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Newbie questions - Transports, artillery and buildings

 Post subject: Newbie questions - Transports, artillery and buildings
PostPosted: Wed Mar 02, 2016 12:55 am 
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After playing a few small games with Space Marines and Imperial Guard, I have a few rules questions (NetEpic Gold):

A. Transports, pertaining to a Space Marine Tactical Detachment (6 tactical stands and 3 rhinos)
A.1. Can the Space Marines begin the game embarked in their Rhinos?
A.2. Bearing in mind that the transports and the space marines are given separate orders, do the transports and the marines count as one activation (activating at the same time) or as two activations?
A.3. With the answer to question A.2 in mind, is it possible for the following sequence of events to occur in the one movement phase: the marines embark in the rhinos, the rhinos move, the marines disembark from the rhinos, the rhinos move again?
A.4. If an enemy unit snap fires at the rhinos 10cm into their movement (charge orders), blowing up one of the rhinos and causing one of the tactical stands to successfully bail out, can the two surviving rhinos move the remaining 40cm of movement or do they have to remain in coherency with the stand that bailed out? Furthermore, can the stand that bailed out still move this turn?

B. Transports, pertaining to a Space Marine Scout Detachment (6 scout stands) and a Land Raider Squadron (3 Land Raiders)
B.1. Can the Land Raiders transport the Scouts?
B.2. Can the Scouts begin the game embarked in the Land Raiders?
B.3. Do the Land Raiders and the Scouts count as one activation or two?
B.4. With the answer to question B.3 in mind, is it possible for the following sequence of events to occur in the one movement phase: the scouts embark in the land raiders, the land raiders move, the scouts disembark from the land raiders, the land raiders move again?

C. Artillery, pertaining to all types
C.1. What is the significance of the abbreviations BP, SB and LB for artillery units?
Mole Mortar 1 BP @ # (0)
Bombard Battery 3 SB @ # (-3)
Griffon Battery 2 LB @ # (0)
C.2. If 3 Mole Mortars fire, how many templates do you place: 1 or 3? If it's only 1 template, how many hits does each unit under the template suffer: 1 or 3?

D. Buildings
D.1. Are Bombards really the only unit in the whole Adeptus Militaris army book that can actually damage a building (of any type)? Are the rules really saying that a Titan can't even make a dent in a wooden hut, or am I missing something?

These rules issues notwithstanding, I have been hugely enjoying the game. Thank you so much to all the people who contributed to these rules.

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 Post subject: Re: Newbie questions - Transports, artillery and buildings
PostPosted: Wed Mar 02, 2016 5:45 am 
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A1. Yes. In my opinion, that would be their default starting configuration. Just my opinion though, there are no rules requiring one way or the other.

A2. See the final sentence in the "Special Rule: Troops & Transports" box. In other words, one activation.

A3. I think you probably mean "in one activation" as your sequence could happen in one Movement phase regardless of the answer to A2. The Movement Phase is when all movement, and related actions, happen. If you do mean "in one activation" then yes. Do recall though that each stand and each Rhino loses 5cm of move each time an embarking or disembarking happens, so the stands would have had to begin the turn adjacent to the Rhinos for this to happen. Also, the Rhinos could not move more than 6cm away from the stands after they disembark as they are still all one Detachment, unless the "Separate Detachments" optional rule is in play.

As an aside, this question is asked and answered in the second example given on page 27 of the Core Rules. Well, almost the exact same question.

A4. They would have to remain in coherency. Well, more specifically, the stands they are transporting would absolutely have to. Whether the Rhinos themselves would or not would depend on whether the "Separate Detachments" optional rule was being used or not.

At that point, the player would have two options. Either end their Move at that point, or disembark the remaining stands.

As to whether a stand could move after bailing out, well, there is no specific rule to that. Thus we must look at the basics. Essentially, "bailing out" is a form of disembarking, and thus should cost the normal 5cm of movement. I would say that IF the stand has any Move remaining for that game turn after that 5cm was accounted for, it could use it.


