How to play Other Tricksters Shard in Doomfire Warlocks Bus

[Warpez]

The Other Tricksters Shard states that models in base contact (friends and foes) must re-roll successful ward saves. I play a Dreadlord with OTS in a Warlock bus. What are all the details of how this works? Here are the scenarios.

1.) vs. Shooting - the shooting rules say that you allocate the hits to the unit but don't mention the case of mixed armor saves. With OTS in the unit you could have up to 5 Warlocks touching your Dreadlord. These 5 dreadlords have a 4+ ward that must be re-rolled while the other Warlocks in the unit do not. How should I be playing this? If I had to house rules it it seems fair to allocate hits against non-reroll warlocks and reroll warlocks. Tempalted Warmachines are straightforward because they allocate hits.

2.) vs. Magic - For magic missiles it has the same problem as shooting. Template magic is straightforward because they allocate individual hits. For miscasts I guess you could randomize whether the D3 warlocks are in fact re-roll ward save warlocks.

3.) in Close Combat - When the opponent allocates attacks he probably needs to call out that he is attacking the model's that have re-rollable ward saves. Impact hits and Stomp have the same problem as shooting.

What a mess, how would you guys play it?

[Warpez]

Discussed this with several people and read and re-read the rules. This is our current conclusion:

Shooting is not distributed when characters are in the unit until you go below 5 rank-and-file models. So until that time, the OTS effect is not in play for shooting/magic missile/stomp/impact hits. Once you are below 5 rank-and-file models hits becomes distributed and at that time if a hit is distributed to a specific model that is in base contact with a OTS then they do re-roll successful ward saves.

Miscast hits are not allocated so the OTS doesn't apply.

In CC, opponent has to allocate attacks to the model's with a different save if they want to go after them. If they don't allocate and say on the unit, then its assumed to be on the 4+ ward guys, not the OTS guys.

Maybe a better way to state is, "models in base contact (friends and foes) must re-roll successful ward saves for hits allocated to them.

[Dalamar]

Against shooting, make sure you read shooting rules very closely.
Hits are allocated on per-model basis until each model has been hit once, repeat with more hits.

The owner of the unit allocates those hits so say you have 5 warlocks and ots master on the end of the unit:

4 hits - you can allocate all 4 to unaffected models
5 hits - you must allocate one hit to the ots affected warlock (since master has same troop type he can't be hit at all due to 5+ rank and file models.

Etc.

Same against non template spells and stomps or anything else that may be allocated as shooting
In close combat your opponent needs to specify, but some models might be in position only to attack ots affected models, remind your opponent of that.

Short answer - don't take ots with warlocks, it's a bad idea.

[Warpez]

Can you give me a page number where it says to allocate hits? Page 99, covering characters and getting shot at is the only place it talks about allocating hits.

I have read them carefully. I thought hits were allocated too but then read the rules and couldn't find this anywhere. Wounds are allocated after you fail saving throws and you remove models from the back rank first. Hits are not allocated. The only time you allocate hits is when a character is present and there are less than 5 rank-and-file models in the unit.

[Dalamar]

Essentially, the game doesn't specify what to do when unit consists of models with different defenses/abilities (like say, 40k does make you use majority).

In this scenario you're faced with two choices:
Use character rules for any model that is in some way different from the rest of the unit
or
Stick to what's written and risk being seen WAACy (which is not necessarily a bad thing depending on your area)

Where I play we've accepted that if a model is substantially different from the rest of the unit (like say being affected by the ots) then it's grounds for granting him temporary character rules to fairly resolve attacks.