Template interactions with Soft/Hard Cover

[mattyfenby]

Clarifying to make sure we are playing correctly.

Any models entirely under the template are automatically hit, any models partially under the template are hit on a 4+.

While in Hard Cover, such as a boulders terrain, models entirely under would still be automatically hit while models partially under would now be hit on a 6+. Is this correct? Same thing would apply while within a wood for Soft Cover for a 5+ on the partials. We looked at pages 60 and 118-125 and this interaction does not ever seem to be explicitly mentioned, so of course we are using common sense during the game while also utilizing this free resource where anyone can ask questions.

I appreciate anyone who takes the time to read this or post an answer.

[Just Tony]

Hit on 4 plus for partials is simply the mechanic used for targeting with war machines. I asked you this: would you get a partial on a 3 plus if you hit a large target? Obviously not, as the intention is not that you're actually rolling to hit with this template like you would with a direct missile attack. You use ballistic skill to fire a crossbow; you don't use your ballistic skill for the war machines. The Mechanics for scoring a hit or rolling your attack for a war machine is drastically different. You look up breath weapons, would you expect to get plus one or minus one to hit with a breath weapon on your partials? It's baked into the mechanic of it. What is the ballistic skill of a dragon or hydra? Obviously they're not using that to roll their breath weapon so to hit modifiers don't count. Your question isn't necessarily a bad one, but if you look at where you're getting your to hit mechanic from that'll kind of lead you where you need to go. Not only that, but if you think of a stone thrower lobbing in from up top and smashing down onto your unit, what good is a hedge in front of you going to do?

[mattyfenby]

Always hitting partials on 4+ regardless of cover, Large Target, etc.

Thank you, very glad I asked this question and I will continue to ask questions, even if they are bad ones.

[Mae]

I have to say I while heartedly disagree with Tony, the rules for cover don't modify ballistic skill. Pages 60 and 62 state that the shooting unit takes a -2 TO HIT. It doesn't say a thing in regards to ballistic skill, and partials state that you roll TO HIT against any partials, making it a roll TO HIT. So following that logic the -2 TO HIT would apply to rolling TO HIT on partials.

[Mae]

Also trying to use the hypothetical of the stone thrower and the hedge, the hedge isn't protecting you from the projectile. The projectile is the center auto hit. It is protecting you from the debris which is the source of the damage on a partial hit

[mattyfenby]

Mae,

Thank you for your response and the shrapnel angle you raise does make sense. However, it also did make sense to me that you don’t modify for Large Target, or Skirmishers, so I may still be convinced it’s a blanket 4+ for lobber war machine partials.

Here’s a thought experiment for you two:

Theres a character in a doorway or window of a building. The projectile lands in the front yard, thats where the template center is, but the template extends to partially cover the character in the doorway. He has a roof over his head, but the shrapnel is coming from the front yard.

I think the only way to handle that is the blanket 4+ right? Otherwise we’re into ‘7+ to-hit’ territory on a lobber war machine which definitely doesn’t feel right.

[Just Tony]

More thoughts...


Magic missiles don't roll to hit as their casting cost is where that part of the mechanic lies. Should a Wizard be at -1 to cast the spell since it is effectively a "to hit" roll without being named as such?


Also, my breath weapon example was casually ignored by Mae. Is it because the flames pass around cover? Have you ever used a flame tool? Paths are most assuredly blocked by objects. We also consider how shrapnel would make a mockery of soft cover in the first place.

[mattyfenby]

I think Mae’s point was that it is named as such, so I’m not sure the wizard analogy works.

Let’s be respectful and clean up chirps like “ have you ever used a flame template?”

You and Jonathan have been out of control rude lately and it makes my club not want to use this site.

[Mae]

More thoughts...


Magic missiles don't roll to hit as their casting cost is where that part of the mechanic lies. Should a Wizard be at -1 to cast the spell since it is effectively a "to hit" roll without being named as such?


Also, my breath weapon example was casually ignored by Mae. Is it because the flames pass around cover? Have you ever used a flame tool? Paths are most assuredly blocked by objects. We also consider how shrapnel would make a mockery of soft cover in the first place.

The minuses to hit are directly stated to be in the shooting phase so your counter point here is idiotic, maybe learn how to read, doesn't seem to be your strong suit

[mattyfenby]

Mae,

Gonna say the same thing to you buddy- let's calm it down on the being disrespectful.