B1. Technically, yes. Land Raiders are allowed to carry Infantry stands, thus they are able to carry Scout stands. Fluff wise it would be a bit odd, but rules wise there is nothing preventing it.

B2. Yes.

B3. Two. The Scouts count as one formation and the Land Raiders count as another one. Thus they must be given their own order counters and activated separately.

B4. No, it cannot. This is because the Scouts and the Land Raiders are from separate formations (IE, cards), whereas the Tactical Marines and their Rhinos are from the same one. The only way that could happen would be if you were to create a custom formation (probably using the Points Formula) that included both Scout stands and Land Raiders in the same detachment in the same formation.


C.
_ 'BP' stands for Barrage Points, which is an indicator of how strong the weapon is. It determines the To Hit value.
_ '@' means that the weapon in question combines fire. This means that all models fire at the same time and you place one template with a BP value equal to the combined BP total of all models in that specific detachment (not formation).

There are no such abbreviations as 'SB' or 'LB'. I would have to guess that they are typos and are supposed to be 'BP'. Where exactly did you see those abbreviations? They need to be fixed.

D. Negative. Any weapon classed as 'Artillery' has, by default, the "Damages Buildings" ability. This is mentioned in passing in the "Resistant to Damage" paragraph on page 29. In my opinion, this ability really needs to be specified in the description of each and every weapon/model that can do so, as otherwise it is quite easy to overlook.

In other words, it is safe to assume that any model classified as "Heavy Artillery" can Damage Buildings, unless it specifies Destroys Buildings instead, or the description of the model says otherwise. There are a few other models with weapons that also do so, but the majority of those say so in their description.

Also, welcome to NetEpic, and welcome to these forums.

As an aside, most of the above questions have been discussed in other threads, some even recently. It can be a good idea to dig a bit before posting. No worries though.

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 Post subject: Re: Newbie questions - Transports, artillery and buildings
PostPosted: Wed Mar 02, 2016 6:48 am 
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Magnus, thank you so much for your quick reply. I have been doing some reading on the forums but there were still a few things I did not quite understand, especially with regard to transports.

A. & B. I think that now makes sense to me. We were using the optional "transports as separate detachments" rule.

C. Artillery
The SB and LB values are from the Net Epic Gold Army Cards that I recently downloaded from http://www.netepic.org/netepic.html (e.g. Adeptus Astartes page 14 Heavy Off-Board Barrage).

D. Sorry I missed the "Artillery can damage buildings" sentence in the rulebook. I still find it odd that an Imperial Guard Infantry Gun (i.e. Autocannon) which is classified as Light Artillery would be capable of damaging buildings whereas a Vindicator would not (or am I still missing something?).

Thanks again.

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 Post subject: Re: Newbie questions - Transports, artillery and buildings
PostPosted: Wed Mar 02, 2016 11:46 am 
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Small correction to Magnus - BUT it only applies if you use gold cards, not the normal codex books:

The terms SB and LB are seperate and important. SB is standard barage (3cm radious) template where LB is the large barage (6cm radious) template. The number before the LB or SB is the number of barrage points (BP) each model has.

The griffon covers a much larger area than the standard template and this is shown by iusing the LB term.

BP is the number of barrage points a unit has. BP uses the standard template (unless otherwise noted) and artillery will "pool" their BP into the same template (again, unless noteed otherwise). So if you have 3 artillery models with 2BP each, you get to place a single standard template with 6BP. Each time you loose a model in the detachment you loose their contribution to the joint BP count and thereby become worse at hitting.

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 Post subject: Re: Newbie questions - Transports, artillery and buildings
PostPosted: Wed Mar 02, 2016 3:43 pm 
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Actually, most "Light Artillery" cannot Damage Buildings. That is why I specifically said "Heavy Artillery" (well, at one point I did just say "Artillery", sorry about the confusion), as the Infantry Gun model should not be able to. Nor the Rapier nor the Tarantula. There is a discussion about just this immediately before your comment in that other thread.

