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Simple question, its probably stated somewhere but I have not seen it

Consider the humble Predator tank as an example, configured with the turret laser cannon and sponson laser cannons

the profile notes it can have "Sponson mounted heavy bolters or Sponson mounted lascannon", fair enough, choice of two weapons

now look at the profiles, this notes the turret weapon gets one dice, with various traits, there are then two lines:

"sponson mounted heavy bolter", with two dice
"sponson mounted lascannon" with one dice

Q: does the tank have two of either Sponson weapon for four dice with a heavy bolter loadout, or two with lascannon, or does that profile cover both sponsons?

note the plural in the loadout and the singular on the weapons stats?

had a game today with the "well there are clearly two of them" option here, not sure which is correct though, it doesn't say they have "two" sponson lascannons, but the mixed use of singular and plural confuses the issue

its probably in there somewhere but not seen it.

thoughts?

This was asked a while ago at Reddit, and I believe the consensus was that sponsons are just a single entry, not two

 tauist wrote:
This was asked a while ago at Reddit, and I believe the consensus was that sponsons are just a single entry, not two

can read it and play either way, nice to know though as that scales the lethality down a bit, its the sort of thing that could do with being clearer though, now to convince an opponent of this

Internet concensus is that the weapon stats row is for the set of sponsons. So 2 HB shots from the sponsons in total.

Needs FAQ as it can be interpreted differently.

 westiebestie wrote:
Internet concensus is that the weapon stats row is for the set of sponsons. So 2 HB shots from the sponsons in total.

Needs FAQ as it can be interpreted differently.

I hope it gets one, and I hope thats what it says

and very happy to play it that way until they say otherwise

many thanks.

You only get one of them. If you look at the entry in the weapon chart it is actually for "sponson mounted heavy bolters" (plural) which corresponds to the option of being equipped with "sponson mounted heavy bolters" in the weapon options.

Likewise there is an entry in the chart for "sponson mounted lascannon" that corresponds to the option for "sponson mounted lascannon".

I agree it is inconsistent that they wrote one option in the plural and the other singular, but since the lines on the weapons chart match the weapons options there is no ambiguity.

 Unknown_Lifeform wrote:
You only get one of them. If you look at the entry in the weapon chart it is actually for "sponson mounted heavy bolters" (plural) which corresponds to the option of being equipped with "sponson mounted heavy bolters" in the weapon options.

Likewise there is an entry in the chart for "sponson mounted lascannon" that corresponds to the option for "sponson mounted lascannon".

I agree it is inconsistent that they wrote one option in the plural and the other singular, but since the lines on the weapons chart match the weapons options there is no ambiguity.

I’m agreement with this.

the ambiguity is really from the weapon name being singular for a vehicle that quite obviously has them in pairs

more than happy for the things to be the lower firepower interpretation, would just be useful for it to be a bit clearer

you also then have the sicaran, where the loadout line is plural and the weapon stat is singular for heavy bolters, ditto the Kratos - the hull mounted weapons being specifically noted as "two x" but the sponson again being described as a plural and the stat line being the singular

its a really easy one for them to FAQ with a note that sponson weapons lines represent the pair unless specifically noted otherwise

There's nothing unclear about it, you get precisely the listed weapons in listed numbers and nothing else. Sponsons being treated as one is one of the more sensible choices they've made in statlines this time around

Also for funsies, as English is a silly language, the plural of cannon is also cannon

Valid question remains valid all the same.

Sponsons are definitely just a single profile though.

Read what rule says.

Apply literally. Don't add i think's, don't look at model. Just apply rule as written literally.

If people would do this 99.99% rule questions in forums would vanish

Datasheet doesn"t say multiples so 1 time weapon profile.


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Read what rule says.

Apply literally. Don't add i think's, don't look at model. Just apply rule as written literally.

If people would do this 99.99% rule questions in forums would vanish

Datasheet doesn"t say multiples so 1 time weapon profile.

To be fair, this is a very new rule set, and it’s gonna take time for us to familiarise.

