ORB Do you have to declare your overwatch shots immediately, or can you wait until the end of the movement phase?

[Hexadethimal]

With the age of the game (and 40K before that), I'm sure this must have been answered online or by the Roolz Boyz in White Dwarf.

tl;dr Do you have to declare immediately when you want to shoot, or can you wait and say "I would have shot him then"?

The long version: I had two guys in cover, and needed them to run around a corner. I knew this would expose them to an enemy model on overwatch, so I sent out the... "more expendable" guy first. When the second (better) ganger fell over in the "sludgy surface" treacherous condition, my opponent said "if he's not coming, I'll shoot at the first guy instead". Which led to a debate over the rule. I felt that in reality, the overwatch model wouldn't be able to go back in time after seeing no one else appear, and shoot the first ganger emerging.

What's the official word on this, as I'm sure it covers 2nd Edition 40K as well.

 

[Mr. M]

Doesn't the Overwatch skill require that the interruption of the enemy model's action occur "as soon as it is declared" (or some other similar wording)? I think one has to declare that Overwatch is being used to interrupt an activation immediately once a visible model declares its activation. In your example scenario, the character with Overwatch passed up the opportunity to interrupt the first, expendable guy in the hopes of getting a better target. The better target never presented itself, so the opportunity was missed on the first character.

 

[Hexadethimal]

That's what I thought as well. But since we had a good spirited debate while playing (we continued the game with "declare when you want" as a rule, just to keep the peace), I thought it best to check with the community going forwards.

 

[Ben_S]

Without checking the rules, this is how I think it should be...

To answer the titular question: I don't think you have to do it immediately. You can wait until the end of the phase, if you want. That is, you might not shoot the first target, during its movement, in the hope that a better target presents itself - but, if that doesn't happen, you can still shoot the first one later (if you can still see them).

But to address the example in the OP: I don't think you can rewind time. If you wait until the end of the phase, you're limited to who you can see then. In this case, your opponent missed his chance to shoot the first model (assuming the first model had moved out of sight again - I'm not entirely clear on that from the description).

 

[MedMos]

Agreed with the above, you declare the shot when you want to take it. You can't go back and say "I wanted to shoot that guy when he was in the open", you interrupt his action as it happens.