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i don't think that this actually breaks the game (as the title suggests). it's a good thing to note and makes the power according to strict RAW fairly useless half the time but it doesn't break the game.. like full reserve armies blocked from entering with RAW. good find, though.

Eidolon wrote:Itll be interesting to see how people play with this. Me personally, id play it RAI if the player was cool. If he wants to park njal two feet away from everything in a land raider and camp the whole game hes getting hosed on the rules.

He wouldn't have LOS anyway...

Elessar wrote:

Eidolon wrote:Itll be interesting to see how people play with this. Me personally, id play it RAI if the player was cool. If he wants to park njal two feet away from everything in a land raider and camp the whole game hes getting hosed on the rules.

He wouldn't have LOS anyway...

Correct, Njarl cannot have LoS from a Land Raider as there are no Fire Points

Get that man a Rhino.

Speaking of tempests, anyone notice how crowded this teapot is getting?

Gwar! wrote:4: Living Hurricane: Enemy Infantry within 24" move as if they were in difficult terrain.

This doesn't specify a length of the effects.... so RaW would indicate it doesn't stop... ever. (Unless there is some rule somewhere describing 'generic game effects')

Lord of Tempests wrote:Lord of Tempests: When Njarl is roused, the elements themselves wage war on the foe. At the Beginning of Njarl's turn, roll a D3 and add the turn number to the result (for example, add one to the D3 result on Turn 1, add two on Turn 2, etc.) Refer to the table opposite for the tempests effects that game turn. Only Enemy Models in Njarl's line of sight can be affected by the tempest's effects.

So the Living Hurricane lasts until the end of that game turn. Considering the comments addressing 'turn' nomenclature in the main rule book, I'd say its effect is clearly and obviously intended to end with that game turn.

Harkainos wrote:

Gwar! wrote:4: Living Hurricane: Enemy Infantry within 24" move as if they were in difficult terrain.

This doesn't specify a length of the effects.... so RaW would indicate it doesn't stop... ever. (Unless there is some rule somewhere describing 'generic game effects')

The rule itself says it lasts only until the end of the game turn. If the SW player is second, this happens before the Opponent gets to take a Player turn, so has no effect.

And yet another reason why arguing RAW is a bad idea. Obviously not every rule was written by a law firm with professionals etching out every detail (if it was most of us would not have taken the time to read it anyway). This is not a multimillion dollar business agreement. The problem is that people have argued RAW in tournaments and have gotten their opponets DQ'ed becuase of it (even though intended was more correct). So if it came across in tournament it would have to go to RAW becuase that is what everyone has been arguing in tournament. However, that said; could you tell me why they would design a rule that would only work if you went first... they wouldn't. It seems obvious in their intent. A -1 BS obviously is desigend to be used during a shoting phase in which BS is used.


Lets just accept that GW hires people that can design a fun army to play, not laywers and that there will be some flaws. Emphasis fun and fair game play and this forum would be usless. I intend to win games on skill, not twisted logic and careful word play.

hyperviper6 wrote:I intend to win games on skill, not twisted logic and careful word play.

Like this?

hyperviper6 wrote:It seems obvious in their intent.

kirsanth wrote:

hyperviper6 wrote:I intend to win games on skill, not twisted logic and careful word play.

Like this?

hyperviper6 wrote:It seems obvious in their intent.

I agree. It seems that anyone who utters the Phrase "It seems obvious in their intent" is just trying to pull a fast one. At least with the RaW you cannot do that.

Gwar! wrote:

kirsanth wrote:

hyperviper6 wrote:I intend to win games on skill, not twisted logic and careful word play.

Like this?

hyperviper6 wrote:It seems obvious in their intent.

I agree. It seems that anyone who utters the Phrase "It seems obvious in their intent" is just trying to pull a fast one. At least with the RaW you cannot do that.

"It seems obvious in their intent" that Infantry facing doesn't matter. Am I trying to pull a fast one?

This will be my last post because becuase its just frustrating and I hope I never play people like you or I would just walk away from the table. I got into this hobby for fun, not to get a law degree. If you codex said "on a 4+ you may...." would you assume their intent is a roll of a D6 that is 4 or higher? Yes, because their intent is obvious. Suffering a -bs is obvious that it should happen.

The largest problem is that that rule that the BRB says is the most important P.12, "THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE" is overshadowed by someone that wants to prove a point. I never take advantage of a rule and I have yet to play an opponet that has.

I don't think I have ever played a game that didn't have a broken rule in it. I also can say this is the first game where I have heard of people trying to exploit exact phrases to limit their challenges becuase they are better at word play then game play or they just feel the need to show someone up with 40k knowledge... whatever it is. I am done posting here. Have fun, tear this appart and I will continue to play by the most important rule.

Slight derail, but in this month's WD, Alessio's bio in the introduction to the batrep says he has been 'locked away in a lead-lined chamber for the past 18 months, feverishly scribbling down notes headed F, A and Q'.

Patience, and all our issues will be resolved

Kaaihn wrote:"It seems obvious in their intent" that Infantry facing doesn't matter. Am I trying to pull a fast one?

