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 kodos wrote:

Voss wrote:

Because its the most common flaw in area terrain rules, regardless of game system and company .

not really
LOS rules are always a tricky thing but I have rarily seen something similar like that outside of a GW game

Ok, but see Warmachine Mk3, page 79

When a model outside a forest attempts to draw line of sight to another point also outside that forest, the forest blocks line of sight to anything beyond it. Thus, a model can see 3˝ into or out of a forest but not completely through one regardless of how thick it is.

Forests do not block line of sight to huge-based models.

So, now you have. Even to the point of clear LOS to huge models (but not from)

Sticking to "cover as a bonus to saves," instead of going back to cover as its own form of save, is one of the biggest missteps of 8th and 9th.

Hankovitch wrote:
Sticking to "cover as a bonus to saves," instead of going back to cover as its own form of save, is one of the biggest missteps of 8th and 9th.

Yeah, cover being useless for high save models was soooo nice.

 Crimson wrote:

ITC houserules in combination with the box terrain their tournaments often use creates a situation where unit in a ruin can neither be shot or assaulted, being pretty much invulnerable. This is utterly terrible game design and should have been blatantly obvious to them.

This has nothing to do with LOS, though. This is just as true or not true under GW's 9th edition LOS rule. It makes no difference.

I mean if you want to modify your statement like that and say "this gives you the option to shoot them, even if you can't assault them" - fine, but that's just tilting the balance of the game against melee in favor of shooting. It's not a solution to the issue of not being able to assault into a ruin.

GW has seemed to have taken some cues from other game's terrain. I'm pretty used to infinite height LoS blocking features from Infinity. Takes a second to get used to but improves the effectiveness of close range units.

Also I wouldn't be even a little surprised by and advanced terrain rule page that takes in account relative heights. Like Cityfight rules for when buildings are taller than each other but also obscuring.

I will wait and see. It doesn't bother me either way.

 puma713 wrote:
I think at this point I might have to stop reading the previews as I seem to come away with more anxiety than excitement, even understanding that I haven't seen the 9th rulebook in its entirety. Previewing rules piecemeal is not really an effective marketing strategy, imo. I would, instead, have liked to see one entire part of the rules previewed (like the entire shooting phase) and then someone said, "and there are more changes like this coming soon!"

I don't think that would really help, you'll still get a load of people pointing out problems (justified or not), 9th will only settle into a better/worse/different game in the gaming publics mind once it's been played for a few months by the masses.

If it's better most of the grumbling will settle,
if it's worse there will be lots of grumbling as GWs sales will start to slip back as at least some of the players stop (or reduce) their involvement
if it's just different (which is where I think we'll end up) people will begin to get their heads round the new meta, rebuild their lists with a new balance of minis (and maybe abandon their previous faction if winning was more important than lore to them)

 addnid wrote:


Feeding into this would be if you didn’t represent 30% of the posts in some (most ?) pages of this thread. I would say you are shovelling metric tons into it

This is a message board. Who comes to a message board not to post?

Seems like a really weird reason to attack someone - for discussing things too much on a discussion board?

DanielFM wrote:

Yeah, cover being useless for high save models was soooo nice.

By comparison, it absolutely was.

Ice_can wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
The issue is that it isn't reciprocal. The big mek can target the flyer, but the flyer can't target the big mek. It's hard to make sense of that. The point is that the flyer is up in the air, so you can see it no matter how tall the building is, right? But why is it up in the air when the big mek wants to fire at it but not when it wants to fire at the big mek?

Non-reciprocal LOS - where one model can shoot another model but that model can't shoot back - is a massive can of worms to be opening.

Ork gunner hundreds of meters in the air won't spot a single fella hiding in rubble through a cloud of smoke dust and fire, the ork has an easier tim looking up and seeing a plane. The imagery makes sense in a cinematic way.

Okay a more dumb version of the issue of having a get out clause based on wounds.

A Repulsor can shoot a sparton through said 5 inch high obsuring terrain (even if it can not actually see the sparton) but the spartan can't shoot the Repulsor (even if it could actually see the Repulsor).

