A bolt thrower shot can cut through several ranks of troops. If the target of a bolt thrower is a formed unit of any type (be it Close Order, Open Order and so on), and if the roll To Hit is successful, the shot causes:

• One hit per rank (including the rear rank, even if it is incomplete), if the bolt thrower lies in the unit’s front or rear arc.

• One hit per file, if the bolt thrower lies in the unit’s flank arc.

However, a bolt can quickly lose power as it passes through armour and flesh. To represent this, the bolt thrower suffers a -1 modifier to its Strength characteristic for each hit after the first.

Note that, should the Strength of a hit be reduced to 0, it has no effect and no further hits are caused.