This "answer" to the issue of a mini making a close combat attack against a target 4 stories above his head is a joke:

In a competitive setting, the organizer should determine
for the event if units can make attacks with Close Combat
weapons at any height, or at this limited height, to avoid
confusion.

Of course, you're not selling official expansions that have multi-story buildings with well-defined floors, so this issue won't come up that often… oh wait.

It's not the tournament organizer's job to avoid confusion, it's the designer's job.

Do the job that people are paying you for.

i think they are generally trying to appease the RAW rule - generally that as all distances are measured horizontally, its technically legal, but should be agreed upon before hand that such BS claims are just that.

I dont disagree though, a simple "no, this is not the case, we missed that" would of been nice. Otherwise though im happy with how quickly the FAQ has been released and how many of our questions have been answered.

I agree, the ruling is fine. Easy to define on a case by case basis. How often would this come up? You still would need LOS between floors, correct?

very true indeed.

A tip gentlemen, dont fight in glass floored buildings

Yeah, I found that ruling surprising. It basically said, "We know this rule doesn't make any sense, but we're sticking to our guns here. So it stays as is, but you'll probably want to house-rule it every time you play."

And it's not that hard to have LOS but be on different floors, or the one person could be on top of a cliff, or all sorts of situations.

I think I might rule it that the top of the lower unit has to at least be level with some part of the enemy unit. That makes sense to me and is easy to verify.

My theory of why they're sticking to it is the, "Tip" on the Axis Gorillas unit page…

" TIP: CLIMBING THE TOWER

It's not just fun to imagine a unit of Gorillas scaling into the ruins of a building to attack the unit inside… it's highly effective! With their ability to receive orders anywhere on the board, and the Blutkreuz Ape ability, Axis Gorillas can get to any target and destroy it!"

I'm pretty sure the first time it came up in development, they all watched King Kong and Planet of the Apes, and said, "Wo, cool! We totally have to let them do that!"

WOW…some people will never be pleased!

Effectively FFG has decided to leave to us to playtest vertical rules. I have no problem with taking time to see if adding vertical rules makes game breaking changes. I'm cool with what they just put out.

I don't know anyone who is perfect at their job. IMO, the game mechanics are tight, the minis are exceptional. They fixed everything people were bitching about.

WHAT ELSE?!

Sorry if my post sounded like a complaint. I'm more amused than anything. The friends I play with wouldn't even think of trying to rules lawyer their way into making units do close combat at ridulous vertical ranges, so it doesn't matter to me.

To be honest, the FAQ is pretty short - there wasn't all that much that was required to be fixed up. I'm glad to finally have the clarifications. I just thought the response for close combat was silly and amusing.

I still think it made them laugh enough, they kept it in on purpose. I'm okay with that, as it amuses me as well. Reminds me it's a game and to not take myself so seriously. But yeah, our community has a couple of rules lawyers as well.

This IMO, actually makes their FAQ response awesome, because now I can do two things…

1. Have fun playing it RAW in friendly games with my buddies who'll giggle at th King Kong Gorillas of the Iron Cross
2. As a TO be able to nerf it to realistic 1-floor apart and tell the argumentative rules lawyers who ask why, "Because the FAQ lets me tell you so!"

felkor said:

That is what is important right there. I too am fortunate to have a group of friends who use common sense when playing.

Its fine….It lets people decide for themselves how to approach it. It would be ridiculous to not just change the vertical rules if it was just normal dudes carrying knives…..the problem is when you have a wall scaling monkey involved where one second you are on the top floor pointing your gun at the stairwell and a giant gorilla with a hellboy sized hand reaches up from the floor under you and tosses off the top floor to your death. It sounds crazy, but part of the appeal to some people are the crazy powerfist spiderman apes and messed up zombies!

I don't personally have any monkey or zombie units (not my style) but I know a few people that went completely cuckoo for cocoa puffs when they saw the freaky apes and zombie models.

I have no problem with them approaching it the way they did…. "You are playing the game…. you decide how you want to play the vertical rules". How hard is it to say "these bushes are difficult terrain, this is impassable, and you have to be on the same level in a building to fight in close combat"… wow, an extra 5 seconds of your life. I would rather that than the 40k terrain rules that say "You walk through walls, don't worry because just imagine they kicked a hole in it or they are carrying a torch to cut a hole through it" and somehow this takes the same amount of time as hopping over bushes.

If you want to say that every 3" level uses movement and you have to be on the same level, do it, if you want a simplified 40k type approach where you hold a flame template over the heads of guys on the top floor of a building when the flame thrower is on the ground three floors below, they allow for that as well.

Would I (or my friends) play it where people fight people on a different level… absolutely not. Could I see some of the 13 year old 40k crowd doing it….absolutely… its basically what they are already used to doing in that game.

How are people thinking that Apes in any way make it difficult to provide an actual rule for this problem?

Limit close combat vertical range to the same distance as the model's vertical movement allowance. Bam, done.

This is laziness, pure and simple, and indicative of the same attitude that led 40k rules to be the mess that they are.

battlemechanik said:

No, it's consistency, pure and simple, and something 40k has never possessed.

blkdymnd said:

I agree, its laziness. On everyones behalf. Its no harder to meaure from base to base on aincline than it is on a level plane. You dont measure 3 inches over and then three inches up or anything like that to get three inches. You just measure three inches in the shortest path. But it is what it is.

I am more upset by the sniper rule and the lack of clarification on the UGL super death grenades that obliterate all cover saves.