Let’s not chirp each other online over Warhammer rules. I’m just trying to post my moronic questions here to be the best most confident commissioner possible for my club. If anyone feels like the questions are bad, just please don’t answer them. There’s absolutely no reason for anybody on here to be condescending to someone trying to learn but if you just start yelling insults that doesnt help either

[Just Tony]

I think Mae’s point was that it is named as such, so I’m not sure the wizard analogy works.

Let’s be respectful and clean up chirps like “ have you ever used a flame template?”

You and Jonathan have been out of control rude lately and it makes my club not want to use this site.

Actually, what I asked was have you ever used a flame tool. You know, like one of those propane flame tools that you use to heat up pipes or something, or like me, a flamethrower in the military. If you use anything that spouts flame it doesn't go in a direct path. That's kind of what I was getting at. I was trying to use real world example to solidify the point.


If you would, matt, please isolate the posts where I have been outwardly rude. Because honestly, I have not been. I may be too direct, but I've never been outwardly rude. At worst my matter of factness may translate poorly in text.

[mattyfenby]

Tony,

I completely misunderstood your post.

I took that as you asking them if they have used a flame template in the same tone someone might say "Do you even lift, bro?"

That was my example of you being disrespectful, and I was rubbed the wrong way by you bringing into it whether or not I was asking a good question. I may be over-reacting or becoming defensive, so I will reflect on that as well. Even when misunderstanding your post, I did not think answering an insult with an insult was the play, and I said as much to Mae. Since I namedropped Jonathan I have created a post underneath his chirp on another thread asking him to reel it in as well. I don't mean to bog everyone down being the nice guy police, and I don't mean to sound like some kind of moral authority. I just want everyone to try and remember to be respectful.

As for "think about the reality the game world is trying to depict" and other similar lines of thought- I respectfully, strongly disagree that 6th Edition is this common sense everything-is-intuitive system. Some examples off the top of my head: The rules of flight don't reflect real life in my opinion. Fleeing is counter-intuitive, and fleeing units can even move through enemy formations in some circumstances (2002 Book needed to clarify this due to many disagreements). Certain units' Unit Strengths are not necessarily intuitive (clarfied in the 2004 book due to many heated disagreements about how monsters cannot possibly be unit strength 1). In the example at the top of the thread, we were originally asking because of a stone thrower landing outside of a patch of boulders. Boulders could certainly stand SOME chance to deflect a piece of errant stone on the perimeter of the blast zone in real life, right? The rulebook clearly states, multiple times, that there will be contradictions, there will be times when something does not work exactly as you might expect. In those instances, someone who needs to be ready to answer questions from opposing club members in the heat of a battle would want to do their due diligence and ask every question they think they might need to ask on an online forum where other players can lend their opinions. I'm honestly not asking these questions to troll anyone or waste anyone's time, so over the past few days I have struggled with how to interpret the tone of the answers I've been getting.

I don't want to start a battle with anybody. Coming here to get a tiebreaker opinion when club members disagree and I cant find an explicit citation to point them to is a valuable resource to me.

[Just Tony]

And I'd like for it to remain a valuable resource to players. I don't want this to become some sort of pissing match between people.


After an exhaustive search, I also could not find any sort of information that would lead one way or the other. I thought maybe there was a note about the modifiers directly referencing the ballistic skill roll, but the only thing that comes close to that is mentioning that the ballistic skill is used on that chart and then all the modifiers to hit are under there. It's vague enough that you can argue Point either way, so I'm not going to stick with either one of those for right now.




Also I decided to go ahead and message Tuomas Pirinen on Reddit to see if he had the answer to this question.

[mattyfenby]

I’m honestly convinced enough to make a ruling for partials always being on a 4+ in my club just by thinking about having to apply single character on foot, large target, etc to any partial roll. It seemed so natural at the time “oh they could just crouch behind some boulders” but I really don’t see the game makers wanting us to modify partials without explicitly saying so.

I appreciate you reaching out to the actual game maker just to be sure though, that is cool.

[Just Tony]

Don't thank me yet, hasn't answered me yet...

[TinyLegions]

This smells like power gaming to me. If allowing this is what people agree to do in their setting than that is fine, but be aware of the consequences of when it is your proverbial stone thrower, or mortar that is in question. I got out the books for this, so let the rules lawyering commence.

