Battle Focus and Heavy Weapons

The rule for Craftworlder's Battle Focus says:
"The unit can shoot in the Shooting phase as if it hasn't moved or Advanced (with the exception of Heavy weapons)."

Does the exception for Heavy weapons apply only to "Advanced", or does it apply to "moved or Advanced"?

If the exception for Heavy weapons applies to movement as well then the movement part of Battle Focus doesn't do anything, because all the other weapon types are unaffected by movement anyway. That leads me to think it should work as follows:
1) Heavy weapons - can move and fire without a hit modifier, but can't advance
2) Other weapons - can advance and fire without a hit modifier

However, it isn't clear, so I would appreciate hearing other's views.

My reading is that any weapon that is not heavy is treated as if it has not moved or advanced, ie the rule does not effect heavy weapons in any way.

But then he is right, the movement part is useless : heavy weapons are the only weapons that can beneficiate from "not counting as having moved".

If they wanted it the other way around, they should have written it like this:
"The unit can shoot in the Shooting phase as if it hasn't moved or (with the exception of Heavy weapons), Advanced."

I am not so sure it is that clear cut. I agree they could have put it better if their intent was to allow heavy weapons to shoot and move, but if not why put the moving in there at all?
All the other weapons can move en shoot already.
Not saying you are wrong, but if they did not intent that havey weapons could move they would have said:
"The unit can shoot in the Shooting phase as if it hasn't advanced (with the exception of Heavy weapons)"

It would hardly be the first time GW has written a rule poorly.

This is an interesting one to my mind.

Whichever way the rule is intended to work it could have been phrased better. The fact that part of the rule would be meaningless if heavy weapons are excluded is circumstantial evidence only in support of the way I read the rule.

There have been rules written previously (and will be again) that don't have any impact on the game, perhaps because they are intended as a fail-safe, or just down to sloppy rules writing. Maybe there was consideration of giving some other weapon types a bonus if they stay stationary, and that was the reason for mentioning movement.

It doesn't affect many units (War Walkers, Vaul's Wrath Batteries, Rangers, Windriders with Scatter Lasers and Autarch with Reaper Launcher are the potential beneficiaries).

I suspect I will have to check with local tournament organisers on their view of that rule. My instinct is they will go with Count Adhemar's interpretation.

|Meavar wrote:

I am not so sure it is that clear cut. I agree they could have put it better if their intent was to allow heavy weapons to shoot and move, but if not why put the moving in there at all?
All the other weapons can move en shoot already.
Not saying you are wrong, but if they did not intent that havey weapons could move they would have said:
"The unit can shoot in the Shooting phase as if it hasn't advanced (with the exception of Heavy weapons)"

Yeah I'm pretty sure they just flubbed up the wording on this one and actually wanted it to work like it is implied. But as it is written now, grammatically I would say the counts interpretation is correct. On the bright side, if someone nags about it enough on FB, we might expect GW to actually clarify it.