Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

You are engaged in close combat when your model is within 1" from another enemy unit. On the first pages of the Rulebook it says that measures are drawn from the basis of the model, does this mean that when engaging an infantry on top of a ruin the height of the model does not count?

So for an example: if we measure 1" from the model itself, means that a Trygon can engage a unit of marine on the second level of a ruin, and this would be the only way since rulewise monsters cannot go on top level of ruins. If we measure 1" from the basis ofc it would be impossible for a monster to engage infantries above ground level, and this would not make sense to me on a gaming perspective.

RAI, it would seem to me that the distance is drawn from the basis only when moving, not when engaging, but I'm not sure, can't find a FAQ about it.

Opinions?

Yes, it is drawn from the base unless the rules on the model say otherwise.

Unfortunately distances are measured from the base of the models. So no, your Trygon is not able to engage those tasty Space Marines on the second floor of a building despite clearly being in nomming range. So you're out of luck unless you house-rule it. There is one exception though, which is large models without a base. In this case, distances are measured from the closest point on the hull, so if you manage to squeeze your Bonebreaka in a building the right way you CAN engage models on upper floors.

All in all however I think the complete lack of possibilities in the base rules for large CC models to interact with infantry and models with fly on upper floors of buildings is something GW should address ASAP, it feels stupid and is currently driving me away from getting stuff like Defilers and Maulerfiends because in my FLGS people use a ton of building terrain and shooty infantry. Simplest solution would be to simply allow big models to engage models on upper floors of buildings if their charge brings their hulls within 1" of them. Another option would be to let all terrain that can be set up and removed from the board be given a datasheet and thus be destructible.

Congratulations, you have just stumbled upon one of the dumbest rule of 40K 8th.

What makes it even dumbest is that GW knows of this silly interaction, and yet the fix was "Oh let's give knights a stratagem to ignore this rule!".

Meanwhile a hyerophant cannot attack something at knee level.

 DarklyDreaming wrote:
You are engaged in close combat when your model is within 1" from another enemy unit. On the first pages of the Rulebook it says that measures are drawn from the basis of the model, does this mean that when engaging an infantry on top of a ruin the height of the model does not count?

So for an example: if we measure 1" from the model itself, means that a Trygon can engage a unit of marine on the second level of a ruin, and this would be the only way since rulewise monsters cannot go on top level of ruins. If we measure 1" from the basis ofc it would be impossible for a monster to engage infantries above ground level, and this would not make sense to me on a gaming perspective.

RAI, it would seem to me that the distance is drawn from the basis only when moving, not when engaging, but I'm not sure, can't find a FAQ about it.

Opinions?

In short, you can't attack because you measure ranges from the bases.

Yes, this is "intended" and confirmed by FAQ. Yes, it's what the rules as written say. Yes, it's stupid.

yooooou better believe it buddy.

If my infantry squad is standing on a crate, making them knee-height to your wraithknight, your wraithknight cannot swing his giant sword down and hit them.

And the people who like playing shooting armies go

"OK, but we have to have some abstractions in the game, it may not be super realistic in this case but you should be able to use height to your advantage etc etc"

And then when you point out that the shooting LOS system is completely 100% model to model, and a person who models their unit standing on a rock suddenly creates 100% more targetable area, the people who like shooting armies go

"But it would be so unrealistic to create some kind of system where the model's base or some other small marker was the only thing that mattered for LOS, it would be too abstracted and the game would no longer make any sense!"

If you wanna be a colossal THAT GUY, there is, as far as I'm aware, no rule requiring you to have your base flat on the board...

Granted, this problem isn't really felt if you play the game as intended, but for some reason the 40K players have an hard on for the ruins, so every scenery element gets classified as ruins.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

secretForge wrote:
If you wanna be a colossal THAT GUY, there is, as far as I'm aware, no rule requiring you to have your base flat on the board...

Depending on how silly the other player is, i would actually do it.
If you place your models on the second level of a ruin, then that is fine.
If you really place a char on top of a barrel, then i'm just going to balance my base against that barrel and attack you.

Spoletta wrote:
Congratulations, you have just stumbled upon one of the dumbest rule of 40K 8th.

What makes it even dumbest is that GW knows of this silly interaction, and yet the fix was "Oh let's give knights a stratagem to ignore this rule!".

Meanwhile a hyerophant cannot attack something at knee level.

A hierophant can indeed attack them.
Due to having no base you measure from the model it's self.

Jackal90 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
Congratulations, you have just stumbled upon one of the dumbest rule of 40K 8th.

What makes it even dumbest is that GW knows of this silly interaction, and yet the fix was "Oh let's give knights a stratagem to ignore this rule!".

