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SO I plan to run a Witch Hunters army with a very combat-oriented theme (I don't need anybody telling me it's a bad idea here, etc.), and I really really like the Penitent Engines, yet hate how they can be so fragile getting to combat.

So I had this idea: Run 3 to 4 rhinos, in front of the Penitent Engines, that move up with the engines moving behind them, in an effort to block line of sight to the Penitent Engines.

Question is, will this actually block line of sight?  And to what level units will it block line of sight to?  Level 2 (infantry) and/or Level 3 (vehicles, etc.)?  What if an infantry unit is on the top floor of a "level 3" building, can they shoot down and draw line of sight to the Penitent Engines behind the Rhinos? (keep in mind, the Penitent engine is visually taller than the rhino, even though they are similar sizes according to the rules)?

Well I would not see why you could not hide behind the rhino model.  However, I think it would be extremely hard to pull of due to the Holy Rage.  If you had to move even a little more than the Rhino it would not be able to really stop short and hide. 

Being a walker and open topped does lead to pretty easy beat down too.

well the Penitent Engines move 6 in + D6 Holy Rage, = 12 in max, which is how far the Rhinos are moving anyways, and if the Rhinos are in the way of the Penitent engine using Holy Rage to move towards the closest enemy model (but not far enough to end up on the other side of the Rhino), then I'd assume the Penitent Engine would just stop at the Rhino (you cannot end your models' movements on top of your other models -_-) seeing as moving in any other direction would not bring it closer to the enemy :-/

I assumed you were only moving your Rhinos 6" and popping smoke.  Then hoping to start the purge on round 2 with all those flamers and such.  SoB have a short reach, atleast the versions I have played.  But, yeah 12" gunning them forward could let them cover the P engines.  Although, I might argue that if they are not hugging it, then from a side angle they could be shot, but not from the front.

I'm still curious about enemy infantry situated on elevated terrain lvl 3 (and up, assuming there is an up?), and whether or not they can shoot pass one level 3 vehicle to another behind it... I don't know if there's such a thing as lvl 4 or lvl 5 assuming you're on top of a building, but it seems plausable, and it seems like the infantry would have no problem seeing beyond something that's only lvl 3 in height...

This comes back down to the "Magic Cylinder vs Tue LoS" debate (topic: http://dakkadakka.com/Forums/tabid/56/forumid/15/tpage/1/view/Topic/postid/103057/Default.aspx). If you play Magic Cylinder, then no you cannot see over the Rhino to shoot the Penitant Engines (but run into other ridiculous situations, such as warbuggies blocking line of sight to/from Monoliths). If you play True LoS, you can shoot at the Engines if you can physically see over the Rhino, but have other problems like shooting between Dreadnought legs.

So really, it depends on which convention you use.

Posted By Mr Bombadidaloo
Question is, will this actually block line of sight?  And to what level units will it block line of sight to?

It will block LOS if it actually blocks LOS.

When drawing LOS past a vehicle, you bend over the table and use actual LOS to determine whether or not you can see what's behind it.

Have a read of page 20 of the rulebook if you're unclear on how it should work.

Posted By Cheexsta on 02/17/2007 10:30 PM
If you play True LoS, you can shoot at the Engines if you can physically see over the Rhino, but have other problems like shooting between Dreadnought legs.

Not really that big a problem. For all that it comes up fairly regularly online, in 14 years of playing 40K, I honestly can't rememember ever actually being in a position where LOS was drawn through a Dreadnought's legs.

Yeah I have been playing for about 10 years now give or take a little myself, and there has never been that much of a problem with LOS and vehicles.  Generally I kinda think of the vehicle as a solid block and ignore any gaps in the model itself.  At least you will get to be hull down cause of the rhino's if nothing else... well not sure that would be official way to do it but in my game group we use other vehicles for hull down rules.
Aztralwolf

Jesterzdragon and Cheexsta are confused. Insaniak has the right of it.

