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Alternate Title: Burnas and Dakka Dakka Dakka
This popped up on 4chan, recently. The basic set-up is this:

Dakka Dakka Dakka is a stratagem that generates one extra shot from a ranged weapon for each 6+ to hit result you roll. It's a 1CP stratagem that you play before shooting with a unit.
Most flame weapons, including Burnas, hit automatically. Burnas have D3 hits, but you roll a single dice before shooting and apply the result to the entire unit.

The first and primary loop-hole concept is that, RAW, hitting automatically doesn't actually eliminate the to-hit roll. In practice, the roll is simply skipped for time during a gentleman's match.because it makes the result a forgone conclusion.

Therefore, it is believed that when attempting to fire a flame weapon, you can roll to-hit, without risk, and still use the dice results for the purposes of qualifying for other abilities.

The second "shenanigan" involved is that because both the application of the stratagem and the rolling for number of shots take place in the same "before shooting with the unit" subphase, you as the player can determine the order of events. Therefore, you may determine that a unit of 15 burnas each has 3 shots, and then choose to play Dakka Dakka Dakka.

The end goal is to roll to-hit for 45 automatically hitting shots to produce, on average, in 7-8 extra automatically hitting shots.

Among the resistance to this concept I've seen is:
Insistence that a person simply cannot roll to-hit for a weapon that hits automatically. It just can't happen, as the weapon ability eliminates hit rolls in procedure, not just in practice.
Insistence that if a person does roll to-hit for an automatically hitting weapon, then they automatically miss on a result of 1, resulting in as many misses as extra shots.
Insistence that if a person does roll to-hit for an automatically hitting weapon, then they forgo the automatic hitting ability and miss any shots rolling below their BS.

Counter arguments for performing the roll at all have compared the concept to "rolling for moral when a unit cannot fail a moral roll."
The missing on one sub-arguments have described "automatically hitting" as a modifier to insist that 1s automatically miss, while others have said that every example of a modifiers is a numerical adjustment (+1, -1), and that hitting automatically is a flat ability, not a modifier.

None of what you are saying is making any sense. You don't roll to hit...so why would you reroll? There is also no roll to hit, so how do you roll a 6+ to generate hits?

It's common to roll for morale on Bloodletters even in cases where they can't fail, because if they roll a 6, some slain models are returned to the unit.

I can't see why rolling to trigger abilities with autohit weapons would be any different. It's pretty much the same thing.

As far as the 1s missing goes, I'd say the autohit roll overrrides that. You are rolling to see if abilities are triggered, the hit is a foregone conclusion.

 techsoldaten wrote:
It's common to roll for morale on Bloodletters even in cases where they can't fail, because if they roll a 6, some slain models are returned to the unit.

I can't see why rolling to trigger abilities with autohit weapons would be any different. It's pretty much the same thing.

As far as the 1s missing goes, I'd say the autohit roll overrrides that. You are rolling to see if abilities are triggered, the hit is a foregone conclusion.

The thing is, the Morale Phase explicitly states every unit has to take a Morale test, if any model from the unit was slain. You have to take it, even if you can't fail it.
Totally not comparable, because "This weapon hits automatically" isn't defined anywhere, it could mean "skip the Hit roll" (makes the most sense in the context) or "hit rolls can't miss, so you could skip it".

 Hanskrampf wrote:

The thing is, the Morale Phase explicitly states every unit has to take a Morale test, if any model from the unit was slain. You have to take it, even if you can't fail it.

And this is often skipped in gentlemen's games, especially if a unit has an ability that auto-passes morale.

Yes, the BRB states that you take must take morale tests.

It also states that you roll to-hit when you make a shooting attack, and likewise provides no caveats for not doing so. It does not state, "Most of the time," or say, "Usually," or anything of that nature. It does mention that in some cases, you can fast-roll, but otherwise does not provide nor allow alternatives to hit resolution.

I'd probably allow it until they release an faq on it, as I could definitely see a RAW case made for it. In the case of 45 hits you'd add an average of 7.5 hits. Doesn't seem too bad. Now I doubt that this is RAI and RAW on it is unclear as we have no instruction on how to handle it.

