I'm not sure it is a problem limited to Tau. Any army which has the possibility to add upgrade to indirect fire formations or any army which can add indiredct fire units can also potentially take advantage of it. Even an individual unit such as a titans which can have indirect fire weapons can take advantage of it. However it is a bigger and more prevalent issue with the Tau list.

The most common formation where this is an issue is the mech FW company, which in the majority of cases consists of 6 FW's, 3 Devilfish (Have Guided Missiles) and a Skyray (Has Marker Lights and Guided Missiles) for 325 points.

Here's what you're trying to say (I believe), the Tau formation (red) clearly has LOS to Unit A from the Tactical Formation (black) with the rest hidden behind the terrain. The Tactical Formation also has a markerlight on it. The Tau batch roll their shots and score 6 AP hits, say 2 from missiles and 4 from pulse rifles. Now, the Smart Missiles are the only weapons that should be able to hit the guys behind the trees, but the hits are allocated as 1 to each Tactical Unit regardless of where they came from since the SMS ignores LOS.

So the point you are trying to get across is, the non-indirect fire weapons are benefiting from the indirect fire rule, correct?

Although I guess it is worth pointing out, the way the Markerlight rule is written it is not classified as "Indirect". It just notes that they can fire without LOS.



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As for the question, the existence of the "no LOS required" weapon doesn't grant line of sight for the formation. It is only an exception for those particular weapons. The rest of the weapons would require LoS as normal in order to fire (which everyone seems to agree is obvious) and any resulting hits would require LoS as normal for allocation.

You'd need to allocation the non-LoS weapons separately. That shouldn't be any different than normal choices in firing based on any other targeting choice like in/out-of-cover or WE/AV.

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That's not correct, PG. The allocation rules state that as long as the target unit is within range and line of sight of any unit in the attacking formation, it may be allocated hits. Which firing unit can see which target unit is irrelevant.

It's not intended to get rid of range and LoS. It's intended to simplify and speed play. In practice, the "one unit lurking around the corner" is extremely rare (and as noted, the one indirect weapon should not work to stretch LoS).


It's this sort of detailed, micromanaged process that the rules are specifically intended to avoid.

The game rules are abstracted. Lots of activity and movement is assumed to happen in teh game even though it is never represented on the board directly. The positions of the pieces are not exact representations.

Shooting is not "The left Lascannon from Leman Russ #4 fires at Warbuggy #8, hits it, and Warbuggy #8 is destroyed." There is no "this weapon, that target." The result is just the aggregate effect of a bunch of Leman Russ shooting at a horde of Orks.

Just because the left Lascannon from Leman Russ #4 rolls the hit, doesn't mean it's actually that exact weapon that hit the target. Maybe it was really the shell from the Battlecannon that hit. Maybe it was actually Leman Russ #6 whose shot hit. Maybe Warbuggy #8 was never hit at all and the reason it is out of action is that the driver swerved and ran into a tree. Maybe the reason the buggy is "killed" is that particular Ork was especially cowardly and fled as soon as they came under fire. Maybe the buggy died because an ambitious Ork took the opportunity to kill Da Boss so he could take over.

Maybe the Leman Russ commander used the one one tank that is nominally in range/LoS to bait the entire Kult of Speed into charging and the rest of the Russ company cut the Orks to pieces as they came into sight, so a whole wave of Buggies was killed during movement that was never actually represented on the game board.

@neal

It's about as much micro management as having different to hit values.
And let's be frank about it, if you don't play to exploit range stretching, situations in which it makes a difference don't happen very often, because you will try to position your shooters in a way that each and every model or at least as many as you reasonably can expect to hit, can be hit.

And in those cases in which it is important you roll for the ones which can hit the least models first and allocate the hits directly (allocating immediately is not in the rules, its just a form of speeding up, as it saves you from remembering, who could hit what) and than roll and allocate the next batch.

I.e. 4 Land Raiders, staying put and using sustained fire, can only reach and by that limitation kill only one target, but the Hunter can reach an other 5 targets. So the Land Raiders suddenly can hit 6 targets and probably will, rolling 8 dices, needing 3's. And that feels utterly wrong, beardy, rules exploiting and cheesy. I prefer to invest an other 0 seconds (as you will have to roll separately for the Hunter anyway) and get a game flow and result that feels correct (and IMHO follows the rules, as I still I don't agree with your interpretation of the rule - as enemy is not any enemy for me. )

Regardless of what enemy really is meant to be, allowing range stretching, leads to rules exploitation, bad feelings not only for unexpecting opponentse and situations that look and feel wrong. If you don't allow it, it will feel correct in any situation, because it's WYGIWYEBOWYS (what yo get is what you expect because of what you see), it will reward the player who moves his troops better (in the sense of tactics) and all that for splitting a batch of dices in two batches.

Of course all that feel right and wrong is only a criteria, if you play with the pretense that this is in some way should reflect what we know or think to know about things. If Hollywood shows us bugs swarming an outpost, I want the same feeling when I "replay" it. If the Scotts show their back to the English, because they are out of musket range, I do not want them to be hurt, because all shots magically fly another 200 yards, just because one guy with a long bow joins them.
If you see EA just as an game like chess or stratego, than this doesn't matter at all, because than it's just about rules and to hell with sense and sensibility.
But I personally think you will miss out some of the fun and some of "stimulus" the the genre want's to provide.

