Do you know that your roll is opposed to EVERY AND ALL the targets under the template and no one can save the others beating your roll, right? If you put the Antenna and 3 models under the template and roll a 10 (success) while the models roll 8, 12 (successes) and 18 (failure), then you score a hit on the 18, on the 8 and on the Antenna. Where is this a problem?
BTW, the Antenna cannot go in Targetted state, a model can. So if you target a targetted model, you get the bonus even against the other targets under the template. Where the f- is this a problem?
The part where you cannot legally target the Antenna in the first place because of the scenery rules. So let's say you have an antenna that happens to be near the corner of a building. If I place a model around the corner of that building, you can't fire a weapon like smart missiles at the antenna to complete the objective, because it would affect my trooper while you are targeting the antenna. That makes the antenna an illegal target and prevents you from attempting to achieve the mission. Which makes absolutely no sense at all mechanically or thematically.
Which is why the vast majority of template weapons now have a hit mode as well as a blast mode. In this case you could Spotlight or Sat-link the hiding trooper and then hit them with the missile and affect both them and the antenna.
Do you really know how a ITW attack works? If you put n models under a template, your opponent gets n ARO. None of this ARO can prevent the attack on the other models. @Triumph you cannot target the Antenna, but you can target the model nearby. The Target of a ITW is the Main Target (i.e. the one who suffers the eventual Critical roll). Please check: http://infinitythewiki.com/en/Template_Weapons_and_Equipment So, again... If your enemy put 3 model near the Antenna, you FO one of them and then start raining Guided Missiles on the full area (both the enemy models and the antenna), with the bonus of Guided Trait.
Yeah and you're not reading what's being written. You put the nearby model out of LOF. You place it so it acts as a hidden guard against the allowing the circular template to even target the antenna in the first place. You could, if you have those resources left available. The point is you shouldn't have to do backflips to try and counter a poorly written rule.
Given that this affects two weapons in the entire game (Smart Missile Launchers and the incredibly rare Smart Sniper Rifle) and that you know what missions are coming up in the tournament, maybe back off a bit? EDIT - one weapon, because the Smart Sniper only gets a template in Guided mode which can't be used against the Antenna anyway.
To be blunt. No. I will not back off on it. It's a badly written rule, and it's the kind of rule that if I ever tried to pull on a new player no matter how nicely I tried to explain it to them they'd likely think I was being a win at all costs ass, and from their perspective I'd totally understand that view point. It's a rule that should without question get fixed.
I understand your point (really, no sarcasm here). The rule is probably a refuse of the previous edition, where in the same situation (antenna is primary target, other models under template) it caused havoc. But, this said, every game is filled with silly rules and rare interaction. As IJW and me explained, it is a so rare interaction that nobody felt the need to point it out. It take effect in ONE mission out of idon'tknowhowmany and with a single weapon. I think that everyone is mature enough to understand that. And if you play with a new player, you (more experienced) should point out these weirdness just for the sake of knowledge.
Man, and I thought *I* was the person with the strongest opinion on possible problems within the ruleset. I agree it's unintuitive when you're trying to complete the objective, but when your opponent throws a shot at a terrain piece specifically to kill the camo'd dude standing next to it it also breaks immersion. A specific allowance for Scenario Objectives that are destructible might make things more complicated, but it might also solve this issue. I don't have strong feelings on it; I wish things were altered so that scenery pieces could be Targeted + taken out with smart weapons because that seems like how those devices would be used in-universe but it's not a massive priority.
My complaint would be the mission favours first turn too much. It's an insanely hard mission to defend/protect objectives against.
If you take the interpretation that you can't even Designate the antennas until the second turn, I'd say it doesn't. And remember, you can't destroy them until second turn anyway.
I'm ok with them not being affected by "targeted" because they're not Trooper models. I find IJW's explanation for the Anti-Material trait allowing an override for the trooper requirement satisfactory in terms of rules and keywords interacting, provided that this is applied consistently across the board like in the case for CC mode D-Charges. Consistency is good. The scenery rules though in relation to objectives and not being targetable if there's an enemy standing too close to them, that I'm not ok with. There's no good explanation for it and why it works one way, when you target the trooper, and not when you do it the other way and target the objective you're supposed to attack.
Actually, in this scenario, where you can designate an Antenna and then destroy it, preventing your opponent from taking it back, that's not the case.
Actually, I choose to go second for this mission and I was always able to spend plenty of orders completely focused on the objectives, counting the designated, the destroyed antennas and seeking for the designated target with my data tracker; antenna related points are scored at the end of the game (you need just one more of the opponent)
You may not think the explanation is good, but one was given: targeting an objective allows you to bypass large negative MODs that models pay lots of points for. This was the rationale for scenery in general, and simply carries over. Keep in mind, this is not a "logic" argument, it is a balance argument. You can argue whether the balance is necessary, but that's a different discussion. Personally, I'm happy that CB is willing to sacrifice a bit of logic for more balanced rules.