If you don't roll to hit you can't get bonus attacks, as you never have a hit roll. Simples.

 Zarroc1733 wrote:
In the case of 45 hits you'd add an average of 7.5 hits. Doesn't seem too bad.

Let's change the stakes, then. Bear in mind that this Ork example is simply one case. I know multiple armies have flame weapons, and I know multiple armies have exploding hits. I can't, off the top of my head, think of any other. Most of the abilities or stratagems I saw referenced extra attacks in the fight phase. One anonymous poster in another thread mentioned creating a custom IG regiment with Scion doctrines, but without Scion doctrine limitations and taking some IG flame weapons, which seems cheaty to me, but also remember that the Tau codex is on the horizon. It's possible that they could receive a similar stratagem or relic ability for ranged attacks. Grumblewartz brought up re-rolls, out of the blue, but it made me think.

Say for a moment that a 3-man triple-flamer crisis team has access to a Dakka Dakka Dakka equivalent and tries to shoot at a target with 5 markerlights. That grants the shooters re-rolling 1s and +1 to hit. Normally both useless for flamers. But that's also 9D6 shots, which I believe averages to 31/32 shots. +1 to hit means that you're generating extra hits on rolls of both 5 and 6, which, on 30 hits is an average of 10 extra shots. And you can re-roll natural 1s to try and score one or two more 6s. The Burna Boyz example above was a maxed out team, and this example is a minimum Crisis team. A maxed out team could take 9 suits or 27 flamers. They may potentially get an additional +1 to-hit from another source.

Do you still feel the same way about it's legality?

This is one of those attempts at rules lawyering for advantage that just falls flat at a very basic level.

Otherwise, I would say that since you auto-hit then you can't roll unless you're willing to accept the results of all of the dice. This is how warmahordes handles the situation.

I think that if you have a +1 your roll of 6 goes to a 7 and so you dont get the extra shot, you would only get it with a 5 (that goes to a 6) then again im not 100% sure.

Regarding the topic there is nowhere that states that hitting automatically skips the hit roll, skipping it is as valid as overwriting the result, so, even though I would not do it (I play orks) I would allow it... if Burnas get d6 shots in the new codex though, I would be very tempted to use this...

The second fail in the OP is that you surely can't decide how many shots you get before you choose who to fire at. You only do that after declaring the unit is shooting and it's target(s). So you can't play a "before shooting" Stratagem if you've begun the shooting sequence.

TL;DR - let this one stay on 4chan, as it doesn't work.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
This is one of those attempts at rules lawyering for advantage that just falls flat at a very basic level.

I think is a legitimate question. Just because it's not how you would do it doesn't make it rules lawyering.

Anyway, I think SinisterSamurai has it right. The rulebook here is mandatory, not permissive:

"Each time a model shoots a ranged weapon, it will make a number of attacks. You roll one dice for each attack being made".

Now let's look at the weapon profile for this kind of stuff: it says "automatically hits" it does NOT say 'do not roll'. So RAW, you roll and regardless of what you roll, it automatically hits. Nowhere are you actually given permission to skip any part of the process.

I feel like we had this discussion back when 8th was first released.

Audustum wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
This is one of those attempts at rules lawyering for advantage that just falls flat at a very basic level.

I think is a legitimate question. Just because it's not how you would do it doesn't make it rules lawyering.

Anyway, I think SinisterSamurai has it right. The rulebook here is mandatory, not permissive:

"Each time a model shoots a ranged weapon, it will make a number of attacks. You roll one dice for each attack being made".

Now let's look at the weapon profile for this kind of stuff: it says "automatically hits" it does NOT say 'do not roll'. So RAW, you roll and regardless of what you roll, it automatically hits. Nowhere are you actually given permission to skip any part of the process.

I feel like we had this discussion back when 8th was first released.

