Hello.

This came up last game and I'd like someway to counter it: Consider a team of three Fireknifes with an attached Shas'El of the same configuration. Due to range I have 8 shots with Plasmarifles and 8 shot with Missile Pods.

My highly esteemed opponent has two models in a unit which due to wound allocation are able to eat at least four for the plasmarifle shot and spead the rest to the other model in the unit. In the end it would have been far more effective if I would have been allowed to fire only the Plasmarifles.

So the question is: May I fire fire only the Plasmarifles or must I fire both Plasmarifles AND missile pods due to the multitracker?

Reading the rules page 27, the "Type" section, third paragraph only mentions limiting fire on a per model basis and disallowes changing the weapon's effect. It does not clarify whether all weapons that can fire must fire.

Page 16, the "Which model can fire?", second paragraph only mentions one-shot weapons.

The TE codex page 26, the "Multi-tracker" says "enables the model to fire two battle weapon systems in the same turn". To me enabling means like in makes possibly, a choice, not compulsory

The GW errata and Q&A have no input for this.

I feel that it is not clear in the rules nor in codex nor GW errata/Q&A whether a FireKnife unit is forced to fire all possible weapons or not

What is your input?

As a solution one could replace the multi-trackers with the Targeting Arrays at an extra cost though.

Kind Regards
Peter Lageri
Denmark

why would it be more effective to only fire one weapon tough ? its still wounds that he needs to save.

but yea anyways cant see why you cant fire only the weapons you want to use when as you say it enables to fire more that one weapon. it isnt a must. but always a good idea tough.

or you just go with twinlinked plasma rifles if you to be sure, and fire within 12" for rapid fire.

Wound allocation. Let's say we have a group of five marines, one with a melta gun, one sergeant with a powerfist, and three meatshields. Let's say you get a total of four plasma wounds and two missile pod wounds. Your opponent now puts all four plasma wounds on the meatshields, and a missile pod wound on each of the other two models. The meatshields die (but they don't matter anyway), and the sergeant and melta gunner get to make a 3+ armor save.

Now let's say you didn't fire the missile pods, and only inflicted the four plasma wounds. Now your opponent removes the three meatshields, and has to kill either the sergeant or the melta gunner. By removing the wounds that allow armor saves, you prevent them from stacking the no-save wounds on models that are already going to die and putting wounds that allow an armor save on the models they actually care about.

Granted, they could fail both armor saves and make the theoretical "best" choice the wrong one, but the most likely outcome (90%) is that at least one of the important models survives (equaling the plasma-only results), with a high probability (45%) of keeping both models. And that's just one simple example, with larger numbers of wounds and more complex units (especially multi-wound models) you can easily find yourself in a scenario where you're almost guaranteed to do significantly worse if you fire the extra weapons.



Actually, it isn't clear. While it doesn't explicitly say "must", it doesn't mention a choice either. I would probably interpret it as being a choice of whether or not to take advantage of the ability, but there is a legitimate argument for interpreting it as "this model now fires two weapons if possible".

How would you make that argument?

The whole point of taking a multi-tracker is to allow the suit to fire more than one weapon during the shooting phase. It doesn't state wether or not you mush shoot both weapons equipped to the crisis suit. Its all comes down to shooters choice. Although you are only limited to shooting at the inital unit selected to shoot at.

So to answer your question, Yes you may only fire the Plasma Rifles, but if you didnt kill the selected target with thoes shots you may as well shoot it with the Missile pods as well to try and finish it off.

I hope that helps.

Except of course that if you indeed can choose to only fire the Plasma Rifles, those are the only weapons you have declared to fire. Therefor after those shots have been resolved (wounds, saves and all) you wouldn't be able to go "Oh, I wanna also fire my missile pods!" The unit has completed its shooting for that round so your choice to fire one weapon or both is decided when you declare your fire for that unit.

In regards to the OP I'd say there shouldn't be any reason you couldn't choose to only fire one weapon system. In general you can choose to not fire a unit's weapons if you wish, as such it seems logical you can hold back weapons fire for whatever reason.

Of course Peregrine is right. It's not technically specified in RAW whether you can or not. Although it seems unlikely to me someone would disallow it as long as you clearly declared what you were doing before making any rolls or checking range.

The only thing that the BRB states is on Pg. 15 and it reads as follows: "You can choose any order for your units to shoot, but you must complete all the fireing by one unit before you move on to the next."
The OP stated correctly that the BRB only mentions singlling out one-shot weapons on Pg. 16 under the Which models can fire section. And must be done so before checking line of sight.

After further reading into the BRB, when you get to Pg. 18 at the top under the section Fast Rolling with Different Weapons it states that: "When A unit fires, all of its weapons are fired simultaneously... Alternatively, you can make seperate dice rolls for different weapons or shooters, as long as it is clear which dice rolls represent which shots."

IMO if you declare that the plasma rifles are sooting and all are within range , then I see nothing wrong with declareing a second attack with that same unit to fire the missile pods since there is no need to check for range due to the missile pods having a longer range then the plasma rifles. But then again I am more lax on the rules than most when I play as to I would rather have fun playing then be nit pickey.

Hmm, I would argue the opposite Spyder - since you have already rolled for plasma rifles, the newly declared missile pods attack would no longer be "fired simultaneously". The way for the attacks to be simultaneous would be to declare all attacks from the unit at once, and then roll the dice.

How are you going to refute what the rulebook states directly? The portions that are underlined were direct quotes from the BRB.

Edit: The elipisis constitutes missing content from the section.

I'm sorry for opening this apparently can of worms.

The Shooting Sequence does not allow for a per weapon type run through of hit-wound-save but does so per unit. First every model that can and will fire does so. Then wound allocation, then save, then next unit.

