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So you have lone guy standing in open shooting big gun and rest of squad wound markers stand out of los so enemy can kill max 1/turn?

Again new exploit. Not easy to come up with rule that doesnt open up exploits

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
The problem is less speed rolling than with character sniping. Back when you could only kill those specific models that you could see, the common tactic was to park a vehicle in front of your own unit, blocking LOS to some of the enemy unit and leaving just the character or special/heavy weapon guy visible. Having casualities come from anywhere in the unit removed that exploit.

The two are not mutually exclusive. Just make it so casualties are pulled from the unit, but you cannot kill more than what you can see.

Man I think you would enjoy legion, this basically how legion works. Not exactly, as depending on the number of models in the unit obscured you get cover, which removes 1-2 hits from the attack pool. Which can be anywhere from crippling to barely mattering depending on the unit, but it's very similar. A case where it's not explicitly stated, but due to the nature of the game it generally works out that way. Legion also gets around the "park the vehicle and leaving the heavy weapon visible" problem by drawing targeting LOS from the squad leader, while actual attack LOS made is drawn from the individual models.

 Jidmah wrote:

leopard wrote:
easy way to avoid that sniping stuff

"models in your army or your opponents army do not block line of sight to other such models"

now one model visible due to a building or ruin etc, one model only can die, carefully parking vehicles to try and snipe characters as the "only visible target" no longer works

this is how a fair few other games get around this while having models actually out of sight being unkillable

How do you check TLOS if there is two battlewagons, a landraider, a knight, a character on a tactical pile of corpses and a baneblade between the two units trying to shoot each other?

you don't use TLOS

I like that solution

PenitentJake wrote:
Yeah, that would work - I'd be fine with that compromise.

tneva82 wrote:

In real life you would hit rhino shooting from gap smaller than ammunition...

Show me irl video of abrams shooting through gap of millimeters betmeen 2 friendly vehicles. Go on. I'm sure you have many examples since you claim that's realistic.

So sorry your realism arqument fails.

Look dude, if a marine is 32 mm tall, and that represents 8ft, a 1mm gap on a table represents a 3 inch gap.

Is it rare for someone to shoot through a three inch gap? Absolutely.

Is it less rare than a guy out of view behind a building dying because his friend in the open got hit? Also yes, because that is a thing that is literally not possible, so my realism argument is fine. And if you want to prove otherwise, how about YOU show us a video of one guy dying when another guy gets hit.

Casualties being pulled from anywhere in the squad is, at least in older editions, explicitly identified as an abstraction to represent troops picking up heavy weapons from dead squadmates, moving forward to fill the gap, et cetera. It's not a perfect abstraction, but it is explained and reasonably intuitive.

What's the abstraction behind two Rhinos perfectly positioning so that the guy behind them can only see the enemy squad leader? What does it represent?

Not everything in a wargame needs to be a 1:1 simulation of how things actually work, and the games that try that usually suck. But whatever abstractions a wargame does implement need to be coherent, logical, and readily explainable. Rhino sniping was always a feels-bad experience because it isn't logical; it was an unintended edge case of well-meaning casualty removal rules that tried to be simulationist and in the process created undesirable side effects.

The solution is that you can only kill as many models as you have line of sight to, but wounds inflicted can be allocated to models outside of line of sight by the defending player if they wish.

There. Fixed. I is smort.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
The solution is that you can only kill as many models as you have line of sight to, but wounds inflicted can be allocated to models outside of line of sight by the defending player if they wish.

There. Fixed. I is smort.

No. So you have big unit with big gun. You shoot at full strength, enemy kills 1/turn max. No downside for defender.

You just created new exploit.

You not so smort.

tneva82 wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
The solution is that you can only kill as many models as you have line of sight to, but wounds inflicted can be allocated to models outside of line of sight by the defending player if they wish.

There. Fixed. I is smort.

No. So you have big unit with big gun. You shoot at full strength, enemy kills 1/turn max. No downside for defender.

You just created new exploit.

You not so smort.

What are you even talking about?

tneva82 wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
The solution is that you can only kill as many models as you have line of sight to, but wounds inflicted can be allocated to models outside of line of sight by the defending player if they wish.

There. Fixed. I is smort.

No. So you have big unit with big gun. You shoot at full strength, enemy kills 1/turn max. No downside for defender.

You just created new exploit.

