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 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

Dionysodorus wrote:
I mean... I guess I am, though mostly that's going to consist of me pointing you to the part of your own post where you quote the rule that plainly says that.

Okay that is fine you play that way.

Dionysodorus wrote:
Also, your reading is completely incoherent. You're saying that the rule means "A Character can only be chosen as a target in the Shooting phase if they are the closest visible non-Character enemy unit." But, uhh, then you just can't ever shoot at Characters. A Character will simply never be the closest non-Character unit because Characters are not non-Character units. So either the word "unit" there includes Characters, in which case a Character can prevent you from shooting a more distant Character, or "units" does not include Characters, in which case you can never shoot Characters. Which is it?

Know what your right enjoy losing your games to impossible to hit Culexus Assassins, and NOT HAVING CONTROL over who your army can shoot at.

Read it like this. You can only shoot X if there are no Ys closer to you.

I feel like it's probably a good idea to play a couple games and let things settle before we start deciding that certain tactics which are plainly allowed by the letter and spirit of the rules are so overpowered that we need to house-rule them away. I actually don't expect that this is going to take the meta by storm, but I could be wrong.

But you do you. Play however you want. Probably discuss this with your opponents before games, though, because I expect that it will come up somewhat often that a player will be relying on a beefy character to shield a more fragile character -- a Farseer sticking close to the Avatar to be protected on one side, for example, or a Librarian staying behind Guilliman. I don't really care how you play.

However, I would appreciate it if you would refrain from barging into ymdc threads and confidently spouting off about your preferred house rules as if they're any more than your preferred variant rule set for 40k. Please make clear that you've decided that the plain meaning of the rules makes the game worse in some way and so you choose to play by a different set of rules. It's fine if you then go on to suggest the house rule that you think improves the game! Just say that that's what it is rather than misleading people about what's actually in the rulebook. Even if you don't do this, I'd ask that, when people point out that you're straightforwardly wrong and that the rule you've presented as being in any way official is just something you've made up, you please don't double down and thoroughly embarrass yourself trying to implausibly rules-lawyer your preferred house rule from the very plain meaning of the actual text.

Dionysodorus wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

Dionysodorus wrote:
I mean... I guess I am, though mostly that's going to consist of me pointing you to the part of your own post where you quote the rule that plainly says that.

Okay that is fine you play that way.

Dionysodorus wrote:
Also, your reading is completely incoherent. You're saying that the rule means "A Character can only be chosen as a target in the Shooting phase if they are the closest visible non-Character enemy unit." But, uhh, then you just can't ever shoot at Characters. A Character will simply never be the closest non-Character unit because Characters are not non-Character units. So either the word "unit" there includes Characters, in which case a Character can prevent you from shooting a more distant Character, or "units" does not include Characters, in which case you can never shoot Characters. Which is it?

Know what your right enjoy losing your games to impossible to hit Culexus Assassins, and NOT HAVING CONTROL over who your army can shoot at.

Read it like this. You can only shoot X if there are no Ys closer to you.

I feel like it's probably a good idea to play a couple games and let things settle before we start deciding that certain tactics which are plainly allowed by the letter and spirit of the rules are so overpowered that we need to house-rule them away. I actually don't expect that this is going to take the meta by storm, but I could be wrong.

But you do you. Play however you want. Probably discuss this with your opponents before games, though, because I expect that it will come up somewhat often that a player will be relying on a beefy character to shield a more fragile character -- a Farseer sticking close to the Avatar to be protected on one side, for example, or a Librarian staying behind Guilliman. I don't really care how you play.

However, I would appreciate it if you would refrain from barging into ymdc threads and confidently spouting off about your preferred house rules as if they're any more than your preferred variant rule set for 40k. Please make clear that you've decided that the plain meaning of the rules makes the game worse in some way and so you choose to play by a different set of rules. It's fine if you then go on to suggest the house rule that you think improves the game! Just say that that's what it is rather than misleading people about what's actually in the rulebook. Even if you don't do this, I'd ask that, when people point out that you're straightforwardly wrong and that the rule you've presented as being in any way official is just something you've made up, you please don't double down and thoroughly embarrass yourself trying to implausibly rules-lawyer your preferred house rule from the very plain meaning of the actual text.

