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Terrain and Cover Question

892 views 14 replies 5 participants last post by  Red Archer 
#1 ·
Ok. Couple of questions.

1) You have an L shaped building (from the GW Imperial building set). The ground floor has no windows but has a single door. Depicted below.

WWWWWWWWW <-- Solid Wall, no windows
W
W
D <-- Open Door
W


Can a unit of troops walk through said solid wall or should they move AROUND it or through the door? Is this in the rule book? I looked and to me it seems that if you can't shoot through it... you shouldn't be able to run through it either.

2) Vehicle gets blown to bits (Explodes) and leaves a nice little crater/debri and smoke. For the rest of the game, does said smoke stay and will it offer a cover save to units behind it?
 
#2 ·
1) Look towards the lower part of page 83 of the big rulebook. It states that your gaming group has to agree on one solution. Whether you opt to grant units the possibility of moving through solid walls (blasting holes into it with grenades, using laser cutters or something similar) or whether you say only doors (and maybe windows) can be passed through is up to you and your opponent to decide.

2) The smoke perishes, but you should put a crater to where the vehicle was. It can provide cover for units inside or behind it, following the normal rules for cover.
 
#3 ·
Agreed with Red Archers assessments.

Although, I'd like to point out there is a difference between Buildings and Ruins. If this area is a piece of a building that has been blown apart and only the L shape wall is left, I would suggest treating the area as ruins. Even ruins can block line of sight, and parts can be identified as impassable and what not (just like RA stated) As the ruins have already been blown apart, or weathered with time, often ruins areas are free to traverse with a difficult terrain roll.

If you have solid building, there are a good amount of different rules that apply. And the "door" would be the access point. Other openings would then be treated as fire points, etc.
 
#4 ·
I am thinking that page 83 only refers to Ruins and is not going to be of much help here.

Page 78 is about Buildings and they are treated like vehicles.

So the ‘door’ must have an agreed policy about being an access point prior to the game – no agreement, no access. And since it could only have permission to be an ‘access point’ it cannot simply be a part of the table that can be walked through.

The building blocks line of sight and has base area so nothing may transverse through it.

The smoke on a wreck does not have any rules concerning it so it does not affect the game.
Whereas craters have no mention of smoke anywhere, so it too would have no affect on the game.

Cheers.
 
#5 ·
I am thinking that page 83 only refers to Ruins and is not going to be of much help here.
Yes, the rules for ruins, and I disagree that they are of no use here.
A "building" with only two walls 90° from each other is not exactly what I would call an "intact building" and therefore nothing I would use the rules for intact buildings on. If half the "building" has no walls as depicted by the OP it is what I would call a ruin.
 
#8 ·
Mate, at this point I am hoping that Vlorlich gets back to us about what class of structure he really means!

But in the meantime please consider that by default a building is classed as ‘intact’ and since nothing else defines what a building looks like apart from an agreement, it could be anything from a pillar of salt to an entire fortified table top, so why not something in between like just two walls?

Do you know for sure that this not what the architect intended as the finished structure?
I think that you are assuming something not illustrated here.

Anyway we could put this to a poll.

Cheers.



:act-up:
 
#9 ·
Vlorlich will state what he meant. ;)
And however things will turn out: we have provided him with all the answers he needs in any case.

But as for the discussion about what a building in Warhammer 40.000 is: when we try to ascertain why building rules are the way they are then it seems rather obvious to me that they have been made for structures and terrain pieces are supposed to be accessible but can't actually be accessed and moved around in by the models on the tabletop (because the model representing the terrain feature is closed-off or not even hollowed out, etc).
It is rather an emergency solution to remove the models from the table in such situations and assume they are inside the structure, using the building rules in order to have any possibility of still dealing with the unit whose models are no longer on the table.
Everything that is not closed-off like an L-shaped wall structure could just be played WYSIWYG or as area terrain (i.e. a ruin) without going through the trouble of introducing another set of rules to the game...
 
#10 ·
Well the L shaped structure could have been an Impassable Building as it does make no sense to enter it as described.

In that case the door really is useless.

Good discussion mate, thanks.
 
#11 ·
I think some good minds have answered the first question as well as I could ever hope to, so I'll just skip to the part about craters and smoke.

An explodes result only mentions a crater or a piece depicting scattered wreckage. Common sense tells us that there would be smoke as well, but they are omitted from the rules in this case.

A wrecked result does however include a smoke marker or cotton, and it also says you can represent flames. But since there is mention that you should not be trying to gain extra cover (by turning the turret sideways, of all things), we can reasonably conclude that these markers should be ignored for purposes of true line of sight and cover.
 
#12 ·
Sorry guys, couldn't get back to teh internets till now.

Thank you for the replies.

I have the Imperial Building set but that particular piece is just an 'L' shape ruin of a wall. We have been playing it as a solid wall that blocked line of sight for shooting purposes but were allowing units to run through said wall and not around it or through the door. After playing a game this weekend I used the wall as a shield to block LoS and then ran my Nids through it. Then it occurs to me that this seemed a bit off but of course that thought only popped into my head when I was at work and away from my rule book.

This clarifies it for me greatly!
 
#13 ·
Glad to have helped!

Like I said: the rulebook doesn't have anything but guidelines on this. If your gaming group plays ruins in a way that you can move through "solid" walls (as difficult terrain, though) then your move was perfectly legal! The walls definitely block line of sight, but they only block movement (concerning ruins) if you agree that they do.

It's generally a good idea to discuss this matter with every new opponent before setting up...
 
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