@Ronnie_Nielsen: Gotcha. I had not looked those over in detail, so I had not noticed that. That is a good idea to put the size of the template into the stats, though when creating new terminology it would be a good idea to specifically mention it in some post connected to the material in which the terms are found.

On that note though, the standard Barrage template should probably be MB as it is the 'Medium' size for a Barrage, not the small size. There is the 3cm template used for the Buzzer Squigs and the Gutbuster Ball that should probably use the abbreviation of SB. The normal is 6cm, while the Griffon uses the 12cm template.

Personally, I'd rather just list the diameter (as that is the standard measure) of the template in the stat line for the weapon, rather than using an abbreviation that a person might have to look up. For example: 2BP(6) for a 2 Barrage Point using the normal template, 1BP@(6) for a 1 point combining using normal, or 3BP@(12) for a 3 point combining Large template weapon.

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 Post subject: Re: Newbie questions - Transports, artillery and buildings
PostPosted: Wed Mar 02, 2016 9:17 pm 
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Hi!

My thanks to Magnus and Ronnie for fielding these questions, it makes my job a lot easier. :)

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 Post subject: Re: Newbie questions - Transports, artillery and buildings
PostPosted: Thu Mar 03, 2016 12:02 am 
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Thanks again for the answers. I'm sorry to be a nuisance but I still don't quite understand (I'll blame it on being half French).

For an Imperial Guard Light Off-Board Barrage (also Heavy Off-Board Barrages), the weapon information is 6BP 4+ (-1). There is no "@" symbol indicated. Does that mean that since the barrage is not combined, I would place 6 standard templates, each one inflicting a single hit on 4+ to each unit under the template? If so, do all the templates have to be placed touching each other (before scatter)? Or does it mean that I place one template but each unit under the template suffers up to 6 hits (hitting on 4+)?

There is an inconsistency for Manticores between the army book (6BP, To-Hit Roll Varies) and the gold cards (6SB @ #), in that the army book does not indicate combined fire but does not provide a fixed To-Hit Roll. Is the army book wrong?

When using the "Transports are Separate Detachments" optional rule, does this mean that because the Tactical Marines and the Rhinos are treated as separate detachments from an activation perspective, it is no longer possible to perform the following chain of events in the one movement phase: marines embark, rhinos move, marines disembark, rhinos move? This would mean that this rule makes all transports act the same, regardless of whether they are purchased as part of an infantry detachment or separately. Is my understanding now correct?

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 Post subject: Re: Newbie questions - Transports, artillery and buildings
PostPosted: Thu Mar 03, 2016 4:25 am 
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No worries on the questions, they show where the rules can use some clearing up - especially when multiple people keep asking the same questions.


Oh wow no. Just ... no. You never place more than one Barrage template per firing model unless the rules for that specific weapon say to do so. In addition, a weapon with the @ symbol only ever places one template per Detachment, not per model. Don't rely on just the stats for the model, always look at the description as well.

In the case of the Off-Board Barrages, one only ever places one standard size template (6cm) per instance and the listed BP rating determines the to-hit value of the attack. It does not have the @ symbol because you cannot combine multiple Detachments into the same attack, and each instance of an Off Board Barrage is basically it's own Detachment. The Off Board Barrage has a to-hit value of 4+ because it has 6BP.*

In the case of the Manticore, the @ symbol is not used in the Codex book (and should not be used on the army cards) because the Manticore has special rules. A detachment of Manticore may choose to combine or they may choose to fire independently in any specific game turn. See the description of the Manticore on page 20 of the "imperial_guard_with_errata_2.pdf" for more details.

*The only thing that the BP rating (the number before the BP) determines is the to-hit value of the attack. The To-Hit of a Barrage attack begins at 6+ for 1 or 2 BP, and goes up by +1 for every 2 BP. In other words:
BP _ To-Hit
1-2 _ 6+
3-4 _ 5+
5-6 _ 4+
7-8 _ 3+
_9+ _ 2+

Weapons that do not combine generally list their To-Hit value so that the chart need not be consulted. For weapons that do combine, add together all current models' BP ratings and use the entry for that total on the chart. That chart is in the core rules somewhere, I just don't recall where.