P 58 BRB: "You may also shoot with any war machines such as stone throwers, cannons, etc. The rules for these are covered later." Anything in the shooting section starting in P. 58 are superseded by the rules for war machines starting on page 118, as the shooting section starting in p. 58 refers to shooting weapons. Subsequent rules for a stone thrower state a static 4+ roll, "Models whose base lie partially under the template are hit on a 4+." Using the 2002 Annual language, the term that they use "and affect partially covered models on a D6 roll of 4+." That 4+ is not a "To Hit" roll as stated in the shooting rules starting in p. 58. The Stone Thrower rules are specifically different from the rules of the bolt thrower on P. 124 where they say to use the BS of the crew, and apply any modifiers.

Putting it in another way, looking at the castle rules a model completely under the template yet on a castle wall, tower, or gatehouse is automatically hit, along with the castle piece.(P 252 BRB) If you miss with the center hole, the castle gets hit on a 4+, not a modified 6+ to include hard cover. They don't specify a 4+ for partials in the castle rules, but I would have to say that you get no special treatment from a war machine hit just because you are in hard cover, which you are when you are defending a castle with a functional rampart.

Honestly this is a clear case of power gaming in the extreme, and someone weaseling their way out of a few hits like this would not be tolerated by me. Matt please do keep asking questions on these things because discussion like this is healthy to discuss these issues, but I do agree with Jonathon on the other thread that I am baffled by how some people parse and cut the English language just to get an edge in an antiquated toy soldier game. Please note that I am not slighting Matt on this, as I suspect that some of the players in his group are power gaming and taking advantage of other peoples lack of knowledge of the game. I know that you are keeping your questions neutral, but perhaps a little more context on the scenario may help us help you.

[mattyfenby]

Maybe I was just being too sensitive reacting to people telling me the questions are baffling if this is a third person saying it, but I would like to just put out there that I've seen some of the questions I've been asking on this https://6th.whfb.app/faq resource I've found so I really don't think they're that wild of questions.

I'd like to say for the record this is DEFINITELY not a case of one of the players trying to take advantage in my club. The boulder thing is entirely on me. Somebody innocently asked if it affects partials and for whatever reason that I decided, I’m not getting bogged down in the rulebooks this time, ‘just think about what would happen in real life.’ Someones behind a boulder, makes sense, shrapnel could bounce off. Moved on nice and quick (didnt end up affecting any outcomes). Our club pretty much never uses lobbing war machines, save for some limited experience with Goblin Doom Divers, which don’t use the template (and we still screwed up how lobber LOS works).

I am probably the most competitive person in the club when it comes to trying to craft the best army list and trying to run the perfect strategy. This is the problem with my club: We have only 4 members. Two of them do not like to study the rules ever and struggle to turn in their Army Lists on time (and struggle to have them be legal). They are my friends in real life and they are incredibly busy with their jobs and families, so I understand that they do not have much time to put aside for prep. They do try their best during the day of the month that is battle day, and they are competitive, asking questions, not to cheat but honestly because they do not know. The third player in the club who is not me has many more years of experience than I do, but we just recruited them into the club this year and they have played so many editions of so many games that they are constantly confusing the rules of editions. That leaves me as somehow the most expert in 6th Edition in our 4 player league and I am commissioner for our first ever season (seasons are 24 months long, 13 competitive games w 11 months for cookouts and friendly games and stuff). I am constantly getting hit with questions and situations that I was not expecting, and as a player who is ALSO in the league, trying to win, I am incredibly reluctant to ever make a ruling that could hurt somebody unless I am 100% sure and can point to the citation. This means that a lot of the time, I spend 10 mins trying to flip through 3-4 different books and googling it. Sometimes we go with a certain ruling and post the question just to make sure I was right, other times we roll for it and let luck decide in the moment and then post the question online to know what we should have done and what we will do moving forwards.

I'll come right out and say it- asking about the Chaos Dwarfs having daemonic aura now looking back on it seems like a dumb question. Nobody else in the club asked that, I was obsessing about making a Chaos Dwarfs book and it didn't even matter because we cut Hellcannon out of the book. I still didn't want to be talked down to, though.

"Think about what would happen in real life" is the absolute bane of my existence and never ceases to trip me up. I don't seem to have a good sense for that. I also have never seen any tournaments or really any other games from anyone and although I've tried to read through Battle Reports I just always seem to get hit with some kind of circumstance I was not expecting or which I do not remember how to resolve. If I had someone in the league who had the right type of brain for this, I would step down as commissioner immediately. I am the type of person who played our first year of Warhammer on the 6x4 table the long way, with 4 feet of neutral zone in between our deployment zones, and my original partner (league JUST grew to 4 people in 2022) is the type of person who played that way with me for almost a DOZEN games never questioning it because he was just happy I was the one doing all the reading and studying. That's why on the first day of this site I said straight off to expect a steady stream of moronic questions while I try to actually learn how to play.

