All Along The Watchtower - Cannons, Buildings & Ogres!

This is my first non-intro post on the forum so hopefully I have posted in the right area? I only wonder as it is part rules query and part tactical advice but as the two are intrinsically linked I figured this would be the right place. As you might tell from the title this involves the watch tower, cannons and Ogres!

To put it into context I was playing a game of watch tower against an Empire player on Monday. I won the roll off for the tower and deployed my unit of Ironguts in the building. The game proceeded smoothly until he started flinging cannon balls at the watch tower and things got a little complicated! At this point a few questions were raised about exactly how the unit would be wounded. Without launching into verbatim of the rulebook, page 127 (of the big book) explains how template weapons work against buildings. Thus in this case a cannonball, being a template weapon, would cause D6 hits and then furthermore all unsaved wounds would be multiplied by D6 to account for the cannon causing multiple wounds. This is within itself fine but then how are those wounds distributed? I argued that surely only the Ogre hit could be slain by the cannonball where as he was sure the sum of the wounds would be used to remove whole models.

To give an example:
The cannonball rolls a D6 and causes 6 hits. The Empire player then successfully passes his 2+ to wound on all 6 of these dice. He then rolls the 6 dice again to see how many wounds each hit has caused thanks to the multiple wounds special rule conferred by his cannon. He scores a 6, 5,4,3,2 and 1 on these dice.

Interpretation 1:  Only 6 Ogres can die out of this. So the rolls of 6, 5, 4 and 3 kill their respective Ogres outright. Then the rolls of the 2 and 1 are added together to remove a further Ogre (as you remove whole models where possible). No matter the dice scores only 6 Ogres could ever die from 6 hits. So even if he rolled all 6’s only 6 Ogres would fall.

Interpretation 2:  The wounds are all carried over and therefore a total of 21 wounds has been scored. Removing whole models where possible this causes 7 Ogres to die. The number of hits is irrespective to the potential carnage. This means a cannonball hitting a building containing Ogres has a minimum damage potential of scoring 1 wound and a maximum damage potential of a massive 36 wounds! For those who care that means one cannonball (rolled perfectly) could kill 12 Ogres in a building outright. I’m not sure what the average works out at but I’m pretty sure this is overly brutal!

So the question is....which of these interpretations is right? To give useful pages from the rulebook (again I only have the page number for the big book sorry) page 45 details multi-wound models and multi-wound weapons. I’m not sure which of the above this paragraph supports however!

To give some credit to my opponent he shot my Ironguts to bits with his first volley and then in his second round of shooting after the initial laughing killed a full unit of 10 bulls. Witnessing me shuffle the models off the board so easily made him suggest that perhaps interpretation 2 was a little overkill and he felt bad if the rules were in fact supporting it. Thus he asked me to replace the bull models at least.  He has already told me that he thinks going forward interpretation 1 of the rules is the better of the two but it is never the less always nice to hear what others think.

So that’s the rule segment out of the way please let me know what you make of that. I’ll be shocked and sobered if you agree with the second interpretation but if that’s how it works then those are the rules and I’ll take my lumps.

So for the tactical advice piece how do you guys deal with watch tower when facing anyone with multiple wounding template weapons? It seems fairly brutal even under the first interpretation and would leave me to think perhaps I need to run a big unit of Gnoblars to occupy the tower. The only problem there is the first unit needs to be under 20 models strong and I feel occupying the building with Ogres is asking them to be smacked around in turn one. Do you guys run a 20 strong unit of Gnoblars and switch them out later? Or have you had more luck with your Ogres in the building than me? Your thoughts and ideas are most welcome!

Interpretation 1 is correct.  You cannot inflict more wounds on a model than it has wounds on it's profile.

I too had some ogres blasted out of a building recently. Brutal. As I'm the "rules guy" in our gaming group I looked up the rules and was shocked by the reading,as I too came to interpretation 2. I couldn't find the "model can't suffer more wounds than it has" rule,only "multiply the wounds,add them up,remove as many whole models as you can". I could be wrong for sure but I try to be knowledgable of the rules,double so when I'm on the receiving end! Almost posted the question to the stronghold but let it go figuring I'd be better off keeping my ogres outside the building,protecting the gnoblars inside it.

Thanks for your response Wildcard nice to see someone else shares my view.

