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 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Today I learned that anytime anyone fired at a non-rectangular vehicle in earlier editions, the game exploded.

Which is weird because I played then and I play now and I don't remember communities collapsing or stores exploding....

The game did explode. The jank 7th edition ruleset couldn't handle non-rectangular vehicles. Horus Heresy still can't. It was PLAYERS who made that rule at all functional. Fixing GW's shoddy rules and the silly notion that future tanks only have enough armor for the front swoops and not the giant flat back where the engine is (another problem with the ruleset) took opponents working together to fix; even as the game disincentivizes doing so.

GW's diagram of where the firing arcs and facings on a Knight were is mostly lost to time, but it was atrocious and one of the few rules utterly dismissed by the community.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

CadianSgtBob wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Clear enough for reasonable and civil individuals.

But it wasn't. No matter how reasonable and civil you were you still had to make up your own rules for how a Barracuda's facings worked because the rules did not cover it. No matter how reasonable and civil you were you still had situations where you could not measure scatter accurately.

Oh no, the horrors of a house rule :O

If you have to houserule it to make it work, it's a broken rule. Why would you WANT to keep broken rules in your game? Especially when vehicle facings added literally nothing to 7th and don't make much of a difference in current HH either.

Or do you guys spend a whole lot of time getting into the rear arcs of Spartan's and Dreadnoughts now? Is that something you do in current HH? For the tictacs?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Today I learned that anytime anyone fired at a non-rectangular vehicle in earlier editions, the game exploded.

Which is weird because I played then and I play now and I don't remember communities collapsing or stores exploding....

Well clearly you are just remembering revisionists history because no one was able to simply discuss with their oponants before hand what would work.
/s

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Today I learned that anytime anyone fired at a non-rectangular vehicle in earlier editions, the game exploded.

Which is weird because I played then and I play now and I don't remember communities collapsing or stores exploding....

Well clearly you are just remembering revisionists history because no one was able to simply discuss with their oponants before hand what would work.
/s

The fact that you had to meant the rule was broken.

Also, sidebar, I love that new Horus Heresy made bushes even scarier. What greater threat is there to a Space Marine, the Emperor's Angels of War, than a small shrub, or mild incline?

SO much immersion. .

The best parts of the new Horus Heresy rules are the stuff they ripped off from Sigmar.

That's what we should do! 40k and Horus Heresy have just been aping Sigmar mechanics for years already. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to just convert both to the Sigmar ruleset wholesale!

I've figured out the best solution. You can all go home now.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Oh no, the horrors of a house rule :O

Thank you for finally admitting that house rules were required, contrary to your original claim that the rules were already perfectly clear and only TFGs would have a problem with them. I'm glad we're now in agreement that even reasonable players needed to change the rules to make them work.

Oh yeah dangerous terrain now? horribly scary like terrifying now.

I would not say they rip off sigmar, but they are greatly inspired by it you know....considering it was written by the same people. To which honestly? i would be ok with, AoS rules are actually pretty damn good, the lore is the big poopa but the game is actually quite fun and enjoyable.


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CadianSgtBob wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Oh no, the horrors of a house rule :O

Thank you for finally admitting that house rules were required, contrary to your original claim that the rules were already perfectly clear and only TFGs would have a problem with them. I'm glad we're now in agreement that even reasonable players needed to change the rules to make them work.

What ever makes you happy kid, We ran some 15 years never running into issues with the rules, the rule book complexly told you how to deal with it, so.

Ill let you have your last word if you want but i think we can both agree this is going no where.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
We ran some 15 years never running into issues with the rules

Because, as you admit, you house ruled them to something that did work.

Old dangerous terrain was awful:

"Brother-Captain Erasmus Bane is a veteran of 3,000 years of constant combat.

A Daemon-Hunter without peer, Captain Bane has personally banished fourteen Greater Daemons, one of them four times over!

After twenty years in seclusion, he learned the dreaded True Name of Gathrak the Mindshredder, a pernicious Keeper of Secrets that plagued the Aquila Sector for close to two centuries!

Now, in the twisted wastes of Elfor VI, he and his company have come after a new quarry: A man recentlh ascended to Daemonhood, one who has forsaken all his oaths to the Emperor, one who has...

Oh no! A tree root!

... and thus ended the saga of Brother-Captain Erasmus Bane."

Later down the line you could save against that, but originally it was't good.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Old dangerous terrain was awful:

"Brother-Captain Erasmus Bane is a veteran of 3,000 years of constant combat.

A Daemon-Hunter without peer, Captain Bane has personally banished fourteen Greater Daemons, one of them four times over!