You not so smort.

just move to a position where you see more of the squad...

 vipoid wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
The solution is that you can only kill as many models as you have line of sight to, but wounds inflicted can be allocated to models outside of line of sight by the defending player if they wish.

There. Fixed. I is smort.

No. So you have big unit with big gun. You shoot at full strength, enemy kills 1/turn max. No downside for defender.

You just created new exploit.

You not so smort.

What are you even talking about?

Dangle the lascannon of a tac squad in the open, rest of squad out of Los. No matter how hard you try that lascannon would see the game through unless you get a better angle

Dudeface wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
The solution is that you can only kill as many models as you have line of sight to, but wounds inflicted can be allocated to models outside of line of sight by the defending player if they wish.

There. Fixed. I is smort.

No. So you have big unit with big gun. You shoot at full strength, enemy kills 1/turn max. No downside for defender.

You just created new exploit.

You not so smort.

What are you even talking about?

Dangle the lascannon of a tac squad in the open, rest of squad out of Los. No matter how hard you try that lascannon would see the game through unless you get a better angle

1: Oh no I need to manoeuver! Woe is me!

2: Plink one wound at a time from multiple sources to whittle the unit down around the lascannon. Not one wound per turn - one wound per source of incoming fire.

3: Block the lascannon's line of sight. (This might be dangerously close to maneuvering though...)

Dudeface wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
The solution is that you can only kill as many models as you have line of sight to, but wounds inflicted can be allocated to models outside of line of sight by the defending player if they wish.

There. Fixed. I is smort.

No. So you have big unit with big gun. You shoot at full strength, enemy kills 1/turn max. No downside for defender.

You just created new exploit.

You not so smort.

What are you even talking about?

Dangle the lascannon of a tac squad in the open, rest of squad out of Los. No matter how hard you try that lascannon would see the game through unless you get a better angle

If the entire unit is effectively just wounds, and shooting with them holds not value. Then I would surmise that GW has probably failed in other places.

Since being honest, I don’t think this is too much an issue.

They could also use Warmachine style, where the one mini that dies. If it’s imported can replace another mini in the unit, so heavy weapons at least need to move back into position.
Also could create an interesting way to use blast weapons, since they could be blowing up the full unit behind cover. And we certainly need more chances for opportunity options.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
The solution is that you can only kill as many models as you have line of sight to, but wounds inflicted can be allocated to models outside of line of sight by the defending player if they wish.

There. Fixed. I is smort.

No. So you have big unit with big gun. You shoot at full strength, enemy kills 1/turn max. No downside for defender.

You just created new exploit.

You not so smort.

What are you even talking about?

Dangle the lascannon of a tac squad in the open, rest of squad out of Los. No matter how hard you try that lascannon would see the game through unless you get a better angle

1: Oh no I need to manoeuver! Woe is me!

2: Plink one wound at a time from multiple sources to whittle the unit down around the lascannon. Not one wound per turn - one wound per source of incoming fire.

3: Block the lascannon's line of sight. (This might be dangerously close to maneuvering though...)

It's just reverse rhino sniping, where the answer for that was "manoeuvre properly to be hidden" where are you're suggesting "manoeuvre properly so they're not hidden". It's honestly all pretty dumb as I don't think anyone in the confines of the current system can actually suggest a fix for the idea of kill what you see that doesn't just introduce a different wrinkle.

 vipoid wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
The solution is that you can only kill as many models as you have line of sight to, but wounds inflicted can be allocated to models outside of line of sight by the defending player if they wish.

There. Fixed. I is smort.

No. So you have big unit with big gun. You shoot at full strength, enemy kills 1/turn max. No downside for defender.

You just created new exploit.

You not so smort.

What are you even talking about?

If you can only kill how many you see but defender chooses model(s) die then he exposes just the 1 guy that needs to see. You shoot, he kills max , defender picks bolter guy.

Defender gets max usability, you kill max 1, no downside.

Seriously this is so abc it"s obvious at glance.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lord Damocles wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
The solution is that you can only kill as many models as you have line of sight to, but wounds inflicted can be allocated to models outside of line of sight by the defending player if they wish.

There. Fixed. I is smort.

No. So you have big unit with big gun. You shoot at full strength, enemy kills 1/turn max. No downside for defender.

You just created new exploit.

You not so smort.

What are you even talking about?

