Cover Everywhere??

Okay I'm in my office and the accountant is late so I gotta get this off my chest. Nids and orks are famous for protecting their monsters and characters with simple troops as a cover save. Now if the save is successful should a troop be removed, since the poor bastard stopped the shot... Just want some clarity on that question I've had for some time.

Commander James of the Ul wrote:Okay I'm in my office and the accountant is late so I gotta get this off my chest. Nids and orks are famous for protecting their monsters and characters with simple troops as a cover save. Now if the save is successful should a troop be removed, since the poor bastard stopped the shot... Just want some clarity on that question I've had for some time.

From a realistic standpoint thing makes sense - I think the rhetoric of "spoiled shot" is weak... they're The Enemy, who cares who you hit, just freakin' shoot. lol

But from a gaming standpoint... that would slow the game down to a crawl. The to wound has to be remembered against the other unit, god forbid they have different toughness, and if they get cover from another source they have to make a save or if it's an armour save, or if from another meatshield... it then passes down to them (keeping in mind the to wound against THEIR toughness) and they make any saves they can get... but what if the unit you originally fire at is 25% concealed from area terrain, 25% from another unit? Or 10% from a unit and 40% from area terrain... or 5%/45%...

yeah, gets insanely complicated very quickly.

james= The problem is that 40k is in no way realistic, both to its own world and ours. A bolter should be s7 ap3 from its description. Space marines should be 100 pts each and have 4 wounds and 5 attacks etc, etc.
Many people also try to apply real world physics for tanks, airships, guns etc, but its lunacy. A Superhuman genetic monster wearing inch thick adamantium/ceramite armor, firing mini missiles at psychic hive bugs from another galaxy, on any number of insane worlds with methane air/carbon oceans/ adamantium grass... Do you see where I am going with this? If you want real world, play flames of war. 40k is ridiculous, and always will be.
Its worked fine for the last few years, and as Regan said, cover in not inv. Its a game mechanic, if there was no cover, those tyranid/ork/ non-mech guard would be decimated by gun lines in no time.
As an experiment, try playing a shooty army against a horde cc army, use the 12" deployment, and see what happens. Money is on the horde army losing by turn 3, no matter what.

No I know there is a valid point for cover saves most of the time. But if you fire a Lascannon at a hive guard and it makes a successful cover with a guants as a cover save just remove a guant since it would have been vaporized. But no I would not want to go thought that toughness stuff, if the shot was made from a bolter or even a heavy bolter. If the weapon is double the strength of the covering troop I think it would be just easy enough to just remove a troop. That shouldn't slow the game down, Did it all the time in Calgary with 4th edition.

You have to also consider that if you want to have that cover save kill a guy from the unit blocking the one you're shooting at then you'd have to do the same if you were shooting through your own unit as well and that would be silly. The rulebook explains it that you either miss cmpletely due to a lack of proper vision or the guy simply doesnt pull the trigger because there is not a clean shot.

Im curious about your claim on 4th edition, since as i remember it you had to shoot the closest unit unless you pass a leadership test, and then there was no cover save. If you were taking a cover save then you were likely playing with further house rules which then would have been changing the dynamics of the game further.

If the big nid is a MC then the only way to grant it a cover save is if half the model is being obscured. Last i remembered, guants are pretty small and im sure that they wouldn't obscure 50% of the MC. and if there is a doubt on that while your playing, the rulebook suggests you go by a standard 5+ cover instead. or alternatively, you can just roll off with your opponent but that is just like giving him a cover save anyway as dice are being rolled.

System Commander wrote:Yep, no way we can bring that rule in.. even if it seems more realistic.

As a side note, those units have to be blocking up to 50% of the model.. so gaunts in front of that trygon aren't helping at all. .. unless there's something in the nid dex I havent seen. Ive still yet to play a new nid list, or read through the book.

Right after 5th came out, I started making lines of genestealers and guants to cover my warriors and raveners, a solid line of troops wont cover a trygon, but it does cover my synapse dudes

just FYI, as I've tested this deliberately...

the only thing that will cover a trygon is another TMC depending on how he's posed, everything else is just too freakin' small. not even hive guard or zoanthropes (or raveners) can do it. hell I doubt a land raider would give them cover.

zoanthropes, hive guard, and raveners give cover to TMCs (except trygons obviously) depending on the angle. you have to bunch them up in order for it to be guaranteed. any of the little critters (gaunts, gargs, rippers, etc.) never grant cover to TMCs no matter how hard you try.

and of course, everything that's "infantry" gives cover to another guy (even if just his foot or arm is obscured)

Well Veyure this is how we did it in Calgary if I can remember correctly. And then I am done with this issue. lol Its starting to affect my work.lol... I'm pretty sure the tanks did not have to do the leadership thing to hit a MC using troops as cover. They are the enemy your in a tank, so you wouldn't care if a enemy troops head is blown off while your trying to hit their big guy. And because tanks are bigger then troop and you wouldn't worry about one of your troops being stupid enough to purposely pocking their head down the barrel of the guns. Troops did have to make the leadership only because troops can carry only so many shoots so you gotta make it count.
Now any object that was obscured could make a cover save using other troops, tank, MC, and other special characters.
Now If the cover save was successful a troop was removed in an instant death. But we did also the toughness and armour save thing if it wasn't instant death. Just a little more time.
I liked this because when your troops fire the ball should be in your court. NOT the other guys. If they miss it your fault not the opponents. And when your troop hit and your opponent makes a successful cover save it is only logical that an enemy combatant is removed. Just cause your opponent make a successful cover save using troop doesn't mean that shot just vanished up the Emperors ass

In all just try it out your selfs its really a fun cut throat way of playing.... NO MERSY lol Okay I'm DONE with this issue...

I like the idea of removing troopers used as cover...

Id be up for making that a local rule

System Commander wrote:We will definitely not be incorporating this as a local rule...

No house rules for this league, unless were attempting to fix a problem.

Seconded.

Summary: Current cover system good. This poll useless. News at 11.

James and Adam= We are not in Calgary or Montreal, this is Saskatoon. This is how we have been doing it, its been working here just fine. I'm sure you guys did it differently in those cities, but I think we have all heard enough of "in (name of city) we did it this way cuz its better".

its ok, I can accept how things are run, I was just curious about how the decisions came to be regarding how to rule all the multi-level ruins terrain came to be.

I can easily understand that its a good simplifier, I remeber tons of arguments and the necessity of lazer pointers when we were trying to determin if model A could see model B