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Don't forget that GW released a FAQ on day 1 of Codex: Tau Empire in 6th edition, just to explicitly clarify that Missile Drones were *only* usable by Broadside Squads. It was an obvious misprint that had people excited that they could totally take 2 Missile Drones per Fire Warrior squad, or tons of them for Crisis Teams or whatnot.

Because hey, FAQs man.

 JNAProductions wrote:

GodDamUser wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

This isn't being pedantic-this is reading the rules as written and realizing that GW made mistakes.

I don't think it's too much to ask that with a less than 20 page rulebook, they go over it and fix mistakes.

But it isn't really a mistake..

You just don't like their grammar and/or their phrasing

No, it IS a mistake. The Rules As Written explicitly prevent this.

"First, you must pick one of your units to shoot with. You may not pick a unit that Advanced or Fell Back this turn, or a unit that is within 1" of an enemy unit."

That's pretty cut and dry.

>_>

yes normally a unit cannot shoot if it has advanced.. the Assault weapons have a rule that trumps this rule, as an exception

It is pretty clear, you are just pedantic

Follow the first step of the shooting phase, if you would. Following that, how do you shoot with an assault weapon after advancing?

I'm not arguing RAI-RAI is really damn obvious, and I'm not gonna be an ass about RAW at the actual table.

However, I am going to be disappointed that GW didn't tighten up their RAW.

GodDamUser wrote:
>_>

yes normally a unit cannot shoot if it has advanced.. the Assault weapons have a rule that trumps this rule, as an exception

It is pretty clear, you are just pedantic

It trumps it for the model, but not the unit. Can the model shoot if the unit does not? If GW is going to continue with recognizing the difference between units and models with rule interactions, then it is wise to recognize the difference.

But again, as I said, it is no different then with how we treat Relentless.

 Charistoph wrote:

GodDamUser wrote:
>_>

yes normally a unit cannot shoot if it has advanced.. the Assault weapons have a rule that trumps this rule, as an exception

It is pretty clear, you are just pedantic

It trumps it for the model, but not the unit. Can the model shoot if the unit does not? If GW is going to continue with recognizing the difference between units and models with rule interactions, then it is wise to recognize the difference.

But again, as I said, it is no different then with how we treat Relentless.

Well with the defender now chooses losses.. I would suspect Model and Unit are interchangeable terms with the new rules

GodDamUser wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:

GodDamUser wrote:
>_>

yes normally a unit cannot shoot if it has advanced.. the Assault weapons have a rule that trumps this rule, as an exception

It is pretty clear, you are just pedantic

It trumps it for the model, but not the unit. Can the model shoot if the unit does not? If GW is going to continue with recognizing the difference between units and models with rule interactions, then it is wise to recognize the difference.

But again, as I said, it is no different then with how we treat Relentless.

Well with the defender now chooses losses.. I would suspect Model and Unit are interchangeable terms with the new rules

You suspect wrong.

It's clear from what rules we have seen that a unit is what you act with and models make up a unit.

And even if there was no difference then why did they use 2 terms?

 Lance845 wrote:

You suspect wrong.

It's clear from what rules we have seen that a unit is what you act with and models make up a unit.

And even if there was no difference then why did they use 2 terms?

Could be a different person wrote different rules

GodDamUser wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

You suspect wrong.

It's clear from what rules we have seen that a unit is what you act with and models make up a unit.

And even if there was no difference then why did they use 2 terms?

Could be a different person wrote different rules

Hate to break it to you. GW is a company. They have a lot of employees. A new edition of 40k does not get placed into the hands of a single person. Neither does any game on the market. There is always a team that works on any book including editors and testers.

No gak a different person wrote different rules. The company is supposed to have a project lead and a lead designer who both lay down a ground work and quality standard that every other employee is supposed to follow. Editors, testers, and proof reading staff should be looking for inconsistencies. Quality control.

Every page of all 12 pages of rules should be getting checked and rechecked by several people before it ever makes it to print or gets all the pretty pictures put into the background. Either GWs writing staff is made up of various people who are all incompetent. Or the lead staff were incredibly incompetent and the standards they laid down were so bellow par that the actual staff was directionless.