[Just Tony]

Thank you for getting in on this one. It didn't even dawn on me to check that War Machines article in Warhammer Annual. I not only let matty down; I let myself down.

You also addressed area of effect, which I planned on addressing with template spells, but actual war machine articles trump principle examples.



And I don't mind matty's questions, as I've had to ask on behalf of people before as well. I've also been guilty of misinterpretation myself. They wrote the War Crown Of Saphery addendum shortly after I came to the same erroneous realization that promted their errata.

[Jonathan E]

Clarifying to make sure we are playing correctly.

Any models entirely under the template are automatically hit, any models partially under the template are hit on a 4+.

While in Hard Cover, such as a boulders terrain, models entirely under would still be automatically hit while models partially under would now be hit on a 6+. Is this correct? Same thing would apply while within a wood for Soft Cover for a 5+ on the partials. We looked at pages 60 and 118-125 and this interaction does not ever seem to be explicitly mentioned, so of course we are using common sense during the game while also utilizing this free resource where anyone can ask questions.

I appreciate anyone who takes the time to read this or post an answer.

OK, this is a funny one, 'cause I can see how you arrived at that conclusion, and I think it probably makes more sense because... of course a body is going to get some sort of extra protection from having something between it and the point of impact. I don't think that's how it's supposed to work, RAW, but I kinda like your interpretation more.

(I'm not just saying that because of the other thread, either, I genuinely think you're onto something here.)
(In fact, while we're talking about that...)

I am probably the most competitive person in the club when it comes to trying to craft the best army list and trying to run the perfect strategy. This is the problem with my club: We have only 4 members. Two of them do not like to study the rules ever and struggle to turn in their Army Lists on time (and struggle to have them be legal). They are my friends in real life and they are incredibly busy with their jobs and families, so I understand that they do not have much time to put aside for prep. They do try their best during the day of the month that is battle day, and they are competitive, asking questions, not to cheat but honestly because they do not know. The third player in the club who is not me has many more years of experience than I do, but we just recruited them into the club this year and they have played so many editions of so many games that they are constantly confusing the rules of editions. That leaves me as somehow the most expert in 6th Edition in our 4 player league and I am commissioner for our first ever season (seasons are 24 months long, 13 competitive games w 11 months for cookouts and friendly games and stuff). I am constantly getting hit with questions and situations that I was not expecting, and as a player who is ALSO in the league, trying to win, I am incredibly reluctant to ever make a ruling that could hurt somebody unless I am 100% sure and can point to the citation. This means that a lot of the time, I spend 10 mins trying to flip through 3-4 different books and googling it. Sometimes we go with a certain ruling and post the question just to make sure I was right, other times we roll for it and let luck decide in the moment and then post the question online to know what we should have done and what we will do moving forwards.

It is rough being the person who has to teach a game they've hardly mastered themselves, especially if one of the parties at the table is really into getting it right and trying hard to win "fair and square." I'm running into it a lot with 40K at the moment, where my only local opponent is much more competitive and literal in his approach than I am and we're having to spend a lot more time with our noses in books during games than I'd like. I'm also a forever GM when I roleplay - in the vast majority of the groups I've been in I'm the only one who's done a full readthrough and I know people who have never cracked the rulebook and refuse to even try and commit the stuff on their sheet to memory. It does suck being the guy who had the idea and has now ended up doing all the work and I do sympathise, so I want to apologise properly for being a condescending pillock.

I still think you're trying to fit a square peg into a round hole by taking this approach to WFB, because the company that made it never did and never foolproofed it to that extent and you're never going to find definitive answers to some of these questions, but I do at least understand why you feel compelled to do it.

[mattyfenby]

I read your linked article and I hear a lot of what you are saying.

Despite feeling a little overwhelmed and like I need to be the computer that runs the game for our club sometimes, I must say I am extremely lucky to have the club that I do. Their sportsmanship is incredible and I feel bad that I didn’t make that more clear off the jump. We are all learning and getting better, and we have a healthy mix of months that are for the Competitive League and months that are just for fun. The Competitive lists actually don’t end up being take-all-comers lists either, because in our league, you know what faction you are and you know what faction your opponent will be, and each player ends up getting one month as each faction and one month facing each (13 total comp games in a 24 month season).

