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My friend and I are knew to 8th edition. Wondering if he can choose to shoot or specifically fight a certain model from a unit in close combat. Eg can my opponent choose to fire at the Boss Nob in a unit of boys or does he have to shoot at the closest model in the unit?

HeavyMitten wrote:
My friend and I are knew to 8th edition. Wondering if he can choose to shoot or specifically fight a certain model from a unit in close combat. Eg can my opponent choose to fire at the Boss Nob in a unit of boys or does he have to shoot at the closest model in the unit?

No, you can only direct shooting or attacks at units. Boss Nobs, Sergeants etc cannot be individually targeted. However characters that are their own units (Like a Warboss or a SM Captain) can be targeted individually as they are units of a single model, subject to the rules for shooting characters when shooting of course.

When shooting you measure to any model in the unit (usually the closest one), and casualties can come from anywhere in the unit.

Some weapons or units have a special rule that says the attacker may allocate the wounds.
In 99% of cases, you cannot do this.

He shoots at the unit , not at specific models. Re-read the shooting phase rules (the primer that's available online has all you need) and note where it says "model" and where it says "unit" - the difference is very important.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Elric Greywolf wrote:
Some weapons or units have a special rule that says the attacker may allocate the wounds.
In 99% of cases, you cannot do this.

Could you name an example? I've not come across any tbh.

These are very useful. But can I decide what receives wounds or is it the closest model type from the attacking unit. I know that I can take away a model of the same type such as a boy from the back of the unit as a casualty.

HeavyMitten wrote:
These are very useful. But can I decide what receives wounds or is it the closest model type from the attacking unit. I know that I can take away a model of the same type such as a boy from the back of the unit as a casualty.

You decide who suffers the wound. Keep in mind you need to allocate what model is taking the wound BEFORE rolling to save. And they have to be done one at a time, though thats more important for multi-wound units like Terminators.

The model doesn't have to be the same "type", it just has to be in the unit. You can allocate your wounds to your Boss Nob if you want.

Thank you, this has been very helpful for our future games.

HeavyMitten wrote:
These are very useful. But can I decide what receives wounds or is it the closest model type from the attacking unit. I know that I can take away a model of the same type such as a boy from the back of the unit as a casualty.

If your friend is shooting with one of his units at one of your units, YOU decide which model takes a wound.

an example:

5 Space Marines shoot at 10 Guardsmen because they committed heresy.
The Space Marines get 10 shots total because all 5 are within rapid fire range to at least one of the guardsmen.
out of the 10 shots, 7 hit their targets. Those 7 hits have to wound, which happens on a 3+ (Strength 4 vs Toughness 3), and 5 shots wound your guardsmen.

Now you have 5 wounds to assign to your Guardsmen - technically you can do this one at a time, which sometimes makes sense - for example:
If one of your guardsmen is outside of cover and all 9 other guys are in cover, you don't get +1 to your save due to cover. If you let the guy outside of the cover take the first hit, he has a 5+ save. If he fails, he's removed immediately, and the remaining squad is now fully in cover - so the other 4 wounds can be saved on a 4+. You can roll these 4 dice at the same time and simply remove 4 more models of your chosing - that's the easiest and fastest way to resolve the whole thing.
The same is true for units with mixed models - you can choose to pick a "tanky" model with a better save, but then you can only roll as many dice at once as that model has wounds left because otherwise you wouldn't know at what point he died, and once he's dead you'd have to use the save of the other guys in your unit.

From 'Allocate Wounds', page 181 of the main rulebook:

If an attack successfully wounds the target, the player commanding the target unit allocates the wound to any model in the unit (the chosen model does not have to be within range or visible to the attacking unit). If a model in the target unit has already lost any wounds, the damage must be allocated to that model.

So with 8th edition, grots like ammo runts and oilers etc have stats and count as models now so can I allocate wounds to them like ablative wounds just using the lower save for example in a nobz unit? The rules say use highest toughness value. This seems odd to me as runts were always ignored for game purposes.

Andykp wrote:
So with 8th edition, grots like ammo runts and oilers etc have stats and count as models now so can I allocate wounds to them like ablative wounds just using the lower save for example in a nobz unit? The rules say use highest toughness value. This seems odd to me as runts were always ignored for game purposes.

Doesn't matter if it seems odd. Thats called edition lag. New edition. New game. Ignore everything from before.

