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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!?

So we have 2 different answers so far, lol.

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

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