If you’ve been to a tournament recently, you’ve probably seen the fabled Void Shield making its rounds at many of the tables. Considering how confusing and non-intuitive its rules are, perhaps we ought to take some time to clarify just how this little gizmo works.
The Void Shield Generator is an increasingly-common sight at tournaments; you’ll see them at almost every tournament you go to and especially near the top tables, where a variety of esoteric armies are struggling for dominance with each other. However, originating as it does in an obscure book and having a very confusing and sometimes-contradictory set of rules, many players have only a passing familiarity with Void Shields, even those that actually play with/against them on a regular business. So, in the interests of public service, I though I’d give a quick primer on the subject.
The Building Itself
The Void Shield Generator is an AV13 medium building, giving it 4HP. Unlike most buildings it is impassible, meaning that units cannot embark on it- however, it does have battlements that allow you to put units on top of it should you so choose. Since it lacks both weapons and embarked units, most results on the building damage table will not affect it in any meaningful way, though of course it can lose Armor Value or being destroyed outright by some of the results.
The Void Shield Area
All Void Shield Generators come with one automatic Void Shield; up to two additional ones can be purchased for it, for a maximum (and standard) of three. Any unit that is at least partially within 12″ of the Generator is protected by the Shields and any hits on said unit will be resolved against the Void Shield, one at a time, until it is downed and then further damage will resolve against the unit. Blast and template weapons that strike one or more models protected by a Void Shield will instead inflict a single hit on the Shield, regardless of the number of models that would have originally been affected- however, any hits on models outside of the Shield will still be resolved normally. Void Shields never protect against damage in close combat or from shooting attacks that originate within the Shielded area.
Void Shields themselves are treated like AV12 buildings; a glancing or penetrating hit will down the Shield, as will ANY hit from a Destroyer weapon (there is no need to even roll on the Destroyer table.) As per the ITC FAQ, Grav and Haywire weapons cannot affect a Void Shield; a unit under the Shield effectively has 100% protection against such attacks as well as anything that is S5 or less, since those weapons are unable to damage the shields.
When downed, a Void Shield no longer protects units; however, such damage is not permanent and at the end of the controller’s turn any downed Shields will regenerate themselves on a 5+ roll, potentially partially or completely restoring the Generator.
Why Is It So Strong?
The reason that the Void Shield Generator is so strong boils down to a couple points: first off, being immune to an attack is better than being resistant by a large margin. Second, certain weapon types (notably Grav) are disproportionately represented in the current meta. And third, it can shore up a major vulnerability of certain units (namely fragility) while giving an army a strong attrition element.
The big one is immunity- being immune to a certain effect is an entirely different class than merely being highly resistant to it because, as everyone knows, bad dice can always happen. If you are 99% unlikely to be affected by something, every once in a while that 1% will slip in and wreck your plans- but if you are 100% immune, that will never happen. This is the case with the Void Shield- many types of weapons simply cannot affect you no matter how well the opponent rolls or how many of them there are. It doesn’t mater if there’s six Boltguns or six thousand, your units underneath an active Shield simply do not care. This is especially important for infantry units, which rarely enjoy such protections and often suffer badly from being able to be hurt by every weapon in the game.
Just as importantly, however, is the hyper-prevalence of Grav weapons in the current meta. Whether brought en masse as part of a Battle Company, the sudden appearance of a Skyhammer team, or “just” the fifteen Ignores Cover shots from a Hunter’s Eye Centurion squad, Grav is an extremely common sight on the top tables because of its exceptional effectiveness against almost all types of targets. The Void Shield works as a natural counter to this, protecting units from any damage from such weapons- and for expensive targets like monstrous creatures or vehicles, this is especially important. So long as we continue seeing a preponderance of Grav weapons, we can expect to keep seeing Void Shields.
