The Battle Barn

Well to give you some background to what this is all about.... I have Skaven and I will likely be fighting Lizardmen in a Fantasy campaign as there are 3 out of 20 players and the only guy close to being able to take me on is one with 2 Stegadons with Skink Priest and an Engine of the Gods on board... along with 5 Skink crew.

Now normally shooting is randomized between the crew and Stegadon... 1-4 Stegadon, 5 crew, and 6 Priest. In hand to hand you get to pick which one you want to attack.

Now there are rules for template weapons and such against monstrous creatures with riders... If the template covers the base then all the riders and crew are automatically hit. If the template only partially covers the base then you roll for each rider and mount on a 4+ to see if they are hit.

I have a special unit called Plague Censer Bearers... Not only do they have lots of attacks and do massive damage in hand to hand, but they also have a poisoned cloud effect that causes any model touching mine to make a toughness test or take a wound with no armor saves. Models only make one test regardless of how many are touching and I have to test for even the models in my own unit... but they only fail on a 6.

OK with all that said... this is the hard part... Who makes toughness tests for the fog if I am in base to base contact with a Stegadon. Is it like the template rules and they all would have to test, would I randomize it like you do for shooting, or would it only effect what I choose to attack in hand to hand?

I know some of you guys are ultra veterans, but it sounds like you play almost exclusively 40k. If we got some Fantasy gurus in here I would like a solution to this question. I can always flip a coin, but I would prefer some opinions. The judge is not really that experienced with Fantasy either. To me it sounds like they would all hit as they are all touching like with a template attack. I have templates that only require them to touch ,which is not normal, but it is a similar gas based attack.

I would say that since all the models are on one base...creature and rider(s)...since that base is in contact...they would each have to make the test.

I like to think of this as each creature coexisting within one space on one base. They are each treated differently for shooting attacks of course, but for things that have an area of effect...like templates and distance powers (ie:base contact) you take the whole model and each organism into account. Are you touching the mount's base?...YES. Are you touching the Rider's base...a big fat YES.

I do not play Fantasy and so maybe there are rules that go against my reasoning...

This would make a big mess out of a Lizardmen army I am likely to face in a Fantasy Campaign. He has a unit of Saurus Warriors, a unit of Skink Skirmishers, and 2 Skink Priests on Stegadons with Engines of the Gods. I have a Plague Claw Catapult that uses and large template and only needs to touch, so I can likely hit his guarding Saurus unit and both Stegadons with a lucky hit. It will not hurt the Stegadons or Saurus, but it will kill about half the Skinks. I also have 2 units of 8 Plague Censer Bearers and one has a Plague Priest. I am going to hit both those Stegadons at the same time. It will be messy. I can bring 7 models to bear against his flank giving me 21 attacks at S5 re-rolling misses, -2 saves.

Likely I will come up with my Plague Furnace pushed by 40 Plague Monks, the Plague Catapult will hit the Skink Skirmishers, wiping out half and making them run. The Furnace unit can take a hit from 2 Stegadons and the Engine's Burning Alignment. Then the Plague Censer Bearers can plow into the sides and finish off what is left. The Plague Furnace can likely kill off most of the crew and it does have a template attack that can kill of some crew too. I have nasty magic too, but with 2 Skink Priests on Engines he will have 6-7 dice to my 4 dice. The Furnace has a Magic Resistance 2. This is the only other player massively wiping out the other armies, so I am guessing I will have to fight him very soon. If I roll good I might get a few spells off... which would really mess him up.

As far as the plague cloud from your censer bearers, both the stegadon and the crew and priest would all take a toughness test. Its a cloud, its not an arrow or a cannonball. Its not going to hit only one or two, its covering the area in a poisonous fog. I think all of them would get hit.

So is there anything like the INAT rules for Fantasy? I looked for a bit yesterday, but could not find anything. I am still under a heavy learning curve. I have been focusing mostly on the complex rules for things like Flank attacks, charge options, pursuit, overrun... Also magic and magic objects. I mostly played 4th and 5th Edition and never played 6th, but I did pick up the travesty of the previous Skaven army book. Through discussions about some of these rules I on other boards I have read and re-read the rules on most of this stuff and have it down pretty good.

A friend of mine came to the Fantasy Campaign up here at Grandiosity and he was mostly a newbie 40k player, but wanted to try it out. I made him a Lizardmen army with a Stegadon and Engine of the Gods and he played against a friend of mine's son who had a Night Goblin army with a Giant and 6 Goblin Fanatics. I was in the middle of a pretty nasty battle, so another person from my Coopersville group who was not a rookie and has a Lizardmen army with 2 Engines said he would help them. Well I noticed things were a bit odd and started asking. The Stegadon had hit the flank of a Goblin unit and he had the Goblins still count their ranks, banner and outnumber, and had them win. Then he thought the Stubborn did extra wounds like Fearless in 40k, so he did random wounds to the Stegadon and killed the Priest. The Stegadon then for some reason ran. None of this made any sense and I had to step in and start explaining that he messed up so many rules it was just crazy. I've only been back playing Fantasy since November when the new Skaven army book came out and he has been playing for well over a year. Admittedly the group was playing 40k really heavy all summer and into the fall, but still. I had to explain that the Stegadon did 2 wounds +1 for flank. The Goblins did nothing back and get only a +1 for outnumbering. The Goblins needed a break test at -2... or a 3, which they failed and the Stegadon actually turned out pursuing the Goblins off the table edge.

The thing is this is the only other player really beating on other armies in the Fantasy Campaign and I am starting to wonder why. I'm guessing he is doing a lot of stuff very very wrong. I have done a few things wrong and always point them out the next game so they know too. One was a Fear causing unit of Dryads charged my Slaves and the failed a Panic Test and fled. They actually did not have to flee as he did not outnumber me. This had little impact on the game, but when he beat them in hand to hand and the broke then, they would have scattered, possibly cause a few wounds. It was a minor flaw and had no impact in the game overall as I wiped him out to the man... except his cowardly general on a steed. 6 Plague Censer Bearers wiped out 4 units in 3 turns including 9 wounds to a unit of 8 Dryads. My other Slave unit actually beat a unit of Eternal Warriors, they broke and the Slaves ran them down. The next game that same unit did the same thing to a smaller unit of Empire Corsairs (?), but the last game they were set to rear charge a unit of Cold One Cavalry that was beating on one of my units of Plague Censer Bearers, but I got a lucky and managed to kill his Scar-Veteran on a Cold One, that was giving me so much trouble. I did loose the entire other unit of Plague Censer Bearers to a massively lucky shot from a unit of Skinks. 9 guys rolled 7 6s out of 18 shots with their poisoned weapons. That game was the closest at 1300 to 400 points.

They actually specified for the Plague Censer Bearer's fog effect in the new FAQ and I think they messed up. They say use the largest toughness then randomize the wound like for shooting. They should have said that whatever model you hit in hand to hand is the one that makes the toughness test. so now one crew can get hit with the flail and another hit with the fog effect, but they get to use the Stegadon's toughness.