Callidus "Polymorphine" rules clarification

http://www.theruleslawyers.com/2011/10/rulings-grey-knights-callidus-assassin-polymorphine-and-cover-saves/

Issue: Can cover saves be taken against the Callidus Assassin’s Polymorphine attack?

Holding: Yes, cover saves may be taken against wounds caused by the Polymorphine attack, but only cover which does not depend on the position of the firer applies.

These guys are pretty pimp. Email or post your 40K rules questions and they find the precedents and similar rules to figure out the ACTUAL EVIDENCE and support for what or what not.

Cheers, dudes.

EDIT:

Small victories, man. I used the word monodominant in an official gov't interview writing skills exam. And scored high enough to get recruited. Heh. EDIT 2: Meh. Apparently the word does exist outside of WH40K - it's a biological term related to when a species has completely taken over a given niche in an area, such as when a certain type of tree is the only tree in one particular forest.

Grenades, grenades and more grenades.

I have not read every codex. I haven't even read the entire rulebook in, oh, about 20 years. Maybe more.


But after checking out some Eldar and Eldar Renegades and Tyranids and the GK (I'm only there for the Coteaz + Henchmen stuff) lists I've come to a conclusion:


TOO MANY GRENADE TYPES.


How many does this game really need?
Frag
Krak
Blind
Smoke
Rad - umm, ok. A little shoehorned Mary Sue stuff never hurts. Well, it does, but not that much.
Melta bombs - sure, kind of like a satchel charge thingy. All right.
Plasma - ok, well known 40K stuff that goes boom.
Photon - wait, what?
Empyrean Brain Mines - dunno if this is even a grenade.
Psychotroke - huh?
Psyk-out grenades - the first thing I ever looked at in a 40K rulebook and went "dude, that's a stupid name." Come on, why not call it something like "Anti-psyker grenades".
Egerian Geode?
Haywire - ok, basic EMP thing.
Ork grenades - ok, sure, but why they couldn't just use the Krak stuff is beyond me.
Anti-plant - Agent Orange, sure.
Choke - what? CS?
Hallucinogen - do we need this and the Psychotroke?
Scare gas. Come on. How about just making that a possible result of the Hallucinogen ones?
Stasis - getting silly, now.
Tanglefoot - how about calling it "Web" or "Sticky" or "Glue" grenades?
Toxin - sure.
Vortex - still around?
Xeno filament - huh? Wouldn't that be peculiar to each race?


So what's the point?


The point is that there's too much stuff to keep track of for a new player - it should just be about 5-10 main choices and the rest "count as" or have a modifier to the result. There's only so much stuff you can do with explosives and their effect on an animal. You're an animal. Humans are animals. Tau and Eldar are animals. 


Let's say that the Tau designer wants to give his footsoldiers a close-in anti-tank weapon. He designs a cool, fluffy little self-contained robot that runs around autonomously and kills tanks. Or "counts as" a double melta-bomb, rather. There's no need to give the effect a new name, like "Chumba-Wumba grenade Mk 3" - just say "Melta Bomb x2" and move on.


Same thing with the weapons. There's inflation in number of different weapons and their ammuniton. Each new codex just has to have some "new" stuff. But really - there's only so much stuff you can fire out of the barrel of a gun until you run into warp magic or whatever. Let's keep it to "Armour Piercing ammunition" and "Armour Piercing +2" or similar. Make things easy for a player to relate to, even if they haven't faced that threat before. I should be able to look at a list and immediately know if their weapons/ammunition are a huge anti-vehicle threat, etc.


End rant.


EDIT: Fluff is nice. "Flesh hooks" for Tyranids is nice, and it'd be a bit silly to just give them Frag grenades. The "Flesh hooks counts as assault grenades" is a very nice way to give Lictors a small buff something while still keeping things nominally fluffy lore-wise. Solution would be to have the Army List info for Lictors read:


Lictor with Flesh hooks 6" 6ST Assault 2, Rending (also counts as Frag grenades)


That way any person not familiar with Lictors doesn't have to flip back to the Lictor-special fluff page to find the special rule, they just know that having the Flesh hooks gives the Lictor a pistol-type attack that also counts as having Frag grenades for purposes of Assaulting. Ta-daa! The fluffy-loving Tyranid player gets to keep his fluffy cool name "Flesh hooks" (because that *is* a pretty damn cool name) and the rest of us innocent victims get to quickly and easily figure out what the hell is up with this thing that's set to get sprung on my slice of cool mini dudes.

