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Alrighty, a situation came up at my last club regarding the rules for shooting at independant characters. Let me explain the situation, and then I would love to get everyones thoughts.

We were playing a 1500pt game, me with Sisters of Battle, my opponent with Orks. On one part of the table he had a unit of grots advancing towards me. Behind the grots were a unit of orks joined by the warboss. also advancing, but behind their green meat shield.

In my turn i moved my unit forward 6", the unit being a sisters squad with storm bolters and bolters. I declared my target was the ork squad, not the grots in front, and as I believed the unit was within 12" I also declared I intended to rapid fire.

First I made the leadership test to let me fire at the orks and passed. Next I measured. As it turns out the orks were further away than I thought. Only a single model was withing the 12" range, and it was the warboss. We read the rules very carefully, in the IC section it says you can't single him out. However the shooting section talks about how only models in range can be choosen as casualties etc etc.

We talked it back and forwards for awhile, and agreed that it made more sense that as he's foolishly standing in the front the hordes of bolter fire takes him square in the chest and he got gunned down.

What is the correct call though? can you pick out a IC if he's all thats in range?

 

You didn't single him out.

You simply shot at the squad, yet only Warboss was in the killzone. You were not actually targeting the boss himself, you were targeting the squad, so no harm no foul.

As you put it, he was 'foolishly standing in the front'. Silly Warboss.


Another point. IIRC, you do not declare rapid fire, the effect simply happens. Models 12" from the squad will rapid fire, while models >12" will fire once at 24".

Which actually brings up the question of how this happened? Was the warboss really that far in front of the rest of the unit that all the marines were within 12" of the warboss but no other models?

Hehehe...I can see where this will go.

This is where we start debating again whether or not Rapid Fire weapons that are rapid firing have a Range of 12" or 24". I remember that debate being kind of entertaining....

Sal.

OK how it happend:

It was my turn and I had a choice to make, it was obvious that the orks were within 24" of my sisters (I guessed that they were about 17" away actually). The choice was, if I stay here the whole unit can fire one shot each at the squad. I thought that if I made the choice to move first I had estimated the distance would be just inside the 12" and they can shoot twice.

So up and at them, the sisters stormed forward their full movement and braced themselves for a solid round of firing.
Out came the tape measure, and we laid it down. it was 12" from the front rank of my squad the the front of his ork squad. At the front of his Ork squad was the warboss plus a few small orks, but the orks were out of line of sight behind a building corner. Other orks were in line of sight but were back 1 or 2" and out of the 12" range. Because I moved I couldnt shoot the further ones. It was just a combination of events that meant his warboss went down.
Stupid Orks!

Psyche:

A) If you play that the intent of the rules is for the "range" of a raid-fire weapon that moves to be 12" (or you follow the unofficial sticky posts on the GW forum), then you played the situation perfectly.

B) If you play the situation RAW, then the range of the bolters remains 24", but models can only fire at a target unit within 12". If you play this way, then any Ork in the target unit within 24" would be a valid casualty.


Since every person I've ever played against has chosen to play with option 'A' (against RAW), in general I'd say you played the game correctly.

It was your opponents fault for positioning the Warboss the way he did. You didn't pick him out like the others have already said, you fired at the unit. The casualtie rules dicated that only he could be removed.

I figured I didn't do anything wrong, I was really looking for confirmation though just to be sure.
I felt pretty bad about doing it, but at the same time I wasn't going to give up the opportunity to get rid of the damn warboss before he got me in CC.