On the final point, attrition, it is important to remember that all armies have to play a balancing game of different factors; units that have high firepower often have low defensive stats in compensation. For units such as these, being able to purchase additional protection- especially protection as effective as Void Shields- is a big deal, since it allows them to cover one of their weaknesses. With an average of one Shield restoring itself each turn of the game (presuming they are all down- and if they aren’t, the Generator is already doing its job) it gives such armies a way to stay functional when a battle turns into a game of attrition.
If an enemy , for example, comes in via drop pod and can shoot a model from within the 12″ range of the projected shield wouldn’t the shot(s) be resolved normally?
That immunity from grav and haywire is damn potent though. I didnt know about that. We’re just starting to use the ITC stuff around here in the Tampa area.
Also, isn’t a medium building 3 HP and not 4?
Small buildings are 3HP, medium are 4HP.
Awesome! Makes a bunker better for sure.
Yes, you only need one model to get a toe within 12″ of the building to be inside the shield and be able to freely shoot without shields getting in the way.
Armies with lots of cheap bodies will spread out over the entire protected zone to make this impossible.
The way to bring it down is with volume of shooting with S6+ weapons. In the meta it provides a break on the runaway use of grav, a balance with other more conventional weapons is needed to avoid being impotent in some match-ups.
If it were played as written.. only MODELS within 12 would benefit
It is played as written.
No that would be a house rule and one that is reasonable (and still worth it and abusable) may end up getting an ITC vote after this event. But no RAW it’s most assuredly not by model.
The case is arguable both ways, I think. The ITC’s version of it definitely makes it a lot more powerful, though.
However, I really don’t like their ruling on Markerlights with regard to it, since it essentially negates them entirely.
The ITC rulings make it an auto include in many lists. It is too powerful, and should be toned down. One good way to do this is to switch it to models instead of units for protection.
I really think the tournament community would be better served changing the rule to Models within 12 inches. Allowing units to be affected is to easily abused. It is also logically absurd when you try to visualize this massive energy shield expanding and contracting based on the movement of units under it.
Treating it as a fixed 12 inch bubble prevents a lot of the gamey manipulation of the rule. (which is a good thing)
preach it brother!
Yes.. it is a little too good at only 100pts for 3 projected shields that can reach across the board if you tail a unit back toward the VSG
There are plenty of thing which are logically absurd in the game. My personal favourite is look out sir rolls on a bullet by bullet basis. Whole list concepts depend on abuse of that one.
It’s best not to over-think any of this stuff. Just play with our models and have fun.
the bullet by bullet basis makes more sense if you consider that the battle takes place over the course of an entire day, most of the time from a narrative perspective from just before dawn into the late evening.
Every dice roll you make potentially represents hours of firing from the unit that is represented. where a commander can order his troops to stand behind him for the small arms, yet want the lackey to take the heavy fire for him.
In the same respect once a commander has been wounded he probably wants to stay out of the line of fire as much as possible.
A typical Warhammer 40k games takes place in under 15 minutes of real time.
It makes more sense to actually be closer to a 1-3 minutes. Think about how many shots can be fired by a semi-automatic in that time? Or how long it would take a flyrant to swoop around the table. Image a hawk circling twice around a soccer field is how I think of it.
You don’t typically see a sunrise/sunset happen in 1-3 minutes, or even in 15 minutes, but both of these things are accounted for in 40K (i.e. the Night Fighting rules.) It seems more sensible to assume a time scale of some number of hours.
One shot with a weapon in the tabletop game is not literally supposed to represent one shot fired by a model on the battlefield.
I agree.
Large horde units (Green Tide and such come to mind) should not be able to leave a rat tail of units under the shield and still assault the other side of the table, whule being immune to all low power weaponry.
It should be FAQ’d to read models.
The funny thing is that it usually doesn’t help green tide that much. Oh know you’re grav is useless against us now! oh wait…
Also, it takes up so much of your list with toughness value models that if you brought any anti-tank at all it works on the shield. At least that’s been my experience, some auto-cannons drop the shield and then the wyverns get to work.
Skyhammer multimelta
No mention on the gauss rule on the void shields, is this mentioned in the faq?
