Well basically, doing it your way E&C gives you more chance to hit and kill any special characters/units etc which is sniping to a degree.

No, you can still only hit units that were under the template but you assign those hits from front to back.

Personally, I don't think the idea that everything under a barrage should be vulnerable to be at all strange. I think it is clear that's what Jervis' intent was and that he recognized the "sniping" problem. He added placement rules later in the description specifically to hinder barrage sniping. He even used the term "sniping" when describing the rationale for restricting template placement. Obviously, he expected it to be possible or he would not have referenced it.

On the flip side, I think it would be extremely "strange" if a valuable unit could remain effectively invulnerable from artillery barrage by simply standing behind other units. From a statistical perspective, a front-to-back allocation is extremely unlikely to ever penetrate the formation because the average number of hits is always going to be ~50% of the number of units or less. "Have no fear, sir! As long as we have troops in front of you, artillery shells will bounce off of you and land on them."

Where does it say that?

As far as I can see from reading the rules, if you're applying the standard shooting rules, then you're going to be removing units from the front of the formation regardless of where you placed the template. And as a side-effect, the "sniping" line would make no sense.


Nealhunt, as usual, has put his words together better than I.

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From a realism perspective certainly but game-wise it's a fairly cheap trick.

Or, perhaps it's no more a cheap trick than making your SC completely invulnerable to artillery by putting him at the back of the formation (and quite possibly, less of one)?

With the rules as I understand them, you can use careful positioning of units to force your opponent to attack other areas of the formation first, with a large formation at any rate, which feels less like a cheap trick and more like tactical choices, to me (A spread-out formation is less vulnerable to artillery, but more vulnerable to engagements and is restricted in its own manoever potential).

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If you're going for realism why do the front units get hit by all the normal shooting? Sometimes the bullets would hit someone at the back in real life (Yes there is a great deal of devils advocate in that statement).

The shooting rules separate attack rolls and hit allocations. Do the barrage rules really combine them back into one?

If we wanted realism then we really shouldn't have allowed flying extra CC attacks should we? But that was pretty universally agreed to.

To attempt to apply more realistic effects to one small part of a highly abstracted system feels odd.

I believe, from reading the rules with a VERY critical eye***, that they really do.

"Ours is not to reason why..."




***I did not start this thread to "win" a debate, but to settle a point of (apparently widespread) confusion. My initial post makes it clear that I just wanted the right answer so I could change my playstyle if it turned out I'd missed a little bit of the rules.

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Well stated, Neal and I agree completely. If a player is worried that artillery can hit his SC, then he should place it where it can even be targeted in the first place.

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Once you get to either two templates or a spaceship it is practically imposable to hide, which I have no problem with.

This just makes barrage weapons even more powerful as far as I can tell. Which is fine and I'll be playing it this way from now on.

Thanks for opening my eyes E&C.

I think whether it is played this way or that way has depended on group cultures.
some groups have settled on playing the "exact" method and have got used to it. Some groups have settled the "general" method. Then the two cultures collide!

Now, I'll point out again that I don't favour either, but something even more general. But i'm able to keep my preferences out of it when reading the rules and try and be objective.

I think there are many indications that Jervis' intent for barrages was individual rolling.

1 the rules say "roll to hit all units under the template". "The number of attacks the barrage has is equal to the number of units under the template" would have been cleare for the general method. Though it would have to be followed by "the attacks are subdivided into AP or AT attacks according to the number of infantry or vehicles under the template, (and remember to factor in cover modifiers), hits are allocated in the normal way save for the fact that they may only be allocated to units under the template.

2 It is for this reason he had to diviise a new method for speed rolling with the phrase "exact type", otherwise the general rules for speed rolling would have been sufficient.

3 As for sniping and template placement, you'd need the the placement rules if you played the exact or general method. If you played the general method and there where no placement rules you could still snipe by placing the template so that your target of choice is at the front of the template. I don't actually think anyone though of that back at GW HQ though. I think they where thinking: "If, by the placement of the template you are effectively CHOOSING which units get shot at, then it is possible to choose particular important targets, i.e. sniping, something that is not really possible with normal shooting due to the hit allocation rules"
"oh dear that doesn't seem very fair we'll have to do something about that!"

btw, how do you reckon front to back, from space craft barrages?

Well, cheers for pointing out my misapprehension about passive AA on aircraft at the weekend. :-)

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50% "correct", I'll take that any day!

Spacecraft are placed on a table edge at the start of the game, and removed after making their attack. So that gives you your front-back for speed-rolling.

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C'mon you can't leave it at that, what misapprehension !!!!!