One more query from the weekend!

When a spaceship activate are all the phases of its activation considered as one activation, or separate .

Let me explain. A marine strike cruiser activates and fires its barrage. There are then two formations drop podded onto separate points on the battlefield and make their deathwind attacks.

Are the effects of all 3 attacks made after all attacks are complete, or does the enemy check if they are broken, make withdrawal moves etc, after each separate attack is complete?

Hmmm, this hasn't come up for me before but I suppose it should be considered all as one action.

Meaning you don't check for broken formations and withdraw until all Deathwind attacks have been finished.

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That was how we played it in the end but I thought I'd seek everyone's opinion.

Would they still count as seperate sources of fire though? So hit by 2 deathwinds and a barrage - is that 3 BM's for coming under fire from three formations?

I have played it as reveal all landing points, scatter, then work out each attack seperately, handling each attack, anything that breaks and retreats and so on, to give units a chance to move out of the barrages as they break.

I'm sure I've played it both ways over the years too. As you say if it is considered as one attack then the formation should really only get 1 BM for coming under fire.

I've asked for clarification on this a couple of times and here's the procedure I go by based on the answers to my questions. Broken formations are allowed to make withdraw moves after every one of these steps (and after every Planetfall).

1) Resolve Orbital Bombardment
2) Resolve Pin-point attacks
3) Resolve Planetfall one formation at a time

BMs for coming under fire are awarded for each step as well.

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Squats 2019-10-17

But do you declare and scatter all the landing points first? Otherwise units can 'flee' into other drop zones which I think is a bit harsh!

True, but how would they know where other pods are going to land!

Neal told me no when I said the exact same thing. Life is rough in the 41st millennium.

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As far as BMs for coming under fire, I think we've counted the spacecraft as one attack and each planetfall attack (deathwind) as separate. So, if an Orbital Barrage and a Pinpoint hit the same formation, that's 1 BM for coming under fire, just like if a titan were to fire a barrage weapon and direct fire at the same formation. Deathwind attacks, though, are effectively firing from a separate formation, so we've added a BM for coming under fire to each of those.

I'm fairly certain we did it this way because there were extended discussions about how vulnerable Eldar were to Deathwind barrage tactics.

I don't think we checked for breaking after each attack, though. That would allow a drop pod formation to "chase down" a broken formation with its 15cm re-position to try to gut it with hackdowns. That seems like a bit much to me.

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That said, this has been discussed enough times that my memory is almost certainly blurring them altogether. I may very well have said something different in the past.

When I asked the first time you said to not allow breaking until all planetfall attacks were concluded. The second time (on the SG forum I believe) it was to allow breaking after each planetfall. I think I got confirmation from you to do it that way for the RG tests as well.

I was initially concerned about chasing broken formations with deathwinds but the scatter mitigates this a lot. More often then not though I found myself ignoring the broken formations in order to get BMs on another formation. I found if you don't keep the pressure up with Planetfall armies they get swamped.

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OK, so all spaceship generated attacks are one attack, all drop pods are separate attacks, but the effects of both are only determined after all such attacks have been fully resolved.

I'm pretty sure that's how we've been playing it around here. What do you think? How did you resolve it in your game?


Dave: I don't doubt that I've given different answers. I've waffled before.

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I think we need some additional discussion before making a call. And we definitely should get this in the Master FAQ thread.

We all seem to agree that there are separate BMs in the same way as if the formation were the subject of multiple OW shots.

Applying the results after each Drop pod potentially allows subsequent pods to attack formations that were screened (which was the issue that caused this discussion). I am less sure about chasing 'broken' survivors, though as others said 'life is harsh in th 41st century'.

Alternatively, applying the results of the pods and the barrage en masse could result in the complete destuction of formations struck multiple times >:D , where the other approach at least allows broken formations to withdraw to fight later.

In the tournament I agreed to apply all results en masse rather than after each attack.

In practice I think there was only one game where doing it differently would have made a slight difference.