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Hello, I was wondering if someone could help me understand weapons with similar names, but with different firing modes (on a vehicle).

Particularly the blight drone, it has 3 weapons, but 2 of them are the mawcannon, one labled "phlegm," a large blast shot, and the other "vomit," which uses a template. can the blight drone fire both of these weapons at a target in the shooting phase? Or do I have to choose one or the other?

A lot depends on how you read the restrictions in the Select A Weapon portion of the Shooting Sequence and Number of Shots in the Type portion of the Weapons section.

Select a Weapon tells us to treat each different profile as a different Weapon.

Number of Shots tells us that if a shooting weapon has multiple profiles, we can choose which to use each turn.

Number of Shots does not explicitly limit the number of profile you can use in a turn (particularly useful for hybrid weapons which both shoot and improve Melee Attacks). Select a Weapon tells us we cannot select a Weapon that has already been fired, but also separates the profiles out as different Weapons as well for this purpose.

If you want to be as pure RAW as you can get, a Vehicle can possibly fire both profiles in the same turn (most other models can only fire one Weapon a turn). HOWEVER, this is a situation that has only been available due to the quirks of the 7th Edition Shooting Sequence and will quickly lose you friends who have been playing the game for a while as it is a bit cheesy (but makes Dreadnought Missile Launchers a little more tolerable).

The part about select weapons on page 30 clearly states to treat different weapon modes/ammo types as differently named weapons.
Then you fire and wound and allocate and all that, and then in the paragraph "select another weapon" (p.36), it clearly states that a unit that is equipped with a differently named shooting weapon that has yet to fire, can now select it and shoot it at the same target unit.

So yes, it is allowed. And it shouldn't make you loose friends. Of course it doesn't let a model shoot all profiles unless it can actually fire that many weapons, but since the drone is a vechicles there's no problem.

 Roknar wrote:
The part about select weapons on page 30 clearly states to treat different weapon modes/ammo types as differently named weapons.
Then you fire and wound and allocate and all that, and then in the paragraph "select another weapon" (p.36), it clearly states that a unit that is equipped with a differently named shooting weapon that has yet to fire, can now select it and shoot it at the same target unit.

So yes, it is allowed. And it shouldn't make you loose friends. Of course it doesn't let a model shoot all profiles unless it can actually fire that many weapons, but since the drone is a vechicles there's no problem.

Can you prove that phlegm and vomit are different ammo types though. Because the rule you are trying to use doesn't work on weapon profiles, just ammo types.

Right rules.. wrong conclusions.

Select a weapon-

A blight drone has one mawcannon. so we pick that.

Number of shots. We have two options for the mawcannon, we can pick either one.

We can't go back and select it again, as there is only one mawcannon.

And yes, deliberately bending the rules to allow you to fire one weapon twice, will lose you friends. .

 CrownAxe wrote:

 Roknar wrote:
The part about select weapons on page 30 clearly states to treat different weapon modes/ammo types as differently named weapons.
Then you fire and wound and allocate and all that, and then in the paragraph "select another weapon" (p.36), it clearly states that a unit that is equipped with a differently named shooting weapon that has yet to fire, can now select it and shoot it at the same target unit.

So yes, it is allowed. And it shouldn't make you loose friends. Of course it doesn't let a model shoot all profiles unless it can actually fire that many weapons, but since the drone is a vechicles there's no problem.

Can you prove that phlegm and vomit are different ammo types though. Because the rule you are trying to use doesn't work on weapon profiles, just ammo types.

Well it says weapon modes too, not just ammo types, but what's the difference?
They're just different weapon profiles, or is that actually covered by rules somewhere that a different profile is different from a mode or ammo types.

Seems pretty clear to me that is the same gun firing in two different modes. It even has parenthesis for Mawcannon(Vomit) and mawcannon(Phlegm).

In fact on page 41 (number of shots) it says that " some weapons can be used used in different ways representing different power setting or types of ammo. ... Where this is the case, there will be a separate line in the weapon',s profile for each..."
How does that not fit the bill here?



