Another question popped up. Can a trooper vault over the corner of the building, provided it has height to do so? For the example please refer to the photos below:
The base must remain wholly supported through the entirety of the move. So per RAW it wouldn't be a legal move, not because of the vaulting but because it's too thin.
By that reasoning, you cannot vault over any low walls or anything thinner than your base diameter, like most defensive walls.
Not the wall, the connection between the box and the building is too small, if you look at the top down view (ignoring the wall/vault) you can see that there isn't a 25mm wide "path" to follow. That said, I'd probably let the player do it, but I figured it's best to give the RAW answer.
@colbrook I'm familiar with the rule you are referring to, but have found it hard to use in practice. I can think of lots of examples that make sense to vault but would fail the test of "supported by" (insofar as supported by means either wide enough or you could let go of the model and it doesn't fall. For instance, I'd be curious how people would treat a traffic cone or a tank trap? Or a rounded bollard? Can these be vaulted by this definition?
'course they can vault over traffic cones and smaller tank traps, they're lower than the model trying to vault over it. The figure in the photo is trying to vault over a deep pit, though, and that's different. You Jump that stuff. That's what the skill is for. So in practice you either place terrain better or the terrain is placed well and you're just not meant to easily cross that gap.
So I agree. I guess the way to think of the "fully supported" concept during vaults then is that the base has to be within a silhouette height above ground of the same or greater area. Because otherwise vaulting a narrow wall or bollard or traffic cone fails that "supported" metric. That also means that the corner-to-corner move in the picture would fail because the sides of the base have to pass over empty space more than a silhouette height above the nearest flat surface. Seems right.
While we're carting out the "fully supported" standard, I'd like to point out that the trooper's base would be forbidden by that standard. You can sort of see it in the first photo, and it's fairly pronounced in the second photo. By the terms of the FAQ, the trooper shouldn't even be in base contact with corner of the building. Because it can't be standing with part of its base over the edge of the cube like that. If you take a big enough allowance for the trooper to be in the position that it currently is, then it isn't a bigger allowance for the trooper to pass over the remaining gap, in my opinion. So it really comes down the OP and the other player involved need to have an agreement for that sort of situation on whether they want to ignore small gaps in the terrain (or whether there is supposed to be a significant gap between the terrain pieces there), particularly when dealing with that sort of cardboard cube terrain that can be difficult to position and arrange nicely.
That's the sort of conversation I try to have with my opponent before deploying (probably even better, before the lt roll). That said, my meta would almost certainly allow that vault.
By the way, where is the rule saying the base must be supported during the whole movement ? I tried to find it in the move skill and general movement rule but I missed it
The move skill uses the words fully in contact, or something like that. Fully supported comes from the simplified basic rules: http://infinitythewiki.com/en/Simplified_Basic_Rules
http://infinitythewiki.com/en/Move First bullet point under Requirements: REQUIREMENTS The user's base must be fully in contact with the surface over which he is moving.
Fully supported to the most strictly simple reading means "beneath" what you are trying to vault. The problem with the vault in the photograph is that the distance to the ground in the gap between the two pieces of scenery is too far down for vaulting down to it, so in effect trying to vault over the railing on the adjacent building you are actually trying to vault roughly 2" downwards at the same time - which isn't allowed. If the box the model was standing on was shorter than a silhouette, it'd be more difficult to judge what is the correct way to handle it, because then you'd be able to argue you're vaulting down 1" from your original position, then up 1" from your original position for a complicated vault where the lowest point is 3,75" between highest point and lowest point. I'd still personally say that such a vault is not in spirit of the rules (I consider vault to either be +1 Silhouette or -1 Silhouette in height, but the rules are not really prepared to answer that question) Mostly, I'd think it's ridiculous that someone is considering such a simple Jump not to be straight forward enough.
While I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment, I don't think it is necessarily obvious to a new player. The photo meets the path requirement but not the support/width requirement. It takes awhile wargaming before you start to think of models as cylinders instead of a little dude on a plastic base. A person could vault that, fairly easily, but the cylinder that represents that person can not.
Maybe, maybe not. Personally, I haven't played a game which would make me presume these two things: 1) that I can move on top of another model without jumping and 2) that I can walk across a gap without jumping. I've seen plenty of people new to the game make the presumption after reading the vaulting rules that it means that 1) you move up stairs through vaulting and 2) you can chain vaults for a total vaulting height equal to infinity provided the terrain allows. While I think that's more natural, I think that mostly stems from a misunderstanding of what stairs are in this game. Commonly have to parse movement through friends, neutrals and enemies with new people before it sticks. Yes, you save one Short Skill. Suck it up. Traversal over terrain that has been intentionally placed awkwardly isn't meant to be easy. This is literally why some units have an advantage through skills like Climb+ and Superjump, because it's mean to be an advantage. No, you don't reveal yourself more at all, you jump barely over the ground and vault over the railing during the Jump. In effect you reveal yourself exactly as much as a Move would've if that building wasn't placed to provide a hiding spot on ground level. Edit: is that an Oznat? If it had been a Preta, then no problem, Climbin+ would allow a Preta to move on walls and would allow you to vault, but if that's an Oznat (or anything without Climb+) then no deal. :)
I guess the question boils down to, would you let a model move over that gap if the wall wasn’t there? I don’t think this involves the vault rules or any other explicit rule, but is more in how you play with your group. Understanding that reasonable people may disagree. There are a lot of specific conventions that different groups adopt when it comes to terrain (do objectives have an S value, how to play small gaps in stairs/railings, etc) and it’s just a good idea to clarify first anyway.