Does Take Up change the source of a model being destroyed? For example, the standard in a unit of Stormblade Legionnaires is destroyed by an enemy attack while under Wolfe’s feat. If the Wolfe player uses take up, does that change the model from being destroyed by an enemy attack and therefore ineligible to trigger his feat?
Here is the specific wording: If this model is destroyed, you can choose a trooper in this unit within 1" of it to be destroyed instead. Remove that trooper from the table instead of this model. This model has the same number of unmarked damage boxes as the chosen trooper.
“Traditionally” it has been ruled that “Take Up” destroys the model, and not the enemy attack, thus effects that trigger on the attacking model destroying a model would not trigger.
I do not see a reason why the past rulings would change, as these parts of the core rules have not changed.
At some point I hope we can move beyond citing unverifiable past rulings that were made using now-unknowable rationale.
New edition. Fresh reading with fresh eyes: why does Take Up destroy the model instead of the attack? What section of the MK IV rulebook can be used to justify that?
How is this different from, say, Shield Guard? Using the same argument as for Take Up, why would the Take Up rule own the destruction of the model, but the Shield Guard rule not somehow become the source of damage?
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Chuck/et al., if the answer is “the model is destroyed by Take Up”, can you provide the rationale for this so we have it in written, reference-able form?
The logic in previous rulings is that the model that is destroyed has not been targeted or hit by an enemy attack. Since it is destroyed only because of the ability Take Up it isn’t considered to have been destroyed by the attacking model, it’s destroyed by Take Up.
This is the same logic for when Alexia 1 destroys Thralls to prevent damage IIRC.
It’s effectively the same as something like Tough or Inhuman Resolve. If an attack disabled a model with Tough and they pass their Tough check they aren’t destroyed by the attack and no abilities on the attacker that trigger off of destroying an enemy model takes place. In this case it’s basically the same as saying the model with Take Up makes a Tough check, stopping the attack from destroying them, but then you also have to destroy another model. The attack sequence stops when the model with Take Up avoids being destroyed by the attack.
I’m not an authority of course, but that’s how I remember the logic working.
It is a bit difficult to refer to rulings when the old forums have been archived and / or removed.
I think the first instance of this was regarding whether Self Sacrifice stops Berserk and Sprint on a Warpwolf Stalker, and we can still see a link to the original (now no longer present) infernal ruling on Warmachine University.
To summarize, all the rules that affect this interaction (whether basic rules or model specific rules) have not changed since the time of the first ruling.
Thus this will not be solved without a ruling, as the unclarity remains the same as in the previous two editions.
As to the nature of the unclarity:
the attacking model does not directly destroy the model
without the initial attack of the attacking model, the model destroyed would not have been destroyed, thus it is “indirectly” destroying it
the model using Take Up is also destroyed due to its own ability, thus it is not 100% clear who or what actually destroys the model
The only rationale available is that Take Up does not say that the attacking model destroys
the model that used Take Up, just that it is destroyed instead. This can be read that the ability Take Up destroys it. But as said above, if it were so clear, we would not have needed an Infernal Ruling in the first place.
Hi! So to be clear if I were to destroy a model while Illari’s Feat was on but that model used Take Up, Howl of the Wolf would not trigger since the model in Borisyuk’s battlegroup did not do the destroying?
Hmm. Intuitively “take up” would seem to refer to another model picking up the weapon from a downed model’s corpse - the rule even talks about having the same number of boxes as the destroyed model, implying that it “is” the destroyed model, just with a different loadout because it “took it up” from that model’s corpse.
Like, imagine a unit with Shield Guard. Grunt A has 5 health, and Grunt B has 3. Grunt A gets hit, but Grunt B shield-guards the shot, and is destroyed. Grunt A still has 5 health.
Now with Take-Up, Grunt A gets hit, and then takes 5+ damage, reducing him from 5 to 0 health. However, instead, Grunt B is destroyed, but Grunt A is left at 3 health instead of the 5 it used to have. So Grunt A and B have swapped their health values of 0 and 3. Clearly this is because “Grunt A” is the model that was formerly Grunt B, it’s just stepped over and grabbed the gun from the former Grunt A’s corpse.
So from a “realism” perspective it doesn’t make sense to me to say that the attack didn’t destroy a model. But hey, if the developers want Take-Up to have the additional advantage of shutting down some abilities like Swift-Hunter, then fine.
Post‐thread-closed‐experimental-edit: I suppose it could also avoid some issues with measuring distances from destroyed models if the destroyed model is not the one targetted by the original attack, and that sort of funkiness? I can’t think of an example off the top of my head, but I can see how it might have been judged better to do it this way.