You get shot. You get wounded. You allocate the wound to the model. Whichever model in the unit you choose. Then the model rolls it's save.

Indeed. The rules are clear on how to deal with these things now.

Thanks for that. Edition lag is a problem that gets worse with age and number of editions I've played. 30 years on I still revert to 1st or second edition rules by default. So glad they binned universal special rules, could not get those things to stick.

Its cool. It was only about 2 months ago that i realized moral rolls were 1d6 instead of 2d6. I had been applying the losses as a penalty to ld.

Edition lag gets us all.

 Lance845 wrote:
Its cool. It was only about 2 months ago that i realized moral rolls were 1d6 instead of 2d6. I had been applying the losses as a penalty to ld.

Edition lag gets us all.

Was your reading possibly influenced by them saying "roll a dice" for a morale check and defaulting to the older definition of dice meaning more than one? (I'm thinking back on a thread we had a while back about whether rolling a dice meant one or two, and it seemed like people's answers depended upon age of the person and the country they were in.)

I do admit that 1d6 morale tests vs 2d6 does take getting used to.

 doctortom wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Its cool. It was only about 2 months ago that i realized moral rolls were 1d6 instead of 2d6. I had been applying the losses as a penalty to ld.

Edition lag gets us all.

Was your reading possibly influenced by them saying "roll a dice" for a morale check and defaulting to the older definition of dice meaning more than one? (I'm thinking back on a thread we had a while back about whether rolling a dice meant one or two, and it seemed like people's answers depended upon age of the person and the country they were in.)

I do admit that 1d6 morale tests vs 2d6 does take getting used to.

Yeah, I remember that thread. Still can't believe anyone would think "a single dice" might be more than 1.

 doctortom wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Its cool. It was only about 2 months ago that i realized moral rolls were 1d6 instead of 2d6. I had been applying the losses as a penalty to ld.

Edition lag gets us all.

Was your reading possibly influenced by them saying "roll a dice" for a morale check and defaulting to the older definition of dice meaning more than one? (I'm thinking back on a thread we had a while back about whether rolling a dice meant one or two, and it seemed like people's answers depended upon age of the person and the country they were in.)

I do admit that 1d6 morale tests vs 2d6 does take getting used to.

I don't THINK so. Just... me going "Oh.. moral! ::Grabs 2d6::"

It doesn't help that I 90% of the time play nids so remembering moral for my Tau is always a uphill battle.

nekooni wrote:

Yeah, I remember that thread. Still can't believe anyone would think "a single dice" might be more than 1.

I still can't believe anyone would think "a single dice" might be valid English.

 Infantryman wrote:

nekooni wrote:
Yeah, I remember that thread. Still can't believe anyone would think "a single dice" might be more than 1.

I still can't believe anyone would think "a single dice" might be valid English.

I know, right? GW is even an English company, so they don't have the excuse of using English (Simplified)

Then again, they are Northeners, so who knows anymore.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lance845 wrote:
I don't THINK so. Just... me going "Oh.. moral! ::Grabs 2d6::"

I still think the same sometimes. =Shakes Old Man Fist=

 Lance845 wrote:
I don't THINK so. Just... me going "Oh.. moral! ::Grabs 2d6::"

It doesn't help that I 90% of the time play nids so remembering moral for my Tau is always a uphill battle.

As an interesting side note, there are no morals in 40K, that is part of the point. Morals are not represented on the game table, but only in the story, and 'Nids obviously have no morals being more a force of bestial nature than an intelligent society. Tau are supposed to have strong morals, though, so I could see how that could get confusing.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Infantryman wrote:

nekooni wrote:
Yeah, I remember that thread. Still can't believe anyone would think "a single dice" might be more than 1.

I still can't believe anyone would think "a single dice" might be valid English.

I know, right? GW is even an English company, so they don't have the excuse of using English (Simplified)

Then again, they are Northeners, so who knows anymore.

The thing is that it is valid British / World English, and GW is a British Company, and therefore doesn't use American English (where "die" is still used instead of "dice" for a single dice). Which one you wanna call "Simplified" is up to you though ;-)

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/dice
Usage: Historically, dice is the plural of die, but in modern standard English dice is both the singular and the plural: throw the dice could mean a reference to either one or more than one dice

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/die
Usage: In modern standard English, the singular die (rather than dice) is uncommon. Dice is used for both the singular and the plural.

They've been using "dice" as a singular term for thirty years now.