It is a shame you don’t live in Massachusetts because I think you would find the mix of friendly scrimmages and competitive matchups ‘nutritious.’ None of us play at our LGS or go to Tournaments (although since I’ve never done it I’m not sick of it yet) because just finding time in our lives to get that once a month battle done is tough enough. This month is a bye month for the club, which my buddy and I are using to test the Chaos Dwarfs book we have been working on.

Our eventual plan, once we own as close to every model from every faction as possible, is to do a giant campaign that falls somewhere between a Total War Warhammer campaign, The End Times, and Game of Thrones seasons 1-4. Each July is a bye month for the League where we have a cookout and invite outsiders to come play a 1000 pt scrimmage. This was something my original warhammer partner and I did a few years ago to grow the club from 2 to 4 and it seems to still be working. My hope is that at the end of this first 4 person season at the close of 2023, we will be looking at expanding to a 6 person club and possibly even adding Dogs of War and Chaos Dwarfs to the list of factions you play as/against and upping the comp season to 15 games.

I fully admit that I can get bogged down in the “lawyering” of the rules and also how dumb of a question Daemonic Aura on CD crew is, but thats sort of just how my brain works. Full disclosure: I was a philosophy major and a law minor in undergrad, so when I read a ruleset I cannot help but begin attempting to turn it around and stretch it and do thought experiments. Sometimes I get caught down a rabbit hole that isn’t where the game was supposed to go. I am, slowly but surely, getting the experience each month to learn the armies and to learn most of the rulebook, and I think in the next few years the whole club will be lightyears from where it is now in terms of game knowledge.

[Jonathan E]

The mode of play you describe sounds like a great fit for you and I'm glad you've worked it out. I appreciate the spirit of the invitation, too. But: square pegs, round holes, again.

Contemporary 40K does one thing absolutely right by creating distinct modes of play - Open, Matched, Narrative - and encouraging players to figure out which one they like and self-sort into something that'll give them more of what they like best about the game. Within those modes are further layers of commitment/complexity because, again, for all their faults the current design team understand that "casual" and "hardcore" are attitudes to play and not correlated to "likes tournaments/leagues" and "likes campaigns." One can commit to Forging The Narrative with an intensity that's normally only seen in powergamers and one can turn up to a league and waste everyone's time by not committing to the "challenging contest of skill" mode that everyone else is on.

What I'm getting to with all this is that I'm very much an Open Play kind of person. The play's the thing, not the score and not the storyline. Within that mode I probably skew more tryhard than most, in that "just line up and pew pew" doesn't hold a great deal of appeal for me as a scenario and I do like some context to each battle. Ultimately though it's "you bring your guys, I bring my guys, we work at having a good time with good flow and good conduct," and the surfeit of organisation around league, campaign or tournament play doesn't suit me. I am a garage gamer to my bones, and the only reason I do the events thing is because there's nobody else playing squarebasehammer around here and events are the only way I get more than two games into a year. Banging myself into the wrong hole (stop that sniggering at the back) has made me a bit grumpy and I'm wondering if I should bother with WFB this year.

(Going back to the problem of my tone for a second, this is an underrated and unspoken element of wargaming discourse: when someone is Big Mad about wargame rules, their actual pain point is usually something outside the game, that they lack the wherewithal or the capacity to address. As such, the pent-up angst an welgang has to go somewhere, and it finds its safety valve in having aggressively held opinions about trivial things on god's own Internet. Maybe this isn't always true, but I've found it generally holds up.)

Also, borrowing armies gives me the heebie-jeebies. This really is just a visceral "feelings not facts" point, but I can't be budged on it. My Dudes, uber alles.

I fully admit that I can get bogged down in the “lawyering” of the rules and also how dumb of a question Daemonic Aura on CD crew is, but thats sort of just how my brain works. Full disclosure: I was a philosophy major and a law minor in undergrad, so when I read a ruleset I cannot help but begin attempting to turn it around and stretch it and do thought experiments. Sometimes I get caught down a rabbit hole that isn’t where the game was supposed to go. I am, slowly but surely, getting the experience each month to learn the armies and to learn most of the rulebook, and I think in the next few years the whole club will be lightyears from where it is now in terms of game knowledge.

You're literally a Rules Lawyer!

It's fine. By contrast, I took Creative Writing, then English Studies, then Education. So, y'know. I can look at a rules set and figure out where the language is a limiting factor, I have a strong sense of genre, and I get the teaching/learning/feeling process down pat, but I'm also not really interested in definitive answers because there aren't any, it's all a question of the lens you're using to read today, and tomorrow's reading might yield completely different answers and those are just as valid.