Rihgu wrote:

Yes, the To Hit Chart is back and it’s as beardy as ever.

Did WarCom team just call us beardy grognards? To our face?

Well, I *have* been sporting a scruffy Van Dyke ever since the plague years...

2 things stand out, that no one has mentioned yet.

Pikes, it mentions Pikes, which has been a DoW exclusive weapon. As DoW are not going to be in TOW, could these mean Pikes are going to be given to Empire?

Battle Magic is mentioned, this is a large lore from 4th/5th edition, think it had 20spells originally. So no more 8 lores from the colleges of magic.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Wonder how that will work with Chariots? They’re by their nature “alpha strike” living or dying on the charge.

If they’re at constant risk of being bogged down even with a decisive running over of the enemy unit, who in their right mind is going to use them? Especially if as speculated above, following up into a pushed back unit sparks another combat round, as if you don’t count as charging, it’ll be in, run off a few folks, then get tipped in the follow up, or sit there like a lemon and get counter charged anyway.



Another one for my list of “frustratingly vague” news.

I think you count as charging if you pursue into another round of combat, so you'd get another round of impact hits

Bobug wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Wonder how that will work with Chariots? They’re by their nature “alpha strike” living or dying on the charge.

If they’re at constant risk of being bogged down even with a decisive running over of the enemy unit, who in their right mind is going to use them? Especially if as speculated above, following up into a pushed back unit sparks another combat round, as if you don’t count as charging, it’ll be in, run off a few folks, then get tipped in the follow up, or sit there like a lemon and get counter charged anyway.



Another one for my list of “frustratingly vague” news.

I think you count as charging if you pursue into another round of combat, so you'd get another round of impact hits

This is how it worked when I played TK a couple of decades ago, lol

I basically tried to get on the sides/flanks and then hope to cause my target to flee so I could follow-up run into/ clip another unit.

You want to go through the enemy army from the side and not the front to max your rundown/follow-up.

Wonderful looking break rules, the battlefield will be much more interesting with things happening other than "locked in place fighting" and "running away"! The sound of victory multi-charge sounds scary though! I suppose it makes sense, heavy cav smashing through a small ranged unit without even stopping then charging the next unit.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Wonder how that will work with Chariots? They’re by their nature “alpha strike” living or dying on the charge.

If they’re at constant risk of being bogged down even with a decisive running over of the enemy unit, who in their right mind is going to use them? Especially if as speculated above, following up into a pushed back unit sparks another combat round, as if you don’t count as charging, it’ll be in, run off a few folks, then get tipped in the follow up, or sit there like a lemon and get counter charged anyway.


Another one for my list of “frustratingly vague” news.

There's a bit of warmaster/3rd sneaking in there, so the chariots might get a second turn of counting as having charged with a push back.

 Tastyfish wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Wonder how that will work with Chariots? They’re by their nature “alpha strike” living or dying on the charge.

If they’re at constant risk of being bogged down even with a decisive running over of the enemy unit, who in their right mind is going to use them? Especially if as speculated above, following up into a pushed back unit sparks another combat round, as if you don’t count as charging, it’ll be in, run off a few folks, then get tipped in the follow up, or sit there like a lemon and get counter charged anyway.


Another one for my list of “frustratingly vague” news.

There's a bit of warmaster/3rd sneaking in there, so the chariots might get a second turn of counting as having charged with a push back.

It says that if you catch a unit falling back you get another round of counting as having charged.

It’s not clear whether catching falling back units gets you another round of having charged that turn or the next, but if the former chariots will be pretty brutal and able to cover quite some distance in a turn if you can keep doing it.

If the latter I guess the aim is to chase them far enough you’re out of charge arc from neighbouring units.

I suspect follow up on a push back doesn’t count as charging, but as that’s on a passed break test you’re no worse than previous editions where they wouldn’t have moved at all.

A number of these rules are from Warhammer Ancient Battles, the historical ruleset penned by Jervis and the Perry twins. Most notably Marching Columns, Counter-Charge and Fall Back in Good Order (FBiGO or "Fuh-bee-go" as we used to say).

I wonder if there will be other elements WAB incorporated into TOW. In particular, WAB had rule called "Drilled" that allowed well-trained troops to change formations quickly and even disengage from combat. Cavalry could also disengage when fighting infantry. Those would be good additions.

 Saber wrote:
A number of these rules are from Warhammer Ancient Battles, the historical ruleset penned by Jervis and the Perry twins. Most notably Marching Columns, Counter-Charge and Fall Back in Good Order (FBiGO or "Fuh-bee-go" as we used to say).

I wonder if there will be other elements WAB incorporated into TOW. In particular, WAB had rule called "Drilled" that allowed well-trained troops to change formations quickly and even disengage from combat. Cavalry could also disengage when fighting infantry. Those would be good additions.

Can you weigh in a bit more? Only there are some blanks in GW’s missives I’m hoping you might offer clarification on.

For instance, FBiGO. If I pressed my attack, was there a further round there and then, and if I drove you back off a charge, did I still count as charging in that subsequent round?

It's been nearly 20 years since i played WAB, but if i recall correctly, in WAB if you lost combat but outnumbered your opponent 2 to 1 instead of breaking you could FBIGO. It was a 2D6 flee like normal but you auto-rallied at the end of the move, before the pursuit move. If your opponent pursued and contacted you, they'd count as charging in the next combat phase.

Yeah I am in agreement about the issues around the combat resolution - it will now be harder to make high Ld armies flee AT ALL. I'm not sure I like that.

My main army has always been dwarfs and their Ld of 9 was great at keeping me in the fight, but enough of a combat loss and they would still be running and destroyed.

Now they will always only have a 16% chance of being routed (or 8% with a Ld10 character). That seems pretty crazy to me.


It seems like a mistake to only have routing possible on a naturally failed Ld roll.

 Hellebore wrote:
Yeah I am in agreement about the issues around the combat resolution - it will now be harder to make high Ld armies flee AT ALL. I'm not sure I like that.

My main army has always been dwarfs and their Ld of 9 was great at keeping me in the fight, but enough of a combat loss and they would still be running and destroyed.

Now they will always only have a 16% chance of being routed (or 8% with a Ld10 character). That seems pretty crazy to me.


It seems like a mistake to only have routing possible on a naturally failed Ld roll.

We don't know how psychology works yet, also there may be some spells that reduce Leadership/add dice to any Leadership checks.

Too early to say at the moment.

 Hellebore wrote:
It seems like a mistake to only have routing possible on a naturally failed Ld roll.

It seems to me that a normal fail (on modified Ld) just results in another round of combat with the winner counting as charging.

So when a genuinely stronger unit wins, it will just continue to grind the loser into paste, while if a weaker unit wins on a fluke, it only has a small chance of insta-wiping the enemy but more likely it will just bounce off them in the next bout.

So my interpretation is that this system reduces RNG and makes it more likely that the better unit wins in the long term.

I'd say it *feels* a lot more authentic to be able to have "elite" armies that do something other than "run away and possibly get hacked down" as a loss condition.

While that's potentially true, that's a pretty big departure from WFB, just to allow them to keep a static Ld test for routing.

So far there hasn't been any really big thematic changes to the game. I would argue that fixed routing limits is one such big change.

They mention combat being decisive, but I'm unsure how the inability to destroy Ld+ armies by routing them is going to reflect that.

Crappy units usually could only win by routing - they would use their resolution bonuses to pip the opponent and force tests. Now it will be virtually impossible for big blocks of skeletons, goblins etc to actually destroy their Ld+ opponents.


To me that's a very big change to the game, a change I don't think forcing horde armies to rely on spells to offset it is really feasible or interesting.

20 dwarf warriors vs 40 goblins would have previously seen the charge determine the likelyhood of victory for the goblins. Now, they will almost certainly do nothing whether they win or not.

Also note that given how many USRs we've seen in just the 2 or 3 ranged weapon profiles that have been previewed, there's bound to be a whole host of combat modifying abilities to game the break check.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
It seems like a mistake to only have routing possible on a naturally failed Ld roll.

It seems to me that a normal fail (on modified Ld) just results in another round of combat with the winner counting as charging.

So when a genuinely stronger unit wins, it will just continue to grind the loser into paste, while if a weaker unit wins on a fluke, it only has a small chance of insta-wiping the enemy but more likely it will just bounce off them in the next bout.

So my interpretation is that this system reduces RNG and makes it more likely that the better unit wins in the long term.

I don't see how 'worse statted units just don't get to win anymore in the long term' is a selling point....


Two equally sized regiments - one elite the other crap, facing off against each other, sure it makes sense.

But a horde of crap vs a smaller unit should be grinding them down with size and weight. This rule literally ignores the size of the unit and its ability to rout an enemy by outnumbering it, because the bonuses have no effect on the chance to rout.

Are elite 6x2 and 4x3 or 4x4 infantry units back in style, then?

Curious to see what psychology does next week. This might mitigate some of the high leadership armies.

Err, doesn't psychology usually only kinda hurt everyone except the high leadership armies? I've yet to see a system that harms or penalizes high ld forces more than those with low ld.

Fear used to wreck them. If outnumbered and beaten in combat by a Fear causing enemy, you auto broke.

Terror was a once per game test, but if charged or charging a Terror causing enemy, if you failed a Ld test, you ran away like a sizeable lady’s chemise.

Terror seems less useful, but it could and would save me the bother of beating you up in the first place.

Ouch. that dragon thing is not a good model.....

The updated WS means that elites vs scum will now be a bit bloodier. The old table meant that in a fight of WS 10 vs WS 1, 1/3 of the attacks still missed. Now we're at 1/6, so that's a significant improvement.

At the risk of transparently shameless self-promotion, I'm seeing something similar to what I did here - bloodier combats, intermediate morale states between "okay" and "routed."

Cyel wrote:
Not a fan. The opponent being unlucky with his unmodified Ld roll seems to have more impact than carefully setting up an overwhelming CR advantage. Flat randomness shouldn't be more effective than a well executed solid plan.

Unless it's charge range, in which case it's perfection in game design...





IF the inference is that they're bringing back 7th's loophole that allows a unit to fight in two separate combats a turn if you work it right? That would be a massive mistake in my mind.



It also seems they're cribbing from every system, INCLUDING Warmaster, except 6th.

Having panic tests be fall back in good order tests would be a good idea so that one failed rout doesn't decimate the whole army.

But psychology doesn't normally have any affect unless a unit possesses a rule like fear.

I will be very interested to see how they plan on goblins, skinks, gnoblars et al to function given they can't use weight of numbers to break an enemy now.

I'm not sure I like the image of 5 elves against 40 goblins being as likely to run as 5 against 5.

 Just Tony wrote:
It also seems they're cribbing from every system, INCLUDING Warmaster, except 6th.

They're cribbing the models from 6th.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
It also seems they're cribbing from every system, INCLUDING Warmaster, except 6th.

They're cribbing the models from 6th.

haha good one.

I have a lot of 6th ed plastic dwarfs, never really got their newer plastics. Partly price, partly because I wasn't actually a fan of the design that much. I think it was the posing and the merging of the heads and beards into the models, rather than the separate parts on the previous version.

And despite the quarrelers having their crossbows over their shoulders, it made them easier to rank up...

The giant hands proportions of the old ones were a bit off, but I loved my great weapon warriors with their axes stowed on their shoulders, the looked regimented and marching forward.

The new ones had tiny faces though. I'm not sure, there was something off about them (not that the old ones were perfect).

 Just Tony wrote:
It also seems they're cribbing from every system, INCLUDING Warmaster, except 6th.

The 6th edition saw the substitution of dice for magic cards, so I think that's included. It also put limits on certain unit types and characters. This may seem like minor details, but at the time they were major changes, and very popular.

Damn those are some good looking models at least imo.

What if catching a unit that FBiGO(yay new acronym for my gaming lexicon) lets you get free attacks or wounds or something, maybe even based on what size your unit is? We just don't have all the rules right now to make fully informed opinions. Based on what we have seen I like it. Not perfect but looks like a solid start

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Saber wrote:
A number of these rules are from Warhammer Ancient Battles, the historical ruleset penned by Jervis and the Perry twins. Most notably Marching Columns, Counter-Charge and Fall Back in Good Order (FBiGO or "Fuh-bee-go" as we used to say).

I wonder if there will be other elements WAB incorporated into TOW. In particular, WAB had rule called "Drilled" that allowed well-trained troops to change formations quickly and even disengage from combat. Cavalry could also disengage when fighting infantry. Those would be good additions.

Can you weigh in a bit more? Only there are some blanks in GW’s missives I’m hoping you might offer clarification on.

For instance, FBiGO. If I pressed my attack, was there a further round there and then, and if I drove you back off a charge, did I still count as charging in that subsequent round?

My memory is a bit hazy, so take this with a grain of salt.

For FBiGO it was a full fall back move: i.e. 2d6" for infantry, etc. If the enemy pursued and caught you, it was counted as new combat and the pursuers counted a charging. FBiGO was especially important for Romans who got a strength bonus from their pilum on the first round of combat, whether charged or charging.

Giving Ground was when you lost combat and broke, but outnumbered the enemy 2:1. You made a d6" move (or 2d6" for cavalry), and the enemy moved his standard M score in inches. If he caught you combat continued, with neither side counting as charging.

 Hellebore wrote:

But a horde of crap vs a smaller unit should be grinding them down with size and weight. This rule literally ignores the size of the unit and its ability to rout an enemy by outnumbering it, because the bonuses have no effect on the chance to rout.

The horde of crap will still be winning every round of combat through static CR tho won't it, pushing the elite back and getting free charges until they eventually roll a natural rout.

The rules seem like they have had pretty decent thought behind them.

There's been decent solutions to random charges, how initiative works and how combat resolution doesn't just result in charge -> flee

I have faith in that people that have identified these things are capable of understanding that cheap troops won't just be routing through CR any more and will come up with something to address it.

There is still a lot of information missing (not least points) which could drastically change things. But from the information given so far, it seems like life will be tough for some units.

Let’s take a look at the example of the article: Trolls vs Swordmasters

The Trolls manage to cross the field (over multiple turns and through arrows, bolts and fireballs) and charge the Swordmasters, despite stupidity and random charge distance.
Now they get hit by the Swordmasters first, even though the Trolls charged and the Swordmasters wield great weapons.
Being big regenerating brutes, the Trolls still win by a moderate amount, break the Swordmasters and manage to catch them during pursuit.
But wait! Instead of routing those pesky elves, the Trolls merrly get to fight the Swordmasters in another round of combat as they failed their break test but still managed to roll below their Ld.
Well, at least the Trolls count as charging! However, they still get hit first by the Swordmasters wielding great weapons…

There seem to be a lot of things that need to turn out just the right way, to make the Trolls viable.
Will be interesting to see how they convince Orc&Goblin players to not just load up on artillery and magic which probaly would have destroyed the Swordmasters before the Trolls could even reach them.

However, let’s not jump to conclusions, TOW could still turn out great in the end!

Ah yes. One unit vs unit comparison and other unit obviously is worthless against everything.

There's always hard counter for every unit. Doh. If you cherry pick worst option to go against of course the other unit is going to suck.

Rock. Meet paper. Have fun.

Seelenhaendler wrote:
There is still a lot of information missing (not least points) which could drastically change things. But from the information given so far, it seems like life will be tough for some units.

Let’s take a look at the example of the article: Trolls vs Swordmasters

It seems a bit weird for the example to be Trolls beating the Swordmasters and then discuss whether that makes Trolls non-viable...