Whilst the answer is indeed obvious when you think about it? It’s still a valid request for clarification.

will see where GW goes with it, hopefully ends up clearer, or just future profiles are written a bit more clearly

keeping in mind GW has a varied history of how "this thing has two of the same gun!" gets handled over the years

from its two guns, to its one that re-rolls, to its one in two parts and back again

would have been seriously easy to have it as "pair of x sponsons" as the line

I suspect its something that simply didn't get picked up as those proof reading & testing already knew how to play, and it wouldn't be the first time a game, GW or otherwise, has suffered from such

the trouble with applying rules literally as written is that this can also often lead to issues in the other direction, the English language can be quite open to interpretation unless you go into a very dry technical way of writing, and GWs style is not that tight

when you have a line that says a vehicle has a plural of something, then the information about that item is the singular, and the model obviously has two there are several ways to read that

I mean so long as both players agree its not that important, I asked as it came up in a game earlier, against someone who is a professional author who has also worked to proof read a few games (not for GW), he thought "singular, vehicle has two, so its twice that, one for each system" and thats what we (both) went with.

it should at least be simple to clear up, sadly GW has a habit of leaving such things ambiguous

leopard wrote:
the ambiguity is really from the weapon name being singular for a vehicle that quite obviously has them in pairs

more than happy for the things to be the lower firepower interpretation, would just be useful for it to be a bit clearer

you also then have the sicaran, where the loadout line is plural and the weapon stat is singular for heavy bolters, ditto the Kratos - the hull mounted weapons being specifically noted as "two x" but the sponson again being described as a plural and the stat line being the singular

its a really easy one for them to FAQ with a note that sponson weapons lines represent the pair unless specifically noted otherwise

The actual rules aren't ambiguous in any way. You just need to match <weapon name keyword> with <weapon name keyword> in the weapons chart. Only if it says you have more than one of them, e.g. two <weapon name keyword> do you get multiples of the same profile.

Sicarans have a <hull mounted heavy bolter> and the options of equipping <sponson mounted heavy bolters>, both have stat lines in the weapons chart. The kratos has two <hull mounted heavy bolters> and the option of equipping <sponson mounted heavy bolters>, again both have exact matching entries in the weapon chart and you do get to double up the hull mounted profile, but not the sponsons.

It is a bit unintuitive that sponson mounted weapons have the same stat lines as hull mounted weapons even though sponson mounted weapons are represented by 2 weapons on the model compared with 1 for hull mounted weapons. It also doesn't help that sponson mounted lascannon is for some reason always singular rather than plural as for heavy bolters. I agree that always applying rules strictly as written can sometimes lead to clearly unintended results and that it is always best to apply a "common sense test" to the end result. However, in this case I would say the rules as literally written are unambiguous, they lead to a result that doesn't break the game and, at least by my judgement, whilst the way sponson mounted weapons is handled is a little unintuitive it doesn't trigger my threshold for "this is clearly not intended", so I'd just go with the rules as written until such a time as GW ever decide to clarify they actually meant something different.

As a personal opinion I think the hull mounted weapons have way too much damage output, but they probably didn't want to confuse people by having different statlines based on how many weapons each statline is representing.

well yes, having one hull mount heavy bolter have two dice, then the sponson mount heavy bolters, with twice the number of weapons and considerably better firing arcs have exactly the same number of dice isn't that helpful

and agree the hull one is probably the bit that needs changing, however you then hit "ah but if that can be anything else it will always be something else"

only really asked as it came up in a game earlier today and was curious how people handled it

came up specifically with the predator, where the line is "Sponson mounted heavy bolters" (plural) - which is correct, it has two of themand yet the weapon line is in the singular

the question being "so, does it have two of them?"

should have been caught by proof reading

and then as noted other vehicles say "two x" so you do double up, when they should really have followed the same thing and just had more dice

basically "pick one way of doing this, then stick with it"

just one of them things I guess

Gotcha. There's no ambiguity, everything follows logic. Unintuitive perhaps, but still logical

Sponsons are a singular entry always. Any sponson weapon name ending with "cannon" is also a plural in this context, because English language is weird

In the case of Kratos, the clue "Two" in the weapons list means the weapons in this hardpoint are added twice, unlike the sponsons. Again, the words ending with "cannon" denote plural, so grammatically, things still check out

 Unknown_Lifeform wrote:
As a personal opinion I think the hull mounted weapons have way too much damage output, but they probably didn't want to confuse people by having different statlines based on how many weapons each statline is representing.

