smoke placement and line of sight

[leopard]

if a ship, say a small but highly irritating destroyer lays smoke between two ships, the smoke is laid behind the destroyer – does this go behind the destroyers bridge or behind the model? (from a rules point of view the former makes sense, from a models point of view the latter makes sense).

the issue is as illustrated below, essentially if smoke is behind the model, can you draw line of sight over the model, behind its bridge but ahead of the smoke to a target beyond?

you could rationally explain this both ways: firstly “no, its obscured by smoke obviously” or secondly “yes, the smoke takes time to spread and form the screen effectively obviously”

thoughts?

Attachments:

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[Nat]

yeah I’ve questioned this as well…. (and some of the online people got snarky over it…but meh )
however the clearest way round it (for a game play on the table perspective) is to place the smoke behind the model touching the base – and yes this will allow LoS to be drawn over the ship thats laying the smoke.  This is the way I play it… but the rules arent tight enough to say one way or another….

might have to add it into the wardroom house rules as an expanded rule…

[leopard]

yes have seen a bit of snark reading some other answers – its not a cheap rulebook and it doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect this sort of thing to be actually covered without being accused of “rules lawyering” – presumably someone during play testing asked “so where does this smoke go exactly then?” – given its a flat marker sticking it under the model isn’t exactly hard.

don’t see this as rules being tight or slack, more a case of being incomplete and a very typical sign that “playtesting” has been done by people too familiar with the rules “so not realising this isn’t there” or a company going “thats far too trivial to worry about”, which is a pity.

there are no stupid questions, though I can be an ingenious inquisitive idiot sometimes

I have seen much more “detailed” sets of rules that also forget stuff like this, and seen several companies go “you are over thinking this”, while being unable or unwilling to answer the question

[Nat]

Yeah… I’ve had to accept that warlord do framework games, not rulesets 😝

[Enioch]

@leopard

There has been no official response from Warlord on this question, but Matt has answered it unofficially:

https://www.dakkadakka. com/dakkaforum/posts/list/120/786189.page#11002068 (remove the blank space)

Aft of the base. Just pop it behind the ship, nothing complicated should be considered here or, indeed, in any part of the rules – if you are wondering about something in this detail, you are <i>probably </i>overthinking it, if you want to take that as a guideline.

[leopard]

@Enioch, that helps cheers, not sure its “over thinking it” when the game gives you a counter to ask “so where do I actually put this?”, very easy to resolve but should really have been picked up in testing.

note that still leaves the question of can you shoot between the smoke template and the bridge of the ship laying it?

[Enioch]

that still leaves the question of can you shoot between the smoke template and the bridge of the ship laying it?

Rules as written say “Yes”. Only the smoke token blocks vision, not the ship model.

[leopard]

as I noted you can rationalise that either way easily enough so no real issue there, just seems something that is perfect for a rulebook diagram for the next edition

[Author]

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