Your right, what what I thinking, your opponent being able to control who you can shoot at the entire game it totally reasonable.

TSS, you're reading it wrong. Charistoph has the right of it.

Characters are units, so they block other characters just like non-character units do.

 JNAProductions wrote:
TSS, you're reading it wrong. Charistoph has the right of it.

Characters are units, so they block other characters just like non-character units do.

I already said he was right.

Sound to me like the kind of army you can catch an opponent out with once, but is probably surprisingly easy to dismantle as long as you have FLY, good mobility or deep strike units.

Just flank them and take out the other characters.

 Silentz wrote:
Sound to me like the kind of army you can catch an opponent out with once, but is probably surprisingly easy to dismantle as long as you have FLY, good mobility or deep strike units.

Just flank them and take out the other characters.

No its the kind of army that would always win.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

 Silentz wrote:
Sound to me like the kind of army you can catch an opponent out with once, but is probably surprisingly easy to dismantle as long as you have FLY, good mobility or deep strike units.

Just flank them and take out the other characters.

No its the kind of army that would always win.

Firstly It's clearly the new version of superfriends which is ace.

Will it always win well only if your incompetent. Sure a static gun line which retreats is going to be doing nothing. But generally they are unfun anyway.

I second that a mobile gunline can easily get round it while a deepstrikeing cc list is going to run up and punch the librarians to death with ease. Even a shoot list that advances is going to get round it unless it backs into a corner but then you play the objectives.

Secondly it only functions if you take a character only army which is very restrictive especially at larger points and leaves them without much firepower so they need to CC countering the back into a corner play. Might make an interesting 500-1k list though.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

 Silentz wrote:
Sound to me like the kind of army you can catch an opponent out with once, but is probably surprisingly easy to dismantle as long as you have FLY, good mobility or deep strike units.

Just flank them and take out the other characters.

No its the kind of army that would always win.

Only against people who are new at strategy games.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
Your right, what what I thinking, your opponent being able to control who you can shoot at the entire game it totally reasonable.

Considering the alternative is Independent Characters, I'm not too broke up about it.

Fragile wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

 Silentz wrote:
Sound to me like the kind of army you can catch an opponent out with once, but is probably surprisingly easy to dismantle as long as you have FLY, good mobility or deep strike units.

Just flank them and take out the other characters.

No its the kind of army that would always win.

Only against people who are new at strategy games.

Nope, because if you have 1 character in combat and 10 characters behind him then you can't shoot at all.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

Fragile wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

 Silentz wrote:
Sound to me like the kind of army you can catch an opponent out with once, but is probably surprisingly easy to dismantle as long as you have FLY, good mobility or deep strike units.

Just flank them and take out the other characters.

No its the kind of army that would always win.

Only against people who are new at strategy games.

Nope, because if you have 1 character in combat and 10 characters behind him then you can't shoot at all.

Anyone with any experience wouldn't have let that happen.

 Ghaz wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
Nope, because if you have 1 character in combat and 10 characters behind him then you can't shoot at all.

Anyone with any experience wouldn't have let that happen.

what else would happen with an all Character Army?

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

 Ghaz wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
Nope, because if you have 1 character in combat and 10 characters behind him then you can't shoot at all.

Anyone with any experience wouldn't have let that happen.

what else would happen with an all Character Army?

1) Why is one character the closest unit to every one of your models?
2) Why do you have models in combat with the closest character, preventing the rest of your units from shooting, in your own Shooting phase? Maybe next time you should not deploy an immobile Drop Pod right in front of the rest of your army.

Dionysodorus wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

 Ghaz wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
Nope, because if you have 1 character in combat and 10 characters behind him then you can't shoot at all.

Anyone with any experience wouldn't have let that happen.

what else would happen with an all Character Army?

1) Why is one character the closest unit to every one of your models?
2) Why do you have models in combat with the closest character, preventing the rest of your units from shooting, in your own Shooting phase? Maybe next time you should not deploy an immobile Drop Pod right in front of the rest of your army.

Read the OP. He was facing an all Character Army.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

Fragile wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

 Silentz wrote:
Sound to me like the kind of army you can catch an opponent out with once, but is probably surprisingly easy to dismantle as long as you have FLY, good mobility or deep strike units.

