p. 44 states: Miniatures that are not obscured must be assigned damage before miniatures that are obscured.

Imagine the following situation: you deal several points of damage to a unit. That unit includes a hero. The hero is not obscured, while the rest of the unit is in cover, but visible.
How do you divide the damage?
a) The hero gets all the damage until he is dead or there is no more damage left. Surplus damage is be divided among the rest of the unit.
b) The hero gets the first point of damage, the rest may be divided as seen fit.

(A) is correct.

felkor said:

There's question about that… the text says "Miniatures that are not obscured must be assigned damage before miniatures that are obscured."

If I put one wound on the unobscured Hero haven't I then met the conditions required to now assign damage to other miniatures? It doesn't say ALL damage or even as much damage as possible must be assigned to unobscured models…just that they have to be assigned damage before obscured.

Yeah, I would agree wih b) as well as written

I believe it would come down to whether damage is assessed as a lump sum to the unit, (in which case it satisfies the damage must be applied to the hero in the open first upon assigning one point of damage), or if it's assigned each individual wound one at a time, (which, as Felkor said, would kill the hero before moving onto the rest of the squad).

I lean toward the literal meaning being satisfied by putting at least one wound on the hero first, then moving on, but I could easily see the intent might be otherwise. I've never had it come up, oddly enough (bizarre considering the number of games I've played - probably has and we didn't think about it). I'll probably play it that after assigning one or more wounds to the hero, you can move on to the next unobscured, then obscured (but not blocked) until an FAQ or Errata states otherwise.

After all, they are heroes, and surviving idiocy (hanging out in the open in a firefight is idiotic) has gotten many a folk medals.

I'd go with b.

Interesting - I would take it that you must assign damage to unobstructed units until you can't anymore, and then you can assign it to obstructed units.

So you would take the rule, "Miniatures that are not obscured must be assigned damage before miniatures that are obscured." as one that gets applied for each point of damage you assign. I believe you assign damage one at a time, and each time you assign it, you'd apply that rule.

But I now see the ambiguity of it (which I never saw before) - sounds like a good question for the FAQ.

B) the rule does not say to assign as much damage as possible to non obscured models first, just assign damage.

I've been playing it as rule A… while you have damage to assign it has to go to models that are not obscured… just because the hero has multiple wounds… he is still not obscured so it goes to him first, whatever is left when the model is removed would go to the next..

mariettabrit said:

Which is my (and most others - if they're honest with themselves), interpretation of the, "intent" of the rule (as well as the most realistic - targets in the open are likely to catch more than one bullet on the two-way range ). However, Rules as Written (without further clarification), allow enough wiggle room for option B to be successfully argued by rules lawyers. I for one, don't consider this one to be a hill worth dying for, as I'm not in the habit of leaving my heroes in the open. And I'm okay with playing it RaW until it gets Errata (which it should to ensure its intent is matched and unambiguous.

The rule was clearly written assuming all one wound models (an A interpretation). Heroes however, seem to create the ambiguity because they are muli-wound models - hence why I, and most others it seems, play it with a B interpretation.

We've always played with B as well. It never really occured to us to do it any other way.

Here's another vote for A), but I'm just guessing the intention of the rule.

I can see how you could make a strong case for B), but that never occured to me before.

If you read wounding heroes on page 59 it says its up to the owning player to assign as much damage as he likes, still nowhere does it say that ALL damage must be assigned to non-obscured models, just so long as damage is applied to these models first then all assigning damage rules have been adhered to - definately B.

So when is the next FAQ?

Warboss Krag said:

If you assigned any damage to a squad member while there is still a member(hero) in the open.. then you haven't fulfilled what the text says… cheesy if you imply otherwise

felkor said:

This and… I really can't think of a whole lot. Like what else?