Shooting through cover clarification

[Valkyrion]

 

picture used without permission, apologies if this breaks any rules.

Link provided instead - scroll to One Model In Area Terrain - https://www.tabletopbattles.com/40k-ruleshammer-11th-edition-article-updates-01

 

 

FORGET THE TEXT ON THIS PICTURE, ONLY THE PLACEMENT OF THE GUARDSMEN AND TAU ARE RELEVANT!

 

Is there a shooting scenario whereby the Tau player can remove the model at the front and therefore make the rest of the unit invisible during the same unit's shooting attack?

 

For example, the 4 guardsmen have 3 Lasguns and Melta Gun. The Guard player chooses the Melta Gun first. Hits, wounds, the Tau player creates his saving groups, the shot cannot be saved, the Tau at the front is killed. Do the remaining Lasguns get to fire? 

Would the answer change if one of the Tau was a Character? 

 

My initial thought is that the remaining Guardsmen still get to shoot because the unit as a whole was chosen to fire at the enemy unit as a whole, but the order of events clearly states to select weapon, then select targets (which must be visible).

 

[DemonGSides]

You target units and all weapons are technically fired at the same time even if they are rolled separately. 

The very bottom of 4.03, it states "If there are any weapons targeting the same unit that have not yet been used to make attacks, return to the gather attack dice step" which circumvents the "Select enemy Unit", so the select targets was already done when visible.

A pretty constant refrain from people who don't like 40k is that having a toe out can get a whole unit destroyed, and this is that interaction basically writ large.  Once targetted, the only way that something can be done about that targetting would be to utilize something that would make it an illegal target (Such as being able to move it out of range before the shots are fired, or something that causes it to be untargetable), but those strats tend to be used right at the 'select targets' phase of the attacks sequence.