New player question about cover

The model does have to be touching the object AND 1/3 hidden to get cover. It's an oddity of infinity that will have to get used to sadly. It does come easy with time though.

 

neither models have cover in your diagram

you need to be touching AND one-third obscured. this is to create a clear-cut way to tell and to minimize arguments over if a model has cover or not.

 

You need to be in base or Silhouette contact with the cover, as well as it obscuring 1/3 of the Silhouette.

This represents the trooper physically hiding behind the cover and actively making themselves a smaller target.

 

Yes, you must be in contact and have over 1/3rd covered. In most cases depending on the board, if you didn't need to be in base contact, you'd probably be cover the whole game.

 

Look at it this way; Partial Cover represents the trooper actively making use of the cover instead of just ineffectually trying to keep a low profile.

 

Awesome! This forum section is great for two things, answering new player questions and arguing the weird rule interactions that fell through the gaps. For new players, I would recommend coming in and asking. Don't stay for to long or you will get lost xD

Also, the human sphere forum sections are great tools for advice.

 

Hey guys, I have a bit of an extension to this question:

Does the terrain you are touching for cover, and the terrain you are obscured 1/3rd by HAVE to be the same object?

For instance, Red dot is on a building touching the forward railing and in cover (black line), but has an AC unit (green square) obscuring most of his model from a firing Blue dot.

The rail itself does not obscure a third of the model from another rooftop, but Red dot is not touching the AC unit, which is obscuring him.

Does he still meet requirements to gain cover?

 

Yes, in order to get cover from an object it needs to be big enough (and positioned in such a way) that it would be obscuring 1/3 of your silhouette if it were the only piece of terrain on the board.

Or to put it a better way, when determining if a model has cover, disregard any pieces of terrain that they are not in base contact with.

 

Admittedly it gets weird when you're dealing irregularly shaped objects.

If the AC unit was physically part of the building (ie the AC unit and railing are all the one piece) then it could go either way depending on how your meta interprets it.

 

The 1/3rd part of the rule is a bit of an abstraction in my meta. As long as you are in base contact with a piece of terrain that is between your model and the other we tend to grant cover, barring extreme cases.

Not saying this is necessarily the best approach, but it works for us

 

Nice, I just wanted to ask the same follow up question!
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Partial Cover
Partial Cover partially blocks the attacker's vision of his target.

Requirements

• The target of the BS Attack must be in base contact with a piece of scenery.
• For a piece of scenery to be considered a valid Cover, it must conceal at least a third of the target. This means that it must have a height that is equal to or higher than one third of the target's height, and must also cover at least the equivalent of one third of its base.

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I guess the piece of scenery mentioned in the second bullet point cannot be a valid Cover without the first bullet point to be active too?
If both bullet points can be read individualy, it would be possible to have requirement a) fulfilled by scenery x) and requirement b) fulfilled by scenery y).

For the sake of clear rules, I would write:

• For the above mentioned piece of scenery to be considered a valid Cover...

 

You’re going to have to get used to the Infinity rules being written like that—having bullet points that are continuations of the previous bullet point, but at the same nesting level, instead of indented more deeply.

 

That's where I feel like it gets really blurry also. Take for instance the example below, of being posted up on a high tower with a railing. You can get cover from the railing to targets in front of you, but if there were NO railing you could go prone and get cover to every angle so long as they are below you. In the latter case the building could be seen as the cover object and it includes the entire building, not just the roof

It's counter-intuitive to me to have a tower with a railing provide less cover than the same tower without the railing. Which is what happened to me in a game where my intruder had a midfield sniper nest (thanks to the MI forward deployment), and my opponent and I disagreed on whether the intruder continued to get cover once the opposing player's unit passed deeper toward my deployment zone than the rail my sniper was touching (though I'm leaning toward that he was right).

Reason being that the model is obscured by the tower, but it is touching the railing. Simple standing on the tower apparently does not count as "touching" cover as I understand it, even if you're obscured (unless you are prone)

Sadly if there were no railing (green square), my sniper would be able to go prone and get cover from all sides.

 

If there were no railing, then your Prone Intruder wouldn't be able to see anything below the pale green line.

 

That's how it's mostly played: that you need to be touching the piece of terrain along the line of fire.

Edit: I'm phrasing that badly. Your diagram shows it better.

 

This is essentially a cultural thing with Infinity, but...
No, the Building itself (and the flat surface that the model is standing on) ARE NOT cover objects.
If they were, the rules wouldn’t need the bits about being prone and elevated granting cover, because that would be redundant.

There are a lot of different styles of railing, some of them provide more cover and better visibility than others. And some have the unfortunate characteristic of having a bottom part too tall for prone figures to see over. :(