Tricky 2+ Cover Save for Raiders

Yesterday I saw a game of Mech-dar vs Mech-IG in a local game shop. The Eldar player used this trick with his vehicles during the entire game, and after the game, the guy said DE would also take advantage of the trick.

According to our BRB,

BRB p.77 wrote:

It may be rarely happen that the firing unit cannot see any part of the facing they are in (front, side or rear), but they can still see another facing of the target vehicle. In this case, they may take the shot against the facing they can see, but to represent such an extremely angled shot, the vehicle receives a cover save one point better than that given by the cover obscuring the vehicle's other facing

BRB, the same page wrote:

Picture 3: The entirety of the front of the Space Marine Rhino is hidden by the ruins. However, part of the side of the Rhino is still visible. The Rhino is obscured, and gains +1 to its cover save.

This is just a +1 bonus to cover save (namely Obscuring Bonus), thus can be stacked with Night Shields IMO (The Eldar player also stacked the bonus with Holo-Field). If so, our Night-Shield Raiders can get 2+ cover save behind a ruin, without Jinking! It's not so hard to screen the narrow front of our vehicle. Not sure of this trick for gunboat, but it would be significantly helpful for my grot bombers to resist most of the first-turn fires.

Is this trick possible? I need your examination.

Yes it's possible, the difficult part of it though is that because our raiders are long and thin, the front facing is very small (remember facing is taken diagonally from the corners of the model, not 45 degrees from the corner).

But isn't that even beneficiary for us? Park the Raider sideways behind LOS blocking terrain, so that only the front area (as defined by the diagonal lines over the Raider) pokes out. Swivel the front weapon to the side and enjoy your 3+ cover save! As only the front is visible, but the enemy should be facing your side, it should be no problem.

I get 2+ saves from this on occasion, but more than that I get the 2+ from mysterious objectives. We can take much better advantage of the objectives with our mobility than most armies. There are always juicy benefits to take advantage of whether it be the cover save, skyfire, or rerolling 1's to hit.

Check out this article I wrote a while ago on how to obtain cover saves:
http://lkhero.blogspot.com/2012/07/de-getting-best-out-of-cover.html

It's an older article (before the Jink change), but a lot of the same principles still apply!

I appreciate all of your opinions guys. TY!

The tricky part is being able to shoot at something while keeping them on your side arc.

What is even sneakier, is doing it with a ravager.

If you look at the BRB on page 75 the picture clearly shows the side mounted sponsons are in the side. NOT the front.

So park your nose up to the ruin out of LOS, and keep one side sponson visible, and fire away with that one dark lance/dissie.

I already tried this several times.
TBH this is not a viable option for us, unless you really need to protect the vehicule at all costs (better hide it totally behind terrain).
In my playgroup we assume that front weapons of raider/ravager/venom have a 45° fire angle (-22,5 | +22,5) , based on how the gunner can move on the model.

Raider: front sponson weapon, 45° angle --> you cannot shoot and hide in the same direction
Venom: front sponson weapons, 45° angle --> you cannot shoot and hide in the same direction
Ravager: 1 front weapon, 45° angle + 2 side weapons, 180° angle --> if you hide the front, you will only be able to fire 1 side weapon

The difference with a wave sepent: they have a 360° turrel weapon, on top of the vehicule.
Here again, they are better than us ...

LSK wrote:

In my playgroup we assume that front weapons of raider/ravager/venom have a 45° fire angle (-22,5 | +22,5) , based on how the gunner can move on the model.

Raider: front sponson weapon, 45° angle --> you cannot shoot and hide in the same direction
Venom: front sponson weapons, 45° angle --> you cannot shoot and hide in the same direction
Ravager: 1 front weapon, 45° angle + 2 side weapons, 180° angle --> if you hide the front, you will only be able to fire 1 side weapon

I think that the weapon at the front of the Raider/Ravager should have a 180° angle, no?

In any case, I'm also curious as to whether it's "standard" to measure the diagonal facing lines from the widest part at the front to the widest part at the back (which is how I do it) or not. This way allows the entire front weapon to be in the front area of the vehicle, potentially allowing for more shenanigans.

old topic about that on dakka : http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/331366.page

My front weapon on ravager/raider are mounted on magnet so they can pivot easily. I cannot move the gunner more tha 45°... so I assume max fire angle is 45° .

My group play it as 180°, though the weapon itself can pivot ~120°, being limiting by the railings. I don't think measuring it based on the gunner is sensible as the static pose is arbitrarily limiting ("realistically", the gunner would lean and reposition their arms and legs); it should be at least 90°. I'd say this also applies to the Venom.

The Ravager side sponson weapons can technically fire 360°, though the hull reduces this to 200-220°.

valmir wrote:

In any case, I'm also curious as to whether it's "standard" to measure the diagonal facing lines from the widest part at the front to the widest part at the back (which is how I do it) or not.

This is how I do it, mostly because it's simple and easy to visualise.

I am aware of and using this tactics whenever a wall or equal allows for it.
It is situational but can make the difference. I don't really see it being effective with a ravager but it might fool your opponent.
You hide your front to only shoot a sponson. The opponent finds himself in a catch 22. You don't need to jink to gain 2+ cover. If he ignores the Ravager, all 3 guns get to shoot if he does. He needs to pen it to disable it. Mearly forcing it to jink doesn't cut it.
Cool, the worse the ravager gets, that more creative you need to be to make it work.