After lots of discussion back and forth, I wonder what people think of random charge distances.

This is about the random element only, I haven't included whether the unit gets to move first or not, this is just talking purely about the random element to the charge. It could be D6 or M+D6, 2xM+D6.... if you like any of those options, just select "I prefer random, but no more than D6".


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Gah sorry, totally missed the existing poll, I was looking for a poll on random charge distance, not D6 vs 2D6 Please lock this mods.

I would like this one to stay, it has a better Choice of options.

Apple fox wrote:
I would like this one to stay, it has a better Choice of options.

Yeah I prefer it too, I guess we'll let the mods decide

I also appreciate a more genuine thread title, that doesn't show bias from the jump.

There's 2 sides to this equation:

1. The charge distance itself, and
2. The randomness of the charge.

There are people who want the charge distance improved.
There are people who are okay with a max 12" charge, but want it less random.

For those who want the charge distance improved:
This is where you lose me. Basing charge distance on movement means slow units will literally always be getting charged first, and going second, meaning that no matter how good you are tactically at outplaying your opponent, their long range charge will make you strike second. This is the exact problem we have now, but flipped, because of initiative. No matter how well you outplay your opponent, your Boyz are striking second to the Eldar because of initiative. Proposing a multiple of movement or based on movement simply brings this back under a different guise. You already have disparity in movement, adding further to that in the charge phase is a problem.

Not to mention, the key point here for me is: If you're in range to charge me, i'm in range to charge you. Expanding that distance based on movement removes this key balance. Additionally, if you're in range to charge someone, you are susceptible to overwatch, which should always be true. A charge range >12" means that there are entire classes of units that cannot ever fire overwatch. No matter how well they position themselves, there is no way for them to fire on you before you charge them, even in overwatch. That's a problem.

For those complaining about the randomness of the charge, but still believe there should be equal charge distances: I can get on board with this, but it's mainly driven by the frustration of failing a charge you feel you should make. But then again, you'll have the same problem if it was 1d6+6", you'd roll a 1 on your 8" charge and be upset. Fixing the charge distance gets us back to where people could exactly predict your charge distance and it'd be pretty damn hard to engage someone in melee. And guaranteeing a 12" charge seems pretty silly, considering the current balance is around 12" and 24" troop guns in a lot of cases.

Random charges force you to make a risk versus reward decision, and really think about how to set up your troops to minimize that charge distance. I like that.

2d6 charge works fine for me. It has its "derp" moments, but also allows for a longer average range than the old 6" charge, and a longer maximum potential charge distance for those potential epic moments.

Greater risk, greater reward, longer average reach, sounds suitably fitting for close assault.

I agree on preferring a random charge distance. I think Marmatag has hit the nail on the end. I remember in the old days of Fantasy, the game was more or less a test of who could eyeball a charge distance better than the other, and led to situations where my forces were tiptoeing around, felt very off.

I'm surprised that people are so accepting of the 2D6 charge. It just seems so unpredictable and random to me. I think something like half of the unit's move + D6 would be better.

 Luciferian wrote:
I'm surprised that people are so accepting of the 2D6 charge. It just seems so unpredictable and random to me. I think something like half of the unit's move + D6 would be better.

well, it's variable but not unpredictable, you know 6-8"is your most likely sweetspot, and that nearly 75% will be at least 5". It's a pretty bog standard bell curve distribution.

We could go back to 5th edition charge ranges so most units have a fixed 6" charge range, I am not sure why people who are promoting the fixed charge distance think it would a fixed 12" charge distance. The major change to the charge distance other than premeasuring from 5th to 6th was that instead of 6" every time you could get 2" to 12" with an average of 7"

 Luciferian wrote:
I'm surprised that people are so accepting of the 2D6 charge. It just seems so unpredictable and random to me. I think something like half of the unit's move + D6 would be better.

Yeah, too much randomness is bad. Especially in places like this where it actually inhibits tactics and does not make sense from a realistic point of view. A degree of randomness for things like whether you hit stuff or not with your attack is good, as it provides an abstraction of the myriad variables that are out of your control that determine whether you hit your target or not in chaotic battlefield situation. Charging however in reality depends not on factors out of your control but is simply related to how fast you can run (charging is nothing more than running at an enemy after all). Therefore it should be linked to a unit's movement allowance, and not be determined completely randomly.

I've heard of half move plus 2d3, and that seems real good to me.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Luciferian wrote:
I'm surprised that people are so accepting of the 2D6 charge. It just seems so unpredictable and random to me. I think something like half of the unit's move + D6 would be better.

well, it's variable but not unpredictable, you know 6-8"is your most likely sweetspot, and that nearly 75% will be at least 5". It's a pretty bog standard bell curve distribution.

It is still unpredictable because it might just as well be 2". Sure 6-8" is most likely, but the high likelihood of getting a different result still makes it far from predictable. Something is predictable when you can be almost certain of the outcome before it happens. 25% chance of less 5" means you are far from being almost certain of getting a charge range above 5", let alone of being any more specific. When playing assault armies, where entire games can be won or lost on a charge, that means you do not have nearly enough certainty to make a sound tactical plan. That is a huge disadvantage assault armies get against any other sort of army.

 JNAProductions wrote:
I've heard of half move plus 2d3, and that seems real good to me.

meh, that just takes a bell curve and cuts out every other stop on its distribution. It also introduces the need for either getting d3's or counting a d6 as a d3.

I like the warmachine mechanic; and think something similar would work well in 40k with a minor adjustment.

move+3'' - your units can ALWAYS charge at least this far.

OR

you can elect to roll 2d6 and make a wild charge.

This means that you have the option of that last ditch last resort charge (but its not worth doing for units that move at least 9 at all, and less than ideal for units with move 7-8). It allows you to never fail the 3-4 inch charges, and at the same time gives you an option for moving quicker with units that are otherwise slow, at the expense of potentially failing the charge.

Any charge that is not at least 3 inches, does not grant any charge bonuses.

