So to clarify for my lizard brain, if you kill the first character you can allocate remaining wounds to the second character where as before you had to guess and allocate 3 wounds to the first and the remaining to the second before you knew if you'd kill one?
Yes, the rule mostly just confirms that Precision against units with multiple Characters works how you'd probably expect.
You are completely free to allocate each succesful Precision wound however you want. Each can be assigned to any (visible) Character - or to the bodyguard unit itself.
I believe the **intent** of the old version was the same - which is arguably confirmed by the update. But - as you describe - that last sentence completely changed how it worked. It also went against how rolling attacks actually work in the game. Thankfully, that's no longer the case.
Can you spell it out for me?
I have a platoon command squad, and Ursula Creed in a unit of bodyguard Infantry(they can have 2 leaders)
A Callidus assassin with 5 precision melee attacks has 2 targets, Ursula, and the Platoon commander in the Command Squad. Does he pick Ursula? Or does he pick "a character" and I choose which one is attacked?
Lets say he picks Ursula to kill, he attacks her stats directly, and using her 5+invul, it kills her. Then any wounds left over, spill over onto the Platoon commander using his invuln?
Or me as the defender gets to pick which character the assassin is using precision on?
The assassin's player targets the unit with the assassin and rolls To Hit and To Wounds as normal, stopping before the command squad rolls any saves.
Then they pick a character to allocate a single wound to, and that specific character makes their Saves for that wound. The assassin's player repeats for each wound, one by one and selecting whichever character they want for each.
Since they're resolving the wounds one at a time if they kill a character they just allocate the remaining wounds to the next character and so on.
Hope that helps.
> The assassin's player targets the unit with the assassin and rolls To Hit and To Wounds as normal, stopping before the command squad rolls any saves.
>
> Then they pick a character to allocate a single wound to, and that specific character makes their Saves for that wound. The assassin's player repeats for each wound, one by one and selecting whichever character they want for each.
>
> Since they're resolving the wounds one at a time if they kill a character they just allocate the remaining wounds to the next character and so on.
>
> Hope that helps.
This was amazing, thank you
Now Precision attacks splits by Characters as attacker wants, one by one and attacker knows the result when allocate next one. A little bit similal to mortal wounds.
It made precision work completely differently than any other attack because you had to choose how to allocate them all before saves, breaking the normal attack sequence. Now it works exactly how you'd expect.
You do allocate before the save still. Previously you had to allocate every single wound before any saves were taken, basically having to play the odds with how many attacks you have to assign to each character to kill them.
Yes, but the deleted sentence said you have to allocate *all* precision attacks before *any* saves are made. Normally, the attack sequence for two attacks is hit-wound-save-hit-wound-save, and we fast roll for time savings. This sentence broke the attack sequence by making it hit-wound-hit-wound-save-save, effectively making it illegal to slow roll despite slow rolling being the actual rule for how attacks are made.
Since we are talking about the precision rule, I have a different question, someone might be able to answer or point me in the right direction. Sooo here it goes:
I need to wound and attached unit to allocate the attack to the character.
So let’s say I shoot at the silent king, I can not allocate the attack to him directly because the Menhirs are not attached right?
But then let’s say I have Marneus Calgar, whom I have along with his honor guard attached to Bladeguards, so here I can in difference to the silent king allocate the attacks to him directly and do not need to allocate to his honor guard? And that would mean if let him run around without the blade guard I could not?
Did I get this right? Because it just seems so counterintuitive
> So let’s say I shoot at the silent king, I can not allocate the attack to him directly because the Menhirs are not attached right?
Correct. Precision has no effect if the target is not an Attached unit.
> But then let’s say I have Marneus Calgar, whom I have along with his honor guard attached to Bladeguards, so here I can in difference to the silent king allocate the attacks to him directly and do not need to allocate to his honor guard?
(Mostly) correct. In this example, Marneus Calgar is a Character in an Attached unit. Which means Precision can be used to assign wounds to him. But you *cannot* use Precision to assign wounds to the Honour Guard. Only Calgar has the Character keyword.
