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Let's say you're at the edge of Rapid Fire Range with different Rapid Fire Weapons

Your opponent decides to take casualties from the front, thus you would no longer be in Rapid Fire Range for the second weapon set.

Now, what is the proper way to play this...

A - Do you establish all shots/ranges at the start of shooting, making removing from the front a pointless exercise*
B - Do you establish shots as each gun is about to fire, making removing from the front a legit tactic

* Ignoring side factors such as helping deny charges or something.

Remember, previous editions don't matter and it's not about how 'you' would play it. I want to know the correct way to play it.

Follow the steps given under shooting sequence:

Choose unit to shoot
Choose target(s) and measure range(s)
Choose Weapon, resolve, repeat til weapons all done

You don't re-measure in between weapons. Just once.

And models that are out of weapon range altogether or line of sight can be removed as casualties, too. All that matters is that at least one model was in range/sight when the check was made.

Agree with above, shots all happen at the same time so removing casualties wont affect the shooting units even if tou roll each weapon(s) separately. Remember that you must declare all of a units shooting and targets before rolling any of them, only important if you splitfire though.

Weirdly though, removing casualties DOES effect "to wound" rolls if the target has models both in and out of cover; when the last model out of cover is removed, the remaining instantly benefits from cover.

Soulless wrote:

Weirdly though, removing casualties DOES effect "to wound" rolls if the target has models both in and out of cover; when the last model out of cover is removed, the remaining instantly benefits from cover.

Why ? Are you sure ?

Strykaar wrote:

Soulless wrote:

Weirdly though, removing casualties DOES effect "to wound" rolls if the target has models both in and out of cover; when the last model out of cover is removed, the remaining instantly benefits from cover.

Why ? Are you sure ?

Yes, because it's in the FAQ.

Reading through the rules, yet again, it does seem that if a unit shoots with weapons of varying stats (bs/s/ap/d) its indeed possible for some weapons to be rendered out of range due to casualties.

The rules are clear that attacks are written and intended as being made "one at a time".
An "attack" begins with the "To Hit" roll and ends with "Inflict Damage".

So i think ive changed my mind on this, if there is potential for casualty removal to effect the shooting unit then attacks should be made "one at a time" or in some fashion that allows for it to be accurately followed.

Nope, range can't change. You measure ranges at Step 2 before cycling through weapons in Steps 3/etc. You never go back to Step 2 to remeasure. If it's all one unit and they were all in range to begin with then nothing can change that during their shots.

It's done this was I imagine for 1) speed, and 2) to avoid removal tactics like that. Bear in mind that casualties can be removed from outside range and LOS too.

The only thing removal can affect is cover, if some dudes were outside cover and are chosen as casualties, as soon as everyone left in the squad is in cover they can start benefitting from the improved save. For this and other reasons you should do allocation, saves and damage one at a time after rolling to hit, even if you bucket up your hit rolls.

 yakface wrote:


Yes, because it's in the FAQ.

Could you quote me this part ? I cant access the faq here from work.

In the rules there is a step of making save rolls. After this step the inflict dmg step comes and I dont see any reason to go back to the save step, if you are already at the inflict dmg step. Or do I miss something here ?

Soulless wrote:
Agree with above, shots all happen at the same time so removing casualties wont affect the shooting units even if tou roll each weapon(s) separately. Remember that you must declare all of a units shooting and targets before rolling any of them, only important if you splitfire though.

Weirdly though, removing casualties DOES effect "to wound" rolls if the target has models both in and out of cover; when the last model out of cover is removed, the remaining instantly benefits from cover.

I think you mean it affects the save rolls. The to wound roll is before determining if the unit is in cover. It's not weird if you think of it like this: the to hit and wound rolls affect Units, the save and damage rolls affect Models. A particular Model makes its own save after assessing if the unit is in cover, on a case by case basis.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
Nope, range can't change. You measure ranges at Step 2 before cycling through weapons in Steps 3/etc. You never go back to Step 2 to remeasure. If it's all one unit and they were all in range to begin with then nothing can change that during their shots.

It's done this was I imagine for 1) speed, and 2) to avoid removal tactics like that. Bear in mind that casualties can be removed from outside range and LOS too.

The only thing removal can affect is cover, if some dudes were outside cover and are chosen as casualties, as soon as everyone left in the squad is in cover they can start benefitting from the improved save. For this and other reasons you should do allocation, saves and damage one at a time after rolling to hit, even if you bucket up your hit rolls.

You are correct, I misspoke

Strykaar wrote:

 yakface wrote:


Yes, because it's in the FAQ.

