Drone Controllers and Skyfire

Tyson and I had an entertaining rules debate (after our game). I was more interested in flexing my Aristotelian logic muscle!

Anyway, Tyson argues that the Drone Controller gives the drones Skyfire if the model with the drone controller also has a velocity tracker (grants skyfire USR).

we boiled the argument down to what the phrase "Uses this models ballistic skill means".

Tyson argues, that it's the commander that is essentially firing the drones, and thus, the commander's skyfire confers to the drones. My argument is two-fold. 1) The Skyfire special rule states "A Model" and the drones are a different model. 2) The drone controller doesn't specifically state that USR's related to shooting confer to the drones.

Have at 'er!

Alrighty, just for clarification I do NOT believe that the drones get the skyfire rule from the 40k rulebook. However, I do maintain that the drones do not actually need it. There are 2 trains of thought I have for this.

1: Because the drones use the ballistics skill of the model with the drone controller, their own ballistics skill is irrelevant. The wording on snapfire is that the models ballistic skill is 1 for the purposes of the shot. However the drones are not using their own ballistics skill to make the shot, they are using the ballistics skill of the commander with skyfire who still has a ballistics skill of 5.

Breakdown:
Base: Crisis Commander has BS 5, Drones have BS 2
Shooting: Crisis Commander has BS 5 and shoots at BS 5, Drones have BS 2, but shoot at BS 5
Shooting at Flyers: Commander has skyfire so he retains his BS 5 and shoots at BS 5, Drones have BS reduced to 1 by snapfire, but shoot at BS 5 because the commander is still BS 5.

2: Now one of the core points of our little debate was the definition of "use" of the ballistic skill. While I believe that means the drone's ballistic remains unchanged, Mark's point of view was more along the line of the drones ballistic skill BECOMES the same as the drone controllers. Now this brings up an interesting concept. The drone controller is always on, its not an ability that activates during a phase or last for a set amount of time. So when the snapfire rules attempt to change the drones ballistic skill away from that of the model with the drone controller it creates a conflict in the rules. Whenever there is a conflict between a codex and the 40k rulebook, the codex generally wins out.

I lean more towards the first concept but both of them are valid arguments for drones to keep the ballistics skill of the bearer of the controller WITHOUT requiring the skyfire rule from the 40k codex.

Its been a really interesting debate so far and I'm curious to see how everybody else thinks. I won't be heartbroken either way, its how I see the rules but honestly not having to take the velocity tracker WOULD let me take a shield generator on my crisis commander instead (Shield Generator, Iridium Armor, Stimulant Inject for the Win!!!!  )

i think this was all hashed out when people were trying to use a signum to circumvent snapfire as well.

the rules for snapfire state you count your bs as 1. so even if your using someone elses BS, that BS will still count as 1 for the purposes of snapfire.

The commander is Not shooting, the drones are. they are using his BS, but do not have his USR of skyfire. So he conveys BS5 to them.... and then they count as having BS1 for the purpose of snapfire anyway.

I agree with Rhaevyn, as the snap fire rules are rather explicit that snap fire BS cannot be modified (marker lights being the notable exception), and replacing your own BS with that of another model certainly feels like a modification to me.

I actually don't know about the signum example, so this may have been covered at some point. But under the rules for snap shots in the 40k rulebook it actually does not mention anything about the ballistic skill not being able to be modified. It simply states the model's BS is 1 for the purposes of the shot with no other qualifiers.

Also, I do have to specify that if the book said that you "count your bs as 1" there wouldn't be an issue here. The wording however is specifically your models BS is 1, which is why there isn't any direct language contradictions between snapshots and drone controllers.

signum counts your ballistic skill as one higher for one shooter.

the wording is thus....

If a model is forced to make Snap Shots
rather than shoot normally, then its Ballistic Skill is
counted as being I for the purpose of those shots.

so no matter what you change the BS to. it could be BS10, and it would still count as BS1 for the purpose of those shots. page 13 BRB. it doesn't change your BS. it "counts as"

This actually came up a lot on the ATT (Advanced Tau Tactica) forums and the consensus was that drones are forced to snapfire at BS1 just like everyone else.

Well, not everybody else. The Crisis Commander is still snapshotting at full BS  . Linguistics debates aside it looks like we have a general consensus on the matter. Thanks guys.