Dangle the lascannon of a tac squad in the open, rest of squad out of Los. No matter how hard you try that lascannon would see the game through unless you get a better angle

1: Oh no I need to manoeuver! Woe is me!

2: Plink one wound at a time from multiple sources to whittle the unit down around the lascannon. Not one wound per turn - one wound per source of incoming fire.

3: Block the lascannon's line of sight. (This might be dangerously close to maneuvering though...)

1: same could be said on now. Don't be dumb enough to leave 1 guy vislble.

But no. Manouvering too hard. Let's change rules so you don't need to think.

Goes both way

tneva82 wrote:
So you have lone guy standing in open shooting big gun and rest of squad wound markers stand out of los so enemy can kill max 1/turn?

Again new exploit. Not easy to come up with rule that doesnt open up exploits

We've actually had this before: Where the unit takes wounds until the one guy in LoS is removed.

It creates a dynamic where the entire unit CAN be killed around the corner if the model standing out is one you want to keep alive (heavy weapon / sergeant), and offers a good trade off of in not being forced to remove full squads because one guy sticks out, but also not auto-losing your squad sergeant because you kept him out front.

 insaniak wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

I think you're hugely overstating the amount of mental load in this type of system. It really isn't complex at all and the vast majority of the time it doesn't even come into play..

I don't think I am. I don't recall claiming at any point that it was complex. Merely that it's not as simple as just looking at the table to see what you can see. Whether or not it's a huge mental load, it's an additional one, as it adds extra things to remember or lookup which only apply to edge cases, compared to just 'I can see what I can see'.

PenitentJake wrote:

Klickor wrote:

If they... made it so you could only kill the amount of models that you can see in a unit

This right here IMHO is the best change that could be made to visibility/ LoS. The fact that seeing one dude allows a player to nuke the entire unit is the most ridiculous system I can imagine. Obviously, Area of Effect weapons could have a splash range that allows hidden members of the unit to be damaged; most weapons that would be capable of doing this are already tagged with "Ignores Cover," so it's easy enough to do.

Some might argue that it can interfere with speed rolling, but I see it as viable when split fire is an option.

The problem is less speed rolling than with character sniping. Back when you could only kill those specific models that you could see, the common tactic was to park a vehicle in front of your own unit, blocking LOS to some of the enemy unit and leaving just the character or special/heavy weapon guy visible. Having casualities come from anywhere in the unit removed that exploit.

In my full post I did specify that defender picks the casualty in the unit to prevent sniping. So if the defender wanted to it could remove models out of line of sight one by one until the entire unit like now is dead or they only remove the model in line of sight and that is the end to that shooting sequence. It is a very easy fix and I think it even were part of the core rules many editions ago.

 morganfreeman wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
So you have lone guy standing in open shooting big gun and rest of squad wound markers stand out of los so enemy can kill max 1/turn?

Again new exploit. Not easy to come up with rule that doesnt open up exploits

We've actually had this before: Where the unit takes wounds until the one guy in LoS is removed.

It creates a dynamic where the entire unit CAN be killed around the corner if the model standing out is one you want to keep alive (heavy weapon / sergeant), and offers a good trade off of in not being forced to remove full squads because one guy sticks out, but also not auto-losing your squad sergeant because you kept him out front.

Yeah, I suppose you could call it an exploit tneva82, as any mechanic can be called an exploit. However, I see it as interesting decision mechanic. Because it often creates tough choices for both the attacking and defending players.

Correct, bolter marines out of LoS become what they are now: wound counters for the heavy weapon. Where I think you are going wrong, tneva82, is the only way a tactical squad like that loses one marine is if the defending player puts the wounds on the heavy weapon marine that's in LoS. If the defending player puts the wounds on the bolter marines outside of LoS, they still have to deal with all the wounds dealt to them. Which, with poor saves, could still wipe the squad. Even a decent amount of worthwhile attack should force a Leadership test. Which if Battleshock had more teeth, would still affect the heavy weapon marine.

What it does it prevent is the attacking player from putting 1,000,000 AP -5 wounds into the same Tactical squad. Since at that point, the defending player would be dumb to not just sacrifice the heavy weapon marine to keep the out of LoS marines on the table. Again, you could call that an exploit, I guess. But I see it more as forcing the attacking player to be more thoughtful with target prioritization than hit targets with brute force. Which I see as a good thing.