Either way, I would not build a company that way. Seems shoddy.

So apparently every sentence in the rulebook needs to start with "Unless otherwise noted", and/or every special rule needs to explicitly state "this overrides normal movement/shooting/assault/etc. rules", or by RAW the game just doesn't work? Is that the argument?

What other game does that? I'm pretty sure I've never read a rulebook before that was that irritatingly precise in its language, but people here are making it sound like that's the norm.

 Sidstyler wrote:
So apparently every sentence in the rulebook needs to start with "Unless otherwise noted", and/or every special rule needs to explicitly state "this overrides normal movement/shooting/assault/etc. rules", or by RAW the game just doesn't work? Is that the argument?

What other game does that? I'm pretty sure I've never read a rulebook before that was that irritatingly precise in its language, but people here are making it sound like that's the norm.

Warmachine and MtG manage to write their rulebooks to work exactly RAW. Sure others do as well, but they're the only two I've read.
GW rules are a pain with their writing, and it goes back to BFG/Epic/etc. Although BFG was better then the others, it still had plenty of issues.

 Sidstyler wrote:
So apparently every sentence in the rulebook needs to start with "Unless otherwise noted", and/or every special rule needs to explicitly state "this overrides normal movement/shooting/assault/etc. rules", or by RAW the game just doesn't work? Is that the argument?

What other game does that? I'm pretty sure I've never read a rulebook before that was that irritatingly precise in its language, but people here are making it sound like that's the norm.

I own DOZENS of board games. Their rules ARE that precise.

Often they have a little section that says "If a rule on a card contradicts the rules in this book the card takes precedence".

In 7th they had a rule for basic vs advanced.

Some of them have the good sense to Bold keywords that get repeated throught the book so that people always know when the rules are referring to specific terms in the rules and they always make sure to use the correct terms.

I dare you to go dig out your rule book for anything from Monopoly or Descent, or any other game and give that rule book a read. Go look up the actual rules to poker and tell me if there are any holes in their language or syntax.

What they never do is make definitive statements that tell you what you can never do and then write rules that grant you permission to break them without ever actually allowing you to break them.

 Deadshot wrote:

Mistakes are completely irrelevant when they have no impact on the clarity of the rule. Quite clearly Assault Weapons are meant to be fired after running, the intention is clear. They only slow the game when someone tries to abuse that minor mistake. Are you going to enjoy the game less because someone was able to fire their Stormbolter? Or are you going to enjoy it less because you had an argument over the stormbolter? .

Nice in theory, doesn't work in practice. Virtually all 7th ed arquments in 7th ed are result of stuff like this. If this was irrelevant becausewit's so obvious no 7th ed arquments either. How did that work out?

Fair enough then.

Here

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wgGvScFWpj8/WSyB9kMTp6I/AAAAAAAAIQc/ZCTeTe4cZqMHwVQRCIAgwdpOR8kbpTXhACEw/s1600/WhatsApp%2BImage%2B2017-05-29%2Bat%2B21.56.16.jpeg

Ethereal: Sense of Stone. When I read that rule it pretty clearly happens on a to wound roll, after saves, before damage.

Sense of Stone is better than FNP because a single roll will negate multiple damage.

RAW that is what it says. But it can be argued that it's not what they meant. And those arguments will happen.

It's also the same rule as Black Rage but it's written differently for no good reason.

part of the problem is trhey use unit too freely, IMHO they should use unit for any one model, and for a Unit of models use the term squad.

 Lance845 wrote:
Here

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wgGvScFWpj8/WSyB9kMTp6I/AAAAAAAAIQc/ZCTeTe4cZqMHwVQRCIAgwdpOR8kbpTXhACEw/s1600/WhatsApp%2BImage%2B2017-05-29%2Bat%2B21.56.16.jpeg

Ethereal: Sense of Stone. When I read that rule it pretty clearly happens on a to wound roll, after saves, before damage.

Sense of Stone is better than FNP because a single roll will negate multiple damage.

RAW that is what it says. But it can be argued that it's not what they meant. And those arguments will happen.

