Eyeless Sight, Sprays, Forests, and You

Add the POW, carry the SPD, then drop the CMD?  So confused.

Last night at the FLGS there arose a question about whether a model with Eyeless Sight (say Typhon) and a spray could use that spray to hit something more than three inches deep in a forest.  Having seen some forum post saying you can spray as far as you like into forests, thanks to how sprays interact with Eyeless Sight, I've been playing it that way since.  (To be fair I did take a look in the rules to see if things worked as claimed and it seemed that they did, but then I've been wrong before.  See: Bulldoze and Slipstream, plus others I'm forgetting.)  I'll state here that the combination doesn't make a lot of sense.  Whether or not you can see through the trees should have little effect on how far your fire/buckshot/whatever travels in said trees.  Since my opponent and I disagreed on how it worked we played around it, but with the footnote to check on the particulars later to see how things fall out.  This post is that fall out.  First some quotes from the book of rules, specifically the softcover of Prime Mk. 2.



Eyeless Sight (p. 34) - "This model ignores cloud effects and forests when determining line of sight.  This model ignores concealment and Stealth when making attacks."

Spray Attacks (p. 60) - "A model under the spray template cannot be hit by the attack if the attacker's line of sight to it is completely blocked by terrain."

Forests (p. 88) - "When drawing line of sight to or from a point within a forest, the line of sight can pass through up to 3" of forest without being blocked, but anything more blocks it.  When a model outside of a forest attempts to draw line of sight to another point outside of a forest, the forest blocks line of sight to anything beyond it.  Thus, a model can see 3" into or out of a forest but not completely through one regardless of how thick it is."

Sprays work on the attacker's line of sight (LoS).  Because forests block LoS past 3", sprays also stop working after 3" of forest (see: Bile Thralls).  This all makes sense.  When you add in Eyeless Sight, which ignores forests (and clouds) while determining LoS, then it gets a little wonky.  Sprays stop working when terrain (forests) block the attacker's LoS, so models with Eyeless Sight get the full range on their sprays even when spraying into woods because Eyeless Sight stops the woods from blocking their LoS.  (Clouds don't stop sprays from working, they just stop a model from being targeted [which Eyeless Sight also ignores.])

Digging around for a bit in the rules forums produced a couple threads on this topic, but there's an issue here as well.  While there are Infernals popping up in them, they don't specifically address the interaction of the rules under discussion here.  Other posters do though and while the Infernals don't correct them on that interaction but do correct them on other items in the threads, I'm assuming (dangerous) that the lack of correction is because the train of thought presented is correct.  It's very possible that there is a thread with an Infernal explicitly confirming that Eyeless Sight sprays go their full distance through woods and that I just haven't found that particular thread yet.  That said, I've found a number of threads that all follow the same logic, which is enough circumstantial evidence to convince me.  My evidence is as such:

• This thread, notably posts 3, 4, and 14.
• This other thread, which is short enough that it all applies but no Infernals.
• This other other thread, notably posts 17 and 18 but again without Infernals.
• This final thread (for now), posts 9, 11, 20.  It meanders a bit into whether or not it makes sense for the rules to interact as they do.  The final post, 34, has an Infernal effectively quoting the rules for Eyeless Sight and sprays and saying they ignore forests (and clouds) without explicitly saying it in so many words.

Despite having just done so for five paragraphs, my intent here isn't to rules lawyer, though that's probably the result anyway.  Warmahordes is a game full of precise terms and their resulting interactions.  For instance, a Raek can't leap while charging because the leap requires a Full Advance, which a charge is not.  For another instance, take a look for my above-referenced misreading of various rules (Slipstream, Bulldoze) and how it took someone pointing out what I was doing wrong followed by a number of re-readings before I got a good handle on how things work.  This is another case in that vein.  I'm a big believer in preparing locally to play on larger stages, whether or not you ever go on to those larger stages, by playing lists and casters you're likely to see in a tournament setting and by using all the tricks in your bag.  You do this not to win (though that is a nice side-effect), but so that your fellow locals don't get caught with their pants down when, for instance, someone charges a Carnivean up and sprays their caster that they thought was safe behind a forest (or cloud).  EV played a large part in making me the player I am today because he ran nasty lists full of nasty models (read: Bile Thralls) that made me learn how to deal with those threats effectively.  It's a boon that I want to pass along when I can, even if it does make me feel a bit pompous when I'm passing it along to people who have far more experience than I do.