N18 Directly targeting a fighter with a Blast weapon?

[JawRippa]

With a blast weapon you may target a point of the battlefield (with an additional -2 penalty to hit after the 2023 rules update). So this is implied that you you can target a fighter 'normally' to avoid the -2 penalty to hit. However, what does targeting a fighter with a blast actually mean?

1. Do you place a blast marker's center anywhere above the target's base?
or
2. Do you place a blast marker's center above the target's base center? This could affect shooting models with large bases like brutes and ogryns

 

[SirFrog]

As far as I know there's no hard rule, our group always centered the marker on the base of the target when directly targeting a fighter.

 

[TopsyKretts]

Never thought about it before, but it's a bit weird to 'target' a fighter (indirectly), but at the same time aiming somewhere else (floor/wall/what ever) to avoid penalty of... well targeting anywhere else than a fighter? Even if targeting a fighter, you'd have some leeway where to center blast on base. To make it simple I'd just say dead center of base.

 

[SirFrog]

To elaborate: in an effort to avoid some exploits and making the Blast rules somewhat consistent our group made the following readings of the rules.

1. You can only target a point on the ground you can draw like of sight on.
2. When targeting a fighter directly as if it was any other weapon, resolve the hit with the center of the blast over the center of the fighter's base, managing any scatter as usual on a miss.

This gives us some follow-up effects. In poor visibility, you can no longer snipe with a missile launcher as some readings of the rules could let you do later.
It also covers some logical loopholes: Say you have a situation where Janet is two stories up and peeking over a railing at Steve. Steve has a plasma cannon. Steve can't magically target the ground next to Janet's feet with his plasma cannon as he can't see the floor under her feet from where he's standing. Thus, to hit Janet, he has to take a direct shot at her.

This does indirecty open up another issue of grenades, where chucking a frag would make perfect sense in the example above, but we deemed it a worthy sacrifice.

 

[Aulenback]

For "house rules" regarding ground targeting and Visibility / Smoke / Hidden etc, given the official statements that you CAN shoot template and blast weapons INTO smoke or darkness, we make use of some old common bits from N95 tables, such that if you are for targeting a point on the ground beyond visibility range with a Blast weapon, automatically roll for scatter as if you have missed (still roll the Firepower and Hit dice, as those ay trigger other effects, but roll for Scatter regardless). Mostly this is really to stop MY pit slave uprising (GSC rules) and venators from sniping with their Incendiary Grenades. But it's a decent rule.

And yes, for us, when targeting a fighter (including vehicles if appropriate), the Blast marker is centred on the estimated centre of the model's base, otherwise we consider it targeting a point on the table.

 

[Lunarcruiser]

The old GW blast templates had a hole in the middle (just can't picture the new ones in my head at the moment). That was used when targeting specific fighter with a Blast weapon.

It was not a 100% realistic solution (if the hole is the impact point why not translate it to targeting the ground etc) but it creates a standardised method for wargaming.

Lots of other game systems with similar templates do the same.

 

[SirFrog]

The old GW blast templates had a hole in the middle (just can't picture the new ones in my head at the moment). That was used when targeting specific fighter with a Blast weapon.

It was not a 100% realistic solution (if the hole is the impact point why not translate it to targeting the ground etc) but it creates a standardised method for wargaming.

Lots of other game systems with similar templates do the same.

The transparent orange ones from the newer 'Munda box sets all have holes still.