It's also the same rule as Black Rage but it's written differently for no good reason.

You take a save for every damage point and a wound for every unsaved point. Sense of stone pretty clearly is just fnp. Say you to take a hit of 4 damage, you then roll 4 saves, fail 2 of them. You then take 2 sense of stone tests for the unsaved wounds that got through. It's not like the 7ed D where one save negated all the wounds. At least that's how I see it given that saves are taken on an per damage bases, not all on one.

I could be wrong, let me know if I am please. I just thought thats how it was for saves.

Did I miss it do fliers just move over stuff now? No more snap shots?

 thatssoeffingcool wrote:
Did I miss it do fliers just move over stuff now? No more snap shots?

Move over stuff like before. No snap shot though seems some fliers(but not all) have minus to hit instead. Poor orks! Their AA is as bad as before

 thatssoeffingcool wrote:
Did I miss it do fliers just move over stuff now? No more snap shots?

Still don't understand why they don't just make all flyers count as skimmers for 40k games, only on Apoc or very large tables does flyers even make a remote amount of sense.

 KingmanHighborn wrote:

 thatssoeffingcool wrote:
Did I miss it do fliers just move over stuff now? No more snap shots?

Still don't understand why they don't just make all flyers count as skimmers for 40k games, only on Apoc or very large tables does flyers even make a remote amount of sense.

actually I think they may have done just that more or less

Ecdain wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Here

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wgGvScFWpj8/WSyB9kMTp6I/AAAAAAAAIQc/ZCTeTe4cZqMHwVQRCIAgwdpOR8kbpTXhACEw/s1600/WhatsApp%2BImage%2B2017-05-29%2Bat%2B21.56.16.jpeg

Ethereal: Sense of Stone. When I read that rule it pretty clearly happens on a to wound roll, after saves, before damage.

Sense of Stone is better than FNP because a single roll will negate multiple damage.

RAW that is what it says. But it can be argued that it's not what they meant. And those arguments will happen.

It's also the same rule as Black Rage but it's written differently for no good reason.

You take a save for every damage point and a wound for every unsaved point. Sense of stone pretty clearly is just fnp. Say you to take a hit of 4 damage, you then roll 4 saves, fail 2 of them. You then take 2 sense of stone tests for the unsaved wounds that got through. It's not like the 7ed D where one save negated all the wounds. At least that's how I see it given that saves are taken on an per damage bases, not all on one.

I could be wrong, let me know if I am please. I just thought thats how it was for saves.

You have your order of operations wrong.

In 8th you roll to hit,
roll to wound,
save
then damage the model.
Then FNP the damage.

So lets use the Lascannon. Heavy1 / ap-3 (I think) / dmg d3

It's heavy 1 so you shoot once. Roll 1 die to hit. You do, roll to wound, you do. the target allocates the wound to a model (defenders choice now) and rolls to save. If they fail d3 damage is dealt to the single model. Any excess damage is lost. If the model has a FNP like ability you would need to roll FNP agaisnt each individual damage from the d3 roll.

But that is not what Sense of Stone says.

Sense of stone says:
It's heavy 1 so you shoot once. Roll 1 die to hit. You do, roll to wound, you do. the target allocates the wound to a model (defenders choice now) and rolls to save. They fail so you roll Sense of Stone. On a 6 the WOUND is ignored. ALL the damage is ignored because it never reaches the dmg step.

To reiterate the inconsistency and the issue:
Sense of Stone say to roll when the unit SUFFERS an UNSAVED WOUND and on a 6 ignore the WOUND. Black rage says to roll when the unit LOOSES a WOUND and on a 6 the DAMAGE is ignored.

The wording is different and references different things in those profiles.

Sense of stone, RAW, applies before damage.

Black Rage, RAW, applies AFTER damage.

If the Lascannon does 3 damage a single model needs to pass a single sense of stone roll to walk away scott free. A Black Rage model needs to pass 3 Black Rage rolls to do the same.

GodDamUser wrote:
yes normally a unit cannot shoot if it has advanced.. the Assault weapons have a rule that trumps this rule, as an exception

It is pretty clear, you are just pedantic

Okay, let me explain this the long-winded way. Hopefully you'll see that this goes beyond mere pedantry.

