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So... Battle Shock is pretty underwhelming. While I know that in the whole Grim/Dark future, half the armies aren't afraid of anything makes it hard to build rules around morale, I think it still very doable. This is my take on it, but I'd like to hear yours as well:

First off, the new philosophy behind Morale would be that (from a game design perspective) loss of control on parts of your army can be a good and healthy thing for the game. It makes Morale impactful and a tangible threat to your battle plan if not kept in check.

The first change will be that you take morale when a unit drops below half, or once per turn when a unit below half looses a model. The morale phase for getting out of "Battle Shock" is now at the end of your turn instead of during the command phase, this means that if you fail morale it will always effect your next turn.

In general, there would be five possible results from a morale test. A Pass, a Pinned unit, a Broken unit, a Rallied Unit, and a Last Stand. A pass is obvious, so I'll explain the other four:

Pinned: If a unit fails a moral test outside of the charge or fight phase, they are Pinned. If all the models in the pinned unit are receiving the benefit of cover, they may not move, become OC:0, gain -1 BS and +1Sv against ranged attacks (this stacks with their +1 cover save, but does not increase past 3+ like normal). If a unit is not receiving the benefit of cover, it must immediately make a full advance move towards the nearest piece of terrain, and then the previous rule applies.

Broken: If a unit fails a morale test in the Charge or Fight Phase, or a Pinned unit fails another morale test, that unit is broken. A broken unit must immediately make an advance move towards the nearest table edge, and receives OC:0 and -1 WS. If a unit was within engagement range with the retreating unit, and there are no other enemy units within engagement range, they must take a Ld check. If they fail they must pursue the retreating unit, moving their full move in an attempt to get within engagement range. If they pass this test, you may choose to do this, or consolidate as though the enemy unit had been slain.

Rallied: A Broken or Pinned unit attempts to rally at the end of your turn, if successful, they may act as normal and automatically pass any morale tests until your next morale phase. (The auto pass prevents chaining failed morale)

Last Stand: If a unit rolls a natural 12 on their morale test, they gain +1WS, +1BS and automatically pass any morale tests until your next morale phase.

You would need markers in the style of Kill Team to see what units are in what state, but I don't think that's all that hard to add into the game.

Now, there are of course units or even whole armies that "Know No Fear" but that doesn't meant that they can't interact with a morale system. Here's how I would handle a few of them:

Space Marines / Chaos Space Marines / Custodes: Tactical Withdrawal: Space Marines / CSM / Custodes units to not receive modifiers to their profiles when failing morale tests. (This means they can still be moved out of position or stuck in place when under heavy attacks, but still fight without fear and can hold objectives.)

Necrons: Mindless Warriors: Necron units that are NOT lead by characters auto pass morale tests. (Only the basic Necrons are mindless fodder, the leadership can and is still concerned with their own survival.)

Daemons: Daemonic Instability: When a Daemon fails a Morale test, they instead suffer D3 Mortal Wounds. Then that test is considered to be passed. (This represents their grip on reality faltering).

Tyranids: Synapse: So long as a Tyranid unit is within Synapse range, it automatically passed all morale tests. If a Tyranid unit leaves Synapse range for any reason, it immediately takes a morale test.

So yeah, that's the gist of it. Obviously each army would have other ways of interacting with the rule set, but this would be the core idea. What do you think of the concept.

First impressions:
* Seems fluffy/flavorful.
* Seems fiddly/book-keepy.
* I don't prefer it to the current system.

You're looking at replacing a single simple status condition (battle shocked) with several different status conditions that would all need to be tracked. Those statuses are significantly more or less punishing for some armies/units than others. Additionally, you've already presented rules for letting the majority of armies modify/not use the rules you're pitching here. Having to write rules to undo/modify your changes to rules is a red flag for me.

So basically, while the rules you've presented here are evocative, I feel they'd also result in a less good gaming experience.

Just make it that shocked units have a hit penalty when firing at anything that isn't the closest enemy unit and a charge penalty when charging anything that isn't the closest enemy unit.

Honestly, either don’t make anything in the game autopass and give it proper rules like suppression OR make morale only a thing for a couple of factions and then with bespoken rules. IG not being able to order but dugging in, Orks hitting themselves, Tau fleeing, Tyranids getting penalties out of Synapse range, daemonic Instability, Genestealers hiding in the shadows.
All other factions could be considered fearless (it's very likely I forgot some to whom morale is important as well).

Concerning your actual proposal: when fleeing to the closest table edge it's very likely for units to flee right into the enemy army and deployment zone . Better choice would be to move towards your deployment zone.
Also what happens when a pinned unit can't reach cover or do they move as far as they reach the next cover? Could be a funny thing...

I had a crack at Morale back in 9th Edition.

Might want to take a gander, see if any inspiration strikes.

Find it here.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Honestly, either don’t make anything in the game autopass and give it proper rules like suppression OR make morale only a thing for a couple of factions and then with bespoken rules. IG not being able to order but dugging in, Orks hitting themselves, Tau fleeing, Tyranids getting penalties out of Synapse range, daemonic Instability, Genestealers hiding in the shadows.
All other factions could be considered fearless (it's very likely I forgot some to whom morale is important as well).