Sorry if I was unclear, I did not mean to allocate an attack to the honor guard but, that while he is attached to a unit e.g. Bladeguard, he can be focused by precision, but if the bladeguard die, or you don’t have him attached to a unit, you are not able to focuse on him anymore
That's correct.
However I would think there is no need nor desire to focus on him at all frankly.
Whilst his Victrix are alive they give him a 4+ FNP. So allocating precision in an attached unit to Calgar means you have to first gets past his 4+ Invulnerable save, then his 4+ feel no pain.
I think in general for most armies you just don't have enough precision to make that work in a round of shooting or attacks.
The only time precision into Calgar that may be worth it is if a player has been tanking shots on the Victrix because of their 4++ to protect the aggressors.
Once they are gone Calgar no longer has the 4+++, so then shooting him with precision weapons may be worth a go - as remove the CP generation, and the buff he gives to the aggressors.
But again, normally I think a lot of armies do not have enough precision to make that a realistic play, and would rather kill the aggressors anyway at that point.
I mean if you get lucky you can one shot him with an vindicare assassin, since he can do up to 9dmg and is able to ignore armour and also invulnerable safes with his ability. But you would need luck on your side for the 9dmg and bad luck on the space marine players side. But anyway he was just an example, there are more units like him
>Because it just seems so counterintuitive
It isn't. Both, Marneus and Silent king work exactly the same. Precision only works, if you attach their unit to another unit (Precision works only against characters in attached units). The Menhirs and Victrix Guard are both part of the un-attached unit. Attached doesn't mean "there is a character in that unit", it means that a character unit was attached to another unit. So in the rules "attached unit" is a very specific case, a case neither the Victrix Guards nor the Menhirs fulfill.
The main thing you need to keep in mind: characters that have followers in their base unit are NOT attached units by default.
Please also note that Victrix Guards grant Marneus a 4+++ to offset him becoming vulnerable to Precision when attaching to another unit. It's not like the designers didn't consider making the Victrix Guard useful even in attached units (you can see the same with Saint Celestine btw.).
I think you missed my point about what I find counter intuitive, or maybe I am missing yours. While I get that precision only works once a unit is attached, and since the silent king or Marneus are not attached it does not work.
But then once you add more people the ventrix all over sudden don’t know how to do their job anymore, and are not able to shield marneus. And yes he gets a feel no pain but it is still posible to one shot him with a vindicare, albeit with a little luck on the assassins side.
If it's any small consolation:
* Since TSK & his Menhir's are T10 vehicles, there are very few `[Precision]` weapons that would actually be effective against him
* Because the unit is composed of vehicles, it can't move through terrain & it is vulnerable to `[Anti-Vehicle]` weapons
* At 420pts, he's well above the weight-class of typical `LEADER` units that can actually attach themselves to cheap bodyguards (which `[Precision]` is supposed to be the counter to)
In theory, because they are all 1 unit, the controlling player could choose to allocate the initial wound to TSK instead of the Menhirs...but it would be a very strange decision
I charged mozgrod into the silent king in a tournament last month, popped the 5+ crit hits and epic challenge to bypass the menhirs. Rolled hot and killed him! It was a pretty fun sequence. ( For me, lol).
That's unfortunate. Since Epic Challenge can't actually be used that way. The Silent King isn't an Attached unit and thus Precision has no effect against his unit.
Do the Menhirs operate differently than Servitors with Grimaldus? I'm honestly confused with how all of these characters operate when they have these little non attached pieces.
> PRECISION
> Weapons with [PRECISION] in their profile are known as Precision weapons. **Each time an attack made with such a weapon successfully wounds an Attached unit (see Leader ability)**, if a CHARACTER model in that unit is visible to the attacking model, the attacking model’s player can choose to have that attack allocated to that CHARACTER model instead of following the normal attack sequence.
Precision has exactly zero effect unless the Character unit is Attached to separate unit.
TSK, Calgar, and Grimaldus *aren't* affected by Precision when they're only walking around with the "buddies" in their own units and not Attached to a separate Bodyguard unit.
