<FLY> keyword and vertical distance.

[thewarriorhunter]

OK... I have never considered myself a rules lawyer but after seeing a post in another thread and searching this area I guess I need some clarification.

 

BRB section of FLY states:

 

If the datasheet for a model says it can FLY, it can move across models and terrain as if they were not there.

 

 

 

I have played (and my opponent agreed) that I was able to charge his unit in a tower. The diagonal distance to the unit was 9" from unit to unit. The lateral distance was 3" looking top down. He agreed that because the rules state they can move as if the terrain was not there that I had a 3" charge.

 

 

Assume I have jump pack infantry 3" from a HUGE wall splitting the battlefield. It's 24 inches tall but only 3 inches wide. No way to pass through, only go over. According to the rules I could freely move from one side to the other because I can act if it's not there. Wouldn't that also mean that I can move 5 inches laterally and land on top or does that mean I've now moved 27" and that's not allowed because it's greater than their movement of 12"?

 

Am I missing something?

[Gentlemanloser]

Move across, not into or up.

 

That charge should not have been 3". Or 9".

 

It would have been longer.

 

And you can't just land 24" up without paying any movement for it.

[thewarriorhunter]

So RAW I can potentially move 48" to traverse the wall in my example (technically the models must go up and then down) because I've moved 'across' it, but I can't land on it?

 

Even though FLY ignores terrain vertical distance is still measured when determining starting/ending position, correct?

[Gentlemanloser]

Yup.

 

Yup. So you want to end on top of a 24" wall. You need to move 24" up.

 

Edit. Sounds rediculous. But then so is a 24" high wall. ;)

 

Edit 2.

 

Question in a similair vein.

 

There is a three story building, 3" gaps between each floor.

 

Unit with FLY is on the ground floor. A second unit (either friendly or enemy) is on the first floor, taking up the entire floor space.

 

Can the unit with FLY move vertically up through them to reach the second floor above?

 

Is moving up through them the same as 'across' them?

[thewarriorhunter]

Yeah, I know the big wall is ridiculous but I made it that way for the exact reason of making sense one way and not the other (moving across as opposed to lading on).

 

As far as your question... good one.

 

They have a 12 inch move, and only need to move 6 to go up two floors... would they have six inches of movement to move out from under, up, and then back to the floor?

 

(If it were me I'd let you go straight up).

[Gentlemanloser]

Yeah you could move around them. But assume for some reason (board egde maybe) they can't.

 

Or the gaps between floors are larger. ;)

[thewarriorhunter]

I'd still let you do it ;)

[TheWolfLord]

It entirely depends how you interpret 'as if they were not there'.

 

If they aren't there there's no issue. You can move freely and the unit only needs to be considered when you want to end your movement.

[Gentlemanloser]

Can only ignore them for moving across them though.

 

All vertical movement seems somewhat of an after thought really.

 

Edit. Now if it was move through them...

[Claws and Effect]

That doesn't seem right.

 

If that were true, a unit stamding on top of a 14" high wall could never be charged by anything under any circumstances. Because there is no possible way to charge the 13" you would need to get within 1".

[Gentlemanloser]

That's correct.

[Stoic Raptor]

I'm almost certain that the rules for movement explicitly state that vertical distance counts as inches of movement, and nothing in Fly contradicts that.

[thewarriorhunter]

Movement rules do state vertical distance is counted. FLY states that terrain is ignored for movement purposes which is what led me to my question.

[Stoic Raptor]

Terrain is not the same thing as distance, of course. ;)

[thewarriorhunter]

So to put the nail in the coffin...

 

I was listening to the Tyranids review pt 2 on Forge the Narrative and they were going over the Dimachaeron. I was riding my bicycle home from work so I wasn't paying close attention to the whole episode but I did tune in on one part...

 

There is a specific rule for the unit that says it ignores vertical distance for determining it's movement.

 

Since that is explicit I think it's pretty clear that models with the <FLY> keyword still have to count distance for movement since they don't that that exception spelled out.

[Quixus]

Since that is explicit I think it's pretty clear that models with the <FLY> keyword still have to count distance for movement since they don't that that exception spelled out.

So how are you supposed to count the vertical distance of a terrain piece you are instructed to ignore?

[TheWolfLord]

 

Since that is explicit I think it's pretty clear that models with the <FLY> keyword still have to count distance for movement since they don't that that exception spelled out.

So how are you supposed to count the vertical distance of a terrain piece you are instructed to ignore?

If you move over the terrain piece you ignore the vertical distance and purely measure horizontal distance.

 

If you choose to land on a terrain piece you mean the actual distance travelled including vertical distance.

[Quixus]

 

 

Since that is explicit I think it's pretty clear that models with the <FLY> keyword still have to count distance for movement since they don't that that exception spelled out.

So how are you supposed to count the vertical distance of a terrain piece you are instructed to ignore?

If you move over the terrain piece you ignore the vertical distance and purely measure horizontal distance.

 

If you choose to land on a terrain piece you mean the actual distance travelled including vertical distance.

 

I thought we were talking about moving "over" the terrain piece. Moving onto is clear anyways. It only gets ridiculous because of the tunneling effect from moving "over". But yeah that is how I read it as well.

 

Al least you do not have to count horizontal distance + vertical distance. You can move any model through the air.

A model can be moved in any direction, to a distance, in inches, equal to or less than the Move characteristic on its datasheet.

[TheWolfLord]

Then I agree with you. If you move over a terrain piece entirely then you completely ignore the vertical distance for units with the Fly keyword.

 

I know GW play it in the way we've described and for what it's worth the Community team described the rule in the same way.