Eh, you do you. To me it's obvious that "this weapon hits automatically" means there is no to hit roll made. You only make a to hit roll to see if a shot is successful. If it's automatically successful you don't roll. Self-evident. No roll, no result, no rules triggered by a result.

Luckily this is one to file under "only a problem on the internet", as I doubt I'll meet anyone who tries to claim this as legitimate IRL.

 JohnnyHell wrote:

Audustum wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
This is one of those attempts at rules lawyering for advantage that just falls flat at a very basic level.

I think is a legitimate question. Just because it's not how you would do it doesn't make it rules lawyering.

Anyway, I think SinisterSamurai has it right. The rulebook here is mandatory, not permissive:

"Each time a model shoots a ranged weapon, it will make a number of attacks. You roll one dice for each attack being made".

Now let's look at the weapon profile for this kind of stuff: it says "automatically hits" it does NOT say 'do not roll'. So RAW, you roll and regardless of what you roll, it automatically hits. Nowhere are you actually given permission to skip any part of the process.

I feel like we had this discussion back when 8th was first released.

Eh, you do you. To me it's obvious that "this weapon hits automatically" means there is no to hit roll made. You only make a to hit roll to see if a shot is successful. If it's automatically successful you don't roll. Self-evident. No roll, no result, no rules triggered by a result.

Luckily this is one to file under "only a problem on the internet", as I doubt I'll meet anyone who tries to claim this as legitimate IRL.

I'd say that technically they're right with RAW but you're right with obvious RAI. It's self evident you don't need to roll, but they don't bother actually saying don't roll. I don't see getting to roll an auto hitting weapon to search for 6's happening for any tournament or even 99% of games. It seems like the type of thing where they would specify that you still roll to see if you get ancillary effects (they used to do that in previous editions for negative effects like Gets Hot but not for any of the positive effects that I recall offhand).

 doctortom wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:

Audustum wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
This is one of those attempts at rules lawyering for advantage that just falls flat at a very basic level.

I think is a legitimate question. Just because it's not how you would do it doesn't make it rules lawyering.

Anyway, I think SinisterSamurai has it right. The rulebook here is mandatory, not permissive:

"Each time a model shoots a ranged weapon, it will make a number of attacks. You roll one dice for each attack being made".

Now let's look at the weapon profile for this kind of stuff: it says "automatically hits" it does NOT say 'do not roll'. So RAW, you roll and regardless of what you roll, it automatically hits. Nowhere are you actually given permission to skip any part of the process.

I feel like we had this discussion back when 8th was first released.

Eh, you do you. To me it's obvious that "this weapon hits automatically" means there is no to hit roll made. You only make a to hit roll to see if a shot is successful. If it's automatically successful you don't roll. Self-evident. No roll, no result, no rules triggered by a result.

Luckily this is one to file under "only a problem on the internet", as I doubt I'll meet anyone who tries to claim this as legitimate IRL.

I'd say that technically they're right with RAW but you're right with obvious RAI. It's self evident you don't need to roll, but they don't bother actually saying don't roll. I don't see getting to roll an auto hitting weapon to search for 6's happening for any tournament or even 99% of games. It seems like the type of thing where they would specify that you still roll to see if you get ancillary effects (they used to do that in previous editions for negative effects like Gets Hot but not for any of the positive effects that I recall offhand).

To be fair, in 7th I somewhat recall them specifying it in a FAQ and not the actual rules. They should probably just reissue that FAQ ruling.

They might have speechified some of the things, but Gets Hot they said (either in the rule itself or in a FAQ on it) that you still roll a die to see if the weapon Gets Hot if it didn't normally require a roll to hit (plasma blasts in 7th come to mind)

 doctortom wrote:
They might have speechified some of the things, but Gets Hot they said (either in the rule itself or in a FAQ on it) that you still roll a die to see if the weapon Gets Hot if it didn't normally require a roll to hit (plasma blasts in 7th come to mind)

I think that's what I'm thinking of and it was a FAQ. If they redid something like that for 8th I think it would largely resolve the issue.