Like morganfreeman said, this isn't new to miniatures war gaming. Many of the war games inspired or written by former GW employees that I've played used this mechanic. It worked fine in those. I find it amusing that GW seems to be dancing all around it, discovering all the issues with every other sort of LoS targeting mechanics instead.

I'm genuinely confused by people complaining that other LoS systems aren't 100% perfect, so they're just as invalid.

Yeah, having a little card you quickly stick behind a model to see if it's a viable target is immersion breaking. So is perma-prone model that refuses to rise even to look over knee-high walls.

Sure, it's complicated to have to draw firing arcs from vehicle weapons and establish facing. It's also complicated to try and hide every antenna and barrel on a tank out of LoS to avoid shooting, or play around vehicles that can unload every gun they have out their exhaust pipe.

Most definitely is it frustrating being unable to shoot through ruins / terrain features you can plainly see through just because they're "area terrain", similar to how it's frustrating to lose an entire squad to enemy fire because one model (or one model's sword) was peaking out from cover.

Some systems sacrifice immersion for functionality, others give a bit of ground in the simulation department for the sake of ease-of-ease. Determined complainers will absolutely find an issue with every system that exists, has existed, or can exist. There's absolutely no argument against this.

Similar to how there's no argument for the current GW system.

The issue with modern 40k is kind of.. All of these. Rather than sacrificing in some areas to gain in others, the current LoS system is a disaster which scrapes the worst parts of every system and bundles them all together. It's tedious, immersion breaking, non-simulation friendly non-sense which doesn't even have the decency to strive for ease-of-use. So while arguments can invariably be made for why any other system isn't perfect, any attempts to justify why they should be used instead of what 40k currently uses don't hold water.

tneva82 wrote:
Again new exploit. Not easy to come up with rule that doesnt open up exploits

This isn't the exploit you think it is...

tneva82 wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
The solution is that you can only kill as many models as you have line of sight to, but wounds inflicted can be allocated to models outside of line of sight by the defending player if they wish.

There. Fixed. I is smort.

No. So you have big unit with big gun. You shoot at full strength, enemy kills 1/turn max. No downside for defender.

You just created new exploit.

You not so smort.

What are you even talking about?

If you can only kill how many you see but defender chooses model(s) die then he exposes just the 1 guy that needs to see. You shoot, he kills max , defender picks bolter guy.

Defender gets max usability, you kill max 1, no downside.

Seriously this is so abc it"s obvious at glance.

Except you clearly didn't read what was proposed.

You can only kill what you can see - but if defender chooses to have models out of LoS die, then you can keep killing them because the model is still visible.

In your example, the defender gets 1 lascannon shot per turn.

If you shoot him, he can either remove the lascannon (meaning you no longer have LoS to the rest of the squad and can't kill any more), or he kills models out of LoS and you can keep killing models until either the squad is dead or he removes the lascannon.

 vipoid wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
The solution is that you can only kill as many models as you have line of sight to, but wounds inflicted can be allocated to models outside of line of sight by the defending player if they wish.

There. Fixed. I is smort.

No. So you have big unit with big gun. You shoot at full strength, enemy kills 1/turn max. No downside for defender.

You just created new exploit.

You not so smort.

What are you even talking about?

If you can only kill how many you see but defender chooses model(s) die then he exposes just the 1 guy that needs to see. You shoot, he kills max , defender picks bolter guy.

Defender gets max usability, you kill max 1, no downside.

Seriously this is so abc it"s obvious at glance.

Except you clearly didn't read what was proposed.

You can only kill what you can see - but if defender chooses to have models out of LoS die, then you can keep killing them because the model is still visible.

In your example, the defender gets 1 lascannon shot per turn.

If you shoot him, he can either remove the lascannon (meaning you no longer have LoS to the rest of the squad and can't kill any more), or he kills models out of LoS and you can keep killing models until either the squad is dead or he removes the lascannon.

Sadly tneva is right:

The solution is that you can only kill as many models as you have line of sight to

You can see 1 model - the lascannon, ergo you can kill a total of 1 model, but allocate it to whichever model you like. That's how I read it, anyway.

 JNAProductions wrote:
A reasonable proposal I've seen for LoS and Rhino Sniping is as follows:

The defending player chooses which models to remove. However, if at any point there are no more models in LoS of the attacking unit, any further shots (that require LoS) are lost.