Upset is the wrong word, Im not sitting in my chair sobbing and drinking my blues away, its more of a shaking my head at FFG and the lack of a real FAQ/Eratta here. I mena, other than Landmines having stats now and a few unit/character entries (that wer epretty much already known to be mistakes) this wasnt much of a update.

But then again, its been out what? A month? So kind of early to be getting frustrated.

I can't see why some questions are even in the faq, how many people actually asked the question, "do I have to reload a weapon that's unloaded before I fire? " And where are the Axis grenades, now that's been asked lots!

I love mein kampfaffen, and mein untertoten have a charm of their own…

I hope the FAQ site will be amended on a routine basis. The close combat weapons/vertical reach is a question that will affect play. The 'funny' thing is that Op. Cerberus actually dealt with this question for Tactics already…

Warboss Krag said:

True. I think FFG are trying to stay away from the Squares and Tiles system when runs Dust Tactics for Dust Warfare so Dust Studios cant just make their own Dust Tactics material if/when the contract expires. An interesting (and possibly even good) idea, but it is costing the game IMHO (I SAID IMHO ).

Case in point, the Dust Tactics Cover rules (and even W-Serum, Sniper and LOS) are far superior to the rules in Warfare (and easily added back in thank the gods). It will be a fun year or two before the second editon or revised rules come out, but the game has a solid foundation and I look forward to a long life and improvements over time.

I still don't quite get the issues people have with cover in this game, I thought the rules made it very clear. Even area terrain is addressed on page 39, and the phrase "if the model's base is touching" so if you are in area terrain and said terrain is mounted on a base (we use old CDs that have been covered in sand with a few trees on them to represent forests) then you are in cover. There is only two types of cover in the game too so that is easy enough to figure out too:

trees and bushes = Soft Cover
stone walls and buildings = Hard Cover

However, I think the thing I like best with the cover rules is the bit about bases. If you see the center of your targets base then they are not obscured, pretty easy. A simple majority cover rule also fixes any issues with one or two models of a unit out in the open as well as mixed cover types (hard cover always wins). This isn't rocket science, this is taking five minuets to read the rules and put them into action. I'm sure Tactics had a great system but that was meant for a board game where 6 inch squares were clearly marked with terrain, you can't do that in a fully modular mini game like Dust or even 40k. Hell, in our games of 40k we argue about cove all the time, since we started playing DW our games have been way smoother.

So, getting to the point of all of this! There was never any question of the close combat rules with my group. If I rolled up a Toten squat next to a building with some enemy units a few floors above then in all likelyhood there is VERY little chance the Toten squad could see the enemy bases, or even the models themselves. Again, this isn't rocket science, this is just hunkering down and attempting to draw line of sight. As another poster had said, if the building was completely made of glass this might be an issue. REMEMBER, line of site is draw from the top of the model, not what you see standing over the top of the table. That is what true line of sight means, actual honest to god line of sight between models. No assumptions, but rather putting your face right onto the table and squinting. If you are still in doubt, grab a laser pointer, seriously it works really well.

Well written Resv! It says everything I wanted to say, but didn't have the energy to formulate it.

Major Mishap said:

They did answer it. No answer = No grenades . After almost a dozen games it is no where near as unbalanced as it seems to be when first read (i was worried about it as well before playing). Giving all grenadiers grenades would unbalance the game. Giving all type 2 infantry (to balance giving it to the grenadiers) grenades makes it way to easy for infantry to kill/ neutralize vehicles and makes them useless in the game.

I agree about the lack of a hard ruling for close combat versus vertical distance being lame. It's one thing when you're playing friendly games in your basement with your regular gaming group. It's another when you're playing at your FLGS against someone you don't know or in a tournament and you want the rules to work one way and your opponent wants them to work another.

wrkrparasite has a very good point. Some decades ago, during the mid-90s, a friend of mine had a wonderful rejoinder to a number of UK 40K gamers online who rigidly defended the 'house rules' tradition of British gaming, and decried Americans for their obsession with 'rules writ in stone:' He simply postulated that, if they were so enamored of less-than-exact rules, and so willing to spout, "it's just a game!." then the next time Nottingham went to Bremen, perhaps the Bremen team could trot out some 'house rules' of their own. That'd be okay, right? The response was predictable and immediate, since, at the time, the Nottingham football team was tops in the UK: He was quite lambasted for his heresy.

His point was made, though. When it turns from a game to competition, unclear and imprecise rules are the single best way to induce dissention.

Which validates the title of this thread.

Having said thus, I still am okay with FFGs answer, because they have ruled. Yes, their answer puts the onus on the TO to clearly indicate how it will be ruled beforehand. This game, however, is a godsend to TOs in many other areas: Scenario, Terrain, Tie-Breakers, et al. As a frequent TO in a myriad of other game systems, I'll happily take the responsibility of clarifying which way the vertical distance will be played for CC, over dealing with all the setup between games when switching scenarios.

Plus, on those über rare occasions (glass buildings) the LOS rules make it ambiguous, as many have said, no LOS, no target. If nothing else, clarifying it strongly beforehand is a very good start to let players know, you as TO are in charge.

Resv said:

My earlier reference to the cover rules of DT being better than the ones in DW was not about how to determine cover, but about how cover works. Meaning, the one auto save for soft cover and the two auto saves for hard cover. I prefer and think the DT mechnic worked better, roll a die against each hit. Blanks for Hard Cover, targets for Soft cover.

Peacekeeper_b said:

Right but that system results in allot of die rolling, and bad dice ruining a game. with this cover system you have to use put more shots into a unit than just sticking a pistol around a corner and firing blindly to take them out. Pus there is an abundance of cover denying mechanics that make it mostly a non issue. The game plays quicker and smother for it.