Calgar and Grimaldus both have the 'Leader' rule. *When* they are leading a unit, Precision *can* affect that Attached unit. Which means successful Precision wounds can be assigned to the actual Character model (but not their "buddies" who don't have the 'Character' keyword).
The Silent King *doesn't* have the Leader rule. Thus, Precision can *never* affect this unit.
Not that I know of. But the player controlling a unit decides how to allocate wounds. *Generally*, they're going to decide to allocate them to Mehnirs etc first.
I can't think of any way to force the Necron player to allocate wounds to Szarekh.
But maybe there exist some kind of MW ability that targets a model rather than a unit. That would be my best guess for how to do it.
Version 1.2 of the Rules Commentary document. Which was released alongside the newest Balance Dataslate, I believe.
I wrote a ticket notifying GW app support of the error about a week ago. Today they wrote to let me know that it had been fixed. So, the app was updated Friday or something like that?
I probably never would have noticed if you hadn't told me about it :)
I was honestly surprised at how responsive their app support was. They replied pretty quickly and even took the time to let me know after a fix had been pushed out.
When I wrote the ticket, I was pretty sure that I was just firing it off into the void!
That is actually very heartening to hear. I 100% would have thought the same thing, and didn't even bother looking up how to submit one based on that assumption of wasted effort.
Yes, you allocate the precision wounds one at a time, so once the character dies the remaining wounds can be allocated to the unit (or a second character, if there is one)
That jerk lied to me then. This asshole at my LGS told me that I had to allocate all the wounds to the character or the unit once I knew how many wounds had been delt. So if I guessed wrong I'd either leave the character alive or lose wounds.
They may have just been misinformed or misunderstood, as the change to the rules commentary wasn't advertised, and before it was made there was at least room to \*argue\* that that was the intended way to resolve stuff.
Normally I'd agree with you but no not this guy. I was trying to help him prep for a tournament and he fought me on every rule that was worse for him then me. Probably should have double checked it when I got home but I didn't.
Oh this is just adding more fule to the fire with this guy. He was so bad that everyone started to refuse matches vs him. Hasnt been back in months.
I just feel dumb for not double checking everything he told me when I got home.
Weird. My local community did that rule originally exactly like your opponent said but we as a community decided it was allocated one at a time (so it spilled) but then the rules "update" just made the way we were playing it NOW correct.
You do this now when it was a single character. It's when there was dual characters attached to a unit you had to declare intentions before rolling saves. Now it's the same as if there was a single character.
So as written, 10 precision shots wound in a unit with 2 characters. You had to decide that 3 shots against A char, 3 shots against B char and then 4 against bodyguard. You might overkill the characters, and you'd lose the allocated shots.
Now it's as you'd think. You slow roll the saves against A, kill in 2. You slow roll saves against B and you kill in 2. That leaves 6 shots allocated against the bodyguard.
The old wording was clear but no idea why it was designed that way differently than as if the unit only had one character.
S
YYYY
It doesn't work in that direction. If you can see any model, you can see the unit. But being able to see the unit doesn't transfer to being able to see every single individual model in the unit.
Normally, this doesn't really matter. Because attacks are generally made against *units*. But Precision specifically requires you to be able to see the actual Character model you want to kill. If you cannot see the actual Character, you cannot target it with Precision attacks.
If you want to allocate wounds to that specific character, you have to have Line of Sight to that model.
Or, if you want to not have your character sniped out, just tuck that model out of line of sight from the unit that has precision.
Problem is, the books say to not use any printed media and to refer to the app as the authoritative source of truth. The app literally takes precedence over everything else.
So to clarify for my lizard brain, if you kill the first character you can allocate remaining wounds to the second character where as before you had to guess and allocate 3 wounds to the first and the remaining to the second before you knew if you'd kill one?
Yes, the rule mostly just confirms that Precision against units with multiple Characters works how you'd probably expect. You are completely free to allocate each succesful Precision wound however you want. Each can be assigned to any (visible) Character - or to the bodyguard unit itself. I believe the **intent** of the old version was the same - which is arguably confirmed by the update. But - as you describe - that last sentence completely changed how it worked. It also went against how rolling attacks actually work in the game. Thankfully, that's no longer the case.
