[WHFB] true line of sight, skirmishers, and screening.

[Mantaray]

Ok, so after having a look around. the rules-as-written are woefully lacking in the shooting department.

lets say ive got a hoard of empire handgunners. i wack a skirmish line of 5 archers in front of them like so.

Spoiler

now if i want to shoot unit x, as far as i can tell. i need to draw line of sight to a model in that unit. the unit gains hard cover if 51% of it is obscured from the shooting model. as far as i can see in this situation, every signle one of my models at eye level are going to be able to draw un-obscured line of sight to at least 6 individual members of that unit. like so

Spoiler

does granting hard cover apply on a per-model basis, or on a per-unit basis. i understand how hard cover would be granted by a hill that only showed like, the top half of some cavalry. or is there still a rule in 8th that i cant find that grants hard cover -just- for me shooting through my own units?
opinions?

[BulletBait07]

From looking over the rules at page 41 in the main rulebook, it looks like you have to determine whether (1) the enemy unit is obscured from (2) each of your models' perspective. You determine whether the modifier applies to the firing unit on a per-model basis, so half of your models could suffer the penalty while the other half doesn't even though they're all in the same unit and firing at the same target. The final two sentences in the "Cover" paragraph actually address this exact situation.

Putting a line of skirmishers between your handgunners and an enemy unit will very likely require applying a hard cover modifier for at least some of your models. For one of your models to avoid suffering the cover to-hit penalty, that model would need to draw an unobscured LoS to at least 51% of the models in the opposing unit. In this case, that would require unobscured LoS to at least 11 of the models in the opposing unit.