[Tassadar]

Hi all...

We came up on the following situation in a game recently and had problems finding any rule that covered it!

Situation is as follows:

Space marine player Droppods a Dreadnought (Multi melta & Heavy flamer) close to Tau deployment zone. Dreadnought disembarks within 2" of the pod. In the shooting phase it targets a Devilfish. In front of the Devilfish is deployed a small squad of Firewarriors. When measuring range the MM is found to be in range of the Devilfish (the designated target) but the Heavy flamer is out of reach (but is covering the Firewarriors) - Is it then legal to claim the FW's as hit by the template?

In another extreme example - The dread targets a vehicle 40" away with its twin-linked lascannon and happens to be positioned in such a way that by placing the Heavy flamer template in a straight line towards the intented target it can hit a full squad of enemy infantry...Is this against the rules as written?

Tassadar

[knightperson]

I'm going to say Yes it violates RAW as well as RAI. 5th edition rulebook, pg 29, 2nd paragraph under TEMPLATE: "Instead of rolling to hit, simply place the template so that its narrow end is touching the base of the model firing it and the rest of the template covers as many models as possible in the target unit without touching any friendly models." To me that suggests (although I admit it's less clear than I thought it would be) that the template must actually touch models in the unit you're firing at. I suppose one could argue that "as many models as possible" could be "zero" if the unit is too far away, but I think it's a very questionable position to take. Since it's so clearly against RAI, I wouldn't use it or allow it.

Note, if you can at least graze the devilfish with the template, then it's fine. You're targeting the same unit with both multi-melta and flamer, and "just happening" to also roast some fire warriors.

[Tassadar]

That was also what we ruled at the moment - but at that time under time-pressure we did not find anything that ruled against it.

On page 17 the Great Tome states: "Any models that is found to be out of range of all the models he can see in the target unit misses automatically - his shots simply do not reach."

Maybe that is an indication to support RAI.

Tassadar

[HijiriOni]

Yeah but then the arguement for templates "Hitting automatically" comes into play.

[Grindgobble Witherfume]

Originally Posted by HijiriOni

Yeah but then the arguement for templates "Hitting automatically" comes into play.

Isn't it, anything under the template is hit automatically? Then when weapons are out of range, they auto-miss and do nothing?

[Wargamer]

I've got to agree; if the Template cannot physically touch the target unit, or a model therein, it automatically misses and no shots are resolved.

[scoutfox]

Just think of it this way; the dread is trying to cook the devilfish (even though it won't do anything), so it doesn't want to waste the fuel on fire warriors. I agree with the others, if the flamer can't hit the intended target it is never fired.

[Astartes X]

If the Devilfish in question was declared the target, then only it can be affected by any weapons from the Dreadnought. Simply placing a template facing in the same direction as the target does not count as firing at it, UNLESS the template touches the intended target and happens to cover other enemy models too.

The latter example given in the first post is the same thing as firing at two separate units by one model in the shooting phase- can't be done unless you're Tau with that piece of wargear that allows this to be so (sorry, not familiar with the names of Tau upgrades). Otherwise people would be marching their Dreadnoughts up to infantry all the time, but targeting far away units while "accidentally" or "just happening" to barbeque nearby infantry. Again, this works fine if the template can roast the intended target and poor souls caught in the firestorm, but not in the examples initially provided.