An Armiger Knight can shoot a Baneblade through said 5 inch high obsuring terrain (even if it can not actually see the Baneblade) but the Vaneblade can't shoot the Armiger (even if it could actually see the Armiger).

GW done goofed unless they have dropped a huge part of the rules to fix the above absurdity out of the preview.

That's one thing I don't like. If 5 inches is the break point then models shorter than 5 inches should be obscured. A quick check shows both my Cerberus and Fellblade under 4.

 Kanluwen wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Reading the goonhammer article, I must have misheard during the stream - apparently Dense Terrain is supposedly terrain that blocks sight, rather than stopping bullets.

That is extremely unfortunate because it means that Dense Terrain is then almost certainly -1 to hit.

Unless "Defensible" is where the rule that benefits hordes is hiding, that does not bode well for light infantry in this edition either.

I genuinely don't recall "Dense" being addressed at all, but I might have missed it when my phone rang.

But if you made me guess, Defensible is a trait that means units on or within the terrain piece can freely fire out of that terrain piece as if it's not there, and Breachible is a trait that applies to area terrain that allows Infantry Swarms and Beasts to move thru it freely while other unit types cannot.

Since for example Swamps and Craters are area terrain, I would assume area terrain does not by default prevent vehicles from entering

I'm actually wondering if "Breachable" is going to be with regards to vehicles being able to enter the terrain.

I wouldn't be shocked, personally, if Defensible is going to be a trait where any infantry units on/within can act as though it's not there.

I thought that too about defensible but thats already within the text of obscuring.

Dont know at this point. Probably something thst screws melee like full bs overwatch.

DanielFM wrote:

Hankovitch wrote:
Sticking to "cover as a bonus to saves," instead of going back to cover as its own form of save, is one of the biggest missteps of 8th and 9th.

Yeah, cover being useless for high save models was soooo nice.

It doesn't have to be either. There's an easy solution here: after hitting but before wounding, if a model is in cover, roll a dice for each hit; on a 6, the hit is absorbed by the cover and the attack sequence ends. Then go on to wound with the rest of your hits.

This means that cover gives equal benefit to everyone. It involves very slightly more dice rolling, but it's not as much as you'd think, because for each 6 you roll, you avoid the need to roll to wound, to save, and to FNP for that hit, and you don't have to calculate what cover does to the armor save either, so the total time spent is actually about the same.

I think at some point you have to take a step back, realize you don't have all the information with how 9th works as a whole, and think maybe this will actually work. I can't imagine the playtesters playing all of their games, and not returning to GW saying that the terrain rules are really janky, confusing and don't help at all. So at some point, in gameplay, this must all come together and work reasonably well. Anything else currently here is pure speculation, and not well informed as it stands.

GW writes janky rules all the time so this isn't exactly new.

yukishiro1 wrote:

This has nothing to do with LOS, though. This is just as true or not true under GW's 9th edition LOS rule. It makes no difference.

I mean if you want to modify your statement like that and say "this gives you the option to shoot them, even if you can't assault them" - fine, but that's just tilting the balance of the game against melee in favor of shooting. It's not a solution to the issue of not being able to assault into a ruin.

That you can shoot them indeed means that the unit is not completely invulnerable, which is important. It also means that you can make room for your assaulters to get into base to base by first killing some enemies via shooting. GW rules are massively more functional than ITC ones. It is not even a close contest.

Granted, I wish they have streamlined and cleared rules about assaults and close combat in terrain. The 8th edition rules for those are unnecessarily fiddly and sometimes lead to unintuitive results. And I think they said that at least some changes have been made.

 bullyboy wrote:
I think at some point you have to take a step back, realize you don't have all the information with how 9th works as a whole, and think maybe this will actually work. I can't imagine the playtesters playing all of their games, and not returning to GW saying that the terrain rules are really janky, confusing and don't help at all. So at some point, in gameplay, this must all come together and work reasonably well. Anything else currently here is pure speculation, and not well informed as it stands.

I very much hope your optimism is justified.

