All about Wound Allocations

So I know that wound allocation is not the clearest thing in the world, so I'm going to try to help explain how things work, how some people do it wrong, and the proper way for it to work out. We'll start out with the basics and then going through the different scenarios that can occur.

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We'll start off with the basics. I only have one image for this one as it's pretty easy.

Here we have a 5 Man Squad of Marines all armed exactly the same way. Because they armed the same way there is no Wound Allocation. If they get shot at and suffer 6 wounds, they then roll a total of 6 saving throws, if they fail 3 saves then 3 die.

You DO NOT allocate the hits, meaning you do not put a single wound on 4 guys and 2 wounds on the last man and then roll separately. You roll them all together.

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Here we have a scout squad with 3 normal scouts, 1 heavy bolter and 1 sergeant. Here the scout squad takes 8 wounds before saves. You must then allocate those wounds, the best case is stacking 2 on each of the normal guys and then 1 each on the different models.

This gives you the best chance to have models survive the encounter.


The red X represents the models that took unsaved wounds. After rolling 6 saves for the normal scouts, they fail 3 and all three die. Even if they had failed all 6 of those saves, only those 3 wound die from the wounds because they were allocated to those models.

That leaves just the heavy bolter and sergeant to make there saves. You roll one die for each, and if saved they stay on the board.

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Here is a squad of 3 Ravenors, they are all the same and include 3 wounds. This works out very much the same way as the first instance with the space marines.

If they are shot at and take 4 unsaved wounds you must assign all of the wounds to one model until it is dead and then assign the remaining wounds to the next model.

In this instance we get 1 dead ravenor and 1 ravenor with a single wound.



No let's say that we have the same ravenor squad and it take 4 unsaved wounds, but 1 of those wounds causes Instant Death.

Very often an opponent will place the ID wound on a model and then place 2 more unsaved wounds on that model, and 1 wound on the other model.

What this does is negate those 2 extra wounds done and keeps the other ravenor alive. This however is not the Correct way to do it.



Now after playing yesterday, we ran into this problem where the ravenors would stack the wounds. I did not know any better until I looked over the rules today.

On Page 26 of the Main Rule Book, second paragraph from the bottom on the right side it described what you are supposed to do.

And that is to place the ID wound on a model, which kills it out right and then place all of the rest of the wounds on the next model. This now results in 2 dead models.

Now lets say that there is already a wounded multi-wound model in the unit, you still must place the wound on a model that has not received any wounds if possible.

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Ok, now we get to a much more complicated scenario. Let say that you are shooting at 5 Ork Nobz with 'Eavy Armor (just for fun) and you deal 11 wounds to them. Now because all of the Nobz are armed differently the controlling player gets to allocate all of those wounds between the 5 nobz as seen above.



Now after failing 3 wounds on the first guy and 1 wound on 3 of the other guys the entire squad only looses 1 man. As they all have 2 wounds each. Even though the squad took 6 unsaved wounds, this would normally cause 3 dead orks. But because of the way the wounds were allocated only 1 ork dies and three of the others are sitting pretty with only taking 1 wound each.

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Now what happens when you have different kinds of weapons shooting at the same target. Well here we have a Ork Squad taking 3 melta shots and 8 flamer shots. Now because of wound allocation the player gets to allocate the kinds of wounds from those shots how ever he wants.

This will normally end up with 3 meltas on 1 ork and then the flamer wounds spread out among the rest of the orks. Because they are all armed differently this is allowed.

So what happens when the orks receive the unsaved wounds? Well the ork with the unsaved melta wounds take 3 ID hits, which would normally be 6 wounds. Then the squad take an additional 4 wounds, but only 1 each to the nobs. So after taking what would be 10 wounds the nobs only loose 1 guy.

How do you work around this. Well it's a toss up actually. You can forget about firing the flamer, and then that means your opponent only has 3 Melta wounds to spread around, which would cause 1 melta for 3 models. Meaning 3 dead orks instead of 1. But of course you might luck out with the flamer and have him fail all of his saves and have all dead orks.

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Now here comes my little rant :D Now after reading the above you are probably thinking to yourself wow wound allocation in this instance does not make a lot of since. Well I have a simple solution that I think GW should consider using (but that won't happen anytime soon.)

The solution is to have a little sentence in there that say, "All Instant Death wounds must be allocated to a different model in the unit being shot, before those wounds can be stacked on the same model in a unit."

So if this were the case we would have the 3 meltas spread out in the unit, and then the flamer wounds would also be spread out in the unit.

With that in place we now have 3 instant dead unsaved wounds and 4 unsaved wounds. Resulting in a minimum of 3 dead orks, with a higher probability of the other orks dieing from there wounds.

I think this simple solution would greatly balance the problem with wound allocation but in the mean time remember how everything else works and you should be fine.

-CKR