Reading "Fast Rolling..." and "Which models can fire?" I'm inclined to believe that either a model fires everything or nothing meaning that a Targeting Array or Fusion Blaster would be better.

However I find it quite annoying that more is really less. The wound distribution rules ought to be changed or this all or nothing approach should.

Kind Regards
Peter
Denmark

In that the line about making separate rolls is referring to splitting the rolling of the dice, for attacks already declared, to expedite the process. If instead rolls were able to be made, and then additional weapons then declared and rolled then the unit would no longer be firing its weapons simultaneously. This would be because the decision as to whether or not fire the extra weapons is made after determining the results of the plasma rifles. By waiting for the outcome of one result, the plasma rifles' effectiveness, you then make another decision based on that data, whether the missile pods fire. This behaviour would not be reflected in the simultaneous firing of the unit - but by declaring all of the shots at the beginning the decision is made and the process to determine results is then split for convenience.

On another note, if you declare the shots separately this could also cause problems for wound allocation if you declared the shots after saves were taken and would cause a single unit to behave as two separate units for the purposes of the wound allocation.

As an aside, I was under the impression that it was acceptable to chose not to shoot with some, or all, of the weapons available to the unit. For example the unit could choose to shoot with its plasma rifles only, missile pods only, only 1 member of the unit firing and another member holding fire, or all weapons available to the unit firing. The only restriction was that all member had to fight in close combat and could not choose to restrain themselves.

So what you are trying to tell me is that if I had a squad of fireknives within Rapid fire range, rolled my plasma rifles "to hit" rolls, then after doing so taking my missile pod "to hit" rolls, then taking all rolls that hit to resolve the wounds agains the opponents squad, you would challenge this action?

I would contest it only if you declared the plasma fire and missile fire separately. If you said that the plasma fired, and then rolled, and then declared that the missile pods were to fire I would contest that. That would be because you were allowed to see how the plasma did before committing the missile pod fire. As in Peregrine's example earlier this would allow you to tweak your unit's firing without needing to commit - say all your plasma hits then you could not declare the missile pods fire in order to limit wound allocation's effect. However if your plasma missed then you could "add in" the missile fire to salvage the unit's damage output.

On the other hand, if you declared that the plasma and missiles were going to fire before making any rolls, and then spilt the rolls into plasma rolls and missile rolls and then rolled separately, I would not have a problem as the unit would be "locked" into its behaviour regardless of plasma and missile performance.

Reguardless of how the shooting was completed , that unit of suits is locked to combat with that perticular squad and can not affect any other units on the board. there is no cheating going on if done the way i mentioned, just a clevar tweaking of playstyle and the rules.

The thing about firing plasma first "to see how it did" and then deciding whether or not to fire MPs is a bit silly anyway (just my humble opinion; don't take offence! ). The rolling of armour saves - or not, in the case of the PR's AP - only happens once the firing unit has completed its shooting anyway.

If someone were to fire the PRs and then make me take armour/invulnerable saves AND THEN say that the MPs were now going to fire from the same unit, I would say "No, sorry, that isn't how the rules work" and I would not permit them to fire the MPs at all.

There would be no reason why a Tau player couldn't decide *not* to fire one of the weapons on an XV8 (sorry about the triple negative!), as the MT is just there to permit him to fire two weapons instead of the single one normally permitted for an individual model. The "I'm not firing my such-and-such weapon" rule still can be applied. However, that declaration is done before any shooting is started, and it is a finite declaration. You cannot change your mind when you see that you've rolled six 1s for your PRs!

E.

Agreed. That's sort of the whole point behind having "rules". You don't just arbitrarily follow some and not others.

I would, however, permit them to re-roll all of the dice for the entire unit. To hit and to wound as a sort of "do over".

While the standard deviation may have changed, the odds remain the same whether the dice was rolled or not. Then again... it comes down to how the game has been progressing. If they're a laid back individual like myself, cool, not a big deal, just roll the whole unit again, but if they're a jerk... well then I guess they're SOL.

Spyder, I think you're looking at the shooting rules too closely. Pull back and check the Shooting Sequence on p. 15 of the BRB.

The issue here isn't the order in which you roll your dice. You could roll one die sequentially for every single shot from each weapon. It isn't really an issue of how you make your declarations in relation to one another. It would be an unorthodox (and technically incorrect) interpretation of the rules, but you could declare the shooting from your plasma rifles, roll your to-hits and to-wounds, and then declare the shooting from your missile pods and roll those to-hits and to-wounds. Despite being a weird way of going about things, this wouldn't change the outcomes.

The key is that you cannot resolve the shooting from one weapon in a unit and then fire another weapon from that unit and resolve it separately. This is to say that steps 5 and 6 of the Shooting Sequence on page 15 of the BRB cannot be undertaken until the to-wound rolls (step 4) of all a unit's shooting has been completed. You cannot resolve the shooting on plasma rifles (step 6), then go back to step 3 (or 1?) and start again with missile pods.

Hmm.

Did we reach any sort of concensus here:

Q: Must a XV8 Crisis Suit model equipped with Plasma Rifle, Missile Pod and Multitracker use both weapons if both are in range and LOS of the chosen target?

I'm in doubt, very much indeed.

Kind Regards
Peter

Edit: Text in Red added.

No, it does not have to fire both. A player may elect not to shoot with a model's weapon if he/she so desires. The only way an XV8 may fire more than one weapon is if it possesses a Multitracker. This piece of wargear does not oblige the model to fire more than one weapon any more than the possession of a Target Lock forces the owning model to shoot at a different target to that of the rest of his unit.

E.

Ok

Then I suggest this thread to be locked.

Thank you all for your input.

Kind Regards
Peter