Hi, in one of my last games I came along the following ruling about placing the template of a mine. My opponent placed a Mine (from an Impersonator) right next to one of my models (guessing it is my Lieutenant). To avoid losing my Lieutenant (he guessed right) I decided to place McMurrough right on the other side of the mine intending to activate him and then dodge the template. My opponent then pointed out, that he could place the template on top of the mine, with the Blast Focus on the side of my Lieutenant facing back to McMurrough. This way he can hit both units eventhough the mine is deployed not touching my unit. We agreed on the ruling and I deployed McMurrough somewhere else and yes there would have been a lot of other ways to avoid this situation. The easiest by putting McMurrough prone and then proceed as intended. Now putting the question in discord end in a very controversial discussion about edges of cylinders, but at the end agreeing that according to the rules this would be possible. And from My understanding this would also be possible for a prone unit with e.g. a Chainrifle to hit one unit in front of him and another behind him. Consulting the Wiki I found the following picture, which makes me curious if this behaviour is intended. Source: https://infinitythewiki.com/Direct_Template_Weapons
The example picture is about a template shooting through the trooper who placed. A mine template shoots above its own silhouette usually.
I don't see an issue with the template coming from the top edge of a silhouette, as long as it doesn't pass through the firer (which is what that diagram is labelled)
From the DTW rule: "The narrow end of the Teardrop Template (Blast Focus) must be placed in contact with the edge of the Silhouette of the Trooper declaring the Attack." Unfortunately "narrow end" isn't defined, and there's an example picture showing that the "narrow end" at least includes part of the side of the rounded bit at the end of the template. Still, it seems to me that if the template is placed so that it actually extends past the mine in the opposite direction from its target, the part touching the mine isn't part of the "narrow end" of the template. Gotta draw the line on the extent of the "narrow end" somewhere. Also there's a math argument that in your photo, the template is only touching the top of the mine's silhouette, not its edge. If it were touching its edge, then the template would have to pass through the silhouette in order to hit McMurder, which isn't allowed. And, from a RAI perspective I don't think mines are supposed to be able to threaten troopers in a 360 arc, even at close range. Their directionality is sort of one of their defining features. Finally, from a narrative perspective, how is the mine blasting from a point in midair? None of the above may be conclusive, but absent a better argument I would play it as not able to hit the lt here.
Maybe? I guess it wouldn't be a problem if it was, except combined with the ability to touch the template at a point not quite at its end. Taken together they seem to create an interaction which I would think is pretty clearly undesirable, but maybe the problem is the vague "narrow end touching" wording.
The mine hitting someone on the exact opposite side from its target, by exploding from a point in empty space?
The examples are also a mess. Some of them seem to imply the "narrow edge" is inside the sillhoute cilinder, while other basically show the tip of the template touching the cilinder from the outside. Kinda like anything goes, but if the OP example is valid, why isn´t this guy placing the template on the ground touching his base and affecting model 3 too?
So? Placing the template on the ground level touching the outside of your own base/cilinder would have clipped the prone trooper, and is a similar situation to that of the OP.
My point is not about how to interpret the rules. I'm convinced the rules permit that you can just place the template on top of the silhouette without touching it. This probaby works with a mine, a prone model or something smaller than S2 (e.g. a Pupetbot with BSG). I'm just not feeling that is how it was intended.
Colbrook was trying to say that the diagram is poorly labeled. That X isn’t there because the shot’s invalid, the X is there because it doesn’t hit the prone trooper on the right. Trooper 3’s big red silhouette area is empty, it’s not there, so it gets missed.
Yes, I get the point. It is a poor placement of the template thou if it could be on the ground and hit the prone trooper, that is my sole point.
Yeah I feel like if someone is getting super pedantic about how much of the end of the template constitutes the 'end', that's someone I'd be very wary to even play with - the physical templates have an actual dot on the end of them that I think is supposed to help with this, though the margin for the die-cutting alone is enough to fudge the end position if you were so inclined. @CrazyNomad If one wanted to fight pedantry with pedantry, I'd suggest that at the very least, the marked edge of the 'circle' would need to be making contact with the mine edge, and that hanging it over by an arbitrary amount like your opponent did (as I've attempted to imitate in this image) is wrong. That would make it essentially impossible for these shenanigans to work except in the case of base-contact with the mine. But realistically, yeah, no weapon should be able to 'shoot' behind itself in this way. It's clearly not what was intended.
That’s at the very least strongly against the spirit of how DTWs and mines generally work. If I were the TO at an event and got called over to resolve this, I would tell the owner of the mine to not cross the template back across the top of the mine like that. Pick one direction and accept that you can’t wrap around 180 degrees.
It's long been established that you can hit things with DTWs that you can't see by placing the blast focus of the Tear-drop template in contact with the SIL. This just takes that to an extreme. It's really no more against the spirit of DTWs than angle-ing them downwards to avoid hitting a target beyond your intended target. Moreover there's several ways of defeating this trick once you're aware of it: either by being prone or by not moving within 7" of the Mine. Aside: the edge of a cylinder is either circle where the top/bottom face connects with the side face. So, strictly speaking, all DTWs need to originate from the top or bottom of the SIL. Note also, that in the original scenario as proposed by the OP that placement is illegal: the Mine would have been placed as a Camo token and this Template placement would go through the SIL of the friendly Camo Marker. So you can only do this when the Mine is on the table as a Mine, not a Camo Marker.
To me, angling them downwards seems largely within the spirit of DTWs - why wouldn't you aim your gun at your enemy's crotch to avoid the risk of hitting your friend standing behind them? Angling it up from your feet seems a little less realistic, but not egregious. A mine firing from a point behind the mine itself seems much more against the spirit to me. But of course, the spirit of the rules can only get us so far. Being prone wouldn't help - he could just angle it slightly up towards McM which would but the blast focus slightly down. McM being prone would work (but then he'd have to waste McM's impetuous order). In the scenario, the mine was deployed already right next to the Lt, by a Speculo. So not moving within range wasn't an option. Hah, that's a funny solution! Kind of a roundabout way to get there, but it does solve the problem in practice.
No, I meant McMurder being prone. Then to hit McMurder the template would need to be placed on the near side.
Big issue here is how the blast focus is not properly defined. Presumably, the blast focus is a circle equal to the smallest diameter circle of the template which makes for a max angle of just under 90º (since the template can't be put inside the silhouette/base of the mine), and a miniature that's not prone would be possible to hit under those circumstances if deploying the mine sufficiently close. I don't like how this is playing with precision to a level that's hard to achieve in a fun and (hopefully) fast paced wargame, though...