Rules, special rules, and special special rules.

There's no need to dumb down the game, but there is a need to stop making a new special rule for every single unit to the extent that there's an bunch of exceptions to every single basic rule, or even exceptions to already special rules where one USR trumps another.

• Rule: all units in this situation have a cover save, always.
• This USR makes this unit ignore cover saves. OK, WELL I GUESS NOT QUITE "ALWAYS".
• This new USR makes units with rules that ignore cover saves - no longer ignore cover saves. WAIT WHAT?
• This super mega new, really new USR ignores all other rules, and cover saves do not apply, no matter what any other rules say times infinity more than you can say. Nanananaanaana-naa. OH, CHRIST. REALLY?

WTF, dude. They need to organize this stuff. See more at http://kirbysblog-ic.blogspot.com/2011/06/in-defense-of-modular-rules-by.html

Or better example - what's that rule that is literally explained as "This counts as Fleet and Scout"?? Why not just say "Fleet & Scout" then, why have the special name that I don't recognize until I've played that unit/army/list a bunch of times?

New guy walks up to table with his unpainted group of whosyourdaddys with a not-yet-legal army list and not much clue other than a few days looking at the rulebook and having bought his own army's codex that afternoon.

He's now facing an "equal" points army list that's not ideal or perfect, but at least put together by someone with some clue about how an FOC works. He gets tabled. Again and again and again. 

Ok. So Warhammer 40K is a bit of an elitist system to get into, you need to know a lot of intricate stuff to stand a chance. It's unforgiving and not nice to new people. That's not cool. There needs to be some sort of learning curve and - wait, that's impossible, you're pretty much just stuck being at the mercy of whatever person you're playing against. And some people are jerks. Luckily there's also nice people. If you meet the latter, latch on to them and never let them go.

My argument: Any person should be able to read the "special rules" section of the basic rulebook and now have a basic idea of how things work - then get a printout with the army list and special rules for each unit/character in the opposing <Army he's never heard of> and stand a fighting chance at knowing what each unit is capable of and what could possibly happen.

Necron Lordylord with grenades, grenades, heavy cannon, supersafety armour and special rules Resistant to Bullets, Leader +5, Terror +2

2 squads of Skeleton Warriors with Armourpiercing +9 rifles, safety armour and special rule Resurrect 50%.

And so on and so forth.

Ok - new guy has never read the Necron codex or heard of Mr. Lordylord. But he saw the thing in the rulebook about "Resistant to Bullets", knows that a "Leader" can grant +5 to some Leadership roll army-wide, and obviously the Terror rule is something to scare his guys with. That's a good situation. Yes, the example rules are corny and the names are bad - hopefully you're smart enough to realize that they're just examples and I've never even looked at the Necron codex.

Here's reality:

Hive Tyrant - Monstrous Creature (more or less self-explanatory), Synapse Creature (what?), Scything Talons (what? why not just say "Rending Talons"?), Psyker, Shadow in the Warp (why not just call it Anti-psyker 12"?), Old Adversary - why not just say "Preferred Enemy 6" friendly units"? And I didn't even get through half the rules yet.

A new guy shouldn't have to stop, ask, borrow a book, flip back and forth and then still get his butt handed to him because he didn't understand the synergy between this or that special rule. Like a whatchamallit Eldar wizard dude in a transport escorting an Avatar with some wizard buff stuff. Rules don't need to have a special name every time.

There's no need to re-invent the wheel every time you write a new codex. Each new codex doesn't need to be better and stronger than the old ones. Hell - why even launch a brand new codex if the old old ones aren't updated yet?

Luckily Necrons are about to drop here in a week or two with - unluckily - some rather insanely overpowered rules. But each of the 4th Ed codexes should be updated before any new races or more likely - Spess Mehrine chapters - are introduced.

While we're at it, CSM chapters need their own codexes. Nurgle, Tzeentch, Khorne and Slaanesh all need their own. Orks need Gorka and Morka codexes.

End rant.