 SinisterSamurai wrote:

 Zarroc1733 wrote:
In the case of 45 hits you'd add an average of 7.5 hits. Doesn't seem too bad.

Let's change the stakes, then. Bear in mind that this Ork example is simply one case. I know multiple armies have flame weapons, and I know multiple armies have exploding hits. I can't, off the top of my head, think of any other. Most of the abilities or stratagems I saw referenced extra attacks in the fight phase. One anonymous poster in another thread mentioned creating a custom IG regiment with Scion doctrines, but without Scion doctrine limitations and taking some IG flame weapons, which seems cheaty to me, but also remember that the Tau codex is on the horizon. It's possible that they could receive a similar stratagem or relic ability for ranged attacks. Grumblewartz brought up re-rolls, out of the blue, but it made me think.

Say for a moment that a 3-man triple-flamer crisis team has access to a Dakka Dakka Dakka equivalent and tries to shoot at a target with 5 markerlights. That grants the shooters re-rolling 1s and +1 to hit. Normally both useless for flamers. But that's also 9D6 shots, which I believe averages to 31/32 shots. +1 to hit means that you're generating extra hits on rolls of both 5 and 6, which, on 30 hits is an average of 10 extra shots. And you can re-roll natural 1s to try and score one or two more 6s. The Burna Boyz example above was a maxed out team, and this example is a minimum Crisis team. A maxed out team could take 9 suits or 27 flamers. They may potentially get an additional +1 to-hit from another source.

Do you still feel the same way about it's legality?

Well to be honest the ridiculousness of a thing doesn't represent its legality, but lets entertain this idea for a second. the average of a d6 is 3.5. 27 flamers would average to 94.5 shots. If we just got extra attacks on 6s then we'd get an extra 15.75 attacks for a total of 110.25 hits. If we factor in a +1 to hit then suddenly we get 31.5 extra hits instead of 15.75. This would bring us to 126 hits. With rerolled 1s, on average you will roll as many 1s as 6s which would be 15.75. The number of those that would be 6s is 2.625 bringing us up to 112.875 or 113 hits without a +1. The number of rerolls that would be 5 or 6 would be 5.25 bringing our +1 scenario to 131.25 or 131 total hits.

Would I allow this in a game? Probably actually. Against T4 you're gonna get 47.25 wounds before extra attacks, 65.5 after (with the +1 and rerolls). With a 3+ save we're looking at 15.75 or 16 unsaved wounds before extra attacks or 21.83 so 22 after. With a 2+ save you're reducing those to 8 before or 11 after.

Against the likes of something t5-t7 you're gonna get on average 31.5 wounds before the extra attacks and 43.67 after. Now lets assume a 3+ save. That''l net you 10.5 or 11 unsaved wounds before extra attacks, 14.56 or 15 after. With a 2+ again we're looking at 5 before, 7 after.

Against t8 you're gonna get 15.75 wounds before 21.83 after. With a 3+ we're looking at 5 unsaved before 7 unsaved after. With a 2+ save we've got 3 unsaved before and 4 unsaved after.

For completion's sake I'll add against T3. You'll get 63 wounds before 87.33 after. With a 3+ save that's 21 unsaved before, 29.11 or 29 unsaved after. 2+ save will net you 10.5 or 11 unsaved before, 14.56 or 15 after.

So it can make a large difference but at those numbers you're already doing a good bit of work except t8 2+ save.

Edit- Sidenote, I love d6s they're so much easier to math out the d20s for ttrpgs

Double edit- fixed t3 3+ math.

Triple edit- Also currently you're paying 621 points for a unit that has 27 wounds and can only do the above and only then within 8 inches. Also for every model killed (3 wounds) they lose quite a bit. Of course this might change with the codex, but right now that's an awful lot of eggs to put in one basket.

I'd say that "hits automatically" fairly plainly tells you that it hits without rolling to hit, as opposed to something like "hits regardless of the result of the roll to hit".

 Mr. Shine wrote:
I'd say that "hits automatically" fairly plainly tells you that it hits without rolling to hit, as opposed to something like "hits regardless of the result of the roll to hit".

