Blast, Gets Hot! and Preferred Enemy

[The Man They Call Jayne]

Commander Longstrike spots an IG Chimera, brings his Ion Cannon to bear and presses the Overcharge button, he pulls the trigger and. . .what happens next?

He has to roll for Gets Hot! but as he has Preferred Enemy IG can he re-roll that if it does overheat?

And if he was firing a Submunition at some IG meatshields, what then? Does Preferred Enemy work with Blasts at all?

[Unusual Suspect]

Looking through the Core Rulebook...

In the rules for Blast Weapons on page 33, we see that if a blast weapon can reroll to Hit rolls and does so, it must reroll both the scatter dice and the 2d6.

In the rules for Gets Hot! on page 37, you'll find two subsections: Gets Hot and Weapons that do not Roll to Hit which tells us blast weapons roll an additional dice to test for Gets Hot before actually firing, and Gets Hot and Re-rolls which tells us that the ability to reroll To Hit rolls works on Gets Hot as well as the special extra roll for blast weapons.

In the rules for Preferred Enemy on page 40, it allows rerolls of ones on to Hit and to Wound rolls against that enemy.


Onto your example, we can see that, due to Preferred Enemy (Imperial Guard), Longstrike rerolls to Hit rolls of 1 against said Imperial Guard.  Said re-roll allows the extra roll to be rerolled, as detailed by Gets Hot.  If Longstrike succeeds, He places the blast marker and rolls scatter like normal.  I would interpret the Blast Weapon reroll section to require the ability to reroll ALL rolls to Hit, which means merely being able to reroll a specific roll like 1, like the ability Preferred Enemy grants Longstrike, is insufficient to grant a reroll of the scatter dice result.


Edit:  Note, boosting Ballistic skill to 6 or higher also grants a rerolled Gets Hot roll, and I wound interpret that since it allows rerolls on all to Hit rolls, it would also grant a rerolled scatter dice result if Longstrike wishes.

[knightperson]

I think that's correct. Unless there is something specific about the interaction between Preferred Enemy and blasts, PE would allow the reroll of the die to check for Gets Hot, but not the scatter.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of dragging Longstrike, kicking and screaming if necessary, away from a railgun hammerhead and putting him in an ion cannon one. It won't help him kill the land raiders and such, but the fact that he only needs one markerlight to get a reroll on the Gets Hot is pretty cool. Preferred Enemy Imperial Guard is another form of that, making it even more appealing. And I think Tank Hunter will, to an extent, offset the reduction in strength that the ion cannon gets.

[The Man They Call Jayne]

I use Ionstrike all the time, he just works in more situations. That S8 Blast has saved my ass more than once. I rely on a 6 fusion blaster toting crisis team to deal with really heavy armour these days.

[Chicop76]

My problem with the ion head is that I run rip tides that does the same thing at longer range and better ap. However longshot has a better bs. I am glad that this issue was pointed out since via marker light it makes sence to raise a riptide bs to 6 due to a ton of get hot rolls.