Read pages 20 and 21. LOS in relation to vehicles is real, bend-over-the-table-and-take-a-look LOS. The rules explicitly state that you can shoot over vehicles. Aztralwolf is correct that the Penitent Engines will be Obscured (turn a Pen hit into a Glance on a 4+) IF half of the facing being shot at is covered up.

The Magic Cylinder debate has absolutely nothing to do with Rhinos. It has to do with Dreadnoughts on bases and whether the empty space around them but over their base is supposed to affect LOS. The misconception that vehicles block LOS infinitely high probably came up in that debate, but the rules are very clear that you can, in fact, shoot over vehicles.

So it could be "hull down" on a 4+, which is better than nothing.  But, a P engine is still open topped.

Now a Land Raider could probably screen them.

Or you could model the P. Engines to be crawling. Remember yak's golden rule. (You can use modelling to your advantage)

That means if you bring a supermodel, your opponent will be distracted by her super chest and you can move all of his models back into his case, and declare a 20 - 0 massacre.

Posted By Mannahnin on 02/18/2007 4:53 AM
Jesterzdragon and Cheexsta are confused. Insaniak has the right of it.

Read pages 20 and 21. LOS in relation to vehicles is real, bend-over-the-table-and-take-a-look LOS. The rules explicitly state that you can shoot over vehicles. Aztralwolf is correct that the Penitent Engines will be Obscured (turn a Pen hit into a Glance on a 4+) IF half of the facing being shot at is covered up.

The Magic Cylinder debate has absolutely nothing to do with Rhinos. It has to do with Dreadnoughts on bases and whether the empty space around them but over their base is supposed to affect LOS. The misconception that vehicles block LOS infinitely high probably came up in that debate, but the rules are very clear that you can, in fact, shoot over vehicles.

This whole argument just does not seem right to me.  Drawing actual line of sight from the model leaves a huge area to be taken advantage of by a beardy converter... Penitent Engines crawling?  How about a rhino that's 3 feet tall? There are no discrete guidelines on how you can convert your model, and it sounds incredibly abusable. 

I'd much rather prefer all vehicles to be a hypothetical set height, and that's one reason I created this thread, to confirm that.  Unfortunately from your responses, it seems that is not the case.

Is this "actual" line of sight technique used in tournaments, or are all vehicles considered lvl3 and block LOS to each other there?

The rules are clear and actually have been the same since at least the beginning of third edition. You use 'true' line of sight exactly as the rules state.

Ghaz has the right of it. Using the size category rules to determine LOS means that you can screen a Monolith with a Rhino, or even the base Trukk model supplied by GW. The rule in the BGB Clearly state when size categories are used, and when they aren't.

The only abstractions are when drawing LOS over Area Terrain and an ongoing assault, for which you use Size Categories. Please reference the appropriate sections of the rulebook.

Posted By Mr. Bombadidaloo on 02/18/2007 11:41 AM

This whole argument just does not seem right to me.  Drawing actual line of sight from the model leaves a huge area to be taken advantage of by a beardy converter... Penitent Engines crawling?  How about a rhino that's 3 feet tall? There are no discrete guidelines on how you can convert your model, and it sounds incredibly abusable. 

I'd much rather prefer all vehicles to be a hypothetical set height, and that's one reason I created this thread, to confirm that.  Unfortunately from your responses, it seems that is not the case.

Is this "actual" line of sight technique used in tournaments, or are all vehicles considered lvl3 and block LOS to each other there?

Most tournaments I've played in use the printed rules for LOS, which is that size categories only come in to play when shooting over area terrain and ongoing close combats. 

As to whether beardy converters can take advantage of it, the answer is yes.  That's why its important to have sportsmanship.

To quote Yakface's 1st Rule: You can use modeling to your advantage, you can use modeling to your advantage, you can use modeling to your advantage.

