Mass shooting!

Enemy in the open! FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! Damn! You shot Jimmy! "What was he doing there in the first place?" I dont know? Maybe stopping that troll with his face?

So it says to randomize when shooting into mass melees. But you can pick your targets when you have elevation. So why cant you shoot if your guys in the melee as well?

-How do you (if you do) randomize which warrior to hit?

S= Skaven
O= orcs
M= mercs


s s o
m s o M
s o o

So our guy M, is elevated so, he can pick his targets. But his buddy m, is in the back and getting mobbed up on. M wants to help his lil brother out and take out some orc and skaven. He cant because lil m is in the way? Or do you randomize which warrior gets hit.

-if you crit (roll a 6, and are elevated and can choose targets) I say you, hit your target regardless.

What do you guys think?

"M" doubts about shooting because he fears to kill his buddy "m" instead of a foe.
In my opinion shooting to a fighting mob where one of your warriors is engaged is too risky for a ganger. His mates will punish him after battle for bad behaviour.
Otherways i think shooting to a foe fighting mob is acceptable. If the Melee was only made from skavens and orcs, it would be fair to shoot at them.

So where does it say randomize when shooting into mass melee? My rulebook says may NOT shoot into combat (melee).

So this never comes up unless its a multi-player game and only my enemies are fighting then we have a house rule for shooting in which you randomize targets. Although we are in the world of made up rules here, even with an elevation you can't pick out a target in a swirling melee (think the warriors moving as they hack and slash, parry and step aside).

Going on the basis that there are no allied bands here. The raised Merc can shoot at any of the Orks or the 1 Skaven at diagonal to the Merc in combat. Base contact is side to side, not diagonal to diagonal. Meaning, a normal size base can only have 4 sides to make contact to. A large creature (2x2 inch base) could have of 8 maximum normal sized bases in base contact with it. Since you can’t shoot into melee combat with a friendly model, only the 3 Skaven in base contact with the Merc are safe from ranged shooter.



For those who will ask, “What about round bases?” Use some common sense, Front, Back, Left side, Right side. Still only 4 sides.

These rules are for the two-player game:

p. 13: "You must shoot at the closest enemy, as he represents
the most immediate threat and therefore the most
obvious target."

Later on p. 13: "Note that you may not shoot at models that are
engaged in hand-to-hand combat, as the risk of hitting
your comrades is too great".

On p. 14: A model situated in an elevated position (ie, anything
that is more than 2" above the table surface, such as
an upper floor of a building), may freely pick any
target he can see and shoot at it. The exception to this
rule is that if there are enemies in the same building
and in line of sight of the shooter, he must shoot at
these, as they present a more immediate threat. [Emphasis added].

So, the "freely pick any target" rule for elevation is intended to trump the "you must shoot closest enemy" rule, not the "you may not shoot at models that are in hand-to-hand combat" rule (which in the original two-player rules would by definition mean a fight with your guys in it).. Because of the shooter's elevated position, models on the ground are not an immediate threat so the shooter does not have to shoot the closest target. But being elevated does nothing to decrease the chance of hitting a friendly model engaged in a melee, so you still cannot shoot into hand-to-hand.

In the rules for games with more than two players ("Chaos in the Streets"), the rule on shooting into melee is "Shooting into close combat: Unlike in the regular Mordheim rules, it is possible to shoot into close combat in multiplayer games, just as long as the shooters belong to a different warband than the models involved in the Close Combat. Shooters must still fire at the closest enemy model as normal (unless they are in an elevated position, as per the normal rules). However, if the shooter hits a model involved in a close combat, the shot may well hit one of his opponents and not the model itself. Randomise any missile hits between the target and any models in close combat with him."

Explicitly, elevation does not allow you to shoot into a melee that includes any of your own warband. If there isn't a friendly present and you are elevated and can pick a target instead of shooting at the closest fellow, it is still totally random who you hit.

It helps if you picture a melee as a swirling chaos of hacking, chopping, kicking and biting - all the warriors involved are whirling and dodging - they are not all nicely lined up, base to base, and unmoving. You can technically pick your target if elevated, but by the time the arrow arrives it is as likely to hit any other guy as your original target.

