Cover before or after special abilities

[zenguy]

One question that came up that I was unable to resolve was: when do you roll for cover compared to declaring you are using AP ammo (once during a game, allows a second hit to be counted as three)? I erred on the side of “the fog of war” and had my Easy 8 declare he was using his AP ammo against an adjacent Tiger in a hill hex, then the Tiger rolled for cover, which it got, completely negating the AP ammo from even being a factor since cover reduces all attacks to disruption only. Had the Easy 8 known the Tiger was in cover it would’ve saved the AP ammo until the Tiger wasn’t in cover, i.e. had a better shot. So the question is: when does one roll for cover—before declaring special attacks or after? I can see reasonable arguments for either way.

Thanks!

[Y2UAsk]

The rulebook doesn't give a specific sequence for when cover rolls are made, but the clear implication (and the way everyone here plays it) is that

a) the attacker announces whether he's using armor-piercing ammo;
b) the attacker rolls his attack dice;
c) if the attack scores more than one hit, the defender makes a cover roll.

Or, to put it in other, more general words, you make a cover roll when one becomes necessary. In cases where a target unit already has a face-down disruption marker, some people make the cover roll before their opponent rolls 14 dice for the attack, because the quick roll of 1 die can make that time-consuming roll of 14 dice unnecessary. It's a good time saver, but even in that case, the attacker must commit to taking the shot -- and an Easy 8 would have to commit to using armor-piercing ammo -- before the cover roll is made.

Steve