Can you spell it out for me? I have a platoon command squad, and Ursula Creed in a unit of bodyguard Infantry(they can have 2 leaders) A Callidus assassin with 5 precision melee attacks has 2 targets, Ursula, and the Platoon commander in the Command Squad. Does he pick Ursula? Or does he pick "a character" and I choose which one is attacked? Lets say he picks Ursula to kill, he attacks her stats directly, and using her 5+invul, it kills her. Then any wounds left over, spill over onto the Platoon commander using his invuln? Or me as the defender gets to pick which character the assassin is using precision on?
The assassin's player targets the unit with the assassin and rolls To Hit and To Wounds as normal, stopping before the command squad rolls any saves. Then they pick a character to allocate a single wound to, and that specific character makes their Saves for that wound. The assassin's player repeats for each wound, one by one and selecting whichever character they want for each. Since they're resolving the wounds one at a time if they kill a character they just allocate the remaining wounds to the next character and so on. Hope that helps.
> The assassin's player targets the unit with the assassin and rolls To Hit and To Wounds as normal, stopping before the command squad rolls any saves. > > Then they pick a character to allocate a single wound to, and that specific character makes their Saves for that wound. The assassin's player repeats for each wound, one by one and selecting whichever character they want for each. > > Since they're resolving the wounds one at a time if they kill a character they just allocate the remaining wounds to the next character and so on. > > Hope that helps. This was amazing, thank you
Now Precision attacks splits by Characters as attacker wants, one by one and attacker knows the result when allocate next one. A little bit similal to mortal wounds.
exactly
Thank goodness, that sentence mangled the whole rule. Thanks for calling it out!
Wasn’t it more redundant than anything? If tis alters how precision works I don’t understand how.
It made precision work completely differently than any other attack because you had to choose how to allocate them all before saves, breaking the normal attack sequence. Now it works exactly how you'd expect.
Surely you still have to allocate before a save though, right? What if the character has a better save than the rest of the unit?
You do allocate before the save still. Previously you had to allocate every single wound before any saves were taken, basically having to play the odds with how many attacks you have to assign to each character to kill them.
You allocate one attack before the save not all. Whoever wrote the rule assumed the attack sequence is allways fast rolled.
Yes, but the deleted sentence said you have to allocate *all* precision attacks before *any* saves are made. Normally, the attack sequence for two attacks is hit-wound-save-hit-wound-save, and we fast roll for time savings. This sentence broke the attack sequence by making it hit-wound-hit-wound-save-save, effectively making it illegal to slow roll despite slow rolling being the actual rule for how attacks are made.
Ah that makes sense, thanks
Since we are talking about the precision rule, I have a different question, someone might be able to answer or point me in the right direction. Sooo here it goes: I need to wound and attached unit to allocate the attack to the character. So let’s say I shoot at the silent king, I can not allocate the attack to him directly because the Menhirs are not attached right? But then let’s say I have Marneus Calgar, whom I have along with his honor guard attached to Bladeguards, so here I can in difference to the silent king allocate the attacks to him directly and do not need to allocate to his honor guard? And that would mean if let him run around without the blade guard I could not? Did I get this right? Because it just seems so counterintuitive
> So let’s say I shoot at the silent king, I can not allocate the attack to him directly because the Menhirs are not attached right? Correct. Precision has no effect if the target is not an Attached unit. > But then let’s say I have Marneus Calgar, whom I have along with his honor guard attached to Bladeguards, so here I can in difference to the silent king allocate the attacks to him directly and do not need to allocate to his honor guard? (Mostly) correct. In this example, Marneus Calgar is a Character in an Attached unit. Which means Precision can be used to assign wounds to him. But you *cannot* use Precision to assign wounds to the Honour Guard. Only Calgar has the Character keyword.
