How do you take the shooting phase with your knights

[mcpolle]

Have just been to the ETC, and a lot of fun was had, some really beautiful armies, and some very lovely knights painted.

 

Anyway, some thing came up in my game against a very cool German guy, I play that when you start the shooting phase, you choose a knight, then with that knight, choose a weapon, shoot it, then choose another weapon on the same knight, shoot that one, then continue, until it has no more weapons.

 

The Germans played it differently, so we got a judge to come and help us decide on which way was correct, unfortunately for us, it took three judges, and quite a long discussion, both ways, and finally the head judge, had to make a decision, and that was, that when you fire with a Knight, you have to declare all the weapons at the same time, then resolve them after that.

 

I am in no way, complaining about the judgement, and both the German  and I, were fine to carry on with this, but thought I would put it up here, to see if there was a definite answer out there, or if it is played differently in each country.

 

Cheers guys

 

Polle

 

 

[Carlson793]

RAW, target selection (step 2) comes before weapon selection (step 3) in the Shooting Sequence (BRB pg 30), and is only done once. Step 7 allows you to cycle through steps 3-6 with another weapon, but this skips target selection at step 2, so if you haven't selected multiple targets in step 2, you can only fire at the initial target. 

Edited August 11, 2015 by Carlson793

[Charlo]

Aye, sadly you can't power game like say shooting an plasma gun from one unit at an enemy to kill the 2+ guy tanking the shots and then switch to a plasma gun from another unit if it fails, you have to do all of the shooting for each unit in turn.

[WarriorFish]

Indeed. You declare all shooting attacks for a unit and they are resolved as if fired at the same time. If for example the enemy are wiped out by bolter fire before you roll your plasma then you must still roll to see if it overheats as all weapons are declared at the start of the shooting attack. The rules have been this way for a long time, and they are pretty clear on it with no special dispensation for super heavies aside from being able to choose multiple targets so I think your judges need to read the big book a bit more

[NCSUWolf]

Indeed. You declare all shooting attacks for a unit and they are resolved as if fired at the same time. If for example the enemy are wiped out by bolter fire before you roll your plasma then you must still roll to see if it overheats as all weapons are declared at the start of the shooting attack. The rules have been this way for a long time, and they are pretty clear on it with no special dispensation for super heavies aside from being able to choose multiple targets so I think your judges need to read the big book a bit more

 

I dont believe this is correct as you do resolve targets all at once but if you dont have a target to fire at the weapon doesnt roll to hit. As quoted above, you MAY continue with steps 3-7 for each weapon type if able. 

 

To the OP, yes, I agree and have always played the same as the Germans, that you must declare all targets of multi-targeting attacks (Split Fire, GMCs, SHs) before rolling any of the attacks. The same goes with splitting close combat attacks into multiple based units in combat: you declare X swings at one and Y swings at the other, any attacks over the wounds of the unit do not go into the 2nd unit. 

[WarriorFish]

You declare your shooting by saying what unit is firing at which target, and which weapons aren't firing and firing modes. Just because you haven't rolled the plasma yet doesn't mean it hasn't been fired in the same phase and needs resolving. If you do this you are cheating by trying to avoid a potential casualty, as you'd be happy to roll this plasma gun to shoot if there was still a model left to kill right?

[jeffersonian000]

You are forgetting that shooting is no longer simultaneous, weapons fire in groups with the results being cumultive. Even if you declare that you intend to fire your plasma weapon on a unit that then dies to your meltas, you stopped firing at the dead unit before your plasmas can shoot. I.e., no chance of Gets Hot.

 

SJ

[WarriorFish]

I'll have to check it out, its never come up to be an issue either way!

[Cactus]

The rules on pages 30-31 (Select a Weapon) and page 36 (Select Another Weapon) permit a model to choose to shoot or not at the point that weapon is selected. There is no requirement to declare which weapons will not fire earlier than that. So you can select 'boltguns' first and resolve their casualties, then select 'plasma guns' and choose not to fire.

 

However that was not mcpolle's question. The issue is when shooting with a super-heavy vehicle, at what point must you decide which additional targets you will shoot at and with which weapons? I think this has come up before in the Official Rules forum because the mention of step 7 only instructing us to repeat steps 3 to 7, not step 2 (Choosing a Target) sounds familiar. My functional interpretation is that when step 7 says "select [another weapon] and shoot with it at the same target unit" the super-heavy vehicle rules kick in and permit us to nominate a different target. I'd have no problem playing it the other way, declaring all targets before making any to-hit rolls, partly because I think the rules don't describe shooting at multiple targets well enough to be sure of the intent and partly because I don't own a super-heavy vehicle that isn't still in pieces in a bag.

 

IIRC some people also get hung up on the idea that there are no other targets at step 7 because step 2 has not been repeated, but I'm not entirely sure what their problem is.

 

This should probably be in the OR but then it'll spawn five pages of circular arguments before getting the melta, so perhaps not.

[Teetengee]

Perhaps the answer is that each unit must fire(or not) all its weapons before another unit fires and you can't go back to it.

However, you may still be allowed to choose new targets on the fly.
That would be assuming the superheavy rule overrides step 7, but not the other aspects.

Edited August 20, 2015 by Teetengee