Rules mistakes: D-Weapons and Templates

During the council of war event we came across several rules issues with some of the newer rules and some that have changed or just gone since the last edition. Since reading over some of my battle reports from then event and checking the rules I think we may have made a few mistakes, they are probably stupid mistakes that you will all laugh at but I thought it would be worth going over them to get your input and maybe help someone out.

D weapons, mostly in our final group game, caused a few issues. Since coming back and looking over the D weapon rules a bit more I can’t help feel we may have made a few mistakes, and it might be obvious but I felt it might be best to go over them and see if people are making the same mistake. Now first of all let’s look at the rules for strength D, the rules are that when you hit a model roll a D6, on a 1 nothing happens, 2-5 you either deal a single hit which causes D3 wounds or a penetrating hit that causes D3 hull points instead of 1. If you roll a 6, shit hits the fan and a model either loses 6 + D6 wounds or a penetrating hit which causes the vehicle to lose 6+ D6 wounds, with no saves of any kind allowed.

 

This guy knows about D

Strength D weapons are meant to be super weapons that can take down titans, but for instant death purposes it counts as strength 10, so it can only instant death to models with T 5 or less. That’s fine but it’s important to remember that as we didn’t and killed a hyperios platform when we only did one wound (sorry guys).

Another issue that we found was that when a D weapon hit a vehicle (super heavy or not) we rolled to see what kind of hit we did, then just left it at that after taking cover saves and reduced it by that many hull points and just left it. I have read online that that’s what you do, but that feels wrong to me. The rules do say they take a penetrating hit, so you need to roll on the damage chart as well! Granted it might not do much (especially against a super heavy) but you still have a chance to explode the tank (or take off extra hull points in the case of the super heavy). The reason I checked up on this is because if you don’t roll on the damage chart it means that a D weapon can only ever wreck a tank, and could never destroy a land raider in a single shot (unless the 6 of course) while a lascannon could? That didn’t feel right.

I guess what I’m saying is DON’T FORGET to roll on the damage chart!!!

Template weapons where more of a sore spot of the tournament as during the doubles game something came up which while not game changing wasn’t handled well between the two teams and left a bitter taste. Anyway the argument was over if you flamed a unit that's on two different levels of a ruin will all of the models under the template (that was held above the models, I say this as its important later on) would all of the models get hit? Our opponents argued you only targeted a single level which is an old 4^th edition rule used in both 5^th and 6^th, but we couldn’t find it in the 7^th rules anywhere. We checked the template special rules, the ruins rules (what half a sentence we found of them) but nothing. In the end we just went with our opponent’s way to get the argument over with. However looking over the template rules we couldn’t really find much useful information when dealing with templates at all. Expect that something very interesting was pointed out.

When you fire a template weapon ‘Instead of rolling to hit, place the template so that its narrow end is touching the base of the firing model... any models fully or partially under the template are hit’ pg. 173, 7^th edition rule book. So going by nothing else, that would assume that as long as a model is under the template is it hit regardless of its position in a ruin. The exact wording stats though that the template has to be touching the base of the model, not hovering above it, so do we have to have the template touching? Looking back at the 6^th edition rule book the rules are just cut and paste from that, but the ruins rules stated that you could hold the template above the model for ease in that one specific situation. Without that president are we now unable to life the template, and theoretically our flamers now have a greatly reduced use.

Think about this, you have a guardsman with a flamer, you have an enemy a few inches behind a barricade you want to target. If you place the template touching your base (as per the rules) and place it under the terrain in the way you will hit them Fig.1.

 

Fig. 1. Template hits the thousand son

But the rules don’t say you are allowed to do that, and states covers, so my assumption is that you will have to place to template over them in order to ‘cover’ them. So in order to do this you will have to place the template at an angle. Now looking at Fig.2 you will see it reduces the distance covered and the enemy (thousand son in this case) won’t be hit. It reduces the length only a fraction but it’s enough (fig.3.).

Fig. 3. Range difference, dotted line = new max range

Fig. 2. Over  the wall, the thousand son is safe

Now I know on this scale it won’t affect much, but let’s think about some bigger pieces of terrain, such as a bastion. If you have to place the narrow end touching your base does that mean that you won’t be able to hit any one on the battlements? Are you safe on the top level of a ruin if the model is on the floor? It’s an odd ruling but I can’t help but think it makes some sense in some situations.  

What do you guys think of this interpretation of the template rules? Can you come up with any rules to the contrary of what I am thinking? Or is this how everyone else is playing it and I’m just the last one to the party? Let me know what you think.