Just flank them and take out the other characters.

No its the kind of army that would always win.

Only against people who are new at strategy games.

Nope, because if you have 1 character in combat and 10 characters behind him then you can't shoot at all.

Here's a very basic tip for you. Take half your army, move left, take the other half and move right. Now there is no way 1 character can be closest to both sides of the table. This is not a static game. When you see that tactic being started you can easily move to mitigate it.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

Dionysodorus wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

 Ghaz wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
Nope, because if you have 1 character in combat and 10 characters behind him then you can't shoot at all.

Anyone with any experience wouldn't have let that happen.

what else would happen with an all Character Army?

1) Why is one character the closest unit to every one of your models?
2) Why do you have models in combat with the closest character, preventing the rest of your units from shooting, in your own Shooting phase? Maybe next time you should not deploy an immobile Drop Pod right in front of the rest of your army.

Read the OP. He was facing an all Character Army.

Yes, I get all that, as is obvious from my posts. I still want answers to those questions.

Since you seem confused, I want to go into a little more detail here:
1) Because the game takes place on a largely two-dimensional surface, it is possible, by moving one's own units around the enemy, to to-some-extent choose which enemy unit is the closest. This clever strategy only becomes more powerful the closer the armies approach to each other, through the magic of geometry. It can be countered by advancing far ahead with a single unit, but of course in an all-character army this leaves that single unit incredibly open to attack since characters are typically not great at long range. So why was one character the closest unit to every unit in your army? Did you just make extremely poor decisions when deploying and moving?

2) You don't seem to have been aware of the existence of the Movement phase before, but now that you are I should tell you that it gets even better! In your Movement phase, you're allowed to leave combat with enemy units! This is called Falling Back. Because the Movement phase comes before the Shooting phase, one in-combat character preventing your whole army from shooting is not much of a problem. if you are capable of thinking even a single step ahead you can foresee this all the way back in the Movement phase, and so you can choose to disengage from the combat. Now there's no in-combat character preventing your whole army from shooting! It is true that some characters have abilities that might prevent this, but if you are losing to an all-character Dark Eldar army that is kind of sad. I understand why my question confused you, though -- I assumed you were aware of the Movement phase and so when I suggested that you not deploy immobile Drop Pods in front of the rest of your army I figured you would realize that the key detail there is that the Drop Pod is incapable of Falling Back. But of course since you thought every single one of your units was immobile that probably didn't make sense, so I'm sorry for that.

Dionysodorus wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

Dionysodorus wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

 Ghaz wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
Nope, because if you have 1 character in combat and 10 characters behind him then you can't shoot at all.

Anyone with any experience wouldn't have let that happen.

what else would happen with an all Character Army?

1) Why is one character the closest unit to every one of your models?
2) Why do you have models in combat with the closest character, preventing the rest of your units from shooting, in your own Shooting phase? Maybe next time you should not deploy an immobile Drop Pod right in front of the rest of your army.

Read the OP. He was facing an all Character Army.

Yes, I get all that, as is obvious from my posts. I still want answers to those questions.

Since you seem confused, I want to go into a little more detail here:
1) Because the game takes place on a largely two-dimensional surface, it is possible, by moving one's own units around the enemy, to to-some-extent choose which enemy unit is the closest. This clever strategy only becomes more powerful the closer the armies approach to each other, through the magic of geometry. It can be countered by advancing far ahead with a single unit, but of course in an all-character army this leaves that single unit incredibly open to attack since characters are typically not great at long range. So why was one character the closest unit to every unit in your army? Did you just make extremely poor decisions when deploying and moving?

2) You don't seem to have been aware of the existence of the Movement phase before, but now that you are I should tell you that it gets even better! In your Movement phase, you're allowed to leave combat with enemy units! This is called Falling Back. Because the Movement phase comes before the Shooting phase, one in-combat character preventing your whole army from shooting is not much of a problem. if you are capable of thinking even a single step ahead you can foresee this all the way back in the Movement phase, and so you can choose to disengage from the combat. Now there's no in-combat character preventing your whole army from shooting! It is true that some characters have abilities that might prevent this, but if you are losing to an all-character Dark Eldar army that is kind of sad. I understand why my question confused you, though -- I assumed you were aware of the Movement phase and so when I suggested that you not deploy immobile Drop Pods in front of the rest of your army I figured you would realize that the key detail there is that the Drop Pod is incapable of Falling Back. But of course since you thought every single one of your units was immobile that probably didn't make sense, so I'm sorry for that.

