Warhammer 40k 6th Edition Rules Questions

[Mannahnin]

IMO the Chaos Lord is equally eligible to swap his bike's gun for an item from the Ranged Weapons or Chaos Artefacts lists, as those only requires him to swap "one weapon".  As opposed to the Melee Weapons list, which requires that a bolt pistol or close combat weapon specifically be swapped.

But your house, your rule.  I'm glad to have a ruling.

[robpro]

Swarms & ID came up a few times in my games yesterday, I'm curious exactly how it should be played. The Adeption FAQ (on pdf pg 2) says you only double the wound after it has been allocated (not while it's still in the wound pool) so a T3 swarm hit by an S6 flamer would only ID one  base (one wound is allocated to the model, gets doubled to 2, it was S6 so it insta-kills the base).

My opponents all thought two bases per wound would get pulled for S6+ template hits, I just let it go because it didn't really have a huge impact on the games and I wasn't really sure if or how BG had ruled on the issue prior. I would like to make sure for future games at the store, though.

So I guess my question is "How does BG play the swarms/ID issue?".

[andalucien]

Should we just ask all the questions that are handled in the Adepticon FAQ and see if there is a different local ruling?   Just because the questions haven't been asked before doesn't mean they won't come up in a tournament and be handled "ad hoc" - not all rules issues are brought up to the TO at all, sometimes people just handle them amicably (like robpro just posted).  Which is fine, I do that too, but it's a better experience if both participants can look something up and be like, "Oh ok, this is how that works" and know it was like an official ruling.  It's less likely to leave a bad taste in someone's mouth.

Also, the format of this thread is not ideal for discovering rulings.  Recently someone asked about legal bastion configuration.  This was actually already answered in this thread, but the only way to know that would be to read all 100 pages of the thread (most of which is irrelevant, even after sifting through the arguments, now that multiple versions of GW faq's have come out since the thread was started).   It's much better to have a concise document that contains all current rulings, because that means it's more likely that both people in a game will be aware of a given ruling and that you don't need to interrupt the game to confirm with Sam and/or try to find the ruling on the messageboard.

[Chase]

There's a solid chance we'll shift over to the Adepticon FAQ soon'ish.

[Sir_Prometheus]

Swarms & ID came up a few times in my games yesterday, I'm curious exactly how it should be played. The Adeption FAQ (on pdf pg 2) says you only double the wound after it has been allocated (not while it's still in the wound pool) so a T3 swarm hit by an S6 flamer would only ID one  base (one wound is allocated to the model, gets doubled to 2, it was S6 so it insta-kills the base).

My opponents all thought two bases per wound would get pulled for S6+ template hits, I just let it go because it didn't really have a huge impact on the games and I wasn't really sure if or how BG had ruled on the issue prior. I would like to make sure for future games at the store, though.

So I guess my question is "How does BG play the swarms/ID issue?".

I disagree with that ruling completely.

[shwnlyns]

So I'm looking at the Dark Angels codex and on page 53 Azrael is listed as having a bolt pistol along with his secial combi plasma and sword; but in the list in the back of the book his wargear does not include the bolt pistol. Does he have the pistol and if he does, does he choose which gun to fire and does he get 1 more attack for having a pistol and sword?

[PhoenixFire]

So I'm looking at the Dark Angels codex and on page 53 Azrael is listed as having a bolt pistol along with his secial combi plasma and sword; but in the list in the back of the book his wargear does not include the bolt pistol. Does he have the pistol and if he does, does he choose which gun to fire and does he get 1 more attack for having a pistol and sword?

its in the faq, he is supposed to have the pistol. yes he gets one more attack, yes he can use the pistol to shoot but why would he.

[shwnlyns]

More curious about the extra attack but also I figure the pistol is nice to shoot with if you plan on charging in the next phase

[robpro]

Swarms & ID came up a few times in my games yesterday, I'm curious exactly how it should be played. The Adeption FAQ (on pdf pg 2) says you only double the wound after it has been allocated (not while it's still in the wound pool) so a T3 swarm hit by an S6 flamer would only ID one  base (one wound is allocated to the model, gets doubled to 2, it was S6 so it insta-kills the base).

My opponents all thought two bases per wound would get pulled for S6+ template hits, I just let it go because it didn't really have a huge impact on the games and I wasn't really sure if or how BG had ruled on the issue prior. I would like to make sure for future games at the store, though.

So I guess my question is "How does BG play the swarms/ID issue?".

I disagree with that ruling completely.

Out of curiousity, why? I feel like that ruling makes a lot of sense.

[Benjamin]

Out of curiousity, why? I feel like that ruling makes a lot of sense.

Me too. My thought process is to first allocate the wound. Next, check if the model has the Swarm rule, and if yes, one wound becomes two wounds.

[Loranus]

Out of curiousity, why? I feel like that ruling makes a lot of sense.

Me too. My thought process is to first allocate the wound. Next, check if the model has the Swarm rule, and if yes, one wound becomes two wounds.

Because wound allocation comes from the wound pool which is determined after all the unsaved wounds are determined.

That sounds a little confusing so here is the long run.