The bigger question I think would be something like Boar Boys (still initiative 2?) who might strike second - but would lose a bunch of relatively expensive bodies before getting to go. Which was always the problem in 8th.
But then if charging gave you +3 initiative, so effectively initiative 5, its only going to be things like Swordmasters that are an issue - and you could just point these units at other things.

My concern is more that FBiGO could have really random effects. I mean is there a cap on how many new combats you can be in? Depending on how far you fall back in good order, units could be zooming 20" forward/back across the table, and fighting 3 times etc.

Seelenhaendler wrote:
There is still a lot of information missing (not least points) which could drastically change things. But from the information given so far, it seems like life will be tough for some units.

Let’s take a look at the example of the article: Trolls vs Swordmasters

The Trolls manage to cross the field (over multiple turns and through arrows, bolts and fireballs) and charge the Swordmasters, despite stupidity and random charge distance.
Now they get hit by the Swordmasters first, even though the Trolls charged and the Swordmasters wield great weapons.
Being big regenerating brutes, the Trolls still win by a moderate amount, break the Swordmasters and manage to catch them during pursuit.
But wait! Instead of routing those pesky elves, the Trolls merrly get to fight the Swordmasters in another round of combat as they failed their break test but still managed to roll below their Ld.
Well, at least the Trolls count as charging! However, they still get hit first by the Swordmasters wielding great weapons…

There seem to be a lot of things that need to turn out just the right way, to make the Trolls viable.
Will be interesting to see how they convince Orc&Goblin players to not just load up on artillery and magic which probaly would have destroyed the Swordmasters before the Trolls could even reach them.

However, let’s not jump to conclusions, TOW could still turn out great in the end!

We have zero idea how Fear works. I could be like 4th-7th, where they autobreak if they outnumber and win, or like 8th where of the unit fails it drops to WS1... which makes those Swordmasters a lot less punchy as even against WS3 they are now needing 5+ to hit.

tneva82 wrote:
Ah yes. One unit vs unit comparison and other unit obviously is worthless against everything.

There's always hard counter for every unit. Doh. If you cherry pick worst option to go against of course the other unit is going to suck.

Rock. Meet paper. Have fun.

Lol, what!?

As I said, I picked the example given in the article, so no cherry picking.
Yeah, I am aware that they gave this example to specifically show that charging units not necessarily get to strike first, even against opponents wielding great weapons.
However, apart from striking last, all the other points made are the same versus virtually any unit that is not destroyed on the charge.
So, my point still stands that it is looking tough for some close combat unit, at least from what we know so far.

As for your point on viewing two units in isolation:
That is true, but there is not much that would help the Trolls to improve the outcome.
While on the other hand, a Great Eagle on the HE side to march block or redirect the Trolls would be a cheap and very effective addition to the HE army.

Except we don't know the rules for the swordsmen, the trolls, the HE army, the O&G army or a full picture of the core rules. Not to mention points.

Seelenhaendler wrote:
The Trolls manage to cross the field (over multiple turns and through arrows, bolts and fireballs) and charge the Swordmasters, despite stupidity and random charge distance.
!

This is not the case. Charges are most likely T2 as it always was and if Trolls are anything like the former editions they are terrible targets for small arms and petty ranged magic.

Their weakness is lack of Ranks and low Ld/Stupidity.

@ Tyel: Striking first or not is not the point I was trying to make. The problem I see is that cc units, in particular infantry, have a hard enough time to get into combat, break their opponents and catch them during pursuit. The FBiGO result makes this chain of events even harder.

@ stonehorse:
In the article, there is no malus for the Swordmasters due to fear of the Trolls given. Just the basic -3 due to the combat result.

This could change with more information, however.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Vorian wrote:Except we don't know the rules for the swordsmen, the trolls, the HE army, the O&G army or a full picture of the core rules. Not to mention points.

Did you even read my post?
It literally starts with:
„ There is still a lot of information missing (not least points) which could drastically change things. But from the information given so far, it seems like life will be tough for some units.“

Scactha wrote:

Seelenhaendler wrote:
The Trolls manage to cross the field (over multiple turns and through arrows, bolts and fireballs) and charge the Swordmasters, despite stupidity and random charge distance.
!

This is not the case. Charges are most likely T2 as it always was and if Trolls are anything like the former editions they are terrible targets for small arms and petty ranged magic.

Their weakness is lack of Ranks and low Ld/Stupidity.

Trolls were T4 with AS6+ (maybe 5+ in 8th?) at best, basically as tough as an orc.
In addition, they had Regeneration 4+. However, this was circumvented by flaming attacks, e.g. of fireballs.
Due to the high point cost and low model count, Trolls were usually a high value target even for small arms and fireballs.

Also, with M6 you only get into cc turn 2 if your opponent wants you to, in particular with stupidity/animosity being a factor as well.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

But a horde of crap vs a smaller unit should be grinding them down with size and weight. This rule literally ignores the size of the unit and its ability to rout an enemy by outnumbering it, because the bonuses have no effect on the chance to rout.

The horde of crap will still be winning every round of combat through static CR tho won't it, pushing the elite back and getting free charges until they eventually roll a natural rout.

Assuming that isn't negated by opposing casualty count - high ld tends to be attached to competent combat units. Prolonged drawn out combats makes the crap highly vulnerable to flank charges and being ganged up on, when previously they would have potentially wiped the unit out by then and not been so vulnerable.

And given combat is initiative order and most crappy horde units have historically had low initiative, unless the charge bonus is massive they will still be striking last, so they are not necessarily relying on cr to do anything.

If its +2 then undead and goblins will be striking before dwarfs but still after elves.

I am unconvinced that reducing routs and increasing kiss chasy games of slow attriton are going to make the game more interesting.

I am also unconvinced that 10 man units of elves facing down 40 man units of goblins should be as unconcerned about breaking and fleeing as 5 elves vs 1 goblin.


As it stands, this rule buffs high ld armies massively and debuffs low ld armies massively. If it did one of those it would be ok, but both is too much.

So far I am loving everything about this new version. I am an old player having started in 2nd edition.

If you are worried about elite units never breaking, it will happen more often than you expect. I hope they bring back the rule making every unit immune to break test until it has taken 25% casualties. That really gives the chunky regiments some help.

In order for a unit to fall back it has to have some place to go. That means no enemy units blocking the move. And eventually the edge of the table will become an issue if falling back 2D6 or whatever. You may never break the dwarves, but you can force them to retire from the field.

Again, you're forcing crappy units to spend 3x as many turns to achieve an outcome they could have gotten in 1 previously. All the while the elite units are slaughtering away like nothing changed.

This rule and the charge rule are certainly making my dwarfs look great.

But the knock on effect of losing decisive routing will be far reaching

I think making battles more of a back and forth thing will be good, elite units still have the edge, less likely to be screwed over by a bad round of dice.

it remains to be seen if there is a mechanism to stop "muh infinite goblins" blocks where even a strong unit flat out can't kill them all in a game, but even then a decent unit should be able to tie them up and take them out of the game

I'm willing to give it a go, I have a mix of goblin & peasant garbage as well as faster harder hitting stuff like knights.

looks now like those smaller harder hitting units will need a bit more care in picking targets

Seelenhaendler wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Vorian wrote:Except we don't know the rules for the swordsmen, the trolls, the HE army, the O&G army or a full picture of the core rules. Not to mention points.

Did you even read my post?
It literally starts with:
„ There is still a lot of information missing (not least points) which could drastically change things. But from the information given so far, it seems like life will be tough for some units.“

I did. Did you read that? Because you seem to have ignored your own disclaimer and then claimed life could be tough for Trolls when the only thing we know about them is that they strike after Swordmasters when they charge.

We know very broad strokes and can infer likely effects from that.

We don't know how the games designers have then accommodated those changes in other rules and points costs.

Hopefully we see nice big point increases for high Ld armies and we can see # of required models for units and armies in general fall. I think most of us would like to see 10 or 20 men units return as a common sight.

leopard wrote:
I think making battles more of a back and forth thing will be good, elite units still have the edge, less likely to be screwed over by a bad round of dice.

It very much seems that the design goal is to establish a back and forth so both players actually get to play the game, unlike previously when dictating charges allowed you to basically play the game without your opponent's participation. I think of that as a positive change, provided it works out that way.

 Geifer wrote:

leopard wrote:
I think making battles more of a back and forth thing will be good, elite units still have the edge, less likely to be screwed over by a bad round of dice.

It very much seems that the design goal is to establish a back and forth so both players actually get to play the game, unlike previously when dictating charges allowed you to basically play the game without your opponent's participation. I think of that as a positive change, provided it works out that way.

basically yes, otherwise frankly they may as well drop the "individual models" things and have units wipe other units with only a few dice rolls as thats basically where it ends up - of course that can be quicker and allow for larger games so advantages either way - given how long some units take to paint having them last more than a turn while they die horribly is a plus here

sort of, the individual goblins may not agree but its a hard life being a goblin

Seelenhaendler wrote:
@ Tyel: Striking first or not is not the point I was trying to make. The problem I see is that cc units, in particular infantry, have a hard enough time to get into combat, break their opponents and catch them during pursuit. The FBiGO result makes this chain of events even harder.

It reduces the chance that you charge, fight one round of combat, win by 1 and proceed to break and destroy the unit.
The FBiGO result means they have a chance to get away - or you get back into combat and fight again. Which unless you just got lucky the first time, probably means you win combat again so they may once again face running away.

But this applies to both sides. Sure you can take a bunch of archers, war machines and mages. But how are they coping when a line of Swordmasters charges them?

Clearly GW could write rules (and points) so gunlines are the way to go. But I'm not seeing why this rule alone would be the reason why.

I think the bigger issue (which may be limited by rules not mentioned) is weird results. I.E. my block charges your block. I fluff the dice and lose combat, I FBiGO 2D6 back (a guess). You pursue and connect. We fight again. Same result. I'm another 2D6 back. You pursue and we fight again. This time however I roll better and win. You FBiGO back 2D6 and I pursue etc. Effectively our units are tap dancing up and down the board while everyone else watches on.

Maybe a bit contrived - but from the article I don't see why that couldn't happen.

 Hellebore wrote:
Again, you're forcing crappy units to spend 3x as many turns to achieve an outcome they could have gotten in 1 previously. All the while the elite units are slaughtering away like nothing changed.

This rule and the charge rule are certainly making my dwarfs look great.

But the knock on effect of losing decisive routing will be far reaching

Shock horror elite units actually being useful and order of day isn't melee hero doing kills leading cheap chaff that does job of expenslve elite just as well for cheaper like before.

Also you act like elites wouldn't be overnumbered big time. Unit front and side and see how far you hold.

Really glad to see those mechanics from warmaster added to ToW.

Very hyped!

Am I just misreading or can someone point to me where if you fbigo and the victor chooses to follow, where does it say you fight another combat immediately. Is there a chance you fight it next round and count as charging? Again not arguing just not seeing where it calls out multiple combats in a turn if you fbigo.

Vorian wrote:
I think most of us would like to see 10 or 20 men units return as a common sight.

Personally, no. Tiny 6th ed sized units makes the "army" seem anemic and like a lord is just taking his personal retainers on a stroll.

Suspect now we have proper initiative order fighting that there will be various modifiers, e.g.

+1 if the unit charged
+1 if the defending unit has spears and is charged this turn (+2 if charged by cavalry)
+1 if the charging unit is mounted and has spears v infantry
+3 if the charging unit has lances v infantry
+1 if the defending unit is behind an obstacle
+1 if the defending unit stood ground to receive the charge (i.e. no stand & shoot or attempt to reform)
+1 if attacking in the flank
+3 if attacking in the rear

etc. plenty of tactical options which could stack

 nathan2004 wrote:
Am I just misreading or can someone point to me where if you fbigo and the victor chooses to follow, where does it say you fight another combat immediately. Is there a chance you fight it next round and count as charging? Again not arguing just not seeing where it calls out multiple combats in a turn if you fbigo.

"Pursue a unit that flees or falls back. If you catch a fleeing unit, it’s cut down and destroyed. If you catch a unit falling back, combat begins again and the pursuer counts as having charged".

That's as much as we have now, I think

^ Thank you, I read that as if you caught a unit in the process already of falling back (which sometimes happened in 8th) they wouldn't be destroyed immediately like in 8th but rather a new combat would begin with that unit that was already in flight. Not continual fights for units that fbigo but I could be wrong obviously. Imagine if it's pertaining to fbigo, there would be some cap on the number of fights right? Did the old rules have a cap?

 Platuan4th wrote:

Vorian wrote:
I think most of us would like to see 10 or 20 men units return as a common sight.

Personally, no. Tiny 6th ed sized units makes the "army" seem anemic and like a lord is just taking his personal retainers on a stroll.

TBF you can play at a higher points level if you want more models. If the game's rules force high model counts, you can't really do anything.

 nathan2004 wrote:
^ Thank you, I read that as if you caught a unit in the process already of falling back (which sometimes happened in 8th) they wouldn't be destroyed immediately like in 8th but rather a new combat would begin with that unit that was already in flight. Not continual fights for units that fbigo but I could be wrong obviously. Imagine if it's pertaining to fbigo, there would be some cap on the number of fights right? Did the old rules have a cap?

I think that's just a concern that's been voiced in reaction to the vague article because fighting more than once a turn has been a rule in Fantasy before. For now I don't think we have evidence that it's also a rule in The Old World (nor that it isn't).

 nathan2004 wrote:
^ Thank you, I read that as if you caught a unit in the process already of falling back (which sometimes happened in 8th) they wouldn't be destroyed immediately like in 8th but rather a new combat would begin with that unit that was already in flight. Not continual fights for units that fbigo but I could be wrong obviously. Imagine if it's pertaining to fbigo, there would be some cap on the number of fights right? Did the old rules have a cap?

I think it's pretty safe to assume it's taking about the falling back that's discussed in the article.

You could keep pursuing in warmaster, but the whole game works differently so it isn't just a case of porting the Warmaster bit over into the old world. Could be a limit, you could keep going - it's just guesswork until they tell us

Yeah, the rules themselves are frequently, let's say "ambiguous". Trying to infer the rules from a fluff article is even more ambiguouser.

 Platuan4th wrote:

Vorian wrote:
I think most of us would like to see 10 or 20 men units return as a common sight.

Personally, no. Tiny 6th ed sized units makes the "army" seem anemic and like a lord is just taking his personal retainers on a stroll.

I respect your view, but disagree. Its a skirmish game. Always prefered how 12 and 16 men infantry looks on the table. 30 and 40 men strong units looks silly to me.

tneva82 wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Again, you're forcing crappy units to spend 3x as many turns to achieve an outcome they could have gotten in 1 previously. All the while the elite units are slaughtering away like nothing changed.

This rule and the charge rule are certainly making my dwarfs look great.

But the knock on effect of losing decisive routing will be far reaching

Shock horror elite units actually being useful and order of day isn't melee hero doing kills leading cheap chaff that does job of expenslve elite just as well for cheaper like before.

Also you act like elites wouldn't be overnumbered big time. Unit front and side and see how far you hold.

I'm comparing small units of elites to large units of chaff - their COST alone should mean they are useful. Otherwise they have no value at all and no incentive to buy. Spending ages painting a speedhump is suboptimal.

The point was that outnumbering won't matter, because it will only increase the chance the combat moves backward 2D6".

Having a wide frontage is being encouraged for everyone. The WS table is also better than it used to be. And having a wider frontage with wraparound only gives you the chance to kill a couple more, assuming there is the step up rule. And my point is that even if they did win through killing more (unlikely given the factors at play), the result would still be that most of the time they just move the combat backward a few inches, and the elite unit gets another opportunity to not lose.

