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Warhammer 40k: Rules Clarificaton on assault wounds allocation???

Posted by Jawaballs at 9:16 PM
Ok, I would love a little clarification here. I think I have it down, just need confirmation. Here is the scenario. Three Grey Knights are locked in assault with three Blood Angels. There are two normal GK with Halbred and Storm Bolter, and one Justicar. The three BA are a Veteran Sgt. with a Power Weapon, and two assault marines with Chain Swords. The assault is joined by a 5 man Honor Guard. 3 of them have Power Weapons, one has a chain sword, and the other is carrying the Chapter Banner. The HG assaults and we decide to resolve their wounds first. 2 wounds are scored with power swords, and 4 are scored with chain swords. The GK player then allocates a Power Sword wound to one GK, a Chain sword to another GK, and a chain sword wound to the Justicar. Here is where he gets cheezy. He allocates the second Power Sword wound to the same GK that got the first one, then gives the other GK a chain sword wound, and the justicar a Chain sword wound for a total of 2 power swords on one GK, 2 chain swords on the other, and 2 chain swords on the Justicar. That makes me furious. BUT thats how it goes, its bye the rules! According to the allocation process, you can do that. He rolled his saves. The Justicar failed a save and made a save, but died. The GK with the two chain swords made both. The GK with the 2 Power swords died. The GK player removed 2 models. The justicar who failed his chain sword save, and the GK who sufferd wounds from the power sword. I believe this was WRONG. Since the two normal GKs were similarly equipped models, they should have shared the total wounds delivered to them. SO the two of them must share the pool of 2 power weapon wounds, and 2 chain sword wounds DESPITE the fact that 2 power wounds were allocated to the same maodel. That would have meant that they each take a power weapon wound and die as per the second paragraph, right column on page 25 of the 5th edition rulebook. Oh and the other three Blood Angels failed to wound. The GKs scored two wounds and tied the combat, killing the two assault marines.

The end result of this, not that it really matters since it is just a game after all, was me losing. But I will cover that in a battle report... :(

Any rule mongers out there???

10 comments:

Sam-B said...

He was wrong, you have to allocate one wound per type to every member of the squad before anyone can have two.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 4:00:00 AM EDT
Jawaballs said...

Where is that explained? Can you quote the rule?

Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 9:23:00 AM EDT
Anonymous said...

The example has the defender rolling 4 dice for the bolter marines and fails 2, so though there are three wounds (2 unsaved and 1 melta that can't be saved), the player only takes off the two bolter marines he rolled those saves for. Then he rolls for the ML marines (one failed,so one figure removed), and finally for the sgt. If he had placed the melta hit on a ML marine and the rolls were as in the example, there wold have been 2 failed saves for the MLs and they would have both been removed. If the player had put the melta hit on the sgt and he failed his two allocated saves... though there would have been three wounds there is only one model in the group so two of them would have been wasted.

So, after all that... you were right. He put four wounds on a group of two models with the same equipment, so if there were two wounds caused by those four weapons, the pool of two figures takes those two wounds. Neither the rule text nor the example say that a wound “ allocated” to a specific figure HAS to be allocated to that specific figure within a pool of like-equipped figures. The example just says that three unsaved wounds have to be taken off from the pool of (two) bolter marines. If there had been five bolter marines, 2 mls and a sgt, the player could have removed any three bolter marines he wished... he doesn't have to choose the one he put the meltagun's wound dice next to. One would think that one would have to, but the rules don't say to do so.

Divide up the unit's wounds as evenly as possible, determine what like-equipped pools there are and roll their saves together, then remove their unsaved wounds from the figures in that pool. Continue until all the pools have completed these steps.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 9:38:00 AM EDT
Jawaballs said...

Thanks. I was too angry at the game to sit and read the wording. But when I got home, that was how I read it too. I still hate how you could possibly allocate 5 Lascannon shots to the same marine in the squad and if the first one kills him the rest are wasted, so long as he is unique in the squad. Poor flamer guys. You are going to see people including one unique thing, like an Auspex, just to fend off the first round of sick assault... "Ok, I put all of your Furious Charge Death Company with Litinies of Hate rending shots on my guy with the Auspex!"

Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 9:51:00 AM EDT
Doc Railgun said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 9:54:00 AM EDT
Anonymous said...

It won't be as easy as that... the total wounds have to be allocated evenly first. So, if 10 DC cause (before saves) 5 rending wounds and 10 regular wounds vs 10 Smurfs (8 w/ bolters, 1 sgt, 1 flamer), the opponent still has to allocate 15 total wounds as evenly as possible. So, he could put two rending wounds on something, but all 10 models have one wound allocate and half have a second wound. He could put 2 rending wounds on 2 models of his choice, the last on a third model and then allocate the regular wounds...or whatever order he liked. But not all of the 5 rending wounds could go on the same model unless the whole unit could take 5 wounds each (so, the DC'd have to have caused 45 regular and 5 rending wounds).

Off the top of my head, the ramification of this will be that smaller squads with special weapons will be better at causing their special effects than large r mixed squads. A HG w/ 2 pw is probably more likely to kill things with its 8 pw + 12 regular attacks than my 3 pw'd VAS with its 12 pw attacks and 18 regular (2 flamers lose me 2 bonus attacks)... but of course there are lots of downsides to smaller squads too.

Ork players are going to complain, though... the more total wounds that a squad of boyz causes, the more diluted their Nob's PK wounds will be. That may be a saving grace vs Orks... people can stack the PK wounds on a small group of models (or 1) because Ork squads are naturally large and put out lots of wounds in CC, while Marines (or Banshees, or whatever) can tool up a squad and dish out hits without diluting their specialwounds too much.

Something to think about, anyway.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 10:33:00 AM EDT
Jawaballs said...

Exactlly! I have a 5 man VAS with 3 powers. I believe that I will drop it down to 2 powers since in most cases the squad I assault will be able to water down the effect of them. Perhaps I will throw in two flamers like you which will further reduce the number of normal CCW shots, but hopefully increase the number of killed marines before I charge. Hell, when I assault with that squad, I dont even want to roll the CCWs. Just give me the three damn power swords!

Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 10:47:00 AM EDT
Aldonis said...

If I read this right - I think he was correct in his allocation. He had 4 total wounds to allocate amongst 3 models. Everyone needs 1 and 1 guy gets and extra. I don't see where it says you have to spread them by type of wound (i.e. savable vs unsavable)? It seems to nerf your Powerweapon guys some in big squads with the same Initiatives. It almost seems better to have something like a Powerfist - which goes last - and the wounds have to be distributed evenly and by themselves - not mixed in with other weapon types?

Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 11:48:00 AM EDT
Jawaballs said...

His allocation of wounds is no longer the question here. He was right. Where the error happened was that he rolled the wounds individually per model. He should have rolled the wounds of both the normal grey knights as a "batch", then subtracted the unsaved wounds from that "batch". That would have resulted in both of the normal GKs dieing form an unsaved wound.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 11:54:00 AM EDT
Space Hulk Enthusiast said...

I went through this on Warseer a few weeks ago but it looks like you've got it straight here.

It was confusing for me at first until I understood the "batch" concept of rolling like models together.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008 at 11:33:00 AM EDT

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