I think it is written, as the model's own unit is ignored and LOS is drawn in an uninterupted line from its eyes to its target.

Vehicles clarify that they can block their own LOS (even moreso with the FAQs), but infantry not so much.

shrug

The thing is 40K is and always has been full of rules which have some apparent flaw (like this one, or AP1 vs Skimmers Moving Fast in 4e, or the Tau Sniper Drone Team's drone controller) which also have a valid explanation as not being a flaw but instead meaning exactly what they say.

It is actually perfectly reasonable to write a rule which benefits an army only half the time, and encourages that army to be aggressive, or passive, or take first or second turn. In game design terms it is a clever way of balancing an effect, or encouraging a particular tactical style without giving an overpowering advantage.

However, Ockam's Razor and the principle of cock-up vs conspiracy should both lead us to suppose that the simple explanation is more likely to be true than the subtle and complex one.

Many previous examples show that the simple explanation is that GW are just incapable of writing clear, consistent rules.

Uh, a little correction on the application of Ockham's Razor: the simple explanation here is that the rules mean exactly what they say, and the "subtle and complex" and wrong one is that somehow GW is incapable of writing clear and concise rules.

The fact is that they've written a clear and concise rule and people don't like it.

When I first read the Lord of Tempests rule in the rumour thread, I wondered whether how it was going to be balanced. Well, it's going to be balanced in the same way that Chaos Dreadnoughts, Possessed, Psycker Battle Squads, Ork Wierdboyz, Flashgitz, and so on are balanced: by randomizing between very useful and useless.

You can't seriously claim that GW do write clear, concise rules. They are also well known for writing hugely over-balanced special rules and power.

If they wanted to make it clear that this particular power only lasted during player turn 2, they could have stated that. Hence the simple explanation is cock-up.

Be that as it may, I don't care as I will probably never play Space Wolves.

For all we know, the rules were perfectly clear and reasonable when they were written.

5th edition reportedly came out July 12, 2008. According to some accounts, codices are started about two years before they actually come out.

So, one can easily imagine a case where various rules in the Space Wolves codex were written during the finalization of 5th edition, a detail got changed in the 5th edition rules (like, say, the mechanism for choosing player sides in scenarios), no one told the guy who wrote the wargear rules, and here we are two years later.

I do seriously claim that GW writes clear and concise rules. The rule at issue here is clear and concise: the effect lasts until the end of the game turn.

Maybe GW is well known for writing "hugely over-balanced special rules and power", but given the option of believing a bunch of people on the Internet and believing my own eyes, I'll go with my own eyes as 'argumentum ad populum' is a fallacy and my own eyes have done pretty well for me.

I used to believe that GW didn't write clear and concise rules, and indeed in that regard they've improved. What changed for me was firstly attempting to write my own set of rules, and secondly coming back to 40k and giving the 40k rules the same close-reading I gave my schoolwork. I was quite surprised to find out that GW did in fact write clear and concise rules. No doubt your mileage may vary, and certainly there's room for improvement on GW's part (it'll never be as clear and concise as a math text, unfortunately), but that's what I believe and feel that I am well-justified in believing given the evidence and how I was taught to read in school.

No Offence, but if the guy writing the rules does not play for 2 years and still gets to write it, GW have FAR bigger probkems

Nurglitch, no offense, but the proper conclusion to draw from your experience is that writing clear and concise rules is difficult and time consuming, as opposed to concluding that rules which people report as unclear and not concise are in fact clear and concise. If the intended audience of a book says that a book is confusing, the author has written a confusing book.

People make mistakes. Those mistakes cause problems in written documents. Those problems lead to rules which have problems. Such things happen.

But how can you be sure this wording is not intended?

I know Nurglitch is writing his Fog Of War rules, and kudos to him for it.

I'm writing new Planetary Empires rules.

It isn't easy

However, GW have had 25 years and 100s of millions of £s revenue to improve at writing rules. There's no doubt 5e is the best written set yet, but it's not completely clear.

The codexes are worse because they are written by a varied gang of people who often recycle material using cut and paste.

solkan:

Actually, no.

There's a wonderful story about Sun Tzu about why this is so. Sun Tzu is applying for a job with some Prince, and the Prince asks Master Sun to demonstrate his competence using the Prince's harem. So the women are given arms and armour, and the Prince's two favourites are appointed officers. Sun Tzu is given this 'army' as his charge.

Sun Tzu bangs on his drum and shouts an order, and the women just stand around looking bemused. The Prince grins and asks Master Sun what the problem is. Sun Tzu replies: "It may be that the order was not clear."

He repeats his instructions to the women, and then again bangs his drum and barks an order. Nothing happens. The Prince again looks askance to Master Sun. Sun Tzu says: "When the orders are clear, the failure lies with the officers implementing then. I order that the officers be executed for dereliction of duty."

The Prince protested against the order of execution, to which Sun Tzu replied: "A commander in the field cannot be countermanded by the sovereign back in court." The Prince agreed that he had in fact given Sun Tzu the legal mandate to order the executions.