 JNAProductions wrote:
I've heard of half move plus 2d3, and that seems real good to me.

seems overly complex, and would be slow with all kinds of measuring. "Okay, my terminators are guaranteed 2.5", so let's start measuring.."

I think the bigger question is: Why should faster units have a longer charge distance than slower units? There are two answers, from a gameplay & balance standpoint, and from a fluff standpoint. I'd like to hear what people think here, because from a balance standpoint, there is no question that this is not at all balanced.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Luciferian wrote:
I'm surprised that people are so accepting of the 2D6 charge. It just seems so unpredictable and random to me. I think something like half of the unit's move + D6 would be better.

Yeah, too much randomness is bad. Especially in places like this where it actually inhibits tactics and does not make sense from a realistic point of view. A degree of randomness for things like whether you hit stuff or not with your attack is good, as it provides an abstraction of the myriad variables that are out of your control that determine whether you hit your target or not in chaotic battlefield situation. Charging however in reality depends not on factors out of your control but is simply related to how fast you can run (charging is nothing more than running at an enemy after all). Therefore it should be linked to a unit's movement allowance, and not be determined completely randomly.

There's a good case to be made for random movement in the case of charging however.

Normal movement is a practiced natural combat pace, units are moving forward coherently, watching for ambush, mines, rough spots on the ground, etc.

Charges and run moved are random, these are hasty advances which, while faster, makes it likely that they may lose their footing, be less mindful of enemy attack, increases possibility of gear breakage (e.g. servo failure on power armor), may not see that piece of falling masonry about to fall on them, they may fall avoiding a landmine they otherwise would have seen earlier, etc.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Luciferian wrote:
I'm surprised that people are so accepting of the 2D6 charge. It just seems so unpredictable and random to me. I think something like half of the unit's move + D6 would be better.

well, it's variable but not unpredictable, you know 6-8"is your most likely sweetspot, and that nearly 75% will be at least 5". It's a pretty bog standard bell curve distribution.

True, but you still have the chance to totally flub your charge for no reason other than arbitrary chance. Putting some kind of floor on the minimum charge distance would make me happier about it, personally. That way if you wanted to try your luck at a long charge you could, but you could still maneuver into charge range with some level of confidence that you're not going to just roll snake eyes and fail a 6" charge.

 Luciferian wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Luciferian wrote:
I'm surprised that people are so accepting of the 2D6 charge. It just seems so unpredictable and random to me. I think something like half of the unit's move + D6 would be better.

well, it's variable but not unpredictable, you know 6-8"is your most likely sweetspot, and that nearly 75% will be at least 5". It's a pretty bog standard bell curve distribution.

True, but you still have the chance to totally flub your charge for no reason other than arbitrary chance. Putting some kind of floor on the minimum charge distance would make me happier about it, personally. That way if you wanted to try your luck at a long charge you could, but you could still maneuver into charge range with some level of confidence that you're not going to just roll snake eyes and fail a 6" charge.

Why should you have a guaranteed 6" charge?

 Marmatag wrote:

 Luciferian wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Luciferian wrote:
I'm surprised that people are so accepting of the 2D6 charge. It just seems so unpredictable and random to me. I think something like half of the unit's move + D6 would be better.

well, it's variable but not unpredictable, you know 6-8"is your most likely sweetspot, and that nearly 75% will be at least 5". It's a pretty bog standard bell curve distribution.

True, but you still have the chance to totally flub your charge for no reason other than arbitrary chance. Putting some kind of floor on the minimum charge distance would make me happier about it, personally. That way if you wanted to try your luck at a long charge you could, but you could still maneuver into charge range with some level of confidence that you're not going to just roll snake eyes and fail a 6" charge.

Why should you have a guaranteed 6" charge?

I don't think it should be 6, but units should be able to charge at least as far as they are guaranteed to move in another phase of the game.

 Marmatag wrote:


Why should you have a guaranteed 6" charge?

Why shouldn't you? Why should you have a guaranteed range on your bolter? We could do that all day.

I'd say you should have a guaranteed minimum charge so it allows you to tactically plan for assaults in the same way you can plan for shooting, as opposed to either having to move within 3" every time you assault if you want to be sure it's going to happen or simply hoping your assault, and possibly the game, isn't ruined by mere chance.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Luciferian wrote:
I'm surprised that people are so accepting of the 2D6 charge. It just seems so unpredictable and random to me. I think something like half of the unit's move + D6 would be better.

Yeah, too much randomness is bad. Especially in places like this where it actually inhibits tactics and does not make sense from a realistic point of view. A degree of randomness for things like whether you hit stuff or not with your attack is good, as it provides an abstraction of the myriad variables that are out of your control that determine whether you hit your target or not in chaotic battlefield situation. Charging however in reality depends not on factors out of your control but is simply related to how fast you can run (charging is nothing more than running at an enemy after all). Therefore it should be linked to a unit's movement allowance, and not be determined completely randomly.

There's a good case to be made for random movement in the case of charging however.

Normal movement is a practiced natural combat pace, units are moving forward coherently, watching for ambush, mines, rough spots on the ground, etc.

Charges and run moved are random, these are hasty advances which, while faster, makes it likely that they may lose their footing, be less mindful of enemy attack, increases possibility of gear breakage (e.g. servo failure on power armor), may not see that piece of falling masonry about to fall on them, they may fall avoiding a landmine they otherwise would have seen earlier, etc.

The distance one can run within a given time is never random. And the chance of someone loosing his footing while running on normal terrain is pretty minimal. That only becomes a problem on rough terrain, which is already represented with difficult and dangerous terrain. Also, there are no landmines in the game and Space Marine power armour is supposed to be reliable enough not to break down from running a few metres.
In real life, charges do not fail because someone stumbled on a rock (rather, the success of a charge usually depends on the morale of both sides). Neither should it be that way in 40k. That is ridiculous.
If we want to keep a degree of randomness for whether a charge fails or succeed, I feel it would be better to have an alternative, more realistic system where charge distance is more or less fixed but whether your troops get to reach the enemy depends on passing morale checks.