Meanwhile a hyerophant cannot attack something at knee level.

A hierophant can indeed attack them.
Due to having no base you measure from the model it's self.

Oh, that's right!

Spoletta wrote:
Granted, this problem isn't really felt if you play the game as intended, but for some reason the 40K players have an hard on for the ruins, so every scenery element gets classified as ruins.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

secretForge wrote:
If you wanna be a colossal THAT GUY, there is, as far as I'm aware, no rule requiring you to have your base flat on the board...

Depending on how silly the other player is, i would actually do it.
If you place your models on the second level of a ruin, then that is fine.
If you really place a char on top of a barrel, then i'm just going to balance my base against that barrel and attack you.

...Except that this rule applies to every scenery element that you can physically stand models on top of. There is no reason that if I rule my rock as a "statue" I can't move models onto that rock if it's flat enough for them to stand.

Hilariously the rules of terrain in 40k are currently 'if you can place a model on top of the terrain feature and it doesn't fall over, it is legal for it to go there.'

The ol "Video game glitch" school of wargaming design. Any time I see someone deploy their devastator squad on top of a big tall rock or somewhere nobody can get to them, I flash back to my old days playing the original WW2 COD games online where someone would always find a way to run up to a crack in the wall and jump repeatedly and end up stuck in a building with just their rifle sticking out so they could kill people unmolested.

I had a fun instance where a squad of devastators with heavy bolters were in a ruin, they took up the whole floor with no room for another base. my orks lost around 20 boys on the way there and could only shoot their sluggas as the charge could not be done. Have also had my new wartrike wanting to assault in on a place and since his base cannot get in he just hangs out unable to fit and patiently waiting for shooting to clear more room the next round (because we know warbosses are known for their patience)

the_scotsman wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
Granted, this problem isn't really felt if you play the game as intended, but for some reason the 40K players have an hard on for the ruins, so every scenery element gets classified as ruins.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

secretForge wrote:
If you wanna be a colossal THAT GUY, there is, as far as I'm aware, no rule requiring you to have your base flat on the board...

Depending on how silly the other player is, i would actually do it.
If you place your models on the second level of a ruin, then that is fine.
If you really place a char on top of a barrel, then i'm just going to balance my base against that barrel and attack you.

...Except that this rule applies to every scenery element that you can physically stand models on top of. There is no reason that if I rule my rock as a "statue" I can't move models onto that rock if it's flat enough for them to stand.

Hilariously the rules of terrain in 40k are currently 'if you can place a model on top of the terrain feature and it doesn't fall over, it is legal for it to go there.'

The ol "Video game glitch" school of wargaming design. Any time I see someone deploy their devastator squad on top of a big tall rock or somewhere nobody can get to them, I flash back to my old days playing the original WW2 COD games online where someone would always find a way to run up to a crack in the wall and jump repeatedly and end up stuck in a building with just their rifle sticking out so they could kill people unmolested.

Sector Mechanicus and Thermal plasma regulators can be climbed and don't have that rule. Actually monsters can even climb without ladders, so they are more mobile than infantry.
Containers too can be climbed without problems by monsters and vehicles.
Literally only the ruins have that rule.

Wow, thank you guys for the many answers! Sadly we confirm this bug... anyway I would house rule / ignore that rule for engaging purposes for 3 reasons:
1. Is clearly stupid
2. The way is written lets me guess that they were thinking about moving and not engaging in CC (clearly 1" means you are close, from the arm of an ork, or the maw of a carnifex is the damn same)
3. Since there is the caveat of measuring from model if no bases, during the game I could just rage and take out the base from my Trygon, problem solved.

secretForge wrote:
If you wanna be a colossal THAT GUY, there is, as far as I'm aware, no rule requiring you to have your base flat on the board...

I've seen somebody put a little ball of sticky stuff on the bottom of their bases, so that their unit could run up the wall and engage some Tau. It was pretty funny.


An equally funny inverse effect is that you can conduct melee through a solid wall, but cannot shoot through a wall.

As a side note, the only army that's like strictly melee is Daemons, IIRC. Also, infantry can charge up and down floors. It shouldn't be hard to either field something that can shoot them off the floor, or field something that can get up there and fight with them.

Accordingly, a Mortar Squad inside a closed box and on 2" stilts could only be engaged by a Battlewagon or Artillery, which is funny and silly and a clear point where the abstraction breaks down.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

secretForge wrote:
If you wanna be a colossal THAT GUY, there is, as far as I'm aware, no rule requiring you to have your base flat on the board...

I've seen somebody put a little ball of sticky stuff on the bottom of their bases, so that their unit could run up the wall and engage some Tau. It was pretty funny.