The chances of a larger chaff unit beating their opponent on kills alone is small, but even if they do, their reward is now much smaller for that feat.

So far all these rules have done have made high WS, I and Ld armies far better and made low WS, I Ld armies far worse. It's making a bimodal distribution, which makes the results more extreme than they used to be.



EDIT: The ability to wrap around with a wider frontage actually makes elite units again even more powerful, because a unit of 10 in 2 ranks will only get a max +1 bonus from those 5 behind, while a unit of 10 in a single line will potentially get +5 casualties.

The wrap around frontage will see shallow wide elites who don't want to bother with building ranks but will get a better outcome as a result.

 Platuan4th wrote:

Personally, no. Tiny 6th ed sized units makes the "army" seem anemic and like a lord is just taking his personal retainers on a stroll.

Units of 50 shuffling around in strict block formation is just as ridiculous as 10 or 20 in terms of "muh realism", better just to come to terms with "each model represents 5/10/20/whatever"

 RustyNumber wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

Personally, no. Tiny 6th ed sized units makes the "army" seem anemic and like a lord is just taking his personal retainers on a stroll.

Units of 50 shuffling around in strict block formation is just as ridiculous as 10 or 20 in terms of "muh realism", better just to come to terms with "each model represents 5/10/20/whatever"

I'm not talking about "realism". The physical force itself on the table looks tiny and off.

for me I tend not to bother too much on the models, used to historical gaming with 24 men representing a full regiment etc, no issues

the idea that the "hero" is the bod themselves and their retinue also makes the damage output more credible. just an abstraction after all.

for me it comes down to the physical footprint of the units in relation to each other, how they move and how they interact with terrain, assuming there is any of note.

quite happy with blocks of 10, 20, whatever, so long as a larger block is generally more cumbersome due to being larger (which they usually are) and with now for the most part it seems only single ranks fighting the push back in good order mechanic I think makes it a lot easier to see them as considerably larger blocks or as 1:1 as well

have to see how it actually plays in the end, if its advanced beyond gimpy "impossible charge" blocking stuff and avoids the "death star" type unit issues I'm happy

 Platuan4th wrote:

 RustyNumber wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

Personally, no. Tiny 6th ed sized units makes the "army" seem anemic and like a lord is just taking his personal retainers on a stroll.

Units of 50 shuffling around in strict block formation is just as ridiculous as 10 or 20 in terms of "muh realism", better just to come to terms with "each model represents 5/10/20/whatever"

I'm not talking about "realism". The physical force itself on the table looks tiny and off.

Is Warhammer Fantasy not fundamentally a game where each infantry model is supposed to represent multiple models "lore wise"? What's the point in making it "look realistic" when baked into the game is the assumption that it is not one to one?

triplegrim wrote:I respect your view, but disagree. Its a skirmish game. Always prefered how 12 and 16 men infantry looks on the table. 30 and 40 men strong units looks silly to me.

I agree with this for the sole reason that huge units are mind-numbing to assemble and paint. Smaller units are more visually interesting and provide more 'moving parts' for the tabletop experience for a given model count.

Plus a 16-strong unit on 25mm bases has the same physical footprint as a 25-strong unit on 20mm bases, with a little more space between the individual models to better show off the sculpts. All it would take would be slightly larger bases to replicate the board presence of large units in 8th.

Guys, you are way overthinking an aesthetic preference.

Not when it actually effects the gameplay, ie multiple smaller units vs a few large blocks. I only came along in 8th and initially thought "big units rule, the olden days sucked look at those tiny units" but if it means more moving parts then great. I'll be very interested to see how it plays with many units of 10, 16 etc. given I only played 8th Lizardmen and the smallest infantry units were usually 10 skirmishers, everything else tended to be 15 or 20+

In my mind THIS is the exact sort of thing Warmaster was for: players who wanted gargantuan units on the board. If the units were massive blocks of 100+ models we wouldn't be able to play on terrain boards at all.

The rules are interesting insofar as they seem to be downplaying the importance of charging. This used to be the absolute object the game, and in the "guess the range" period, players would do things like move units a few tenths of an inch less than their movement to throw that off.

I've already gone on record as saying random charge distances are stupid. There is no historical example of this happening. When charges failed, it was from enemy fire, not because someone was an inch off on the distance. If GW wants to implement a "countercharge" rule, that would work as well.

Anyhow, there seems to be a sense that a single impact should not decide the engagement. That was absolutely the case in the earlier editions, where the charging unit slammed into a unit, inflicted casualties, and if the front rank was wiped out, the defenders were toast in the subsequent morale check.

This changed in 6th ed. with "stubborn" units, and also the unit strength bonus, and since I quit after that edition, I don't know what came next. At any rate, there seems to be a desire to see combat as "sticky" rather than a single impact.

That is to say, line units engage and wear each other down while flankers try gain the edge and force the issue.

Except that it will only be sticky for high Ld units. Low Ld units will be run over as per usual.

The only way it will be sticky for low Ld units is if they miraculously win a combat - which given low Ld is chained to low WS, and often I, is unlikely.

 ph34r wrote:
Is Warhammer Fantasy not fundamentally a game where each infantry model is supposed to represent multiple models "lore wise"? What's the point in making it "look realistic" when baked into the game is the assumption that it is not one to one?

it once was but that part was removed from the rules later for "realism"

Well it was originally just j suggestion anyway and didn't make sense rulewise anyway

 Hellebore wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Again, you're forcing crappy units to spend 3x as many turns to achieve an outcome they could have gotten in 1 previously. All the while the elite units are slaughtering away like nothing changed.

This rule and the charge rule are certainly making my dwarfs look great.

But the knock on effect of losing decisive routing will be far reaching

Shock horror elite units actually being useful and order of day isn't melee hero doing kills leading cheap chaff that does job of expenslve elite just as well for cheaper like before.

Also you act like elites wouldn't be overnumbered big time. Unit front and side and see how far you hold.

I'm comparing small units of elites to large units of chaff - their COST alone should mean they are useful. Otherwise they have no value at all and no incentive to buy. Spending ages painting a speedhump is suboptimal.

The point was that outnumbering won't matter, because it will only increase the chance the combat moves backward 2D6".

Having a wide frontage is being encouraged for everyone. The WS table is also better than it used to be. And having a wider frontage with wraparound only gives you the chance to kill a couple more, assuming there is the step up rule. And my point is that even if they did win through killing more (unlikely given the factors at play), the result would still be that most of the time they just move the combat backward a few inches, and the elite unit gets another opportunity to not lose.

The chances of a larger chaff unit beating their opponent on kills alone is small, but even if they do, their reward is now much smaller for that feat.

So far all these rules have done have made high WS, I and Ld armies far better and made low WS, I Ld armies far worse. It's making a bimodal distribution, which makes the results more extreme than they used to be.



EDIT: The ability to wrap around with a wider frontage actually makes elite units again even more powerful, because a unit of 10 in 2 ranks will only get a max +1 bonus from those 5 behind, while a unit of 10 in a single line will potentially get +5 casualties.

The wrap around frontage will see shallow wide elites who don't want to bother with building ranks but will get a better outcome as a result.

But shallow 10 wide elite units will have a hard time maneuvering, will have a super weak flank, and will take multiple charges...

 Hellebore wrote:
Except that it will only be sticky for high Ld units. Low Ld units will be run over as per usual.

The only way it will be sticky for low Ld units is if they miraculously win a combat - which given low Ld is chained to low WS, and often I, is unlikely.

Even a bog standard Goblin has a 40% chance of falling back. Obviously General/Hero Ld and Standard rerolls on top before we even consider any potential Ld boosting rules they could come up with.

Interesting that there doesn't seem to be a limit on rank bonus. So the thing stopping you from going for maximum static combat resolution is avoiding being in marching formation.

 Graphite wrote:
Interesting that there doesn't seem to be a limit on rank bonus. So the thing stopping you from going for maximum static combat resolution is avoiding being in marching formation.

well that and the cost and size of exposed flanks, but to be honest "hard" limits on unit sizes don't sit right with me any way, there is never a reason for it other than "because". and with rank bonus that was capped at three, why three? why not four? or two?

yes this means, in theory, large bricks of cheap rubbish are possible, however I have yet to see "steadfast" as a rule, the new push back mechanic seems to have replaced it, so when faced with such a brick basically you hit it in the flank with something nimble to nuke the rank bonus (hopefully) and then hit the front with something that can kill it - otherwise the idea that a huge block will stick about in combat (as the bods towards the back may not even realise they are even in combat) seems fine

in terms of utility I suspect 2x20 goblins will do more than 1x40 anyway, for one thing each can cover one flank of the other, and multiple smaller units can essentially deny flank attacks to the enemy for a while at least where as a few larger ones are much more exposed.

have to see how it actually plays out in practice once we have the full actual rules and critically the army lists & points

leopard wrote:

 SgtEeveell wrote:

 His Master's Voice wrote:

 Fayric wrote:

Now its just a bad sculpt that dont fit the theme, and that makes me also question the throne bit balancing on the spine. I mean, is it supposed to fly with a lord balancing on that throne?

Is it supposed to fly? The wings have no membrane.

How does it smell with no nose?

actually quite nice, so there

All this talk of crocodile skeletons made me look.

Amazon has some, but they're 20" long. Might make for some nice desert terrain though.

https://www.amazon.com/Crocodile-Skeleton-Halloween-Decoration-Trick/dp/B0BWKTBS2H

 Graphite wrote:
Interesting that there doesn't seem to be a limit on rank bonus. So the thing stopping you from going for maximum static combat resolution is avoiding being in marching formation.

I missed in my skim reading of everything what the amount of models to require a rank bonus is?

Back in the day, most of my units were 4 wide with specially modelled magnetic movement trays. Then GW upped the required amount of models for a rank bonus to 5, making me remodel everything and try and pick up a few more of each model (and some were then oop). Whats the amount now? 4 or 5?

leopard wrote:

 Graphite wrote:
Interesting that there doesn't seem to be a limit on rank bonus. So the thing stopping you from going for maximum static combat resolution is avoiding being in marching formation.

well that and the cost and size of exposed flanks, but to be honest "hard" limits on unit sizes don't sit right with me any way, there is never a reason for it other than "because". and with rank bonus that was capped at three, why three? why not four? or two?

yes this means, in theory, large bricks of cheap rubbish are possible, however I have yet to see "steadfast" as a rule, the new push back mechanic seems to have replaced it, so when faced with such a brick basically you hit it in the flank with something nimble to nuke the rank bonus (hopefully) and then hit the front with something that can kill it - otherwise the idea that a huge block will stick about in combat (as the bods towards the back may not even realise they are even in combat) seems fine

in terms of utility I suspect 2x20 goblins will do more than 1x40 anyway, for one thing each can cover one flank of the other, and multiple smaller units can essentially deny flank attacks to the enemy for a while at least where as a few larger ones are much more exposed.

have to see how it actually plays out in practice once we have the full actual rules and critically the army lists & points

we had the 40 model blocks in 8th for max damage and max Rank Bonus
prior to that such blocks were only used for Hordes to suck up damage

if there is no cap, the "minimum" sizes for bonus are:
10, 5x2, +1
15, 5x3, +2
20, 5x4, +3
25, 5x5, +4
36, 6x6, +5
49, 7x7, +6
64, 8x8, +7

with the 8 wide block on 25mm is the same as the old 10 wide block on 20mm

the question is now what heroes are going to do and of a single large block with all the heroes and damage inside is better than multiple small blocks without heroes


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gimgamgoo wrote:

I missed in my skim reading of everything what the amount of models to require a rank bonus is?
Back in the day, most of my units were 4 wide with specially modelled magnetic movement trays. Then GW upped the required amount of models for a rank bonus to 5, making me remodel everything and try and pick up a few more of each model (and some were then oop). Whats the amount now? 4 or 5?

was not mentioned yet
5 models wide is assumed as we have not seen any unit that is 4 wide on the promo-pics but it still can be a minimum of 4

It didn't mention any minimum, only that they had to be wider than they were deep.

Which leaves square units in a sort of limbo until we see what the exact rules are.

EDIT: Thus far, I'm VERY cautiously optimistic for the rules. I'm still not rebasing thousands of models, but I might invest in new, properly spaced movement trays. Now whether I'll actually buy more GW models or not, that's still very much up in the air. If they're still pricing minis like they're cast from precious metals, probably not.

No matter how nice they might be.

There's this note at the bottom of the article:

* In other words, the unit needs to be at least as wide as it is deep.

So Squares are combat order and not marching column

 Graphite wrote:
Interesting that there doesn't seem to be a limit on rank bonus. So the thing stopping you from going for maximum static combat resolution is avoiding being in marching formation.

Just because it doesn’t say it in this article doesn’t mean there isn’t a limit on rank bonus, you can’t take absence of evidence as evidence of absence.

Vorian wrote:
There's this note at the bottom of the article:

* In other words, the unit needs to be at least as wide as it is deep.

So Squares are combat order and not marching column

Ah. Missed that before. Thanks.

Vorian wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Except that it will only be sticky for high Ld units. Low Ld units will be run over as per usual.

The only way it will be sticky for low Ld units is if they miraculously win a combat - which given low Ld is chained to low WS, and often I, is unlikely.

Even a bog standard Goblin has a 40% chance of falling back. Obviously General/Hero Ld and Standard rerolls on top before we even consider any potential Ld boosting rules they could come up with.

If it works like WHFB used to, then the margin by which the combat was lost is applied as a penalty to the Ld check. Lose the fight by 3 and your Ld7 unit has just a one-in-six chance of sticking around. Even if you can test on the general's Ld9 they're more likely to break than to stay.

In practice stacking bonuses made it very unlikely to fall back just from a lost combat, but if you lost by any significant margin it was difficult to keep units in the fight. It was Steadfast in 8th that changed this up by making it so that you don't suffer any penalties if you have more ranks than the opponent, but I'll be very surprised if that rule makes a comeback.

We're discussing the new system for the Old World. They won't flee unless they roll higher than their natural Ld (presumably natural general Ld if applicable).

Losing combat heavily will now make them more likely to fall back in good order rather than giving ground.

So Goblins on Ld6 have ~40% chance of falling back in good order or giving ground and ~60% chance of fleeing like it's the 90s

I apologize, I saw that there was a Combat preview and then totally forgot to go back and actually read it after work. My bad.

 kodos wrote:

if there is no cap, the "minimum" sizes for bonus are:
10, 5x2, +1
15, 5x3, +2
20, 5x4, +3
25, 5x5, +4
36, 6x6, +5
49, 7x7, +6
64, 8x8, +7

with the 8 wide block on 25mm is the same as the old 10 wide block on 20mm

I think the easier thing is just give a +1 to the side with more ranks, -1 to the other one. That's how I did it in my game. Much easier and also more realistic. It's really a psychological edge because you are many and they are few, not because there's something special about symmetrical units with depth.

Hellebore wrote:
The point was that outnumbering won't matter, because it will only increase the chance the combat moves backward 2D6".

If the scenarios are about whoever can stand on circles the longest, pushing a combat back will matter quite a bit.

 Altruizine wrote:

Hellebore wrote:
The point was that outnumbering won't matter, because it will only increase the chance the combat moves backward 2D6".

If the scenarios are about whoever can stand on circles the longest, pushing a combat back will matter quite a bit.

Routing the unit accomplishes the same thing.

