RAW Allies silliness

[Konrad]

http://www.beastsofwar.com/warhammer-40 ... er-cheese/

I never thought about this. If you follow the rules to the letter, your allies could be as harmful to you as the enemy. To bad da Boyz ain't got no battle brothers.

[Primarch]

I feel dumber for having watched that.

How is something cheesey if it makes your army weaker? I'm waiting for the next part: Super Cheese - Only take 100 points of models in your 2000 point list.

And something they missed, but is picked up on by the people commenting on the site:
Your UNITs treat allies as enemies. At no stage does it state that YOU treat allied units as an enemy unit, so the whole scoring kill points or capturing objectives comes down to whether or not it is YOU the player who gets points and objectives or if it is Sergeant Lorenzo and his tactical squad who get the points.

15 minutes for 3 guys to poorly and vaguely explain a rule that they had partially misread. Great stuff.

[Konrad]

I feel dumber for having watched that.

How is something cheesey if it makes your army weaker? I'm waiting for the next part: Super Cheese - Only take 100 points of models in your 2000 point list.

And something they missed, but is picked up on by the people commenting on the site:
Your UNITs treat allies as enemies. At no stage does it state that YOU treat allied units as an enemy unit, so the whole scoring kill points or capturing objectives comes down to whether or not it is YOU the player who gets points and objectives or if it is Sergeant Lorenzo and his tactical squad who get the points.

15 minutes for 3 guys to poorly and vaguely explain a rule that they had partially misread. Great stuff.

Well, yes "cheesy" is misapplied here. And yes, this was not like professionally presented. But I think they brought up an interesting grey area. Even if "I" am not treating my allies as enemy units, they are still defined as being treated as enemy units by my main detachment's units. How can "I" score an objective point if Srg. Lorenzo doing the scoring is unable to meet the requirements to do so because of an "enemy denial unit within 3" of the objective". Sure, the said unit happens to be an allied unit, but it's defined as "enemy" and Lorenzo has to treat it as such. I think it's a pretty strong argument.
The bit at the end with the gaunts, termies and crons though, where the allied 'crons follow up into their allied termies. That could happen, right?

[me_in_japan]

A general rule which I tend to apply to GW games is:

If it sounds reeeeeaaaaally stupid (more so than their normal "a wee bit daft" rules) then the designers probably didn't mean it that way, and assumed the players would be able to apply some common sense.

The problem with over thinking the 40k rulebook is that, when you get right down to it, it isn't really very well written. It's pretty much impossible to play as written, if you follow the RAW religiously. It does kinda mention this at the start, and requests that players use their common sense in a gentlemanly fashion. All this rules lawyering/nitpicking that sites like BoLS and BoW do is missing the point of 40k. It not there to allow folks to see who is the better general. It's there so folks can have fun. The rules are just a means to that end.

[Spevna]

A general rule which I tend to apply to GW games is:

If it sounds reeeeeaaaaally stupid (more so than their normal "a wee bit daft" rules) then the designers probably didn't mean it that way, and assumed the players would be able to apply some common sense.

The problem with over thinking the 40k rulebook is that, when you get right down to it, it isn't really very well written. It's pretty much impossible to play as written, if you follow the RAW religiously. It does kinda mention this at the start, and requests that players use their common sense in a gentlemanly fashion. All this rules lawyering/nitpicking that sites like BoLS and BoW do is missing the point of 40k. It not there to allow folks to see who is the better general. It's there so folks can have fun. The rules are just a means to that end.

My attitude to gaming exactly. Love the 40k minis, love the 40k setting, but would happily play games set in the 40k universe with any rules that are well written and simple.

[Konrad]

A general rule which I tend to apply to GW games is:

If it sounds reeeeeaaaaally stupid (more so than their normal "a wee bit daft" rules) then the designers probably didn't mean it that way, and assumed the players would be able to apply some common sense.

The problem with over thinking the 40k rulebook is that, when you get right down to it, it isn't really very well written. It's pretty much impossible to play as written, if you follow the RAW religiously. It does kinda mention this at the start, and requests that players use their common sense in a gentlemanly fashion. All this rules lawyering/nitpicking that sites like BoLS and BoW do is missing the point of 40k. It not there to allow folks to see who is the better general. It's there so folks can have fun. The rules are just a means to that end.

My attitude to gaming exactly. Love the 40k minis, love the 40k setting, but would happily play games set in the 40k universe with any rules that are well written and simple.

Don't think I'm trying to be all Mr. TFG rules lawyer here. I'm with you guys. 40K is such a convoluted, constantly evolving mass of rules that you just have treat it as a "means to and end" as MIJ quite nicely put it. But I do think it is a good thing that nitpicks do uh.. pick nits...just to bring up potential points of contention. Better the debating (and flaming,arguing and name calling) gets done on the forums than at the table.
I linked to the site because I thought that while the BOW guys are hardly going to win any awards for broadcast journalism, their rational and reasons were pretty solid and if you interpret the rules that way, it would make a huge, huge difference on how we've been playing the game. My personal thoughts are that their lawyer-ship is right, but the designers really, really did not intend for the allies rules to play out that way.

[Primarch]

Personally I wouldn't use the rules that way and anyone who tried would find themselves looking at an empty table very quickly. As far as RAW goes, the BoW are halfway right with the pile in moves, but looking at the rest of the rules for allies, no charging, shooting, targeting, psychicing, templating or blasting them, the RAI is pretty plain to see. This is like the folks who said that 4th ed Marine combi weapons could shoot an infinite number of times per shooting phase. You can argue it as much as you want, but it's not going to fly with anyone.

For the purposes of any event I run, you can feel free to imagine that you never watched that BoW video and that this gap in the rules doesn't exist. Your allies will not deny you objectives and you will never gain kill points if they die. (Space Wolf Lone Wolves being something of an exception).