 Luciferian wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:


Why should you have a guaranteed 6" charge?

Why shouldn't you? Why should you have a guaranteed range on your bolter? We could do that all day.

I'd say you should have a guaranteed minimum charge so it allows you to tactically plan for assaults in the same way you can plan for shooting, as opposed to either having to move within 3" every time you assault if you want to be sure it's going to happen or simply hoping your assault, and possibly the game, isn't ruined by mere chance.

Because assault is incredibly devastating, whereas bolter fire can be generally shrugged off.

Because really, 6" is already basically guaranteed with 2d6, and almost entirely unfailable on 2d6+1. Because 2d6 is easy to math out, and easy to understand and provides a very nice looking probability distribution that makes a lot of sense and makes slow assault units not trash and fast assault units not overpowered.

Because, tbh, if you're planning on rolling a 2 or a 3 on 2d6, you're probably being far too paranoid and giving up opportunities. I try almost automatically on a 7 or less.

Charge distance should be set per individual movement and be biased to large mobs of fast models like gaunts or daemonettes while being biased against slow units such as Terminators or already absurdly fast bikes. Random charge distances only remove tactical play from the game and inject more randomness, which is the last thing 40k needs. The only "random" mechanic should involve actual combat, models being removed, and the psychic phase. Everything else should be decided by the player's decisions and a ruler.

Well, if you want to get 'realistic' the entire of idea of charging is stupid. No one runs wildly at their enemy on the battlefield, and it certainly doesn't give them an advantage (like +1 attack or striking first). The exception, of course, is guys on horseback, but even then they don't go crashing into other people or nonsense like that.

An element of randomness and unpredictability is desirable in a wargame, both to make it a game and to accurately model the unpredictability of actual warfare. Of course there's a thing as too much randomness, but I don't think random charges pushes things too far. You could drop random charges but it should be replaced with some other mechanic that makes engaging with the foe less than 100% reliable.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 Luciferian wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:


Why should you have a guaranteed 6" charge?

Why shouldn't you? Why should you have a guaranteed range on your bolter? We could do that all day.

I'd say you should have a guaranteed minimum charge so it allows you to tactically plan for assaults in the same way you can plan for shooting, as opposed to either having to move within 3" every time you assault if you want to be sure it's going to happen or simply hoping your assault, and possibly the game, isn't ruined by mere chance.

Because assault is incredibly devastating, whereas bolter fire can be generally shrugged off.

Depends on the unit doing the assaulting. Also, bolters aren't the only ranged weapon. There are ranged weapons with fixed ranges far more deadly than most assaults.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Because really, 6" is already basically guaranteed with 2d6,

Nope. 1 in 4 of your rolls are going to be less than 5". That is not 'basically guaranteed'. With a relatively low number of dice rolls, probability based on averages is essentially meaningless. You are only going to be able to see that pattern when you get hundreds of dice rolls.

 Saber wrote:
Well, if you want to get 'realistic' the entire of idea of charging is stupid. No one runs wildly at their enemy on the battlefield, and it certainly doesn't give them an advantage (like +1 attack or striking first). The exception, of course, is guys on horseback, but even then they don't go crashing into other people or nonsense like that.

An element of randomness and unpredictability is desirable in a wargame, both to make it a game and to accurately model the unpredictability of actual warfare. Of course there's a thing as too much randomness, but I don't think random charges pushes things too far. You could drop random charges but it should be replaced with some other mechanic that makes engaging with the foe less than 100% reliable.

What complete and utter bollocks. If you actually bothered to open a history book you'd know that charges are a major stable of history, with the charge becoming a key method of dispersing and routing the enemy with the advent of bayonet mounted on muskets and rifles.



Secondly randomness is a horrible excuse for gak mechanics. Randomness does not win battles, logistics and morale does.

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Because assault is incredibly devastating, whereas bolter fire can be generally shrugged off.

Because really, 6" is already basically guaranteed with 2d6, and almost entirely unfailable on 2d6+1. Because 2d6 is easy to math out, and easy to understand and provides a very nice looking probability distribution that makes a lot of sense and makes slow assault units not trash and fast assault units not overpowered.

Because, tbh, if you're planning on rolling a 2 or a 3 on 2d6, you're probably being far too paranoid and giving up opportunities. I try almost automatically on a 7 or less.

You're going to fail a 7" charge 27.78% of the time. It's not nearly the sure thing you guys are making it out to be, and game outcomes WILL be decided on that arbitrary chance. That's not something I'm comfortable with for the sake of being able to talk about how nice a distribution of probability something is.

Iron_Captain wrote:
The distance one can run within a given time is never random. And the chance of someone loosing his footing while running on normal terrain is pretty minimal. That only becomes a problem on rough terrain, which is already represented with difficult and dangerous terrain. Also, there are no landmines in the game and Space Marine power armour is supposed to be reliable enough not to break down from running a few metres.
In real life, charges do not fail because someone stumbled on a rock (rather, the success of a charge usually depends on the morale of both sides). Neither should it be that way in 40k. That is ridiculous.
If we want to keep a degree of randomness for whether a charge fails or succeed, I feel it would be better to have an alternative, more realistic system where charge distance is more or less fixed but whether your troops get to reach the enemy depends on passing morale checks.

Right, this is a game where nearly everyone is a trained, maniacal killer. Some of them have been enduring constant battle for centuries, some of them have powerful martial technology beyond anything we've created, and some of them are motivated by the power of actual gods or simply the will to destroy their enemies. There's no good reason a unit of such soldiers should be able to move at a steady pace through fields of fire and alien terrain, then coincidentally trip on their shoelaces the instant they decide to swing a sword at someone. In my opinion it's just ludicrously silly.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 Luciferian wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:


Why should you have a guaranteed 6" charge?

Why shouldn't you? Why should you have a guaranteed range on your bolter? We could do that all day.

I'd say you should have a guaranteed minimum charge so it allows you to tactically plan for assaults in the same way you can plan for shooting, as opposed to either having to move within 3" every time you assault if you want to be sure it's going to happen or simply hoping your assault, and possibly the game, isn't ruined by mere chance.