 Hellebore wrote:

 Altruizine wrote:

Hellebore wrote:
The point was that outnumbering won't matter, because it will only increase the chance the combat moves backward 2D6".

If the scenarios are about whoever can stand on circles the longest, pushing a combat back will matter quite a bit.

Routing the unit accomplishes the same thing.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

If you're playing a scenario that requires you to slow the other guy own, being pushed back instead of being routed can still be a win.

Eumerin wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

 Altruizine wrote:

Hellebore wrote:
The point was that outnumbering won't matter, because it will only increase the chance the combat moves backward 2D6".

If the scenarios are about whoever can stand on circles the longest, pushing a combat back will matter quite a bit.

Routing the unit accomplishes the same thing.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

If you're playing a scenario that requires you to slow the other guy own, being pushed back instead of being routed can still be a win.

True and old Fantasy had plenty of scenarios where you had to do exactly that as a defender, particularly with games where you had less points than the attacking force. That's one thing I've not seen talked about, I'm keen to see what else they release beside the rules. A 'Crusade' equivalent with narrative campaign packs would be very welcome.

Eumerin wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

 Altruizine wrote:

Hellebore wrote:
The point was that outnumbering won't matter, because it will only increase the chance the combat moves backward 2D6".

If the scenarios are about whoever can stand on circles the longest, pushing a combat back will matter quite a bit.

Routing the unit accomplishes the same thing.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

If you're playing a scenario that requires you to slow the other guy own, being pushed back instead of being routed can still be a win.

You're just describing routing with extra steps.

There isn't really any scenarios where driving the enemy away and either killing them as they run or watching them flee isn't just as effective as pushing them back, except one drags out your engagement and the other doesn't.

They even acknowledge this by putting the rout higher up on the table, because it's the most valuable. And now it's only within reach of elite units fighting chaff.

It's not only available for elite units though, nor does it only work vs chaff.

Ld6 flees 58.3% of the time
Ld7 flees 41.7% of the time
Ld8 flees 27.8% of the time

None of these are all the time, nor are they never.

Vorian wrote:
It's not only available for elite units though, nor does it only work vs chaff.

Ld6 flees 58.3% of the time
Ld7 flees 41.7% of the time
Ld8 flees 27.8% of the time

None of these are all the time, nor are they never.

Within reach is what I said. Before you get to that test you have to win combat.

There is a strong correlation between high ld and ws stats (with dwarfs mostly being the exception to also having good initiative as well as ld and ws), and the wrap around attack rule encourages smaller elite units to deploy wide front ranks to offset their lack of rank bonuses through extra potential kills.

So the outcome will be that not only will ld8+ units not rout very often, they are unlikely to lose the combat against low ld units in the first place for it to be necessary.

So you have situations where no matter how big the chaff unit is, it will have a low likelyhood of winning, and even if it does, a low likelyhood of routing, while the opposing elite will more often win and require fewer combat victories to generate a route.

Like I said previously, these rules don't just uplift elites, they push down chaff even more, creating a more extreme environment.

Wait a sec, outnumbering without ranks is useless for CR...

 Hellebore wrote:

Vorian wrote:
It's not only available for elite units though, nor does it only work vs chaff.

Ld6 flees 58.3% of the time
Ld7 flees 41.7% of the time
Ld8 flees 27.8% of the time

None of these are all the time, nor are they never.

Within reach is what I said. Before you get to that test you have to win combat.

There is a strong correlation between high ld and ws stats (with dwarfs mostly being the exception to also having good initiative as well as ld and ws), and the wrap around attack rule encourages smaller elite units to deploy wide front ranks to offset their lack of rank bonuses through extra potential kills.

So the outcome will be that not only will ld8+ units not rout very often, they are unlikely to lose the combat against low ld units in the first place for it to be necessary.

So you have situations where no matter how big the chaff unit is, it will have a low likelyhood of winning, and even if it does, a low likelyhood of routing, while the opposing elite will more often win and require fewer combat victories to generate a route.

Like I said previously, these rules don't just uplift elites, they push down chaff even more, creating a more extreme environment.

We don't know how magic nor "command abilities" work, both of which could potentially make the chaff horde exponentially deadlier/more efficient.

For example, a "chaff" army like goblins could afford to have a shaman/boss in every block, whereas high elves probably couldn't.

We also don't know how psychology works, that could also potentially play a factor here (for example, does being flanked by a block with 2+ ranks also infer morale penalties?).

Furthermore, I think you're looking at his in a vacuum; not only is the "chaff" army going to have more models per unit, but will probably also have more units overall, meaning it will have an easier time flanking an elite unit that's been pushing back a chaff horde block, while disabling the elite army's general to do the same by feeding his army's flankers with, well, chaff.

With all that in mind, I don't have a problem with an elite unit going to pound town with a horde block if they pull off/if the opponent is careless enough to allow a scenario where it's just one-on-one

SU-152 wrote:
Wait a sec, outnumbering without ranks is useless for CR...

Yeah, hence why wide frontages to get as many attacks as possible to convert to kills will be the more effective way to get your CR bonuses.

You can waste your (20 strong regiment) 3 extra ranks of 5 guys behind your battle rank to get +3, or you can run them 10 wide and get +1 for a rank and 2x the potential attacks and kills you would have otherwise gotten, giving you (if your ws and I are good...) Up to +11 CR, vs the standard block at +8 max.

The 'its hard to manoeuvre wide units' argument is weak. If its a powerful tactic then it will be pursued with vigor.

I used to use a 20 wide rank of dwarf crossbows and only reformed them when the enemy was close. I built my army around it.


Btw, unless they have a limit on your front rank wrap around, a 20 wide rank gets 20 attacks on an enemy that could physically be 6"+ away from some models.


Hopefully they have something like 'as many wrap around as the target is deep'. So a 20 man unit in 4 ranks could get a max of 5 at the front and 4 on either side. Which is still a lot.

On an infinitely wide board you may have a point, but on a regular board, footprint and power at a point really matters. Your 20 wide unit is vulnerable to be charged by 3 or 4 opposing units that cover the same frontage. Then everyone gets similar numbers of attacks but the opponent has static combat res and you don’t.

I think when we've got to 20 inch wide units of single attack elite units being the death of chaff units, we've taken an odd turn somewhere.

Chaff is going to be fine, they just aren't going to be 50 strong units that are going to be winning combats on their own.

I mean there’s so much we don’t know yet either, gobbos and such could have a USR called “swarming” that prevents FBIGO for example.

Probably not worth throwing out all your regular movement trays and buying 20 wide ones just yet.

Whta happens in the case of a flanked unit being pushed back? Does the flanking unit also follow-up? What about a unit that has been charged both from the front and the rear?

 Hellebore wrote:


Within reach is what I said. Before you get to that test you have to win combat.

There is a strong correlation between high ld and ws stats (with dwarfs mostly being the exception to also having good initiative as well as ld and ws), and the wrap around attack rule encourages smaller elite units to deploy wide front ranks to offset their lack of rank bonuses through extra potential kills.

Ah yes. Fighting against front and flank enemies obviously doesn't have ANY impact whatsoever. Chaff can't uise their LOWER POINT COST to field up MORE UNITS to OUTNUMBER the enemy and OUTFLANK them to use their SUPERIOR NUMBERS thanks to their CHEAPER POINT COST to win.

Oh no. Elite units OBVIOUSLY cost just as much or every chaff player is so bad player that tries to fight 1 on 1 ignoring superior numbers.

Yep yep.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hellebore wrote:

SU-152 wrote:
Wait a sec, outnumbering without ranks is useless for CR...

Yeah, hence why wide frontages to get as many attacks as possible to convert to kills will be the more effective way to get your CR bonuses.

Groovy. Elite unit puts up units in single rank. I'll charge your flank. You get 1 model attack, I get ranks, flank bonus. Easy win.

Have fun.

Oh boy do my games get boring if my opponents try that. Easy wins. Easy wins. It's like I won't even have to TRY to win as my opponent just gives up in deployment

tneva82 wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:


Within reach is what I said. Before you get to that test you have to win combat.

There is a strong correlation between high ld and ws stats (with dwarfs mostly being the exception to also having good initiative as well as ld and ws), and the wrap around attack rule encourages smaller elite units to deploy wide front ranks to offset their lack of rank bonuses through extra potential kills.

Ah yes. Fighting against front and flank enemies obviously doesn't have ANY impact whatsoever. Chaff can't uise their LOWER POINT COST to field up MORE UNITS to OUTNUMBER the enemy and OUTFLANK them to use their SUPERIOR NUMBERS thanks to their CHEAPER POINT COST to win.

Oh no. Elite units OBVIOUSLY cost just as much or every chaff player is so bad player that tries to fight 1 on 1 ignoring superior numbers.

Yep yep.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hellebore wrote:

SU-152 wrote:
Wait a sec, outnumbering without ranks is useless for CR...

Yeah, hence why wide frontages to get as many attacks as possible to convert to kills will be the more effective way to get your CR bonuses.

Groovy. Elite unit puts up units in single rank. I'll charge your flank. You get 1 model attack, I get ranks, flank bonus. Easy win.

Have fun.

Oh boy do my games get boring if my opponents try that. Easy wins. Easy wins. It's like I won't even have to TRY to win as my opponent just gives up in deployment

You do know both players get to move and charge right? Or do your opponents just sit single line elite units out there with massive gaps between them for you to spend a couple of turns marching and reforming with chaff to get to their flanks?

I feel this debate is impossible to have without actual concrete examples.

I don't think its an issue that say a line of 10 Swordmasters costing 130 points will chop up a small brick of 20 goblins costing 50-60. Will it be an issue when 3 goblin wolf chariots (150 points?) charge the 10-man line of Swordmasters and potentially kill all them with impact hits?

Yea I'm just gonna be cautiously optimistic for now, like I always am.

Dudeface wrote:
You do know both players get to move and charge right? Or do your opponents just sit single line elite units out there with massive gaps between them for you to spend a couple of turns marching and reforming with chaff to get to their flanks?

Yes, one reason why you would extend your front is to make the flanks harder to reach, particularly for large, unwieldy blocks of chaff.

There's also the fact that elite armies tend to have very elite flanking units who can dodge and weave, and bog down far larger forces by denying them march moves.

I like the new 'to hit' table and rules that reward extended fronts for this reason. This creates space for historically viable tactics that simply were not possible in WHFB.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Yea I'm just gonna be cautiously optimistic for now, like I always am.

Wise move.

But I can´t help but stop to be cautios, because I like too much what I see so far about ToW. It is checking all but one point of my wishlist!!!

One thing I'm noticing is that the combat article simply says +1 combat res per rank. No mention of a cap, no mention of only using one unit's ranks.

The requirement of having to be wider than deep imposes an exponential cost on the number of ranks one unit can have, but if I charge an enemy unit with 2 blocks of infantry, each with 3 ranks, do I get +6 rank bonus? That would be an interesting development if so. I always found lower quality units to be problematic in the old WHFB because ranks were capped at a maximum of +3. It often meant that charging multiple units into an elite enemy gave little or no benefit in static combat res and just ended up giving them more attacks back, meaning ganging up was often actively detrimental to you.

Counting all ranks would certainly be a power boost to chaf hordes. Of course, we can't expect a war com fluff piece to be comprehensive, so they may just have not mentioned the caps.

Yeah, we'll have to see if the actual rules have a cap. The preview aren't necessarily complete on any given point. But going only by what's in the article, I think adding ranks from multiple regiments without cap doesn't sound like a bad idea. Especially if insane courage is still in the rules and provides a chance for a unit to stand its ground no matter how stacked against it combat resolution is.

I'd hope the rank bonus is capped at the maximum of several units, not the sum of them

2x20 goblins should not hit harder than 1x40 goblins when both are four ranks deep

leopard wrote:
I'd hope the rank bonus is capped at the maximum of several units, not the sum of them

2x20 goblins should not hit harder than 1x40 goblins when both are four ranks deep

Given decades of experience with GW, I'm reasonably certain that there will be poor phrasing in the rule which will be exploited, and rather than correct the deficiency, GW will not only defend it, but will parse it further leading to even weirder combinations.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

leopard wrote:
I'd hope the rank bonus is capped at the maximum of several units, not the sum of them

2x20 goblins should not hit harder than 1x40 goblins when both are four ranks deep

Given decades of experience with GW, I'm reasonably certain that there will be poor phrasing in the rule which will be exploited, and rather than correct the deficiency, GW will not only defend it, but will parse it further leading to even weirder combinations.

there is a significant chance of you being correct here

still the argument phase of the game tends to at least be interactive

tneva82 wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:


Within reach is what I said. Before you get to that test you have to win combat.

There is a strong correlation between high ld and ws stats (with dwarfs mostly being the exception to also having good initiative as well as ld and ws), and the wrap around attack rule encourages smaller elite units to deploy wide front ranks to offset their lack of rank bonuses through extra potential kills.

Ah yes. Fighting against front and flank enemies obviously doesn't have ANY impact whatsoever. Chaff can't uise their LOWER POINT COST to field up MORE UNITS to OUTNUMBER the enemy and OUTFLANK them to use their SUPERIOR NUMBERS thanks to their CHEAPER POINT COST to win.

Oh no. Elite units OBVIOUSLY cost just as much or every chaff player is so bad player that tries to fight 1 on 1 ignoring superior numbers.

Yep yep.

If I deploy 200 points of chaff vs 200 points of elite, the game should allow for either to win. That's what points balance is for. Currently these rules mean that 200 points of elites are going to be disproportionately better at fighting than an equal number of points of chaff.

Your argument is, the game now doesn't reflect the power of large hordes of chaff smashing into the foe, so deploy as MSU instead. Which is the behaviour of elite armies, not horde ones.

If the only way to fight with a horde of chaff is to play MSU, then there is a problem.

tneva82 wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hellebore wrote:

SU-152 wrote:
Wait a sec, outnumbering without ranks is useless for CR...

Yeah, hence why wide frontages to get as many attacks as possible to convert to kills will be the more effective way to get your CR bonuses.

Groovy. Elite unit puts up units in single rank. I'll charge your flank. You get 1 model attack, I get ranks, flank bonus. Easy win.

Have fun.

Oh boy do my games get boring if my opponents try that. Easy wins. Easy wins. It's like I won't even have to TRY to win as my opponent just gives up in deployment

And because their LD is static, you won't rout the elites, you'll just push them a little. If you think it's absolutely fine and thematic flanking a single rank of 5 models with 40 goblins and just pushing them because your CR doesn't affect their Ld, then we're really just arguing on completely different planes.

100 goblins in the front, flank or rear of 5 ironbreakers/chaos warriors, generates no difference - they will just get pushed no matter which direction you're coming from.

That is a poor rule resolution.

Given that next week’s article is about Morale, Breaking, and Psychology there are almost certainly more to the process than the simple picture drawn so far.

 Hellebore wrote:
If I deploy 200 points of chaff vs 200 points of elite

The elites should win more often than not, because the chaff models have superior board control. You didn't take Goblins or Gnoblars or Skavenslaves because they were good troops- not even for the points- you took them because they were just as good as elites when it came to blocking off flanks, interrupting marches, and opportunistically flanking to provide rank bonus.

This is not the sort of brainless game where 200pts of anything has equal odds against 200pts of anything else. Every unit type has natural counters, and every unit type contributes soft factors beyond raw killing power.

 catbarf wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
If I deploy 200 points of chaff vs 200 points of elite

The elites should win more often than not, because the chaff models have superior board control. You didn't take Goblins or Gnoblars or Skavenslaves because they were good troops- not even for the points- you took them because they were just as good as elites when it came to blocking off flanks, interrupting marches, and opportunistically flanking to provide rank bonus.

