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There are only 2 ways you can resolve anything given to you as "hits": following page 12, by wounds rolls, allocation & casualties

or P20 second part3 (more specifically following pages 22-26)

There is no other permissive set of rules allowing you to remove models (starting from hits or wounds etc)

Right. But why must something that uses some of the shooting rules be a shooting attack?

Are close combat attacks shooting attacks?
They share some rules.

 grendel083 wrote:
Right. But why must something that uses some of the shooting rules be a shooting attack?

Are close combat attacks shooting attacks?
They share some rules.

I'm not saying CC are shooting or shooting is CC. But anything that generates hits or wounds will be one or the other. There is no "unknown type".

 BlackTalos wrote:

 grendel083 wrote:
Right. But why must something that uses some of the shooting rules be a shooting attack?

Are close combat attacks shooting attacks?
They share some rules.

I'm not saying CC are shooting or shooting is CC. But anything that generates hits or wounds will be one or the other. There is no "unknown type".

But there are many examples of attacks that are neither.

Why must they be only shooting or CC ?

there are other ways of removing models: p80 - then any models that cannot disembark are removed as casualties.

But anything along the line of "causing hits" at Sx AP- will be a shooting or CC attack. Vector strike, mandiblasters, soul blaze, etc etc.
Probably Death Rolla too, but i'll need to find those rules.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 grendel083 wrote:

 BlackTalos wrote:

 grendel083 wrote:
Right. But why must something that uses some of the shooting rules be a shooting attack?

Are close combat attacks shooting attacks?
They share some rules.

I'm not saying CC are shooting or shooting is CC. But anything that generates hits or wounds will be one or the other. There is no "unknown type".

But there are many examples of attacks that are neither.

Why must they be only shooting or CC ?

List the "are not" ones (with rules support if they are not BrB) and all will need to resolve via page 12 or 20. Or fully self contained with casualty removals.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The only troublesome one i could think of was JotWW, but then FAQ says:

"A: As a psychic shooting attack, Jaws of the World Wolfrequires
line of sight"

Shooting attack

I'm not arguing that an ability will use part of the shooting rules, for example.

But just because it uses part of the shooting rules, why must it be a shooting attack?

 grendel083 wrote:
I'm not arguing that an ability will use part of the shooting rules, for example.

But just because it uses part of the shooting rules, why must it be a shooting attack?

Because it cannot be a CC attack and it's one or the other. In the examples above, Mandiblasters are CC, even tough "they are not CC" and Vector strike is shooting.

Or another way of putting it: they are not using part of the shooting rules, but "ignoring" part of the shooting rules (like LoS, Rolls to hit). This still means they are contained within one or the other (and apply the full rule set)

In essence, it's the underlying reason of why cover saves can be taken, instant death (p16), LoS, etc will apply.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As this started with the statement

 BlackTalos wrote:

 PrinceRaven wrote:
Vector Strikes are neither shooting or close combat attacks, they are Vector Strikes.
Also they happen in the movement phase.

Just need to point out this is wrong, everything is Shooting or CC, there is 0 support for "Other wound resolutions"

If the Vector Strike is NOT CC and NOT Shooting attack, then why do you even get a cover save?
Why can you Look-out Sir?
Why can it Instant death?

 BlackTalos wrote:
and it's one or the other.

This is what I'd like you to back up.
Why is it one or the other? Why are these the only two types of attack possible?

If the Vector Strike is NOT CC and NOT Shooting attack, then why do you even get a cover save?

The rules for Vector strike state it ignores cover FYI.

 BlackTalos wrote:

Just need to point out this is wrong, everything is Shooting or CC, there is 0 support for "Other wound resolutions"

While you are 100% correct (and I have argued this point for years)…GW has, for every edition of its rules for 40K only written casualty removal rules for shooting and CC attacks and then has proceeded to *continually* stuck types of attacks and/or damage that clearly aren't meant to work within the confines of these casualty removal rules.

Vector Strikes, DE Reaver Bladevane attacks, the new D-weapon and Stomp rules, attacks that just 'hit' or 'wound' every model in base contact with another model. The list literally goes on and on and on.

