IJW Wartrader wrote:
It's the disembarking that triggers the Overwatch.
'Also note that formations on overwatch may only react when a formation moves or unloads troops. They may not to choose to shoot at a formation that does anything else in their line of fire, such as shooting without moving or regrouping.'
Sustained Fire, Overwatch or any other activation that doesn't involve a Move action won't trigger Overwatch. For example if a Marshal activation is Move-Regroup then it will trigger Overwatch even if nobody actually moves, but if the Marshall was Shoot-Regroup there has been no Move and Overwatch won't be triggered.
I can see where my mistake in reading the footnotes from 1.10 might have come from there.
Quote:
Q: A formation carries out an action that involves a move but none of the units
physically move, is it still susceptible to overwatch?
A: Yes. Any action that includes one of more moves (advance, engage, double,
march and possibly marshal, hold and special actions) is considered a move for the purposes of overwatch, even if units moved 0cm.
Note that withdrawals and consolidation moves are optional however, and that a player can choose not to move the formation at all, thus avoiding overwatch.
Q: Do units that enter play via a special rule (landing, planetfall, self planetfall, teleporting, tunneling, being summoned or swarmed) trigger overwatch fire?
A: No, only completing a move or disembarking triggers overwatch.
I see where I got mixed up now, though:
Dreadclaws have Planetfall & Transport; they don’t confer Planetfall onto the formation they’re added to. In other words, “drop pods are a really unique type of vehicle, not a set of special rules that modify the base unit.”
So played correctly, my Tau opponent would have had the opportunity to Overwatch the moment I finished placing units coming in via Dreadclaws. If he elected not to, a Sustained Fire order after that decision wouldn’t itself trigger Overwatch, but a 0cm Advance would have. At least we wound up at effectively the same outcome with my Engage order, then.
Sorry for turning the IW thread into an Overwatch rules explanation thread!
At least I have a better understanding of why I should appreciate Terminators a little more, despite my horrendous luck at picking up Teleport blast markers...