Note that weapons that do actually fire more than one Barrage template at a time must place the templates adjacent to at least one other template and may not overlap. Unless the description of the weapon says otherwise.


As a more in-depth example, let's say that a player is running an Imperial Guard army. He has an Artillery Company and a Manticore Support formation (along with other formations not relevant to this example).

During the first turn of the game, he activates the Manticore formation. He selects to have them not combine. Thus he places one 6cm template, scatters if needed, then places two more templates. All models at least half covered by any template take a hit on a 4+. [Note that no target model can be threatened more than once by the same attack, as it must be at least half under a template to qualify. Since templates cannot overlap, it is impossible to be more than half under more than one template.]

Next he activates the Bombards from the Company. He places one 6cm template on a building that contains an enemy Infantry formation. As all three Bombards are still in play, the total of this attack is 9BP (3BP from each Bombard) for a To-Hit value of 2+. First, the building is automatically hit (as per the 'Resistant to Damage' section on page 29 of the Cure Rules) and has to save. If it fails it's save, it is automatically destroyed regardless of remaining SP, as the Bombard does that. If it succeeds, all stands at least half under the template are hit on 2+.

Next he activates one of the Basilisk detachments. He places one 6cm template within range and sight. As all three Basilisk in that detachment are still in play, the BP total is 6 (2 from each model) for a To-Hit rating of 4+. He cannot add the Basilisk models from the other detachment to this total, as models in separate detachments never combine, even though they are all in the same formation. He then fires this detachment of Basilisk again, at the same target or a different one, as the Basilisk does that. [See description on page 19 of that Codex for details.]

On the next turn, he activates the Manticore again. By this time, they have lost one model. The player chooses to have them combine to try and take out a major target. Since each Manticore contributes 6BP, the total is 12BP, for a To-Hit value of 2+. [Note that 2+ is the best that the base To-Hit value can get just from combining BP ratings. Other factors may adjust this value though.]


As to your question about the "Separate Detachments" optional rule, well ... maybe, but probably not. Technically, that optional rule only specifically mentions that it affects coherency. It does not specifically say that it affects activations, thus my inclination would be to say that it does not. (As otherwise the activation discrepancy in the Marines' favor gets even worse.) In other words, even when using that rule, Space Marine stands and their dedicated Transports (IE, ones that are a part of the same formation) would be activated as one detachment rather than as two. Thus they would still work differently from detachments purchased as separate formations.

Due to you mentioning that, I can see how my first answer to A3 seemed like I was saying that they activate separately. That was not intentional ... at least, I think it wasn't.

It could be worth playing a couple of test games with them getting separate activations to see just how broken it might be. I have the feeling that it would give the Marine player too much of an activation advantage, at least if several formations of Mechanized Infantry are involved, especially Companies.

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 Post subject: Re: Newbie questions - Transports, artillery and buildings
PostPosted: Thu Mar 03, 2016 4:34 am 
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Wow!!! Thank you so much for the fantastic detailed explanation. It all makes sense now!

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 Post subject: Re: Newbie questions - Transports, artillery and buildings
PostPosted: Thu Mar 03, 2016 4:44 am 
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You are welcome, glad to be of assistance.

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 Post subject: Re: Newbie questions - Transports, artillery and buildings
PostPosted: Thu Mar 03, 2016 6:58 am 
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Nice clear reply Magnus. :)

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 Post subject: Re: Newbie questions - Transports, artillery and buildings
PostPosted: Thu Mar 03, 2016 9:11 pm 
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I guess the only question left at this point is why do the Manticore have the @ symbol on the Gold Cards that are available for download? They really should not have that, as that symbol means that the weapon always combines, and the Manticore has the option to or not.

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