What makes some of these changes difficult for some folks I think is that rules that previously were ostensibly more “realistic” ie true line of sight, are now explicitly abstracted. This can be distracting in some respects as it can seem to break immersion, it can make things much clearer in playing the game. If some of these idiosyncrasies remain unresolved in the full rules, such as standing on a hill vs infinitely tall terrain, I think they would easily be resolved by either TOs in that setting or simply having a discussion with your opponent. If your opponent is not someone you can have a reasonable discussion regarding terrain and come to a reasonable agreement on how to play, perhaps that isn’t someone that it’s worth playing with?

 bullyboy wrote:
I think at some point you have to take a step back, realize you don't have all the information with how 9th works as a whole, and think maybe this will actually work. I can't imagine the playtesters playing all of their games, and not returning to GW saying that the terrain rules are really janky, confusing and don't help at all. So at some point, in gameplay, this must all come together and work reasonably well. Anything else currently here is pure speculation, and not well informed as it stands.

Neither can i, I can imagine them doing all of that and GW just doing what they want regardless though XD

The obscured rule previewed today is pretty clear cut, not sure what extra gubbins can remove the mental examples the fine members of dakka came up with in 3 hours.

Either/Or wrote:
What makes some of these changes difficult for some folks I think is that rules that previously were ostensibly more “realistic” ie true line of sight, are now explicitly abstracted. This can be distracting in some respects as it can seem to break immersion, it can make things much clearer in playing the game. If some of these idiosyncrasies remain unresolved in the full rules, such as standing on a hill vs infinitely tall terrain, I think they would easily be resolved by either TOs in that setting or simply having a discussion with your opponent. If your opponent is not someone you can have a reasonable discussion regarding terrain and come to a reasonable agreement on how to play, perhaps that isn’t someone that it’s worth playing with?

I find it immensely more realistic that you no longer can shoot someone through four tiny gaps in two separate buildings.

One interesting thing about having all these playtesters come out and tell everybody it's the best edition ever is that they are putting their reputations on the line. Previously, when GW said "this will be the best edition ever! everything is totally perfect!" it didn't really matter because it was GW, and nobody trusts them to be impartial.

Now, we have a bunch of respected people in the community telling us this really is great in every way and there are no downsides at all, it's better than 8th in every way. If that doesn't turn out to be the case, their credibility will suffer. The optimist in me says this means it actually is a lot better in practice than this piece-meal rule revealing has made it look. The pessimist says maybe they just got paid.

yukishiro1 wrote:
One interesting thing about having all these playtesters come out and tell everybody it's the best edition ever is that they are putting their reputations on the line. Previously, when GW said "this will be the best edition ever! everything is totally perfect!" it didn't really matter because it was GW, and nobody trusts them to be impartial.

Now, we have a bunch of respected people in the community telling us this really is great in every way and there are no downsides at all, it's better than 8th in every way. If that doesn't turn out to be the case, their credibility will suffer. The optimist in me says this means it actually is a lot better in practice than this piece-meal rule revealing has made it look. The pessimist says maybe they just got paid.

You'd think that their reputation would be on the line, except that Reece is still being defended for his crap statements about 8th still.

yukishiro1 wrote:
One interesting thing about having all these playtesters come out and tell everybody it's the best edition ever is that they are putting their reputations on the line. Previously, when GW said "this will be the best edition ever! everything is totally perfect!" it didn't really matter because it was GW, and nobody trusts them to be impartial.

Now, we have a bunch of respected people in the community telling us this really is great in every way and there are no downsides at all, it's better than 8th in every way. If that doesn't turn out to be the case, their credibility will suffer. The optimist in me says this means it actually is a lot better in practice than this piece-meal rule revealing has made it look. The pessimist says maybe they just got paid.

These are the same guys that get free books from GW every month and make a living from their product being popular. I love table top tactics etc, but they are never that critical of GW.

So obscuring terrain is an infinitely high and complete LOS blocking, even if there are things on either side that are far beyond the height of the intervening terrain?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
So obscuring terrain is an infinitely high and complete LOS blocking, even if there are things on either side that are far beyond the height of the intervening terrain?

yep, appears that way for now if the terrain has the obscured rule. I'm gonna re-quote galas because of his epic example

 Galas wrote:
So by the new obscuration rules this two miniatures can't see each other?