This is not the sort of brainless game where 200pts of anything has equal odds against 200pts of anything else. Every unit type has natural counters, and every unit type contributes soft factors beyond raw killing power.

I'd be interested to see what you consider a capable goblin or skaven army if you don't think chaff units should be effective at killing things. nothing but goblins and trolls, skaven and ratogres?

Board control means less if you can't kill off your enemy and flank charges no longer devastate the enemy because of these rules.


You could charge a 10 man unit of sword masters with 20 goblins in the front and 20 to either side and they would react exactly the same as if they'd been charged by 1 goblin. Your board control and cheeky flank charges don't mean much when they will lose the combat and rout themselves by foolishly charging an enemy they can't hit, won't strike first against, will lose CR against and with low Ld rout and be run down by.

In this environment I'd be MSUing my dwarfs (10 models per unit depending on their minimums), and placing them all over to either charge, or take charges, safe in the knowledge that no matter how outnumbered they are, they won't be breaking and will hold enemy units up for ages.

I'd put multiple rows of them one behind the other, rather than having 20 man blocks, 2 separate 10 man ones in two lines one behind the other. That gives you flank charges on flankers. No down sides. A flank charge means nothing unless it comes from another elite/heavy hitting unit.

This will work really well with ironbreakers who have 2+ saves against chaff units with no ASM. Goblins hit ironbreakers on 5+ and wound on 5+, and now the return attacks are 2+, wounding on 3+. 10 goblins striking 1 ironbreaker will do 1 damage, while 1 ironbreaker striking 10 goblins will also do 1 damage, but the gobbo will probably not save while the ironbreaker most definitely will.

Flank charges done with a front charge actually become more vulnerable because the front will take casualties, whether the flank does or not and if they're a combined combat then the flank will rout.

So I see very little to support your assertion that 'board control' with chaff actually matters. They'll lose whether charged or charging, and if they're in the way then they'll be charged and suffer the most from the low Ld rout.

I think there's probably a tactic in there somewhere which doesn't involve feeding increasing numbers of the worst infantry into some of the best.

 catbarf wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
If I deploy 200 points of chaff vs 200 points of elite

The elites should win more often than not, because the chaff models have superior board control. You didn't take Goblins or Gnoblars or Skavenslaves because they were good troops- not even for the points- you took them because they were just as good as elites when it came to blocking off flanks, interrupting marches, and opportunistically flanking to provide rank bonus.

This is not the sort of brainless game where 200pts of anything has equal odds against 200pts of anything else. Every unit type has natural counters, and every unit type contributes soft factors beyond raw killing power.

Correct. What would the 200 points look like? They could be two decent-sized units, which would put the one elite one in a quandry. Points are there to facilitate balance, but not infallible. Tactical skill is also required for units to be effective, which is why we bother playing.

the third edition book had a discussion on points, noted how when you compare a dragon to a goblin points cease to function - the dragon will kill a few and the rest will run, doesn't matter how many there are its never "balanced"

points only work at a figure level between roughly comparable things to show which is better and by how much

or at an army level, unit level etc things need to be roughly comparable for points to make sense

so asking if 200 points of chaff are equal to 200 points of elite doesn't overly make sense, in broad terms they should contribute the same to an army, but it doesn't mean its a fair fight between them

leopard wrote:
the third edition book had a discussion on points, noted how when you compare a dragon to a goblin points cease to function - the dragon will kill a few and the rest will run, doesn't matter how many there are its never "balanced"

points only work at a figure level between roughly comparable things to show which is better and by how much

or at an army level, unit level etc things need to be roughly comparable for points to make sense

so asking if 200 points of chaff are equal to 200 points of elite doesn't overly make sense, in broad terms they should contribute the same to an army, but it doesn't mean its a fair fight between them

Consider 200 points of horse archers vs 200 points of heavy, elite infantry. In close combat, the horse archers will lose. But how will the infantry catch them?

This is why additional limits were put in place in 6th, to try to limit units whose points value was highly circumstantial. Artillery crews at a distance can wreck even big monsters, but in close even the worst chaff can mop the floor with them.

The additional challenge GW faces is in the fact that - unlike almost all wargames - GW does not rely on the players to collaborate in creating a fun, balanced scenario. Instead, GW purports to provide this service as part of their design, and - making matters worse - they also seem to approach it with a high degree of indifference.

This is why I can look at some of the mechanics and think "wow, this looks neat" but understand that the execution is likely going to fail because it always does.

I believe the continuing loyalty to 2nd ed. 40k was because the hobby didn't reach the "professional tournament" level during its run. Many of the rules are contingent on mutual agreement and variant lists are specifically noted as unbalanced but entertaining. At this late date, I don't see GW returning to that mentality.

 Hellebore wrote:
I'd be interested to see what you consider a capable goblin or skaven army if you don't think chaff units should be effective at killing things. nothing but goblins and trolls, skaven and ratogres?

A capable Goblin or Skaven army was one that took advantage of its non-chaff options, of which there were plenty beyond trolls and ogres. For Goblins, that's fanatics, doom diver catapults, squigs, wolf riders, spider riders, rock lobbas, and Arachnaroks off the top of my head, even if you choose to ignore Orcs entirely. For Skaven, that's Stormvermin and basically everything from Moulder, Skryre, Eshin, or Pestilens. Either way you then also have characters that could be credible combatants, as well as magic. Building an army out of nothing but chaff units was always a meme; even the Gnoblar Horde list had access to artillery, monstrous infantry, and giants.

Those chaff units were there to guard your flanks, fill gaps in the line, lend rank and outnumbering bonuses when necessary, prevent the enemy from marching, speedbump scary stuff, hold objectives, help dogpile vulnerable units, et cetera. Things where their combat ability was secondary to the utility of having another ranked unit on the board, and having cheap units to perform these roles provided a tangible advantage over an army that went all-in on elite deathstars and had to choose whether to leave their warmachines exposed or squander a 300+pt unit on guard duty.

Against MSU elites, your advantages were rank bonuses and outnumbering at the cost of lesser raw damage output, so stacking that CR to support the heavier hitters let you take apart MSU armies piecemeal. MSU had other vulnerabilities besides that, but throwing chaff infantry into equal points of elite infantry without any force multipliers was always a braindead play.

For TOW, we do not know the full rules yet and it's absurd to immediately dive into theorycrafting about how snippets of rules previews conclusively prove that certain unit archetypes are invalidated. But I do not expect that 200pts of anything will have coin-flip odds against 200pts of anything else because that's simply not how this game genre works.

I didn't get any experience of it but I thought MSU and skirmisher charge redirects etc were a large part of the 8th meta? In a bad, overly skewed kind of way?

 RustyNumber wrote:
I didn't get any experience of it but I thought MSU and skirmisher charge redirects etc were a large part of the 8th meta? In a bad, overly skewed kind of way?

8th, and a bit before, had some easily breakable rules

1. charger always conforms to the target - hence small skirmish chaff "redirecting" a large block that would contact them, end up "aligning" to face towards a board edge then when they overran etc they end up out of position and taking two turns to get back, or staying put, but still facing the wrong way with flanks exposed - when "in reality" (and yes, yes I know) they would likely have just rolled over the chaff

2. charge blocking - using the above requirement and positioning several units such that the enemy cannot conform to any of them, and thus cannot charge any of them, leading to the ridiculous situation of a large combat block facing two small, lone characters standing just in front of them (or cheap fliers, or cheap chaff units), but unable to charge either of them and unable to move around them

I think there were a fair few issues in movement, its a war game, not a "you can't touch me" game, or at least it should be a war game, stuff should fight

the other side was chucking six dice super spells that some armies had no counter to, e.g. anything that was an initiative test to survive, good luck Dwarves, Orcs, Ogres etc - however those same spells were seemingly designed as a kerb on "death star" units with multiple characters etc as it made such risky. Of course a lot of event packs focused on how to nerf the magic, and then how to nerf the death stars.

A fair bit of this came down to leaving a bad feeling at times, a feeling where one player is basically a passenger in a game with little they can actually do - I would note that if you played the game as it was actually written though some of these issues went away. e.g. the chaff redirect stuff, given a victory was killing 100 points more than the enemy you could score a win by killing some chaff and then if the enemy wants to avoid combat.. let them. Again most event packs changed that in some way.

This coupled with 8th encouraging large blocks of models that were both expensive to buy and time consuming to paint and yet that on table were largely ineffective because the enemy had the bulk of their army in one large block, which was virtual suicide to charge, and some cheap chaff to stop you even trying to hit it until it steam rollered one of your units and the game became far too predictable and won in the list building phase

I would note again, play it as it was written though, which meant going for more than just the "Battleline" scenario where some of these tournament lists struggled and it was a different game

tl;dr issues with 8th, over earlier editions especially
- it was an issue written by the marketing team to sell a lot more models
- the rules were too fragile and easily broken if a player wanted to

Morale and Psychology due tomorrow.

I guess stubborn and Unbreakable needs to be changed from how they used to work, since the combat resolution works so different.

Stubborn now feels kind of superfluous. Unbreakable shouldn’t prevent being pushed back.

Though I suppose Stubborn could mean a modifier to combat res, reducing the chance of being pushed back. Or perhaps might grant a re-roll in your break test.

 triplegrim wrote:
Morale and Psychology due tomorrow.

I guess stubborn and Unbreakable needs to be changed from how they used to work, since the combat resolution works so different.

It will be interesting to see what they give us in the article. But neither of these are hard to imagine how they will rework them.

Stubborn will probably be something like: "When making Break Test, this unit ignores the modifier to the Break Test. It therefore will never Fall Back in Good Order, instead it Gives Ground if it does not Break and Flee."

Forget stubborn and unbreakable, I wanna know what fear and terror do now. Hoping it’s not 8th rules as psychology wasn’t super important in that edition imo. Also almost always forgot to get my opponent to roll fear tests.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/11/27/old-world-almanack-get-in-the-right-headspace-for-morale-and-psychology/?utm_source=sm&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=old-world&utm_content=blpreorder23/11/23&fbclid=IwAR2T2IxOyWU3koW_R87EZvM09xhWs0JI8UKQgsb-bwhiNMVAtbbGQQ5bTN8

Some nice info here now to mull over.

Confirms how the break tests results operate.

Fear now seems to be a nice mixture of 6th and 8th edition. Terror has a bit more bite to it now.

Also, Stomp is still in the game, so Monsters have a bit more hitting power.

Well Fear and Terror now sound legitimate.

Break Tests still seem to heavily favour Dwarfs over all other traditionally high Ld armies.

Not only are they less likely to actively flee? But just being pushed back, ready to charge me in the turn sounds like it’s gonna suuuuuck. And indeed, only encourage The Dwarven Gunline of Numbing Inevitablity, where my sole strategic option is “peg it across the board as fast as I can, and hope I’ve enough bodies left for a half decent shot at a punch up”, whilst my half witted opponent claps like a seal at their “tactical genius” of just huddling around a hill they demanded be in their deployment zone. Yes I am speaking from genuine experience here. Sod you, Cheaty Steve!

Of course we don’t have the full picture just yet. Certainly we don’t know what Dwarf Ld might be. It could well have been lowered to offset how hard they are to shift just under the basic rules. And there may be spells or other abilities which count a unit’s native Ld as lower.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Break Tests still seem to heavily favour Dwarfs over all other traditionally high Ld armies.

Not only are they less likely to actively flee? But just being pushed back, ready to charge me in the turn sounds like it’s gonna suuuuuck. And indeed, only encourage The Dwarven Gunline of Numbing Inevitablity, where my sole strategic option is “peg it across the board as fast as I can, and hope I’ve enough bodies left for a half decent shot at a punch up”, whilst my half witted opponent claps like a seal at their “tactical genius” of just huddling around a hill they demanded be in their deployment zone. Yes I am speaking from genuine experience here. Sod you, Cheaty Steve!.

Seems we have played the same guy...


This is the first rules reveal that was more of a yawn to me.

I like that terror can cause troops to flee before combat though.

Animosity remaining was a welcome surprise. I know its been a point of dispute for O&G players but I'm personally glad to have it around.
The Shaggoth looks to have an almost identical statblock to its 8E version so doesn't look like monster stats are likely to inflate much.
The Shaggoth remaining Ld9 and Swordmasters being Ld8 in the last article both point towards Leadership values remaining comparable to historical values, although rerolls might still be reduced.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Break Tests still seem to heavily favour Dwarfs over all other traditionally high Ld armies.

Not only are they less likely to actively flee? But just being pushed back, ready to charge me in the turn sounds like it’s gonna suuuuuck. And indeed, only encourage The Dwarven Gunline of Numbing Inevitablity, where my sole strategic option is “peg it across the board as fast as I can, and hope I’ve enough bodies left for a half decent shot at a punch up”, whilst my half witted opponent claps like a seal at their “tactical genius” of just huddling around a hill they demanded be in their deployment zone. Yes I am speaking from genuine experience here. Sod you, Cheaty Steve!

Of course we don’t have the full picture just yet. Certainly we don’t know what Dwarf Ld might be. It could well have been lowered to offset how hard they are to shift just under the basic rules. And there may be spells or other abilities which count a unit’s native Ld as lower.

Deploy in the opposite corner, point out your Trebuchet out ranges his cannons.

sit back and enjoy the rage as you pelt rocks at the immobile huddled masses and steadfastly refuse to entre gun range.

for a bonus point, if you accept some peasant losses, and frankly why not as they smell, the long bow out ranges most firearms, make that hill into a burial mound


that aside, to be honest a well drilled force should be hard to break in melee

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Break Tests still seem to heavily favour Dwarfs over all other traditionally high Ld armies.

Not only are they less likely to actively flee? But just being pushed back, ready to charge me in the turn sounds like it’s gonna suuuuuck. And indeed, only encourage The Dwarven Gunline of Numbing Inevitablity, where my sole strategic option is “peg it across the board as fast as I can, and hope I’ve enough bodies left for a half decent shot at a punch up”, whilst my half witted opponent claps like a seal at their “tactical genius” of just huddling around a hill they demanded be in their deployment zone. Yes I am speaking from genuine experience here. Sod you, Cheaty Steve!

Of course we don’t have the full picture just yet. Certainly we don’t know what Dwarf Ld might be. It could well have been lowered to offset how hard they are to shift just under the basic rules. And there may be spells or other abilities which count a unit’s native Ld as lower.

Why would just being pushed back allow them to charge? Just opt to follow up and reengage

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Also note that given how many USRs we've seen in just the 2 or 3 ranged weapon profiles that have been previewed, there's bound to be a whole host of combat modifying abilities to game the break check.

So today's article confirms that abilities can modify the testing unit's Leadership, which affects their odds to Break and Flee.

Crisis over?

Vorian wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Break Tests still seem to heavily favour Dwarfs over all other traditionally high Ld armies.

Not only are they less likely to actively flee? But just being pushed back, ready to charge me in the turn sounds like it’s gonna suuuuuck. And indeed, only encourage The Dwarven Gunline of Numbing Inevitablity, where my sole strategic option is “peg it across the board as fast as I can, and hope I’ve enough bodies left for a half decent shot at a punch up”, whilst my half witted opponent claps like a seal at their “tactical genius” of just huddling around a hill they demanded be in their deployment zone. Yes I am speaking from genuine experience here. Sod you, Cheaty Steve!

