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Hey Dakkanauts! I'm hoping to solicit outside opinions for the sake of checking my reasoning on the following action. The search function didn't reveal any relevant threads and I don't remember seeing it anywhere else. The proposal:

A Soul Grinder can fire its Harvester cannon six times at a given target. Normally, three shots are always going to snap fire unless the target is a skimmer or a hovering/gliding flying unit in which case all six fire at their normal ballistic skill.

Relevant rulebook entries, abridged:

Pg. 30: If a weapon can fire in more than one mode, or can fire more than one type of ammo, select a weapon mode/ammo type - treat weapons firing different modes/ammo types as differently named weapons. (edited to include full rule as mentioned below).

Pg. 90: A walker that moved can still fire all of its weapons in the shooting phase.

Pg. 36: If the firing unit is equipped with a differently named shooting weapon that has yet to fire, you can now select it and shoot with it at the same target unit.

Pg. 171, Skyfire: A model firing a weapon with this special rule fires using its normal ballistic skill when shooting at flyers, FMCs, and skimmers, but can only snap shot against other targets.

Therefore, the Harvester Cannon can fire both types of shells in the same phase, usually leading one type or the other to snap shoot, but sometimes neither. Is this a sound conclusion or have I missed relevant rules entries or FAQs?

Solid shells and Flakk shells aren't ammo types so don't count as seperate weapons

Damn. How do you tell? It seems pretty self-evident that they're different ammo types but I take it I'm missing something.

There is nothing saying that they are ammo types. You're just assuming so because of their name which isn't an actual rules source

You choose which version to fire, you can't shoot both.

Gotcha. I've never seen any case in other codexes where it specifically mentions ammo types so I made the assumption. Now that I think of it, it's like frag/krak missiles. I think


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I found the page I think you're referring to:

Pg. 41: Some weapons can be used in different ways, representing different power settings or types of ammo...where this is the case, there will be a separate line in the weapon's profile for each, and you can choose which to use each turn.

However, revisiting page 30 for the full rule listed above seemingly contradicts this concept:

Pg. 30: If a weapon can fire in more than one mode...select a weapon mode...treat weapons firing different modes as differently named weapons.

It looks like it still stands to me as there's nothing saying you can't choose both each turn.

Page 41 is more specific, and limits the selection to once each turn.
Page 30 doesn't override that.

rigeld2 wrote:
Page 41 is more specific, and limits the selection to once each turn.
Page 30 doesn't override that.

I'm not so sure. Why even have the entry on page 30, though, if it's overridden by page 41? Page 41 never mentions limits, either - it says "choose which to use each turn", not "choose one to use each turn". I could say "I'm choosing both firing modes".

Perhaps this is another example of shoddy rules writing.

lustigjh wrote:

rigeld2 wrote:
Page 41 is more specific, and limits the selection to once each turn.
Page 30 doesn't override that.

I'm not so sure. Why even have the entry on page 30, though, if it's overridden by page 41? Page 41 never mentions limits, either - it says "choose which to use each turn", not "choose one to use each turn". I could say "I'm choosing both firing modes".

Perhaps this is another example of shoddy rules writing.

Because if a unit fires with different ammo it will occur at different times.

A unit of 10 sternguard decide to fire 4 boltguns with kraken rounds, 6 guns with vengeance rounds. p31 tells us to treat the 2 ammo types as differently named weapons so the unit has to fire all of 1 ammo type and resolve it completely before firing the next ammo type.

The rule on p41 is more specific and states that a weapon can only be fired with one profile each turn.

Forgive me for being difficult (I'd like to completely understand the rules), but wouldn't "one profile per term" then limit the sternguard to firing one ammo type per phase?

I think RAI is the Harvester cannon only firing one mode per phase so I'll stick with that for now but I'd like to totally understand the rules reasoning anyway.

lustigjh wrote:
Forgive me for being difficult (I'd like to completely understand the rules), but wouldn't "one profile per term" then limit the sternguard to firing one ammo type per phase?

It's one profile per turn, not phase.
And yes, each stern guard model is limited to one ammo type per phase.