Because assault is incredibly devastating, whereas bolter fire can be generally shrugged off.

Depends on the unit doing the assaulting. Also, bolters aren't the only ranged weapon. There are ranged weapons with fixed ranges far more deadly than most assaults.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Because really, 6" is already basically guaranteed with 2d6,

Nope. 1 in 4 of your rolls are going to be less than 5". That is not 'basically guaranteed'. With a relatively low number of dice rolls, probability based on averages is essentially meaningless. You are only going to be able to see that pattern when you get hundreds of dice rolls.

With regards to ranged weapons: of course the Shadowsword's Volcano Cannon is far more destructive than a Chainsword. But a Reaper Chainsword on a Knight is definitely nastier than a Volcano Cannon. The disadvantage you pay for being more destructive is the fact you have to be in melee to use it, while the Shadowsword gets 2 turns to try to kill you before you reach it.

With regards to 75% chance: It's good enough that I can count on getting into melee if I have to, and plan around it, and not lose the game. I've had assault units fail to reach their target of 75% charges for 3 turns straight before, and it can be frustrating, but it's not game breaking in the least and it's fairly rare.

 Wyzilla wrote:

What complete and utter bollocks. If you actually bothered to open a history book you'd know that charges are a major stable of history, with the charge becoming a key method of dispersing and routing the enemy with the advent of bayonet mounted on muskets and rifles.

To be fair, attempting to charge a group of enemy combatants armed with contemporary weapons is a pretty damn good way to get riddled with lead for your troubles. I agree with you otherwise, though.

 Luciferian wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

What complete and utter bollocks. If you actually bothered to open a history book you'd know that charges are a major stable of history, with the charge becoming a key method of dispersing and routing the enemy with the advent of bayonet mounted on muskets and rifles.

To be fair, attempting to charge a group of enemy combatants armed with contemporary weapons is a pretty damn good way to get riddled with lead for your troubles. I agree with you otherwise, though.

Unlike for the French, Ork Machine gunners aren't going to overwatch on a 1+.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

With regards to 75% chance: It's good enough that I can count on getting into melee if I have to, and plan around it, and not lose the game. I've had assault units fail to reach their target of 75% charges for 3 turns straight before, and it can be frustrating, but it's not game breaking in the least and it's fairly rare.

You're either extremely lucky or simply unaware of when chance affects you negatively. Failing three assaults in a row, or even one assault, can and will decide the outcome of games.

 Saber wrote:
Well, if you want to get 'realistic' the entire of idea of charging is stupid. No one runs wildly at their enemy on the battlefield, and it certainly doesn't give them an advantage (like +1 attack or striking first). The exception, of course, is guys on horseback, but even then they don't go crashing into other people or nonsense like that.

Except that happened quite a lot on battlefields historically. Why do you think soldiers kept carrying bayonets for so long? It is only really with the omnipresence of fully automatic weapons on the modern battlefield that charging the enemy and hitting him in the face stopped being a viable tactic.

 Saber wrote:
An element of randomness and unpredictability is desirable in a wargame, both to make it a game and to accurately model the unpredictability of actual warfare. Of course there's a thing as too much randomness, but I don't think random charges pushes things too far. You could drop random charges but it should be replaced with some other mechanic that makes engaging with the foe less than 100% reliable.

The problem with this is that this game has armies that rely on melee combat and charging to do anything. Those armies are now put at a tactical disadvantage because the randomness of the charge makes them unreliable. Their unreliability makes it hard to devise a sound tactical plan for the game. This is a disadvantage a player of a ranged army does not have. And unlike the other inherent disadvantage of assault armies (having to get into melee range before being able to do anything) this one is virtually impossible to balance out through stats or point costs as it detracts from player skill.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Luciferian wrote:
I'm surprised that people are so accepting of the 2D6 charge. It just seems so unpredictable and random to me. I think something like half of the unit's move + D6 would be better.

Yeah, too much randomness is bad. Especially in places like this where it actually inhibits tactics and does not make sense from a realistic point of view. A degree of randomness for things like whether you hit stuff or not with your attack is good, as it provides an abstraction of the myriad variables that are out of your control that determine whether you hit your target or not in chaotic battlefield situation. Charging however in reality depends not on factors out of your control but is simply related to how fast you can run (charging is nothing more than running at an enemy after all). Therefore it should be linked to a unit's movement allowance, and not be determined completely randomly.

There's a good case to be made for random movement in the case of charging however.

Normal movement is a practiced natural combat pace, units are moving forward coherently, watching for ambush, mines, rough spots on the ground, etc.

Charges and run moved are random, these are hasty advances which, while faster, makes it likely that they may lose their footing, be less mindful of enemy attack, increases possibility of gear breakage (e.g. servo failure on power armor), may not see that piece of falling masonry about to fall on them, they may fall avoiding a landmine they otherwise would have seen earlier, etc.

The distance one can run within a given time is never random.

Random? No. Variable? Sure. How much gear one is carrying, how well fed or rested one is, if one has minor injuries, equipment condition, etc can all influence how fast one can be.

Likewise, even running over even a seemingly empty grassy field can find small holes, uneven clumps, hidden rocks, etc, that can slow or cause one to trip and thats not taking into account being under fire.

And the chance of someone loosing his footing while running on normal terrain is pretty minimal.

I've seen it plenty of times. Hell I've done it plenty of times

In my Longsword group, someone falls down probably once or twice a month without even really being in contact with their foe, and thats on maintained gym floors with no mad dash to make contact. We have people fall over just playing stance tag (maintaining a fighting stance while playing "tag" as a warmup exercise) from time to time, again, on maintained gym floors. Balance isnt always easy, especially in combat.

That only becomes a problem on rough terrain, which is already represented with difficult and dangerous terrain.

