Shooting under skimmers

So as i get in more and more games with my deep striking duke list, im looking to squeeze the absolute most out of them and try to get the most bang for my buck.

With that being said, sometimes I dont have a good target for a unit of blasterborn or squad of warriors and I have to drop them somewhere and face off against something that I know is going to just chew me up with return fire. Example, this last weekend I was playing my friends marine list and he reserved a lot and deployed very strategically so I didnt have much to choose from when I dropped in. About the only thing was a squad of turbo-boosted bikers and a vindicator. I dropped 3 units of blasterborn to neuter the vindi and still had 2 units of warriors to place. I put 1 down nearish my objective and placed the unit of 8 warriors + duke near the boosted bikers, hoping to kill off a couple through sheer volume of fire. I kill off a couple but his return salvo was devastating, my FNP drug result mitigated it somewhat, but not armor or cover save really hurt. However, what if I had been able to place the raider so as to provide me some cover? The skimmer stands are tall enough that the regular DE models can draw line of sight under them. Its only AV10 open topped so its not the most durable thing out there, and can very well be wrecked by bolters.

Sadly, if You can see model under skimmer (fully) it don't give cover (imagine how beardy Valkyries would be then).

This reminds me Grot Problem most players have (Grots standing close to Orks give them cover, as well as Boyz giving cover for Killa Kanz). And also how crappy TLoS implementation we have in 40K.

Anyway if Your LoS is obscured from above, Your range should be limited:

B line is You, C is line from Your eyes under vehicle.

Depending on where the shots were coming from, I would feel comfortable claiming a cover save from the raider.


Here I wouldent though.

This is a pretty straightforward case of shooting through a unit. If you were talking the flyer bases, then I could totally expect no cover save. However, in this case you clearly should have such a save. Imagine the pilot lowering the craft in between rounds to offer cover to the unit behind.

The only people who don't play like this are the ones who never played against Fish of Fury. This is a critical deployment tactic from vehicles and the only reason it's not in play up above is because somebody placed their venom on a high base, then placed the camera down on the table itself and up close to the venom to get as low as possible. At head height, most models from every faction are looking into the side armor, and able to see the torsos and legs underneath.

thecactusman17 wrote:

This is a pretty straightforward case of shooting through a unit. If you were talking the flyer bases, then I could totally expect no cover save. However, in this case you clearly should have such a save. Imagine the pilot lowering the craft in between rounds to offer cover to the unit behind.

The only people who don't play like this are the ones who never played against Fish of Fury. This is a critical deployment tactic from vehicles and the only reason it's not in play up above is because somebody placed their venom on a high base, then placed the camera down on the table itself and up close to the venom to get as low as possible. At head height, most models from every faction are looking into the side armor, and able to see the torsos and legs underneath.

Those are shots I took on the spur of the moment to illustrate a point. For the venom shot, I picked a random venom out of my case and placed 3 blasterborn behind it. I placed my cellphone camera right at the height of of table to I could get a straight on shot with as little perspective manipulation as possible.

Youd claim a cover save for units shooting at the blasterborn through the venom even though they can draw clear line of sight?

Cellphone camera makes perfect sense now. The lens is down on the table, just barely above the surface. Take another model and get down to head height. It covers more than you think..

If those pictures are a representation of a models eye view then you would get no cover save. You can clearly see all the torso's, arms and legs of those trueborn. Remember it is True Line Of Sight that we are using.

kenny3760 wrote:

If those pictures are a representation of a models eye view then you would get no cover save. You can clearly see all the torso's, arms and legs of those trueborn. Remember it is True Line Of Sight that we are using.

Heads are part of the targeting matrix.
Though also remember it's about half the unit having cover - not one guy.