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Line of Sight and Blocking RAW vs ROI


Flib Jib

Question

I have experienced two separate intuitive interpretations or carry-overs from Malifaux regarding blocking terrain and LoS interaction. First,  with people interjecting ‘height’ rules. E.g. King’s Empire standing on terrain to “see over” other terrain. This is not in the rules as written and I was wondering how others are interpreting blocking terrain. Second, RAW Top-down perspective issues when fireteams are atop blocking terrain.

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LINE OF SIGHT
To determine Line of Sight (or LoS) from a Fireteam to a target, the player draws a series of imaginary straight lines from the Fireteam to the target. These “sight lines” are drawn from anywhere on the Fireteam’s base to anywhere on the target’s base.
When drawing LoS, the sight lines are drawn from a top down perspective, ignoring all vertical height. If at least one sight line can be drawn without being blocked, the Fireteam has LoS to the target.

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Blocked
Some terrain does not block sight lines, but certain sturdy, solid objects (such as the boulder in the Line of Sight example) are capable of blocking sight lines. These terrain pieces are said to have the Blocking trait.

 

I also was listening to a podcast that said ADEODATOS could stand on terrain to have LoS anywhere on the board to levorege his Twisted Path action.

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Twisting Paths (8 v 12): Place a friendly non-Titan unit in LoS into base contact with this Fireteam. It gains a Shaken Token.

Also, LoS is determined from a top-down perspective which means if two fireteams are both on terrain with the blocking trait then they would not have LoS to each other. Furthermore, if a fireteam were on blocking terrain so that all parts of its base were surrounded by the terrain from a top-down perspective, than it would for all intents and purposes be “invisible” to non-titan units. 

I believe that this list point is more of a RAW which should be a RAI but would love your thoughts.

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Disclaimer:  I'm going to ignore everything in this thread dealing with Naive Literalism.

According to the rules, if you have a building or something else with Blocking on it and you can stand on top of that terrain, you need to make clear that the top of the terrain IS NOT Blocking (and consider whether it should have Elevated on it).

Concerning Titans standing on top of terrain to gain additional line of sight to things, Elevated doesn't do anything for them that they don't already do:

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Elevated: A Fireteam whose base is entirely within this terrain can draw sight lines through non-Titan Fireteams and Low Terrain. Models that are not entirely within Elevated Terrain suffer -2 AV when targeting a model entirely within Elevated Terrain with a y Action.

If you stand on top of terrain, it needs to actually have Elevated to do this.

Edit:  After double checking the terrain rules, note how Cliffs are done and how Buildings are done:

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• Hills with Cliffs: Elevated, Blocking [Low] | Cliffs: Impassable

• Building: Blocking, Impassable
• Raised Platform: Difficult, Elevated, Blocking [Low], Impassable [High]

That Blocking[Low], Elevated combination is pretty much how close you get in this game to "You can stand on top of it to see over it."

And should pretty much be why Building is specified as Impassible and Blocking.  No standing on Blocking terrain that you haven't made provisions to ignore, unless you're trying to replicate something you can't see out of.

 

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4 minutes ago, Harkevich said:

Standing on low terrain would prevent it from blocking LOS as you don't count any terrain within 2" of the targeting model. I don't know how Malifaux works since I've only ever plaed a demo game, but the LOS rules in the Other Side rulebook are one of the few clear parts of the initial rulebook.

I have no idea where you're getting this from, but that's not in the published rules.

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Line of sight in this game is basically 2.5D.  Height is, in essence, just "titan vs not-titan".  If a "not-titan" size model stands on a piece of terrain with the elevated trait, he gets to be "titan" tall and can now see over all the stuff that isn't also "titan tall".   Which would be other squads, and anything marked blocking [low].    If it's just blocking, that's "titan tall" and you can't see over it no matter what.

 

Unrelated, but the "ignore terrain within 2 inches" thing is only for determining cover, not LoS.   If you have a fireteam standing completely within a Blocking piece of terrain (not blocking [low] and not elevated) then they can't see or be seen by anyone.  They're in a windowless bunker and you decided not to use the special terrain rules.

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Standing on low terrain would prevent it from blocking LOS as you don't count any terrain within 2" of the targeting model. I don't know how Malifaux works since I've only ever plaed a demo game, but the LOS rules in the Other Side rulebook are one of the few clear parts of the initial rulebook.

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