So if I had a Plasma gun that hit automatically, I wouldn't need to roll gets hot?
Just to clarify.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:

 Mr. Shine wrote:
I'd say that "hits automatically" fairly plainly tells you that it hits without rolling to hit, as opposed to something like "hits regardless of the result of the roll to hit".

So if I had a Plasma gun that hit automatically, I wouldn't need to roll gets hot?
Just to clarify.

Presumably. If you look at streams of offical GW events in the UK, they aren't rolling for flamers at all. Just declaring the hits and rolling for wounds. At the very least not rolling is RAI if not RAW.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:
So if I had a Plasma gun that hit automatically, I wouldn't need to roll gets hot?
Just to clarify.

Given that both flamer weapons' automatic hitting and plasma weapons' "gets hot" wordings both appear in the "Abilities" column of their weapon profiles, I'd ask you to show me that weapon.

But if you had a stratagem or other rule and were applying it to a model firing its plasma gun, by RAW I'd agree no hit roll was necessary.

 ChargerIIC wrote:

AdmiralHalsey wrote:

 Mr. Shine wrote:
I'd say that "hits automatically" fairly plainly tells you that it hits without rolling to hit, as opposed to something like "hits regardless of the result of the roll to hit".

So if I had a Plasma gun that hit automatically, I wouldn't need to roll gets hot?
Just to clarify.

Presumably. If you look at streams of offical GW events in the UK, they aren't rolling for flamers at all. Just declaring the hits and rolling for wounds. At the very least not rolling is RAI if not RAW.

That in itself is zero evidence. There's no point making the roll if it's going to have zero effect on gameplay. However, if you apply a stratagem which means a roll might have an effect on gameplay, it would make sense.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:

 ChargerIIC wrote:

AdmiralHalsey wrote:

 Mr. Shine wrote:
I'd say that "hits automatically" fairly plainly tells you that it hits without rolling to hit, as opposed to something like "hits regardless of the result of the roll to hit".

So if I had a Plasma gun that hit automatically, I wouldn't need to roll gets hot?
Just to clarify.

Presumably. If you look at streams of offical GW events in the UK, they aren't rolling for flamers at all. Just declaring the hits and rolling for wounds. At the very least not rolling is RAI if not RAW.

That in itself is zero evidence. There's no point making the roll if it's going to have zero effect on gameplay. However, if you apply a stratagem which means a roll might have an effect on gameplay, it would make sense.

This. You often see them skip rolling for morale on a unit that can't fail, but that doesn't mean that's RAI or RAW.

This seems like it works. Neat find!

Saying that something is obvious or that RAI is not how it works doesnt mean anything, this are rules, and they dont care whether they make sense or not, or if they are obvious or not or whatever, and you cant apply "common sense" to them either, rules are rules and only counts RAW.
Having said that, the only point that could be made against this is that "automatically" means that you dont roll because if not it would say "they hit regardless of the result" instead, but even then you cant be sure about that.
So thats why this is simple, a rule says that you have to roll, and the other doesnt state anywhere that you dont have to roll, so RAW and so how it works as long as a faq is not released is that you can use the stratagem to get more hits.

This sounds like a "general vs specific" issue.
General rule is roll to hit.
Specific rule is Flamers always hit.

As I recall, GW has a long standing metric of Specific overrides General in the rules.

 helgrenze wrote:
This sounds like a "general vs specific" issue.
General rule is roll to hit.
Specific rule is Flamers always hit.

As I recall, GW has a long standing metric of Specific overrides General in the rules.

There's no overriding, though. Auto-hit never says do not roll.

 helgrenze wrote:
This sounds like a "general vs specific" issue.
General rule is roll to hit.
Specific rule is Flamers always hit.

As I recall, GW has a long standing metric of Specific overrides General in the rules.

Yeah, and probably if they faq this then it wont be valid anymore, but the problem is that as long as they dont do it we are stuck with the current rulebook and the current faqs, and with this set of rules, they allow (more than allow, they make you) roll even if the weapon hits automatically