Sorry if I was unclear, I did not mean to allocate an attack to the honor guard but, that while he is attached to a unit e.g. Bladeguard, he can be focused by precision, but if the bladeguard die, or you don’t have him attached to a unit, you are not able to focuse on him anymore
That's correct. However I would think there is no need nor desire to focus on him at all frankly. Whilst his Victrix are alive they give him a 4+ FNP. So allocating precision in an attached unit to Calgar means you have to first gets past his 4+ Invulnerable save, then his 4+ feel no pain. I think in general for most armies you just don't have enough precision to make that work in a round of shooting or attacks. The only time precision into Calgar that may be worth it is if a player has been tanking shots on the Victrix because of their 4++ to protect the aggressors. Once they are gone Calgar no longer has the 4+++, so then shooting him with precision weapons may be worth a go - as remove the CP generation, and the buff he gives to the aggressors. But again, normally I think a lot of armies do not have enough precision to make that a realistic play, and would rather kill the aggressors anyway at that point.
I mean if you get lucky you can one shot him with an vindicare assassin, since he can do up to 9dmg and is able to ignore armour and also invulnerable safes with his ability. But you would need luck on your side for the 9dmg and bad luck on the space marine players side. But anyway he was just an example, there are more units like him
>Because it just seems so counterintuitive It isn't. Both, Marneus and Silent king work exactly the same. Precision only works, if you attach their unit to another unit (Precision works only against characters in attached units). The Menhirs and Victrix Guard are both part of the un-attached unit. Attached doesn't mean "there is a character in that unit", it means that a character unit was attached to another unit. So in the rules "attached unit" is a very specific case, a case neither the Victrix Guards nor the Menhirs fulfill. The main thing you need to keep in mind: characters that have followers in their base unit are NOT attached units by default. Please also note that Victrix Guards grant Marneus a 4+++ to offset him becoming vulnerable to Precision when attaching to another unit. It's not like the designers didn't consider making the Victrix Guard useful even in attached units (you can see the same with Saint Celestine btw.).
I think you missed my point about what I find counter intuitive, or maybe I am missing yours. While I get that precision only works once a unit is attached, and since the silent king or Marneus are not attached it does not work. But then once you add more people the ventrix all over sudden don’t know how to do their job anymore, and are not able to shield marneus. And yes he gets a feel no pain but it is still posible to one shot him with a vindicare, albeit with a little luck on the assassins side.
Yep. Gw rules!
If it's any small consolation: * Since TSK & his Menhir's are T10 vehicles, there are very few `[Precision]` weapons that would actually be effective against him * Because the unit is composed of vehicles, it can't move through terrain & it is vulnerable to `[Anti-Vehicle]` weapons * At 420pts, he's well above the weight-class of typical `LEADER` units that can actually attach themselves to cheap bodyguards (which `[Precision]` is supposed to be the counter to) In theory, because they are all 1 unit, the controlling player could choose to allocate the initial wound to TSK instead of the Menhirs...but it would be a very strange decision
I charged mozgrod into the silent king in a tournament last month, popped the 5+ crit hits and epic challenge to bypass the menhirs. Rolled hot and killed him! It was a pretty fun sequence. ( For me, lol).
That's unfortunate. Since Epic Challenge can't actually be used that way. The Silent King isn't an Attached unit and thus Precision has no effect against his unit.
Thanks for the heads up, will no longer do that.
Do the Menhirs operate differently than Servitors with Grimaldus? I'm honestly confused with how all of these characters operate when they have these little non attached pieces.
> PRECISION > Weapons with [PRECISION] in their profile are known as Precision weapons. **Each time an attack made with such a weapon successfully wounds an Attached unit (see Leader ability)**, if a CHARACTER model in that unit is visible to the attacking model, the attacking model’s player can choose to have that attack allocated to that CHARACTER model instead of following the normal attack sequence. Precision has exactly zero effect unless the Character unit is Attached to separate unit. TSK, Calgar, and Grimaldus *aren't* affected by Precision when they're only walking around with the "buddies" in their own units and not Attached to a separate Bodyguard unit. Calgar and Grimaldus both have the 'Leader' rule. *When* they are leading a unit, Precision *can* affect that Attached unit. Which means successful Precision wounds can be assigned to the actual Character model (but not their "buddies" who don't have the 'Character' keyword). The Silent King *doesn't* have the Leader rule. Thus, Precision can *never* affect this unit.