It never happens anyway, because in most cases it would be phenomenally stupid to try to "exploit" it.

Movement and formation positioning in the GT scenario is driven by the need to take objectives, use terrain defensively, control/channel enemy movement and support/defend in potential assault situations. There's little opportunity and virtually no advantage to trying to manipulate allocation for range stretching. If someone is doing it by design rather than coincidence, they're probably making a mistake with respect to those other far more important considerations.

It's extremely rare with most armies and only slightly more prevalent with Tau due to their unusual combinations of range.

Only in aircraft does it happen with any regularity, because of their free movement and LoS advantages.


Exactly! Your emphasis on exact range and "this unit hits that unit" is the chess/stratego approach in my opinion. I believe it's a waste of time worrying about that kind of detail and you're missing out on what I consider to be the fun part.

You said you would not play with someone who stretched ranges. Well, I would not want to play with someone who was upset because a unit 47cm from a Land Raider was killed.

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Well, here's what it really comes down to.

"Any" enemy is the most reasonable interpretation with respect to normal English usage and the phrasing used in the rules. While you might make an argument if that were the only description of how to allocate hits, the Macroweapon allocation description in the third paragraph uses a slightly different descriptive text which does not have any room for interpretation.



The target unit only has to be in range/LoS of "a" macroweapon, not "the" macroweapon. There's really no way to read that except as in range of any macroweapon in normal English usage. If it required the target to be in range of the particular macroweapon which scored the hit, it would use "the" as a designating article.

Doesn't it make sense that the method of allocation is supposed to be the same for both, rather than having a strict "unit X to target Y" allocation for normal hits and "free" allocation for macroweapons?

I heartily disagree. When range stretching is allowed it is very useful. Especially with armies that have usually short ranges, but can increase their range by buying a single (or two for backup) longer range models, like an Battlewagon in a deathcopter mob. The "zone of thread" increases. Normally you don't care if your Orc opponent can get within 30 cm of a single model. But suddenly he can hit as many as he wants.

In the first two turns I kill and break as many enemy units as possible, in the third I will make sure to grab objectives to win or at least prevent my opponent from winning and to get a forth turn. In the killing part, range stretching is great, because I can move and fire, and while my opponent might usually be able to use sustained fire to retaliate, I might be be able to prevent this. Just imagine two units of Land Raiders. The one who has the Hunter can attack the flank and potentially kill all opponents. If he rolls miserably only one Land Raider can fire back, without a move action. Just image a contested objective. Only one model is in range of your chimeras, but 5 other in range of the last surviving guardian. And suddenly you have the chance to break that unit, which you wouldn't have been able to break without range stretching. If it is allowed you can play to exploit it.



See there we differ. The properties of the formations are part of the fun. There are some which are good in CC, some in FF some have long range firepower, some short range but MW. It's part of the imagery. A heavy tank unit should behave like a heavy tank unit, and a short ranged unit should not be able to fight at a medium range with the same efficiency as a medium ranged unit.

I do not worry about the procedure. It's absolutely intuitive. You move your shooters in position and you measure the range, you do that also, don't you or is that also gritty detail ? And when you measure range you know who you can hit. No extra step needed, no worrying.

There is no real practical difference in procedure.

The difference is in effects and in looks. You see a short ranged and a long ranged unit and you think to know the long ranged unit will outreach the short ranged unit, but it doesn't have to, if you allow to stretch ranges.


Nice try. No I said I would ask him to follow the procedures by the book. And if the house rules or whatever say to stretch ranges, I will play so. And if we agree before the game that this is the way to play, I will do so.

And I do not talk about a give or take a cm or to roll a singe shooter separately, when 3 others can reach deeper into the formation anyway. I talk about exploiting a rule a described before.



You know that the rules say

Please note the "the enemy". Will you now start to discuss whether this is a single enemy or the enemy in it's entity ?

By the way this paragraph about MWs states that the hit can only be allocated to a unit which can be hit by a unit with a distinctive property. In this case the MW property.
That is the reason why you roll AT, AP an MW attacks separately.
The to hit roll is also a distinctive property. That's the reason why you roll them separately.
And the models you can hit is also a distinctive property. That's the reason why you should roll them separately.

By the way I agree about the "a macro-weapon". This obviously talks about the case where you rolled more than one MW in a batch (see macro-weapons). And within that batch it doesn't matter which MW it is, because if it would matter, you wouldn't have rolled them in a batch.

Anyway:
With regular gaming partners such problems are solved quickly and they will agree on a way to play and will do so.
There is also usually a friendly solution when people with different opinions meet at a gaming table - it only gets difficult if one gets the impression that the other tries to gull him.

I'm off to a holiday, so I will not continue this discussion, but I admit enjoyed it.

my 2 cents - if 1 out of 12 can see 5 and the other 11 can only see 1, you roll that guy once and apply it to one of the 5, with the other 11 going to roll against the 1. I understand it might not be rules as written, but come on, a little bit of common sense gos a long ways... but then again, common sense isn't common...

but i dont play in the euro elite league so...

Or the playing by the actual rules league

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