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Captyn_Bob wrote:
Right rules.. wrong conclusions.

Select a weapon-

A blight drone has one mawcannon. so we pick that.

Number of shots. We have two options for the mawcannon, we can pick either one.

We can't go back and select it again, as there is only one mawcannon.

And yes, deliberately bending the rules to allow you to fire one weapon twice, will lose you friends. .

Read p.36 " select another weapon." That in combination with the fact that "which" could be plural too means you do indeed get to fire both profiles. Considering how on p 30 it tells you to treat them as differently named weapons.

Ah I see. You are interpreting the line asking you to fire different firing modes in the same unit as separate shooting attacks, as permitting you to fire the same weapon twice. Lawyering at it's finest. :p

(The line has "weapons" -rather than "A weapon", the intent is pretty clear to me.)

Please don't anyone try that in a real game. sigh.

Captyn_Bob wrote:
Ah I see. You are interpreting the line asking you to fire different firing modes in the same unit as separate shooting attacks, as permitting you to fire the same weapon twice. Lawyering at it's finest. :p

(The line has "weapons" -rather than "A weapon", the intent is pretty clear to me.)

Please don't anyone try that in a real game. sigh.

I does say " a weapon". And, if it has more modes, to select one and to treat weapons firing in different modes as different weapons.
Since you're supposed to treat the other mode as different weapon that means you're kinda stuck with treating it as a different weapon altogether.

The intent was probably to be able to fire multiple versions of the same gun in different modes, but the way they wrote it makes it work for the same gun too.

And maybe I should elaborate on the not loosing friends part. You would bring this up before the game and tell them why you think it works.
Don't just start shooting both mid game without a heads up. I'm not saying it's not weird lol.

There is one part were I'm not entirely sure my english isn't failing me though. The part about "treat weapons firing different..."
I'm interpreting that as as a general statement, aka "treat weapons with different profiles as different weapons".
Could that actually mean "treat other weapons with different profiles as different weapons" ? Because that makes more sense with RAI in mind and would prevent you from picking that particular weapon again.

Captyn_Bob wrote:Ah I see. You are interpreting the line asking you to fire different firing modes in the same unit as separate shooting attacks, as permitting you to fire the same weapon twice. Lawyering at it's finest. :p

(The line has "weapons" -rather than "A weapon", the intent is pretty clear to me.)

Please don't anyone try that in a real game. sigh.

Not really. We are to "treat weapons firing different modes/ammo types as differently named weapons." That doesn't exclude from the same "physical" Weapon, exactly. If we are to treat them all as the same Weapon, then a Devastator Squad with Missile Launchers couldn't fire two Frag Shots and two Krak Shots, they would have to 1-4 of either version. The interpretation has to go the whole monty in order to be applicable with the words that are currently written.

Before 7th Edition, it wasn't a problem as all shooting was performed at the same virtual time, so only one mode/ammo could be selected. But with how the 7th Edition Shooting Sequence operates, it adds a whole new banana. They should never have considered them as different named Weapons, or at least added the specific caveat of only one profile can be used per Phase (which would also have reduced a few questions for dual mode Weapons like the Necron Praetorian's Rod of Covenant).

Roknar wrote:And maybe I should elaborate on the not loosing friends part. You would bring this up before the game and tell them why you think it works.
Don't just start shooting both mid game without a heads up. I'm not saying it's not weird lol.

True, if you are concerned about it enough to talk before hand, it isn't always a problem. However, as Bob said, it comes across as "rules lawyering" to old hats with people trying to come up with what would have been severe cheating not so long ago. The approach on this will usually determine the immediate and future response, but some of these guys can be very touchy on a local level.

I agree. Rules lawyering, to me, is more about how you say it, than about the rules you're bringing up. Which can be difficult on a forum imho. I'm sure quite a few debates would be much less heated in RL than they end up being here for example.