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Offline arisos

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Shooting at independent operating Characters
« on: September 22, 2004, 10:24:28 PM »
Shooting at independent operating Characters

Most people think characters are protected against shooting  and magic by  staying within 5 inch of friendly similar-sized or greater troops.
(I will call these the “covering troops” in this article)

From round the mill shooting this is correct there are however some situations that ignore these rules.
It is good to know these situations to exploit them or to avoid them.

1 If you are closer to the character then to any other unit you can shoot it, Fast cavalry and skirmisher troops, especially scouts are very good at getting in a shooting position.

2 If  LOS is blocked to the “covering troops” while LOS is maintained to your character he is the closest target and can be shot at.
If there are other enemy troops that can be legally targeted, closer by then the character cannot be shot.

3 Cannons can target anything that is in LOS without targeting restrictions.

4 Even if LOS is blocked to the character the bounce of the cannonball can hit the character behind the screening troops.

5 Any template weapon can hit the character even without targeting him, due to scattering.

6 Your “screening troops” are reduced below the 5 model mark.

7 Your “screening troops” are engaged in close combat, they are no longer a target so closest by target is your character.

8 Terror/Fear causing enemy tried to charge the “screening troops” they fled and left your character out in the open.

9 Spell cast is not a magic missile and is not bound by targeting restrictions.
Heavens or Life lore, do I have to say more? Also other lores have damaging spells that are not magic missiles.

10 Hochland Long Rifle: Empire weapon that can shoot anything in sight, even if you are inside a unit. Single wound weapon.

Where can I find this in the rulebooks?
1,2,6,7,8 BRB page  Shooting at Independent characters and Proximity to friendly troops
3 BRB page 122 +Chronicles 2004 Errata page 123 “(Cannons)for this.*
4,5 BRB page 100 “Stone Throwers, Cannons & Characters.”
9 BRB page 142 “Fireballs and other magic missiles”
10 Empire Rulebook page 19

* Errata can also be found at this site :
http://uk.games-workshop.com/warhammerworld/warhammer/chronicles/assets/warhammerrulebook.pdf
It's on the 3th page IIRC
<edited for corrections 9-23-04>
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Offline Karl Schimmelfennig

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Shooting at independent operating Characters
« Reply #1 on: September 25, 2004, 08:17:58 AM »
Excellent summary!

Bravo! :clap:
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Offline Lord_Leviathan

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Shooting at independent operating Characters
« Reply #2 on: September 25, 2004, 01:44:49 PM »
I agree.
Most helpful.

Stupid question: can you now target a skaven weapon team, and such alike, directly with your cannon or am I missing something?
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Offline queek

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Shooting at independent operating Characters
« Reply #3 on: September 26, 2004, 03:52:45 AM »
Quote from: Lord_Leviathan
I agree.
Most helpful.

Stupid question: can you now target a skaven weapon team, and such alike, directly with your cannon or am I missing something?


yes, and you always could.

cannons ignore targeting restrictions.  If you can see them (and even sometimes when you can't) cannons can nail them.

Offline PygmyHippo

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Shooting at independent operating Characters
« Reply #4 on: September 27, 2004, 02:07:14 PM »
Great post.  What I like the most is that you included your sources.  This is terrific and should be integrated into any tactics/rules post or article.

Marcus

Offline Cheesejoff

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Shooting at independent operating Characters
« Reply #5 on: October 22, 2004, 02:31:26 PM »
Cannons can target anything within LOS? Time to start cannon-sniping, I think.

Oh, and here's a fairly cheesy tactic. Put a wizard on a hill next to a great cannon. Take the Lore of Gold and choose to take the first spell in the list. Since most wizards outside units have no armour this spell inflicts a single S3 hit. You should put lots of dice into it to try and stop your opponent dispelling it.

I mean, he's not going to dispel a pathetic S3 hit when you've used 3 dice to cast it. He'll save his dispel dice for other spells, won't he?

Once you've cast it, it might wound, it might not. That doesn't matter.

What matters is the fact that you now have the precise range to the enemy wizard, so your cannon can open fire and blast him away!
Cheesejoff, master of the 21+power+dice+the-staff-of-cheese-Tzeentch list.

