I am not sure this is correct - though it would be good to get an 'official' opinion.

From the Master FAQ

2.2.2 Disrupt
Q: If an Imperial Guard Artillery Co. contains Basilisks and Manticores (with the Disrupt ability) does a barrage fired from this formation use the Disrupt rules since not all of the units in it have the Disrupt ability?
A: Special Weapon abilities are only used if all the units firing have them. So if you wanted to use the Disrupt ability in this case you could only fire with the Manticores. A barrage that used both types of units would not have the Disrupt ability.

(I believe the distinction is that *all* the units firing need to have the ability, irrespective of how they are firing.)

Since the FAQ is only referring to barrges I see no reason why it's not allowable.

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It would have to apply only to weapons contributing to the actual barrage; otherwise a Gargant's Big Gunz would stop it's barrages from being MW and that would just be silly. If the Basilisks choose their other firing mode they don't fire barrages, so both are fine.

I quite like the idea of a mobile artillery company with upgrades BTS sometime. I might try it in the Vraks list some time where you can upgrade it with 3 fearless ogryn beserker stands to make it harder for it to be killed.

If the Q&A were not referring to all units firing a barrage, then this Q&A ruling is a huge nerf for the one SM sniper in a scout unit, or IG snipers.
We do know from orc warbands (or titans) that some units can fire barrage while others fire point fire.



Eeek.

As you know, this particular FAQ on Disrupt has been around for a long time and mandates that all *units* firing have Disrupt weaponry. I suspect that the notion of using different shooting mechanics had not occurred to the people who wrote the FAQ - hence the need for an 'official' perspective.

From the introduction to SPECIALIST UNITS & WEAPONS, 3rd paraMy emphasis

So when firing a Gargant, the various MW weapons get their specialist abilities as it is a single unit that is firing.
Equally, when firing three Baneblades, the Demolisher shots get IC as all units have the ability (even though only some of the weapons have it).
Unfortunately, RAW mixing Basilisks with Manticores means that you lose the disrupt capability as only some of the units have the specialist weaponry.

However, I would also add that this may be another of those occasions where general practice has ignored the wording of the rule, (as you point out for other specialist cases like 'snipers'). Furthermore it should be fairly easy to track 'Disrupt' hits separately - though doing so would also slow things very slightly.

The passage you cite is interesting, (and a wonderful example of the problems with typical conversational-style GW rules-writing) It's hard to tell whether 'sometimes situations will occur' actually means "special abilities are negated in all situations where a unit fires weapons that do not have the special ability." Are they talking specifically about barrages (and therefore actually answering the Q&A question cited previously)? This would be one clear situation when mixed special abilities pose a problem -- i.e. you can't track disrupt (or first strike, or sniper, or MW, or pulse by shot), and you might, for example, be able to get disrupt barrages every turn with two manticores in a mixed arty co.

I can certainly see how you're interpreting that passage, but I think the problem with adhering to your interpretation is that it breaks a good deal more things in the system than it fixes -- (vis, 2 baneblades and a shadowsword, or other mixed war engine formations.) Nb. your Gargant exception doesn't deal with the warband with BP-generating Supaguns. Your interpretation also opens the door for an abuse in the opposite direction: in that 'slow firing' is a special ability, and if we negate 'all' special abilities in mixed fire, then all it takes is one basilisk to ensure that the Arty Co gets 17 blast points every turn. (eek.)

I guess I'd tend to focus on their example of barrages as a particular case where aggregating fire/special abilities poses some problems -- where it's impossible to track disrupt, sniper, macro-weapon, etc. separately.

My emphasis

Epic isn't a game for rules lawyers, we know that's not intended, and it's a pretty torturous reading of the FAQ to come to that conclusion. I really don't think you can describe the Basilisks as "taking part in the barrage" when they're firing their non-barrage weapon.

Even if that was the correct RAW interpretation of the FAQ (and it's not), it still wouldn't be the right way to play it. Epic isn't about playing by the rules exactly as written, no matter how stupid.

QFT.
I'm with zombocom and Carrington on this one.

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I'm not. ;-). I'd like to take Zombocom's interpretation, but the problem is that it's not clear whether the 'example' is just one example in a range of 'situations,' or it whether it was the situation they were trying to address. Neither reading is satisfactory.



Of course here we come to a problem; at some point you have to go back to the text, and often when you do have to go back, both parties tend to think the other is being a 'rules lawyer.'

From Ginger's point of view, the rules lawyering was mine, in that I was suggesting using the artillery Co in a manner that exploited a loophole in the rules as commonly accepted. And, of course, I might agree with you -- in this case -- that diving for the rulebook is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Granted, it's something that could be resolved with a d6 (or with a pointy stick) but in the end the debate is best kept to what the rules actually say (or intend), not who is being the lawyer. And much better to have this debate now than when I've brought my Artillery Co to the tournament.

Alright then, I'm with zombocom on this one.
KISS is always the best approach with these things or this will turn into another 3 extra pages of useless debate about interpretation and about a few people trying to make Epic more complicated than it was ever intended to be.

