Hi! I´ve been playing with allies nearly ine year now, and everyday this game just gets better But we have some questions at our local wargames club, and I came here in search for answers

* Close Combat.

Just exactly how is CC resolved? We just cant figure it out. As we understandt it, one unit charges another. After the attacking unit moved, but before it attacks, the attacked unit could react only by fighting with C-class weapons. Does this means that the attacked unit fights first, and after damage has been applied to attacking unit, then the attacking unit fights? If it were so, some charges could be a complete loss for the attacker, being beaten BEFORE they could lay a finger on the enemy is that so? Please, explain!

* 4.2" Rocket System

Its the main weapon of the Steel Rain medium walker. Thing is, it confuses me because it states this weapon is an A-class weapon (artillery weapon). Theoretically, it can fire all the time. But in the weapons description (page 83) it says "Unfortunately, the rockets are strictly one-shot weapons - at oven seven feet long they are too cumbersome to reload under combat conditions". So, was that just fluff or it actually affects gameplay somehow? To further confuse things, below that, in the same page under the title "TIP: Don´t forget the radio" it states that "the 4.2 rocket is a Reload weapon (although the steel rain carries 4 of them). Once it discharges its payload, the vehicle isnt as prominent a target". So, how many shoots do I have? Just four? Or, since it is a Reaload weapon it follows the Reload rules and is therefore unlimited, no matter what the fluff says?

* Damage Resilient and Phaser Weapons

As it states, Phaser weapons negate Armor saves. But what about Damage Resilient? Since it adds one dice to the Armor Save, we think that preventing that Armor Save it also prevents the Damage Resilient. Is that so?

Those are our doubts right now. We´ll appreciate if someone could bring some light Regards, all SSDT staff ( javascript:void(0);/*1339425163486*/

As far as close combat question is concerned, if the defending unit is reacting to the movement (i.e., reacting before the attack), then they can react with any weapons they'd like (long range or CC weapons, but not both.) In this case the reaction happens before the attacking unit attacks. If they reacting to the actual attack, then they can only react with CC weapons nad the reaction is simulteansously - both units attack at the same time.

The rocket rules got changed part way through - ignore the fluff and just follow the actual stats for the Steel Rain.

And the concensus on the forums seems to be that phasers negate damage resilience as well, and that's how I've been playing.

Close combat: If you react after the move and before the attack, you do not have to use C weapons, you can use any you want, which will likely be more impressive than your C weapons or else his CC oriented unit wouldn't have picked on them. Alternatively, since you are reacting to a move, you can react with a move. Now, if, they didn't move and were already within 3" of you and simply declared an attack or sustained attack and you reacted, you can only react by attacking, in which case you are reacting to an attack made by CC weapons and therefore can only use CC weapons yourself. In this case, the attacks are simultaneous. Just resolve one sides attacks and keep any casualties to the side for the time being and then attack with the other side included those set aside as casualties, and then remove all the casualties and you are done.

4.2 Rockets: That's just fluff. All you need to know is that it is artillery with the reload rule. The reason why it "isn't a threat after it discharges its payload" is because it has to use an action to reload so next turn it cannot fire indirectly with unlimited range, from behind a building, out of sight of the enemy, for example. The first shot is great because you can hide it and fire at anything that a radioman can see. Then because it needs a reload, it only has one action so no indirect fire and if it was hidden will not be able to fire at something it can't see, requiring it to move to get line of sight to the enemy. But since it only has one action, then it can't shoot anyway. So simply hiding it in the back behind a building is only a threat for one turn. If you want it to fire every turn, you need to expose it to the enemy.

Phasers: Yes sir. While damage resilient can let soldier 3 unit roll 4 dice during armour saves, Phasers negate them all which means no armour saves at all. Damage resilient is still great against everything else though, and red devils have a very short range which should allow you to put some 16" weapons on them with a reaction before they can shoot you.

EDIT: Ninja'd by Felkor while I was writing my post

Strombole said:

Haha - that's why I have so many spelling mistakes - was typing furiously to be the first one in!

Good responses from all, additional quick CC reminders. You are never "Locked" in Close Combat. what I mean is say you get assaulted and your unit lives through the CC, on their turn they can choose to just shoot they dont have to use CC weapons or move away. Also the CC range is 3" and enemy models must stay 1" away from your models.

