Look Out, Sir! and the 5-Model Rule — One of Those Tiny Rules That Changes Everything
We had one of those very familiar hobby moments recently: someone reads one line from the rules, someone else panics that they can’t read with comprehension anymore, and five minutes later the whole group is deep into edge cases, templates, and very specific anti-doom-diver theory.
And honestly? We love these moments.
This time the discussion was about targeting characters in units in Warhammer: The Old World, and specifically how the 5 rank-and-file models threshold interacts with Look Out, Sir!
The question
The key bit we were looking at was essentially this:
if there are five or more rank and file models of the same troop type
Which immediately led us into the classic rules spiral:
- if there are fewer than 5 models, can you shoot the character?
- if there are 5 or more, can you not target them directly?
- and where exactly does Look Out, Sir! fit into all of this?
The conclusion we reached
Our reading was:
- If there are fewer than 5 rank-and-file models of the same troop type, the character can be targeted.
- If there are 5 or more, the character cannot be targeted directly in the normal way.
- Look Out, Sir! matters for situations where the character is still at risk indirectly — for example from a template attack.
So the rule interaction seems to be less about “you can always shoot the character, but they get a save” and more about:
- with enough bodies around them, you usually can’t pick them as a target at all;
- but if something like a template catches them anyway, then Look Out, Sir! comes into play.
The example that made it click for us
The example from the chat was perfect.
If Michał had a Hobgoblin Khan inside a unit of Sneaky Gits, and Ender was blasting them with a Gyrocopter flame/template attack, then that’s the kind of situation where Look Out, Sir! would matter.
That helped us separate two different ideas that are easy to blur together:
- direct targeting restrictions, and
- protection against indirect/template-style danger.
And once we looked at it that way, the whole thing suddenly made much more sense.
Why this is a good rule to remember
This feels like one of those small rules that can massively affect how games play out.
It also explains why the reaction in chat quickly became:
so this is basically an anti-doom-diver rule
Which, honestly, is a pretty funny way to remember it.
If your group is learning or re-learning The Old World, this is exactly the kind of detail worth bookmarking. A lot of confusion comes from mixing up:
- when a character can be chosen as a target,
- and when a character can still be hit by something else.
Those are not the same thing.
Our hobby tip here
When you run into a rule like this, don’t stop at the first sentence. Check it in three layers:
- Can the model be targeted directly?
- Can the model still be hit indirectly?
- If yes, what defensive rule applies then?
That sounds obvious, but it saves a surprising amount of table-side confusion.
Final thought
This was a very short rules exchange, but exactly the kind that sticks in the brain because it clears up a bigger pattern.
So our takeaway is simple:
- under 5 models: the character may be targetable;
- 5 or more models: usually no direct targeting;
- templates and similar effects: that’s where Look Out, Sir! starts doing real work.
If nothing else, we now have a new mental label for it: the anti-doom-diver rule.
If your group had the same confusion, welcome to the club — we’ve been there too.