50 Astropaths with 5 Tank commanders.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

50 Astropaths with 5 Tank commanders.

I don't think it would be productive trying to explain to you why this is a terrible list against anything other than, like, nothing but Knights, but I do have to ask: why tank commanders? I don't get it. They're characters but they have more than 9 wounds so what are they doing for you that a regular tank wouldn't? They can't even give each other Tank Orders! Isn't your whole thing here about how the "can't shoot at characters unless they're the closest unit" rule makes it possible to be really abusive with all-character lists? Regular tanks do the same job, and since you're getting 0 CP anyway it's not like you need HQs. I guess the Astropaths stop you from shooting at other Astropaths, but who cares? Are you trying to protect the ones that you've given telepathica staves to so that they can crush everything in CC? Do you remember what it was that you originally objected to about the rules or are you just on autopilot at this point?

Dionysodorus wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

50 Astropaths with 5 Tank commanders.

I don't think it would be productive trying to explain to you why this is a terrible list against anything other than, like, nothing but Knights, but I do have to ask: why tank commanders? I don't get it. They're characters but they have more than 9 wounds so what are they doing for you that a regular tank wouldn't? They can't even give each other Tank Orders! Isn't your whole thing here about how the "can't shoot at characters unless they're the closest unit" rule makes it possible to be really abusive with all-character lists? Regular tanks do the same job, and since you're getting 0 CP anyway it's not like you need HQs. I guess the Astropaths stop you from shooting at other Astropaths, but who cares? Are you trying to protect the ones that you've given telepathica staves to so that they can crush everything in CC? Do you remember what it was that you originally objected to about the rules or are you just on autopilot at this point?

Your assuming the Astropaths are the ones for CC. The tank commanders are because you want all Characters and 1 higher BS, and other reasons.

Hi, I'm a bit confused RE the point Thousand Son Sorceror made (one character in hth and 10 behind him, not being shot)? If in this case you mean the Culexus is in assault, then he stops being the nearest viable unit then and so you can shoot the other 10 characters?

Samii wrote:
Hi, I'm a bit confused RE the point Thousand Son Sorceror made (one character in hth and 10 behind him, not being shot)? If in this case you mean the Culexus is in assault, then he stops being the nearest viable unit then and so you can shoot the other 10 characters?

The requirement is not viable its visible.

So that would work with any all-character list? Also, I thought the rule was you couldn't target units within 1" of enemy models?

Samii wrote:
So that would work with any all-character list? Also, I thought the rule was you couldn't target units within 1" of enemy models?

You can't. But in the case where the only enemy units your firing units can see are characters, and the closest one of them is within 1" of the enemy, then you're out of luck. The only proviso that allows you to shoot at characters that aren't the closest unit is when all of the closer units aren't visible. Being within 1" of enemy units does not make the closest unit not visible (just untargetable).

I don't know if you've put it on the FAQ list to ask if units in combat should count against being able to shoot a character if he's the closest unit not in combat, but it does sound like it's worth them clarifying. It does sound like the type of thing where they'd come back with a "do what we meant, not what we said" type of response.

 doctortom wrote:
I don't know if you've put it on the FAQ list to ask if units in combat should count against being able to shoot a character if he's the closest unit not in combat, but it does sound like it's worth them clarifying. It does sound like the type of thing where they'd come back with a "do what we meant, not what we said" type of response.

Yep, its already on the list.

Before this thread gets derailed any further, I feel the need to point out that the culexus is never affected by psychic powers, friendly or enemy.

 humanas wrote:
Before this thread gets derailed any further, I feel the need to point out that the culexus is never affected by psychic powers, friendly or enemy.

He isn't but everything hitting on 6s and having a 4+ invul is still difficult to deal with. And even if he only survives 2 turns its long enough to get other models into combat which is all hes there for.