Once the Prince's favourites were dead, Sun Tzu banged on his drum and shouted his order, and the women executed the drill perfectly.

The moral of the story is that communication can be debugged, and that it requires you to listen well in addition to someone speaking clearly. GW speaks clearly: the problem is that so many of its fans do not listen well.

This board alone is replete with people asking questions that they could have answered had they bothered to exercise basic researching skills, where all they had to do is look up the answer. This is not unusual, per se. I've pointed out before that I've seen worse situations as a TA. Indeed, in my university career I frequently had professors point out that they frequently misread things unless they applied the close-reading skills (really attitude) that they were trying to instill in their students.

I'm very sorry if you find it rude of me to say that in my opinion, having read GW's rules and its fans' posts on these forums, and coming firmly to the conclusion that the problem is mainly with the readers.

The fact is that there is nothing unclear about this rule. It is not ambiguous, it cannot be read to mean something else. If there is a problem, then it should be errata'd, but in the meantime, the rule is completely and utterly clear that its effects last for the duration of that game-turn.

This is not actually a problem, or at least any more of a problem than Bolters having a range of 12". It causes no conflicts with other rules, it is not unclear, and this fact of its duration does a good job balancing out what would otherwise be a poorly written rule.

You see a bug and I see a feature: is it any surprise that I draw the conclusion that the problem is with you?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Kilkrazy:

Actually Fog of War (including the first three expansions) is written: I recently switched careers and have had to put its production on the back-burner for a while. If I had a spare $15,000 for an initial print run, then I have production copies to distribute to retailers. But that's really apples and oranges since Fog of War is a board-game rather than a miniature wargame. I was referring to my "Dark Millennium" game that I wrote something like five or six years ago. I think it's still available on freewargames.co.uk or somewhere.

Nurglitch, I applaud you and thank you for your amusing story. While reading your account, I was seized by the image of Sun Tzu proclaiming, "Your prince, it appears that I may have misspoken" after the first of the harem was executed, so I may be unable to gain the intended benefit of your story.

solkan wrote:Nurglitch, I applaud you and thank you for your amusing story. While reading your account, I was seized by the image of Sun Tzu proclaiming, "Your prince, it appears that I may have misspoken" after the first of the harem was executed, so I may be unable to gain the intended benefit of your story.

I'm sorry to pick on you like this solkan, but this is precisely what I'm talking about: Sun Tzu said that after the first attempt, before the officers were put to death (the officers were put to death after the second attempt failed). See what I mean about reading-comp skills failing unless you conscientiously apply them?

Nurglitch wrote:

solkan wrote:Nurglitch, I applaud you and thank you for your amusing story. While reading your account, I was seized by the image of Sun Tzu proclaiming, "Your prince, it appears that I may have misspoken" after the first of the harem was executed, so I may be unable to gain the intended benefit of your story.

I'm sorry to pick on you like this solkan, but this is precisely what I'm talking about: Sun Tzu said that after the first attempt, before the officers were put to death (the officers were put to death after the second attempt failed). See what I mean about reading-comp skills failing unless you conscientiously apply them?

Someone just got told

Nurglitch wrote:

solkan wrote:Nurglitch, I applaud you and thank you for your amusing story. While reading your account, I was seized by the image of Sun Tzu proclaiming, "Your prince, it appears that I may have misspoken" after the first of the harem was executed, so I may be unable to gain the intended benefit of your story.

I'm sorry to pick on you like this solkan, but this is precisely what I'm talking about: Sun Tzu said that after the first attempt, before the officers were put to death (the officers were put to death after the second attempt failed). See what I mean about reading-comp skills failing unless you conscientiously apply them?

I appear to have misunderstood your misunderstanding of my post. You appear to be under the impression that Sun Tzu would not be able to give the same incorrect order twice in a row.

Perhaps it is lucky that neither of us will be executed for the misunderstanding, as the harem members were, and perhaps it is unlucky.

Gwar! wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:

solkan wrote:Nurglitch, I applaud you and thank you for your amusing story. While reading your account, I was seized by the image of Sun Tzu proclaiming, "Your prince, it appears that I may have misspoken" after the first of the harem was executed, so I may be unable to gain the intended benefit of your story.

I'm sorry to pick on you like this solkan, but this is precisely what I'm talking about: Sun Tzu said that after the first attempt, before the officers were put to death (the officers were put to death after the second attempt failed). See what I mean about reading-comp skills failing unless you conscientiously apply them?

Someone just got told

That was hilarious.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

kirsanth wrote:

Kaaihn wrote:"It seems obvious in their intent" that Infantry facing doesn't matter. Am I trying to pull a fast one?

I think it is written, as the model's own unit is ignored and LOS is drawn in an uninterupted line from its eyes to its target.

Vehicles clarify that they can block their own LOS (even moreso with the FAQs), but infantry not so much.

shrug

Missed my point. RAW, facing matters. You can't choose a target you don't have LOS to, and you can only pivot in the shooting phase to face your target.

RAI, facing doesn't matter. Am I pulling a fast one by claiming that?