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So I've been wanting to try this formation for a while, but a debate just recently came up on how the Meteoric Impact rule actually works. Here is the rule itself.

"Immediately after deploying, any enemy units within 6in of any units from this formation take a str4 ap- hit for each of their models which is within 6in of a model from this formation..."

There's another rule about difficult terrain in there, but that's not what im looking at. There are 3 possible ways that this rule actually works, but no one in my gaming group can come to an agreement.

Option 1- Enemy units only take 1 set of hits regardless of whether or not they're within range of 1 unit, 3 units, or 5 (with combat squads) of this formation. Obviously this makes the formation very weak, as you can only put a few hits on each unit that you cover.

Option 2- The formation essentially acts like several blast templates, with each unit making individual use of Meteoric Impact on its own. For example, the vanguard vets and a squad of assault marines both land next to a unit of chaos marines. The VV unit catches 5 marines within its 6in bubble, and the ASM unit catches 6. This means that the CSM unit will take a total of 11 str4 hits.

Option 3- Each MODEL procs is own meteoric impact, at which point you'll have to pull out your calculator to figure out how many hits the enemy units will actually take. This seems far fetched, but a friend of mine who is also an english major broke the rule down gramatically and concluded that this is actually the most well founded interpretation, though he admitted he could be wrong.

So before I play with this formation on Saturday, I have to ask... how the heck does it actually work!?

Work out how many models from the formation are within 6" of unit A. Unit A takes that many hits. Repeat for all units.

Method 1 if you are within 6" of one unit or a thousands units you are within 6" of any unit.

So we have 2 different answers so far, lol.

No, same answer, different way of saying it.

"Repeat for all units" mans "repeat for all units other than unit A", e.g. if the person with the force is the enemy, then it is all friendly units

Essentially each model can only cause 1 hit, no matter how many units it is within 6" of.

What youre confusing is that the first part tells you when the rule is triggered - so for friendly unit A when it is within range of 1 unit with thsi rule or 20, the rule triggers for unit A once and once only.

The second part tells you how to calcalate the number of hits caused to friendly unit A when this rule is invoked. This now ignores the units' from the formation, and tells you to look at the number of models within range of unit A.

Yes but only one that has anything to do with the written rules. Nos must have completely misread the rules as his answer bears no resemblance to the rules at all.

Fab response as ever. MAybe you should provide some discussion and explanation as to why, rather than a bald statement?

Immediately after deploying, any enemy units within 6in of any units from this formation take a str4 ap- hit for each of their models which is within 6in of a model from this formation...


Do that like I said. So you:

1) See which enemy units are with in 6" of any units from the formation.
2) Count how many of their models are within 6" of a model from the formation
3) Do that many hits on the unit
4) the End

Can you explain how your "bizarre count how many models from the formation are near the unit" method has any relation tothe rules posted?

Because, and youre already getting close to being unpleasant and reminding me why youre on ignore, I read it differently to begin with.

Perhaps you could attempt discourse, not attack? It might help more.

The first part with enemy units within 6 inches tells us the range of the attack, and that the attack is on a unit basis and affects mulitple units in range.
The second part describes to us the number of hits allotted to the affected enemy units. This number is determined by counting models. If an enemy unit with 10 models has 9 models within 6 inches of any BA model from the formation, it suffers 9 hits.

Yes you must have misread the rules like I said in the 2nd post before your "Fab response as ever" response... Hence my initial response which clearly laid out the correct path and why and 2nd explained that you must have misread something as what you posted had no relation to the rule given, I even put that in because I didn't believe you had misinterpreted it due to my respect for your ability to understand the complex language of rules and thus you must have just misread something.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Work out how many models from the formation are within 6" of unit A. Unit A takes that many hits. Repeat for all units.

Yeah, thats not right.

For the sake of argument lets assume the following three facts are true.

Unit A contains 5 models.
The Formation contains 20 models.
The entirety of the formation is within 6 inches of Unit A.

What you've said is that Unit A will take 20 hits. Is this what you meant?

Nope, just a mistake in writing down my explanation.

For the rule in general - it really could have been laid out a lot more clearly, however this is true of a lot of GW rules.

... So we don't actually have a definitive answer?

Yes method 1 is the definitive answer as it is the method the rules tell us to follow. No one has actually argued for any other method so I don't quite get why you said that?

The important thing to note here is that the formation arrives at the same time.

Here is a breakdown on the steps you take.

STEP 1:
A model from Squad A (van vets for example) is put onto the table to indicate the ideal location for deepstrike. The deepstrike scatter dice is rolled. The rest of the models are placed around this model concentrically. If a mishap is rolled, follow the steps of the mishap rules.

STEP 2:
Repeat step 1 but for Squad B/C etc until all units in the formation have been deployed or mishapped.

STEP 3:
For each enemy model on the table, ask the question 'is this model within 6 inches of any of the above listed units'. Make a note for each enemy unit how many models that was true of.

STEP 4:
Each enemy unit where at least 1 of the models WAS within 6 inches, receives a number of hits equal to the number of models in that squad where Step 3 returned the answer 'Yes'.

Thank you, Xander. And I asked because to me this conversation has seemed really convoluted and confusing.