AOS Combat Phase question regarding damage allocation.

[Mattman77]

I have picked up AOS after a long time away from WFB, and I am having trouble understanding the damage characteristic.
I am unclear of how and when to apply it.
Maybe the obvious is escaping me but I would appreciate if someone could expain the combat phase to me step by step.
Thanks.

[Chronowraith]

Quite simply put Damage is the amount of wounds caused by a successful hit that is NOT saved by the targeted model/unit.

Note that if an attack does multiple wounds that those are only applied to a single model. If my model has 4 attacks that cause 3 wounds each I could only ever kill 4 models. Alternatively, I could kill 1 model with 12 wounds. If my attack hit a 2 wound model, the extra damage would NOT bleed over into another model.

I hope that helps.

[Mr Mystery]

Nope.

If your unit has one wound apiece, and you get walloped by Damage 2 weapons, each failed save would remove two models. The rest of the damage section demonstrates this 'Most weapons have a Damage characteristic of 1, but some can inflict 2 or more wounds, allowing them to cause grievous injuries to even the mightiest foe, or to cleave through more than one opponent in a single blow

You allocate wounds to any model you choose in the attacked unit, but once you start allocating, you can pick a new model to be wounded until the first is dead.

[Ben_S]

I assume the last 'can' in Mr Mystery's reply should be 'can't'. Subject to that, he's right. Multiple wounds (applied after saves) can kill multiple models in AoS.

[Mr Mystery]

Yep - late night typing error!

Also, should clarify its the owning player who chooses their first casualty.

[Chronowraith]

Hrmm. Didn't notice that before. I actually find this rather disappointing. I'm not a fan of an attack doing 2 wounds killing 2 models as it makes characters even more ridiculous. They seemed balanced in my first dozen outings in the game without that. It limited someone like Archaon to killing 8 models (well, 4 from him and 4 from his horse) but allowed him to take down big gribblies with relative ease. This means he could take down 16 models in a single combat phase which is absurd.