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Cheers!
Today i parked a wave serpent on top of a container. There was no more space on top to place models. My opponent declared to charge underneath the serpent and strike nevertheless "up three inches". No part of the enemy models was within 1" not even outstretched swords.
I let it slip to get the game on but find it fishy still, also i couldnt find a corresponding part of the rulebook on the quick. Pointers?

Cpt. Icanus wrote:
Cheers!
Today i parked a wave serpent on top of a container. There was no more space on top to place models. My opponent declared to charge underneath the serpent and strike nevertheless "up three inches". No part of the enemy models was within 1" not even outstretched swords.
I let it slip to get the game on but find it fishy still, also i couldnt find a corresponding part of the rulebook on the quick. Pointers?

Your opponent was lying or mistaken.

The Fight Phase has no special vertical rules, it's 1" base to base (or Hull to Hull, etc) like every other time. Yes, this means models on top of things can't be attacked and in some cases can't even be charged at. This was known from day one and GW haven't fixed it. The only thing that has a special vertical hight that I can remember is unit coherency.

Core rules :

Moving

A model can be moved in any direction,
to a distance, in inches, equal to or
less than the Move characteristic on its
datasheet. No part of the model’s base
(or hull) can move further than this. It
cannot be moved through other models
or through terrain features such as walls,
but can be moved vertically in order to
climb or traverse any scenery.

FAQ :

Q: What happens when an Infantry model cannot
completely end its move on a floor of ruins when
attempting to scale the walls?

A: If an Infantry model is unable to complete a move
to a stable position, use the Wobbly Model Syndrome
guidelines in the core rules to identify with your
opponent where your model’s actual location is.

Depending on how much you believe in RAW its possible to end your movement on a vertical wall, side of container, whatever vertical area there is. Your opponents infantry could climb the sides of the container and charge your tank. But players like BCB would say no, you cant get within 1" of the tanks base. Wobbly model syndrome requires my permission, and i dont agree.

BaconCatBug wrote:

Cpt. Icanus wrote:
Cheers!
Today i parked a wave serpent on top of a container. There was no more space on top to place models. My opponent declared to charge underneath the serpent and strike nevertheless "up three inches". No part of the enemy models was within 1" not even outstretched swords.
I let it slip to get the game on but find it fishy still, also i couldnt find a corresponding part of the rulebook on the quick. Pointers?

Your opponent was lying or mistaken.

The Fight Phase has no special vertical rules, it's 1" base to base (or Hull to Hull, etc) like every other time. Yes, this means models on top of things can't be attacked and in some cases can't even be charged at. This was known from day one and GW haven't fixed it. The only thing that has a special vertical hight that I can remember is unit coherency.

Correct that there is no vertical distance for melee but incorrect that the opponent could not possibly fight.

p5freak wrote:Core rules :

Moving

A model can be moved in any direction,
to a distance, in inches, equal to or
less than the Move characteristic on its
datasheet. No part of the model’s base
(or hull) can move further than this. It
cannot be moved through other models
or through terrain features such as walls,
but can be moved vertically in order to
climb or traverse any scenery.

FAQ :

Q: What happens when an Infantry model cannot
completely end its move on a floor of ruins when
attempting to scale the walls?

A: If an Infantry model is unable to complete a move
to a stable position, use the Wobbly Model Syndrome
guidelines in the core rules to identify with your
opponent where your model’s actual location is.

Depending on how much you believe in RAW its possible to end your movement on a vertical wall, side of container, whatever vertical area there is. Your opponents infantry could climb the sides of the container and charge your tank. But players like BCB would say no, you cant get within 1" of the tanks base. Wobbly model syndrome requires my permission, and i dont agree.

These quotes are the correct way to fight people on top of containers and gak. There is no way for someone to occupy the top of a wall and be immune to assault. If your charge distance is enough to reach base to base with the tank then it's not even debatable where the models are. They are next to the wave serpent.

Also if i'm not mistaken only infantry can take advantage of multi level areas, so neither vehicles or monster should "technically" be able to get above ground.