There is indeed a part in the paragraph on multiple wounds which does state no model can suffer more wounds than it has on its profile. We saw this but the bone of contention was it being followed by "Add up all wounds caused on the unit and then remove the appropriate number of models, noting any spare wounds on the unit."

I interpreted this to mean "spare wounds" were those that did not kill an Ogre outright. He saw "spare wounds" to mean even those left over from an Ogre that had been killed outright. To his mind the sentence stating "remember a model cannot suffer more wounds than is on its profile" actually supported his theory as it meant the excess wounds would have to carry over onto another model (since one model cannot die twice). I obviously interpreted it as only the model hit can be killed with the excess being wasted.

I guess its just another case of the rules not being crystal clear but I am still inclined towards the first interpretation and was just looking for a nod from someone else really.

And thanks for the tip Minoa! I think no matter which interpretation you go for they are both bad for your units of expensive fatties! I think I'll have to take a unit of 20 Gnoblars going forwards and try to replace them with one of my units of 40 later in the game. I guess you live and learn but that was the first time my Ogres faced off against cannons in buildings!

One thing to be wary of though is that the scenario allows a single infantry unit to deploy in the building.

This prohibits Ironguts (as they are Monstrous Infantry).

Nothing to stop them entering in subsequent turns though.

Wow. That hadn't actually occurred to me Big Kid!

I'm not entirely sure that's true though as the Monsterous Infantry rules do state that "For the most part, monstrous infantry work exactly the same as normal infantry (i.e. follow the standard rules) but have a couple of extra facets to represent just how massive they are."

But it is most certainly a grey area and I could see some people arguing RAW says you can't do it.

I think to play it safe its definitely worth taking a unit of 20 Gnoblars anyway just to keep things simple. Its not like they are breaking the bank in points after all.

Infantry are still a different unit type from Monsterous Infantry.


remember that this keeps us from getting turned into rats by the Dreaded 13th.



just put a unit of gnoblars in the building.

Or Chaos Dwarves.

Oops!

Getting ahead of myself!

If - and thats a big if - you could place IG in the watchtower. Would you be able to place more than 6 ogres inc. characters?

Ogres count for 3 models each in this scenario, right? And the special rules for the watchtower states a maximum of 20 core infantry models.

to settle this in my group, we decided that we'd revert to unit strength and say each ogre is worth 3 regular models - so a unit of six represents 18. This came up because I couldnt fit my gnoblar horde in but I felt sticking in a bull horde of 16 was corny! We figured the word infantry is being used here in it's traditional definition - foot soldiers - and not the capitalized Infantry, a specific WH unit designation. It was a compromise we all liked!

That seems like a fair compromise Beefquake. I'm inclined to play it by RAW myself as BigKid and Grey Templar have suggested but I can see where your idea might be particularly useful for players who take Gnoblar hordes, or better yet, no Gnoblars at all!

That seems like a fair compromise Beefquake. I'm inclined to play it by RAW myself as BigKid and Grey Templar have suggested but I can see where your idea might be particularly useful for players who take Gnoblar hordes, or better yet, no Gnoblars at all!

Thanks. It's restrictive enough to take units (for x scraplaunchers, you need x gnoblars, for which you need x bulls...) and I dont need it to also be 'take a mandatory 20-model gnoblar unit in all army lists.' It will get to the point where the army builder just auto-prints the one list that is legal!

Thanks. It's restrictive enough to take units (for x scraplaunchers, you need x gnoblars, for which you need x bulls...) and I dont need it to also be 'take a mandatory 20-model gnoblar unit in all army lists.' It will get to the point where the army builder just auto-prints the one list that is legal!

Haha! Absolutely. Hopefully when GW graces us with a new book the restrictions will disappear and be less of an issue. On a scenario note it will be interesting to see if the Ogres end up playing the battle types differently (if Gnoblars got banners for Blood and Glory for instance). But anyway I digress.

In terms of these rules I think it will depend on the environment I'm playing in. If I know I'm going to be playing people I haven't played before I think I'd just take the Gnoblars to keep things simple and avoid unnecessary rules lawyering. If I'm playing in a friend group I'd just mention it and see what their take is it is beforehand. I pretty much play my games in the latter setting but I still like to try to do things right as it were, hence this post.

Just goes to show its always worth asking anyway! Not only has it answered the question I came here for but I've been enlightened to something related to it I hadn't even considered!