Ogniem i Mieczem - By Fire and Sword

Most hills are ones with a ridge line. If a unit stands on the reverse slope of a hill it presumably cannot be seen from the opposite side. However if an enemy unit approaches the crest the rules seem to say it cannot advance within 2 cm and hence if it has to stop at this point then neither unit can see each other to shoot or charge! Is it reasonable to assume that as they have stopped at 2 cm they must be able to see each other over the crest as otherwise why would they stop?

This is kind of grey area, am I right? Are there any regulations on hills blocking line of sight for a climbing unit?

I play in a way, that I assume that a base is on the hill when it is fully on a hill - disregarding actual sculpt of the terrain - it really makes all the movement and such easier.
If a base/unit is on the hill it is visible. If it is still climbing i would say that it is not visible to units on the other side of the hill.

This actually bit us during our last game. I tried looking everywhere in the book for LOS rules for hills, without finding even a mention. This is a major omission as there are two mutually exclusive ways of determining LOS over slopes:

1. Traditional method: Since the terrain scale is much smaller than the figure scale (1:700 vs 1:100), you can usually see the top of the figures behind a hill crest even though they would be hidden in reality. Whereas buildings and trees usually are in figure scale, making hills figure scale in height but terrain scale in width would be impractical or even impossible (e.g. Napoleonic games with 1"=100 yds scale). These rules often have convoluted procedures for calculating LOS comparing the height of each unit and obstacles in between, or the simpler method of just measuring line of side from the base instead of the figures.

2. "True" line of sight: This method, made popular by GW (40K 5th ed) and used in some historical games like FOW, states that a unit is in LOS if you can see part of the figure. This means every tree counts as a single obstacle, instead of a forest blocking LOS through it. (For a discussion of why many thinks this is a bad idea, read here, here and here.)

So, could we get an official clarification of which of these methods (or any others) should be used?

I do not know if you have new Small Rulebook (aka Players Rulebook (?) ). There is a passage at the beginning of Terrain section (Polish rulebook, page 70, I hope english has more or less the same page numbers ):

We divide obstacles into two categories: vertical (eg. houses, hill slopes, etc.) and horizontal. [...]
We say that enemy unit is in LOS if we can track true LOS from perspective of our troop [eg. GW-like rule - my comment]:
1) in case of vertical obstacles: any part of the base [not figures on it - my comment]
2) [...]

There is also a rule that says (when any doubts) to discuss with your oponent before the battle the status of all obstacles LOS / crossing (page 70 - Terrain and LOS, page 74 - Obstacles, second paragraph about crossing).

I hope this will help

Thanks, the Gamer's rulebook is on order awaiting the release of the Task Force rules. But I have the PDF, and if there haven't been many changes before publication is it indeed mentioned on p. 70, although sparsely.



Which I'm interpreting as you will have to measure from the heads of the shooter to the base of the target. This means that in some cases units on top of a hill will be able to shoot at units below, but they can't shoot back. I imagine a lot of heads will start spinning when this becomes a regular tactic.

Btw, the rule about agreeing beforehand what constitues cover only applies to horizontal cover ("such as walls, fences, and ditches"). This seems to be a synonym for obstacles ("include all kinds of fences, walls or narrow ditches").

I would always discuss all terrain with my opponent before the game, make sure you both know how each terrain piece plays.