Includes missile fire, artillery, breath weapons, etc. Normally, you declare which unit is going to shoot, work out all dice rolls, casualties and panic, then move on to another unit. In addition, note the following house rules, offered in the interest of good sportsmanship:
All firing that requires range guessing by the player should be declared before the commencement of any other missile fire. After you declare all your ranges, work out the shooting for these units. This is done so that the player does not gain any benefit from measurements made to resolve other missile fire hits.
War machines must target an enemy unit it can see. War machines that employ range guessing may shoot over a visible enemy target to strike an enemy target hidden from view. No rule prevents such war machines from guessing long.
House Rule: The Warhammer Design Team suggest the following house rule. Large monsters (and characters riding them) can see over other models apart from other large monsters. This also means that large monsters and characters riding large monsters can be seen if they are behind foot-sized or mounted-knight size units (and potentially missile fire aimed there way).
If the template is positioned so that it only touches models from one side and none of these models are actually fighting, then the hits are applied only to that unit. If the template touches any models from either side who are engaged in hand-to-hand fighting, then distribute the number of hits equally between both sides.
If a character is within 5" of a unit of 5 or more models he can only be targeted if he is the closest model to the shooter. If a character is more than 5" away from a unit, he may be freely targeted.
No. The bolt thrower is considered traditional missile fire and must obey targeting rules for missile fire. Therefore, for unit of 5 or more figures, it only kills rank and file troopers.
As long as the unit starts with more than 5 models at the start of the missile fire phase, all hits are applied to rank and file models. The characters cannot be hit in this round of shooting.
Strictly according to the rules, if a unit has 5 or more rank and file models then associated characters cannot be hit by missile fire, even if enough wounds are caused to completely wipe out all of the models in the unit. Players that wish for more complexity should feel free to invent their own house rules for this situation.
The rules about having more than 1 wound are used to determine if a mount is considered a monster mount or a steed. Therefore, there is no +1 missile fire bonus for shooting at Harpies, Beastmen and Unicorns. Only "big" monsters suffer the +1 to be hit penalty.
Yes. The only combination that is not cumulative is (character & skirmish formation) and (soft cover & hard cover). Combinations of (character & soft cover), (character & hard cover), (skirmish & soft cover), (skirmish & hard cover) are valid cumulative to hit modifiers.
Note that the -1 to hit modifier only applies when shooting at single man-sized character model. This means that shooting at a character on a horse would count a 0 to hit modifier (larger than man-sized, but not a large target).
Yes, however all elevated war machines gain line of sight over friendly troops. It is suggested that warmachines should be allowed to shoot over hostile troops to other hostile units behind them. Note, it is suggested that the goblin Doomdiver should not need line of sight and may be shot over friendly troops, as he picks his target from the air.
No! Anything (ie magic items, wargear, steeds, etc) which increases a model's armour save can never increase it to greater than 1+, under any circumstances whatsoever.