Of course we don’t have the full picture just yet. Certainly we don’t know what Dwarf Ld might be. It could well have been lowered to offset how hard they are to shift just under the basic rules. And there may be spells or other abilities which count a unit’s native Ld as lower.

Why would just being pushed back allow them to charge? Just opt to follow up and reengage

It’s more having to hang around like a lemon and risk flank charges.

Quite intuitive psychology rules. Fear can cause a -1 to hit, nice.

Liking it so far.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Vorian wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Break Tests still seem to heavily favour Dwarfs over all other traditionally high Ld armies.

Not only are they less likely to actively flee? But just being pushed back, ready to charge me in the turn sounds like it’s gonna suuuuuck. And indeed, only encourage The Dwarven Gunline of Numbing Inevitablity, where my sole strategic option is “peg it across the board as fast as I can, and hope I’ve enough bodies left for a half decent shot at a punch up”, whilst my half witted opponent claps like a seal at their “tactical genius” of just huddling around a hill they demanded be in their deployment zone. Yes I am speaking from genuine experience here. Sod you, Cheaty Steve!

Of course we don’t have the full picture just yet. Certainly we don’t know what Dwarf Ld might be. It could well have been lowered to offset how hard they are to shift just under the basic rules. And there may be spells or other abilities which count a unit’s native Ld as lower.

Why would just being pushed back allow them to charge? Just opt to follow up and reengage

It’s more having to hang around like a lemon and risk flank charges.

Well the whole game will work differently since it's a lot less about getting charge and routing stuff in 1 turn. I'm sure you'll quickly adapt how you play to not leave charging units swinging on the wind.

The hope would be that the death of the game revolving around charges and units instantly fleeing will make it much easier for Dwarfs to be something other than gun lines and static blocks defending those warmachines.

I wonder how following up will interact with Fear causing units. If they'll give you some sort of guarantee or if you still have to make a Ld test or stand in place.

Vorian wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Vorian wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Break Tests still seem to heavily favour Dwarfs over all other traditionally high Ld armies.

Not only are they less likely to actively flee? But just being pushed back, ready to charge me in the turn sounds like it’s gonna suuuuuck. And indeed, only encourage The Dwarven Gunline of Numbing Inevitablity, where my sole strategic option is “peg it across the board as fast as I can, and hope I’ve enough bodies left for a half decent shot at a punch up”, whilst my half witted opponent claps like a seal at their “tactical genius” of just huddling around a hill they demanded be in their deployment zone. Yes I am speaking from genuine experience here. Sod you, Cheaty Steve!

Of course we don’t have the full picture just yet. Certainly we don’t know what Dwarf Ld might be. It could well have been lowered to offset how hard they are to shift just under the basic rules. And there may be spells or other abilities which count a unit’s native Ld as lower.

Why would just being pushed back allow them to charge? Just opt to follow up and reengage

It’s more having to hang around like a lemon and risk flank charges.

Well the whole game will work differently since it's a lot less about getting charge and routing stuff in 1 turn. I'm sure you'll quickly adapt how you play to not leave charging units swinging on the wind.

The hope would be that the death of the game revolving around charges and units instantly fleeing will make it much easier for Dwarfs to be something other than gun lines and static blocks defending those warmachines.

Plus it seems like you need space behind you to actually take advantage of these new rules - if you’re in your deployment zone there’s very little board to flee/fbigo/give ground into

 Rihgu wrote:
I wonder how following up will interact with Fear causing units. If they'll give you some sort of guarantee or if you still have to make a Ld test or stand in place.

Very good point here. I love the new fear rules myself.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also I guess unit strength is back. They mentioned it a few times in this article.

Did I read that wrong or do you have to fear test every round of combat if still engaged?!?!?!?

 Just Tony wrote:
Did I read that wrong or do you have to fear test every round of combat if still engaged?!?!?!?

No, you read that right.

Terror also applies an extra -1 penalty to opposing units’ Leadership characteristic when taking Break Tests – making a break and flee outcome that much more likely.

So combat results give a positive penalty to the dice roll, but Terror gives a negative penalty directly to Leadership. Already seems like an over-complication to me.

 Just Tony wrote:
Did I read that wrong or do you have to fear test every round of combat if still engaged?!?!?!?

It’s a nerfed version of 8th Ed which had a fear test every round or drop to WS1. And frankly that barely mattered.
Can’t remember if the fear test to charge was in 8th though.

With the new FBIGO it’s a shame they didn’t bring in a nerfed version of the old outnumber autobreak thing - fear causing troops that outnumber you tend to be pretty rubbish, and outnumbered by a fear causing unit making FBIGO => Break & Flee would add an interesting dynamic.

This is honestly looking like the most exciting set of rules that GW has released since the Adeptus Titanicus relaunch. I am increasingly hyped.

 Shakalooloo wrote:

Terror also applies an extra -1 penalty to opposing units’ Leadership characteristic when taking Break Tests – making a break and flee outcome that much more likely.

So combat results give a positive penalty to the dice roll, but Terror gives a negative penalty directly to Leadership. Already seems like an over-complication to me.

Except they do different things. As Terror will also effect the chance to break and flee, while the combat results just effect give ground and fall back in good order.

chaos0xomega wrote:
This is honestly looking like the most exciting set of rules that GW has released since the Adeptus Titanicus relaunch. I am increasingly hyped.

I would tend to agree, but remember that a lot of snippets of 10th also looked swell...

 lord_blackfang wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
This is honestly looking like the most exciting set of rules that GW has released since the Adeptus Titanicus relaunch. I am increasingly hyped.

I would tend to agree, but remember that a lot of snippets of 10th also looked swell...

Tbf the issue with 10th is less the core rules and more the army composition rules.

If, like HH, TOW aligns mostly to how things were historically in that regard then hopefully we’ll be OK.

On my part, I’m hoping we go back more or less to the 6th/7th paradigm, though maybe with the minimum Core being still a %.

the core rules were never really a problem with any GW system

and currently, the more I see from TOW the less excited I get

Shakalooloo wrote:

Terror also applies an extra -1 penalty to opposing units’ Leadership characteristic when taking Break Tests – making a break and flee outcome that much more likely.

So combat results give a positive penalty to the dice roll, but Terror gives a negative penalty directly to Leadership. Already seems like an over-complication to me.

Essentially 20 gallons of gak shoved into a 5 gallon sock. I imagine the rules will suffer for it once dice hit the felt.

Well that's a small encyclopedias worth of special rules on the shaggoth. Back to bloat it is.

 Just Tony wrote:

Shakalooloo wrote:

Terror also applies an extra -1 penalty to opposing units’ Leadership characteristic when taking Break Tests – making a break and flee outcome that much more likely.

So combat results give a positive penalty to the dice roll, but Terror gives a negative penalty directly to Leadership. Already seems like an over-complication to me.

Essentially 20 gallons of gak shoved into a 5 gallon sock. I imagine the rules will suffer for it once dice hit the felt.

Why do you care, you’re out remember

 lord_blackfang wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
This is honestly looking like the most exciting set of rules that GW has released since the Adeptus Titanicus relaunch. I am increasingly hyped.

I would tend to agree, but remember that a lot of snippets of 10th also looked swell...

Can you name one?

Well I have some Beastmen so I am bit interested.

Although Beastmen are a bit wild to speculate on as there was bit of an leap between 6th & 8th edition books and this new version has micture of both.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
This is honestly looking like the most exciting set of rules that GW has released since the Adeptus Titanicus relaunch. I am increasingly hyped.

I would tend to agree, but remember that a lot of snippets of 10th also looked swell...

In my opinion, specialty games rulesets have mostly been better than what GW considers their main games. So I remain optimistic.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
Well that's a small encyclopedias worth of special rules on the shaggoth. Back to bloat it is.

For some reason I've never had an issue learning two dozen USRsin fantasy, but the keyword system in 40k just makes my eyes cross and glaze over whenever I look at a unit card when I try to get back into 40k.

Removed - rule #1 please..

Play nice everyone, please. What are we AOS players bashing fantasy players for getting their game back?

For the person that asked about Fear in 8th, it was only a LD test to see if a unit was affected. Had no affect on charges so that part is new for TOW.

Not seeing anything that changes the issues the melee rules present.

In fact the fall back in good order is even less useful than was claimed - it's at most a 6" move backward, not a full flee, while the give ground is only 2".

That's a whole lot of moving large unwieldy blocks of troops for very little gain.

So we are still in the situation of high Ld units just not being broken in combat.

The capacity of some rules to modify Ld won't impact this unless it is spread across the whole army, in which case it would have been simpler to just change the way the break test.


Will be interested to see if any armies bother deploying chaff units at all under these rules. You get more value for your dollar by not.

 Hellebore wrote:
Not seeing anything that changes the issues the melee rules present.

In fact the fall back in good order is even less useful than was claimed - it's at most a 6" move backward, not a full flee, while the give ground is only 2".

That's a whole lot of moving large unwieldy blocks of troops for very little gain.

So we are still in the situation of high Ld units just not being broken in combat.

The capacity of some rules to modify Ld won't impact this unless it is spread across the whole army, in which case it would have been simpler to just change the way the break test.


Will be interested to see if any armies bother deploying chaff units at all under these rules. You get more value for your dollar by not.

Well. Physically smaller armies will be a blessing imo. I could play with the size of the army box deals contents as full sozed battles and be happy with it tbh.

Yeah, I'm concerned about the physical clunkiness of the fall back rules. Pushbacks were one of the (many) overcomplicated rules in 3rd edition that slowed games down.

Didn't KoW have a separation mechanic in 2nd Edition? I don't remember "push back" being that complicated and nothing I've seen feels overly complicated. A unit can fall back in good order and you can choose to chase it. Leaving your flanks open but likely counting as charging in the next combat phase.

Feels fine to me.

leopard wrote:

the other side was chucking six dice super spells that some armies had no counter to, e.g. anything that was an initiative test to survive, good luck Dwarves, Orcs, Ogres etc - however those same spells were seemingly designed as a kerb on "death star" units with multiple characters etc as it made such risky. Of course a lot of event packs focused on how to nerf the magic, and then how to nerf the death stars.

I think magic will be a big factor with the new fantasy.

I liked aspects of the old system (like the fact you actually had to manage dice and risk, rather than just rolling a d6 for every spell with no thought or input required), but it also had some pretty severe issues:

- As noted above, a lot of spells were ridiculously strong, with many being able to just delete even 500pt characters/monsters outright if they failed a single roll, as well as vaporising whole units.

- Spells known being random. One of the many depressing attempts by GW to balance things with randumb. See, now it's fine to have stupidly strong spells because you might end up not knowing them.

- Despite the idea being risk vs. reward, throwing more dice at a spell only increased the odds of miscasting - it didn't affect the outcome of the miscast. Thus, you could play it safe and have your Vampire Lord cast minor spells with only a few dice, only to roll snake-eyes or boxcars and have him blow his brains out, at which point it's basically game over without your opponent's army even being involved. Meanwhile, a wizard can throw a ton of dice to cast Black Sun or the like, miscast, and the only effect is that they're lightly tickled.

 Hulksmash wrote:
Didn't KoW have a separation mechanic in 2nd Edition? I don't remember "push back" being that complicated and nothing I've seen feels overly complicated. A unit can fall back in good order and you can choose to chase it. Leaving your flanks open but likely counting as charging in the next combat phase.

Feels fine to me.

Yes in KoW2 the loser bounced back 1" and in the next turn couldn't shoot or get a charge bonus. This gave you the option to continue melee just by walking back in, or make a clumsy retreat. There was a slight snag that units with a fairly square footprint could pivot 90d without clipping the unit that just pushed them back, and charge something else, which felt wrong and was colloquially known as Corkscrewing.

 Hulksmash wrote:
Didn't KoW have a separation mechanic in 2nd Edition? I don't remember "push back" being that complicated and nothing I've seen feels overly complicated. A unit can fall back in good order and you can choose to chase it. Leaving your flanks open but likely counting as charging in the next combat phase.

Feels fine to me.

and you immediately gain "impetuous" units unable to restrain, or requiring a leadership test to do so

 Hulksmash wrote:
Didn't KoW have a separation mechanic in 2nd Edition? I don't remember "push back" being that complicated and nothing I've seen feels overly complicated. A unit can fall back in good order and you can choose to chase it. Leaving your flanks open but likely counting as charging in the next combat phase.

Feels fine to me.

KoW was designed and encouraged to multibase, rather than WFB individually based models. It didn't require the removal of individual models. Moving a block of troops around is simple.

WFB players were famously anti abstraction around this. I used movement trays as much as possible but the amount of reforming i would make it challenging.


If all regiments are on movement trays and they push that as the standard, then maybe. But they have built a lot of rules into the shape of your regiment, so movement trays will be of limited use if you are reforming a lot.

So, tying to move whole regiments not on movement trays will be problematic.

many other games manage fine, by in effect multibasing, "regiment" being four or six bases each wider than they are deep

makes a column easy, easy to move and easy to reform

my O&G were built around 5x1 movement trays designed to allow blocks of gobbos to go 5x4, 10x2, 20x1 etc as required

 lord_blackfang wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
This is honestly looking like the most exciting set of rules that GW has released since the Adeptus Titanicus relaunch. I am increasingly hyped.

I would tend to agree, but remember that a lot of snippets of 10th also looked swell...

The devil's in the details. They can nail the rules and then botch the army lists.

So far, the rules we are looking at could have been implemented 25 years ago.

Shaggoth has Terror, but not Fear.

Curious...

Wasn't Terror previously "same as Fear but in addition..."?

 RustyNumber wrote:
Wasn't Terror previously "same as Fear but in addition..."?

Pretty sure it was 'a model that causes terror automatically causes fear as well,' but yeah.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Break Tests still seem to heavily favour Dwarfs over all other traditionally high Ld armies.

Not only are they less likely to actively flee? But just being pushed back, ready to charge me in the turn sounds like it’s gonna suuuuuck. And indeed, only encourage The Dwarven Gunline of Numbing Inevitablity, where my sole strategic option is “peg it across the board as fast as I can, and hope I’ve enough bodies left for a half decent shot at a punch up”, whilst my half witted opponent claps like a seal at their “tactical genius” of just huddling around a hill they demanded be in their deployment zone. Yes I am speaking from genuine experience here. Sod you, Cheaty Steve!

Of course we don’t have the full picture just yet. Certainly we don’t know what Dwarf Ld might be. It could well have been lowered to offset how hard they are to shift just under the basic rules. And there may be spells or other abilities which count a unit’s native Ld as lower.

Best way to counter the 'gunline on a hill in the deployment zone' is some large LOS-blocking terrain right in front of it. Forests, buildings, another hill... anything that creates a dead zone they can't see to shoot into.

We now return you to TOW news and rumors...

I recall some units having both, because you may pass your Terror test, but could still fear the thing that's coming towards you.

But I'm not very experienced with WFB, so the Terror rule may have said "Also causes Fear" without needing to list it separately.

I wonder if units that cause Fear will be immune to Fear?

EDIT: Never mind...

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I recall some units having both, because you may pass your Terror test, but could still fear the thing that's coming towards you.

But I'm not very experienced with WFB, so the Terror rule may have said "Also causes Fear" without needing to list it separately.

I wonder if units that cause Fear will be immune to Fear?

Pretty sure in previous editions everything that caused Terror automatically caused Fear as well.

Previously Fear causing units were immune to Fear (other than from units that caused Terror) and treated Terror causing units as if they only caused Fear; and Terror causing units were immune to both.

