Played my third game of Warhammer 40k with my 1500p Imperial Fists army today. We never did finish (2on2 with a total of 3000 points a side) but I'm pretty sure by now that the two razorbacks I have are not even remotely paying for themselves. That and assault marines are pretty tame against Genestealers (auch!).
One thing that struck me though was a rule interpretation that I found a bit odd. I've read about others running into this, but I didn't really have the opportunity (or will) to discuss it at the time. On top of that it was to our opponents disadvantage to interpret the rules that way.
To break it down. The Genestealers charge my Assault Squad and funny enough three of the marines survive and make their leadership test (Stubborn!). In our turn a Tau squad (Farsight and friends) charges into the fray. Looking over the situation I comment that only one Genestealer is situated so it can only attack my Marines, the rest can attack the Tau. To my surprise everyone around the table then agreed that the Genestealers could only attack the Marines!
Obviously they can attack anyone they want, as long as that squad has at least one model in base to base with it. To support my interpretation I steer my eyes towards the FAQ:
Page 41 – Multiple Combats, Attacking. A third bullet point should be added, as follows:
• Models that at the beginning of the combat (before any model attacked) were engaged with more than one enemy unit, but were in base contact with just one of the enemy units, must attack that unit.
Page 41 – Multiple Combats, Attacking. In all three bullet points, the word ʻcombatʼ will be changed
to ʻround of combatʼ.
Q: For multiple combats there are two extra rules under the heading ʻAttackingʼ. For these rules, at what point is “at the beginning of the combat”? (p41) A: It is after defenders react when you pick the combat but before any attacks have been rolled.
Ta ta! At the beginning of combat (i.e. after defenders react) the Genestealers can choose to attack anyone they want, as long as they are close enough (with one only within 2" of a model in B2B with the Marines but not the Tau). So Matt if you are reading this, three things. Bring all the Dark Angel veterans on Sunday and I'll put them together and paint them, Friday I will work on the Vespid (including basing this time:)), and let me know if you agree/disagree with my interpretation.
How to paint Rusty Krieg??
6 years ago
Interesting post mate, to my knowledge Genestealers are awesome in close combat, especially on the charge, so yeah the Assault Marines had no chance.
ReplyDeleteAlso Imperial Fists, nice one.
Assault Marines are decent, but against something that is really tooled up for assault (like Genestealers) they die just like normal marines.
ReplyDeleteAs for the rules thing, you are correct. It's poorly worded in the rulebook, and it has been argued many times. I'm glad that they cleared it up at least a little bit with the FAQ.
@Warflake They sure are! The rest of his army was all meh (we shot his big bugs to pieces real fast) but the Genestealers were scary. Makes me want to try a Genestealer list, but alas, too much $$$ to start yet another army!
ReplyDeleteThe imperial Fists are my main army, and the assembled and painted one:)
@Rkik
ReplyDeleteI've found the AM a bit hard to play thus far. Deep striking to get some use out of the flamers is hard, they are OK on the charge with 25 normal and 4 power weapon hits, but mostly are quite difficult to get into position. I'm thinking of retiring them for a while until I get better at playing. Need to paint up more guys to do so though :)
I'm thinking of starting to document rules disputes and have the source for my views somewhere on the web. Maybe here on the blog. I also hope for a "House FAQ" for the gamestore in the future :)