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I played a game against an Eldar player for the first time in 8th a few days ago, and came up against some... Weirdness.
Basically, they said that Serpent Shields reduced the damage taken on a weapon-by-weapon basis, regardless of that weapon's Dakage stat, or RoF. So a single Lascannon shot that gets 1 hit and rolls a 5 for damage would be taken down to 4, (reasonable enough,) but let's say I fired a Punisher Gatling Cannon and got 5 individual wounds through, that'd ALSO be taken down to 4.

I didn't really bother arguing the point, but it was really annoying to have to roll every single attack against it individually, and I have to feel like that's not how the rule is supposed to work.

Can anyone clarify for me?

No, five individual attacks doing 1 damage each wouldn't be affected. A weapon doing multiple damage would be reduced by 1. There is a "to a minimum of 1" caveat in the rules your opponent was ignoring or hadn't properly read. Seems they were treating the Punisher as a multi-wound attack, not multiple attacks doing 1 damage each.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
No, five individual attacks doing 1 damage each wouldn't be affected. A weapon doing multiple damage would be reduced by 1. There is a "to a minimum of 1" caveat in the rules your opponent was ignoring or hadn't properly read. Seems they were treating the Punisher as a multi-wound attack, not multiple attacks doing 1 damage each.

They said that the damage reduction was done on a weapon-by-weapon basis, not a hit-by-hit basis. (I don't have the codex to cite this, unfortunately.)

Google "wave serpent 8th" look at the images. Read for yourself.

Okay, "Any damage suffered by a Wave Serpent from a Ranged Weapon is reduced by one". If I just point that out, I'm about 95% sure he'll say that it's on a weapon-by-weapon basis, because when I asked mid-game that's how he explained the rule.

I should add that a lot of people at my LGS... Kiiiind of suck at comprehending the rules. There are a few players who are trying to argue that the 'Killshot' strategem can apply to any number of Predators, as long as each Predator is within 6" of another two Predators.
I don't need a 'Yes/No' answer, I need a clear, foolproof way to explain the rule that can't be roadblocked by fuzzy logic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
(While we're on the subject, a foolproof way to explain Killshot would also be helpful.)

Page 179, right-most side;

"Fast Dice Rolling"

Weapons have a number of attacks listed on their profile - a Punisher Gatling Cannon has X shots that need to be resolved.

Each shot, hit, damage, and armor save is individually rolled for each shot of the weapon (at different steps in the phase) - however, weapons with multiple attacks/the exact same statline can be rolled all at once to save time;

"...make all the hit rolls at the same time, then all the wound rolls. Your opponent can allocate these wounds ONE AT A TIME, MAKING SAVING THROWS AND SUFFERING THE DAMAGE AS APPROPRIATE."

It's possible that your opponents are Age of Sigmar players; in which case attacks and damage are pooled. This is NOT the case for Warhammer 40k.

As far as Killshot goes - What's the exact wording of the Strategem?

From what I've read online, it only applies to one of the Predators, not all three.

That's exactly what I needed, thanks.


"Use this Strategem in your Shooting phase if a predator is within 6″ of 2 other friendly <Chapter> Predators. If you do so you can add 1 to the wound rolls and damage for all the Predators' attacks that target Monsters or Vehicles this phase."

A lot of hand-written leaks mistakenly had this written as "Predator's", but it is in fact "Predators'", which is a plural possessive. It definitely applies to more than one Predator.

Don't play with morons

Reading that the rule only effects ranged weapons kinda peeves me off, a local guy has been playing his wave serpents as reducing all damage by one. Had a penitent engine rip havoc on one of them and he was claiming I was doing 2 damage a wound not 3.

warpedpig wrote:
Don't play with morons

They're friendly morons. I mostly like the people at my LGS, silly rules inanity aside.

 mmzero252 wrote:
Reading that the rule only effects ranged weapons kinda peeves me off, a local guy has been playing his wave serpents as reducing all damage by one. Had a penitent engine rip havoc on one of them and he was claiming I was doing 2 damage a wound not 3.

"Know thine enemies rules as thine own" should be the first rule of Guilliman's new Codex!

For mere non-Primaris mortals without all the army books, the BattleScribe app is a handy (but not foolproof) guide. Just open a detachment for your opponent's faction, add the unit and see what the rules say. They're not all 100% accurately transcribed (Broodlord 'Swift and Wossname' rule is wrongly transcribed, for example) but it'll show up alarming discrepancies between what's written and what your opponent is claiming, and you can ask to see their Index/Codex entry to clarify. ;-)

I tend to do this even with my super-friendly regular opponent just so we can track each other's actions and help each other not forget rules. It's not just about rule policing.

Except I asked him about the sheer amount of things he was doing and he seemed to take great offense that I was questioning him about his army. Keep in mind this was like..week 2-3 of 8th edition. I won't be playing the cheater again because those were not the only rules he was bending and his list seemed quite TFG

 mmzero252 wrote:
Except I asked him about the sheer amount of things he was doing and he seemed to take great offense that I was questioning him about his army. Keep in mind this was like..week 2-3 of 8th edition. I won't be playing the cheater again because those were not the only rules he was bending and his list seemed quite TFG

If he's getting angry because you're asking him to prove that the rules say they do what they say, that's pretty much all you need to not play him again.