Would be surprised if that didn’t carry over.


On another note, it seems that Terror is substantially improved since it says nothing about it being once per game anymore, not to mention the -1Ld for Break Tests being new.

 Hulksmash wrote:
Didn't KoW have a separation mechanic in 2nd Edition? I don't remember "push back" being that complicated and nothing I've seen feels overly complicated. A unit can fall back in good order and you can choose to chase it. Leaving your flanks open but likely counting as charging in the next combat phase.

Feels fine to me.

KoW ditched its pushback mechanic due to it slowing down gameplay.

I didn't find it added much time to the game, or was complicated, the issues it had were the original charging unit then being able to reform and 'corkscrew' into another units flank the next turn.

There will probably be similar things happening in ToW where the repositioning exposes flanks.

with a 2" pushback and a "flee but not destroyed" option, you are able to get out of combat with a moral test and use corkscrew tactics also with non-square units as long as they have enough movement range

like a cavalry attacking a unit, causes a orderly retreat, and charge a another unit in the flank that was next to the other unit before is possible and with a good swiftstride roll you can also charge a unit behind.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
This is honestly looking like the most exciting set of rules that GW has released since the Adeptus Titanicus relaunch. I am increasingly hyped.

I would tend to agree, but remember that a lot of snippets of 10th also looked swell...

The devil's in the details. They can nail the rules and then botch the army lists.

the devil is in the detail and we have not seen a lot of actual rule text for now
just marketing text explaining what is written in the rules, so the actual rules as written can still be different and add another layer of details
like now 2 different articles are already slightly off, with one saying you can chose to pursue or not while the other says you always pursue unless you pass a test (which is something very different than simply choosing not to do it)
and such minor details can change a lot

"All the classic psychological effects are back – Fear, Terror, Stupidity, Animosity, Frenzy, Unbreakable, Stubborn and Hatred."

But no Panic. Interesting.

 Graphite wrote:
"All the classic psychological effects are back – Fear, Terror, Stupidity, Animosity, Frenzy, Unbreakable, Stubborn and Hatred."

But no Panic. Interesting.

and apparently the stats for Cool, Willpower and Intelligence are also sadly missing it seems

 kodos wrote:
with a 2" pushback and a "flee but not destroyed" option, you are able to get out of combat with a moral test and use corkscrew tactics also with non-square units as long as they have enough movement range

IIR corkscrewing worked in KoW as units always pivoted about the centre of the unit. So you could spin on the spot. With the Old World following the WHFB method of wheeling from the front, along with needing LoS and being in the front arc I can’t see this being a thing.

it works in KoW for square units because they pivot on the spot
it does not work for rectangular units because there is no space between units to finish the pivot out of contact (which was a reason why certain units got a rectangular base in the first place)

for the TOW Information we have now, depending on the unit size there will be enough space between units (as they are always moved out of contact, just the minimum distance is different) to change facing or wheel around the previous opponent

This is why many games have some sort of "Zone of control" concept

leopard wrote:

 Graphite wrote:
"All the classic psychological effects are back – Fear, Terror, Stupidity, Animosity, Frenzy, Unbreakable, Stubborn and Hatred."

But no Panic. Interesting.

and apparently the stats for Cool, Willpower and Intelligence are also sadly missing it seems

I liked them but they went at the end of 3rd ed.

Yeah, panic hung around a lot longer than those stats. And breaking units panicking your entire goblin army was very much A Thing

If memory serves, Panic played a reducing role over editions.

When I started in 4th, Panic occurred when your General was bumped off, or a friendly unit within a fixed distance fled (maybe 6”?).

Overtime, you had to flee through a friendly unit to trigger a Panic test, and I think a General being jobbed was reduced to a ranged bubble, maybe 12”?


Can’t remember if it was reduced further from there though.

 Mr Morden wrote:

leopard wrote:

 Graphite wrote:
"All the classic psychological effects are back – Fear, Terror, Stupidity, Animosity, Frenzy, Unbreakable, Stubborn and Hatred."

But no Panic. Interesting.

and apparently the stats for Cool, Willpower and Intelligence are also sadly missing it seems

I liked them but they went at the end of 3rd ed.

I know, to be replaced with a whole slew of special rules when the designers realised that you know what? just because basic humans had the same number in each stat, other factions didn't

It did reduce, but I'd argue that army morale as well as unit morale should be important.

Maybe not to the point where one Gobbo unit fleeing wipes out your army, though!

leopard wrote:
This is why many games have some sort of "Zone of control" concept

Very true, while WFB has always been a bit lite on that, it has had the rule where a unit can not come within 1" of the enemynunless it was charging a unit.

While not the best, it is at the very least something.

Panic has changed a lot over the editions, I do hope it is retained to some degree as it helps reflect that units don’t always act as we would like them to when things get a bit hairy.

Have to say I find games where the commander is not entirely in full control of the army get a lot more interesting.

when that "perfect charge" can be mucked up by something outside the commanders control adds a requirement to have a back up plan

I think it's interesting the way in which they seem to be making stats more meaningful in the core rules.

Someone mentioned way back in this thread, when ASF elves were the topic of the day, about how they could use WS to make elves more worth their points without having to resort to discussing rules. The new table does this wrt 8th edition at least.

We also see this with M + highest d6 in the charges, I forming the basis for who gets to hit first (then modified) and how Ld is more important around holding your lines together.

It gives them more room to make meaningful differentiation between troops just by using the stat line.

leopard wrote:
Have to say I find games where the commander is not entirely in full control of the army get a lot more interesting.

when that "perfect charge" can be mucked up by something outside the commanders control adds a requirement to have a back up plan

Yeah if you're playing for the narrative and to have fun, your high powered wizard exploding on turn one can be thematic and create a fun scenario - can I survive against the odds?

If your high powered wizard never gets to do anything because he always dies turn 1 or 2 through being underpowered or a simple exploit, that's bad game design.

Appreciate if you are only playing competitively, and winning is all you care about, then randomness can be frustrating, but if that's the case you can always go and play chess!

The 1" rule for enemies (and we played allies too) where you couldn't go within 1" unless you were in combat helped distinguish units from each other especially if you had multiples of the same or didn't keep a tidy board. I always found it useful in keeping track of what was where.

So unit strength...someone that played 7th (and maybe before not sure when it was introduced), can someone explain that? Is it just number of models in a unit = unit strength?

 Graphite wrote:
It did reduce, but I'd argue that army morale as well as unit morale should be important.

Maybe not to the point where one Gobbo unit fleeing wipes out your army, though!

Don't play an army full of cowards? I remember hearing a story about Skaven versus Night Goblins, and the whole Night Goblin army ran off the board top of turn one when the Skaven rolled a 13 on the Screaming Bell.

Hoping to see some more info about combat that explains the value of low Ld units in the new paradigm.

Want to give the benefit of the doubt, but it's GW so it's pretty hard...

 Graphite wrote:
Maybe not to the point where one Gobbo unit fleeing wipes out your army, though!

Could make it an army special rule thing, so it would be something Greenskins get for Gobbos, Skaven for Skaven Slaves/Clanrats, and maybe even Brets for Peasant units.

Ahh, back in the days of yore:

Units that cause Terror automatically also cause Fear.

Causing Fear makes you immune to units that cause Fear, but you Fear units that cause Terror.

Units that cause Terror are not impressed by Fear or Terror.

My greatest fear was losing a unit to Magic or Missile fire and then getting a bad set of Panic Test that decimate my army. I especially loved how units fled the source of panic, which meant the dead unit that caused the Panic test rather than the unit that destroyed it. Let's flee across the army, causing more Panic test as you go, rather than off the board.

 nathan2004 wrote:
The 1" rule for enemies (and we played allies too) where you couldn't go within 1" unless you were in combat helped distinguish units from each other especially if you had multiples of the same or didn't keep a tidy board. I always found it useful in keeping track of what was where.

So unit strength...someone that played 7th (and maybe before not sure when it was introduced), can someone explain that? Is it just number of models in a unit = unit strength?

Unit Strength is based upon number of models, some models have a unit Strength more than 1 however. Cavalry have 2, characters on Monsters have the starting number of wounds on their mount +1, etc.

In the 6th edition army books, it states what their Init Strength is, if it is greater than the standard 1.

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:
Don't play an army full of cowards? I remember hearing a story about Skaven versus Night Goblins, and the whole Night Goblin army ran off the board top of turn one when the Skaven rolled a 13 on the Screaming Bell.

Dogs of War had to make a Panic check if the Paymaster bought it. Played a game where supremely lucky magic took the guy out on turn 1. Whole army routed. "Well, that was fun."

 alextroy wrote:
Ahh, back in the days of yore:

Units that cause Terror automatically also cause Fear.

Causing Fear makes you immune to units that cause Fear, but you Fear units that cause Terror.

Units that cause Terror are not impressed by Fear or Terror.

My greatest fear was losing a unit to Magic or Missile fire and then getting a bad set of Panic Test that decimate my army. I especially loved how units fled the source of panic, which meant the dead unit that caused the Panic test rather than the unit that destroyed it. Let's flee across the army, causing more Panic test as you go, rather than off the board.

Panic has changed with each edition, in 6th the ranges for the various causes were not standardised m, so some things would be 6", while others were 4". It did however remove the death if the general dying causing a panic test in every friendly unit on the gable. That one was very pivotal against some armies.

7th standardised the ranges, and removed the needing a Panic for being charged in the flank/rare while engaged in combat.

I can't recall if 8th removed any. It had heavy casualties, nearby friends annihilated, nearby friends breaks, and fled through as causes of Panic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:
Don't play an army full of cowards? I remember hearing a story about Skaven versus Night Goblins, and the whole Night Goblin army ran off the board top of turn one when the Skaven rolled a 13 on the Screaming Bell.

Dogs of War had to make a Panic check if the Paymaster bought it. Played a game where supremely lucky magic took the guy out on turn 1. Whole army routed. "Well, that was fun."

True, but those that passed had hatred. It was one if the few things that gave DoW their unique character, the other being Pikes.

 nathan2004 wrote:
The 1" rule for enemies (and we played allies too) where you couldn't go within 1" unless you were in combat helped distinguish units from each other especially if you had multiples of the same or didn't keep a tidy board. I always found it useful in keeping track of what was where.

So unit strength...someone that played 7th (and maybe before not sure when it was introduced), can someone explain that? Is it just number of models in a unit = unit strength?

IIRC, it generally tracked with the total wounds of the unit, with an odd exception for cavalry. Basic infantry, the number of models is the unit strength. Cavalry models counted double. Monsters and Monstrous units, total wounds of the unit.

Of course, TOW might be doing things differently...

 Vulcan wrote:

 nathan2004 wrote:
The 1" rule for enemies (and we played allies too) where you couldn't go within 1" unless you were in combat helped distinguish units from each other especially if you had multiples of the same or didn't keep a tidy board. I always found it useful in keeping track of what was where.

So unit strength...someone that played 7th (and maybe before not sure when it was introduced), can someone explain that? Is it just number of models in a unit = unit strength?

IIRC, it generally tracked with the total wounds of the unit, with an odd exception for cavalry. Basic infantry, the number of models is the unit strength. Cavalry models counted double. Monsters and Monstrous units, total wounds of the unit.

Of course, TOW might be doing things differently...

Cavalry have the attack strength of two but the death vulnerability of 1 - both attack but kill one and they both become useless

 Hellebore wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

 nathan2004 wrote:
The 1" rule for enemies (and we played allies too) where you couldn't go within 1" unless you were in combat helped distinguish units from each other especially if you had multiples of the same or didn't keep a tidy board. I always found it useful in keeping track of what was where.

So unit strength...someone that played 7th (and maybe before not sure when it was introduced), can someone explain that? Is it just number of models in a unit = unit strength?

IIRC, it generally tracked with the total wounds of the unit, with an odd exception for cavalry. Basic infantry, the number of models is the unit strength. Cavalry models counted double. Monsters and Monstrous units, total wounds of the unit.

Of course, TOW might be doing things differently...

Cavalry have the attack strength of two but the death vulnerability of 1 - both attack but kill one and they both become useless

It was just for Unit Strength. It didn't change their wounds.

 Vulcan wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

 nathan2004 wrote:
The 1" rule for enemies (and we played allies too) where you couldn't go within 1" unless you were in combat helped distinguish units from each other especially if you had multiples of the same or didn't keep a tidy board. I always found it useful in keeping track of what was where.

So unit strength...someone that played 7th (and maybe before not sure when it was introduced), can someone explain that? Is it just number of models in a unit = unit strength?

IIRC, it generally tracked with the total wounds of the unit, with an odd exception for cavalry. Basic infantry, the number of models is the unit strength. Cavalry models counted double. Monsters and Monstrous units, total wounds of the unit.

Of course, TOW might be doing things differently...

Cavalry have the attack strength of two but the death vulnerability of 1 - both attack but kill one and they both become useless

It was just for Unit Strength. It didn't change their wounds.

yes, as I said, you kill one of the rider or horse and the both are useless, but they are combined double attack value. Unit Strength is reflective of their threat, not really their wounds

 Hellebore wrote:
Hoping to see some more info about combat that explains the value of low Ld units in the new paradigm.

Want to give the benefit of the doubt, but it's GW so it's pretty hard...

Cheap. Outnumber enemy. Charge enemy front and rear.

AOS players will have a field day in TOW tournaments TOW players just moving death star elite units front to front while AOS players learned how to attack weak side of units and outflanking enemy with multiple units years ago.

tneva82 wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Hoping to see some more info about combat that explains the value of low Ld units in the new paradigm.

Want to give the benefit of the doubt, but it's GW so it's pretty hard...

Cheap. Outnumber enemy. Charge enemy front and rear.

AOS players will have a field day in TOW tournaments TOW players just moving death star elite units front to front while AOS players learned how to attack weak side of units and outflanking enemy with multiple units years ago.

It's funny that 6th Ed. players had that tactic down pat over 20 years ago.

tneva82 wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Hoping to see some more info about combat that explains the value of low Ld units in the new paradigm.

Want to give the benefit of the doubt, but it's GW so it's pretty hard...

Cheap. Outnumber enemy. Charge enemy front and rear.

AOS players will have a field day in TOW tournaments TOW players just moving death star elite units front to front while AOS players learned how to attack weak side of units and outflanking enemy with multiple units years ago.

Do units in AoS have flanks? rear? or any type of LoS limitation? so those tactics matter at all.

SU-152 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Hoping to see some more info about combat that explains the value of low Ld units in the new paradigm.

Want to give the benefit of the doubt, but it's GW so it's pretty hard...

Cheap. Outnumber enemy. Charge enemy front and rear.

AOS players will have a field day in TOW tournaments TOW players just moving death star elite units front to front while AOS players learned how to attack weak side of units and outflanking enemy with multiple units years ago.

Do units in AoS have flanks? rear? or any type of LoS limitation? so those tactics matter at all.

Yes, yes, no. Granted, they're not explicit in the rules, so a lot of people would miss them if they aren't thinking too deeply, but formation on the tabletop certainly does mean something in AoS and a unit being attacked from certain sides/angles can definitely change the outcome of a battle. Especially when you consider multiple units working in tandem (usually a hero + unit nearby) and the implicit rules that go along with that.

SU-152 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Hoping to see some more info about combat that explains the value of low Ld units in the new paradigm.

Want to give the benefit of the doubt, but it's GW so it's pretty hard...

Cheap. Outnumber enemy. Charge enemy front and rear.

