with a different group than I normally play with and we came to an issue over area terrain and shooting over it. It wasnt very tall and my raider could clearly see a target on a hill on the other side of the terrain however the other player said that area terrain was infinite in height in 6th edition. I looked through the big book and couldnt find anything on the subject. I havent played a ton of 6th yet to know the rules offhand like I have past editions. Is this something I missed somewhere or is this a case of them not knowing the rules very well and making stuff up?

It is True line of sight so if you can see over it then it what grant a cover save.

also worth noting that hills are not classified as terrain, so as such they are open ground that can block LoS, although for arguments sake you'd allow a 5+ if part of the model was obscured.

Yeah in my opinion there should not have been any kind of save granted, and that it was true line of sight. They said area terrain was an exception, although I had never heard of such. My side was crushing them and simply flat-outed to end up on the objective so it really wasnt worth arguing about. Note I am aware troops in vehicle cant take objectives but this scenario was simply closest unit to the objective which my DE found hilarious at 500pts.

Thanks, just making sure I played this right.

 nutty_nutter wrote:
also worth noting that hills are not classified as terrain, so as such they are open ground that can block LoS, although for arguments sake you'd allow a 5+ if part of the model was obscured.

Hills confer a TLOS 4+ cover save. They certainly are terrain - usually, but not always, Open Ground.

Also worth noting that if the area terrain being discussed was a Forest, then they might indeed get a cover save if LoS is traced 'through' a forest (Page 102, BRB).

Area Terrain is a little unusual but in this case the true line of sight rules are in play. All you need to be able to do is see part of the hull or model you are targeting, even as tiny as a 0.1%, and you have permission to shoot at it. What sort of cover save it will grant from having intervening terrain will always be detailed within it's entry, or fall under the rule right at the start of the Terrain section which asks the players to work out the finer details of unusual and confusion terrain pieces. The oddity with Area Terrain is that it does break a true line of sight rule by granting a cover save to any non-vehicle model within regardless of how much is obscured, which is humorous as it means crushing a bush completely underfoot covers you as much as standing behind it would.

Forests, as Quanar pointed out, also bear a closer looking at and it is likely your opponent was thinking of these.

These were low bushes they made as area terrain. My raider on its flight stand had no issue hitting elevated crisis suits on a hill.

if the bushes were considered area terrain, and forests, then you played it correctly. With forests you draw a line from the shooter to the target, and if the line passes through a forest at any point, they receive a 5+ cover save.

If it was just generic area terrain, and they were not standing in it, and it was only in between the shooter and target, then the only save they could receive would be if it TLOS obstructed them.

Thanks Deviant, that was the most clear and succinct explaination I have seen and will be copy pasting it in an email. I assume you did mean if it physically draws a line through and it hits a tree as opposed to a line passing through but over the top of terrain and not touching anything.

Nope. Trees are a fluid concept and can be moved willy nilly within the terrain to allow free and easy placement of models, so we can't go by them physically interfering with TLOS. It's the latter of your choice.

If the line passes through/over the inside of the perimeter of the area terrain, it confers a save to the target, even if there is not really something blocking TLOS. I just assume a jerk squirrel threw an acorn at the exact right time to knock the bullet from the air.

But again, this is only for area terrain that is also a forest.