Good responses, indeed. But Ill have to disagree about the close combat. As Felkor and Strombole states, I can react to close combat shooting. In that case, enemy charges me, I Shoot, if enemy survives, he punches me in the face

BUT!

Page 57 of the manual states, at the downest-rightest corner:

" Any attack reaction to a Close Combat Attack action may ONLY include Close Combat Weapons." Does that mean that i can´t shoot as a reaction to an enemy charge? If that´s so, and seeing that it also states that "The target unit cannot react with a Move reaction", I assume I could only react attacking with my Close Combat weapons, not by moving nor shooting. Is that so, or I´m missing something?

Other stuff was s I thought, Damage Resilient is negated by negating Armor Saves and the Steel Rain is not a limited artillery as inicially seemed. But the close combat still is confusing, help really apreciated thanks!

If someone moves towards you and you react to the MOVEMENT, you can use regular or CC weapons. You are only restricted to using CC weapons when reacting to a CC attack. Some units, like the Hammers, have Jump, and you can't react to their movement, so you'll get stuck trying to react to their CC attack.

OK Felkor I get it (I think ) So when enemy makes a MOVE and then an ATTACK actions, AFTER the move but BEFORE the enemy attack, I can declare an ATTACK reaction and shoot em dead Cool!

If enemy ATTACKS with CC weapons I can only react by attacking with CC weapons.

In either case, are attacks simultaneous? I mean, CC attacks… we fight together, like in tactics, or I punch first (since I reacted to CC) and then punches the enemy?

It´s clear that in shooting, enemy moves, I shoot, then enemy punches.

Right - and we actually forgot to play it that way in our first game. There's no real "charge", per se - it's just a movement using 1 of 2 actions in the turn. Action 2 is to attack.

This means the defending unit:

- does nothing if it has a reaction token already

- can shoot if it reacts to the move

- if it has great CC weapons, can wait, and then react with simultaneous CC attacks

The shoot one is interesting because it means you will often get shot up if you try to close in on a unit to perform CC attacks.

Also, rocket troops have the benefit of closing the distance to an enemy unit without fear of this reaction (so in fact we played it right now that I think about it, because it was the Allied "Hammers" unit doing the attacking)

jkrax said:

Your if you react to the movement with an attack action your attacks happens before the enemy makes their CC attack therefore any models lost due to damage are not able to attack in the CC attack.

If you react to the CC attack then your attacks happen simultaneous and all models in both armies are able to attack.

OK thanks guys, I think I almos got it, but my final doubt is: where in the book it says CC is simultaneous?

CC in and of itself is not simultaneous. An attack Reaction to an Attack Action, CC or Shooting, is simultaneous.

You sure? I dont think so. Simultaneous means both units make something at the same time, but that is never the case un Warfare. I mean, your unit makes someting, then I react to that action, and AFTER y finished my reaction then you can continue doing what you were doing. That´s not simultanous to me.

In Dust Tactics it was clear: Close Combat WAS simultaneous, so a unit charged other, punched, and viceversa; dead miniatures also punched since it happened at the same time. But here in Warfare the book doesn´t explain that. That, or I didn´t read where it said its simultaneous And if thats the case, Id like some correction, thanks!

If attacking as a reaction to an attack, the 2 attacks are simultaneous (regardless of if they are CC or not.) That's how I've understood it and have played it.

Yes! I'm sure!

Page 34 Reaction Rules (pay special attention to the last bullet I'm quoting below in bold for emphasis)…

"Units reacting to an Attack action are subject to the following restrictions:

• The reacting unit must declare its reaction before the activating unit rolls Combat Dice to resolve the attack.

• Attack reactions may only target the activating unit; the reacting unit cannot divide its attacks among multiple units.

• Attack reactions are resolved at the same time as the triggering Attack action. "

Shadow4ce said:

Yup! You got it right! Thanks a lot to everybody! Now everything is clear ;-) Thanks a lot guys, this will certainly improve the game experience at our club. Thanks A LOT to all, and long live Dust Warfare!

about CC

I got a fine question, pure theoretical, let's put this situation:

Unit A and Unit B are like this:

A1 <- 3" -> B1 <- 6" -> LB <- 6" -> B2

A1 means miniature 1 of unit A

B1, B2 are miniatures 1 and 2 of unit B

LB is lider of unit B

Unit A attacks in CC to Unit B, miniature B2 and LB are in LOS of A1, no blocked, therefore are valid targets for the step 5, assign damage on page 44 after resolution of the attack, even if they are clearly outside of range of A1 from a "realistic" point of view as per the rules on page 40, if at least one miniature of the target unit (here B1) is in range.