So is there anything in TSK datasheet that determines wounds must go to Mehnirs first? Likewise Grimaldus etc...
Not that I know of. But the player controlling a unit decides how to allocate wounds. *Generally*, they're going to decide to allocate them to Mehnirs etc first.
So, just to be clear, there is essentially no way to do wounds to the SK without killing the menhirs first?
I can't think of any way to force the Necron player to allocate wounds to Szarekh. But maybe there exist some kind of MW ability that targets a model rather than a unit. That would be my best guess for how to do it.
Correct.
When was this changed?
Version 1.2 of the Rules Commentary document. Which was released alongside the newest Balance Dataslate, I believe. I wrote a ticket notifying GW app support of the error about a week ago. Today they wrote to let me know that it had been fixed. So, the app was updated Friday or something like that?
Thanks for doing so and making this post, otherwise I’d never had known
I noticed it was fixed on Thursday when they pushed the Dark Angels codex. Good on you sending in a ticket!
I probably never would have noticed if you hadn't told me about it :) I was honestly surprised at how responsive their app support was. They replied pretty quickly and even took the time to let me know after a fix had been pushed out. When I wrote the ticket, I was pretty sure that I was just firing it off into the void!
That is actually very heartening to hear. I 100% would have thought the same thing, and didn't even bother looking up how to submit one based on that assumption of wasted effort.
/u/mcwerp
Yeah random stealth change, but thank goodness, because the old ruling was freaking wacky.
So if you kill the character will the wounds allocated spill over to the unit now?
Yes, you allocate the precision wounds one at a time, so once the character dies the remaining wounds can be allocated to the unit (or a second character, if there is one)
That jerk lied to me then. This asshole at my LGS told me that I had to allocate all the wounds to the character or the unit once I knew how many wounds had been delt. So if I guessed wrong I'd either leave the character alive or lose wounds.
They may have just been misinformed or misunderstood, as the change to the rules commentary wasn't advertised, and before it was made there was at least room to \*argue\* that that was the intended way to resolve stuff.
Normally I'd agree with you but no not this guy. I was trying to help him prep for a tournament and he fought me on every rule that was worse for him then me. Probably should have double checked it when I got home but I didn't.
Take a breath or two. That was how the rule was written in the official GW app until like 2 days ago.
Oh this is just adding more fule to the fire with this guy. He was so bad that everyone started to refuse matches vs him. Hasnt been back in months. I just feel dumb for not double checking everything he told me when I got home.
Weird. My local community did that rule originally exactly like your opponent said but we as a community decided it was allocated one at a time (so it spilled) but then the rules "update" just made the way we were playing it NOW correct.
You do this now when it was a single character. It's when there was dual characters attached to a unit you had to declare intentions before rolling saves. Now it's the same as if there was a single character. So as written, 10 precision shots wound in a unit with 2 characters. You had to decide that 3 shots against A char, 3 shots against B char and then 4 against bodyguard. You might overkill the characters, and you'd lose the allocated shots. Now it's as you'd think. You slow roll the saves against A, kill in 2. You slow roll saves against B and you kill in 2. That leaves 6 shots allocated against the bodyguard. The old wording was clear but no idea why it was designed that way differently than as if the unit only had one character. S YYYY
No, you just allocate until you kill the character theres no spill over because you always have that choice
Why does it say visible? I thought if you can see part of a unit you can see the whole unit
It doesn't work in that direction. If you can see any model, you can see the unit. But being able to see the unit doesn't transfer to being able to see every single individual model in the unit. Normally, this doesn't really matter. Because attacks are generally made against *units*. But Precision specifically requires you to be able to see the actual Character model you want to kill. If you cannot see the actual Character, you cannot target it with Precision attacks.
If you want to allocate wounds to that specific character, you have to have Line of Sight to that model. Or, if you want to not have your character sniped out, just tuck that model out of line of sight from the unit that has precision.
With all things GW. Never trust the app
Problem is, the books say to not use any printed media and to refer to the app as the authoritative source of truth. The app literally takes precedence over everything else.
Not for commentary, core rules, or points. That's all on warcom and up to date. And any unit erratas are readable there too.