Monday 28 February 2011

Rules Lawyering: Line of Sight

As you may have noticed, today's post has a significant titular difference from those that precede it. Why? 'Cause today I feel like being an asshat, is why. This post will be petty. nitpicking, and - of course - entirely correct. It contains the sort of rules lawyering I only ever apply in practice if it's my own models that are affected.



Recognize this fella? (He's not mine. I've unceremoniously Googled "Carnifex", and taken what suited the article best. If I get my camera and one of mine in the same, well-lit room, I might replace him...)


My Tyranid army has three. Now to the fun part.

Quote the first:
"Line of sight must be traced from the eyes of the firing model [. . .]" (BBB, p. 16)

Eep.

The one above has an advantage in this regard, since it obviously has several eyes on each side of its head, but mine, using the more standard head variants, do not. They have herbivore eyes.
 
One on each side of the head, looking to the sides. Good luck tracing line of sight from both to a single model.

This, even I ignore. Why? Because it's ridiculous, and if taken absolutely literally, would have all sorts of ramifications for everything ranging from one-eyed Commissars to... well, you get the point.

Quote the second:
"Infantry models can also be turned to face their targets in the Shooting phase [. . .]" (BBB, p. 11).

Infantry. Not Monstrous Creatures, not Beasts, and (less relevantly) not Bikes or Jump Infantry. Is this a huge deal? Not if you're good at anticipating exactly where you're going to need the firepower, and thus manage to turn the beastie in question the right way in its Movement Phase, or if it's got long range guns and the enemy is far away, so there's only really one way to point it.

If, however, like me, you like Sporing your Carnifexes with twin Devourers in to land in the middle of the enemy army, then, yeah, it might prove significant. Or if you keep forgetting that you need to be turned the right way at the end of movement, which I also seem to like doing.

Oh, and third, a question to which I don't have an answer.
"Line of sight must be traced from the eyes of the firing model to any part of the body of the of at least one model [. . .] Sometimes, all that may be visible of  a model is a weapon, an antenna [. . .] In these cases, the model is not visible" (BBB, p. 16)

Now, where does the body of the big fella above end, and where does its weapons begin? Or, for that matter, for a Hormagant?

And on that note I'll sign off for now.

No comments:

Post a Comment