Hu ... Never thought of the rooftops trick to see only the back ... That sounds dumb. You should definitely house rules it. Or we play geometry exercise and I change my nick into "pyta the Gore".
Against the wall, yes. Obviously, you can cover both from further back, but I guess that wasn't the point of this discussion. I also like @Icchan 's idea of house ruling it. I never liked the SuperJump/Rooftop interaction, as it always seemed silly to me.
There are several ways that you can place it that cover both corners, just not in contact with the wall. If you think about it, you won't get cover from the sides of the building anyway, so why not place it an inch or two back? Or better yet, in cover somewhere else...
Sorry, I forget to say that it was impossible within the constraints of the example. ;) Or an exceptionally small building.
I think the easiest think would be to just walk back the FAQ ruling, have troopers ignore intervening terrain when checking to see if a target is in their front arc. That's how I'm going to suggest it to the greater SF Bay Area playgroup.
So... you're going to suggest that people ignore Line of Fire rules regarding Total Cover in specific circumstances?
This is basically how we play it. Which is essentially pre-faq. If the enemy is within your front 180', the model can return fire as reciprocally. Or in other words, being able to see the silhouette and being in "front" of a model were two separate checks. Of course post FAQ this is just a house rule, but it really only opens up abuse, particularly for intent play.
No it's just to roll back to the interpretation of the rules which had "being in front" and " drawing a line" as separate checks. So if you were in the front arc if a model but draw a line of fire to their "back arc", the reciprocal lof rule would mean you could both see. The FAQ basically invalidated the reciprocal LoF to just mean people only needed to see 1mm of your silly as long as you saw 3mm of theirs or vice versa.
I don't see how the original rules text would support that interpretation, either. The FAQ doesn't change anything, it just clarifies. The real problem here once people start adding elevation into the question is that silhouettes don't account for a trooper being able to "look up". But, hey, that's how it goes when a rules mechanic tries to abstract the real world.
In many forms of writing bullet points without 'and' are considered to be independent points, so you must meet all 4 bullets, but they are each independently checked. The way each bullet is written seems to continue that logic. Eg the 3rd bullet point... "Lof can be drawn from any point in the troops volume to any point of the targets volume" Which now means exactly what? The FAQ actually needs to be an errata.
Exactly what it says... The very next line is LoF can be obstructed by figures—friendly or not—and pieces of scenery. You seem to be wanting to focus on parts of the list to the exclusion of other parts, and I don't see how that makes sense. Additionally, please consider that all of the bullet points you refer to are stated from the point of view of the Active trooper/shooting trooper, not the target trooper. For return LoF (of the target trooper) we look a little lower where it says: Mutual Awareness In Infinity, Line of Fire always assumes reciprocity, following the rule of thumb "if I can see you, you can see me". This means that as long as any troop can draw LoF to its target, the target can draw LoF to its attacker as well (assuming, of course, that the attacker is within the target's front 180˚ arc). The rules are written with the assumption that you're looking at facing with your LoF. Otherwise you're just pretending you have 360 visor/Sixth Sense. CB doesn't really seem to make distinctions between these things.
So Can you explain exactly when I can or need to draw LoF from ANY part of my volume? I'm reading the list as 4 independent checks. If they're not then reading point 1, 2 and 3 as one check becomes non-sensical. Because again, point 3 contradicts the now known rule that LoF is only drawn from your front 180 half of your volume . I don't know why you're writing the mutual awareness clause. Which is a whole paragraph essentially dedicated to saying only one model needs to see 3x3mm. But both models still must draw LoF from the front half of their silhouette. So again, point 3 of drawing LoF seems redundant here?
It's not redundant, it's addressing that you can, for example, draw Line of Fire from the bottom left of your facing to the right top corner of your target, allowing that shotgun template to angle off and catch another trooper that is slightly elevated and behind. Just arbitrarily picking an example out of thin air here. The Mutual Awareness paragraph is exceedingly relevant to the topic of this thread because it clearly points out drawing LoF between two silhouettes grants it to both, but only if facing conditions are met. One of the most basic rules of LoF is that you can't draw it through Total Cover. These aren't somehow separate and completely independent thoughts, they are tied together. This is another one of those cases that CB not making a mechanical distinction between "LoF" and "LoS" seems to really cause a mental block in rules interpretation.
Also the previously linked FAQ diagram is pretty explicit about not being able to draw LoF from the back of your silhouette to a model that is in your front 180 degree arc.
Is anyone else feeling an odd similarity between this conversation and the one about SSL2 and Speculative/Guided fire?
Mechanically there does seem to be a few issues with how CB writes about LoF and how CB actually wants LoF to play out yes.
While there are great improvements in the rules going from 2nd to 3rd, there's definitely places where it could be better. Little early to be looking for 4th edition though, I think. ;)
Ultimately though, I don't think the net good of the FAQ "clarification" outweighed the net bad. A single model can no longer cover both corners of a building, which is good. But 55mm bases now get shot in the back >8" with disturbing frequency. People shoot people in the back from the front using super jump or roofs (or atleast they could, but choose not to). Slicing pies is much more appealing in more situations, to almost be the default for every engagement.
Wasn't there supposed to be some sort of official announcement about model placement, intent, measuring, and so forth coming out?