Mweaver is correct in where to find the rules. Chaos in the Streets- White Dwarf issue 242 march.

And I have mixed feeling about not being able to shoot into melee especially when its a big mutilplayer melee of doom and gashing of teeth. But for simplicity, not shooting into friendlies makes sense.

So how do you guys randomize your missile fire? Designate a die number and roll? That seems the simplest.

Fungomungus wrote:

So how do you guys randomize your missile fire? Designate a die number and roll? That seems the simplest.

We do.

Also, we make up some modifiers as we go along, e.g. when someone in the melee is knocked down/stunned his chance to be hit is reduced by 50% and the chance to hit a large monster in that melee is double that of a normal guy. Those last rules are not set in stone but we improvise them as we go along

BTW: mweaver, welcome to Tom's forum, I always enjoy reading your posts over at Warseer so it's good to see you here

I agree. No shooting into close combat, except when all combatans are your enemies.

I our group we have a rule (don't know if it's official), that when shooting at models in cover (could be in cover of a close combat taking place between the shooter and the target), and rolling '1' to-hit, you hit the cover instead. And if that is the close combat, we random roll to see what model is hit, not including knocked down or stunned models.

And that is the only way (in our games) to shoot into a close combat, inluding friendly warband members.

We do the same with the cover, but how do you determine when the cover is hit?
For example, you need a 5+ to hit the target that is behind the melee. When you roll, you obtain a 2. Does this mean you hit the cover? or does this just mean you missed the shot?.

When rolling '1' to-hit only. I guess its based on that cover only confers -1 to-hit, so the chance of hitting cover, should not increasy with the shooters lack of skill or other modifiers.
And 'trick shooter' does not negate the possibility of hitting cover.

We play by the rules layout mweaver stated as well. We straight up randomize shots between melee combatants, including those knocked down and stunned - although models in HtH can ignore them to concentrate on the others, the bodies are still there!

Official Trick Shooter does allow one to ignore modifiers for cover, so we do play that models with Trick Shooter never hit cover. Other than that, if a shot misses their hit roll by 1, they hit the cover. If my shooter needs a 5+ to hit your model who is behind cover, then a roll of 4 will hit the cover - note that this is in official Mordheim errata. For more about cover and shooting past a melee to another target, you might want to check this thread: https://boringmordheimforum.forumieren.com/rules-and-gameplay-f1/shooting-past-cc-t2755.htm?highlight=shooting+into+melee. This thread got a little contentious, but there's some great information in there.

@wyrldhunt: thanks for the update!
I guess you're only hitting cover when missing by 1, and not 1+?
So the statistics are the same as the roll of '1' (1/6).

Yes - going with the official Errata on that. However, if we used your method, we could still have Trick Shooter hit cover, so I'm going to have to consider that...

Restating just to make sure I understand what you're using:
1. Models suffer a -1 to hit with shooting attacks if their target is in cover.
2. Trick Shooter negates the -1 to hit modifier for cover.
3. If a model shoots at a target in cover and rolls a "natural" 1 to hit, he hits the cover instead.

Hmmm, we say that a "natural" 1 always misses (even if cover would otherwise had been hit). So your rules would introduce a change for shots that only require a 2+ to hit. In our rules, a 1 would completely miss at all times, whereas in yours it would hit cover. But it's still a near miss, so I could see the sense of cover getting hit instead. I like it! Now to bring it up to our group...

Thanks, Mithras.

We do have one (rarely used) house rule about shooting into a melee with a friendly model: if the only friendly in the melee is stunned or knocked down, and thus is either going to be auto- or almost-certainly taken OOA in the next enemy phase, it is OK to shoot because it is his best chance of survival. Doesn't come up very often, though (and I don't recall that it has ever actually saved anyone!).

We play with natural 6s are always hit, and 1s are fail. Maybe its cause we played alot of D&D But there are always exceptions to a rule. We try to make the game be the best game, with epic fails and epic saves. But they have to be used sparingly and not to power play.