Could you quote me this part ? I cant access the faq here from work.

In the rules there is a step of making save rolls. After this step the inflict dmg step comes and I dont see any reason to go back to the save step, if you are already at the inflict dmg step. Or do I miss something here ?

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/07/02/warhammer-40000-faq-now-available-july2gw-homepage-post-1/

They made an explicit example in the FAQ as to how this is to be played. You do gain cover after models outside of it have been killed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As for the OP question I double checked the core rules wording, it does indeed say roll one weapon at a time per model. You may wish to talk this over with your opponents if you guys wish to speed things alone and just roll them together, but to be strict to the wording, it would prudent to find out how many are in double tap range without risk of overkill, roll those, and then proceed to the rest of the unit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It should be noted this is done on a model by model sequence, not by weapons. The weapons are rolled separately but at the same time.

IE. if you had a lets say, Dreadnaught with a Heavy flamer and a hurricane bolter. You measure all weapons are in range (so and in rapidfire), if they heavy flamer killed a bunch of unit to make the hurricane bolter no longer in rapidfire, it still shoots rapid fire, as the sequence of shooting/dice rolls are split for logistic ease, not order of actual fire. So the hurricane would still get rapid fire range.

However, if there were two or three dreadnoughts, you would fire the first as said above, but the other two would then be subject to the results of the first.

 Tsol wrote:

As for the OP question I double checked the core rules wording, it does indeed say roll one weapon at a time per model. You may wish to talk this over with your opponents if you guys wish to speed things alone and just roll them together, but to be strict to the wording, it would prudent to find out how many are in double tap range without risk of overkill, roll those, and then proceed to the rest of the unit.

No, you're misunderstanding the rules. As you say in your first sentence you ROLL for a model one at a time (if you wish). However all of the rolling takes place at step #4 of the shooting sequence (resolve attacks). The only time you check range and line of sight is during step #2 of the shooting sequence.

So once you've finished checking range and line of sight, you've figured out which weapons are in range and how many shots they will be getting to fire. Casualties caused during step #4 would not change this, no matter what order you choose to resolve your attacks in.

It's definitely weird, because it's possible for some models in a shooting unit to be out of range when you check range (such as 7 tac marines being able to hit and 3 being out of range). But an entire unit is in range when attacked.

So that's a "concrete" thing- 7 models are in range of the other players unit.

But then the play switches to abstract--once those 7 models are determined to be in range, they are always in range until those shots are resolved. There is no mechanism to refigure range once models are removed.

I like to think this errs on the side of people having difficulty rapidly moving from concrete (range measurement) to abstract thinking, but I suspect--IN SOME CASES--there is some system gaming at work.

It really isn't the conceptual switching. It is the rather huge change in sequence from 3rd-7th.

In th last few editions each unit would cycle through the shooting steps per weapon.

In 8th each unit follows and resolves each step as a whole before moving to the next step.

Everyone is still rolling to-hit, then to-wound, then saves, then applying damage as individual shots and then getting hung up on how range and los is handled.

But; you are doing it wrong.

The selected unit to shoot checks range and declares targets for each gun.

You then start resolving your attacks; either 1 at a time(following the resolve sequence per individual gun) or in batches(following the resolve sequence per batch).

If you are firing 7 bolters at a single target; then you batch roll to-hit and to-wound. If the target is partially in cover your opponent allocates and saves individually or can batch roll saves and allocate fails. If they are fully in or out of cover just batch roll saves and allocate fails.

 Kommissar Kel wrote:


But; you are doing it wrong.

The selected unit to shoot checks range and declares targets for each gun.

You then start resolving your attacks; either 1 at a time(following the resolve sequence per individual gun) or in batches(following the resolve sequence per batch).

If you are firing 7 bolters at a single target; then you batch roll to-hit and to-wound. If the target is partially in cover your opponent allocates and saves individually or can batch roll saves and allocate fails. If they are fully in or out of cover just batch roll saves and allocate fails.

I hear what you're saying, and I know the sidebar says the rules are designed to be resolved one at a time, but I wish that they didn't use "unit" and phrasing like "a model from the unit must be in range" unqualified in the main text. It gives me tired head trying to keep it all straight.

In the moment, I don't think anyone measures per gun before each dice roll though.

 3orangewhips wrote:

I hear what you're saying, and I know the sidebar says the rules are designed to be resolved one at a time, but I wish that they didn't use "unit" and phrasing like "a model from the unit must be in range" unqualified in the main text. It gives me tired head trying to keep it all straight.

In the moment, I don't think anyone measures per gun before each dice roll though.