Except that's what they did for the Baneblade, where the lascannon turrets have 2 shots on a single profile.

 tauist wrote:
Gotcha. There's no ambiguity, everything follows logic. Unintuitive perhaps, but still logical

Sponsons are a singular entry always. Any sponson weapon name ending with "cannon" is also a plural in this context, because English language is weird

In the case of Kratos, the clue "Two" in the weapons list means the weapons in this hardpoint are added twice, unlike the sponsons. Again, the words ending with "cannon" denote plural, so grammatically, things still check out

note that while "cannon" can be plural, "cannons" is also a not uncommon way of phrasing the plural, they key bit when writing is avoiding needless ambiguity, a document should be written to inform the reader, not to try and show how clever the author is (I'm sooooo happy GW do not employ the author of the DBA version 2 rulebook for example). When something is both unintuitive and even worse inconsistent given other vehicles have the plural in the weapons tables while some have the singular when both referring to a pair of weapons the inconsistency is a needless complication.

suggests whoever "proof read" this was either doing a basic grammar check so wouldn't find it, or knew how the rules played so was basically blind to it

it happens, hopefully its sorted out pretty quickly.

mean time more than happy to run with the profile being both weapons if it means some stuff lives a little longer, whole point of asking was that its wasn't clear upon reading and two of us read it in two different ways


and yes the English language is weird, very, very weird

The whole rulebook uses "cannon" in plural, though, from weapon stats to things like Imperial Fists legion rule listing what weapons they get benefits with. It is very consistent through the whole text that this is the way they spell it.

Imagine how many issues would have been avoided if the presumably British authors realized most countries say plural Cannons rather than the Queens English plural Cannon..

leopard wrote:
will see where GW goes with it, hopefully ends up clearer, or just future profiles are written a bit more clearly

keeping in mind GW has a varied history of how "this thing has two of the same gun!" gets handled over the years

And that's the "i think" part.

Don't look models, don't think other games. Look at datasheet and apply literally. It has section weapons. As per page 45 that tells you what and how many you have.

If you apply rules literally that section tells you how many times apply each weapon stat. As per page 45.

It's part of section "core concept" so one could hope players read and not say go with what youtube video said but seeing how many ask when is be'lakor's ability chosen when rule clearly states it I have gone to conclusion majority won't read rules and just base youtube battle reports as rule source...

 Sherrypie wrote:
The whole rulebook uses "cannon" in plural, though, from weapon stats to things like Imperial Fists legion rule listing what weapons they get benefits with. It is very consistent through the whole text that this is the way they spell it.

and yet it also mixes the plural and singular of weapons on datasheets, and weirdly even thought I was born here and raised here speaking the language, I use "cannons" as a plural because its unambiguously a plural

and yes "I think", given most of the rules require you to in order to use them this seems a not unreasonable assumption, as noted two of us read this, read it differently, we played it one way for the game and I thought I'd ask a question here after

then you also have concepts such as a single gun in a turret rolling a single dice, and then, apparently, a pair of the exact same gun, on different mounts able to point physically in different directions also represented by a single dice when the exact same model in other GW games in other scales handles it differently

all of which leads to it not being an unreasonable question to ask when the profile on the card is in the singular, and note how you pluralise "cannon" is irrelevant when they have done the exact same thing with "heavy bolter sponsons" (plural) being carried and yet a profile for "heavy bolter sponson" (singular)

 Unknown_Lifeform wrote:
You only get one of them. If you look at the entry in the weapon chart it is actually for "sponson mounted heavy bolters" (plural) which corresponds to the option of being equipped with "sponson mounted heavy bolters" in the weapon options.

Likewise there is an entry in the chart for "sponson mounted lascannon" that corresponds to the option for "sponson mounted lascannon".

