Scattered Blasts...a headache of a problem

I didn't see this on the rules query page, so I figured I'd bring it up. Topic came up recently at the FLGS of whether a skimmer could jink if a blast marker scattered on top of it.

Now INB4 everyone starts screaming yes, or no. I want to throw out some book quotes. From the hard copy (since the PDF seems to be missing a few spots)
Pg 30: Once you have chosen the unit that you want to shoot with, choose a single enemy unit for them to shoot at. To do so, you must check the range and line of sight from your unit to the enemy unit you are targeting.

Thats just to show how a unit becomes a targeted unit. The shooting phase continues to use the term "Target unit" to represent the unit that is fired at

Skip head to page 158 (its got a whole page dedicated to it) Running through that page, it makes a few mentions of other things being able to be 'hit', but its description on wound allocation is sketchy.
Look at the last paragraph of the first section:
Pg 158:Once the number of hits inflicted on the unit has been worked out, roll to Wound and save as normal. Remember that any Wounds inflicted by weapons with the Blast special rule must be allocated to the closest model in the target unit even if it is out of sight of any models from the attacking unit *emphasis mine*

From here we can weed through and draw some conclusions. The most likely in my opinion, is that the other units become 'target units' when the blast moves on to them.
The second, popular argument is that the models take hits and wounds as usual, without becoming targets. This seems strange to me, as you cannot take wounds if you aren't targeted
Lastly, One might draw up that since you can only wound what you target, and a travelling blast marker doesnt target, you can only wound the original target of the attack.

Hop forward to Jink and you get this
Pg 167: When a unit with any models with the Jink special rule is selected as a target for a shooting attack, you may declare that it will Jink.

So when can you Jink? After you are targeted by something. For a blast to do damage to you, you must be a target of its attack.

I've heard some say "You have to Jink before your opponent rolls to hit" Which is completely true in the Jink Special rules. However, Blast Rules say "models do not roll to hit, instead just pick one enemy model visible to the firer and place the........."

So if you roll for Jink when the template deviates and finds its final position, you are not jinking after the roll to hit, since blasts do not roll to hit

Simply put, with the Blast rules stating that a a model must be a target of the attack to take a wound from it, models hit by deviation are either Targets, or unable to be wounded by blasts.

But from what I've read, the excuse that "I'm not targeting you" means you cant hurt me if you didnt target me and "have to jink before rolling to fire" doesnt work with blast weapons

Thoughts?

I have seen it argued intelligently both ways. Both appear supported per the rules depending which rules you care to pay attention to.

I, and my FLGS, play it as 'final location of blast dictates who is a target unit'. As this seems less wonky than the other way.

If I had to get super technical I would argue that the initial blast template placement would require Jink statements prior to scatter, and that after scatter new units now affected could also then declare Jink. I find our current way more clean though.

id love to play that the final scatter position is the target, and in my minds eye i can see a venom jinking off a nearby blast aimed at kabalites if its reflexes were fast enough, but our community plays as written, and dictated that the target is nominated, then scattered. think of kabalites with a shredder for instance. the kabalites target an infantry unit, and have no way of targeting more than one unit, say a light vehicle next to them. so why does the blast marker target a separate unit than the one the rest of the kabalites are shooting at just because it scatters?

What if you place the blast marker over two units? Both of them are targeted, right? Or is only one of them a target?
I mean, if you want to really go by "rules as written"... Going to ground states:
Page 38: "After the enemy has rolled To Hit and To Wound against any of your non-vehicle units, but before any saves are made or wounds are allocated, you can declare that the unit is Going to Ground.

As I pointed out above, by the book writing, blasts do not roll to hit. Therefor you cannot go to ground against a blasts since the enemy must "roll to hit and to wound" before you can declare going to ground.

Also, as pointed out, you can easily make an argument that you cannot wound what you didnt target per the blast special rules. In fact, you can even argue that you cannot even damage a vehicle with blasts, since it only mentions rolling to wound, and not rolling for armor penetration

Le Sigh, I think this book is too wonky to take verbatim

BUT for blasts gou have to roll to wound, filling the requirement for go to ground! as per the rules, i believe the center hole must be over a base, and that unit is the one targeted.

I understand what Thor is saying as to how they handle this, I just don't think that's in the spirit of jink. The way jink is written is as a gamble. You declare it before the to hit rolls are made. Which means the player being shot at is gambling that the shooter will actually hit them. If the shot misses, then the unit has still jinked and pays the penalty in the followig turn. Essentially they are making the conscious decision of making a following shooting phase harder "just in case" the shot works.

However if you allow jink for a scattered blast then the gamble part doesn't exist. You know it hit and frankly there are very few blasts that wouldn't also cause a pen to our stuff. So unless you have an invul, you'll absolutely want to jink.

Not supported in any way by the rules but perhaps a fair way of handling this is to allow the player whose units are being shot at to nominate any unit that wishes to jink from that shot before the shot is fired. So if you have a unit of, say, Wracks being targeted by a blast and you're thinking that your Reavers are bit too close to them for comfort, you declare that the Reavers are jinking before the blast is fired. If it scatters onto them then they get their Jink save and if not they still have to snap fire next turn anyway.

This seems like a mess in the rules, is there nowhere stated at Blast special rule that the unit under the final position has de facto become the target unit?

