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I've caught a few batreps on YouTube trying to pick up some stuff. Some of them go pretty quick as the narrator explains what is happening. One thing that I believe I saw that made me wonder ... are Cover Saves cumulative? In the example I saw, his opponent shot at one of his units through two other units. Rather than the standard 5+ Cover Save for shooting through a unit he claimed a 3+ Cover Save.

Is this accurate?

In some ways this sort of makes sense. For example, I am in ruins which grant a 4+ Cover Save. My opponent shoots me in the Ruins but through another unit. Would they stack or would I get the best Cover Save of 4+? Shooting through a unit and at me in ruins sounds like it would be to me advantage and to my opponent's detriment. My gaming group has always played it where we take the best Cover Save.

No, cover saves are not cumulative.

Lots of things can modify them upwards, however. Stealth and Shrouded being the most readily available options.

It boils down to whether the cover save is a "set" operation or a modifier.

Example 1
Let's say you have the following situation:

Target === razor wire === forest === Shooter.

In this case razor wire sets the cover save to 6+ while the forest sets it to 5+. These are both "set" operations and therefore don't stack, so you take the one that sets the cover save to the best available which is the 5+ from the forest.

Example 2:

Now, let's say that same situation, but night fighting is in effect and the two units are between 24" and 36" apart. This means you get shrouded. Shrouded is a modifier, it modifies your cover save to make it 2 points better than normal. This means you would take the Forest cover save of 5+ then modify it by 2 points so that your actual cover save is 3+.

Without seeing the video in question, that is likely what happened...or they played it wrong which happens all the time.

Example 3: - more complications
In this example, the target unit is a DE Reaver which turbo boosted to that area. Reavers are jetbikes which always get a 5+ Jink; however, if they turbo boost then it's set to 4+. On top of that they have Skilled Rider which is a +1 modifier to cover saves granted by Jink.. meaning that it's now 3+. Next add in Shrouded which is a blanket 2+ modifier and you have a 1+ cover save. However, per the rules saves can't be modified lower than 2+, so it is set to 2+.

Quick correction for example 3, the cover save would be 1+, but a 1 is always a fail, so it technically isn't important... Unless you have a situation where your cover save is reduced, which then would reduce the 1+ to say a 2+, effectively doing nothing.

That's probably what it was. Cover Save through another unit plus Shrouded.

Thanks guys for talking this through!