You can try to make guesses and figure out how some of these things should work purely using the shooting or CC combat resolution rules, but it seems pretty clear that GW at times believes that their rules infer that if a model takes a hit, you can roll to see if that model is wounded and if that model is wounded then it takes a save and if it fails that save it takes an unsaved wound…even though those 'basic' rules don't actually exist.

So you can't argue that a Vector Strike is a shooting or combat attack, because there is no actual information backing that up. By RAW it is an attack that cannot be resolved because it isn't CC or shooting, and yet we all understand that cannot be the case.

 BlackTalos wrote:

 PrinceRaven wrote:
Vector Strikes are neither shooting or close combat attacks, they are Vector Strikes.
Also they happen in the movement phase.

Just need to point out this is wrong, everything is Shooting or CC, there is 0 support for "Other wound resolutions"

Vector Strike, Perils of the Warp, Terror from the Deep, Nids eating themselves when they fail IB, the old Doom of Malan'tai's special rule etc.

There are plenty of examples of things that cause hits and wounds, without being either shooting or CC.

Baktru wrote:

 BlackTalos wrote:

 PrinceRaven wrote:
Vector Strikes are neither shooting or close combat attacks, they are Vector Strikes.
Also they happen in the movement phase.

Just need to point out this is wrong, everything is Shooting or CC, there is 0 support for "Other wound resolutions"

Vector Strike, Perils of the Warp, Terror from the Deep, Nids eating themselves when they fail IB, the old Doom of Malan'tai's special rule etc.

There are plenty of examples of things that cause hits and wounds, without being either shooting or CC.

Gets Hot, Dangerous Terrain, certain Maledictions...

 Happyjew wrote:
Not sure on bombs, but VS uses random allocation.

Where does it state that vector strikes use random allocation?

I see the reference in sweep attack but not in vector strike.

Page 43 – Special Rules, Vector Strike.
Change the second paragraph to read “When Swooping, this
model may savage its prey. At the end of the Movement Phase,
nominate one unengaged enemy unit the model has moved
over that turn. This unit may even be an enemy Flyer. That unit
takes D3+1 hits, resolved at the model’s unmodified Strength
and AP3, using Random Allocation. Against vehicles, these hits
are resolved against the target’s side armour. No cover saves are
allowed against these hits.”

 grendel083 wrote:

 BlackTalos wrote:
and it's one or the other.

This is what I'd like you to back up.
Why is it one or the other? Why are these the only two types of attack possible?

If the Vector Strike is NOT CC and NOT Shooting attack, then why do you even get a cover save?

The rules for Vector strike state it ignores cover FYI.

Indeed, VS has been FAQed probably for this very reason...

As for the back-up: It's simple permissible ruleset - When are you allowed to work through wounding & casualties but in those 2 types of attack?

 yakface wrote:

 BlackTalos wrote:

Just need to point out this is wrong, everything is Shooting or CC, there is 0 support for "Other wound resolutions"

While you are 100% correct (and I have argued this point for years)…GW has, for every edition of its rules for 40K only written casualty removal rules for shooting and CC attacks and then has proceeded to *continually* stuck types of attacks and/or damage that clearly aren't meant to work within the confines of these casualty removal rules.

Vector Strikes, DE Reaver Bladevane attacks, the new D-weapon and Stomp rules, attacks that just 'hit' or 'wound' every model in base contact with another model. The list literally goes on and on and on.

You can try to make guesses and figure out how some of these things should work purely using the shooting or CC combat resolution rules, but it seems pretty clear that GW at times believes that their rules infer that if a model takes a hit, you can roll to see if that model is wounded and if that model is wounded then it takes a save and if it fails that save it takes an unsaved wound…even though those 'basic' rules don't actually exist.

So you can't argue that a Vector Strike is a shooting or combat attack, because there is no actual information backing that up. By RAW it is an attack that cannot be resolved because it isn't CC or shooting, and yet we all understand that cannot be the case.