A hypothetical Ork player has a wonderful idea:

He's going to take a Battlewagon, stick a 72 in wide/5 in tall rectangular mass of GW bits on top of it, do the same thing with all his other vehicles, and send them blasting towards the enemy, hiding everything else behind them, and almost garunteeing combat with his mass of Orks. Sure he'll get zeroed out on Sportsmanship, but he'll likely get a Victorious Slaughter each time and possibly win a trophy for taking advantage of a game.

What is there to stop this from happening, and where do you draw the line?

Sorry, I'm just very disgruntled at discovering how abusable LOS is, and I know I must sound silly, stupid, or even assinine, but some things... *sigh*

Posted By Mr. Bombadidaloo on 02/18/2007 11:01 PM
What is there to stop this from happening, and where do you draw the line?

What stops it is that the vast majority of players realise that abusing the rules like that just isn't worth the flak they would cop for it.

'The line' varies, really, depending on intention. If a customised model is created out of a genuine desire for a cool and distinctive model, then so long as it isn't too abusive, that's fine. If the player is simply trying to exploit the rules for the sake of it, then they can find another opponent so far as I'm concerned.


It's seriously not that big an issue. The rules have allowed this sort of abuse for at least 15 years and 3 seperate editions now. You will very, very rarely come across a player who actually makes an issue of it... which is most likely at least a part of the reason that GW have never bothered to 'fix' it.

Yeah, I see your point. I don't have much tournament experience and was planning to start participating in some, so I guess I assumed the worst of my opponents in that they'd do as much as they can to win.

It's good to hear that most people seem ethical when it comes to the rules, and I'll just have to hope I face similar players this year at my first Games Day tourney.

Problem is, now I'm facing an internal struggle: use modelling to my advantage and make my rhinos able to screen my engines (which, to me, seems the only way to make them effective...), not run them at all, or run them and forget about trying to win :-(

Here's what confuses me a bit about your reluctance to accept the LOS rules as written:

You have a problem with the rules written that allow modelling to give players an advantage, yet your original proposition was to use Rhinos to screen your Penitent Engines.

So. . .you have a problem with rules that allow players to model big Rhinos to screen their Penitent Engines (or make small engines to hide behind Rhinos), yet you were hoping the rules would allow you to use your Rhinos to screen your penitent engines. . .


See the silliness in that attitude?


While the rules allow for abuses through modelling that doesn't mean we, as players, have to take advantage of it. The rules writers could close that loophole by not allowing conversions, but would any of us really want that?

Think of it as a moral compass in the game of 40k.

For what it's worth, I've never gotten to play anywhere where they use true line of sight.

"Actual" line of sight is technically the baseline, the "this is how it is look for yourself," no argument, physical evidence mandatory way to determine whether or not you can shoot something. "Actual" LOS is supposed to be used in all cases WITH THE SOLE EXCEPTION OF SHOOTING PAST LEVEL THREE TERRAIN.

This is in fact abuseable because of the "model however you want" guideline. It isn't *that* abuseable, however, because of soft-scores at tournaments (such as sportsmanship). It's usually obvious when someone has modeled a figure to gain some sort of benefit (foot-long weapon barrels being a good indicator) so it is also fairly easy to avoid such people as opponents or to call them on it in a tournament, and possibly have them disqualified.

Even if they do away with soft scores, I'm pretty sure that most judges wouldn't allow an "abusive" model.

No. Even with Level Three terrain you still use actual line of sight. There are only two times that yoiu don't use actual line of sight. Those are:

1) Area Terrain

2) Close combats

Indeed; thank you for clarifying.

My post assumed too much. Around my area we gernerally assume that true LOS is ignored for all terrain (its just easier to do "magic cylinder/square/blob" than actual LOS). And close combat I just plain forgot to mention. But in both cases this is the exception to the "true LOS" base line, and the exceptions to the rule are clearly portrayed.

Posted By yakface on 02/19/2007 1:44 AM

Here's what confuses me a bit about your reluctance to accept the LOS rules as written:

You have a problem with the rules written that allow modelling to give players an advantage, yet your original proposition was to use Rhinos to screen your Penitent Engines.

