The Shooting Phase — Warhammer 40,000 3rd Edition Wiki

In the shooting phase you have the opportunity to fire at the enemy with your forces. In a real battle the guns thunder unceasingly and there is an almost constant exchange of fire between foes. To represent this in a Warhammer 40,000 battle we split the firing up so that each player fires during their own turn. This makes shooting simple to work out and keeps the game moving at a good pace.

In the shooting phase each of your units may fire. You can choose any of your units to shoot with, but you must complete all the firing by one unit before you move on to the next. Each model in a unit can shoot with one weapon each. The whole unit has to fire all of its weaponry at a single enemy unit of your choice, you may not split fire between two or more target units. The shooting process can be summarised into the following five steps.

Choose a target. Select an enemy unit for one of your units to fire at.
Measure range. See if the target is within range of weaponry of your firing unit.
Roll to hit. Roll a D6 for each shot fired by the firing unit. The model's BS determines what score they must equal or beat to hit their targets.
Roll to wound. Roll again any dice that hit to see if the shots wound their targets. The score needed is determined by comparing the Strength of the firing weapons to the Toughness of the target.
Remove casualties. The target unit's owner removes any casualties but attempts saving throws for models that have been wounded. Models in cover can always attempt a saving throw.

Once you have completed this sequence with one of your units select another unit and begin at step 1 again. Once you have completed steps 1 to 5 for each unit in your army you have finished shooting and can move on to the assault phase.

The rules to the shooting phase also include details on weapons. These appear later on in this section.