If someone is intentionally removing models from the front for that hope, you can bet they will measure for you.

 3orangewhips wrote:

In the moment, I don't think anyone measures per gun before each dice roll though.

And they should not.

You measure range and choose targets before rolling any dice.

All of the targets for all of the guns on all of the models from the unit are chosen and locked in(with regard to range) before a single to-hit roll is ever made. So even if you had those 7 bolters in range, 4 were in rapid-fire range, and there was a flamer in range of the target unit and you choose to attack with the flamer first, then casualties from the flamer were taken from the front dropping 2 bolters out of rapid fire range; it doesn't matter all 4 bolters get to fire 2 shots each with the final 3 firing 1 each.

 yakface wrote:

 Tsol wrote:

As for the OP question I double checked the core rules wording, it does indeed say roll one weapon at a time per model. You may wish to talk this over with your opponents if you guys wish to speed things alone and just roll them together, but to be strict to the wording, it would prudent to find out how many are in double tap range without risk of overkill, roll those, and then proceed to the rest of the unit.

No, you're misunderstanding the rules. As you say in your first sentence you ROLL for a model one at a time (if you wish). However all of the rolling takes place at step #4 of the shooting sequence (resolve attacks). The only time you check range and line of sight is during step #2 of the shooting sequence.

So once you've finished checking range and line of sight, you've figured out which weapons are in range and how many shots they will be getting to fire. Casualties caused during step #4 would not change this, no matter what order you choose to resolve your attacks in.

Sorry if I didn't make it clear, I should have said it like this; "you resolve each model's actions one at at time". As in my example explained, is still correct.

I know it sounds weird, cause it is. But I've seen the game writers talk both on live stream and on the GW website describing these circumstances. They say treat weapons/models to fire individual, the bulk fire is done to speed things up. This is even explained in the core rule book if you still doubt it, or can't find the videos on the GW community site. I'll post the page number so you can use that as a quick reference. Pg. 179 'Fast rolling dice" -summary/paraphrase here: You only roll the whole unit's weapons to speed up the process instead of firing them one at a time.

If it pleases the crowd, I'll post the question to the GW team and see what they say.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Submitted question to get proper clarification. Will let you know if and when they respond.

 Tsol wrote:


Sorry if I didn't make it clear, I should have said it like this; "you resolve each model's actions one at at time". As in my example explained, is still correct.

I know it sounds weird, cause it is. But I've seen the game writers talk both on live stream and on the GW website describing these circumstances. They say treat weapons/models to fire individual, the bulk fire is done to speed things up. This is even explained in the core rule book if you still doubt it, or can't find the videos on the GW community site. I'll post the page number so you can use that as a quick reference. Pg. 179 'Fast rolling dice" -summary/paraphrase here: You only roll the whole unit's weapons to speed up the process instead of firing them one at a time.

If it pleases the crowd, I'll post the question to the GW team and see what they say.

Again, go back and look at the steps for the shooting sequence carefully. You'll notice that steps #1-3 are for the unit, and then step #4 is where you get to the point where you (can) resolve each model's hit/wound rolls separately, or if you like, can use 'fast dice rolling' to roll your hit/wound rolls together (assuming you have some identical weapons to do so with).

You DO NOT start back over at step #1 of the shooting sequence for each model. You don't even go back to step #2 or #3. You finish steps #1-#3 for the unit and only then do you start rolling for each model separately in step #4. And by step #4, there is no more checking range and/or line of sight. That has all been completed and determined in steps #1-#3.

Well, this is probmatic. GW responded, and said you are right. Roll them all together, as wounds now spillover into units even if out of range or LOS.

I'm going to hunt for the video(s) I saw where the devs said resolve each shot one at a time, in case I misheard (apparently I did) or their example was towards something else. But I can't refute the 40k community site saying, fire away.

 Tsol wrote:
Well, this is probmatic. GW responded, and said you are right. Roll them all together, as wounds now spillover into units even if out of range or LOS.

I'm going to hunt for the video(s) I saw where the devs said resolve each shot one at a time, in case I misheard (apparently I did) or their example was towards something else. But I can't refute the 40k community site saying, fire away.

As I've said multiple times you DO RESOLVE ATTACKS ONE AT A TIME (if you want).

The point you're missing is that if you read the rules for the shooting sequence, you check for range and line of sight for all the models in the unit before you start resolving any attacks.

Seriously, its all in the rules for the shooting sequence, if you just take the time to read it carefully.

This has been answered so many time in this thread now. GW have said how to do it. Community has said how you do it. The rules unambiguously show how to do it. And still people insist that way isn't correct?

Blimey.