People trip and fall over small things like sidewalk curbs (which 40k would not considet difficult terrain) all the time at normal walking paces (I mean, maybe not every day, but at the office I'm at now I've seen it happen a couple of times). In combat that happens not at all infrequently, and tales abound of things like insurgents crossing Iraqi streets with RPG-7's, tripping and killing themselves as the RPG warhead detonates as it is dropped nose first into the ground .

Also, there are no landmines in the game

They arent directly represented, but it was just a random example. Could be an unexploded mortar shell or the like just as easily.

and Space Marine power armour is supposed to be reliable enough not to break down from running a few meters

In new condition? Sure. After it may have been in the field for weeks and suffered a las bolt blast? Maybe not.

In real life, charges do not fail because someone stumbled on a rock (rather, the success of a charge usually depends on the morale of both sides). Neither should it be that way in 40k. That is ridiculous.

well, in real life people generally just shoot at each other from very close distances instead of trying to bayonet each other, hand to hand combat in reality, as portrayed by 40k, is usually something that occurs as an "oh gak" surprise moment to individuals as someone turns a corner or someone dives behind a barricade not seeing a foe behind it. Nobody is fixing bayonets and mounting attacks across open ground as coherent units to take enemy held positions in the field through direct hand to hand assault

Much of the weirdness here is an artefact of GW's rules trying to make actions unit specific but everything else model specific, and that creates weirdness quite often.

If we want to keep a degree of randomness for whether a charge fails or succeed, I feel it would be better to have an alternative, more realistic system where charge distance is more or less fixed but whether your troops get to reach the enemy depends on passing morale checks.

the problem is that morale varies wildly and many assault units have inherently crappy Ld (e.g. Orks, Ogryns, etc) whild others could literally never fail.

Generally, I do like the randomness of it, as nothing's guaranteed.

However, it is sometimes a bit too random. I would have been happier with a move + D6 charge range, or just 6+D6. Because it does suck to fail a 3" charge.

I think the big reason random charge distances were brought into the game is the fact you can pre-measure distances, and having a fixed charge range causes all kinds of trouble for melee dependant units (staying 1" or more out of charge range if it was fixed being the main issue). I've been told this sort of thing happened a lot in WHFB.

Personally, I prefer a Move + D6" approach, but if we got rid of the ability to premeasure distances, I wouldn't mind x2 Move charges.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Random? No. Variable? Sure. How much gear one is carrying, how well fed or rested one is, if one has minor injuries, equipment condition, etc can all influence how fast one can be.

Likewise, even running over even a seemingly empty grassy field can find small holes, uneven clumps, hidden rocks, etc, that can slow or cause one to trip and thats not taking into account being under fire.

The problem with your argument is that, firstly, this is not a simulation. It's supposed to be a strategy game, and they're supposed to be streamlining the rules to introduce more balance and player skill into the game, not less. Secondly, it's very inconsistent to insist that these kinds of variables should only apply to charges. There are many variables in marksmanship as well, perhaps even more. What if Brother Marineguynius has three bolts in his combat load that are a few grains light in propellant? What about the wind? What about swamp gas refracting the light from las weapons? What about weapon malfunctions? None of that is accounted for, so why should an Astartes in Terminator armor tripping over a clod of grass 25% of the time he tries to punch someone in the face be accounted for?

A terminator wouldn't trip anyway, anything that weighs over one tonne is simply going to rip right through anything that would trip a human and pound the ground flat. Same with a space marine.

One other thing that just occurred to me: how are they going to deal with charges through difficult terrain if the chance of being hindered by terrain is already built in to every charge action regardless of the ground it occurs on?

Well I guess the dude just tripped in the larger hole he just made.

Charge could benefit from being rolled with D3's, I think, something like 4D3 would be ideal, I think.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Luciferian wrote:
I'm surprised that people are so accepting of the 2D6 charge. It just seems so unpredictable and random to me. I think something like half of the unit's move + D6 would be better.

Yeah, too much randomness is bad. Especially in places like this where it actually inhibits tactics and does not make sense from a realistic point of view. A degree of randomness for things like whether you hit stuff or not with your attack is good, as it provides an abstraction of the myriad variables that are out of your control that determine whether you hit your target or not in chaotic battlefield situation. Charging however in reality depends not on factors out of your control but is simply related to how fast you can run (charging is nothing more than running at an enemy after all). Therefore it should be linked to a unit's movement allowance, and not be determined completely randomly.

There's a good case to be made for random movement in the case of charging however.

Normal movement is a practiced natural combat pace, units are moving forward coherently, watching for ambush, mines, rough spots on the ground, etc.

Charges and run moved are random, these are hasty advances which, while faster, makes it likely that they may lose their footing, be less mindful of enemy attack, increases possibility of gear breakage (e.g. servo failure on power armor), may not see that piece of falling masonry about to fall on them, they may fall avoiding a landmine they otherwise would have seen earlier, etc.

The distance one can run within a given time is never random.

Random? No. Variable? Sure. How much gear one is carrying, how well fed or rested one is, if one has minor injuries, equipment condition, etc can all influence how fast one can be.

Likewise, even running over even a seemingly empty grassy field can find small holes, uneven clumps, hidden rocks, etc, that can slow or cause one to trip and thats not taking into account being under fire.

And the chance of someone loosing his footing while running on normal terrain is pretty minimal.

I've seen it plenty of times. Hell I've done it plenty of times

In my Longsword group, someone falls down probably once or twice a month without even really being in contact with their foe, and thats on maintained gym floors with no mad dash to make contact. We have people fall over just playing stance tag (maintaining a fighting stance while playing "tag" as a warmup exercise) from time to time, again, on maintained gym floors. Balance isnt always easy, especially in combat.

That only becomes a problem on rough terrain, which is already represented with difficult and dangerous terrain.

People trip and fall over small things like sidewalk curbs (which 40k would not considet difficult terrain) all the time at normal walking paces (I mean, maybe not every day, but at the office I'm at now I've seen it happen a couple of times). In combat that happens not at all infrequently, and tales abound of things like insurgents crossing Iraqi streets with RPG-7's, tripping and killing themselves as the RPG warhead detonates as it is dropped nose first into the ground .