( writing from my phone so can't check the exact wording of the rule)

 Lord Perversor wrote:
Also if i'm not mistaken only infantry can take advantage of multi level areas, so neither vehicles or monster should "technically" be able to get above ground.

( writing from my phone so can't check the exact wording of the rule)

Depends on what rules your playing with. Core game rules have no such restrictions. It's not until you start getting into the optional advanced terrain rules and cities of death and gak that rules like that start to come into play.

most advanced rules are optional, the exception is battle forged armies in matched play.

Most battlefield terrain (in the battlefield terrain rules) only benefit infantry, so most people dont use them as you get some really gak things. Like a vehicle not getting cover unless they are inside the terrain piece and obscured.

Can anyone tell me when a vehicle is going to be both in terrain and obscured. Cause i rarely see that, most of the time it's the terrain feature blocking LOS (Try and park a land raider in tree's. You'll never get that cover save using these rules)

Lord Perversor wrote:Also if i'm not mistaken only infantry can take advantage of multi level areas, so neither vehicles or monster should "technically" be able to get above ground.

( writing from my phone so can't check the exact wording of the rule)

Vehicles with the FLY keyword ignore terrain and can move in/on different levels of terrain. But not everyone agrees to that interpretation of the rule, because its not clear. The rules tell us that units with the FLY keyword ignore terrain when they move across it. The rules dont say what happens when you move in/on the terrain with your FLY unit.

mchammadad wrote:
Can anyone tell me when a vehicle is going to be both in terrain and obscured. Cause i rarely see that, most of the time it's the terrain feature blocking LOS (Try and park a land raider in tree's. You'll never get that cover save using these rules)

It depends how you define in terrain. At our FLGS a vehicle is in cover if its completely inside a ruin, and less than 50% is visible. This only works with smaller vehicles. I never had a land raider in cover.

Hmm, yeah at our game night today this same situation was brought up. For the sake of keeping the game going nobody really cared, but it would be nice to know.

mchammadad wrote:
most advanced rules are optional, the exception is battle forged armies in matched play.

Most battlefield terrain (in the battlefield terrain rules) only benefit infantry, so most people dont use them as you get some really gak things. Like a vehicle not getting cover unless they are inside the terrain piece and obscured.

Can anyone tell me when a vehicle is going to be both in terrain and obscured. Cause i rarely see that, most of the time it's the terrain feature blocking LOS (Try and park a land raider in tree's. You'll never get that cover save using these rules)

Are you sure 'most people' don't use them? As that's not my experience. Terrain works just fine and people do use the advanced rules for it, even if only as a framework for their scratch built terrain.

It's not hard to justify vehicles not getting cover. With one BS stat and no bonuses to simulate the larger mass of a vehicle anymore it's entirely logical that shooting at a man-sized chunk of vehicle is as easy as shooting at a dude. Shot accuracy is all so streamlined that trying to claim cover for vehicles is largely a fool's errand. But they get saves now and have a pile of Wounds. I look on cover for vehicles as a nice bonus if it happens, but rarely something to make a strategy, outside of smaller vehicles like Sentinels. Either hide completely out of LOS or accept you can shoot and be shot.

Admittedly i only play with a friend but we say if you cannot land within an inch you fail the charge. Being on top a cliff or a level of a ruin to the extent that the enemy cannot place anything else means no assault, simple. Shoot some guys dead first, then charge. If it really upsets you, make better terrain.

Except that is a house rule not the actual rules as stated earlier in the thresd your opponent uses the Wobbly model rule places his models 1 cm below the ledge and stabs you as he is within one inch.

The only reasonable way to play this to avoid severe cases of the feelbadsies is to allow the charger to kind of... cling on to the outside of a building or terrain piece. You then have to agree a little subset of rules like who can fight.

Here are my Red Scorpions about to be charged by some plaguebearers. They're on an objective at the top of a 7" tall building, with pretty much no free space for enemy models.



The Open Play deck had dictated that whoever held this objective at the end of T5 was the winner. So preventing his melee-only unit from attempting to fight me off it would have been a real TFG move.