How does melta/ ordinance/guass/etc function in regards to a VSG?
I occasionally use a VSG against my friend’s necrons. We treat the AV12 void shield like vehicle armor. So the melta gets the additional d6 at specific range, and ordinance gets its special, and guass which wouldn’t normally be strong enough still glances on a 6.
Just so you’re clear, that’s the exact opposite of what ITC and what this article says. play however you want, but that’s not how it will be in ITC tournaments you go to.
Couple things:
1) You write that ‘hits on models outside the shield are resolved normally’ (in the context of blast/template weapons. I’m not sure I understand what this means, given that a unit protected by a VS that is hit by a blast/template weapon always only gives 1 hit on the VS (there is no ‘pool’ of hits to resolve if the shield collapses).
2) As Witchfire powers are Shooting Attacks, the VSG also affords immunity to Psychic Shriek and a number of other Witchfire powers (those not strong enough to threaten a shield).
3) In response to a comment above about getting a toe inside the 12″ range–Shooting attacks are resolved model by model (see Line of Sight), so the model or models inside the 12″ range would bypass the VS, but those models in the firing unit that are outside would still interact with the VS.
4) There are more scratch-built/converted VSGs than ‘official’ models. The dimensions of the official model are important. Conversions should be in the neighborhood of 5″ wide by 5″ deep by 9″ tall, with pillars starting at about the 4″ height (not a full LoS blocking piece of terrain by any means). The real estate on the ‘battlements’ is fairly small as well, and if any battlements are included in the conversion, they should be kept in line with the official model.
4. Problem with point number four is I made one using a picture as my guidelines since I’ve never seen the thing in real lift until LVO! I can’t blame people for having no idea how to exactly build it at all. Yes there is room for modeling for advantage and it’s obvious. But 90%+ of what I saw was just someone making a cool conversion of a model they’ve never seen…
The dimensions, and side-by-side comparisons, can be found via the google.
Yeah I agree with this.
I made an Eldar one as close to scale as I could. There is hardly any Line of Site blocking on it, but the height is about 9-9.5″ tall and about 5-6″ wide. And one platform around 4″ up. I made it as close as I can while making my VSG look good and not too cheesy.
But sometimes someone will have a cool idea and it won’t quite fit the mold of a VSG. I think that is ok as long as it doesn’t get abused too much.
^This
On point 3 : A unit as a whole is either inside or outside of the Void shield Zone dependent on whether any model in that unit is within the 12″. Nothing in the VSG rules suggests anything about resolving this one a model by model basis. The ITC FAQ on this makes perfect sense as a RAW interpretation.
It is powerful but you might notice a lack of VSG dominating the top tables at the LVO: it is not so overpowered as to destroy game balance or be any sort of auto-win. Against a poorly balanced list (e.g. only grav as heavy weapons) or unprepared player it can be a nasty shock.
Shooting attacks are resolved at the model level, thus it is possible for some models’ shooting attacks to ‘originate’ inside the 12″ range of the VS while others are outside of this range.
I appreciate that this means a unit could, itself, benefit from a VS (if being shot at)and yet have some portion of its own shooting attacks nullified by the same shield.
Shooting attacks are declared as a unit and resolved per weapon type not per model (although if every single model in your unit has a different type of weapon the distinction might not seem obvious).
In any case the VSG rule wording is reasonably clear, a unit with a model within 12″ is inside the Void Shield Zone. This possibly helps either the defender or the attacker depending on positioning.
The VSG rules are different to the rules of Line of Sight, I would just treat each in its own way rather than try to shoehorn one into the other. The rules style of 40K does tend to be “just because it says so” and this is a classic example.
A unit with a model within 12″ of a VSG is PROTECTED (sorry for caps, I don’t know how to do italics in these threads) by the VS because the rule is written such that it affects units rather than models.