Why may all of those attacks not be resolved as shooting? (Unless they interact with CC?)
Most of them are self-contained - IE by the usual wording "immediately suffers a wound" which disallows LoS and "no cover saves" for the cover part.

Vector Strike, Perils of the Warp, Terror from the Deep, Gets Hot, Dangerous Terrain
All of these either state "no cover saves" or "takes a wound" (without usual allocation). I have yet to find any that would inherently "break" them as a shooting attack?

I understand the reluctance to see Perils, Soul blaze, Gets Hot or Demonic instability as shooting attacks (as do I) but unfortunately as you have said Yakface, the RaW do not allow any other method of treating the situation (apart for CC in certain cases - Hallucination 5-6 HappyJew?)

 BlackTalos wrote:

Why may all of those attacks not be resolved as shooting? (Unless they interact with CC?)
Most of them are self-contained - IE by the usual wording "immediately suffers a wound" which disallows LoS and "no cover saves" for the cover part.

Vector Strike, Perils of the Warp, Terror from the Deep, Gets Hot, Dangerous Terrain
All of these either state "no cover saves" or "takes a wound" (without usual allocation). I have yet to find any that would inherently "break" them as a shooting attack?

I understand the reluctance to see Perils, Soul blaze, Gets Hot or Demonic instability as shooting attacks (as do I) but unfortunately as you have said Yakface, the RaW do not allow any other method of treating the situation (apart for CC in certain cases - Hallucination 5-6 HappyJew?)

You seem to be playing the devil's advocate just for the sake of it. To say: 'why can't you just assume certain attacks are shooting or CC attacks?' Is ridiculous. Sure we can guess and say that some of these attacks should be resolved as shooting attacks or as combat attacks, but in all these cases nobody has any real idea because those attacks do not specify whether they are shooting or combat attacks and in many cases don't follow the process presented for either of those two types of damage resolution.

So any guess we make would be pure speculation and any leaps in logic we make to figure out a way resolve those attacks using either the shooting or combat resolution rules would not necessarily be same way another player would interpret that and so we'd be back stuck in an unplayable situation.

As I pointed out, this is not something new. GW have done this since the dawn of 3rd edition 40K (when they switched damage over from hitting individual models in the unit to a squad based damage resolution). They have continued to publish rules that contain attacks that cannot be resolved strictly by the RAW given that they do not follow the rules for the damage resolution laid out in either shooting or CC.


So at best you can say that: 'all attacks should be either shooting or close combat attacks, because those are the only two types of attacks recognized in the main rulebook'.

But in reality, that is an unplayable position because we do have attacks in the game that cannot be clearly identified as being shooting or close combat attacks.

Therefore, even if you want to stick to the high-ground of saying there are only shooting and CC attacks in existence, then you're left being unable to reconcile the inconsistencies in these strange attacks that do not follow the described path for damage resolution in either the shooting or CC section.

 yakface wrote:
So at best you can say that: 'all attacks should be either shooting or close combat attacks, because those are the only two types of attacks recognized in the main rulebook'.

But in reality, that is an unplayable position because we do have attacks in the game that cannot be clearly identified as being shooting or close combat attacks.

Therefore, even if you want to stick to the high-ground of saying there are only shooting and CC attacks in existence, then you're left being unable to reconcile the inconsistencies in these strange attacks that do not follow the described path for damage resolution in either the shooting or CC section.

Sorry if this did not help the topic further, but there is a reason behind pushing the issue:
Have a base (this is basic rules after all) to stand on in case of further arguments (as this stemmed in fact from the MSS thread) are required.
If we cannot agree on the very basics of Hit, Wounds, and Casualty allocations, then how would we even expect to decipher more complex rulesets?

I am trying to understand why having only one (potentially 2 - p25 explains Wounds as "just like in the Shooting Phase" ) system of working through the game does not mean "all of the game" is treated as such (a Shooting attack) and then how this generates "broken" resolutions?

In a sense: i fully agree RaI that some forms of damage and removal will not be shooting or CC (eg feeling through enemy models) but in terms of RaW, there is only ever 1 (or 2) paths we can follow when playing the Game of 40k.
Which would mean that in discussions pertaining to RaW only two methods of resolving hits>Wounds>Casualties can be followed. Even though the the "unclear" attacks seem out of place in either category, they have to follow one of the two systems or indeed class as "unresolvable".