We decided that he could charge them and he needed to roll 7" vertically plus the horizontal distance, which was 2" I think. Then any model that could get within 1" after the charge and pile in could fight - NOT all the unit as some could only reach the bottom of the building after the charge as they were so strung out.

Made for a slightly awkward and visually poor combat where the entire unit was "wobbly modelled" into mid air around a building parapet, but was far better than saying "sorry you can't fit up there gg wp"

I do feel like the intent needs to be stated in a GW ruling/guidance thing though. There are about 3 versions of this same question on the first page of YMDC!

 Silentz wrote:
Here are my Red Scorpions about to be charged by some plaguebearers. They're on an objective at the top of a 7" tall building, with pretty much no free space for enemy models.

I've seen other people house rule that objectives can't be placed on the top floor of ruins/buildings because many types of units aren't allowed up there.

Except officially you only have to get within 1inch so assuming thats a ruin you just charge diagnolly 4-5 inches useing the wobbly model rule.

Anything else is a house rule

So what happens when a model with the fly ability lands on top of, say a chimney, and the base covers the entire chimney. While also being so far up that no models can realistically reach it.
You can't claim wobbly model, since, there is nowhere to wobble next to the flyer.
This brings out two possible scenarios, both bad in their own way.

1. CC units cannot attack it at all? Making it a "safespace" for the flyer.
2. Vertical attacks have unlimited range vertically? But if they can reach it, then why do they need to climb up to reach units on top of other buildings, and not just move in close enough to be 1away if seen from above?

I really feel like GW needs to address this topic...

U02dah4 wrote:
Except officially you only have to get within 1inch so assuming thats a ruin you just charge diagnolly 4-5 inches useing the wobbly model rule.

Anything else is a house rule

Isn't it a house rule to be charging diagonally through the air if you're not a flyer?

My more battle-experienced nephew charged my elevated CSM with a Dread and said that because the Dread could not go up to fight, the rules said CSM had to actually come to the edge of the ledge and jump down if within 3" to fight on the base level. I let him have it in the interest of time and family but is this even close to a real rule?

Dactylartha wrote:
My more battle-experienced nephew charged my elevated CSM with a Dread and said that because the Dread could not go up to fight, the rules said CSM had to actually come to the edge of the ledge and jump down if within 3" to fight on the base level. I let him have it in the interest of time and family but is this even close to a real rule?

If he tries it again, ask him to show you the rule because you couldn't find it in the book. I'd be surprised if he can produce the rule.

(Otherwise, you'd see a lot of tournaments with people using things that can't climb acting like supermagnets to pull your units out of their nice fortifications just so they can attack you. They have to get to you to start the combat, you don't have to go to them.)

This is a little off topic, but I guess I've been measuring distances wrong in certain situations. I think I got mixed up from the section in the BRB on Movement and combining horizontal measurements and then vertical and not exceeding the total. This concept has bled over into my other measurements of just measuring horizontal distance to see if something is in range of a weapon or an aura. Have I been doing it wrong? is it only in the case of movement of anything without the FLY keyword and unit coherency that you check in a horizontal and/or vertical distance?

The best way to handle these sorts of cases is to try to capture how we typically feel such a scene might play out in reality so far as we can understand it from a common base of experience in sci-fi novels and movies and of course actual Earthling physics.

If a grav tank is on top of a container, we would expect that the area under the tank is potentially open to infantry if a few conditions are met. Is the thing hovering there? So, what was the movement rate of the tank, and does it end movement in a mode such as hover mode? If so, then we would expect that the top of the container is not open to infantry. If not, then the unit is traveling at speed, and in fact does not occupy the space on top of the container, but only is moving over it. In this case, we might expect that the space on top of the container is open to infantry.

That aside, it is difficult to imagine a unit of infantry jumping on top of a container to assault with chainswords, pistols, and power fists a grav tank moving at speed above the container.

One possible fix is to allow that IFF the grav tank moved less than the unit's movement plus assault distance, then it may be 'caught' by the unit and engaged in close combat.