Shooting, as pointed out prior, is resolved at the model level. In particular, when checking range (Step 3 of a Shooting Attack, iirc). If a model making a shooting attack against a unit protected by a VS is more than 12″ from the VSG, its shots are resolved against the VS unless/until the shields are down/the VSG is destroyed.
This is an important thing to understand about a VSG, and I mean no offense by continuing to disagree with you.
1) I should have said units, rather than models there. If you fire a blast such that it its a unit inside the shield and a unit outside the shield, the ones outside the shield will be resolved normally (as opposed to the unit inside the shield, which will “consolidate” all the hits into one.)
2) Quite true.
3) Not so. While shooting attacks are indeed calculated model-by-model, the Void Shield area is determined by unit, not by model- so even a single model from a unit being inside the Shield will negate its protection.
4) The issue with keeping to the “official” model for many people, myself included, is that the official model was released WELL after the rules for it were printed (and hence after many had made conversions) and also contradicted prior statements by GW with regards to the size of the model. Since a smaller VSG is actually a disadvantage in many cases (it protects a smaller area), I don’t think being below the “official” size is really a big problem. That thing is ENORMOUS.
I’m going to start a thread on Dakka, where we have more room/flexibility to present arguments and evidence for our positions.
Starting a thread on Dakka has never resolved any rules argument ever. That place is a toxic soup of incoherent yelling, ignorance of how the game functions, and ad hominem attacks.
The irony of using ad hominem attacks against people that use ad hominem attacks.
Please don’t assume I’m looking for resolution from Dakka. I am looking for discussion. I appreciate the ability to edit posts and be updated on what’s most recently posted in a thread (which is not available here).
Great article.
I might have heard wrong, but dring the LVO finale we saw another use for the fortification: as a scoring unit that can also block line of sight and hinder the enemy from reaching it too easily.
another concern is the interaction with barrage weapons. Seeing how the shield says stops stuff that originates outside the protected area, and barrage says counts as originating from the center of the blast marker.
I’m paraphrasing from memory so this might be more clear than i am leading on.
Any insight into this?
For the purposes of determining cover saves and allocating wounds. The shooting attack still originates from the unit with the barrage weapon.
That’s actually not true. Wounds are allocated radiating outward from the blast. Cover saves are also determined from the center of the blast marker.
As for the interaction with the VSG. If the shot originated from outside the field, it’s going to hit the field first. That part of it is no different than the direct fire weapons.
Don’t have the rules in front of me, but I don’t recall them specifically stating that blast/template weapons only cause 1 hit. I was under the impression you allocated hits to the squad being targeted, and then all those hits are transferred to the VSG shields until they are down. Thus, things like T-fire cannons would be great against the shields just due to volume of hits. I could be wrong or it could be something I missed in the ITC FAQ as well.
Its in the official GW FAQ.
Thanks, I totally spaced on looking at the Stronghold Assault FAQ
It’s kind of like spacing on your taxes, its pretty much expected to happen at one point.
Blast and template weapons that strike one or more models protected by a Void Shield will instead inflict a single hit on the Shield, regardless of the number of models that would have originally been affected- however, any hits on models outside of the Shield will still be resolved normally.
You just stated that you only need to have a single model inside the voidshield area for the whole unit to be protected. How can the models outside the area take damage? Might be a typo.
Noticed that too. I’m pretty sure that’s a typo, meant to say “Unit” or “models in units outside void shield”
Applies if two separate units are hit by the same blast, one in the shield one outside.
Not only are the rules for VSG in an abscure place, GW had the f-ing brilliant idea to only make, what, 500 of them? So if you want to use it you pretty much HAVE to scratch build one.
Obscure. It is in a published book. Just one you perhaps don’t have.
How many people have the Sisters codex, does that make their rules obscure?
Stronghold Assault is a book that most factions don’t/won’t use, barely contains any rules, and is an edition out of date. I don’t think it’s unfair to qualify it as obscure.
I mean, I _like_ Stronghold, but the only reason anyone gives half a shit about it is because of the Void Shield.
