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Hi dakka,

A question regarding rules/bases.
We have a player in our Meta who is "cutting down" his flying Base Stands ( the clear Part), so the Model is much lower and get better cover from LOS blocking terrain.
He also does this on drone bases, hammerhead and devilfish bases etc...
Legal?

The rules assume the model is on the base supplied with it - "Moddelling for Advantage" is purely a player-made convention (as in, it's not mentioned in the Rulebook).

The Rulebook is also silent on being able to mash your opponents models with a hammer - but that doesn't make it legal.

It sounds like your friend is Moddelling for advantage, and not even being subtle about it.

If he had a bunch of flyers and wanted some to fly lower than others to make them not all look the same, I would say rule of cool.

But if he does it for all of them and those "drone bases" then he is clearly just moddelling for advantage. I would ask him about it and if he isnt cool about it (maybe just counting them an inch higher or so for LOS purposes) not play him.

Significantly modifying the dimensions of the bases like that puts you in conflict with the spirit of the "models must be mounted on the bases they come with" rule. It's as though I cut my 40mm terminator bases down to 28mm, and then insisted that "it's on the base it came with, so it's legal".

There certainly are some modifications that people do to flyer bases, especially when posing models (I can think of a lot of examples of pictures I've seen online of Flyrants or Riptides in dynamic poses, where they were propped way up in the air on a flyer stem). I think these are alright because it fits with the spirit of the game - the rule of cool modeling aspect of the game. But just cutting down the stems on all your flyer bases to gain LOS advantages, at the cost of everything looking goofy... that's lame, and is not in the spirit of the game.

Just start making terrain that's too tall for his shortened drones and tanks to see over.

He may have cut them down to help prevent breakages.
Probably worth asking him.
If he's not modeling for advantage he won't mind putting a dice under the base when los is needed of just giving decisions in your favor.
If he won't do either of those things then don't play him again.

Another thing to remember, drone bases can come with 4 rods, all with different heights. IMO as long as the altered stand is no lower than the shortest provided by GW I can see no valid reason to complain. WRT a flyers stand, they are all the same height, so I wouldn't be happy if it's been cut down.

Cheers

Andrew

Making a personal rule for height could solve both problems. I also 'cut down' or in most cases accidentally break and have to fix, my flying stands so I usually count LoS from the top of my Falcon's antennae. I have a fair bit of LoS blocking terrain so to avoid conflict, the extra inch or so of part that is usually ignored isn't because of the shorter stand.

To avoid any discussions of "modelling for an advantage", it is best to always measure distances and determine LoS on the basis of a standard model on the base it was supplied with in a static pose.

If there are multiple bases to choose from, the BRB says nothing about changing stem length during the game, but general 40K mechanics point to "pick a length at the start of the game".

It's probably worth pointing out that modeling for an advantage in terms of cover may also end up being a disadvantage for the purposes of line of sight.