I agree it is inconsistent that they wrote one option in the plural and the other singular, but since the lines on the weapons chart match the weapons options there is no ambiguity.

The plural of cannon is “cannon” - this is on the English language more than GW.

leopard wrote:

all of which leads to it not being an unreasonable question to ask when the profile on the card is in the singular, and note how you pluralise "cannon" is irrelevant when they have done the exact same thing with "heavy bolter sponsons" (plural) being carried and yet a profile for "heavy bolter sponson" (singular)

Where is this the case? Page number and publication, please? It’s not in the Predator entry in the physical rulebook.

I too, tried to find some piece of text which incorrectly refers "Spinson mounted Heavy Bolter" instead of "Spinson mounted Heavy Bolters".. couldn't find one, at least from the Astartes army lists

probably on a reference card I've seen

it came up in the game though as to how a single heavy bolter had one dice, where as a pair of them had one dice


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Went away and checked, yes its a reference card, the online army builder, that has the singular/plural mixed up. not the rule book

however it still came down to "but this has two of them right?" in game.

its easy enough to clear up and I hope at some point its a one liner to note that yes, that applies to the pair of weapons as a single system

The army builder, which is a fan project that GW has nothing to do with.

 Sherrypie wrote:
The army builder, which is a fan project that GW has nothing to do with.

yes, the one thats a far easier way to build an army than what GW have, and the one they could do with buying, reskinning, validating and publishing officially

that one

leopard wrote:
probably on a reference card I've seen

it came up in the game though as to how a single heavy bolter had one dice, where as a pair of them had one dice


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Went away and checked, yes its a reference card, the online army builder, that has the singular/plural mixed up. not the rule book

however it still came down to "but this has two of them right?" in game.

its easy enough to clear up and I hope at some point its a one liner to note that yes, that applies to the pair of weapons as a single system

Ah yes. Bad gw for making things unclear when 3rd party types it's own typoes. Obviously gw is responsible for what others write

I write my own version of LI and gw is responsible for all the differences to official ones...yea right.

Don't trust army builders. Official sources are official rulebooks combined with errata. If army builder data looks even slightly off check OFFICIAL rules.

If you can't create army lists and know official rules you arent qualified to use army builder tools. This shows exactly why nobody who doesnt know official rules and can't if needed write legal list by hand shouldn't be allowed to get anywhere near army builders.

leopard wrote:

 Sherrypie wrote:
The army builder, which is a fan project that GW has nothing to do with.

yes, the one thats a far easier way to build an army than what GW have, and the one they could do with buying, reskinning, validating and publishing officially

that one

The one that is so useful in fact, that surely it cannot be allowed to survive.

It looks like it has most of the functionality stripped out of it at the moment, hopefully they are just working on an upgrade and it is not in the process of being murdered :(

tneva82 wrote:

leopard wrote:
probably on a reference card I've seen

it came up in the game though as to how a single heavy bolter had one dice, where as a pair of them had one dice


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Went away and checked, yes its a reference card, the online army builder, that has the singular/plural mixed up. not the rule book

however it still came down to "but this has two of them right?" in game.

its easy enough to clear up and I hope at some point its a one liner to note that yes, that applies to the pair of weapons as a single system

Ah yes. Bad gw for making things unclear when 3rd party types it's own typoes. Obviously gw is responsible for what others write

I write my own version of LI and gw is responsible for all the differences to official ones...yea right.

Don't trust army builders. Official sources are official rulebooks combined with errata. If army builder data looks even slightly off check OFFICIAL rules.

If you can't create army lists and know official rules you arent qualified to use army builder tools. This shows exactly why nobody who doesnt know official rules and can't if needed write legal list by hand shouldn't be allowed to get anywhere near army builders.

The initial issue, which occurred with just the rulebook and GW models was remarkably simple

essentially thus "this thing has sponsons, thats a pair, like two right? so that weapons line twice? I mean that has a single heavy bolter so its got to be twice that right?"

simple as that, and apparently we were not the only ones to wonder given there are other discussion threads about it, the army builder wasn't something I had used at that point, just the newly unwrapped book

so yeah, that