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Gaining the benefit of cover ruling and our Tide of shadows


Silver-Fox

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Hello fellow brothers,

 

I saw this in the Grey Knight Facebook group and in the flying monkey GT it was played this way too.

 

How was it played?

So if we are in the open and are in the Tide of Shadows, we benefit from light cover. So with the new ruling we are getting +1 to our save. There is no discussion.

Bevore the argument was that the kind of cover was not specified for "a benefit of cover", now we are now in a imagenery terain feature, wich does the same.

 

Now with the new ruling in the "Rare rules: benefits of cover when not in terain"(out of the app.),

In it, it says that when not specified you are counting for ALL rules purposes as being in/on a terain feature with the light cover trait.

So now we are officialy in terain while we are in the shadow tide and so the second part kicks in with the -1 to hit of our tide rule.

Am I right?

 

I did save and upload the pictures for you:

Tide of Shadows:

https://ibb.co/yR0JT4k

Rare Rule clarification:
https://ibb.co/9rMgnwR

 

I was in the camp of not getting the -1 to hit, but this ruling did change my mind. The problem I have is that it seems only to be on the app and not in an PDF FAQ. And that's another problem of the new edition and the APP.

 

What do you think?

And how do you play it?

I think we need every boost we can get.

Edited by Silver-Fox
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For starters, it's in the main rule book, so that's why it's not the FAQ

 

If you are in the open, you do not get the -1 to hit. If it did, Tide of Shadows would just say you get the benefits of cover and a -1 to hit. 

Ah thank you, brother. I only have the german main rulebook and so the part is already translated and worthless for a rules debate.

 

Why don't I get the -1 in the open? The tide in combination of the ruling says exactly that we are in a terain feature and so the -1 works.

Can you go in a bit more detail with your argumentation?

I would like to know how RaW handles this. Nowdays you don't know what GW thinks.... (RaI)

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Reading as raw, based on that rare rules bit. You absolutely get both +1 save and -1 hit at alllll times... But I don't think that this is intended.

 

It makes terrain itself almost pointless for grey knights,except for line of sight blocking pieces. And given at how much effort GW has put into terrain recently, definitely don't want us having almost no reason to ever use it.

Edited by Captain Coolpants
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Let's start at the beginning.  Why does the 'Rare Rule' even exist?  Well, here is why: back in 8th edition some units might have an ability that would "give them the benefits of cover" under certain conditions.  That was sufficient back in 8th edition, when there was only ever one meaning for getting "the benefits of cover;" that always meant the same thing - you'd get to add +1 to your Saving Throws for your normal Armour Saves.

 

Sometimes those abilities would specify exactly what would happen (i.e., you add +1 to your Saving Throws,) but sometimes they wouldn't specify, since the result of what it meant to gain the benefits of cover were in the Core Rules and could only ever mean one thing.

 

With 9th edition, however, we now have multiple possible effects for gaining "the benefit of cover," since we now have 3 distinct types of cover: Light, Heavy, and Dense.  

 

The entire purpose of the Rare Rule is simply to tell folks which of the 3 possible "benefits of cover" to apply when they have an old ability that says they have cover even when they aren't on a terrain feature (the "normal" way to get cover).  

 

And which of the 3 effects did they go with?  Well, as one would expect, they went with 'Light Cover' which is the one that was the closest match to what we would have gotten from any/all cover back in 8th edition.  It's the one that gives you the +1 to your Saving throw rolls made against ranged attacks.  Honestly, it would have been really weird if they had told us to treat those units as gaining 'Dense' or 'Heavy' cover effects instead of 'Light', right?  

 

So, the Rare Rule really ought to be a simple thing for us.  Unless the rule specifies what the benefits of cover are (in other words, unless the ability tells you to do something differently), just treat that model/unit as being on or within a terrain feature with the Light Cover terrain trait.  And what does that mean?  "This means that when an attack made with a ranged weapon wounds a model under the effect of this rule, add 1 to the saving throw made against that attack...."

 

I think that it is abundantly clear from all of this what the designers expect to happen here.  And I'm not just talking about Grey Knights under the Tide of Shadows, but for all units that have abilities that grant them cover, even when they aren't in a terrain feature that would grant them cover.  

 

 

So, now we ought to take a look at our ability, the Tide of Shadows, and see what that says about things, and see if we need to do anything differently.  "

 

Whilst this Tide is dominant, a unit with this ability receives the benefit of cover to its saving throw even while it is not entirely on or within a terrain feature."  Hey, we know what to do with this.  From the Rare Rule, discussed above, we know exactly what to do.  Give that +1 to the saving throw versus ranged attacks, just as if it were really in a Light Cover terrain feature.  No issues here, and it doesn't conflict with what our ability already said, "receives the benefit of cover to its saving throw..."

 

Now we go to the second feature of our Tide of Shadows ability, which goes on to state, "When resolving an attack made with a ranged weapon against a unit with this ability while it is entirely on or within a terrain feature, subtract 1 from the hit roll."   So, this part of the rule is telling us that we gain a benefit from this Tide even when our models/units really are on/within a Terrain Feature, when the free Light Cover benefit would be redundant (as we'd already be getting that anyway from the terrain).  

 

So, this all leads to the questions, are we really meant to take the benefits of BOTH features of our Tides of Shadow ALL of the time?  I wouldn't, and won't play it that way.  It clearly isn't how it is meant to work, even if you can certainly argue the RAW of it right now, which is simply the result of a lot of different units having abilities like this in 8e, and the rules folks not thinking through how it might result for the Grey Knights specifically.

Either way, I expect they'll catch wind and fix it with an Errata or a FAQ soon enough.

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Reading as raw, based on that rare rules bit. You absolutely get both +1 save and -1 hit at alllll times... But I don't think that this is intended.

 

It makes terrain itself almost pointless for grey knights,except for line of sight blocking pieces. And given at how much effort GW has put into terrain recently, definitely don't want us having almost no reason to ever use it.

This is 100% correct that we get both benefits. I’m not sure about saying it isn’t intended and I’m also not sure it will be FAQ’d as it’s not exactly a loophole, they have written the “Rare Rule” section specifically stating that’s how it works. Edited by Holier Than Thou
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It will probably be FAQ'ed, however my interpretation is that we get both of those benefits - I've been playing like that so far in 9th, and the people I play with (who, might I point out a competitive lot), agreed with it. 

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