Anyways, we can see where this is going.
We need more detailed rules.
They should be intuitive, i.e. match as well as possible what we might expect given a base of common experience in Earthling physics and sci-novels and so on, and cover every possible case on the table-top.

And, if it were me, I would have this discussion with my opponent during the game, to sort out what he/she felt was the best way to proceed not only in this game, but in all future games until and unless we choose later to modify this ruling or return to the base rules.

In this case, I can see assaulting the tank if it moved less than the assault rule for the unit, allowing attacks from any models that are able to get within 1" of the tank using "wobbly model" rules. So, at least SOME of these infantry models should be able to throw grenades, fire plasma pistols, and so on, potentially damaging the tank as it passes.

That said, the 8th ed. stuff with infantry blocking tank movement needs to be ignored. Especially in these cases, the tank should be able to move off without trouble, and be targeted by friendly shooting, and others should be able to target the assaulting infantry during normal shooting as well.

U02dah4 wrote:
Except officially you only have to get within 1inch so assuming thats a ruin you just charge diagnolly 4-5 inches useing the wobbly model rule.

Anything else is a house rule

Of course wobbly model rule requires both players agreement so dependant on not playing TFG.

 doctortom wrote:

U02dah4 wrote:
Except officially you only have to get within 1inch so assuming thats a ruin you just charge diagnolly 4-5 inches useing the wobbly model rule.

Anything else is a house rule

Isn't it a house rule to be charging diagonally through the air if you're not a flyer?

Indeed - you'd need to measure along the ground then up the obstacle, because they can't suddenly move through the air.

The "diagonally" thing keeps coming up and is born of a misreading. Of course, adding "anything else is a house rule" is poor form arguing form (but becoming a bit too common around here), and still doesn't make the statement correct.

the faq says

What happens when an Infantry model cannot
completely end its move on a floor of ruins when
attempting to scale the walls?

A: If an Infantry model is unable to complete a move
to a stable position, use the Wobbly Model Syndrome
guidelines in the core rules to identify with your
opponent where your model’s actual location is.

Core rules :

Moving

A model can be moved in any direction

So why not diagnolly?

U02dah4 wrote:
the faq says

What happens when an Infantry model cannot
completely end its move on a floor of ruins when
attempting to scale the walls?

A: If an Infantry model is unable to complete a move
to a stable position, use the Wobbly Model Syndrome
guidelines in the core rules to identify with your
opponent where your model’s actual location is.

Core rules :

Moving

A model can be moved in any direction

So why not diagnolly?

*sigh*

It makes me sad this even needs to be explained/debated. There are some concepts in the rules that are just assumed, or convention, because they're obvious... like dudes who walk along the ground not being able to fly in a diagonal line (ditto treaded regular tanks etc. not flying through the air).

If that *really* needs to be spelt out in the rules then we have no hope.

 jeff white wrote:

That aside, it is difficult to imagine a unit of infantry jumping on top of a container to assault with chainswords, pistols, and power fists a grav tank moving at speed above the container.

I could easliy imagine Orks doing it.


One possible fix is to allow that IFF the grav tank moved less than the unit's movement plus assault distance, then it may be 'caught' by the unit and engaged in close combat.

 jeff white wrote:

Anyways, we can see where this is going.
We need more detailed rules.
They should be intuitive, i.e. match as well as possible what we might expect given a base of common experience in Earthling physics and sci-novels and so on, and cover every possible case on the table-top.

A simple "measure from the base or the model itself, whichever's closer" would seem to cover a good bit of these problems.

 JohnnyHell wrote:

U02dah4 wrote:
the faq says

What happens when an Infantry model cannot
completely end its move on a floor of ruins when
attempting to scale the walls?

A: If an Infantry model is unable to complete a move
to a stable position, use the Wobbly Model Syndrome
guidelines in the core rules to identify with your
opponent where your model’s actual location is.

Core rules :

Moving

A model can be moved in any direction

So why not diagnolly?

