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yakface wrote:

TYR.51B.03 and TYR.58B.02 state that cover saves may be taken against Terror From The Deep and Spirit Leech.

The wording on the former states that a unit "suffers a number of S6, AP2 equal to the number of models [under the marker]" and the latter states that a unit "suffers a single wound for each point they failed by, no armor saves allowed."

I'd like to note that the same wording applies to the Tervigon's "Brood Progenitor" rule. The same wording is also used in the wording for the Deffrolla, and possibly a number of other non-shooting attacks in the game.

In other words, a battlewagon with a deffrolla attempts to run over a tervigon in range of a venomthrope. The tervigon takes 6 S10 hits, but gets cover saves from the venomthrope. It dies, and the termagant broods in range of it may take cover saves from the psychic backlash of their parent's death by being in woods. Alternatively, a unit may take cover saves from a vehicle's explosion while embarked on said vehicle. I'm not going to pull RAI on you, but it's looking rather silly.

I would specifically disallow cover from any attack unless it is a shooting weapon, Psychic Shooting Attack, or states specifically that it allows cover saves, because doing otherwise opens the door for potential abuses. Plus, it's not like being inside a vehicle won't completely protect you from the entire rest of the Tyranid army, anyway.

Okay, sorry for the long response to this one, but I feel like it is needed to explain our position.

The first thing to remember is that the rules for 40K only have the steps for converting a hit into a wound, a wound into a save and unsaved wounds into casualties in the normal steps for the shooting phase and partial rules in the Assault phase section (in that they refer back to the shooting phase rules in some places).

That means, by the pure RAW anytime a hit or wound is inflicted on a model by a special rule outside of these two normal processes, the rules do not tell us how to resolve it AT ALL.

Now, being smart people gamers tend to figure out that based on how GW has laid out the rulebook we are simply expected to understand that we default back to the 'core' rules for these processes (i.e. those laid out in the 'shooting phase' section) and so when a model takes a hit, it means we roll to wound based on the Strength of the hit and then we take an armor/invulnerable save (unless specified otherwise), and if the model doesn't save it loses a wound from its profile and it this takes it to 0 wounds, it is removed from play as a casualty.

But it is important to always remember that these are very common CONVENTIONS used by players in lieu of clear rules telling us how to resolve specialty hits or wounds (those caused outside of shooting or assaults).

So when we get to the areas of casualty removal and cover saves, how to play these types of specialty wounds starts to become really murky. If we're defaulting back to the main shooting rules for these processes, then are we always able to assign the wound to any model in the unit regardless of which model was hit? And when exactly can cover saves be taken? And if these questions have answers, where are those answers coming from since they aren't in the rules themselves?

Ultimately the problem is this: When it comes to these types of 'specialty attacks' GW has written its rules with context unfortunately in mind rather than consistency. In other words, they seem to expect players to read what context with which the rule takes place in and based on that, make a judgement on exactly which casualty rules to apply.

For example, while it might seem really easy to simply lay a ground rule that states 'any wounds caused outside of shooting attacks don't get cover saves', but the problem is there are attacks that occur outside of the shooting phase that are pretty clearly similar to a shooting attack that don't specify one way or another how to resolve them if you don't consider them a shooting attack. I'm talking about such things as Ork Big Bomms dropped by Deff Koptas, or the Swooping Hawk Grenade Pack.

If you don't play that these things are treated like shooting attacks, then all of a sudden you have a bunch of questions with no answers like: 'what armor value do they hit vehicles on?' and 'Can only the models hit by the blast be removed as casualties?', etc.

And then on the flip side you have things like the Tyranid Acid Blood and Toxic Miasma which state that no cover saves are allowed even though these attacks occur in the assault phase...so by comparison where does this leave the Mawloc's emergence attack blast...cover or no cover save?

And even worse for us writing the INAT is the fact that we aren't trying to write a FAQ to reinvent the wheel, in that we hope and try to find with rulings that already generally match how most people already play the game with the goal of making sure there are naturally as few rules arguments at the tournament as possible without even having to reference the FAQ.

And you can rest assured that there are a good chunk of players out there that expect cover saves to be taken against exploding vehicles, Mawloc emergence attacks, Swooping Hawk Grenade Packs, Ork Big Bomms, etc, etc, etc, unfortunately just as there are some who would expect not to get cover saves in these cases.

Our belief and hope is that currently the former outweigh the latter in which case we've made the right ruling.

But what this ultimately comes down to is the context from which the attack is generated. Players expect to take cover saves against a Swooping Hawk attack because the context of the attack is that it is a grenade attack, which only makes 'sense' to get a cover save against.

Whereas with the Tervigon, these wounds are inflicted psychically by a friendly creature as a penalty for it dying, so I think you'll find that naturally people would not expect to get cover saves against these wounds.

But unfortunately because GW has failed to create a base-standard for how non-shooting, non-assault hits/wounds are resolved, and worse they are incredibly inconsistent with when they clarify if a unit does or does not get a cove save against such attacks, we are left as players and the INAT council, making individual judgement calls against each specific rule.

Which is likely what we will continue to do unless GW comes out with something major as a guideline in one of their FAQs.

So if cover saves against Tervigon wounds become a legitimate question that people start really asking about then we'll rule on it in the INAT and likely rule against allowing cover saves simply because it is highly unlikely that a majority of players would expect to get cover saves in that situation.

Whew, that was long! Hopefully that clarified our position a bit on the matter even if it isn't the answer you were particularly looking for.

Thanks again for all your feedback!