The shooting phase is divided into 4 steps:
Step 1 - Choose Unit to Shoot With
Step 2 - Choose Targets
Step 3 - Choose Ranged Weapons
Step 4 - Resolve Attacks

Each step is predicated on completing the ones before it (e.g. if there are no legal targets in Step 2, you can't advance to Step 3).

With me so far?

Right, so let's say we have a squad of 5 Marines. 4 with bolters, 1 with a Flamer and 1 with a Lascannon (I don't know if this loadout will be possible, but let's just assume it is).

In the Movement Phase the squad Advances up the table.

Now we move to the shooting phase and begin with Step 1:
"In your Shooting Phase you can shoot with models armed with ranged weapons." Check.

"First, you must pick one of your units to shoot with. You may not pick a unit that Advanced or Fell Back this turn, or a unit that is within 1" of an enemy unit."

The player may not pick the unit of marines because it Advanced in the movement phase.

"But what about the Assault rule!" I hear you cry.

Okay, let's look at the Assault rule:

"A model with an Assault weapon can fire it even if it advanced earlier that turn."

I refer you back to Step 1 of the shooting phase:

"First, you must pick one of your units to shoot with. You may not pick a unit that Advanced"

Do you see any reference to models in that sentence? Do you see any mention of weapon types? No. Do you see any mention of 'units' or 'choosing' in the Assault rule? Also no.

This is a permissive ruleset. You do not have permission to choose the unit of marines that advanced. There is literally nothing in the Assault rule that overrides that. The Assault rule would, in theory, come into play in Step 3 (when you are at the level of individual models and their weapons). However, that's far too late because you've already been denied access to those steps.

"But the intent is obvious!" I could argue that we're already on dicey ground here. I mean, what's to stop me arguing that the intent of a transport is to move units before they disembark, and thus I should be able to ignore that rule?

But whatever. Let's say you're right. Clearly the intent is that the model with an Assault weapon should be able to fire it even if the unit advanced. So clearly it must override that restriction in Step 1.

Okay, we'll move onto Step 2. Let's say that there's a single unit of orks within 6", so that'll be our target.

Step 3 (Choose Ranged Weapons). Okay. I'll choose to fire the Flamer, the Bolters and the Lascannon.

"Wait! You can't do that?"

On the contrary - nothing in Step 3 prevents me from choosing to fire the non-Assault weapons in the unit. Literally the only barrier to firing those weapons in the first place was in Step 1, and by allowing me to override that because the unit contained a model with an Assault weapon, you also opened the door for the unit to fire every non-Assault weapon as well. Good job.

Do you see the problem yet?

The barrier that prevents units that Advanced from shooting is in Step 1 and precludes the entire unit from even trying to shoot.

The Assault rule doesn't override this because it comes in at the wrong step and overcomes a barrier in that step that doesn't actually exist. What's more, if you allow the Assault rule to overcome the barrier in step 1, then there is nothing stopping the entire unit from shooting. Because by the time you get down to the level of individual models and weapons, the only barrier to shooting with non-Assault weapons has already been passed.


Now, this is fixable. First you'd have to remove the restriction in Step 1 that prevents you from being able to choose units that Advanced. Then you'd have to add a rule in Step 3 that prevented models that advanced from firing with any weapons that don't have the Assault property.

However, we're now having to break or remove one rule and then add a second rule just to get the Assault rule to work as intended. This is not pedantry this is incompetent rule writing and proofreading by chimpanzees.

 vipoid wrote:

GodDamUser wrote:
yes normally a unit cannot shoot if it has advanced.. the Assault weapons have a rule that trumps this rule, as an exception

It is pretty clear, you are just pedantic

stuff

Yup.

 Lance845 wrote:
Sense of Stone say to roll when the unit SUFFERS an UNSAVED WOUND and on a 6 ignore the WOUND. Black rage says to roll when the unit LOOSES a WOUND and on a 6 the DAMAGE is ignored.

The wording is different and references different things in those profiles.

Sense of stone, RAW, applies before damage.