If you have a Unit of Scarabs Toughness 3 with 3 wounds and an Armour save of 5+.

I hit them with a Strength 6 AP - Flame Template manage to hit 4 of them. I roll and manage to wound with all 4. You now make armour saves. You made 1 so 3 unsaved wounds go into the wound pool which are now doubled because they were unsaved templates for swarms. Then you apply the first wound to the closest model which would be an instant kill. You then have 5 more wounds to apply since once they are unsaved they are doubled and put into the wound pool before going on models.

The only situation this would not be the case is if an Independent Character joined a unit with the Swarms special rule and he had a different armour save and didn't have the swarms special rule. Which if you are doing that you better have a good reason I can not think of outside of to avoid doubling ID rules.

[andalucien]

The exception you mentioned with the independent character is a good example of where your logic breaks own.   The problem is that you can have units where some of the models are swarms and others aren't.   Another example would be Dark Eldar beast packs - only the Razorwing Flocks are swarms.   So in order to determine whether a given wound from a blast/template should be doubled, you first need to make sure that wound was actually allocated to a model that was a Swarm.  Once the wound has been allocated to a specific model, it can't "overflow" to another model.  So, by this logic, each str 6 blast/template wound would only be able to kill a single swarm base.

If you disagree, can you walk us through how you would handle this situation:  there's a beast pack with 3 beastmasters, 5 khymerae, and 4 razorwing flocks.  A heldrake breathes on it and hits 2 khymerae, 1 beastmaster, and 2 flocks.  A khymera is closet, then a flock, then another khymera, then another flock, then the beastmaster.

[Loranus]

I see where my logic breaks down and I have been thinking about it even when I posted. Here is an example though to take into consideration. A unit with 2 swarm units in it toughness 3 gets hit by a plasma cannon shot hits both 1 has cover one does not. The one who does not have a cover save has 1 wound left and the blast causes 2 wounds to him now where does the second wound go now does it just fade away? Or does the second swarm get a cover save from it that will not double on him. You can not apply 2 wounds to a model that has only 1 wound. It is a very detrimental and confusing set of rules for the one special rule. What if you do a lookout sir for an unsaved blast wound from a character without swarms to one with does it suddenly get 2 wounds when it would have been one. Unfortunately I haven't been able to sit down and look extensively over the rules and situations pertaining to this and in fact the only reference I can remember is that in 5th that the blast would instant death 2 models and that was how it was FAQ by games workshop but this is 6th not 5th so that is in valid.

[Sir_Prometheus]

90% of the time, if the intention behind a rule hasn't changed (never mind the technicalities, please remember that GW doesn't write technical rules) that's how they're going to FAQ it again.  I don't see anything behind the intended interactions of swarms, templates, and instant death that has changed between editions.

This is also just how I and every opponent I have had have played it, without too much argument.  Just saying. 

Personally, I have always thought double str ID being applied to swarms as a little dumb.  Why should a krak missile do more dmg than a frag missile to a pile of coach roaches?  Conversely, I'd have no problem with flamers just IDing whole bases, forget about double wounds. 

And they don't get stealth now?  Why? Never seen a rule that made more sense. 

But practically, I have always liked that Incinerators will just slaughter scarabs and razor flocks.  THose suckers need to die.

[robpro]

Playing around with the example Loranus gave, here's how I always saw this scenario working out (and I was pretty shocked when I first heard someone tell me it did double ID wounds)

If you have a Unit of Scarabs Toughness 3 with 3 wounds and an Armour save of 5+.

Good here.

I hit them with a Strength 6 AP - Flame Template manage to hit 4 of them. I roll and manage to wound with all 4. You now make armour saves. You made 1 so 3 unsaved wounds go into the wound pool

Good so far.

hich are now doubled because they were unsaved templates for swarms. Then you apply the first wound to the closest model which would be an instant kill. You then have 5 more wounds to apply since once they are unsaved they are doubled and put into the wound pool before going on models.

This is where I think you make a mistake on the process.

We have 3 wounds in the wound pool caused from a template. However, the wounds aren't smart. They don't know they're going to a unit with the swarm USR while they're sitting in the wound pool.

When the wound gets allocated to the scarab, you would double it per swarm, and then remove the base since the wound caused ID.

There are issues:

-what happens if a scarab has only 1 wound left? You can't keep allocating wounds to it, I'd say the wounds are lost. The base that took double wounds has been removed. If you bump the wound to another swarm, are they doubled against since it was a 2nd wound caused by a blast template? That seems silly to me.

-what happens if an IC (or other non-swarm) is in the unit? If you rolled to wound the closest model one at a time, double the wounds the swarm took, and removed it, you'd be resolving the hits the way I just described above.

GW just doesn't give us good guidance on exactly when to double the wounds a swarm takes. I'll play with it either way, but since there are multiple ways to look at the issue, I just wanted to know ahead of time how it would be played in BG.

It would make a lot more sense to me if you said "Well, 4 scarab bases are covered, so I roll 8 dice to wound them" or "4 scarabs and an IC are covered, so I roll 9 dice to wound them." Boom, solves the whole mess. Unfortunately, it's not written like that. :/