I like the Wall of Martyrs Bunker too.
I guess my experience with the VSG is a little less wonderful. Every game I played at the Toledo GT I had enemy units inside the shield by turn 2 if not turn 1 via Sky Hammer or some other get in your face shenanigans (like shunting). I could see how a gun line army would love this thing but anything that wants to move around and take board control has no need for it. Also with the abundance of drop pods if you don’t have a lot of models you will always leave gaps to be exploited and fail to reap the benefits. In that reguard I view the Skyshield as a better all around choice as it can’t be destroyed and is easier to defend. So you always have that 4++, it doesn’t matter how close they are.
Certainly not every army wants the Void Shield; however, it’s certainly useful to a lot of them.
Good anti-Deep Strike defenses (Interceptor, Coteaz, blocking off the area, etc) can make it very hard for the enemy to get inside your Shield.
I’ve never really seen a use of a Skyshield that impressed me. Sure, it gives a 4++, but the enemy can get it as well (and it’s much harder to stop them than it is with a VSG) and the terrain itself is a huge, unwieldy thing.
Something to note is a model with a melta weapon within 6″ or ordnance weapon shooting an enemy within the shields won’t get their bonus die against the shields as the shields are not vehicles.
Not sure if this works on tank hunter or not?
Anything that specifies “against enemy vehicles” So that’s melta, ordinance, haywire, grav, gauss,and I think rending? All of those don’t work on it because it’s not a vehicle.
Correct.
Tank Hunters has no effect either.
Worth noting that the “sunder” special rule still works vs shields.
Hence the abundance of quad guns at the LVO
I don’t believe this is the case. Anything that works on vehicles will work on a Void Shield because the Void Shield is treated like a building and buildings, except where specified otherwise, follow all the rules of vehicles. You have to assume that, otherwise there is no way to know how to resolve hits against it.
Melta specifically does not work, however, because you cannot measure range to the Void Shield itself (since it has no physical representation); however, Tank Hunter, Ordnance, and other rules will affect them normally.
Not saying I disagree, but the ITC faq specifically calls out tank hunter as non-functional against the shield.
Also haywire not working doesn’t make sense to me. If it works against vehicles, why not against the void shield?
Huh, I had missed that part. But yeah, I don’t understand the rationale for which things don’t work against the Shield.
The shields themselves have an AV but are neither vehicles nor buildings. Special rules that activate against those classes of models do not activate against void shields. If you start out thinking “it’s just like a vehicle but…” you lead yourself into confusion. Currently there are 3 classes of things with an AV in the game
Vehicles
Building
Void Shields
Vehicles and buildings are largely similar, Void Shields have fewer rules interactions in common.
Armourbane and Sunder work fine because they work against anything with an AV.
This is why this article was such a good idea. The ITC FAQ is pretty spot-on for them (yes, even the latest marker light clarification) but people struggle to understand them because they are less like vehicles than assumed.
>The shields themselves have an AV but are neither vehicles nor buildings
The thing is, this is a meaningless statement. The ONLY rules for resolving how to damage something with an Armor Value are those of vehicles (as the building rules explicitly reference them.) If you aren’t following the vehicle rules, there is no way to determine what happens when a hit strikes the Shield. You can’t say “you just roll for armor penetration as normal” because the “as normal” part is only ever talked about in the context of vehicles- so if you say that it isn’t a vehicle and isn’t affected by hits in the way that a vehicle is, then you are left with nothing.
I think the rationale is clear enough. Perhaps because I work in IT the concept of a NULL unit type is easier for me to pick up. In any case I always thought the name Void Shield fitted quite well – it is a null object with an AV value that acts as a shield. Any rule that would rely on a Void Shield being any unit type – or even a unit or model – does not apply.
The choice to put the rules on glancing/penetrating AV values in the Vehicles chapter is convenient 99% of the time but I would not disagree with you that putting it in the Basic Rules would have been clearer when they added in a non-vehicle with an AV.
