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Hey all, sorry if this has been posted already but I didn't see any direct answers for this.

So, I'd left Lysander out in the open after popping a tank and a tac squad engaged in combat with some sisters. My opponent activated his nearby guards to shoot, wanting to target Lysander but the tac marines were closer.

The shooting rules read: "Models cannot target enemy units that are within 1" of friendly models – the risk of hitting your own troops is too great."

The character rules read: "A CHARACTER can only be chosen as a target in the Shooting phase if they are the closest visible enemy unit to the model that is shooting."

The shooting rules seem to read as if models in the combat aren't a valid target, while the character rules only say they have to be visible to prevent shooting a character. We ended up playing by the character rule, and my opponent moved some of his unit behind a wall to block LoS to the tac marines - but I was wondering what Dakka's take is on it. Thanks!

Yep, you played right in my eyes. There was another unit closer that was visible, regardless of whether it was targetable or not.

Expressly covered in the Designer's Commentary:

Q: If a model cannot shoot at the closest visible enemy
unit for some reason (e.g. it is within 1" of one of
your units) but the next closest visible enemy unit is a
Character, can that model then target the character?
A: No.

Must have completely missed that, thanks for digging it out!

The ruling there seems weird, but I guess there's a bunch of that flying around in 8th. I feel like it'd be way better if the character also had to be within X" of a unit too.

No worries. For a full core rules FAQ you need the FAQ, Designer's Commentary AND Stepping Into A New Edition docs... phew!