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Me and my friend are having an argument on how Skyborne works. He says that, since skyborne allows jet pack units to mover over terrain freely, his crisis suits can first jump 12" straight up on to a ruin and then 6" along the ruin horizontally. I think they are restricted to move up to 6", like any other infantry, even when using jet packs to move up and down. Thoughts?

No vertical restriction on movement. Weird but that is how it works.

It all comes down to how one defines the word 'freely' within the Rule itself, and that should show you how badly written this Rule is.

There is nothing informing us how to go about measuring the Movement of a Model evoking Skyborn so we are forced to use the default Rules for Measurements. Those Default Rules also contain the instructions telling us to measure Vertical Movement, though it can be debated if we are measuring the final position directly or the path the Model took to reach that point. Either way it still is not at all surprising this problem exists, as "Vertical Movement" is nothing more then a 6th Edition Rule found on Ruins that was hack-and-pasted into the general Movement Rules for 7th. Just like the one or two other 'vertical' Rules, it feels slapped on to patch up the few problems that occur when you write 2 dimensional Rules for a 3 dimensional game.

So it all comes down to how your group defines 'freely' and if they view Vertical Movement as a restriction preventing free movement over Terrain.
Hell I could make an argument to allow indefinite horizontal movement, as long as there is a piece of terrain for me to 'freely move over'

Thank you. I was afraid it might be one of those situations again.

Being able to move 'freely' doesn't change the distance you move. It just means there is nothing stopping you from moving in that direction.

There's nothing stopping me from going to the shopping centre a kilometer away. I'll still have to travel a kilometer to get there.

But do you measure that kilometer in a direct line or following the path you took to get there?

Why would I measure it in a direct line?

If you're meeting how far you travel, you measure the path you travel. Otherwise you're not measuring the actual distance.

Parabolic flight, limitless height, maximum horizontal movement of x.

Insaniak,
So a Model which goes evokes Skybound to 'freely move over' a 0.5 inch wide and 10 inch tall piece of Difficult Terrain (wall) has moved how far?

It would have to move a minimum of 20", plus however far it was from the wall to begin with and however far it ends its movement from it on the other side.



Note that this isn't how people generally play it. In actual practice, the vast majority just measure the horizontal distance.

This has been a rules issue in pretty much every edition for skimmers, jetbikes and jump units. The rules for each of those have varied in wording, with some in some editions allowed to just 'ignore' terrain when they move, and some allowed to 'move freely' over it.

The former would allow you to just measure horizontally. The latter would require you to measure your actual movement path. But most people assume that they're supposed to both mean the same thing, and go with the former.

They don't even follow the same format within the same Edition, which is the only reason I was drawn to this in the first place. In this Edition, Skimmers ignore the penalty caused by Dangerous and Difficult Terrain entirely, which would indicate they still go through the Terrain to generate the tests in the first place. Ignoring the negatives of a Rule would be sensible, so I am more inclined to believe it is purely accidental on Game Workshops behalf. Would be nice if they did consider the game a 3 dimensional entity when making certain Rules, not everything is a perfect range from the model. On that note, I do have to wonder about the whole 'measure the path' concept but the whole thing is strange and cloudy.

We are informed to measure from the same point on the model to ensure it does not move more then 6 inches, creating the base of a straight line measurement. Then other Rules inform us that impassable objects exist, and we must go around... but we don't have instructions telling us how to measure this 'around' movement. Vertical Movement then came along, as much as I like to rant on it, to explain how to measure gained vertical distances but it is impractical for anything but Ruins and doesn't address situations where the Model ends on the same horizontal plane as it begun. Maybe I am just tired and over-looking obvious instructions, but without them how do we over-turn the default instructions telling us how to determine the distance a Model has moved?

Movement phase, page 18, Movement Distance, second paragraph;
"... if a model does move, no part of its base can finish the move more than 6" away from where it started the Movement phase."

Jump units, page 65, Movement Phase;
"If a Jump model uses its jump pack (or equivalent) in the movement phase, it can move up to 12"

Interpretation of freely moving is irrelevant, there is no permission to place your base more than 12" away from where it started.

But if that model goes over a 12" wall, but is placed just on the other side, say, horizontally 4" away....has it been placed 4" away or 28" away from where it started???

sm3g wrote:
But if that model goes over a 12" wall, but is placed just on the other side, say, horizontally 4" away....has it been placed 4" away or 28" away from where it started???

You don't measure displacement, you measure movement.

Otherwise, every other model would also be able to skip freely over impassable objects so long as they are less than 6" wide.

 insaniak wrote:

sm3g wrote:
But if that model goes over a 12" wall, but is placed just on the other side, say, horizontally 4" away....has it been placed 4" away or 28" away from where it started???

You don't measure displacement, you measure movement.

Otherwise, every other model would also be able to skip freely over impassable objects so long as they are less than 6" wide.

that's not 100% true. Models must move through the terrain. some models have an allowance to move freely over terrain.

 DeathReaper wrote:
that's not 100% true. Models must move through the terrain. some models have an allowance to move freely over terrain.

The point was that if you allow your Skyborne to move 24" up and over a tall wall so long as they finish their movement within 12" of their starting point, what is stopping a regular infantry unit from moving 24" around the side of that same obstacle so long as they finish within 6" of their starting point?

The movement distance you measure out should be the distance the unit actually moves, not just how far they wind up from their starting position.


Having said that, most people do (and always have) just measure the horizontal distance moved for jump units and skimmers and the like, on the assumption that you're just supposed to ignore the intervening terrain rather than going over it specifically.

sm3g wrote:
But if that model goes over a 12" wall, but is placed just on the other side, say, horizontally 4" away....has it been placed 4" away or 28" away from where it started???

You are shown that you always measure base to base. You are told to measure the distance you move. Whether you can move up and over something and not count it as vertical distance is irrelevant when you must still end your movement within 12" of where you started. Moving freely would only ever affect how you measure the distance you are moving (Allowing you to either go up as high as you need, or simply ignore intervening terrain), versus the final position of the model, which is explicitly required to be within 12" of where you started.