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Sorry if this has been discussed elsewhere, I wasn't able to find much with the forum search tool.

But, like the title says, the mobile fortress rule says: "A battlewagon ignores the penalty for moving and firing heavy weapons". Well and good. Based on that rule alone, I would not think that it would affect occupants.

However, the open topped rule reads: "Any restrictions or modifiers that apply to this model also apply to its passengers". It references falling back in a battlewagon causes passengers to suffer fall back penalties, if it is in CC, passengers can only fire pistols, etc. But it's not unreasonable to assume that, based on that phrase, that the mobile fortress modifier, if it is indeed a modifier, would apply to passengers. I mean, if negative effects affect passengers, positive ones could too.

Is there a general consensus on this?

It only affects occupants if the data sheet specifically says it does. It's one of the things that makes Dark Eldar so nasty with their assault weapons.

Well, the open topped rule says that modifiers that affect the vehicle affect the passengers. The question, I suppose, is does the 'mobile fortress' rule count as a modifier? If so, than it would benefit passengers.

Haven't looked closely, but my first impression is yes, it should.

I would go with it still affects the occupants. The mobile fortress rule isn't itself a modifier as it doesn't say heavy weapons get +1 to hit when the model moves.
Due to the wording of the rule being "ignores the penalty" rather than "removes the penalty" the orks inside would still be affected IMO.

They could have worded the open top rule to say that any benefits, restrictions and modifiers that apply to the transport apply to the occupants.

But they limited it to just modifiers and restrictions that pass on. So RAW I have a hard time seeing how this gets passed onto occupants because its definitely not a restriction and its also not a modifier (its a benefit that removes a modifier).

However, I personally do think the spirit of the rule was to apply stuff like this, so hopefully they FAQ it to make it clear (its in my FAQ list).

I may be a bit biased, since I relied heavily on my bigmek in MA last edition and now Need to have to use the BW to ship both my lootas and flash gitz around, but the way I Interpret the rules, the passangers get to shoot with their regular BS, because:

Every mod. and restriction applied to the BW also apply to the passangers, right?
But the -1 to BS for firing heavy weapons isn't applied to the BW.
Which in turn would mean, it isn't applied to the passangers as well.


Basically I just want this to be true.

I can tell you with 99% certainty that they still count as moving if the Battle Wagon moves. The Wagon itself counts as stationary, but the occupants do not. The Live Streams showed this a number of times and a lot of the play testers have commented on this exact thing on several occasions.

Haven't seen that SideShow, but considering the models are not on the board, they haven't moved at all...

The BW did not move for HW calculations, ergo, nothing in it moved either.

There are Transports which are Open Topped which do not have the ignore penalty clause..

Yes; it allows the passengers to negate the -1 to-hit while moving penalty, for heavy weapons.

From the Designers Commentary/FAQ:

Q. If a rule or ability grants a re-roll on, for example,
‘hit rolls of 1’ (such as a Space Marine Captain’s ‘Rites
of Battle’ ability) does that effect trigger before or
after applying modifiers to the hit rolls?

"Modifiers are applied after re-rolls. In this example there is
a -1 modifier to the hit rolls for moving and firing a Heavy
weapon. That means that the post-re-roll scores of 2, 3 and 5..."

The -1 to hit for moving and firing a heavy weapon is a MODIFIER.

Open Topped: "...When they do so, and restrictions or MODIFIERS that apply to this model ALSO APPLY TO IT'S PASSENGERS;..."

Battle Wagon Mobile Fortress: "A Battlewagon ignores the penalty (MODIFIER) for moving and firing heavy weapons."

The only confusion over this is because GW's wording and rules writing team is inconsistent in the terminology it uses, but -

The -1 is a modifier to moving and firing a heavy weapon. Any modifiers that apply to the vehicle apply to it's passengers because of open topped (say, the vehicle moved); however, the Battlewagon is allowed to ignore this penalty - which again, is shared with the passengers, thanks to open-topped. More accurately, it doesn't even apply in the first place (to either the vehicle or passengers), since it was entirely ignored.

Ya'll are weedy ruleslawyering gits, that moreso are just wrong. :choppa:

EDIT: See my response in the next (well, two) posts below; I can understand maybe this post was confusing.

@fe40k
You have a hole in your reasoning there. You incorrectly assume that that because the battlewagon is ignoring the effects of the penalty it is not still applied to it. It is still there it is just ignoring the fact that it is there. If it said the effect is negated then it would remove it completely. As the effect is still applied to the battlewagon it is still applied to the unit inside. I do not see why you think open topped gives the mobile fortress rule to the unit inside as it is neither a restriction or a modifier on the battlewagon.