Concerning your actual proposal: when fleeing to the closest table edge it's very likely for units to flee right into the enemy army and deployment zone . Better choice would be to move towards your deployment zone.
Also what happens when a pinned unit can't reach cover or do they move as far as they reach the next cover? Could be a funny thing...

Personally I don't think that conditional autopass is that bad of a thing, but I do agree that it has to be impactful for everyone, or like you said, a separate thing that one a few deal with. I favour the former.

Yeah, I mean closest non opposing table edge, my bad.

As for cover, yeah, they would move as far as they could towards it, but if they don't make it, they are stuck there. It's basically like moving them early rather than having to remember to do that move on your movement phase, that's why they skip their next move.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
First impressions:
* Seems fluffy/flavorful.
* Seems fiddly/book-keepy.
* I don't prefer it to the current system.

You're looking at replacing a single simple status condition (battle shocked) with several different status conditions that would all need to be tracked. Those statuses are significantly more or less punishing for some armies/units than others. Additionally, you've already presented rules for letting the majority of armies modify/not use the rules you're pitching here. Having to write rules to undo/modify your changes to rules is a red flag for me.

So basically, while the rules you've presented here are evocative, I feel they'd also result in a less good gaming experience.

I get what you're saying to a point. I do agree that for competitive 40k, it would likely add an additional time / memory constraint that could bog down the game a little too much. However, with reminder markers, I don't think that it's all that hard to follow for casual players.

Almost every game has their base rules and then are modified in some way shape or form to provide variation to players. Yeah you don't want to go crazy with it, but it's no different than numerous other system already in 40k itself of any other game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JNAProductions wrote:
I had a crack at Morale back in 9th Edition.

Might want to take a gander, see if any inspiration strikes.

Find it here.

That was an interesting take on it. I like the addition of blast weapons causing a check, might be worth considering torrent weapons too...

The big thing that I liked about old morale was the forced movement, the chance for a section of your line to break and the enemy to spill through or cause a rout, there's really nothing like that anymore unless you actually fight through everything and that just takes too much time in most games for it to feel like it matters.

I get what you're saying to a point. I do agree that for competitive 40k, it would likely add an additional time / memory constraint that could bog down the game a little too much. However, with reminder markers, I don't think that it's all that hard to follow for casual players.

Speaking as a casual player, my concern is that the pros of your proposal don't outweigh the cons. This is very subjective, but personally the enjoyment I would get from a more cinematic morale effect doesn't outweigh the downsides of the extra bookkeeping, the potential to totally shut down units for a turn, or the added complexity that might be daunting for people trying to pick up the rule set. ("OC 0 and you can't use strats" is much easier to explain than 3 different status conditions plus an extra layer of rules for each faction playing.)

The big thing that I liked about old morale was the forced movement, the chance for a section of your line to break and the enemy to spill through or cause a rout, there's really nothing like that anymore unless you actually fight through everything and that just takes too much time in most games for it to feel like it matters.

FWIW, I was around for 5th-7th when the forced movement was a thing. It was a frequently complained about topic. Armies that didn't have ways to outright ignore it could basically lose the game because a 2d6 roll they had no control over went badly. A squad of ork boyz that would normally be able to charge on turn 2 or 3 was now charging on turn 4 or 5 (if they were still alive) because the forced movement caused them to backtrack their footslogging.

So footslogging melee units that failed morale were basically not allowed to participate in the game, but you still had to go to the trouble of moving them around.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

I get what you're saying to a point. I do agree that for competitive 40k, it would likely add an additional time / memory constraint that could bog down the game a little too much. However, with reminder markers, I don't think that it's all that hard to follow for casual players.

Speaking as a casual player, my concern is that the pros of your proposal don't outweigh the cons. This is very subjective, but personally the enjoyment I would get from a more cinematic morale effect doesn't outweigh the downsides of the extra bookkeeping, the potential to totally shut down units for a turn, or the added complexity that might be daunting for people trying to pick up the rule set. ("OC 0 and you can't use strats" is much easier to explain than 3 different status conditions plus an extra layer of rules for each faction playing.)

The big thing that I liked about old morale was the forced movement, the chance for a section of your line to break and the enemy to spill through or cause a rout, there's really nothing like that anymore unless you actually fight through everything and that just takes too much time in most games for it to feel like it matters.

FWIW, I was around for 5th-7th when the forced movement was a thing. It was a frequently complained about topic. Armies that didn't have ways to outright ignore it could basically lose the game because a 2d6 roll they had no control over went badly. A squad of ork boyz that would normally be able to charge on turn 2 or 3 was now charging on turn 4 or 5 (if they were still alive) because the forced movement caused them to backtrack their footslogging.

So footslogging melee units that failed morale were basically not allowed to participate in the game, but you still had to go to the trouble of moving them around.

Hmm... both fair points.

For the first, I think that would require just a lot of testing, seeing if people take to it easily or not and adjusting accordingly.

That is a fair concern. Back in the day though it was check on 25% casualties instead of the 50% it is now. I was hoping that would make the difference, and that if there is terrain closer to the enemy, you'll actually run forward in the shooting phase upon failing rather than back. You only flee to a table edge from melee, or failing twice. I was hoping that would mitigate some of that issue.