Guys, a situation came up in a game this weekend regarding barrages and template placement. It fostered a little discussion regarding who exactly gets to place the initial template in a barrage. Here's what happened:

I fired a 4BP barrage at a strung out unit of Ork big guns. The way our group has been handling placement of the first template is that the defender places the first template anywhere on the targeted unit as long as the maximum number of units are covered - in this case, assume that there were four units covered by the template. Instead of covering the portion of the four units I would have targeted - including the Oddboy/Zzapgun combo - the defender moved the template to cover another four units. The remaining blast template was unable to hit the Oddboy/Zzapgun at that point.

Now, in looking at the rules, they state that when firing a barrage, you (meaning the attacker) place the initial template, and the resulting templates, if any, must touch the initial template. They also state that the initial template must cover the maximum amount of models to prevent character sniping. I read this to mean that if I have the choice between covering five troop units or a character and a troop unit, I need to cover the five troops because that contains the highest target density. By the same token, if I have the choice I had in my game (4 troops or three troops and a character) I could choose either as they offer the same target density.

Am I wrong? It doesn't make sense to me that the defender could move my artillery barrage, just because he wants to protect his character. BTW, my opponent agreed with me, but the "defender chooses" is the way our group has been playing.

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Adeptus Monk-anicus
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I had thought you were right- you can place the initial template to cover the character and 3 troops.

Cheers

James

I believe you're right. As long as you hit as many units as possible, you can place the template anywhere you want, even if there is an equal concentration that would be better for the defender.

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SG

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The attacker places the barrage marker to cover a maximal number of enemy units from the target formation. However, the defender can arrange his formation to "steer" how your barrages are placed. As long as both players play by the rules, there is a balance.

/Fredmans

Agreed - the attacker places the template(s) which must be placed to cover the maximum number of units in the target formation. This applies when placing all templates, and if there is a choice, the attacker decides.

However this can be influenced by how the defender sets out the formation, so for example, the defender could set up a triangle of three units and string out the rest of the formation in a line. This, forces the initial template to be placed covering the first three, and the second template to cover some of the line. If a third template is used, it cannot be placed to hit the target formation at all (as it must touch the initial template, and may not overlap either of the other templates).

Final thought is that each unit under the template is diced for separately - so any 'special' units should be diced for, thus if caught by the template character uints could die irrespective of where they are in the formation.

Yep, that all makes sense - it is up to the defender to have placed his units in an optimal configuration so that if he is hit by a barrage, his characters are protected. Moving the template to avoid being hit didn't make sense to me. Thanks for the answers, everyone!

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I agree with Ginger, it's up to the defender to arrange his fm so that the character isn't in the block with the most units. I wouldn't consider choosing 3 troops and a character over 4 troops as sniping, although if you wanted it to be truly random which 4 get the 1st template then roll a die; evens is one, odds is another.

Just to confirm that the barrage rules do work like that.

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I'm coming up with nothing for a source on playing it how we've done, I'd still like to hear what the ERC says though.

I'll add that while allowing the attacker to choose over the defender doesn't bump up against the letter of the rule, it does the intent of not to be able to snipe important units in my opinion.

The defender positioning their units so commanders aren't under a maximized template is all well and good, but that can be defeated by the attacker firing with another formation to thin down the maximized area. As per Ginger's example, all the attacker would have to do would be to kill one of those units in the triangle. Then the whole formation is in a line and they can choose any two units along that line to place the template over. That doesn't feel right to me, with barrages landing on COs more often than not.

Rolling a die to determine what group gets it seems the fairest but then you have to run through all the permutations and assign them a number (which often times doesn't play nicely with a d6).

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Dave

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Squats 2019-10-17

Neal checked with Jervis on how to play barrages and Jervis confirmed that we have it right.


I doubt you'll encounter this situation particularly often again, now that you know how the rules are intended to work, and when you do, it'll probably be down to your opponent's skill at picking apart your formation first with direct fire guns (A game with an emphasis on skill being a good thing, IMO).

If you've left your commander in the most concentrated area(s) of a formation, he deserves to be vulnerable, and that is certainly the intent of the rule.

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I agree - it is the exact same thing as placing your commander in the front of a formation when coming under direct fire. When casualties are taken, he will be the first to go, since they're taken front to back. It isn't like the defender can say "That's not fair - you obviously shot at that unit because it is the commander. I'm going to pick another unit to take the loss."

The reference to "sniping" with artillery in the rulebook refers to the attacker placing a template down on just the character when he has the option of placing it over 5 closely-grouped units instead.

This game is about tactical deployment, and placing your commander accordingly should come under that heading.

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If people are surrounding the commander and keeping him in the dense part of formation, then yes I'd agree that's the same thing as putting him right up front. But if I have a formation set up in lines with its units being spaced equally apart, how is it not considering "sniping" when you place the template over a group of units that contains a CO when there's 2+ other choices for the template?

If the template can cover three units and there's three different groups of three units with only one of them containing the CO it'll get targeted every time with the attacker placing the initial template. What's making him such a fire magnet beyond the player's omnipresent view of the battlefield? Playing it that way, I'd be more inclined to just denote my Commander by marking the bottom of the base. If you want to take him out, make your guess. Or just randomize it.

@E&C - was that discussion posted somewhere?

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Dave

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thing is though Dave, you could counter those arguments with "how can shells in a ballistic arc choose NOT to land in a particular place?" (ie. if this happens repeatedly, how come the CO is never getting hit?). The two arguments are entirely equal. At some point, you have to step back into the fuzzy world of abstraction (eg. forward spotters say that there are lots of conscripts getting shot by an angry guy with a chainsword standing next to another guy with a huge aerial - see what I did there - on his back, so shoot that clump and not the other clump) and just say that this is the way it's done. Otherwise we'd end up scattering barrages and other kinds of nonsense.

More often then not he's hit by a subsequent template in my experience.

But it's not like that this doesn't pop up in other places. If you don't get more hits in assault then the opponent has units in BtB then he doesn't have to allocate a hit to the CO even if it's in BtB. He can choose the other units.

I'm still in favor of rolling a die, despite the extra overhead it creates. You're not allowed to pull this with aircraft by positioning them in the middle of the formation so the CO is the closest target, why should artillery be allowed to always hit the special guys with barrages?

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Dave

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What is there is only one template? Also, regarding the aircraft, they're just making a normal shooting attack, like everything else in the game, correct? There is no reason they should be able to target a specific unit within a formation. Barrages are area affect weapons, not pinpoint effect weapons.

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