>Perhaps because I work in IT the concept of a NULL unit type is easier for me to pick up
But again: unless you use the rules for vehicles, there is no way to process what happens when something hits the shield. It’s not a matter of a Null unit type, but rather a Null _rule_. If you declare it to not function like a vehicle or a building, there are no rules to cover how it functions.
I will try one last time to see if I can come up with the right form of words to explain.
The projected void shield has no model, nor is it a unit. It neither has nor needs a unit type. Similarly it has neither hull points nor wounds. Any special rules that would work against specific unit types will fail just like some telepathy powers are useless against anything lacking a leadership characteristic. Similarly anything that would do wounds or inflict hull points damage is ineffective because it has neither.
The method for knocking down a Void Shield is in its rules and I have never known anyone to find it hard to understand.
The only characteristic that a projected void shield has is an AV. Special rules that work against AV with no other requirements, such as Sunder and Armourbane, work against it normally.
>The only characteristic that a projected void shield has is an AV.
Except that, in the absence of the Vehicle unit type, _there is no way to determine what an Armor Value means_. You have a S7 hit on AV12. What do you do? Unless you reference the vehicle rules, there is no way to say- even the building rules make explicit use of the systems for Armor Value found in the vehicle section.
Now, we can intuit that the same system might perhaps apply to a non-vehicle entity that possesses an Armor Value… but this presumption is in no way supported by the actual rules of the game. Assuming that a Void Shield follows all of the rules for vehicles except for the rules that we don’t want is absurd, because if we are going to pick-and-choose what rules we get to apply in such a case, we can create any end result we want without concern for our starting point.
The AV12 means exactly what it says in the rule; no more, no less.
Clearly I am not going to be able to explain this to you over the internet, over a beer one day perhaps but I’m the wrong side of the pond for that to ever be likely. I can only suggest you stick to what it says in the FAQ because the person writing those entries groks it.
Well, give it a shot: what does AV12 mean? Explain to me how to resolve a hit against the Void Shield without in any way referencing the vehicle rules.
The void shield is a building for sure, but the void shields are not I believe. I might be wrong here, but I think the shield are just an armour 12 shield and not classed as either a building or vehicle?
I don’t like the rules in general, and it doesn’t help that ITC keeps FAQing it in the most positive ways possible.
I don’t really feel like it adds anything to the game; it’s an overpowered gimme for many, many armies. I feel like if more people had access to the actual model, you’d see them lots more.
The original intention was to be powerful, but very much offset by the limited production run, which would drive it into near obscurity, outside of very friendly games. I’m actually surprised ITC allows them at all, given the weird rules interactions it creates (center of a large blast hits a unit inside a shield, with the hole inside the shield radius, but also hits models outside; how is it resolved?) and the rarity of the actual model itself.
>center of a large blast hits a unit inside a shield, with the hole inside the shield radius, but also hits models outside; how is it resolved?
All hits on models in units inside the Shield will be “consolidated” into a single hit on the Shield, while any hits on units not protected by the Shield will be resolved normally.
Love my spore field generator!
Having the shield bubble be just models within 12″ would be fine for me.
Haywire not affecting the shields is pretty silly. In every other sci-fi universe EMP attacks (e.g., Haywire) affect shields. Grav not doing anything makes sense because the shield has no mass. But high output electricity attacks should destabilize the shield in proportion to the energy of the attack. I get that the shield is a “building” from a rules perspective, but from a theme perspective that is ridiculous.
Especially since Haywire is the BRB’s example of attacks that affect buildings in exactly the same way that they do vehicles.
I’ve gotta say, the number of people who said they’d be bringing less Grav in the future after dealing with mine at TSHFT made me happy 🙂
2 Thumbs Way Up!
I just won a teeny-tiny local tourney with an Eldar CaD and a VSG; held off 6 Grav Cents in game one, a Knight Acheron backed by AdMech Breachers (the ones with the Haywire guns) and Dark Raven dudes with twin-linked plasma guns on bikes in game two, and a Storm Surge + OSC + Retribution Cadre in game three….