 BlackTalos wrote:

Sorry if this did not help the topic further, but there is a reason behind pushing the issue:
Have a base (this is basic rules after all) to stand on in case of further arguments (as this stemmed in fact from the MSS thread) are required.
If we cannot agree on the very basics of Hit, Wounds, and Casualty allocations, then how would we even expect to decipher more complex rulesets?

I am trying to understand why having only one (potentially 2 - p25 explains Wounds as "just like in the Shooting Phase" ) system of working through the game does not mean "all of the game" is treated as such (a Shooting attack) and then how this generates "broken" resolutions?

In a sense: i fully agree RaI that some forms of damage and removal will not be shooting or CC (eg feeling through enemy models) but in terms of RaW, there is only ever 1 (or 2) paths we can follow when playing the Game of 40k.
Which would mean that in discussions pertaining to RaW only two methods of resolving hits>Wounds>Casualties can be followed. Even though the the "unclear" attacks seem out of place in either category, they have to follow one of the two systems or indeed class as "unresolvable".

But you can't have 'unresolvable' as a thing, because you have to resolve any attack that exists in the game or else the game just stops...you don't get to just say: 'well we have no idea how to resolve these attacks so I guess we'll just go home'.

Again, the problem stems from the fact that GW, for years, clearly believes that it is possible for specific models to have hits or wounds directly inflicted on them, and then those hits/wounds get resolved against that specific model.

For example, D-Weapons inflict wounds directly onto 'models'...something that isn't specifically allowed in the rules for resolving shooting attacks (shooting wounds are inflicted on a unit, not models, and *then* applied onto specific models following a detailed procedure).

So even though we know D-weapons are a shooting attack, we are still left with many questions about how to resolve them that nobody except the authors can answer.

Similarly, attacks that aren't even classified as being shooting or close combat that directly inflict wounds onto MODELS (not onto units), we face the same exact problem, but in those cases we can't even hope to know which of the two resolutions we should even use, even if we could figure out how to resolve wounds inflicted directly onto models.


There is another option, however, and that is, if you look at the way GW writes their rulebook for 40K, you will notice that they generally put certain rules in the sections where they are typically used...but then, they use those rules in all kinds of different situations outside of where they are placed. In many cases they simply expect that players will be able to figure out that when a vehicle has an invulnerable save, for example, how to resolve it.

Is it bad rules writing? I'd say so, but you often end up cutting corners to fit all your text into a book and being able to explain that there are times when attacks will hit or wound models outside of shooting or combat is likely one of those casualties, as they've done it edition after edition after edition.


Now, I'm not saying that this is the *clear* way to play (that non-specified attack types which directly hit/wound models are always resolved only against that model), but it damn well seems like it is the way the authors think the game is played. So the best we can do here in an online forum is to accept that there ARE attacks which are not classified as being shooting or close combat attacks (because there are).

How we resolve those attacks is up for debate (and can only really be settled by the individual players at the table), but their existence is not.

Well in the end, that's where i would disagree: I am quite happy to interpret any form of "damage" as a shooting attack, unless it then classes as a CC attack.

In your example for D weapons and all allocations to particular models (Gets hot too etc...), in my opinion that just means you have skipped steps 1-4, you are in step 5 with an allocation pre-determined.
IE you would start the process from p15: Take saves & Remove casualties - The model gets to make(...)
And the model would follow pages 16 to 19, ignoring anything then forbidden (Any saves for D, etc)

This still implies that you are following the rules for shooting, even if, as such, the attack is "not shooting". For all intents and purposes, it still classes as a shooting attack and gives and explanation to why things like Soul Blaze and VS include a "No cover saves" part within their ruling.

