Is it still possible to use Combat Jump on the top of a roof? The new rules state the you cannot be in contact with a scenery element to get cover when you use combat jump. The cover rules state that you can get cover from being on top of a building even if you are not prone. Does this mean Combat Jump can no longer be used to land on top of a building, crate or anything else besides the ground of the battlefield?
The definition of several of those terms are a bit ambiguous in the C1 rules. My reading is that you can deploy on any flat surface that could otherwise support your base.
This. But it's based on N3, which as has been repeatedly discussed as a bad starting point for assumptions on the rules in C1.
Yeah, but there's some funny business in more than one game's ruleset when you start asking questions like "is the play area itself a piece of terrain?" and "are you in base contact with the ground?".
When I initially read the new rule I read it as more permissive than the N3 rule. I'm not so sure anymore. I'd continue playing roofs as a valid option. Mostly because otherwise any table with multi-layered terrain becomes essentially impossible to play on with AD troopers. I think as a house rule saying that "troopers who perform Combat Jump may land on elevated terrain that supports their base; however, they never benefit from cover on the turn they land", would be the most in line with the intent of the rules. As it is, either you read (paraphrasing) "any surface that can support their base" as over-riding "not in base contact with terrain" or vice-versa.
I think the big problem is that cover is situational and depends on enemy positions. Landing on a roof is fine as long as you're not being observed, strictly speaking.
For me it looks like they changed the wording especially to remove the N3 ambiguity for landing on roofs and simply forgot this new interaction. Right now i play with the house rule that you simply don't get cover in the order you land in as a compromise.
You can land on the rooftop, but you do not get cover in the order that you arrive in. You may not place the model that used combat jump in contact with the railing of the rooftop or any other cover providing terrain feature. You don't get cover from being higher because you moved into this position of cover via combat jump.
Ok, but that would then really mean that you cannot drop onto rooftops. I think it is problematic that CB dropped the need to place a template around the drop trooper, but once they have done that we should have the benefit of troopers being able to drop on rooftops. Just from writing 20x20, I can tell you how hard it is to think of everything that could possibly happen in Infinity and if you have found it, you have to cover the case with rules. Without writing paragraphs about every option. I believe CB just failed on this combat jump on rooftops a little bit. I am pretty confident that my idea is the intention of the rules.
I agree that's probably the intent. I just think it's important to make a distinction between what the rules say and what we think the intent of the rules is unless the rule is absolutely unplayable as written. I do think that the opposite interpretation is plausible. That is that the permission that "The player may deploy the Trooper on any surface of the game table" overrides the prohibition against deploying "in Silhouette contact with a scenery element to get Cover". Or, to put it another way, you can't deploy in contact with a scenery element except for scenery elements that are a surface of the game table that may be deployed on. What then is a "surface of the game table"? "Surface" is used throughout the Code One rules frequently to refer to literally any surface (horizontal, vertical and diagonal). So I think "any surface of the game table" should be read as broadly as possible: that is, it literally refers to any surface on the game table. However, we know (from separate rules text) that you are not permitted to deploy on vertical surfaces (pp. 39): "Troopers cannot be deployed on a vertical surface, neither duringthe Deployment Phase nor during the game." So we're left with: "With Combat Jump, troopers are not allowed to deploy in Silhouette contact with a scenery element to gain Cover except that they may be deployed on any horizontal or diagonal surface that is equal or larger than their base." From a gameplay POV, that seems entirely playable albeit it does make AD relatively strong for exploiting a high-ground advantage. Until this is clarified, that's how I'd recommend playing it. As an example, this means for the OP Kaldstrom buildings it would be legal to AD onto the roof of the building and gain cover from a Trooper at a lower elevation, but not to deploy in SIL Contact with the parapet and gain cover from a Trooper on the same or higher elevation, provided that you understand that the roof and the parapet are 2 distinct Scenery Elements.* * It's note-worthy that in N3 this is the case: a Scenery Building is made up of several Scenery Items. So absent other guidance (which would be preferred), this is a reasonable interpretation.
Honestly, I don't think the intent of Combat Jump is for the unit to not have Cover, I think the intent is for the unit to not touch anything other than the ground they stand on. So, whether you get cover or not when you land on an elevated position should be determined with whether you're mechanically allowed to land there or not. (However, I'd actually like the elevated position giving Cover to be spelled out more clearly - I'm not 100% convinced that's intentional, more like 60% convinced it is. Preferably through an example set up similar to the Hacking example or the Flamethrower example where unit up high is standing on a building without a chest-high-wall)
So you're saying that a trooper on the roof of a building with parapets would be in partial cover against lower positioned enemies, even if the trooper is not in Silhouette contact with a parapet? We never played Combat Jump onto a roof and/or C1 in general like that but I can follow your thinking if you trait the roof as scenery element that covers part of the target's Silhouette from below (if we would draw a invisible line through the wall of the building). In my view it's not consistent with the C1 rules if you would grant partial cover in this situation. But I think there is some wiggle room here.
That's the C1 rules. There's no wiggle room. :) So the question is, is it legal to use Combat Jump to deploy into the position shown in the left hand diagram? If so does the Trooper get cover on the turn it lands? My recommendation was to answer yes to both questions as that answer is both consistent with the rules as written (see my logic above) and doesn't create a situation where the answer to the first question is "well it depends, can any trooper on a lower elevation draw LOF to you: if yes, then that position isn't legal, if no, then that position is legal". My preference is for CB to rewrite the rules so that it is explicitly permitted to Combat Jump in SIL contact with scenery elements that give you Cover BUT that the Trooper does not gain Cover on the order they deploy. This treats roofs and walls the same and ensures legal Combat Jump deployment locations do not change based on enemy LOF.
Apparently I was wrong, sorry! With the help of a friend I could find the post (linked below) from the CB staff member with the picture you also quoted. Such a diagram should be added to the rulebook in N4. Thanks a lot for the clarification, so we can play it "correct" from now on https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/cover-prone-and-elevated.37139/page-2#post-341142
Any chance we can get started on an "answered by CB" section like in the N3 rules forum? There's going to be a lot of people asking the same questions you took the time to answer in a month or so. Might as well get ahead of it before the big rush. Especially since C1 rules appear to also be N4 rules, with N4 simply adding onto it and otherwise fully compatible.
This is neither here nor there regarding the rules discussion, but I imagined that part of the point of not landing from a combat jump in contact with cover has to do with the idea that if you're parachuting into a combat zone, you'd be aiming for an 'open' area rather than the edge of something... a wall you could crash into, a fence you could smash your leg against, or otherwise. Thematically it makes sense to me that you want to land in the open, rather than dangerously close to obstacles. Feels logical that you could land on a roof, though, whether the rules actually make it clear what is and isn't terrain for the purposes of that or not.