AOS players will have a field day in TOW tournaments TOW players just moving death star elite units front to front while AOS players learned how to attack weak side of units and outflanking enemy with multiple units years ago.

Do units in AoS have flanks? rear? or any type of LoS limitation? so those tactics matter at all.

That was going to me my question. How do units with no formation, no facing, and 360 degree vision have a 'flank' to attack?

Some 8E players did, indeed, rely on deathstars to win games. I loved those players; I'd kill the mandatory second and third unit and play keep-away the rest of the game. Easier to do with some armies than others, of course, but generally doable if you were careful.

What are 'implicit rules' and how does that turn not having rules for flanks into having more rules for flanks than classic WHFB? An AoS player being better at flanking than a WHFB player?

That seems like a completely bizarre argument to me

 ph34r wrote:
What are 'implicit rules' and how does that turn not having rules for flanks into having more rules for flanks than classic WHFB? An AoS player being better at flanking than a WHFB player?

That seems like a completely bizarre argument to me

I am not supporting or defending tneva92's argument that AoS players will have better knowledge/gameplay in TOW by virtue of being AoS players. Nor am I saying that there are more rules for flanks in AoS than classic WHFB/TOW.

The implicit rules are things like, units will have unit champions or other models with different wargear, and if you attack into it from a position where their pile-in move fails to get those models into range, they are not going to be able to attack with those. Or if you attack into the flank of a formation that is 2 ranks of 5 files, even after pile-in moves, less total enemy models will be able to fight back.

Then we get into multiple-units-acting-in-tandem, where if you strike from behind you can get the exposed hero unit that is providing buffs to the main unit.

Just because these things aren't explicitly spelled out in the rules like WHFB has, doesn't mean they aren't in the rules.

Pretty sure that was just a troll post anyways

it was, but given how people already claimed that using the new movement rules to get behind the opponent is WAAC while the on reddit people mention that the one who will use formation changes is going to lose because you are better off just moving your locks straight forward

there is some truth inside that some "hardcore" fantasy players will be surprised by people who actually use the full spectrum of the rules

I kinda hope that it actually turns out to be "relatively" mobile game that encourages aggressive manouvers so you can get on opponents flanks/rears. Or so that you have to move your ass anyway.

My few games against Dwarfs really made a mark.

outside of 8th edi comps dwarfs were actually mobile

Yea, when playing in 8th until the armybook came out, I was taking a ton of rangers, miners, and slayers with Strollaz runes, using the Anvil to get extra movement during the actual game.

The 8th armybook removed that feature of the Anvil. Although, if I remember, you could still take a bunch of Strollaz runes and ambushing units, it's just the actual mobility during the game was hampered by not getting the Anvil's bonus move.

On a less silly but still flank and rear combo pondering?

If I beat you in combat, and have a units engaging you to front and say, left flank? If you’re pushed back or fall back in good order…..wonder which way you go?

It reads like all 3 versions of giving ground are away from the highest unit strength from the wording in the article. Though it's not very clear

tneva82 wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Hoping to see some more info about combat that explains the value of low Ld units in the new paradigm.

Want to give the benefit of the doubt, but it's GW so it's pretty hard...

Cheap. Outnumber enemy. Charge enemy front and rear.

AOS players will have a field day in TOW tournaments TOW players just moving death star elite units front to front while AOS players learned how to attack weak side of units and outflanking enemy with multiple units years ago.

Rear charges in WFB have always been rare, Flank charges easier. But as GW have shown, that won't do much, at most moving the enemy.

And those charges won't guarantee winning the combat anyway. I'm not sure what rules you think you're reading, but low I Low Ld armies won't win combats even if you do get flank charges. The enemy killing you before you can strike will do far more for the CR than your chaff ranks will, because you aren't going to kill much in return.

Spending all your time trying to set up complex charge manoeuvres only for them to achieve nothing is a pretty demoralising experience.

I see nothing in the rules that make skinks, skaven slaves (or just skaven), goblins, gnoblars et al actually useful. This was an issue GW had decades ago, people spending tonnes of time painting big units of speed humps is not incentivising.

These rules push that to a far bigger extreme than even that, because at least goblin horde could outnumber you into fleeing and run you down, now they can't.

tneva82 wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Hoping to see some more info about combat that explains the value of low Ld units in the new paradigm.

Want to give the benefit of the doubt, but it's GW so it's pretty hard...

Cheap. Outnumber enemy. Charge enemy front and rear.

AOS players will have a field day in TOW tournaments TOW players just moving death star elite units front to front while AOS players learned how to attack weak side of units and outflanking enemy with multiple units years ago.

As someone who heavily played The Empire in 6th and Dark Elves in 7th, I can say I puled off a few flank charges in day. I think I'll be fine.

The 8th edition rule book was thick enough to be a tome. Rip out all the fluffy and we maybe have seen a page of partial rules for The Old World.

We can’t be disappointed that “X unit won’t have value” yet, because we don’t know.

When I played 6-7th editions and compared them to 40k at the time, I used to say that Fantasy is a far superior game, because player moves trump raw stats.

In WFB you could beat a much stronger unit with a weaker one if you manoeuvered better. A puny goblin regiment in a flank of super-elite Chaos Knights won combat 100% of the time and likely broke them.

With 40k it doesn't matter how smart your manoeuvers are, to defeat a unit you need a stronger sum of units - that's why you get this "huge dudes exchanging sledgehammer blows on the head" vibe from 40k instead of "a duel of expert fencers".

Unfortunately, the new TOW break test rules favour raw stats (and randomness) over player agency and manoeuver. It doesn't matter how well you coordinate and execute a huge CR advantage - for a decisive result you just need a certain roll vs certain Ld value, the same for 1CR or 10CR advantage.

I don't know why GW went this way. The cynic in me says "you can't sell being a good player, but you can sell good stats on units".

I'm wondering if there is a bit more to the "retire in good order" and "push back" stuff than we have seen.

e.g. being hit in the flank preventing such a move as quite a few other games do it, and especially being hit in the rear

leopard wrote:
I'm wondering if there is a bit more to the "retire in good order" and "push back" stuff than we have seen.

e.g. being hit in the flank preventing such a move as quite a few other games do it, and especially being hit in the rear

Honestly if you get pushed back and have a unit in the rear i don't care what unit we are talking but atleast as many inches in models even partially moved in to the unit at the rear should just flat out be killed.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Cyel wrote:
When I played 6-7th editions and compared them to 40k at the time, I used to say that Fantasy is a far superior game, because player moves trump raw stats.

In WFB you could beat a much stronger unit with a weaker one if you manoeuvered better. A puny goblin regiment in a flank of super-elite Chaos Knights won combat 100% of the time and likely broke them.

With 40k it doesn't matter how smart your manoeuvers are, to defeat a unit you need a stronger sum of units - that's why you get this "huge dudes exchanging sledgehammer blows on the head" vibe from 40k instead of "a duel of expert fencers".

Unfortunately, the new TOW break test rules favour raw stats (and randomness) over player agency and manoeuver. It doesn't matter how well you coordinate and execute a huge CR advantage - for a decisive result you just need a certain roll vs certain Ld value, the same for 1CR or 10CR advantage.

I don't know why GW went this way. The cynic in me says "you can't sell being a good player, but you can sell good stats on units".

I think it's a problem of making elite units in elite armies worth it compared to raw board presence so as to not just bounce off with even smaller elite units through static CR bonus.

Its certainly understandable for some armies that it'd be a "need" to do so, but at the same time it's also something that benefits armeis that have "cheapish" good morale units far more.

Not Online!!! wrote:

leopard wrote:
I'm wondering if there is a bit more to the "retire in good order" and "push back" stuff than we have seen.

e.g. being hit in the flank preventing such a move as quite a few other games do it, and especially being hit in the rear

Honestly if you get pushed back and have a unit in the rear i don't care what unit we are talking but atleast as many inches in models even partially moved in to the unit at the rear should just flat out be killed.

thats how quite a few games do it, they have a push back mechanic, but any unit that cannot push back for some reason is destroyed outright. the sole exception is usually you can push back one of your own units to make space

a few also deny push backs if caught in the flank

leopard wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

leopard wrote:
I'm wondering if there is a bit more to the "retire in good order" and "push back" stuff than we have seen.

e.g. being hit in the flank preventing such a move as quite a few other games do it, and especially being hit in the rear

Honestly if you get pushed back and have a unit in the rear i don't care what unit we are talking but atleast as many inches in models even partially moved in to the unit at the rear should just flat out be killed.

thats how quite a few games do it, they have a push back mechanic, but any unit that cannot push back for some reason is destroyed outright. the sole exception is usually you can push back one of your own units to make space

a few also deny push backs if caught in the flank

Which i hope is true.
I am not a fan of outright wiping a unit though that just got merely pushed back in good order, but getting flanked and or rear blocked should come with heavy casualities.

a way I have thought about, but never seen, is to remove whatever models are required from a unit such that its front rank can push back as required

say a unit on 1" bases is four ranks deep, has an enemy front and rear and gets pushed back 2"

thats two dead ranks from the rear to allow the front to push back, if the enemy follows up they are in trouble for the next turn

It is entertaining how some people are so certain that low LD troops will be useless after seeing maybe 5% of the rules, hardly any USRs and zero points costs

MaxT wrote:
It is entertaining how some people are so certain that low LD troops will be useless after seeing maybe 5% of the rules, hardly any USRs and zero points costs

Well they won't be hugely useful in combat, if that is by "useful" you mean "likely to stick about in a prolonged fight against higher skilled fighters"

the skill for the player is in finding ways to use such units to have an impact on the overall result out of proportion with their costs and stats.

there is little point looking at a unit and thinking "what can this unit do?", instead look at it and think "what can this unit do as a part of my wider army?"

its fine for some units to have a role which is basically "act as a speed bump", and even more so with things the game could contain such as objectives based around battlefield control, mechanics such as alternating deployment where smaller, cheaper units can be useful

the game is not entirely about killing things for every single unit, or at least it shouldn't be

What are the changes compared to 8th that people think are making chaff useless?

WS5 hitting on 2s and getting hit on 6s vs WS2
Everyone being less likely to flee and get run down
Others?

Cyel wrote:
When I played 6-7th editions and compared them to 40k at the time, I used to say that Fantasy is a far superior game, because player moves trump raw stats.

In WFB you could beat a much stronger unit with a weaker one if you manoeuvered better. A puny goblin regiment in a flank of super-elite Chaos Knights won combat 100% of the time and likely broke them.
.

And thats a bad thing - catching out a similar sized unit or spearmen or similar. and routing fine - a few gobbos wiping out Chaos Knights - thats just beyond stupid. A huge mob of gobbos maybe - yeah swarming them etc.

It was equally stupid elite units not hitting low WS units easily - the table going back to previous editions is IMO a huge improvement

 Mr Morden wrote:

Cyel wrote:
When I played 6-7th editions and compared them to 40k at the time, I used to say that Fantasy is a far superior game, because player moves trump raw stats.

In WFB you could beat a much stronger unit with a weaker one if you manoeuvered better. A puny goblin regiment in a flank of super-elite Chaos Knights won combat 100% of the time and likely broke them.
.

And thats a bad thing - catching out a similar sized unit or spearmen or similar. and routing fine - a few gobbos wiping out Chaos Knights - thats just beyond stupid. A huge mob of gobbos maybe - yeah swarming them etc.

It was equally stupid elite units not hitting low WS units easily - the table going back to previous editions is IMO a huge improvement

A unit of spear armed soldiers wiping out a unit of cavalry by hitting them in the flanks is a bad thing?

Not sure I follow that. Superior tactics is the name of the game.

 Mr Morden wrote:

Cyel wrote:
When I played 6-7th editions and compared them to 40k at the time, I used to say that Fantasy is a far superior game, because player moves trump raw stats.

In WFB you could beat a much stronger unit with a weaker one if you manoeuvered better. A puny goblin regiment in a flank of super-elite Chaos Knights won combat 100% of the time and likely broke them.
.

And thats a bad thing - catching out a similar sized unit or spearmen or similar. and routing fine - a few gobbos wiping out Chaos Knights - thats just beyond stupid. A huge mob of gobbos maybe - yeah swarming them etc.

It was equally stupid elite units not hitting low WS units easily - the table going back to previous editions is IMO a huge improvement

Doubtful the Goblins would cause the Chaos Knights to run.

A unit of 20 Goblins will be have 6 attacks (champion+5), hitting on 5+ and wounding on a 5+, the Knights will save on 2+. So the Goblins inflict zero casualties.

The Knights attack back 2 attacks hitting on 3+, and wounding on 2+ (strength 5), the Goblins get no save. The mounts attack, 2 attacks hitting on 3+, wounding on 4+, the foblins save on 6+.
The Knights will kill 2-3 Goblins.

The Goblins now with 17, will have flank, 2 ranks, and a standard, for a combat result of 4.
The Knights will outnumber (10), 3 kills, and a standard. For 5. They win by one and the Goblins flee.

Chaos Knights are brutal in 6th, even more so if increased to choosen... which seemed to be very popular.

But realistically, nobody fielded units of 20 Gobbos for that reason. You’d want 30 or so for a Redundant Rank, and if Night Gobbos you’d almost certainly drop the points for Fanatics and Netters.

Also, the Knights S5 were only wounding on a 3+. Had to be double or more their T for a 2+ to wound

Mad Doc, that's the new 40k wounding chart from 8th edition.

The Fantasy chart, as far back as 3rd edition, would have S5 wounding goblins on 2s.

This is why the old "free hack" rule was good, if gobbos do break chaos knights the "free hack" isn't that scary

the other way around however is slightly different

 stonehorse wrote:


Doubtful the Goblins would cause the Chaos Knights to run.

A unit of 20 Goblins will be have 6 attacks (champion+5), hitting on 5+ and wounding on a 5+, the Knights will save on 2+. So the Goblins inflict zero casualties.

The Knights attack back 2 attacks hitting on 3+, and wounding on 2+ (strength 5), the Goblins get no save. The mounts attack, 2 attacks hitting on 3+, wounding on 4+, the foblins save on 6+.
The Knights will kill 2-3 Goblins.

The Goblins now with 17, will have flank, 2 ranks, and a standard, for a combat result of 4.
The Knights will outnumber (10), 3 kills, and a standard. For 5. They win by one and the Goblins flee.

Chaos Knights are brutal in 6th, even more so if increased to choosen... which seemed to be very popular.

I feel like you've assumed two ranks for the Chaos nights.

Just wondering if White Dwarf will be dusting down Full Tilt, now that the Bretonnians are back in town.

 Dawnbringer wrote:

 stonehorse wrote:


Doubtful the Goblins would cause the Chaos Knights to run.

A unit of 20 Goblins will be have 6 attacks (champion+5), hitting on 5+ and wounding on a 5+, the Knights will save on 2+. So the Goblins inflict zero casualties.

The Knights attack back 2 attacks hitting on 3+, and wounding on 2+ (strength 5), the Goblins get no save. The mounts attack, 2 attacks hitting on 3+, wounding on 4+, the foblins save on 6+.
The Knights will kill 2-3 Goblins.

The Goblins now with 17, will have flank, 2 ranks, and a standard, for a combat result of 4.
The Knights will outnumber (10), 3 kills, and a standard. For 5. They win by one and the Goblins flee.

Chaos Knights are brutal in 6th, even more so if increased to choosen... which seemed to be very popular.

I feel like you've assumed two ranks for the Chaos nights.

Chaos Knights had 2 Attacks base plus the mount in 6th. That's a single Knight stonehorse did "rolls" for.