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PLEASE READ THE ENTIRE POST BEFORE VOTING

Caress of Death: Each to hit roll of a 6 made by a weapon with this special rule causes a single automatic wound, regardless of the victim's Toughness, resolved at AP 2. Against vehicles, each To Hit roll of a 6 causes a single Glancing Hit.

Argument the first: The Caress of Death causes the to wound roll for the hit of 6 to wound automatically, and does not generate additional hits.

Argument the second: The Caress of Death never gives directions to skip the normal process of rolling a to wound roll for each successful hit, and the automatic AP 2 wound is in addition to any other wounds caused.


The question stands as follows: Are wounds caused by the Caress of Death additional wounds, or do they just make the to wound roll for the To Hit rolls of 6 automatic?

Option A: The Caress wounds are in addition to any normal wounds. If a Harlequin rolled all 6's To Hit, it is therefore possible for the model to cause more wounds than it has attacks.

Option B: The Caress merely makes the wounds automatic. A model will not be able to cause more wounds than it has attacks, no matter how well it rolls.

Option C: Other/confused/no opinion

I believe the intention was to have been the same as the Bladestorm rule of Shuriken weapons, but the exact wording seems closer to the Rad rule from the Mechanum armies. I voted "confused".

I chose B and I can't fathom how it even ended up as an argument. I could imagine a new guy at the FLGS putting a TFG but no way would that fly with the group.

Harlequins are nearly always present in my armies so I have everything to gain from option A except it makes no sense.

The roll of a 6 CAUSES an automatic wound not GENERATES an additional automatic wound. If it was something as conveluted they would have specified it as so.

 Erik_Morkai wrote:
I chose B and I can't fathom how it even ended up as an argument. I could imagine a new guy at the FLGS putting a TFG but no way would that fly with the group.

The problem comes in when TFG runs the local group. And the other local group is ultra-hardcore casual. It makes it hard to get a perspective sometimes on which rules calls are legit and which are cheese.

(I assumed, like you, that the answer was 'no' off the bat, without doing a lot of thinking about it. Of course, I also assumed that about the Kiss/Caress combo, but apparently in that case, premium Vermont cheddar is fine and dandy. )

Well, I think that's about enough to draw a conclusion. Pretty much what I expected.

There's something I learned by reading the articles by Mark Rosewater, lead designer for Magic: The Gathering. He says that whenever you have conflict between the rules and human nature, human nature wins. Thus, the rules should reflect human nature whenever possible.

A good example of this is this card: Doomwake Giant


This card could easily be re-templated as: "whenever an enchantment enters the battlefield", and this card would work the exactly the same. However, it's written "Whenever Doomwake Giant or another enchantment enters the battlefield...". Why? Because human nature is such that we ask ourselves if a card which is not yet on the battlefield should affect the battlefield by its owner entering because of an ability it has that checks when a creature enters the battlefield. Our intrinsic reaction is "no", even though the logical answer is "yes" by the rules of that game.

I feel this situation is similar. Logically, the attack causes a wound, but it doesn't discount the to-hit roll of 6, which would mean you "should" roll another to-wound roll, even though you've already cause an automatic wound. Human nature takes the rules as written, and instead applies its own expectations onto it. We expect that a roll results in a single wound unless that roll specifically mentions otherwise, and so we say that the to-hit roll of 6 causes a wound and is disregarded for the rest of the to-hit and to-wound process. It may be "wrong" by rules as written, but it's what we expect. I believe that we should try to achieve "Rules as Intended/Expected" as often as possible, and that most of the splitting-hairs discussions wouldn't be a big deal if we followed this line of thinking. Unfortunately, because some people's expectation are different than others, we get these kinds of problems where some people believe differently than others. Magic does a great job in really carefully wording their cards. GW does not carefully word their rules. The difference is apparent.

 Yarium wrote:
There's something I learned by reading the articles by Mark Rosewater, lead designer for Magic: The Gathering. He says that whenever you have conflict between the rules and human nature, human nature wins. Thus, the rules should reflect human nature whenever possible.

A good example of this is this card: Doomwake Giant


This card could easily be re-templated as: "whenever an enchantment enters the battlefield", and this card would work the exactly the same. However, it's written "Whenever Doomwake Giant or another enchantment enters the battlefield...". Why? Because human nature is such that we ask ourselves if a card which is not yet on the battlefield should affect the battlefield by its owner entering because of an ability it has that checks when a creature enters the battlefield. Our intrinsic reaction is "no", even though the logical answer is "yes" by the rules of that game.

I feel this situation is similar. Logically, the attack causes a wound, but it doesn't discount the to-hit roll of 6, which would mean you "should" roll another to-wound roll, even though you've already cause an automatic wound. Human nature takes the rules as written, and instead applies its own expectations onto it. We expect that a roll results in a single wound unless that roll specifically mentions otherwise, and so we say that the to-hit roll of 6 causes a wound and is disregarded for the rest of the to-hit and to-wound process. It may be "wrong" by rules as written, but it's what we expect. I believe that we should try to achieve "Rules as Intended/Expected" as often as possible, and that most of the splitting-hairs discussions wouldn't be a big deal if we followed this line of thinking. Unfortunately, because some people's expectation are different than others, we get these kinds of problems where some people believe differently than others. Magic does a great job in really carefully wording their cards. GW does not carefully word their rules. The difference is apparent.

I agree with your conclusion 100%. I think GW plays their games in a very casual environment, and that their consistent group has led to (and I hate to use this word) group-think. They know what they mean, and it doesn't occur to them that other people might not see it that way.

I voted B,

"causes a single automatic wound"

because the word single in the above quote, single certainly doesn't mean more then one and I do not see the phrase "in addition to" in the quoted rule to mean it is added to another rolled wound.