But in seriousness, this is just fundamentally wrong: "the idea that the template is a blast emanating from a point on the shooter's silhouette". The template emanates from the Blast Focus which is adjacent to the SIL, not from the SIL.
IJW has confirmed that in certain situations it is possible to place a DTW so that it's touching a target that the attacking miniature/token does not have LOF to, that much is certain and shouldn't be shocking to anyone.
Still waiting for a link on that one. Many of us started playing after the old forums had gone away. The old guard saying "trust me, it just works this way even though it doesn't make sense, because of my recollection of an unverifiable ruling" isn't going to be persuasive to anyone who doesn't have the same recollection as you.
It's not the same reference as inane.imp writes about. I'm not referring to a ruling, just IJW reiterating that the rules for template weapons require LOF from the blast focus and not the trooper itself when it comes to its area of effect. From (faulty) memory, nothing was said about the size or shape of the blast focus, only that it was theoretically possible (which will be the case as long as the blast focus is not the tiniest of tiny dots which would make angling the template impossible). You're looking for confirmation on the shape and size of the focus. Note: you still need to see the primary target when declaring a BS Attack, or you need to be declaring the attack such that LOF is not necessary.
For what it's worth, it does seem counterintuitive (and inconsistent to how other BS Attacks work) to me as someone who's just now here in N4 that the blast focus would allow the attack to be sourced essentially from 'outside' a model's silhouette (more-or-less the equivalent of being 1.5mm bigger on all sides). If IJW has ruled on it, I guess it's gospel and I can't argue... but I don't think it's by any means obvious in the RAW. Blast Focus is really ONLY defined as the 'narrow end of the template' with no qualifiers, and in N4 at least there's never really an explanation of how the pip at the end of the DTW works... usually it's shown with the end itself touching a figure base in an illustration in the book, but sometimes the pip looks like it is embedded in a model's silhouette (hard to tell because these are 3d angle shots, so maybe the implication is that the template is behind the figure and still touching the edge of their silhouette) There's also an issue of the difference between the size/shape of the end of the small and large templates. If we are saying we need to touch the edge(?) of the blast focus, does that mean that the large teardrop template has a much narrower angle of usability than the small one? And what can be made of the fact that the pip on the small template doesn't actually touch the edge of the template. If I'm putting the pip edge against the edge of my figure, I will always be overlapping my figure's silhouette illegally because of the way my template is constructed. I don't know how @QueensGambit plays it, but personally I'd always supposed that Blast Focus point was essentially an infinitely small point at the middle of that pip, and that it is this point (and not the entire end of the template) that needs to 'touch the edge of the figure's silhouette' much in the same way that a ruler measures movement not from its physical end (which is again inaccurate due to die cutting) but rather from and to the printed hashmark, which is the real start point of a ruler, and that anything behind the pip center and inclusive of the pip's volume is essentially non-existent from a template/measurement/overlap standpoint (e.g. the pip itself is a 'deadzone' in which the template does not do damage and therefore doesn't count as overlapping the user) if I interpreted this ruler the same way as a DTW, the ruler is technically 'overlapping' a figure illegally if you put the 0 hashmark on the edge of the silhouette like you should to actually measure. This may be already ruled as a wrong interpretation, or technically wrong RAW, but this methodology is more consistent to how other things in the rules work, creates fewer corner cases (like the weird Intuitive Attack interaction described in previous comments) that require rulings, AND could more easily be leveraged to prevent the 'backwards mine blast' situation the OP experienced. So whether or not this is actually correct or not via RAW, errata, precedent, and/or official rulings, it's how I've been playing personally. Realistically, the DTWs could also use a re-design - perhaps with an 'arc' rather than a pip at the end to allow the RAW to function better.
It is the same one. Because in that IJW post he reiterated that the Blast Focus was the narrow end which is what made it possible - or at least that's how I remember it. The problem is: We know it's an arc, because the diagrams clearly show the template being angled. If we know it's an ARC, how big an arc? A. The indeterminate size in the wiki that is inaccurately produced on printed Templates B. 180 degrees. I can play B, I can't play A. Therefore it needs to be B.
Yeah, with the RAW the actual design of the templates contributes to the problem. They should look something like this realistically: With an added stipulation that if the blast focus area (in gray) is the ONLY thing touching a model, that model will not be hit by the attack (to prevent the shooting-behind-a-mine issue). I guess it's time for me to add that to my list of token and template re-designs :-)
I don't see why you need the additional stipulation: to reiterate, pulling off the "hitting something behind you" is *really* hard to do reliably in actual gameplay. Why increase the density of the rules to account for an edge case that's surprising but not an actual practical issue? Moreover, that stipulation is not actually present in the rules; so what you're asking for is your personally ideal version of the rules. Whereas the 180 degree arc is supported by the rules (that arc is "the narrow end" of the template - the end is a curved face not a flat face nor a point) and is entirely playable from both a balance and practical perspective. Tl;dr the rules describe (through a combination of text and images) placing the curved face of the narrow end of the Teardrop template in contact with the SIL.
Well, what I'm asking for is a version of the rules that isn't exploitable by pedants ;-) - which apparently the current rules are - essentially nowhere in the rules does it describe a 180 degree arc on the end of the template either. The rules ASSUME we're going to be reasonable and can agree what constistutes the narrow end of the template, and yet here we are. The purpose of suggesting that the shaded area itself doesn't count as the 'business end' of the template and therefore does not damage figures it is touching is just clean unambiguous rules writing (and would render some extra verbiage in the book unnecessary and ultimate shorten that section of the rules I think). The fact that it would lock out bad faith interpretations of the above is just a pleasant side-effect. My personally ideal version of the rules is the one that won't create goofy "well-actually" situations that scare my friends away from giving N4 a try.
Can you please not name call or ascribe bad faith to people without justification. It tends to lower the tone of the conversation and scare people away from participating in the community. I'm thoroughly frustrated by literally every conversation with simulationist vs gamey interpretations of the rules involving the simulationists saying words to the effect "you're bad for wanting to play the game the way you do".
Sorry, in case it was unclear, I wasn't referring to your position or interpretation as bad faith - on the contrary, I generally agree with you. I just like it when rules appear to match designer intent and am offering my opinion on how the system could potentially be cleaned up, changed, and improved to prevent what I believe is an unintended (albeit admittedly rare) rules loophole - my 'bad faith' actor is a hypothetical person (I may or may not personally know) who would push the edge case in the OPs example beyond feasibility and might be able to defend it with current RAW as I understand them. As far as I can tell, though, my opinion has nothing to do with simulation or game-y-ness (in fact if mines behaved in a more simulated way, they'd probably blow up in all directions and not distinguish friend from foe). Perhaps one person's 'bad faith' is another's 'clever rules interpretation' - we all have personalities that we do and don't want to play against, and in the past 25 years of playing board and minis games I have a pretty clear sense of who I prefer to play with and who sucks the fun out my games, and maybe they feel the same way about me.
