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So the question came up,

Lets say a squad of marines is in a piece of terrain and a unit of Tau just moved into the same piece and are 5" away from the space marines absolutely nothing is blocking LOS. Will the SM get their 4+ cover even though the Tau are point blank because of area terrain? If not can you page Ref?

Ruins : 4+ cover save if they are in it regardless of 25% obscuring or not. pg 108

Determinaing cover saves: a model gets a save if they are 25% obscured. pg 37

There is no limitations on them needing to be in the same or diffrent terrain

So they will both get a cover save because of the ruins rule? Regardless if its the same piece of terrain?

Yep

 typhus40k wrote:
So they will both get a cover save because of the ruins rule? Regardless if its the same piece of terrain?

Yes. The Invisible rock that gives you cover for standing in a ruin is also in between you and the unit shooting at you

Ah, that makes complete sense. Thanks for clearing it up.

If someone is on a hill or rock outcroping and he's still within Los, does he still get an area cover?

Area terrain no longer exists in 7th edition. You don't get cover for automatically being in a piece of terrain unless it's datasheet specifically says so (ruins, rubble and battlements come to mind).

You COULD create a datasheet for a hill or rock outcropping that makes it behave like 6th edition area terrain if you wanted.

Whilst are terrain no longer exists as a term all the things that used to be area terrain have datasheets that make them behave like area terrain.... Woods, Craters, Debris etc. Things that never had that (like hills) still don't.

So whilst 'area terrain' no longer exists, it effectively does.

Is there anything that had 'area terrain' that lost the equivalent rules in 7th?

The specific cover save is no longer a 5+c and now varies by terrain piece, but that doesn't seem to be tripping anyone up so *shrug*.

Is there anything that had 'area terrain' that lost the equivalent rules in 7th?

I can't think of a single thing that still acts exactly area terrain. You no longer receive a cover save for simply being inside of woods, you must be 25% obscured by them (unless you use the GW twisted copse). You also don't get a +2 bonus to your cover save for going to ground in any type of terrain except craters, but they only give 6+ cover and are not necessarily difficult terrain now. Or defence lines. Also things like swamps/mudpits that had clearly defined borders used to be area terrain, but now would just be difficult terrain.

Indeed,
If one wants to bring back Area Terrain for any piece of scenery they are required to write a Scratch Built Datasheet to represent the piece of Terrain. There are a great number of other Rules which are dropped from 7th Edition but functioned far better then anything they where, or not, replaced with. It is my recommendation that every player should make their own Rules for all their Terrain, claiming even Game Workshop released models as 'scratch built' in order to restore those, or better, Rules to the game.

JinxDragon wrote:
Indeed,
If one wants to bring back Area Terrain for any piece of scenery they are required to write a Scratch Built Datasheet to represent the piece of Terrain. There are a great number of other Rules which are dropped from 7th Edition but functioned far better then anything they where, or not, replaced with. It is my recommendation that every player should make their own Rules for all their Terrain, claiming even Game Workshop released models as 'scratch built' in order to restore those, or better, Rules to the game.

I always like the idea of area terrain.
Lots of smaller low-lying debris that could be used as cover, but not modeled fully so you could still place your models there without a crazy balancing act.

Same Here but with the caveat of Vehicles, MC, Walkers shouldn't ever benefit from it

Also the GTG bonus is a little wark.

Bojazz wrote:

Is there anything that had 'area terrain' that lost the equivalent rules in 7th?

I can't think of a single thing that still acts exactly area terrain. You no longer receive a cover save for simply being inside of woods, you must be 25% obscured by them (unless you use the GW twisted copse). You also don't get a +2 bonus to your cover save for going to ground in any type of terrain except craters, but they only give 6+ cover and are not necessarily difficult terrain now. Or defence lines. Also things like swamps/mudpits that had clearly defined borders used to be area terrain, but now would just be difficult terrain.

Not exactly the same, but equivalent.

I see now what you are saying though. I didn't realise that people don't use the "Twisted Copse" data sheet for woods as its the only rule for woods in the rulebook. Similarly for other terrain that has just been given a name to encourage purchase of GW scenery. I think that has been used in every game of 7th I've played.

Also you played swamps and mud pits as area terrain in 6th? That's also very different to my experiences.

 Desubot wrote:
Same Here but with the caveat of Vehicles, MC, Walkers shouldn't ever benefit from it.

They..... don't?

 BlackTalos wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Same Here but with the caveat of Vehicles, MC, Walkers shouldn't ever benefit from it.

They..... don't?

MC do.

 Desubot wrote:

 BlackTalos wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Same Here but with the caveat of Vehicles, MC, Walkers shouldn't ever benefit from it.

They..... don't?

MC do.

True.

Drager wrote:

Also you played swamps and mud pits as area terrain in 6th? That's also very different to my experiences.

From the 6th edition rulebook under area terrain, page 91:
"Marshes, Woods, Ruins, and other types of rough ground". People I played with agreed that "Marshes" and "rough ground" encompassed swamps and mudpits.

Gameplay-wise it made sense to us also. Mud would give them natural camouflage for a cover save, and diving into it would have them pretty much disappear into it, Passchendaele style, so +2 to cover save made sense as well.

I've always found that the best thing to do is to simply agree beforehand how everything works.

That being said, we typically do the "area terrain" type rules for ruins and forests, with 4+ and 5+ cover saves respectively. I never thought of the fact that that means that we are always using the Twisted Copse for our forests, but it just feels right to do it that way.

Your best bet is always to agree upon what cover is what before the game starts. There's nothing worse than having an argument over who gets a cover save for standing where.

We still use a lot of area terrain, especially since one of our boards has a few swamps and a stream running through it. There's really no room to put more than 2-3 small buildings/bunkers on it, as it was designed with the idea that all of the water areas are a 5+.

In terms of the invisible rock in ruins thing though, we usually don't count it. 90% of our selections of ruins/rubble are less than a foot square, so if two units are in the same ruin they're pretty close to each other.

As much as I hate it, I follow the 25% rule except for a few cases that we establish before playing, such as the swamp.

Yeah, around here every forest is a "twisted copse".

Tell them there is so many better ideas for forests then stock standard Rules.
I still like mysterious, or straight out monstrous, forests!