A Small Rules Rabbit Hole: Who Is Actually Behind Terrain?
We had one of those very classic Warhammer hobby moments recently: a short rules question turned into a surprisingly interesting discussion about terrain, line of sight, and what the wording is really trying to say.
This time the topic was the rule for being behind a terrain feature.
The rule that started it
Stas pulled out the relevant wording:
When a unit is targeted by an attack, the unit is considered to be behind a terrain feature if it is impossible to draw a straight line from a model in the attacking unit to a model in the target unit without that line passing across that terrain feature. Ignore parts of the terrain feature within the attacking unit’s combat range for the purposes of determining if the target is behind that terrain feature.
And that one extra sentence immediately made the whole thing more interesting.
So it is not just about standing on terrain
Our first takeaway was that this is not only about whether somebody is physically on a terrain piece. The important part is how the line is drawn between the attacking unit and the target unit.
As Stas pointed out, this seems to mean that if you are standing right next to an obscuring terrain feature, the enemy unit you are targeting might no longer count as being “wholly behind” it from your perspective, because the relevant part of the terrain close to your attackers gets ignored.
That creates a very specific situation:
- the target is still on the far side of the terrain,
- but the attackers are pressed right up against it,
- so for the purpose of the attack, the target may no longer benefit in the same way as if the attackers were further back.
Why this actually feels pretty thematic
We liked Stas’ interpretation because it also makes sense narratively.
As Michał mentioned the day before, you can imagine the attacking models briefly leaning out from behind the wall, ruin, or obstacle to take the shot. That mental image fits the rule surprisingly well. It is one of those cases where the game abstraction and the cinematic version line up nicely.
The weird edge case we immediately found
Of course, once you start thinking about terrain rules for more than thirty seconds, somebody will find the awkward example.
End3r brought up a funny one: if we are standing just on the opposite side of a wall, very close to an enemy unit, does that suddenly mean the enemy is not behind that terrain relative to us?
Even if the wall is absurdly large.
Even if it is, as he put it, basically 100 meters wide, and we are both standing exactly in the middle of it.
That is the kind of example that never appears in official videos, but somehow always appears in real gaming conversations five minutes after reading the rule.
The real question: what is “wholly behind” doing here?
The discussion then narrowed down to the most practical rules question:
Is “wholly behind” only relevant for the +1 to hit rolls bonus?
That is the part we wanted to pin down, because in actual games that is what matters most: not just what sounds logical, but what exactly changes on the table.
At this stage, our conversation was more about interpreting the wording than about reaching a final courtroom-grade ruling. But it was a good reminder that terrain rules often hide their complexity in one tiny sentence.
Why we enjoy these conversations anyway
Honestly, this is part of the fun.
A lot of our hobby chat is painting, list building, and planning games, but every now and then we hit a rules interaction that sends us into full detective mode. We pull quotes, test examples, invent increasingly cursed wall scenarios, and try to figure out what the designers intended.
And even when we do not end with a perfectly final answer, we usually come away with a better shared understanding for the next game.
If nothing else, we now have a new visual in our heads: warriors carefully peeking out from behind an absurdly wide wall to deny someone a terrain benefit.
Warhammer rules discussions are beautiful like that.
Have you had similar terrain-rule debates lately? We are always a little impressed by how often the smallest paragraph in the rulebook creates the biggest table-side discussion.