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So in 9th, did they change it so you can be charged from the other side of a wall of a ruin with no windows or doors?

To my knowledge, if you're in engagement range you can swing in melee.

That depends.

Does the Wall in question have the Defense Line terrain trait? If so, I can charge you if I can touch the wall and get within 2" of your unit.

Does the Wall in question have the Breachable terrain trait? If so, Infanty, Beast, and Swarm models can charge through the wall to reach a unit beyond it.

Was my charge roll high enough for me to reach, climb over, and then get within Engagement Range of the unit? If so, I can charge over the wall.

This hasn't really changed much with 9th.
In both 8th and 9th you've been able to declare a charge without requiring line of sight.
In both 8th and 9th there has been a rule permitting Infantry to move through the walls of ruins. 9th extended that to Beasts and Swarms too.
This is just codified a bit better in 9th, with the addition of the Breachable keyword. Rather than being a rule specific to ruins like in 8th.

So then what is the point of terrain? Am I the only one that feels like every rule in this game is counter intuitive? I just am upset at the weirdness of terrain. So I know they can charge around corners without LOS, and that is fine. But if my unit is on the other side of an 2 foot piece of Steel wall with no holes or doors, or windows, he can punch me through it somehow? That is dumb. Terrain can block shooting but not swords or spears.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So then what is the point of terrain? Am I the only one that feels like every rule in this game is counter intuitive? I just am upset at the weirdness of terrain. So I know they can charge around corners without LOS, and that is fine. But if my unit is on the other side of an 2 foot piece of Steel wall with no holes or doors, or windows, he can punch me through it somehow? That is dumb. Terrain can block shooting but not swords or spears.

Three reasons:
1. GW needed to encourage players to take infantry. Having terrain that gives advantages to infantry (etc.) over vehicles (etc.) does this, while remaining reasonably plausible; it makes sense for infantry to be more manouverable in a close-confines cityfight.

2. With 40k being a "Fantasy in Spaaaace" setting, GW needed to encourage the use of swords and spears being a feasible tactic in a universe with laser guns. Having terrain that blocks LOS reduces the effectiveness of simply standing back and shooting and doing nothing else.

3. The models we use cannot reasonably be expected to perfectly represent a battlefield situation - it's not possible to show exactly where breachable parts of a wall are (without a ton of arbitration), or show how a soldier is hugging cover as they dash towards a ruin and therefore can't be shot. The rules in 9th represent this in an abstract way reasonably well.

You can easily imagine that infantry are equipped with grenades or scaling equipment to help them get through breaches in a wall that can't be easily represented on a model. Fighting through a "solid" wall could easily be explained by saying that the soldiers simply aren't exactly where the models show they are.

Personally, I think the walls of ruins should be treated as Difficult Ground if you want to breach them. The movement penalty would represent the infantry moving around solid obstacles, or breaching the wall, or vaulting through windows, etc. I feel like that would be a reasonable middle ground.

And there are practical ways around it, too. Want to avoid being engaged "through" a wall? Simply put your models more than an inch away from the other side of the wall, and enemies won't be able to reach Engagement Range through the wall.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So then what is the point of terrain?

Terrain can provide cover, or be an obstacle to move around, or provide bonuses or any number of other terrain rules written in the RAW that will have an affect on the game.

Am I the only one that feels like every rule in this game is counter intuitive? I just am upset at the weirdness of terrain. So I know they can charge around corners without LOS, and that is fine. But if my unit is on the other side of an 2 foot piece of Steel wall with no holes or doors, or windows, he can punch me through it somehow? That is dumb. Terrain can block shooting but not swords or spears.

The model on the table top does not dictate what the rules say.

P.S.

Do not try to bring realism into a fantasy/sci-fi setting, it never ends well.

The rules were not written to be "Modern day real world" logical. It is a rules system, an abstract system used to play a game by those rules.

If you are going by what is dumb compared to the real world, then over 90% of the game is dumb, as most of it can not really happen.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So then what is the point of terrain? Am I the only one that feels like every rule in this game is counter intuitive? I just am upset at the weirdness of terrain. So I know they can charge around corners without LOS, and that is fine. But if my unit is on the other side of an 2 foot piece of Steel wall with no holes or doors, or windows, he can punch me through it somehow? That is dumb. Terrain can block shooting but not swords or spears.

The thing is GW gave us a suite of terrain rules, provided some suggestions on how to assign them, and then left the rest to you and your opponent. If you don't want that "2 foot piece of Steel wall with no holes or doors, or windows" to be something that you can move or fight through, don't give it the Defense Line and Breachable rules.

As long as you are within engagement range, you can fight other enemy models in melee, it doesnt matter if there is something between those models. Unless a special rule, as others have mentioned, says otherwise. Yes, you can fight through a solid piece of wall of a ruin.

 alextroy wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So then what is the point of terrain? Am I the only one that feels like every rule in this game is counter intuitive? I just am upset at the weirdness of terrain. So I know they can charge around corners without LOS, and that is fine. But if my unit is on the other side of an 2 foot piece of Steel wall with no holes or doors, or windows, he can punch me through it somehow? That is dumb. Terrain can block shooting but not swords or spears.

The thing is GW gave us a suite of terrain rules, provided some suggestions on how to assign them, and then left the rest to you and your opponent. If you don't want that "2 foot piece of Steel wall with no holes or doors, or windows" to be something that you can move or fight through, don't give it the Defense Line and Breachable rules.

This. If you want a wall to be impenetrable by melee weapons, you just need to give it the proper keywords and don't hug it. I'm fairly sure that you will be sent flying when a dreadnaught punches the 2 foot steel wall you're leaning on.