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Garrisoning 'Formations including units with a speed of 0cm' is just from the standard rule book, Glyn. All this means is that static artillery emplacements have the option to garrison whether they have a trojan or are in a gun emplacement.

I don't regard the garrisoning oversight to be a particular problem. If it's shown to be broken I'll change it.


IIRC we've done a debate on the FAQ on barrages & special rules interaction before, and the conclusion was that Ginger was reading a little too much into things. The FAQ is meant to specifically refer to barrage fire, not all types of fire.

Otherwise, as has already been pointed out, it becomes almost impossible to use units' special rules, for example Hellhounds could never use their ignores cover flame weapons unless every other unit in the company they're attached to has already been destroyed.

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FWIW, the FAQ is only re-stating the rules which are encompassed by the 1st and 3rd sentences; effectively :-

"Sometimes situations will occur where some units have a special ability and others do not, raising the question of whether the ability may be used." [snip]
"If such a situation occurs in a battle then you may only use the ability if all of the units taking part can use it."

(The 2nd sentence and remainder of the para are providing examples of the rule in action.)

HOWEVER (before you all start reaching for keyboards), I am not sure why this rule was presented this way, and it is certainly true that many people allow such mixes of 'special' abilities to occur, hence the request that an 'official' view be presented.

In practice I suggest we may need a slightly different interpretation, something like:-

For a formation to use a "unit" ability, then all units in the formation must have the ability (so terminators can only teleport if the formation has no other units). BUT, this does not apply to "Weapon" abilities which must be tracked and considered separately (so Sniper, Disrupt, IC etc can still be used, but the hits caused must be handled separately).

Finally Carrington, I totally agree with your perspective that these kind of things are best discussed here, or at least in the 5 min warm up to avoid "reaching for the rule book" and spoiling the game. The problem is that some of these "interpretations" lie at the root of a player's strategy, and will completely spoil a game if they are actually deemed to be 'inappropriate' during the game - more so if you have spent time and money on models (like an artillery company) only to find that you cannot use them as desired. So lets see if we can resolve this one to everyone's satisfaction

Just to be clear, I am a rules lawyer: go ahead and report me.

Specifically, I trust rules writers to design rulesets that are clear, consistent, and self-explanatory, and I'll dig into the text of the rules in an effort to understand that consistency, even when it proves elusive on first reading. I also tend to be quite annoyed with competitive rules that have recourse to the 'pointy stick' method of resolving disputes.



Here I agree with you. The example of the barrage is simply a subset of the -- least common denominator -- rule you state above, hence my discomfort with Zombocom's emphasis. One of my problems was thinking of other subordinate cases where the rule might come into effect, and teleport seems to be another place where the rule is commonly-applied. The problem, really is that the two sentences you cite are fairly cloudy: instead of "always apply", it reads "sometimes situations arise " (in which you might apply) the least common denominator of unit special abilities. In short, as you suggest, theres ambiguity about when exactly such situations, and how to tell it when you see it.

Certainly, in favor of your latter interpretation:

[1) We've accepted individual tracking of weapon abilities... -- e.g. "two sniper shots at 5+, one MW shot at 3+, and 14 regular shots at 6+" -- up to and including a fiddly (and somewhat ambiguous/poorly documented) differentiation between special abilities in the weapon stat-line as opposed to the unit stat-line -- e.g. first strike on only one of the Rough Riders' two CC attacks. (Indeed, I seem to recall an example in the rules that specifically describes the the way we allocate hits from such an attack.)

2) It also seems apparent that "slow firing" is also special weapon (dis)ability that should be tracked separately, i.e. basilisks (and Manticore bolters) don't have to wait for the manticores to reload and conversely, Manticores don't lose their slow firing disability in a formation where not all units have that disability.

2.5) Similarly, by the way, basilisks still suffer from their "no direct fire barrage" disability even in a mixed formation where manticores are conducting a direct fire barrage. Really, the question with the mixed arty co is not whether the direct fire barrage can occur -- it can if the manticores can fire, can't if they can't. Rather, it is whether the Basilisks (and, for that matter, the manticore's bolters) can fire point fire at the same target in the same action. (is there a minimum range for manticore direct fire barrages?).

3) Finally, common practice -- and some 'ERC-sez' rulings -- allows that both formations and units (gargants, or other units with multiple stat-lines) can fire both barrage and point fire in the same fire actions.

(And, by the way, the 'abuse' -- if we think it's that -- of direct support Manticores could be 'plugged' by a simple special rule: "all Manticore barrages must be conducted as indirect fire." Indeed, that would probably be a good special rule for certain towed artillery.)

To be honest, I have no problem with the rule as written (aside from the way it's written) because of this part:


If you're firing a barrage, you can only use disrupt if all units taking part in the barrage have the disrupt ability.

The one problem is that it says unit and not weapon, when it should probably say "unit/weapon". I think this is pretty clearly an error that was in fact resolved in the example itself, which interchanges "weapon" and "unit":

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