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I am not smart enough to figure this out on my own,
so could someone please tell me how exactly terrain will affect shooting and casualties in the new edition?

Say that I have ten marines behind a ruined wall.
5 are visible to the enemy unit.
The enemy unit shoots.

How will this proceed exactly?

You get to allocate wounds. Say the enemy causes 5 wounds. You can allocate them to kill all 5 that are visible, all 5 that arent, etc. Maybe strategically killing the 5 that are visible would be best, because you can hide the rest of the unit.

Say they cause 8 wounds, you will have to kill 8 models - whether they can be seen or not.

 rollawaythestone wrote:
You get to allocate wounds. Say the enemy causes 5 wounds. You can allocate them to kill all 5 that are visible, all 5 that arent, etc. Maybe strategically killing the 5 that are visible would be best, because you can hide the rest of the unit.

Say they cause 8 wounds, you will have to kill 8 models - whether they can be seen or not.

This is what I feared... I am not a fan of this way of handling terrain effects.
IMO casualties should be limited to those seen.
And, if I remember correctly, this used to be the case - maybe it was 2nd edition, and maybe 3rd?

After all, if you cannot see a model then you cannot target the model.

Why should wounds carry over to models that could not be shot at in the first place?
This is a serious question.
Does anyone have a good answer for this?

 jeff white wrote:


Why should wounds carry over to models that could not be shot at in the first place?
This is a serious question.
Does anyone have a good answer for this?

2 reasons:

-The game is just an abstraction. The models represent things that are in constant motion, sometimes with weapons that can shoot through trees, sand bags, walls, etc.
-To prevent the gamey-ness of having an entire unit visible except the sergeant or apothecary etc.

 chalkobob wrote:

 jeff white wrote:


Why should wounds carry over to models that could not be shot at in the first place?
This is a serious question.
Does anyone have a good answer for this?

2 reasons:

-The game is just an abstraction. The models represent things that are in constant motion, sometimes with weapons that can shoot through trees, sand bags, walls, etc.
-To prevent the gamey-ness of having an entire unit visible except the sergeant or apothecary etc.

Thanks for the reply, and the answer, and I expected this of course, but I do not find these good answers (though standard, for sure).

I get the abstraction, but I tend to lose faith when it demands a suspension of common sense.

Isn't the idea of cover simply just that, though, to limit casualties by limiting field of view?
And, wasn't it area effect weapons that had the special potential to ignore cover and spread casualties beyond what is visible?
Shouldn't the abstraction of the rules still leave room for an abstraction of this potential being special to this sort of weapon?

 jeff white wrote:

 chalkobob wrote:

 jeff white wrote:


Why should wounds carry over to models that could not be shot at in the first place?
This is a serious question.
Does anyone have a good answer for this?

2 reasons:

-The game is just an abstraction. The models represent things that are in constant motion, sometimes with weapons that can shoot through trees, sand bags, walls, etc.
-To prevent the gamey-ness of having an entire unit visible except the sergeant or apothecary etc.

Thanks for the reply, and the answer, and I expected this of course, but I do not find these good answers (though standard, for sure).

I get the abstraction, but I tend to lose faith when it demands a suspension of common sense.

Isn't the idea of cover simply just that, though, to limit casualties by limiting field of view?
And, wasn't it area effect weapons that had the special potential to ignore cover and spread casualties beyond what is visible?
Shouldn't the abstraction of the rules still leave room for an abstraction of this potential being special to this sort of weapon?

You're welcome. Cover is meant to limit casualties by providing cover saves only now, apparently, and there may still be weapons meant to off-set this. I understand this may not be some people's preference. I'm ambivalent about it if you are wondering.

 jeff white wrote:

 chalkobob wrote:

 jeff white wrote:


Why should wounds carry over to models that could not be shot at in the first place?
This is a serious question.
Does anyone have a good answer for this?

2 reasons:

-The game is just an abstraction. The models represent things that are in constant motion, sometimes with weapons that can shoot through trees, sand bags, walls, etc.
-To prevent the gamey-ness of having an entire unit visible except the sergeant or apothecary etc.

Thanks for the reply, and the answer, and I expected this of course, but I do not find these good answers (though standard, for sure).

I get the abstraction, but I tend to lose faith when it demands a suspension of common sense.

Isn't the idea of cover simply just that, though, to limit casualties by limiting field of view?
And, wasn't it area effect weapons that had the special potential to ignore cover and spread casualties beyond what is visible?
Shouldn't the abstraction of the rules still leave room for an abstraction of this potential being special to this sort of weapon?

From what I've read, this is how cover will work now. It will make it harder for the opponents to hit them by adding a +1 or +2 to hit, like it was for WFH. Right?

Terrain is mostly meaningless except for weird bespoke rules the plastic pieces will get with random buffs to certain factions and stupid gak like that. Instead of simply fixing everything by copy pasting area terrain rules from 4th GW is "fixing" assault armies by giving them all abilities to deploy at 9" and try to make the charge. The +1 to saves will only matter to small gunline units as anyone else is unlikely to be all able to reach and fit inside terrain while trying to walk somewhere important. Everything is effectively transparent and you might as well play with an empty board as terrain just hinders assault armies needlessly.

Rip ork hordes they'll get zero cover while the elite armies sit in cover ignoring what few hits the orcs manage to get.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Terrain is mostly meaningless except for weird bespoke rules the plastic pieces will get with random buffs to certain factions and stupid gak like that. Instead of simply fixing everything by copy pasting area terrain rules from 4th GW is "fixing" assault armies by giving them all abilities to deploy at 9" and try to make the charge. The +1 to saves will only matter to small gunline units as anyone else is unlikely to be all able to reach and fit inside terrain while trying to walk somewhere important. Everything is effectively transparent and you might as well play with an empty board as terrain just hinders assault armies needlessly.

Tournament players don't tend to like terrain, and even less custom terrain. Just look at Warhamhordes. Luckily, is one of the easies fixes to houserule. Is the only "bad" thing (besides much posible imbalance problems) I have seen in the core rules for 8th edition so far.

Terrain is pretty much always relegated to being either irrelevant or frustrating. Really blocking LoS is it's most important function

The player suffering wounds allocates wounds and you must allocate to a wounded model. Thus let's the defender take models from the front or back to potentially keep or lose line of site in the next turn.

It's not a bad mechanism but if a individual is visible the whole unit is vulnerable. Atleast it provides a kind of tactical choice for the defender