*sigh*

It makes me sad this even needs to be explained/debated. There are some concepts in the rules that are just assumed, or convention, because they're obvious... like dudes who walk along the ground not being able to fly in a diagonal line (ditto treaded regular tanks etc. not flying through the air).

If that *really* needs to be spelt out in the rules then we have no hope.

If your answer is "somethings have to be assumed" you have lost the argument. The only thing that matters is what the rules say assumed is subjective and convention is location specific. Neither are relevant to a rules thread when the rules are clear and is this instance they are. Even if you don't like them or they don't make sense from a physics point of view- 40k is a simulation.

U02dah4 wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:

U02dah4 wrote:
the faq says

What happens when an Infantry model cannot
completely end its move on a floor of ruins when
attempting to scale the walls?

A: If an Infantry model is unable to complete a move
to a stable position, use the Wobbly Model Syndrome
guidelines in the core rules to identify with your
opponent where your model’s actual location is.

Core rules :

Moving

A model can be moved in any direction

So why not diagnolly?

*sigh*

It makes me sad this even needs to be explained/debated. There are some concepts in the rules that are just assumed, or convention, because they're obvious... like dudes who walk along the ground not being able to fly in a diagonal line (ditto treaded regular tanks etc. not flying through the air).

If that *really* needs to be spelt out in the rules then we have no hope.

If your answer is "somethings have to be assumed" you have lost the argument. The only thing that matters is what the rules say assumed is subjective and convention is location specific. Neither are relevant to a rules thread when the rules are clear and is this instance they are. Even if you don't like them or they don't make sense from a physics point of view- 40k is a simulation.

From Stepping In To a New Edition of Warhammer 40,000:

Q: How do vertical distances work for movement
and measurements?
A: All distances are measured in three dimensions, so if
a unit moves over a hill or scales a wall, the horizontal
distance and vertical distance combined cannot exceed
its Movement characteristic. This means that in order
to traverse across an obstacle, you must move up to the
top of that obstacle, move across the top of it, then move
down it.

So, you don't measure in a diagonal direction; you have to add the horizontal distance to the vertical distance for the move.

 doctortom wrote:

U02dah4 wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:

U02dah4 wrote:
the faq says

What happens when an Infantry model cannot
completely end its move on a floor of ruins when
attempting to scale the walls?

A: If an Infantry model is unable to complete a move
to a stable position, use the Wobbly Model Syndrome
guidelines in the core rules to identify with your
opponent where your model’s actual location is.

Core rules :

Moving

A model can be moved in any direction

So why not diagnolly?

*sigh*

It makes me sad this even needs to be explained/debated. There are some concepts in the rules that are just assumed, or convention, because they're obvious... like dudes who walk along the ground not being able to fly in a diagonal line (ditto treaded regular tanks etc. not flying through the air).

If that *really* needs to be spelt out in the rules then we have no hope.

If your answer is "somethings have to be assumed" you have lost the argument. The only thing that matters is what the rules say assumed is subjective and convention is location specific. Neither are relevant to a rules thread when the rules are clear and is this instance they are. Even if you don't like them or they don't make sense from a physics point of view- 40k is a simulation.

From Stepping In To a New Edition of Warhammer 40,000:

Q: How do vertical distances work for movement
and measurements?
A: All distances are measured in three dimensions, so if
a unit moves over a hill or scales a wall, the horizontal
distance and vertical distance combined cannot exceed
its Movement characteristic. This means that in order
to traverse across an obstacle, you must move up to the
top of that obstacle, move across the top of it, then move
down it.

So, you don't measure in a diagonal direction; you have to add the horizontal distance to the vertical distance for the move.

So yeah, besides sheer common sense that regular dudes can't fly through mid-air, it's in the rules. Remind me again who has "lost the argument"?

You lost

Common sense isnt a rules argument:

unless you back your statement up and can quote me a rules passage indicateing the exact nature and role of common sense within the rules?

40k is a simulation many of its rules lack common sense. Common sense is Subjective. It would be common sense to me to play by the rules as written not manufacture rules because i didnt like them.

There is a proposed rule thread for manufacturing rules