Ok, let's try it like this.

Is the Battlewagon effected by "-1 to hit, from moving and firing heavy weapons modifier"? No - it's not; because it's entirely ignored.

Thus, there is no penalty to transfer to the passengers.

Open-topped transfers any penalties that are on the vehicle to the unit inside - despite having moved, there are no penalties applied to the Battlewagon, thus there's nothing to transfer.

Right?

Lets explain it a different way.
Scenario 1: You are standing in front of a mirror. Everything modifier to your appearance is reflected in the mirror (open topped). You have dirt on your face (a penalty) but you can ignore it because you can't see it (mobile fortress). When you look in the mirror can you still see the dirt on the reflection? (do the occupants still have a penalty?)

Scenario 2: Instead of having a rule to ignore the dirt you have a rule that removes the dirt (washing your face). The reflection no longer has dirt on it.

The mobile fortress rule lets you ignore the fact that it is there when you are shooting but doesn't remove the fact that you have moved. For all other purposes you have still moved.

The rules for Open-Topped reflect that the passengers inside aren't on the table, and are for all intents and purposes considered part of the vehicle they're in - basically, thing of them as extra guns added onto the vehicle during the shooting phase (only).

In this light, they don't suffer the penalty for moving and shooting, they never actually moved - the vehicle did, but that doesn't matter because of Mobile Fortress. So for the purposes of shooting, the guns of the Battlewagon ignore the move and fire penalties - and since the passengers are essentially just extra guns, they don't suffer this penalty.

At no point are the passengers ever effected by ANYTHING, save the modifiers that apply to the transport itself - which doesn't exist, since it's entirely ignored. The passengers simply DON'T exist at all; until the vehicle is destroyed, in which case they bail out and are officially units on the table.

Right?

The penalty simply doesn't ever apply to the battlewagon, and thus literally cannot be transferred to the passengers ("extra guns").

fe40k, that is how we play it as well. The models are not on the table, thus they are part of the model they are in, with open topped they add their attacks to the model they are in.

Did the models physically move, NO (Transport rule). Does their platform suffer a penalty from moving, NO (Mobile Fortress rule). Can the models fire, YES (Open Topped Rule). Do the models suffer any penalty from moving, NO (Transport Rule+Mobile Fortress Rule).

Another thing, words mean things, Mobile Fortress

Fortress: a military stronghold, especially a strongly fortified town fit for a large garrison. or: a person or thing not susceptible to outside influence or disturbance.

Note the not susceptible to outside influence, would mean ignores and garrison means, has people in it...

fe40k wrote:The rules for Open-Topped reflect that the passengers inside aren't on the table, and are for all intents and purposes considered part of the vehicle they're in - basically, thing of them as extra guns added onto the vehicle during the shooting phase (only).

In this light, they don't suffer the penalty for moving and shooting, they never actually moved - the vehicle did, but that doesn't matter because of Mobile Fortress. So for the purposes of shooting, the guns of the Battlewagon ignore the move and fire penalties - and since the passengers are essentially just extra guns, they don't suffer this penalty.

At no point are the passengers ever effected by ANYTHING, save the modifiers that apply to the transport itself - which doesn't exist, since it's entirely ignored. The passengers simply DON'T exist at all; until the vehicle is destroyed, in which case they bail out and are officially units on the table.

Right?

The penalty simply doesn't ever apply to the battlewagon, and thus literally cannot be transferred to the passengers ("extra guns").

Have you even read what I said about the modifier being ignored not removed? Just repeating yourself is not doing anything to disprove what I said.
At no point are passengers ever said to be part of the vehicle they are in. Take for example the dark eldar raider, if it were damaged then by your logic of them just being extra guns for the tank the passengers would all hit on a 5+.

Pedroig wrote:fe40k, that is how we play it as well. The models are not on the table, thus they are part of the model they are in, with open topped they add their attacks to the model they are in.
.

Again do you have any rules quote saying they are part of the vehicle they are in?

The BW is affected by the -1 for moving and shooting heavy weapons, but ignores the effect.

A) Since it is affected, so are the passengers and they suffer -1 as well.

B) Since it ignores the effect, it is in the end not affected after all and thus the passengers don't suffer the -1 either.




My local GW staff supports B) so I'm gonna use that until an official rules clarification.

 roflmajog wrote:

fe40k wrote:The rules for Open-Topped reflect that the passengers inside aren't on the table, and are for all intents and purposes considered part of the vehicle they're in - basically, thing of them as extra guns added onto the vehicle during the shooting phase (only).

In this light, they don't suffer the penalty for moving and shooting, they never actually moved - the vehicle did, but that doesn't matter because of Mobile Fortress. So for the purposes of shooting, the guns of the Battlewagon ignore the move and fire penalties - and since the passengers are essentially just extra guns, they don't suffer this penalty.