Black Rage, RAW, applies AFTER damage.

If the Lascannon does 3 damage a single model needs to pass a single sense of stone roll to walk away scott free. A Black Rage model needs to pass 3 Black Rage rolls to do the same.

This is exactly the way I read it. the Black Rage ability of discounting damage is a common enough thing is AoS, but the Etheral ability is unique. It actually makes them worth taking, that ability is super strong.

 Lance845 wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

GodDamUser wrote:
yes normally a unit cannot shoot if it has advanced.. the Assault weapons have a rule that trumps this rule, as an exception

It is pretty clear, you are just pedantic

stuff

Yup.

I'm truly impressed!

The new edition hasn't even come out yet - and Dakka's already found a 'contradictory' rule to ruthlessly analyze without any semblance of common sense and obvious intention? Ma gawd!

I'm saving this post for when they fix the 'mistake' by issuing some smug reply to all the rules lawyers on Facebook

 Jambles wrote:
I'm truly impressed!

Yes, I expect you are. Your rabid devotion to GW's illiteracy is a strong indicator that anything will impress you.

 Jambles wrote:
The new edition hasn't even come out yet

And already it is in dire need of a rewrite.

 Jambles wrote:
and Dakka's already found a 'contradictory' rule

The rule isn't contradictory (not even if you put the word in inverted commas) - it is outright nonfunctional if you attempt to follow the rules as written.

 Jambles wrote:
ruthlessly analyze

Excuse me while I contact the Oxford English Dictionary and inform them that the definition of 'ruthlessly analyse' has been changed to 'reading the rules'.

 Jambles wrote:
without any semblance of common sense and obvious intention?

Does it make you feel big when you outright lie about people?

 Jambles wrote:
I'm saving this post for when they fix the 'mistake' by issuing some smug reply to all the rules lawyers on Facebook

People like you are why the rest of us have to put up with GW's sloppy writing. People like you who will defend atrociously-written rules because of 'obvious intention', apparently oblivious to the thousands of pages of rule disputes on this forum alone. People like you, who think that the appropriate response by a company, when someone points out a mistake in their rules, is for them to post a smug reply on Facebook instead of making an effort to actually fix the mistake and improve their sloppy writing.

But feel free to save my above post if it somehow pleases you. I have said nothing I regret and am satisfied with the arguments I provided. If GW issues a smug reply via Facebook, all it will prove is that they have no actual rebuttal nor any excuse for their poor writing. If that puts you in awe of GW as a company, then that is your problem and not mine.

 Jambles wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

GodDamUser wrote:
yes normally a unit cannot shoot if it has advanced.. the Assault weapons have a rule that trumps this rule, as an exception

It is pretty clear, you are just pedantic

stuff

Yup.

I'm truly impressed!

The new edition hasn't even come out yet - and Dakka's already found a 'contradictory' rule to ruthlessly analyze without any semblance of common sense and obvious intention? Ma gawd!

I'm saving this post for when they fix the 'mistake' by issuing some smug reply to all the rules lawyers on Facebook

The problem is that we don't know. What were the intentions of the writers? The two situations should be equal and we are nitpicking, or is intentional and carefully calculated in the unit point cost? I don't read minds, do you? Especially on the other side of the ocean, I don't have enough Warp Charges to be honest.
Besides, albeit I like how the new rules model weapons and how the shooting between infantry models changes, these pseudo-FnP, wounds, random stats, decreasing stats, and split fire look like a lot of stuff to keep track of!
Better keep the points low (and buy less models )

The main reason it's getting so much scrutiny is that a syntax error like that is not always so innocent as "oh well obviously they MEANT to let assault weapons shoot after running, so we'll just ignore the fact that their order-of-operations technically would prevent it".

D&D's long history is filled with numerous examples of how a simple oversight like that can turn out much worse. Such as the Locate City Bomb. 40k even has a fairly infamous example with the Fish of Fury.

Ideally, a good rules system should be written so a computer can understand it in order to avoid situations like that.

GENERAL IN THREAD WARNING TIME:

Following RULE #1 is not only important - it is mandatory.

[MOD EDIT - RULE #1 - Alpharius]