Therefore and only rules-layer-wise if A1 hits and causes 1 damage, the player B could remove B2. Or there is something I am missing here?

This, obviously would apply also to firearms if the situation would be:

A1 <- [range of firearm]" -> B1 <- 6" -> LB <- 6" -> B2

Yeah, with range, if you do things right, you can make reaction attacks not very powerful.

Put all your units so they're within CC range of just one enemy miniature in the squad. Now you can attack with all your troops, but if your opponent reacts, they can only attack with the one miniature within range. It ends up feeling pretty unfair, but it's pretty effective. I've had this happen once or twice, not on purpose, but as the one person in the game went to do their reaction attack, we realized they couldn't attack with everyone even though everyone could get hit.

Nasty rule :)

It also punishes folks who hide heroes out of LOS of attacks, as my regular opponent and I both realized after assigning hits to Rhino & Angela in which only one member of their respective units were in valid LOS & range of the units which attacked them. It dawned on me shortly after I applied the damage to Angela. Fortunately, we were still in the same turn of this, and corrected it by removing the hit tokens from our leaders and 86ing the poor unlucky mooks who were exposed to fire.

Live used this rule to take out just a hero before by getting my Gorilla squad only within 3" of my opponents hero, and not the rest of the squad.

Shadow4ce said:

If you're only in range of one miniature but still in LOS of the rest of the miniatures, then the attack goes against all those in LOS, even if they are out of range, and your opponent can take out whichever one he wants (unless some are obscured and some are not.)

felkor said:

I took the last step in assigning damage ("Miniatures that are blocked to every miniature in the attacking unit cannot be assigned any damage.") to mean if I'm out of range, they are blocked, especially where CC is concerned.

Otherwise, an entire unit could be wiped out with good rolls, even though only one target is in weapon range. That seems to mock the other half of legal targeting, LOS.

Youve got me wondering now though. I'm probably wrong, but it sure seems counter-intuitive to the rest of the attack rules. I'll have to research it when I have more time. I'm pretty tired right now, and probably not making much sense.

Page 40, attack restrictions:

in order to attack, individual miniatures must have the target unit (emphasis added):

• within range
• within firing arc
• within LOS

Therefore, you can kill all the unit members IF you can see them even if only one is in range of ANY of your weapons. As far as I can see DW does not make any distinction between "fireamrs" and CC apart from the special conditions on page 57 which basically restrict the options of the attack by:

• attacking unit can only use CC
• no split of attacks between different target units
• no cover
• target unit cannot react with movement (to the attack in CC as already clarified and discussed in other thread)
• any reaction attack can only involve CC weapons of the target unit

So, if you have your hero in range and the rest of the squad out of range but in LOS, you can assign damage to the squad, however any member of the squad outside of LOS will not be affected by the attack with independence of being or not in range.

Range and blocked are two different conditions and two different things.

Or at least this is how I interpret this part of the rules.

I was having a lot of problems with this range thing, and I read the page like 10 times, so any idea or comment is more than welcomed.

Yeah, I rereading the entire section last night after signing. Tired as I was, it was bugging me, so sleep was hard to achieve. Having rereading the entire section, it appears, "Blocked" is a game term in DW which only refers to LOS. Therefore I'm sure you are right. From a logic standpoint, shooting situations don't bother me at all, as projectiles continue past the range soldiers are trained to fire within. As far as CC goes, I'll just have to imagine it being guys rushing forward, punching the entire squad, then jumping back to their start positions to regroup as a unit after the pure chaos of mêlée.

I know the syndrome, after the second game of dust I was also rethinking the CC hypothesis and the indirect fire thing I just wake up and started writing here

And, yes, I agree, blocked is a status of a miniature which depends only of LOS of the attacking miniatures. Once you determined who is blocked and who is not, then you know which guy can fire and which guys can be shoot at and you can start looking for obscured or clear LOS from the leader for cover saves.

Re-reading and re-thinking the rules with some friends who played AT-43 in the past with me helped a lot in my case as the idea is similar between the two games, different implementation and different wording but similar concepts.