Also, there are no landmines in the game

They arent directly represented, but it was just a random example. Could be an unexploded mortar shell or the like just as easily.

and Space Marine power armour is supposed to be reliable enough not to break down from running a few meters

In new condition? Sure. After it may have been in the field for weeks and suffered a las bolt blast? Maybe not.

In real life, charges do not fail because someone stumbled on a rock (rather, the success of a charge usually depends on the morale of both sides). Neither should it be that way in 40k. That is ridiculous.

well, in real life people generally just shoot at each other from very close distances instead of trying to bayonet each other, hand to hand combat in reality, as portrayed by 40k, is usually something that occurs as an "oh gak" surprise moment to individuals as someone turns a corner or someone dives behind a barricade not seeing a foe behind it. Nobody is fixing bayonets and mounting attacks across open ground as coherent units to take enemy held positions in the field through direct hand to hand assault

Much of the weirdness here is an artefact of GW's rules trying to make actions unit specific but everything else model specific, and that creates weirdness quite often.

If we want to keep a degree of randomness for whether a charge fails or succeed, I feel it would be better to have an alternative, more realistic system where charge distance is more or less fixed but whether your troops get to reach the enemy depends on passing morale checks.

the problem is that morale varies wildly and many assault units have inherently crappy Ld (e.g. Orks, Ogryns, etc) whild others could literally never fail.

You forgot that an Organized Charge only moves as fast as the Slowest Person.
Did 15 years of Steel Combat Myself.

 Luciferian wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Random? No. Variable? Sure. How much gear one is carrying, how well fed or rested one is, if one has minor injuries, equipment condition, etc can all influence how fast one can be.

Likewise, even running over even a seemingly empty grassy field can find small holes, uneven clumps, hidden rocks, etc, that can slow or cause one to trip and thats not taking into account being under fire.

The problem with your argument is that, firstly, this is not a simulation. It's supposed to be a strategy game, and they're supposed to be streamlining the rules to introduce more balance and player skill into the game, not less. Secondly, it's very inconsistent to insist that these kinds of variables should only apply to charges. There are many variables in marksmanship as well, perhaps even more. What if Brother Marineguynius has three bolts in his combat load that are a few grains light in propellant? What about the wind? What about swamp gas refracting the light from las weapons? What about weapon malfunctions? None of that is accounted for, so why should an Astartes in Terminator armor tripping over a clod of grass 25% of the time he tries to punch someone in the face be accounted for?

In my earlier post I made a distinction between movement types. To repeat, normal movement is done at a practiced and intentional combat pace, while Charges and Running is far more hasty and haphazard, hence why normal movement has a set value while running and charging is random. It's also there to avoid some of the weird 0.1" manipulation silliness from old Fantasy.

As for weapon accuracy, the types of shooting done in 40k arent really the kind where those things would require additional rules. They already have a random factor built in (hence why nothing automatically hits and even superhuman super soldiers miss often).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Anpu42 wrote:


You forgot that an Organized Charge only moves as fast as the Slowest Person.
Did 15 years of Steel Combat Myself.

that too, good point

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Luciferian wrote:
I'm surprised that people are so accepting of the 2D6 charge. It just seems so unpredictable and random to me. I think something like half of the unit's move + D6 would be better.

Yeah, too much randomness is bad. Especially in places like this where it actually inhibits tactics and does not make sense from a realistic point of view. A degree of randomness for things like whether you hit stuff or not with your attack is good, as it provides an abstraction of the myriad variables that are out of your control that determine whether you hit your target or not in chaotic battlefield situation. Charging however in reality depends not on factors out of your control but is simply related to how fast you can run (charging is nothing more than running at an enemy after all). Therefore it should be linked to a unit's movement allowance, and not be determined completely randomly.

There's a good case to be made for random movement in the case of charging however.

Normal movement is a practiced natural combat pace, units are moving forward coherently, watching for ambush, mines, rough spots on the ground, etc.

Charges and run moved are random, these are hasty advances which, while faster, makes it likely that they may lose their footing, be less mindful of enemy attack, increases possibility of gear breakage (e.g. servo failure on power armor), may not see that piece of falling masonry about to fall on them, they may fall avoiding a landmine they otherwise would have seen earlier, etc.

The distance one can run within a given time is never random.

Random? No. Variable? Sure. How much gear one is carrying, how well fed or rested one is, if one has minor injuries, equipment condition, etc can all influence how fast one can be.

Likewise, even running over even a seemingly empty grassy field can find small holes, uneven clumps, hidden rocks, etc, that can slow or cause one to trip and thats not taking into account being under fire.

And the chance of someone loosing his footing while running on normal terrain is pretty minimal.

I've seen it plenty of times. Hell I've done it plenty of times

In my Longsword group, someone falls down probably once or twice a month without even really being in contact with their foe, and thats on maintained gym floors with no mad dash to make contact. We have people fall over just playing stance tag (maintaining a fighting stance while playing "tag" as a warmup exercise) from time to time, again, on maintained gym floors. Balance isnt always easy, especially in combat.

That only becomes a problem on rough terrain, which is already represented with difficult and dangerous terrain.

People trip and fall over small things like sidewalk curbs (which 40k would not considet difficult terrain) all the time at normal walking paces (I mean, maybe not every day, but at the office I'm at now I've seen it happen a couple of times). In combat that happens not at all infrequently, and tales abound of things like insurgents crossing Iraqi streets with RPG-7's, tripping and killing themselves as the RPG warhead detonates as it is dropped nose first into the ground .

It happens. But as you say, not all that frequently. Do you think it happens often enough to justify a completely random charge distance? And why would one person stumbling stop an entire squad's charge dead in his tracks?
"Charge men! For the Emperor!"
The Space Marines heroically charge into the hail of plasma bolts towards the Tau gunline, heedless of the casualties inflicted by the vile Xenos' firepower.
"Oh wait hold on guys, stop charging! Fred just tripped on a rock. Wait until he gets up, then we start charging together again on the count of three."