Than this calls for an Errata IMHO.

I'm naturally reading RAI so I would be inclined to say that you should choose to jink before the blast scatter is rolled. As this is more in the nature of the gamble you have to make with jink.

But from RAW you could state you can only jink if you are targeted. Especially as jink is our primary defence you don't want to jink unnecessarily.

But yeah, Count Adhemar has the best proposal to deal with this Blast issue. Once the template is placed, you can measure which units might be the final target and you decide which ones want to jink and then you roll for scatter.

El_Jairo wrote:

This seems like a mess in the rules, is there nowhere stated at Blast special rule that the unit under the final position has de facto become the target unit?

If they're not the target then there is no way to cause them injury.

The "gamble" already exists because you would have had to already claim the initial target as a jink/no jink prior to scatter.

clively wrote:

I understand what Thor is saying as to how they handle this, I just don't think that's in the spirit of jink.   The way jink is written is as a gamble.  You declare it before the to hit rolls are made.  Which means the player being shot at is gambling that the shooter will actually hit them.  If the shot misses, then the unit has still jinked and pays the penalty in the followig turn.  Essentially they are making the conscious decision of making a following shooting phase harder "just in case" the shot works.

However if you allow jink for a scattered blast then the gamble part doesn't exist.  You know it hit and frankly there are very few blasts that wouldn't also cause a pen to our stuff.  So unless you have an invul, you'll absolutely want to jink.  

Had this debate with a friend of mine, and the last part is really what convinced me (much to my disappointment) that it probably would be you don't get to jink (as you know you're hit).

But I agree, it is far from crystal clear in the rules

I discussed this with my group and we came to a compromise similar to Thor's. This is how we wrote it down:

"When the Blast marker is placed over a unit with the Jink special rule, it must immediately declare if it is Jinking."

This works for us as a compromise as the gamble is on the first unit deciding to Jink before the Scatter roll. The unit under the end-point of the Blast may Jink also.

A fair enough compromise between "I'm not the target so you can't hurt me neener-neener" and "eff your skimmers".

MyNameDidntFit wrote:

I discussed this with my group and we came to a compromise similar to Thor's. This is how we wrote it down:

"When the Blast marker is placed over a unit with the Jink special rule, it must immediately declare if it is Jinking."

Technically, this is RAW, you just phrased it more clearly (although you really do need the note "any models with" in there for those occasions when you've just used a haemie or archon to drop a pack of bikes somewhere, they are still joined, and the blast marker only covers the HQ).

The rule states:

Quote :

When a unit with any models with the Jink special rule is selected as a target for a shooting attack you may declare that it will Jink.

The phrasing 'selected as a target' makes no distinction between random selection and selection made by a player, and the use of 'a target' rather than 'the target' indicates that they anticipate attacks with multiple possible or actual targets. These two factors actually suggest that their intent was to explicitly include the ability to jink blasts.

So the way it plays out:
1) The shooting player declares where he intends to fire the blast, at this point a target has been selected.
2) Any unit with models under the blast marker may declare Jink, if otherwise able to do so.
3) The shooting player rolls scatter dice, and moves the blast marker accordingly.
4) Any unit under the final position of the blast marker is selected (albeit randomly) as a target and may declare Jink.

Further, Jink does not care whether your shooting attack requires To Hit dice. Jink only cares about To Hit dice if they have been rolled.

There are three conditions which must be met in order to declare Jink:
1) Has a unit been selected as a target of a shooting attack?
2) Does the unit in question have any models possessing the Jink special rule?
3) Have To Hit dice been rolled?

As long as the answers are "Yes, Yes, No," you are free to declare Jink.

If this madness interests you, I'm currently working on a post about the logic and phrasing of the Jink rule... and, if my current progress is any indication it will only be about 6 months before it is posted...

I think Name's interpretation is the best, but I'll tell you the house rule we use. We tend to apply a lot of "common sense" and it's sometimes at the expense of hard rules. You might like it anyway.

Basically, when someone declares a shot with blast weapon, we declare then and there every model who wants to jink just in case it scatters onto them.

It's as if they saw the missile fire, and thought "that might hit me" and took evasive action. You couldn't do that after the thing had hit you already! So then if the blast does hit them, the cover save applies, but the snapshots only part of Jink applies either way.

Just to underline this - it's NOT the actual rules. It's just the best house rule we've come up with on it.

thesaltedwound wrote:

Basically, when someone declares a shot with blast weapon, we declare then and there every model who wants to jink just in case it scatters onto them.

It's as if they saw the missile fire, and thought "that might hit me" and took evasive action. You couldn't do that after the thing had hit you already! So then if the blast does hit them, the cover save applies, but the snapshots only part of Jink applies either way.

Dangit, thank you Salty, I knew I forgot something. This solution was my gut response when I first went and re-read the rule. Honestly, I'd say it's a perfectly viable RAW alternative to my RAW interpretation. The moment the starting location of the blast is chosen, any unit within the potential scatter has been selected as a potential target.

Something new has occurred to me, and it has the potential to ruffle some feathers. I see nothing in the Jink rule that prevents you from Jinking your own scattered blast (though obviously you'd have to follow the same agreed-upon rule, either declaring when selected as a possible target or scattered onto). There could be a rule somewhere else that comes into play there though. Thoughts, anyone?