A selection of random questions.

[Night System]

These have all come up recently in my local group. After coming to the impasse and a good 5 minutes of discussion, we quickly solutioned/4+ed it out when the BRB didn't have definitive answers (as far as we could tell). So hopefully, some clarification would be very helpful.

On to the questions.

1) Balthasar Gelt in the new empire book. Has a 2+ ward save vs shooting attacks. When hit with a Magic Missile, the hits are distributed as shooting, does this mean the 2+ stands against the shot? Or does he have to rely on his usual 6++ ward?

2) Steadfast. What counts as a rank for the purposes of being steadfast? A chariot charged into a unit of archers. At the end of the round there were 7 archers left, with 5 in the front and 2 in the back. The player with the archers argued that they were steadfast as they had 1 rank of 5 while the chariot had none. But the chariot player thought only the rank after the first counted. Which one is right?

3) Breath Weapons. Normally, you are only allowed to fire 1 breath weapon a turn. The chaos dragon allows you to fire both breath weapons in the same turn. You can have a chaos lord with streaming corruption riding the dragon allowing the model to have up to 3 breath weapons. Since the chaos lord and the dragon are two entities, does that allow all 3 breath weapons to be fired at once?

I am sure I have forgotten one. Regardless, thank you in advance! :)

[Wildeybeast]

1) I would say no. Nowhere does it say that MM actually are shooting attacks and they do not need to roll to hit.
2) This is correct. For combat res it specifies extra ranks after the first, for steadfast it simply says more ranks than the enemy, in this case 1 vs none.
3) It's one breath weapon a game, not turn (unless you have a rule that says otherwise, I don't know how Chaos dragons work). Since both the rider and mount are allowed to fire seperately and are seperate entities, then yes you can use breath weapons from each in a single turn.

[Night System]

Thank you for the answers they are useful.

To clarify the dragon problem. Rulebook says each breath attack can only be used once per game, but if the model has more than one break attack it can only use 1 a turn.

The WoC army book counteracts this by saying "the chaos dragon has 2 breath attacks with the following profile.... .... which may be used in the same turn"

Hence the problem as to how the chaos lord with breath weapon fits into this.

[Wildeybeast]

I see. So it gets two breath atttacks for the whole game and can use them both in the same turn (or indeed seperate turns). In which case you could fire both dragon breath weapons and the rider one in the same turn. Nasty.

[cerebros]

1) Balthasar Gelt in the new empire book. Has a 2+ ward save vs shooting attacks. When hit with a Magic Missile, the hits are distributed as shooting, does this mean the 2+ stands against the shot? Or does he have to rely on his usual 6++ ward?

Well first off, it's only a 3+ Ward Save versus shooting. Magic Missiles are not shooting attacks.

Generally the easy way to resolve this is to ask yourself:

1) Does the attack take place in the shooting phase?
2) Does the attack take place as part of a stand and shoot reaction?

If not then the majority of the time, it's not a shooting attack. Exceptions off the top of my head (as I can't be bothered to get up and pluck my BRB off the shelf right now) being: special attacks that take place in the shooting phase that are not shooting attacks (Banshee/Varghulf scream), a spell that specifically says in its description that it is a shooting attack (of which I am not sure there are any off the top of my head).

When something says it is "distributed like a shooting attack" it means just that - you work out what is hit in the same way as for a shooting attack. This does not make it a shooting attack - it's simply the writer referring you to an established rules mechanic for distributing hits rather than duplicating text by describing how to distribute hits from chariots and magic missiles (and other things that distribute hits in the same way as for shooting)