Hi,

Grateful for your help with the following query which came up in a recent game. My opponent had an artillery battery with the 'indirect fire' ability.
When he tried to fire the battery, we had a friendly but confused discussion about where he could place the first template. Should the whole template be within range or the centre or should the template just touch extreme range ? We ended up placing the template touching extreme range but with the whole template outside range (if that makes sense !) ie. if extreme range forms a circular line on the table (centred on the firer), the template touched this line but the body of the template was the other side of the line. This is easy to understand on the table but hard to explain !!

Any thoughts ?


Phil

We play that you must cover the maximum number of units in the target formation with the first template. All units firing must be able to reach a model under that template. Any additional templates touch the first one and are not checked for range to the firing unit.

What I am wonder is this: Why is there no scatter for barrage firing in Epic? Especially for firing at units out of line of sight! It has been a part of 40K for ages...

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~Laserwolf

Yes, we know, the game was intended to be played in the 2000-5000 points range...

theoretically it does scatter, but each artillery shot is scattering like ~1-2cm, and each gun is firing multiple times. End result: essentially no scatter.

Because Epic is more tactically complex than 40k's RandomHammer.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

Even modern artillery doesn't 'scatter' as such, let alone when you're simulating sci-fi artillery firing over a period of time and saturating an area with explosives. It does scatter to some extent and that's why you use a template rather than pin-point the attacks on specific units.

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Hi chaps,

Many thanks for taking the time to reply. I think the light has dawned !

Cheers,

Phil

actually artillery does scatter.

But a barrage template in 40K represent a high explosive shell explosion, which when lobed may scatter. Given the scale of epic, a barrage is a rain of shells from multiple barrels; the template itself represent the scattering, but the zone the shells are scattered over is pretty precisely defined.

That's what large numbers do for you.

And is also why you've only got a ~50/50 chance of actually hitting anything under the template, rather than just making saves.

Morgan Vening

And to glorfindel's original post, the barrage mechanics of measuring the range to a single unit while also mandating that the template be placed to maximise hits does mean that the extreme range of the artillery is somewhat fuzzy. In principle, you can hit enemy units that are apparently beyond the range of the artillery provided that a single unit of the formation is in range; the template is placed to cover that unit but then reaches out to cover as many other units in the formation as possible. If the barrage is large enough to use more templates, they must be placed to touch the first one and also to cover as much of the target formation as possible. So notionaly this means that you can hit units up to 15cms beyond the stated range of artillery