After twenty years in seclusion, he learned the dreaded True Name of Gathrak the Mindshredder, a pernicious Keeper of Secrets that plagued the Aquila Sector for close to two centuries!

Now, in the twisted wastes of Elfor VI, he and his company have come after a new quarry: A man recentlyh ascended to Daemonhood, one who has forsaken all his oaths to the Emperor, one who has...

Oh no! A tree root!

... and thus ended the saga of Brother-Captain Erasmus Bane."

I enjoy the simplicity at least of difficult terrain, just a -2 to movement. But i think the big thing is to make dangerous, and hazerdous terrain feel better is just to appropriately lable what they are, like a tree root should obviously NOT be dangerous terrain.

My point was more that it was one of those rules that blatantly went against all the structures of causing damage that exist in the rules* (strength v toughness/AP vs saves/damage v wounds/etc.) in favour of a straight out wound that couldn't be saved or negated in any way.

It didn't make any sense that a Lascannon blast can be saved, but some terrain could fell the mightiest warlord with some awkwardly placed footing.


*A bit like the 8th/9th morale rules that I promised I would stop bringing up.

OH yeah im not a fan of that though.
Yeah i never was a fan of just something wounds you out right. Personally i enjoy and think the better method is "Take a S x hit at AP -" because that at least feels a bit better.

Oh bro 8th and 9th moral sucks, just loosing more models to moral then shooting feels really bad.

 jeff white wrote:
Actually, if GW retconned the last few years, back to pre formation freebies, saying that it was a bubble from when fantasy was obliterated but somehow the bubbles had been re unified and the Old World returns plus new stuff since introduced and the same with 40K

........... ... wut?

dude, lore and rules are two very differant things

CadianSgtBob wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Oh no, the horrors of a house rule :O

Thank you for finally admitting that house rules were required, contrary to your original claim that the rules were already perfectly clear and only TFGs would have a problem with them. I'm glad we're now in agreement that even reasonable players needed to change the rules to make them work.

They don't need to change any rules, they just need to agree on where the "corners" are for determining arc.

 Insectum7 wrote:
They don't need to change any rules, they just need to agree on where the "corners" are for determining arc.

Agreeing to add imaginary corners to treat a triangle as a rectangle is a house rule, one that only needs to exist because the rule as printed couldn't handle vehicles that weren't rectangles. And it absolutely refutes the original claim that the facing rules were perfectly clear unless you were TFG because the printed rules give no guidance whatsoever on where these new corners should be on your triangle.

Photocopying the x solves that....

Racerguy180 wrote:
Photocopying the x solves that....

What angle are the lines of the X when dealing with a triangle model?

Racerguy180 wrote:
Photocopying the x solves that....

Thats what we always did, or just clarified what we decided the corners of vehicles were.

I'm a pretty big proponent of armor facings as a gameplay mechanic but I will fully agree with CadianSgtBob that 'work it out with your opponent' is a pretty poor rule for a wargame. You shouldn't need to come to a mutual agreement about such a basic mechanic, particularly if the answer is not obvious, as is the case with Eldar skimmers.

Again, not like it's hard to fix- 90 degree arcs work, or just having front/back 180 degree arcs is a pretty common system in wargames- but corner-to-corner only works well when all the vehicles in play are boxes (as in HH).

ERJAK wrote:
The best parts of the new Horus Heresy rules are the stuff they ripped off from Sigmar.

That's what we should do! 40k and Horus Heresy have just been aping Sigmar mechanics for years already. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to just convert both to the Sigmar ruleset wholesale!

I've figured out the best solution. You can all go home now.

Er, hell no - any system where a Goblin finds it as easy to hit and wound a freaking Bloodthirster as it does another Goblin is a system that has fundamental flaws, and should not be aped.

As for the vehicle facings "debate", I don't recall ever having problems with it back in t'day. I will say, however, that it would certainly have been a good idea to provide a top-down diagram showing the facings in the Codex (or IA book, in the case of silly anime flyers), as that would prevent most potential "discussions" without taking up too much space.

 catbarf wrote:
I'm a pretty big proponent of armor facings as a gameplay mechanic but I will fully agree with CadianSgtBob that 'work it out with your opponent' is a pretty poor rule for a wargame. You shouldn't need to come to a mutual agreement about such a basic mechanic, particularly if the answer is not obvious, as is the case with Eldar skimmers.

Again, not like it's hard to fix- 90 degree arcs work, or just having front/back 180 degree arcs is a pretty common system in wargames- but corner-to-corner only works well when all the vehicles in play are boxes (as in HH).