Spoiler:

In fairness, I think GW assumes “hills” are and inch or two of insulation foam. We also don’t know scaleable. It might allow units on top to see over intervening terrain.

someone posted this on the WH40k facebook thread for the preview, another legend.

bloodletter is safe

 Latro_ wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
One interesting thing about having all these playtesters come out and tell everybody it's the best edition ever is that they are putting their reputations on the line. Previously, when GW said "this will be the best edition ever! everything is totally perfect!" it didn't really matter because it was GW, and nobody trusts them to be impartial.

Now, we have a bunch of respected people in the community telling us this really is great in every way and there are no downsides at all, it's better than 8th in every way. If that doesn't turn out to be the case, their credibility will suffer. The optimist in me says this means it actually is a lot better in practice than this piece-meal rule revealing has made it look. The pessimist says maybe they just got paid.

These are the same guys that get free books from GW every month and make a living from their product being popular. I love table top tactics etc, but they are never that critical of GW.

Well, sort-of. They were quite critical of some of the PA releases (the GSC one, for example). They don't say "OMG GW you suck @#%@%@#%@" but they have been pretty upfront in the past about rules they think miss the mark.

In contrast, Lawrence actually said in a video the other day that there is not a single downside to 9th edition, that it is better in literally every single way. That's going far further into hype territory than you could reasonably say they are obligated to do in order to continue their cushy relationship with GW. It honestly surprised me, because it was going so far that it seems almost certain to come back to bite him at least a little bit.

 Crimson wrote:

Either/Or wrote:
What makes some of these changes difficult for some folks I think is that rules that previously were ostensibly more “realistic” ie true line of sight, are now explicitly abstracted. This can be distracting in some respects as it can seem to break immersion, it can make things much clearer in playing the game. If some of these idiosyncrasies remain unresolved in the full rules, such as standing on a hill vs infinitely tall terrain, I think they would easily be resolved by either TOs in that setting or simply having a discussion with your opponent. If your opponent is not someone you can have a reasonable discussion regarding terrain and come to a reasonable agreement on how to play, perhaps that isn’t someone that it’s worth playing with?

I find it immensely more realistic that you no longer can shoot someone through four tiny gaps in two separate buildings.

But you still can. You only can't if one or more of the buildings is 5" tall AND classified as obscuring terrain. Obscuring terrain does nothing unless specifically built to be tall.
If you've got a collection of GW Ruins from old starter sets? Obscuring rarely kicks in.

Either/Or wrote:
What makes some of these changes difficult for some folks I think is that rules that previously were ostensibly more “realistic” ie true line of sight, are now explicitly abstracted.

Well some of them are, which is the real problem. They've gone 'either/or' in multiple cases- some are 'true line of sight,' some are abstracted, and in some cases its bafflingly both.

And in a couple, like heavy cover, you get a situation where a defended position doesn't protect against charges, which is simply wrong whether you're going for abstracted OR realistic. It's like having pikes be bad against cavalry charges and good against infantry.

Yep. It's the height of one of those buildings that matters now, not how many are in the way.

Ice_can wrote:

A Repulsor can shoot a sparton through said 5 inch high obsuring terrain (even if it can not actually see the sparton) but the spartan can't shoot the Repulsor (even if it could actually see the Repulsor).

Would you mind quoting anything from the preview allowing a model to target another model it can't see to clear up the bolded part ? The only thing they say is that even if an "obscuring" terrain piece is between a repulsor and a spartan, the repulsor can ignore the obscuring rule if the spartan is its target. Not that it can ignore the terrain all together.
You guys are filling pages and pages about this stuff but... we don't have the targeting rule. We just know part of its interaction with "obscuring" and i'm pretty sure TLOS is still in effect and if you can't see something, you can't shoot it.

 Latro_ wrote:
someone posted this on the WH40k facebook thread for the preview, another legend.

bloodletter is safe

The bloodletter is clearly not safe. If the Knight moves to the right or the left, it will be able to shoot the bloodletter. If the knight goes to the front, it will be able to charge and kill the boodletter.