As for the Vehicle's invulnerable saves, indeed it was broken in RaW, until the FAQ:


This leads even further to think that most of the "do as if" reasoning is being stamped out as much as possible and therefore i would personally be reluctant to use it as an argument when discussing RaW (in it's purest form - in a way)

Obviously using rules out of context is my preferred choice when on a table with models (just as much as Rolling Odds and Evens for conflicts) and i would not just "go home"

 BlackTalos wrote:
Well in the end, that's where i would disagree: I am quite happy to interpret any form of "damage" as a shooting attack, unless it then classes as a CC attack.

In your example for D weapons and all allocations to particular models (Gets hot too etc...), in my opinion that just means you have skipped steps 1-4, you are in step 5 with an allocation pre-determined.
IE you would start the process from p15: Take saves & Remove casualties - The model gets to make(...)
And the model would follow pages 16 to 19, ignoring anything then forbidden (Any saves for D, etc)

This still implies that you are following the rules for shooting, even if, as such, the attack is "not shooting". For all intents and purposes, it still classes as a shooting attack and gives and explanation to why things like Soul Blaze and VS include a "No cover saves" part within their ruling.

Obviously D weapons are a shooting attack (they say as much), that was never in contention...but even when you accept that you jump right into the shooting resolution step precisely where you say you're still left wondering if D-weapon wounds can be look out sir'd (since they weren't technically allocated) and whether they can kill models completely out of line of sight (since the rules only specify that wounds can't be ALLOCATED to models out of line of sight).

But that is really not the point of this discussion (so sorry I brought it up, really).

When we get to things that are clearly not classed as being either shooting or combat attacks, then all of a sudden things become much more tricky.

If you say that Vector Strike is a shooting attack, then that means you can't remove models out of LoS from where the model is after it moves. A simlar thing with Soul Blaze...it says: 'These Wounds are allocated by the unit’s controlling player and cover saves may not be taken.' So the controlling player allocates the wounds, fine, can they be allocated onto models that are completely out of line of sight? If so, why? If not, who is line of sight checked from? A unit can suffer soul blaze wounds from several different enemy units, so how do you even tell which unit to draw line of sight from to see where casualties can or cannot be inflicted by the soul blaze wounds?


I know that you can come up with your own personal opinion on how to answer these questions, but they are not clearly answered by the RAW if you try to play that all wounds follow the shooting wound resolution to the letter. It does not work.


So while I agree in principle with you (I tend to try to apply the rules for shooting resolution whenever possible), it is foolhardy IMHO to try to claim that there aren't attacks/hits/wounds that are more or less 'mystery' attacks. There is literally nothing in the rules indicating that Vector Strike attacks are either shooting or close combat attacks...that is the only thing we can determine by the RAW. What they are and how they are resolved are a mystery as far as the RAW are concerned.

As no allocation is involved, that is what stops LoS and such from happening - just as with Gets hot and how that cannot be LoS (in essence "because it is already allocated") and Out of sight would indeed have no bearing (and only the Line of sight needed upon creation of the wound would apply).

Out of sight will indeed apply to Vector Strike and Soul Blaze, but the first has already allocated wounds via random allocation ("all remaining Wounds in the pool are lost" - so none are left anyway) and the second would be treated as the unit "shooting itself" if it were important - again the wound pool is already empty because the "controlling player" has already allocated them when you check.

I agree this is opinion and interpretation about how to resolve based on "all is shooting", but it is opinion that stems from the original argument i would try to simplify:

- There are only 2 resolutions of "hits" possible per RaW: p12 and p20. One is shooting, one is close combat. If you are not within any then you are not within RaW.
Which also simply stems from the permissible ruleset.

 yakface wrote:
There is literally nothing in the rules indicating that Vector Strike attacks are either shooting or close combat attacks...that is the only thing we can determine by the RAW. What they are and how they are resolved are a mystery as far as the RAW are concerned.

Nothing says what they are, i agree. But we have no method of resolving them than A or B. (which then makes them A or B - this is the opinion part)

My claim is that RaW only have two methods as a third resolution simply does not exist (or is an adaptation of one of the 2: Interpretation and not written)

I'd just like to point at that just because the wound allocation rules are in the shooting phase section of the book doesn't mean you have to be using a shooting attack to use them, anything that requires wound allocation may use them.

Never mind...