 Vaktathi wrote:

Also, there are no landmines in the game

They arent directly represented, but it was just a random example. Could be an unexploded mortar shell or the like just as easily.

Unexploded mortar shells are also not represented And if it were, such terrain hazards should be represented by a charging squad taking additional casualties, not by the entire group of people suddenly stopping their charge.

 Vaktathi wrote:

and Space Marine power armour is supposed to be reliable enough not to break down from running a few meters

In new condition? Sure. After it may have been in the field for weeks and suffered a las bolt blast? Maybe not.

Space Marines spend half their lives caring for their equipment. Presumably it is a lot more reliable than that. And even if it weren't, it would not justify random charge distances. Especially not for entire groups of units.

In real life, charges do not fail because someone stumbled on a rock (rather, the success of a charge usually depends on the morale of both sides). Neither should it be that way in 40k. That is ridiculous.

well, in real life people generally just shoot at each other from very close distances instead of trying to bayonet each other, hand to hand combat in reality, as portrayed by 40k, is usually something that occurs as an "oh gak" surprise moment to individuals as someone turns a corner or someone dives behind a barricade not seeing a foe behind it. Nobody is fixing bayonets and mounting attacks across open ground as coherent units to take enemy held positions in the field through direct hand to hand assault

 Luciferian wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

With regards to 75% chance: It's good enough that I can count on getting into melee if I have to, and plan around it, and not lose the game. I've had assault units fail to reach their target of 75% charges for 3 turns straight before, and it can be frustrating, but it's not game breaking in the least and it's fairly rare.

You're either extremely lucky or simply unaware of when chance affects you negatively. Failing three assaults in a row, or even one assault, can and will decide the outcome of games.

Neither. I consider the odds and ranges ahead of time when putting my list together.

Before playing Sisters and Wolves, I played Artillery Gunline Imperial Guard and Imperial Guard Armoured Battlegroup, and wrote lists that were entirely dependent on me winning the initiative roll off. I won if I got to go first, I lost if I didn't.

Compared to that, I have a lot of control over a 2d6 charge. If that one charge was so essential that I had to make it to win the game, and I failed it, then I made a error in my planning or execution and need to analyse the situations that lead up to that being the deciding factor, and possibly return to the drawing board to make a new list. Or sometimes just shrug it off an try again. It's statistically improbably enough sometimes I can write it off, and play another game.


Oh, and I won the most recent game in memory where I had a unit [Vigilators], fail to charge 3 times in a row.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Luciferian wrote:
I'm surprised that people are so accepting of the 2D6 charge. It just seems so unpredictable and random to me. I think something like half of the unit's move + D6 would be better.

well, it's variable but not unpredictable, you know 6-8"is your most likely sweetspot, and that nearly 75% will be at least 5". It's a pretty bog standard bell curve distribution.

It is still unpredictable because it might just as well be 2". Sure 6-8" is most likely, but the high likelihood of getting a different result still makes it far from predictable. Something is predictable when you can be almost certain of the outcome before it happens. 25% chance of less 5" means you are far from being almost certain of getting a charge range above 5", let alone of being any more specific. When playing assault armies, where entire games can be won or lost on a charge, that means you do not have nearly enough certainty to make a sound tactical plan. That is a huge disadvantage assault armies get against any other sort of army.

This. I in general do not like random charge distances, but 2d6 is awfully unreliable for those who actually want to get in assault, and should in my opinion at least be replaced with something more reliable.
Failing a charge in general comes down to losing the unit or at least suffer crippling casualties for most assault based armies. Failing a few of these with key units will most likely cost you
the game so you do not want this to happen.


Post overwatch charge range 7" 41.66% failure
Post overwatch charge range 6" 27.77% failure -> More than 1 in 4 of your charges is likely to fail at 6"
Post overwatch charge range 5" 16.66% failure -> 1 in 6 of your charges is likely to fail at 5"
Post overwatch charge range 4" 8.33% failure -> 1 in 12 of your charges is likely to fail at 4"

This makes the charge range with an acceptable failure rate 4" and this is all is post over watch ranges. So for most this will be 3" to 2" for those assault based armies that tend to lose models in overwatch.

 Iron_Captain wrote:



It happens. But as you say, not all that frequently. Do you think it happens often enough to justify a completely random charge distance? And why would one person stumbling stop an entire squad's charge dead in his tracks?

The stop is really an artefact of the turns and igougo, really it would be more of a slowing or staggering, which may delay a charge enough to justify it carrying over into another game turn.

Does it happen in real life as often as portrayed in game? No, but enough that the mechanic isn't out of place. By the same token I can set a half blind 14 year old (BS1 for game purpowes) behind a modern assault rifle with a red dot optic and theyll hit a man sized target at 25 meters 100% of the time, not 16% of the time, whereas them hitting a moving target at 100m under combat stress would be almost entirely random chance. Abstraction isnt perfect.

"Charge men! For the Emperor!"
The Space Marines heroically charge into the hail of plasma bolts towards the Tau gunline, heedless of the casualties inflicted by the vile Xenos' firepower.
"Oh wait hold on guys, stop charging! Fred just tripped on a rock. Wait until he gets up, then we start charging together again on the count of three."

As helpfully noted by Anpu42, charge moves at the speed of the slowest component. In reality it wouldnt be a stop but a section of the line may slow or stagger however. Charges done into direct fire heedless of casualties, leaving behind stragglers and the like, are typically exceedingly costly affairs that often fail.

Unexploded mortar shells are also not represented And if it were, such terrain hazards should be represented by a charging squad taking additional casualties, not by the entire group of people suddenly stopping their charge.

Again, the "stop" doesnt really happen, thats just a game artefact. And thr example was someone seeing one at the last second and falling or tripping to avoid it that, at a more measured pace, they would have avoided entirely. An abstract example of what *could* happen.

In present-day not anymore. But in historical times it happened a lot. Even during WW2 infantry charges were still surprisingly common and used by every major army in the conflict.

Aye, they happened, but most also usually failed, costing many lives for little gain.

