B10.1 "Other terrain (e.g. woods) is at the higher level throughout the entire depiction of the terrain in question, even if it
appears to be rising from the lower level portion of the hill hex".
Is a woods terrain crossing along the hexside of level 1 hill hex and a ground level hex a level 1 or level 2 obstacle? Specific game example below, is there LOS from B14 to D11? I was thinking no: LOS crosses woods along the C14/B13 hexside and since C14 is level 1 and citing B10.1 above, the woods is therefore a level 2 obstacle. But crossing the C14 hexside, not within hex C14 itself is giving me pause. Thanks all.
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The answer is that yes, there is a LOS from B14 to D11, but you have asked the question wrong. Because woods is not an inherent obstacle, the obstacle has to appear on both sides of the LOS thread. The LOS you have chosen goes exactly down the hexside, so there would have to be level two terrain in B13 as well as C14 to block the LOS from level one (B14) to level two (D11), and there isn't.The woods in B13 rises from level zero to level one, and the woods in C14 rises from level one to level two. A LOS starting at level one and going to level two will only have blocking, non-inherent terrain on one side, and so the LOS will be clear.
That said, you have realized that B10.1 defines things in a way that probably surprises you. The woods is all at level one going to level two inside C14, and there is implicitly or explicitly hill going from level zero to level one under all the woods, even in the bit where the woods *appears* to rise from level zero. If instead of a LOS that went exactly on the hexspine you instead had a LOS from B14 that went slightly to the right of the hexspine to level two, that LOS would be blocked by the woods in C14, which would be a level two obstacle. (In the example you give there is no legal place to show a blocked LOS, so I have added a red line that shows how a LOS to level two would be blocked if the other end were a legal place to trace LOS to.)
Note that although these are the rules as written, many players do not play that way. Many players assume that the heights are as you might infer from the map, i.e. bits of woods that are clearly at level zero within a level one hex are treated as rising from level zero. In the latest version of the rules there is even a suggestion in a footnote that encourages players to play that way. I say 'no' to variantism: so it is written, so shall it be played.
JR
