Flame and Transports

[Feral]

The rules state that when using the flame template it cannot touch friendly models. If you are using a flame template out of a Chimera for example how would you shoot it? Since you are shooting out of the back hatch it would overlap the Chimera which is a seperate unit or would you just measure from the hull. Any of the other weapons would be measured from the hatch and if you were shooting at a unit in front it would gain like three inches if from the hull. What is the common practice thanks.

[BrotherAlpharius]

In practice friends and I play that you place the narrow end of the template touches the hatch so the range is fair but we assume that the flamer toting guy standing out of the top hatch is high enough to direct his jet of flame clear of the vehicle. I'm sitting behind a desk right now and I reckon I could hit just about anywhere in the room using the jet of water from a hosepipe without getting the desk wet - similar logic. Admittedly, firing forward from the hatch of a chimera over the turret when there's a guy sitting in the cupola manning the pintle weapon seems a bit dodgy.

[Milchmann]

I always thought you cannot fire to the front with a flamer weapon from a top hatch - only to the sides and back. When doing so, you measure from the vehicles hull, though. That's how everyone I ever played against did it and I have kind of adapted...

[Strata]

For everything i've ever seen, its been measured out from the side/back of the hull

[DarkLink]

This has come up on numerous forums before. The best RAW solution I've heard is that the template is placed at the edge of the hull, rather than at the firing port, due to the following quote.

BRB: "Instead of rolling to hit, place the template so that the narrow end is touching the base of the model firing it..."

All told, it seems this is obviously something that got overlooked when GW wrote the 5th rules. There isn't a clean cut answer with how to handle this situation, but there is enough there to let you still use flamer templats from transports without have to worry much about people accusing you of cheating. And if they do, pack up and find another game.

[Nabterayl]

I agree with DarkLink. Otherwise you end up with things like Immolators that can't fire their flamers at all, which can't be allowed to be the right answer.

[sorri]

I've always played that you measure from the hatch (if firing from a vehicle), and measure from the end of the heavy flamer nozzle for Immolators.