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Here was the situation (it was a FLGS mini tournament so we just rolled off at the time). Please understand I am not too familiar with the Tau rules so bear with me.
Sisters of Battle vs Tau. The guy had a FW huge bot thing with an assault 3d6 S7 AP-3 3 damage auto hit weapon (plus some other darn good weapon on its other arm) that had to die turn one as it had already wiped an exorcist and a unit of sisters turn 1 (it could move/advance basically the table). That weapon and it's back-up were awesome. (This was in a 50PL tourney, but please leave the OP/TFG/ FW unbalanced whatever out of this).
Back to my question. The thing was protected by a set of drones acting as bodyguards (shield drones).
I had whittled the drones down so there were 2 left. I fired a unit of Sisters at him, choosing to split my fire between the drone unit and the big Suit. My unit had 2 melta guns (sgt had a combi), and 8 bolters in rapid fire range.
As it was my turn I rolled my to hits (we agreed to group the bolters together, and then the meltas). Now here is the question. I rolled to wound with the bolters first (again, my turn).
It is at this point that he intervened and said since saves are controlled by him he gets to choose the order he rolls saves against wounds, and that I had to roll the melta's to wound, and he would make saves against them first, thus retaining his drones to protect against them. I argued that the BRB says the sequence completes with each weapon first before you move onto the next (fast rolling is optional, and I could have rolled each weapon through its full sequence one at a time).
Who was right? To me the BRB is obvious, but I am not the best rules lawyer about and it wasn't worth it to me at the time.

PS: He won the roll off, but it was moot, I damaged the thing, and my cannoness melted it with her inferno pistol with some divine rolling. Sadly, he surrendered the game (my first turn and it was the championship) because he had brought the classic one trick pony army.

You, the attacking player, control the order.

The technical process is:

Roll to-hit with Bolter shot 1
Roll to-wound, if it hit
Roll save
Apply damage

Repeat with Bolter shot 2 and further.

Edit: In other words, you're right.

Yep, you could even choose to fast roll all the bolters to make it easier , but aren't compelled to roll the melta.

Okay, thanks guys. I really couldn't see his side at all, but worried bias and such was influencing me.

edwardmyst wrote:
I had whittled the drones down so there were 2 left. I fired a unit of Sisters at him, choosing to split my fire between the drone unit and the big Suit. My unit had 2 melta guns (sgt had a combi), and 8 bolters in rapid fire range.
As it was my turn I rolled my to hits (we agreed to group the bolters together, and then the meltas). Now here is the question. I rolled to wound with the bolters first (again, my turn).

And this is where you went wrong. Per the rules, you need to resolve all the attack one unit makes against enemy units one at a time. The attacker picks, so you should have decided to resolved the Bolter shots at the drone unit before the Meltaguns against the Big Suit. You can Fast Roll against each unit when resolving those attacks.

edwardmyst wrote:

It is at this point that he intervened and said since saves are controlled by him he gets to choose the order he rolls saves against wounds, and that I had to roll the melta's to wound, and he would make saves against them first, thus retaining his drones to protect against them. I argued that the BRB says the sequence completes with each weapon first before you move onto the next (fast rolling is optional, and I could have rolled each weapon through its full sequence one at a time).
Who was right? To me the BRB is obvious, but I am not the best rules lawyer about and it wasn't worth it to me at the time.

He was partially right here in that he decides what models suffer wounds first, and thus allocates them to make the save, and if you had rolled the melta's at the same time as the bolters, he would have been right unfortunately. However, you made the explicit point that you were resolving bolters first and did not resolve the wounding process for the melta weapons yet. This immediately puts him in the wrong as you have already designated wounds against him that must be resolved first.

I Know all about this as my friends play the same way but without the shenanigans. we fast roll all weapons in a unit using colour coordinated dice then we resolve wounding and saves according to a pre-declared weapon order. it's just a fast rolling technique and does not allow him to dictate priority.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Yep, you could even choose to fast roll all the bolters to make it easier , but aren't compelled to roll the melta.

In fact, you're technically not ALLOWED to fast roll the melta with the bolters - they have to be the same statisticaly - Same BS/WS as applicable, same Strenth, AP, and Damage. So since you chose the bolters to go first, he would have had to fully resolve the bolters before you started rolling the Metlas.