Fortifications cover save

Maybe my friend and i are dense..... but when would you get the "fortifications" cover save listed in the book?

as far as we can tell, if you're on the battlements of a bastion, then you get the coversave for battlements. And when you're inside the fortification, i dont' think you get a cover save per se.

So what are we missing? (feeling very stupid right now... and maybe I'm missing the obvious, but figured I'd run it by you lot and you can point it out to me. )

You don't get cover saves while inside a building because you cannot be shot at while inside a building. You certainly don't get a cover save when said cover is collapsing around you!

You can be shot at inside buildings with template weapons but they ignore cover anyway.

The problem is that 'cover fortifications' aren't the same as 'fortifications'.

BRB p.18 wrote:

Purpose-built fortifications confer a 3+ cover save...

So every piece of terrain that was purpose-built as a fortification confers a 3+ cover save, be it a bunker, fort or battery tower.

All bought fortifications should fall into that category, of course, but battlements and Aegis defence lines don't.
And your table could include many terrain pieces that confer a 3+ cover save without being a 'fortification'.

Additionally a unit or vehicle can get a cover save from being partially behind a building so an Imperial fortress could still grant a 3+ cover save.

The problem is that these rules are not only written sloppily, but also contradict each other.

The BRB just uses the old table from 4th and 5th edition, when the term fortification had no in-game value, unlike today.
Furthermore there are terrain pieces that clearly should be purpose-built fortifications but aren't, like trenches or defence lines while other terrain pieces aren't purpose-built fortifications and have, at least in my eyes, no right to be better than a 'normal' concrete wall, like the Imperial Statuary.

Thanks Tiri Rana

That actually makes sense. So i'm not completely crazy, the rules are just poorly written in this case.

Appreciate the clarification!

so if i buy a bastion with my list and put troops on the battlements do i get a 3+ or a 4+?

did i read somewhere that if you are in a building only precision shots can hit you or am i making that up?

Battlements don't have their own cover save, at least I can't find one. They always use the cover type of the building they are part of, so battlements on a bastion are 3+, on a ruin they are 4+ and on a wooden fort, they would be 5+.

Units occupying buildings can't be directly shot at or assaulted. They can be wounded by causing glancing or penetrating hits, using template weapons or grenades or by assaulting them from another section of the same building.

Tiri Rana wrote:

Battlements don't have their own cover save, at least I can't find one. They always use the cover type of the building they are part of, so battlements on a bastion are 3+, on a ruin they are 4+ and on a wooden fort, they would be 5+.

From the FAQ:

Q.What is the armour value of battlements? (p95)
A: Battlements have no armour value as they are not a building. They serve to protect any models on the roof of the building in the same way as barricades and walls (see page 104), offering a 4+ cover save.

Ok, there's the 4+ cover I was looking for, thought I was going insane or mixing up editions again.

So if we don't count peeking out from behind a bastion or fortress of redemption there is actually no fortification that grants a 3+ cover save.
Battlements don't, gun emplacements don't, trenches don't and defence lines don't.
Unless you have special terrain pieces like bunkers or batteries you don't want to use as buildings, there are no 3+ cover saves other than the ironbark forest and the imperial statuary.

Which is funny to me as they declare on page 95 of the book that a building with battlements is a multipart building, the building and the battlements and then when explaining grenade hits on page 96 they say that a unit assaulting the building can throw one grenade onto the battlements, which you can't do if the building is not occupied but that is another discussion, and then the battlement takes one of the hits. since it has no armor value then what happens to that hit?

Red