At no point are the passengers ever effected by ANYTHING, save the modifiers that apply to the transport itself - which doesn't exist, since it's entirely ignored. The passengers simply DON'T exist at all; until the vehicle is destroyed, in which case they bail out and are officially units on the table.

Right?

The penalty simply doesn't ever apply to the battlewagon, and thus literally cannot be transferred to the passengers ("extra guns").

Have you even read what I said about the modifier being ignored not removed? Just repeating yourself is not doing anything to disprove what I said.
At no point are passengers ever said to be part of the vehicle they are in. Take for example the dark eldar raider, if it were damaged then by your logic of them just being extra guns for the tank the passengers would all hit on a 5+.

Pedroig wrote:fe40k, that is how we play it as well. The models are not on the table, thus they are part of the model they are in, with open topped they add their attacks to the model they are in.
.

Again do you have any rules quote saying they are part of the vehicle they are in?

Where does it say that the Passengers are subject to any modifier that the transport is not subject to? This is what you are trying to argue. That a modifier which is not applied to the Transport should be applied to the embarked models, without anything in the rules, the wording of the abilities, or anything RAW.

Mobile Fortress means the transport does not receive a modifier for moving in regards to heavy weapons. It does not "remove" the modifier, the modifier never takes place because the entire rule is IGNORED.

There are examples of where transported models suffer a penalty to heavy weapons when the platform moves when the platform has immunity, Firing Deck excludes the models from the Steel Behemoth rule for the DoomHammer for example.

Try again. Steel behemoth doesn't stop it from taking penalties from moving.
I think we disagree on what is being ignored. From what I can tell you think the entire heavy weapon section in the main rulebook is ignored. I believe that as soon as the model moves the penalty is applied to it, the battlewagon can then ignore this penalty when it comes time to shoot but still has the penalty applied.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
Sorry if this has been discussed elsewhere, I wasn't able to find much with the forum search tool.

But, like the title says, the mobile fortress rule says: "A battlewagon ignores the penalty for moving and firing heavy weapons". Well and good. Based on that rule alone, I would not think that it would affect occupants.

However, the open topped rule reads: "Any restrictions or modifiers that apply to this model also apply to its passengers". It references falling back in a battlewagon causes passengers to suffer fall back penalties, if it is in CC, passengers can only fire pistols, etc. But it's not unreasonable to assume that, based on that phrase, that the mobile fortress modifier, if it is indeed a modifier, would apply to passengers. I mean, if negative effects affect passengers, positive ones could too.

Is there a general consensus on this?

Benefits are neither restrictions nor modifiers, only restrictions and modifiers apply. Therefore, you do not gain any benefits the vehicle may have, and as such still suffer a penalty when shooting heavy weapons if one applies.

As an example you could put 2 battle wagons 11" apart and have heavy weapons go from vehicle to vehicle and shoot without penalty.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
Sorry if this has been discussed elsewhere, I wasn't able to find much with the forum search tool.

But, like the title says, the mobile fortress rule says: "A battlewagon ignores the penalty for moving and firing heavy weapons". Well and good. Based on that rule alone, I would not think that it would affect occupants.

However, the open topped rule reads: "Any restrictions or modifiers that apply to this model also apply to its passengers". It references falling back in a battlewagon causes passengers to suffer fall back penalties, if it is in CC, passengers can only fire pistols, etc. But it's not unreasonable to assume that, based on that phrase, that the mobile fortress modifier, if it is indeed a modifier, would apply to passengers. I mean, if negative effects affect passengers, positive ones could too.

Is there a general consensus on this?

Benefits are neither restrictions nor modifiers, only restrictions and modifiers apply. Therefore, you do not gain any benefits the vehicle may have, and as such still suffer a penalty when shooting heavy weapons if one applies.

As an example you could put 2 battle wagons 11" apart and have heavy weapons go from vehicle to vehicle and shoot without penalty.

1. Your example doesn't work, because it is forbidden. A model cannot embark and disembark in the same turn. What you stated would require an embarkation and disembarkation in the same turn.

2. You are ascribing the term "BENEFIT" to the Battlewagons ability. Then categorizing this term that you introduced yourself as something different than a modifier. Since it was you that introduced term and not the rule book, this statement may be ignored completely.

3. PG 175 (Right margin) clearly states that " You may encounter ABILITIES and RULES that MODIFY a characteristic." Since this is clearly an ability ( in the abilities list, no less) that modifies an existing rule, then it is passed on to the occupants.

Mobile fortress clearly modifies shooting for the BW.

