This has come up recently and it just occurred to me I might have been using this rule very wrongly in the last few years. Basically, if a model has explode lvl1, like Gakis and Kuang Shi, can they affect allied models with the explosion, or does it become illegal if an allied model is in the blast radius, thus nullifying the explosion at all?
Explode does affect friendlies as it is not an Attack. However it will be nullified by the presence of a Civilian like an HVT, due to a special case in the Civilian rules.