The thing is, you are not arguing about the mechanic or settling on the mechanic. The mechanic is clear cut and not up for debate.
To determine the facings you draw a line from opposite corners. Thats it, thats how they are done

The agreement is on "Hey what is the corner of this vehicle that is not a box?"
I agree we SHOULD not have to do that, and gw SHOULD say what the corners are of none box vehicles. But we dont live in should land.

There is no issue with the rule because the rule tells you what and how to do it, you just need to determine it with your opponent prior. Its no different then agreeing on what a cocked die is. The common community agreement is, if you can set another die atop it, its not cocked, thats not in the rules, thats just a agreed upon community rule for determining if a die is to cocked.


But either way, are there better ways to do it? sure, but is there any real issues with the current armor facing set up? no because the rules tell you how to settle it.


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Also armor facing aside because that train has reached the end of its tracks at this point.

Moving on to AP, i for one lord the return of the all or nothing AP system, and the way HH is doing it by reducing AP3 and 2 across the board but instead are handing out a lot more breaching and rending i think is a great idea, offers a lot more room to balance, and it once more makes Sv 2 mean something again.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Its no different then agreeing on what a cocked die is. The common community agreement is, if you can set another die atop it, its not cocked, thats not in the rules, thats just a agreed upon community rule for determining if a die is to cocked.

It's not the same at all. "Cocked die" has a meaning that is understood even outside of gaming, the only question is exactly what degree of cocking is required for it to count. But whatever angle you settle on you're still dealing with the same concept. With the Barracuda situation you can't draw an X between the corners of a rectangle because the Barracuda is a triangle and doesn't have four corners. You have to completely set aside the "draw an X through the corners" rule and make up an alternative method that is not found anywhere in the rules. You can use a fixed 90* angle for the facings regardless of model shape, you can draw a bounding box around the Barracuda and draw an X through the corners of the box, etc. None of those are found in the rules, and nothing in the rules suggests a preference for any of the possible answers.

And of course the bigger problem here: two reasonable people can disagree on the answer. I think it's A, my opponent thinks it's B, we roll off on a 4+ and it's B. Except next game another opponent thinks the answer is C, so now we roll off on a 4+ for A vs. C and get A. Game after that, A vs. D and it's D. You have to keep having disputes over how to resolve the situation and you're never going to find a final answer. And strategic questions like "how vulnerable is my vehicle to rear armor shots" become impossible to plan for since you don't even know which possible options you're going to have to 4+ between until you sit down with a list and start having the pre-game dispute with your opponent.

CadianSgtBob wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
Photocopying the x solves that....

What angle are the lines of the X when dealing with a triangle model?

Well if you're photocopying it out of the book the angles are set in stone by GW. How is that not clear???

At this point I'm beginning to think you're being purposefully contrarian.

Racerguy180 wrote:

CadianSgtBob wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
Photocopying the x solves that....

What angle are the lines of the X when dealing with a triangle model?

Well if you're photocopying it out of the book the angles are set in stone by GW. How is that not clear???

At this point I'm beginning to think you're being purposefully contrarian.

That is the default way to do it, but the GW rules say, "Draw from corner, to opposite corner." so the question becomes, "Well what is the corner of a wave serpent?"
To which we have been arguing that its super easy to determine that by just simply asking your opponent or telling them. "Hey this point on my model, i consider this the corner in regards to facings, you cool with that?" and then look, its no longer an issue.

But yes i to agree with the contrarian stance.

Racerguy180 wrote:
Well if you're photocopying it out of the book the angles are set in stone by GW.

"Use the angles for the Rhino example in the book" is a house rule. Remember that the angles in the book were not set in stone, they were explicitly different for each vehicle.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:

CadianSgtBob wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
Photocopying the x solves that....

What angle are the lines of the X when dealing with a triangle model?

Well if you're photocopying it out of the book the angles are set in stone by GW. How is that not clear???

At this point I'm beginning to think you're being purposefully contrarian.

That is the default way to do it, but the GW rules say, "Draw from corner, to opposite corner." so the question becomes, "Well what is the corner of a wave serpent?"
To which we have been arguing that its super easy to determine that by just simply asking your opponent or telling them. "Hey this point on my model, i consider this the corner in regards to facings, you cool with that?" and then look, its no longer an issue.

But yes i to agree with the contrarian stance.

this is just proof that xenos are the real problem with 40k, get ridda em

in all seriousness though, yeah the problem with "model bases rules" is GW doesn't really think of those things in the design phase. they just go with "what looks cool"

you can be certain when GW designs something like the wave serpant no one asked "so what about figuring out the angles on this?"