Love me some VSG.
Very very good article. Thank you abused
I’ve been eyeing a VSG. Thanks for the detailed explanation!
How about markerlight hits. Negated to the shield and then gone?
That’s how the ITC currently rules it.
There were some rulings in the Final Game of the LVO that bugged me quite a bit
1) The Void Shield Generator is a “Claimed Building”, and thus is a unit in the controlling player’s army, and thus gives up 1st blood, kill points, and can control objectives.
>This one is RAW. I don’t like what it does to the game, but it is correct. Now that Fortifications are no longer placed before objective Markers, I can place my correctly Modeled VSG directly on top of an objective Marker. The Base is 6″ Square. Objective markers are usually 40 mm. That means if you can’t come within 1″ (See #3) then a properly centered VSG is not contestable unless it is killed. That seems like a bad idea.
2) Because you cannot embark on it, the Void Shield Generator can never under any circumstances be claimed by the opponent.
>This one is highly problematic. It does seem strictly RAW. However, it would also seem to be a complete failure as a RAI reading. Is there anyone that thinks GW meant the VSG, and other Impassable buildings to be unclaimable by the opponent?
3) Because it is a unit in the controlling player’s army, the opponent can’t move within 1″ of it. But they can move onto the battlements, because “Battlements”
>This is wrong. You can’t have both things. If you are standing on the Battlements you are within 1″ of the building. The 1″ restriction is a big problem for gameplay (see #1), and as above a clear failure of RAI. Beyond that, it means you basically can’t charge any enemy unit on the battlements because it would mean more or less charging the VSG as well.
The rules for this thing need to be cleaned up for the ease of tournament play. The easiest solution is to make it a non-claimed (or claimable) building.
I would be with you on #3; ITC specifically allows you to move onto the battlements, so it seems like you should be able to move within 1″ of the building itself as well. However, it’s definitely a bit of an awkward situation, as no answer you come up with will be 100% satisfactory.
the 1″ rule is ignored when assaulting a unit, therefore you could still assault a unit on the battlements even if you normally could not get closer than 1″ to the building.
I wasn’t positive how this would work. The problem is not only do you have to assault while moving with in 1″ of it, you have to be BTB with it.
Unless your unit is jump or jet pack (or skimmer or jetbike or etc) I don’t believe there’s a way to assault onto the battlements- battlements can normally only be embarked onto by going through the building (which does not allow you to assault.)
You can walk up the side of a building to the battlements assuming you have enough movement. it is just like moving to the upper level of ruins.
The VSG is interesting, because the GW model for it has 2 levels of battlements.
I’m building one for my Tyranids, and I’m curious, if a unit covered by the void shield, is within a venomthrope spore cloud, does the void shield get a coversave? What if I park the venomthropes next to the generator itself?
They ruled that void shields don’t get the ork invul save to shooting in their battle reports (the only source of a ruling that I’ve seen anyway) so I’m assuming cover saves would be null as well.
No. You need to be a unit with the Tyranid faction in order to gain that cover save. The VSG is not. It’s a unit in your Tyranid army, but its faction is not Tyranids
Additionally, a Projected Void Shield (or any other type of Void Shield) is not a unit and cannot benefit from a save. The building itself can do so in some cases, but the Shields never will.
If I manage to land my Ironclad or Leviathan inside the shield, It will be tough to decide what to shoot at, the generator or the cowards next to it! Of course I wanna make one, all the light up customization possibilities are too good.
So if you want to destroy the VSG you have to take down 7 hull points (in essence). 3 AV12 glances/pens (don’t roll on building damage table) followed by 4 AV13 glances/pens (do roll on building damage charts). Is that correct?
assuming you do it all in one turn yes. Though really I wouldn’t try that.
It’s very rarely worth it to destroy the Generator itself.
Will the void shield of the big mek stompa get an invul from a kff ?
No.