So. . .you have a problem with rules that allow players to model big Rhinos to screen their Penitent Engines (or make small engines to hide behind Rhinos), yet you were hoping the rules would allow you to use your Rhinos to screen your penitent engines. . .


See the silliness in that attitude?


While the rules allow for abuses through modelling that doesn't mean we, as players, have to take advantage of it. The rules writers could close that loophole by not allowing conversions, but would any of us really want that?

Think of it as a moral compass in the game of 40k.

Thanks for the attack on my "attitude", guess I haven't been very clear in my viewpoint however so I had it coming.

What I was hoping would be the case is this: all vehicles are level 3 and block line of sight to others behind.  That doesn't allow for using any modeling to your advantage per say, although now that the scenario of an ork buggy screening a monolith has been pointed out to me, I see the folly in this idea.

A few ways to solve that is to make the Monolith count as size 4, release Ork buggy models that are larger physically (which may very well happen soon enough),  or  scale the smaller vehicles like Ork buggies down to size 2.  Of course, this is all wishful speculation and discussing it here is pointless.  Guess I just felt the need to defend myself.

Posted By Mr. Bombadidaloo on 02/19/2007 6:22 PM

Thanks for the attack on my "attitude", guess I haven't been very clear in my viewpoint however so I had it coming.

What I was hoping would be the case is this: all vehicles are level 3 and block line of sight to others behind.  That doesn't allow for using any modeling to your advantage per say, although now that the scenario of an ork buggy screening a monolith has been pointed out to me, I see the folly in this idea.

A few ways to solve that is to make the Monolith count as size 4, release Ork buggy models that are larger physically (which may very well happen soon enough),  or  scale the smaller vehicles like Ork buggies down to size 2.  Of course, this is all wishful speculation and discussing it here is pointless.  Guess I just felt the need to defend myself.

I wasn't saying you were a bad person for thinking this way, it's just a similar argument has come up quite a few times and I've always found it a bit funny that the people who seem most disgusted by the fact that people can use modelling to make big stuff to screen things are the same people who play that the 'magic cylinder' allows their smaller vehicles to block LOS to their larger models/vehicles. It's just a little odd when you think about it.

And you're right, GW could go solely to size characteristics, however I'd wager there are still quite a few players out there (if not most) who still like the fact that the size and shape of our models affects some part of the gameplay. As I've said many times before, I actually like having to get down and check out LOS as it is fun to see how the 3 dimensional miniatures interact with the 3 dimensional terrain. Once you fully switch over to a size category system, you ultimately might as well be playing with numbered chits instead of miniatures.

 

Sorry for side tracking the discussion, but I'm a bit confused becuase of what has come up in my games.

The question is thus:

Can a hammerhead see over a land raider to shoot a vehicle behind it? Or, can a predator see over a land raider to shoot a Hammerhead? Since the hammerhead is A) a skimmer and B) using true LOS from the end of the gun (don't get me started - and I'm the tau player) see the predator, what is the correct ruling?

Thanks!

Edit: the skimmer is on a normal flying base - not a custom expandable/super high base.

Posted By budro on 02/20/2007 12:16 PM
Can a hammerhead see over a land raider to shoot a vehicle behind it?

Rulebook, page 20.

You bend over the table and have a look. If you can draw LOS from the weapon mount (not the end of the gun) to the target, you have LOS.

The end of the gun barrel is only used for range... and then only if you're using the ridiculous Rulebook FAQ ruling that creates more problems than it solves. Otherwise, you just measure from the vehicle's main hull.

Posted By budro on 02/20/2007 12:16 PM
Or, can a predator see over a land raider to shoot a Hammerhead?

Same answer.

Posted By budro on 02/20/2007 12:16 PM
Since the hammerhead is A) a skimmer

Being a skimmer has exactly one effect on LOS: It doesn't block it.

LOS to and from the vehicle is drawn in exactly the same manner as for any other vehicle.