Yesterday a friend and I played the the following scenarios: Crossing the River of Sleep and Howling Giant Hills. A question arose about the Uthuk scenario. The Uthuk scenario card states "The maximum range of friendly archer units is increased by 1. Friendly archer units can trace line of sight through 1 hex of blocking terrain". The VP step says "Gain 1 VP if friendly units occupy more hill hexes than enemy units".

My friend immediately made it a point to move 2 archer units onto hill hexes. Now the rule book states "Ranged units in hill hexes ignore all units when tracing line of sight. However, blocking terrain still blocks line of sight for units in hill hexes". The two hill hexes the archer units were on were adjacent to one another. Now normally each hill would block line of sight for the archer unit on the adjacent hill as stated in the rule book. The scenario allows the archer units to trace line of sight through 1 hex of blocking terrain so the adjacent hill has no effect on the archer units. Here is my question, if archer units can ignore intervening units when tracing line of sight from a hill, what happens when that intervening unit is on an adjacent hill, like my friends second archer unit. Can the attacking archer unit still ignore the other archer unit and attack through them? Or because the second archer unit is now raised up on level with the attacking archer unit it would now be considered an intervening unit and blocks line of sight?

So basically... Can one archer unit on a hill attack opposing units by drawing line of sight through an adjacent friendly unit on a hill in the "Howling Giant Hills" scenario? I know this would not be a question in any other scenario because line of sight would automatically fail because of the adjacent hill. But in this scenario 1 blocking terrain hex has no effect when tracing line of sight. So how does a unit on top of that hill affect line of sight for the attacking archers?

I thought the archers line of sight would be blocked because the intervening adjacent unit is now on level with the attacking archers so they would be unable to fire over them but would have to fire through them.

Any thoughts are welcome.

There are two effects you have to consider:

- LoS is blocked by an intervening unit

- LoS is blocked by a blocking therrain

the two effects are not linked: they are independent.

The first one is ignored because you're shooting from a hill

The second one is ignored due to Scenario's special rules

Hence: archers on Hill 1 can shoot through the hex occupied by Hill + Unit 2 with no probs. Just remember you have a free pass through only one blocking terrain.

Hope this helps