So, if they set it up with terrain or vehicles or whatever to take out your one Lascannon, you can either remove the Lascannon first, losing only one model; or you can keep it and take casualties out of line of sight, requiring more shots to take down the heavy weapon.

I believe this is what was meant.

You mean far to simple for GW to actually think about implementing it ?

 JNAProductions wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
A reasonable proposal I've seen for LoS and Rhino Sniping is as follows:

The defending player chooses which models to remove. However, if at any point there are no more models in LoS of the attacking unit, any further shots (that require LoS) are lost.

So, if they set it up with terrain or vehicles or whatever to take out your one Lascannon, you can either remove the Lascannon first, losing only one model; or you can keep it and take casualties out of line of sight, requiring more shots to take down the heavy weapon.

I believe this is what was meant.

Reasonable, too much so. Get outta here!

Dudeface wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
The solution is that you can only kill as many models as you have line of sight to, but wounds inflicted can be allocated to models outside of line of sight by the defending player if they wish.

There. Fixed. I is smort.

No. So you have big unit with big gun. You shoot at full strength, enemy kills 1/turn max. No downside for defender.

You just created new exploit.

You not so smort.

What are you even talking about?

If you can only kill how many you see but defender chooses model(s) die then he exposes just the 1 guy that needs to see. You shoot, he kills max , defender picks bolter guy.

Defender gets max usability, you kill max 1, no downside.

Seriously this is so abc it"s obvious at glance.

Except you clearly didn't read what was proposed.

You can only kill what you can see - but if defender chooses to have models out of LoS die, then you can keep killing them because the model is still visible.

In your example, the defender gets 1 lascannon shot per turn.

If you shoot him, he can either remove the lascannon (meaning you no longer have LoS to the rest of the squad and can't kill any more), or he kills models out of LoS and you can keep killing models until either the squad is dead or he removes the lascannon.

Sadly tneva is right:

The solution is that you can only kill as many models as you have line of sight to

You can see 1 model - the lascannon, ergo you can kill a total of 1 model, but allocate it to whichever model you like. That's how I read it, anyway.

I don't really see the exploit. In this scenario you're paying for a full tactical squad to ensure* the game-long output of: a single lascannon. I'm not sure it'd be a tournament staple.

*as long as your opponent doesn't dedicate some unit to maneuvering and hunting it down of course.

shortymcnostrill wrote:

I don't really see the exploit. In this scenario you're paying for a full tactical squad to ensure* the game-long output of: a single lascannon. I'm not sure it'd be a tournament staple.

*as long as your opponent doesn't dedicate some unit to maneuvering and hunting it down of course.

Well, 5 guys to nitpick, but it's more you could only ever kill 1 guy per squad firing. Context, a tac squad would survive 9 warlord titans. Not an exploit so much as a gak interaction, as others elucidated, let the wounds spill until LOS is broken and you're sorted.

Yeah, just have it be an abstraction of the guys moving out of cover to pick up the Lascannon - less sustained impacts from the enemy weapons destroy the Lascannon itself! While the rest of the squad stays in cover.

My take on this is that in 25+ years of playing 2nd (except for that unfortunate gap to burn out on 3rd), I never saw Rhino sniping.

The scenario is simply bizarre. Why would you make two Rhinos and a squad of Long Fangs dance around the board just to splat a single IG heavy weapon? That's more than enough firepower to waste the whole squad!

And if it isn't, then the rules of that edition were completely jacked up.

Sensible LOS rules are not difficult. They should be intuitive and easy to adjudicate and GW had a workable set of them. So do other games. I'm starting to think that GW makes lousy rules on purpose because given how many ways there are to get these things right, GW seems to be unique in always getting them wrong.

Rhino Sniping isn't about killing Heavy Weapon Squads. It's about killing the exact models out of an enemy unit that are most dangerous to your army.

Don't want that Power Fist to reach HTH combat? Snipe him down.
Worried about that Meltagun killing your tanks? Snipe it down.
Want that character dead? Snipe him down.

In all these cases, you can send as much firepower as necessary into the squad to neuter the units effectiveness without needing to dedicate the firepower to destroy the entire unit.

It was a legal, but not sporting, way to maximize the effects of shooting.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
My take on this is that in 25+ years of playing 2nd (except for that unfortunate gap to burn out on 3rd), I never saw Rhino sniping.

In 2nd it was blind grenade sniping. Used that a few times to pick off Warpheads, Exarchs and the like.