 Backspacehacker wrote:
That is the default way to do it, but the GW rules say, "Draw from corner, to opposite corner." so the question becomes, "Well what is the corner of a wave serpent?"
To which we have been arguing that its super easy to determine that by just simply asking your opponent or telling them. "Hey this point on my model, i consider this the corner in regards to facings, you cool with that?" and then look, its no longer an issue.

Okay, let's simplify shooting: 'To resolve a shooting attack, roll a die. If the result seems reasonable, remove the target model.' The question becomes 'what is reasonable?'. And it's super easy to determine that, simply ask your opponent or tell them 'Hey, I consider a 4+ reasonable, you cool with that?' and then look, it's no longer an issue. That's a very clear and easy to implement rule with minimal possibility for problems, right?

Obviously an extreme reductio ad absurdum. But the point is that it doesn't matter if a rule is clearly written (draw from corner to corner) if it's not clear how to implement it (where's the corner?) and the result is that you need to essentially houserule with your opponent before the game (the corner is here) with all sorts of potential for disagreement (nah man in my old group the corner was always here).

 catbarf wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
That is the default way to do it, but the GW rules say, "Draw from corner, to opposite corner." so the question becomes, "Well what is the corner of a wave serpent?"
To which we have been arguing that its super easy to determine that by just simply asking your opponent or telling them. "Hey this point on my model, i consider this the corner in regards to facings, you cool with that?" and then look, its no longer an issue.

Okay, let's simplify shooting: 'To resolve a shooting attack, roll a die. If the result seems reasonable, remove the target model.' The question becomes 'what is reasonable?'. And it's super easy to determine that, simply ask your opponent or tell them 'Hey, I consider a 4+ reasonable, you cool with that?' and then look, it's no longer an issue. That's a very clear and easy to implement rule with minimal possibility for problems, right?

Obviously an extreme reductio ad absurdum. But the point is that it doesn't matter if a rule is clearly written (draw from corner to corner) if it's not clear how to implement it (where's the corner?) and the result is that you need to essentially houserule with your opponent before the game (the corner is here) with all sorts of potential for disagreement (nah man in my old group the corner was always here).

Right....except there are rules that clearly lay out how shooting works and the entire process. BS 4 means you hit on a 3+, if you can draw line of sight to the model, from your shooting model, you can shoot it. S4 wounds T4 on 4.
You don't and cant debate that because its empirical, you cant debate that a S4 weapon wounds a T4 model on a 4.

Again like you said an extreme example yes but its not really apt because shooting is clearly defined of what it is and what it can be.

Corner to corner, also agian, is pretty clear but like you said, where is the corner is the debate.
What I, and many people in this thread have been pointing out, its not hard to have that conversation about where that corner is, and move on with the game, can that lead to disagreements? Of course, but any sensible player can make comprises to get htat the agreed point for both players.

ALL OF THIS, though, goes directly back to my orignal point on rules with scatter, templtes, blast markers, 25% cover, and armor facings. The only time it ever caused actual issues in the game, was when you ran up against people who literally just wanted to argue to argue the rules. Multiple people already have echoed what i have said armor facings even on awkward vehicles really never came into effect because they are sensible players that can go "Oh yeah this is reasonable."

I make no denial in agreeing there would be better ways, If i had it my way every vehicle that used AV would have its own base that say on a square and clearly marked what was the side and front but thats me..


I think at this point though we are just going in circles, anymore, getting no where with anyone. That i think we can all agree on.

CadianSgtBob wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Im not going to explain to you something that picutres inside the rule book show you how to do. You are just willfully choosing to not understand it. The rules for Vehicle facings are clear as day in the rule books, It did not, and still does not, take a rocket scientist to figure it out.
I know you can as well.

Please stop trying to substitute rudeness for a valid argument.

The rulebook shows that you draw the X from the center to each corner. This method only works for vehicles with four clearly defined corners (like the Rhino in the picture), which both of the vehicles I mentioned lack.

Draw your x. Put an arrow pointing up, the the x … so the arrow should point up in the meddle between the two top arma of the x. Put that on top of your Falcon pointing directly forward… done.

 jeff white wrote:
Draw your x.

But what is the angle between the legs of the X?

This is why we can't have nice things. Sheesh.

Ok... the fated X.

I guess that house rules involving interpretation are not supposed to be part of the game experience? I always thought that resolving such issues in the best interests of the group, i.e. both players, was one of the most socially redeeming aspects of wargames like 40K, because people can apply this practice at resolving disputes cooperatively to real life contexts...

If we look at the condition of society, it seems that this process goes both ways... people who have not learned to cooperate constructively for a common end in real world experience are unable to apply such skills to in-game experiences...