As a side note, the only army that's like strictly melee is Daemons, IIRC. Also, infantry can charge up and down floors. It shouldn't be hard to either field something that can shoot them off the floor, or field something that can get up there and fight with them.

A couple weeks ago I heard a story from somebody who had That One Guy in his small garagehammer group who would habitually claim EXTREMELY dubious Line of Sight while refusing any line of sight from his opponent even when it was obvious a decent chunk of his model was visible. As a gag he read the rule for line of sight and saw that it said you had to "crouch down to look from your model's perspective and if you can see any part of the enemy model from that position, you had LOS.

So he put mirrors up all around the board.

I like the image of a Trygon or Wraithknight laying on their backs so that their base if vertical thus they can fight units 5 or so inches off the ground level.

lol

 admironheart wrote:
I like the image of a Trygon or Wraithknight laying on their backs so that their base if vertical thus they can fight units 5 or so inches off the ground level.

lol

I mean, they only attack by kicking up dust from the little circle of dirt around their feet anyway, so it makes sense.

Since 6th edition the melee troops of 40k have presented a game fantasy of being increasingly doofy and incompetent.

They deep strike down an extremely polite distance away, declare their intent to engage their opponent in an honorable duel of fisticuffs, stand with puffed-out chests as their opponents shoot them full of holes, then eye the distance between them carefully. If they decide "nope, it's just too far!" they just stand there twiddling their thumbs and wait to be finished off. When they do make it in, they fight for a little bit, and then if their opponents decide this has been fun, but really we'd like to just walk away from you so our buddies over there can shoot you in the face, the melee unit grins and says "yep, sounds fair, off you go then!" and they let the people they were just trying to hack to bits waltz away from them without so much as a taunting.

Then they stand frozen in place, probably with their arms still akimbo and faces stretched into hilarious movie pause face, while the opposing army stands 12 feet away from them carefully aiming their guns and gunning them down.

At this point, I would happily give up the possibility of an out-of-sequence fight phase in my opponent's turn if I could just get non-random charge distance (Maybe "if you want to charge, you can move 2x your move distance!") and some kind of attack of opportunity analogous to overwatch if my opponent wants to fall back.

Just have my models fight on my turn, and my opponent's models fight on my opponent's turn. I don't care. Just do SOMETHING to stop melee units from feeling like "the goons" in a movie.

So... for the same principle an infantry cannot charge another infantry that is on the top level of a ruin if there is no physical space to place the models, right?

 DarklyDreaming wrote:
So... for the same principle an infantry cannot charge another infantry that is on the top level of a ruin if there is no physical space to place the models, right?

Yes, as confirmed by FAQ.

yeah thank you, this is really sad, we should mail them about it, I already did it today

 DarklyDreaming wrote:
So... for the same principle an infantry cannot charge another infantry that is on the top level of a ruin if there is no physical space to place the models, right?

I always house-rule that with "If a model can get within 1" with a given charge roll but there is no physical space on the table we just pretend the model is standing within 1" so they can fight" while leaving the model in the closest possible spot where it doesn't keel over.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Spoletta wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
Granted, this problem isn't really felt if you play the game as intended, but for some reason the 40K players have an hard on for the ruins, so every scenery element gets classified as ruins.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

secretForge wrote:
If you wanna be a colossal THAT GUY, there is, as far as I'm aware, no rule requiring you to have your base flat on the board...

Depending on how silly the other player is, i would actually do it.
If you place your models on the second level of a ruin, then that is fine.
If you really place a char on top of a barrel, then i'm just going to balance my base against that barrel and attack you.

...Except that this rule applies to every scenery element that you can physically stand models on top of. There is no reason that if I rule my rock as a "statue" I can't move models onto that rock if it's flat enough for them to stand.

Hilariously the rules of terrain in 40k are currently 'if you can place a model on top of the terrain feature and it doesn't fall over, it is legal for it to go there.'

The ol "Video game glitch" school of wargaming design. Any time I see someone deploy their devastator squad on top of a big tall rock or somewhere nobody can get to them, I flash back to my old days playing the original WW2 COD games online where someone would always find a way to run up to a crack in the wall and jump repeatedly and end up stuck in a building with just their rifle sticking out so they could kill people unmolested.

Sector Mechanicus and Thermal plasma regulators can be climbed and don't have that rule. Actually monsters can even climb without ladders, so they are more mobile than infantry.
Containers too can be climbed without problems by monsters and vehicles.
Literally only the ruins have that rule.

Is that true? Hmm, then I was unintentionally cheating a year ago In that case my Crisis Suits should have had that sound thrashing from a Deffie wanting to climb up on a platform but we ruled that it couldn't based on the ruins rules