Offline arisos

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Shooting at independent operating Characters
« Reply #6 on: October 22, 2004, 08:14:04 PM »
Don't need that kind of borderline cheating with a wizard and a cannon.
Cannon are not that acurate anyway so guessing the range is most of the time close enough.
I think many opponents will only play once if you resort to these kinds of tactics.

Well that's my opinion anyway, if you want to win that bad, just use loaded dice:D
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Offline Calvin

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« Reply #7 on: October 23, 2004, 04:22:59 PM »
@ arisos: Good article.

@ Cheesejoff: I would call that cheeting, or at least I would call that, "I'm not playing you any more". Then again, what can I expect from someone with Cheese in their name.
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Offline Cheesejoff

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« Reply #8 on: October 24, 2004, 10:28:12 AM »
Of course it's cheese, since I am the master of cheese :)

Well I won't actually do that, and it would only work once because after that the opponent will know to dispel it...althgouh it might be a good surprise at a tournament! (Although if you do it, don't expect any sportsanship marks)
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Offline General Helstrom

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Shooting at independent operating Characters
« Reply #9 on: October 24, 2004, 10:37:19 AM »
Quote
6 Your “screening troops” are reduced below the 5 model mark.


I've had moderate success in reducing covering units to below 5 models in the Magic phase, allowing me to shoot at the now uncovered character in the Shooting phase.

Also note that the rules for shooting allow you to declare targets one by one (except for guess-range weapons like our artillery), so you could try to whittle a covering unit down to below five models, and then shoot the rest at the now uncovered character.

Beware that Panic tests are taken at the end of the Shooting Phase, so it's no use trying to Panic a unit out of a covering position. In similar vein, if I'm not mistaken, keep in mind that fleeing units still provide cover.
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Offline queek

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« Reply #10 on: October 24, 2004, 03:26:22 PM »
Cheesejoff, most of the time the distance isn't going to be measured unless its real close to 24".  If its obviously in, no one is going to be laying tape next to a cannon, and if its out, then you've wasted powerdice and still haven't gotten to lay tape.    

its questionable sportsmanship, to say the least.

Offline Cheesejoff

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« Reply #11 on: October 24, 2004, 06:08:27 PM »
Quote from: queek
Cheesejoff, most of the time the distance isn't going to be measured unless its real close to 24".  If its obviously in, no one is going to be laying tape next to a cannon, and if its out, then you've wasted powerdice and still haven't gotten to lay tape.    

its questionable sportsmanship, to say the least.


It's not just questionable, it's practically became a survey it's that questionable. And if you are firing in the first or second turn, then it is likely to be near 24". Even if it's not, you can still measure "for a complete sense of accuracy" (Read: "To be cheesy)
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Offline curse

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« Reply #12 on: November 06, 2004, 10:05:24 PM »
I don't think it is that cheesy at all.
If you look at it from a fluff perspective the wizard is just been a spotter for the cannon. He knows the range of that spell and you should be able to measure it because even if it doesn't hit anything the troops can still see where the spell stops.
If some one did it to me I would think it was a good tactic on their behalf.
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Offline gOR

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Shooting at independent operating Characters
« Reply #13 on: December 31, 2004, 01:36:20 PM »
I find that firing your cannon at a single screening skirmishing archer only to "accidentally overguess 5 inches right onto a characters head which happens to be behind that model is plain cheating. This was one of the options outlined, would you really do it?

4 Even if LOS is blocked to the character the bounce of the cannonball can hit the character behind the screening troops.

PS. i dont know how to quote!
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Offline Karl Schimmelfennig

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Shooting at independent operating Characters
« Reply #14 on: December 31, 2004, 03:41:11 PM »
I don't think he was saying you should do that - as a matter of fact it IS cheating to do it deliberately, since you can't actually "see" the character.

However, you can easily roll high for the artillery dice, and high for the bounce, and the cannonball winds up 10 inches further forward than you anticipated, and hits the character. Purely accidental of course, but there's nothing that stops it from happening.
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Offline The old ultra violence

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« Reply #15 on: January 12, 2005, 11:28:00 AM »
Sorry to post off topic but why cant I PM?

 I wanted to ask cheesejoff about his tzentch.
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Offline queek

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« Reply #16 on: January 12, 2005, 03:05:28 PM »
bandwidth concerns.

that's what e-mail is for.