[Stoic Raptor]

 

So how are you supposed to count the vertical distance of a terrain piece you are instructed to ignore?

 

 

The same way you count the horizontal distance of a terrain piece you ignore.  It doesn't mean you can just move through it as if it doesn't exist, it just means you don't pay extra inches of movement to do so.  Normal movement rules still apply otherwise - and those rules clearly state that vertical distance is counted as inches of movement, just as horizontal distance is.

 

If a mudhole was 8 inches in diameter, you wouldn't cross it for zero inches of movement, you'd pay 8".  If a building is 6" tall, you wouldn't be able to jump to the top for free, you'd use 6" of movement.  If you have 16" of movement and the obstacle you want to mount is 18" tall, you'd need 2" of movement in the following turn to finish the ascent.

 

This isn't teleportation or phase shift.

 

If you're going to quote the rules, make sure you're not cherry-picking.  There's a very clear rule pertaining to vertical distance that you conveniently omitted.

[Quixus]

 

So how are you supposed to count the vertical distance of a terrain piece you are instructed to ignore?

 

The same way you count the horizontal distance of a terrain piece you ignore.  It doesn't mean you can just move through it as if it doesn't exist, it just means you don't pay extra inches of movement to do so.  Normal movement rules still apply otherwise - and those rules clearly state that vertical distance is counted as inches of movement, just as horizontal distance is.

 

If a mudhole was 8 inches in diameter, you wouldn't cross it for zero inches of movement, you'd pay 8".  If a building is 6" tall, you wouldn't be able to jump to the top for free, you'd use 6" of movement.  If you have 16" of movement and the obstacle you want to mount is 18" tall, you'd need 2" of movement in the following turn to finish the ascent.

 

This isn't teleportation or phase shift.

 

Of course the distance is counted, but it is not counted as the trajectory the model would have to take, if it did not have tunnelling abilities (diagonally up to the roof of the obstacle, along the topside of the obstacle, diagonally down to the end point).

 

If you're going to quote the rules, make sure you're not cherry-picking.  There's a very clear rule pertaining to vertical distance that you conveniently omitted.

Please quote the rule I have omitted. The word vertical comes up only two times in the whole book and neither sentence says anything contradicting my statement. Any direction means any direction, given permission to go in a specific direction (vertically) does not remove permission to go in any other direction. Additionally we are not instructed to use any special metric to calculate the distance. So as normal you would use the Euclidean, which amounts to a straight line between the starting point and the end point. We are never instructed to measure any trajectory. So whether you move a model first along the board an then up, or diagonally or even set it on another table during the movement, if starting and end point are the same the distance is the same.

[Stoic Raptor]

Fine, then - if you're not going to add the horizontal and vertical distance, you must concede that the hypotenuse is longer than either of them individually.  So it's undeniable that ascent must use more than horizontal distance.

 

And, as I said before, there is nothing in the rules for Fly that contradicts the normal movement rules.  All it says is that they can move across (not through) terrain "as if it were not there", meaning that the normal penalty to movement for crossing terrain does not apply. 

 

As to your challenge - are you seriously trying to imply that climbing does not use inches of movement?  That a soldier on the ground could get to the third or fourth (or whatever) floor of a building with no inches of movement?  Again, the rule for crossing terrain in no way changes the distance one moves - terrain is not distance, it merely adds a movement penalty normally, one that does not apply to units that can Fly. 

 

As you sais, a model can be moved in "any" direction - 3 inches forward and 3 inches up equals 6 inches, not 3. 

[Quixus]

Fine, then - if you're not going to add the horizontal and vertical distance, you must concede that the hypotenuse is longer than either of them individually.  So it's undeniable that ascent must use more than horizontal distance.

Of course and this is the case for any movement. We are comparing distance to movement characteristic, not trajectory to movement characteristic.

 

And, as I said before, there is nothing in the rules for Fly that contradicts the normal movement rules.  All it says is that they can move across (not through) terrain "as if it were not there", meaning that the normal penalty to movement for crossing terrain does not apply.

Not sure what you mean by the distinction between across and through.

If moving 6 inches across flat ground costs you 6 inches of movement, moving across a 2" flat ground, an arbitrarily high and 2" wide building and another 2 inches of flat ground, as if the terrain piece were not there, that should also cost 6". If it costs more that is a violation of the condition as it it were not there.

 

As to your challenge - are you seriously trying to imply that climbing does not use inches of movement?  That a soldier on the ground could get to the third or fourth (or whatever) floor of a building with no inches of movement?  Again, the rule for crossing terrain in no way changes the distance one moves - terrain is not distance, it merely adds a movement penalty normally, one that does not apply to units that can Fly.

I'm saying as per the rules no matter how we move the miniatures the distance is calculated as the straight line between the starting point and the endpoint.

 

As you sais, a model can be moved in "any" direction - 3 inches forward and 3 inches up equals 6 inches, not 3.

As I said any direction. There is no need to follow the ground and the wall. The distance between the starting and the end point in your example is not 6 inches but Sqrt(18)≈4,24 inches. Movement is limited by distance, not by trajectory.

[thewarriorhunter]

Wow, I woke up to a lot of exchanges! My apologies for not being clear in what I wrote. With the mention of the nid rule I was implying that vertical distance is counted when determining where a move ends. Units that fly can still move over terrain as the rule states.

[Gentlemanloser]

I'm saying as per the rules no matter how we move the miniatures the distance is calculated as the straight line between the starting point and the endpoint.

Am i missing something, as that's not correct for combined horizontal and vertical movement.

 

Each axis is measured separately. But both still straight lines. If you wish. I don't recall seeing anywhere that disallows you moving in a curve.