The open topped rule clearly states that anything that modifies the BW shooting modifies the passengers shooting


Clearly the passengers shooting is modified by mobile fortress.

blaktoof wrote:
Mobile fortress clearly modifies shooting for the BW.

The open topped rule clearly states that anything that modifies the BW shooting modifies the passengers shooting

Clearly the passengers shooting is modified by mobile fortress.

The rule states modifiers not anything that modifies the shooting. Mobile fortress isn't itself a modifier. Modifiers are rules that say something like +1 to this or x2 to that, MF just makes the battlewagon ignore a modifier.

 Idolator wrote:
1. Your example doesn't work, because it is forbidden. A model cannot embark and disembark in the same turn. What you stated would require an embarkation and disembarkation in the same turn.

2. You are ascribing the term "BENEFIT" to the Battlewagons ability. Then categorizing this term that you introduced yourself as something different than a modifier. Since it was you that introduced term and not the rule book, this statement may be ignored completely.

3. PG 175 (Right margin) clearly states that " You may encounter ABILITIES and RULES that MODIFY a characteristic." Since this is clearly an ability ( in the abilities list, no less) that modifies an existing rule, then it is passed on to the occupants.

You are right that there isn't anything defined in the game as a 'benefit' but at the same time it is clear that the Mobile Fortress ability isn't, strictly speaking a modifier either, as it doesn't actually modify anything, it just allows the Battlewagon to ignore an existing modifier.

I don't know why everyone is continuing to argue about this because there is obviously no possible resolution. Both sides have a pretty strong case and this is 100% a candidate for something that needs to be FAQ'd, especially as it would be nice to know if pretty much any ability that applies to a transport's shooting (including all benefits) is supposed to also apply its occupants as well (like if the vehicle is getting a re-roll for being within range of an aura, does that pass onto the passengers too?).

@Yakface: Fair enough;

For now, the best we can do is agree to disagree, and wait for the FAQ.

GW, don't let me down - but as an Ork/Xenos, I know you will. =(

 yakface wrote:

 Idolator wrote:
1. Your example doesn't work, because it is forbidden. A model cannot embark and disembark in the same turn. What you stated would require an embarkation and disembarkation in the same turn.

2. You are ascribing the term "BENEFIT" to the Battlewagons ability. Then categorizing this term that you introduced yourself as something different than a modifier. Since it was you that introduced term and not the rule book, this statement may be ignored completely.

3. PG 175 (Right margin) clearly states that " You may encounter ABILITIES and RULES that MODIFY a characteristic." Since this is clearly an ability ( in the abilities list, no less) that modifies an existing rule, then it is passed on to the occupants.

You are right that there isn't anything defined in the game as a 'benefit' but at the same time it is clear that the Mobile Fortress ability isn't, strictly speaking a modifier either, as it doesn't actually modify anything, it just allows the Battlewagon to ignore an existing modifier.

I don't know why everyone is continuing to argue about this because there is obviously no possible resolution. Both sides have a pretty strong case and this is 100% a candidate for something that needs to be FAQ'd, especially as it would be nice to know if pretty much any ability that applies to a transport's shooting (including all benefits) is supposed to also apply its occupants as well (like if the vehicle is getting a re-roll for being within range of an aura, does that pass onto the passengers too?).

An Aura Effect that gives a restriction or modifier would indeed pass on to the passengers if it is open topped. It states so directly in the "open topped" ability.

The rules for passengers in the main rule book states. "Embarked units cannot normally do anything OR BE AFFECTED IN ANY WAY whilst they are embarked. Unless specifically stated, abilities that effect other units within a certain range has no affect whilst that unit that has that ability is embarked."

The "Open Topped" ability is the only rule that I'm aware of that allows embarked units to gain modifiers from the vehicle. Since the Heavy Weapon modifier is ignored (not, applied then ignored) it does not apply to the transport and cannot be applied to the unit embarked.

What several people seem to be insisting in this thread is just that. That they apply it to the transport first, then ignore it's application to the transport, then pass it onto the embarked unit. They are adding a step that is not in the rules.

@Idolator: I completely agree, and seems quite clear - but unfortunately, this is going to require an FAQ for some people to really get on board.

I'm inclined to think they won't suffer the penalty even though the live streams showed them play the other way. I have no idea what their intent was, but I believe by RAW they ignore the penalty.

 SideshowLucifer wrote:
I'm inclined to think they won't suffer the penalty even though the live streams showed them play the other way. I have no idea what their intent was, but I believe by RAW they ignore the penalty.

So how did GW play it on the live stream? That they got -1 modifer or they didn't?

That they got the -1, but RAW doesn't support that. I have no idea what their intent is at this point.