 Vaktathi wrote:

If we want to keep a degree of randomness for whether a charge fails or succeed, I feel it would be better to have an alternative, more realistic system where charge distance is more or less fixed but whether your troops get to reach the enemy depends on passing morale checks.

the problem is that morale varies wildly and many assault units have inherently crappy Ld (e.g. Orks, Ogryns, etc) whild others could literally never fail.

True. It probably should not be based on leadership but rather on a separate morale value that represents a units willingness to engage in melee.
To make it even more realistic we could even make it so that the unit receiving the charge has to pass a check too or else it breaks and runs.

while perhaps ealistic, that sounds like even more dice rolling.

Except the current mechanic isn't realistic or tactical. The best option for both is fixed charge distances on a per-unit basis with a modifier for difficult terrain. Not only will assault benefit will, but everybody can pre-measure and know exactly how to maneuver their models about the table.

 oldzoggy wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Luciferian wrote:
I'm surprised that people are so accepting of the 2D6 charge. It just seems so unpredictable and random to me. I think something like half of the unit's move + D6 would be better.

well, it's variable but not unpredictable, you know 6-8"is your most likely sweetspot, and that nearly 75% will be at least 5". It's a pretty bog standard bell curve distribution.

It is still unpredictable because it might just as well be 2". Sure 6-8" is most likely, but the high likelihood of getting a different result still makes it far from predictable. Something is predictable when you can be almost certain of the outcome before it happens. 25% chance of less 5" means you are far from being almost certain of getting a charge range above 5", let alone of being any more specific. When playing assault armies, where entire games can be won or lost on a charge, that means you do not have nearly enough certainty to make a sound tactical plan. That is a huge disadvantage assault armies get against any other sort of army.

This. I in general do not like random charge distances, but 2d6 is awfully unreliable for those who actually want to get in assault.
Failing a charge in general comes down to losing the unit or at least suffer crippling casualties for most assault based armies. Failing a few of these with key units will most likely cost you
the game so you do not want this to happen.


Post overwatch charge range 7" 41.66% failure
Post overwatch charge range 6" 27.77% failure -> More than 1 in 4 of your charges is likely to fail at 6"
Post overwatch charge range 5" 16.66% failure -> 1 in 6 of your charges is likely to fail at 5"
Post overwatch charge range 4" 8.33% failure -> 1 in 12 of your charges is likely to fail at 4"

This makes the charge range with an acceptable failure rate 4" and this is all is post over watch ranges. So for most this will be 3" to 2" for those assault based armies that tend to lose models in overwatch.

I think our conditions for acceptable rate of failure may be different. I try for the 25% all the time. Though I rarely have one unit charging a given target. I've got Celestine and the Vigilators going in together, or Bran and some melee Grey Hunters going in together. The Repentia usually go by themselves, but they're fleet and they tend to charge things that can't fight back effectively anyway.

Things that bug me.

A: "We're bringing back movement stats because each unit should be the proper speed!"
Bringing back a Movement stat and then...not really using it. That's just a silly decision. If everyone runs +D6" and charges 2D6", etc...you're not using your Movement stat. Why bring it back? Silly.

B: The consumer argument that "well that makes fast units better"
Yes. That is the point. It's not an unfair advantage. It is a purpose built advantage, which you should find a way to deal with. Balance does not mean everyone does the same thing...an army should excel in certain areas and suck in others. As long as the game results are balanced enough, you're doing fine. A genestealer or hormagaunt should without question be faster than 90% of the units on the table top...not "maybe" faster, but faster. This is where a Movement value based run/charge would have come in. A genestealer or hormagaunt may have crap armour, and no gun...so its advantage should be speed and viciousness in close combat.

C: Simplifying or streamlining the game...and then not"
GW indicated they wanted to streamline and simplify the game...and then they do this nonsense. As with 7th and the stupid movement values assigned to similar units etc., you'll end up with a dozen new special rules attached to each guard justifying why X unit is faster on a charge, or while running...instead of simply doubling the Movement value and calling it a day. Now, to set apart something like a genestealer we'll get "oh well Genestealers roll 3D6 and pick the best two..." etc. So you'll see another dozen rules (at least they'll be on the cards/unit entries) to justify breaking the game's rules again. (let's keep in mind the rules in 7th were so crap that certain units had 11(!) special rules...allowing them to break/ignore half of the core rules because they were so crap). This just means adding more dice rolls or time wasted to the turn sequence.

D: Well 2D6 is a bell curve and you get an average of...[i]
Doesn't matter. Nothing is more immersion breaking than a genetically engineered bio-beast made to hunt and kill fleshy things...rolling a 2-3" charge.

I was pretty intrigued by 8th, but honestly the running/charging stuff may be enough to keep me from really buying into it. Shame. As mentioned, if you're going to argue the nuances of randomness and battlefield chaos...then you need to include this throughout the game. I'm fine with that. As it stands the randomness is somewhat arbitrary (and oddly I love random stuff in certain games/settings/rules sets) and doesn't gel with the other phases/rules.

Wee! Buttons!

That's my very useful contribution to this topic.

The only time it should be random IMO is if you're charging across difficult or dangerous terrain.

It isn't keeping me away I my crab themed Dread mob army idea might just be viable in 8th and this makes me happy. But the 2d6 sure is a wasted opportunity in my book.

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
If that one charge was so essential that I had to make it to win the game, and I failed it, then I made a error in my planning or execution and need to analyse the situations that lead up to that being the deciding factor, and possibly return to the drawing board to make a new list. Or sometimes just shrug it off an try again. It's statistically improbably enough sometimes I can write it off, and play another game.

That's where you're exactly wrong, though. It's not statistically improbable at all - you said earlier that you automatically assume a 7" charge is a sure thing, but the truth is that you will fail a 7" charge more than one out of four times. That's not negligible at all, and the only way to tactically plan for its occurrence is to never charge from further away than 3". These are facts. It actively takes away from your ability to make plans and choices as a player and leaves everything up to chance, even if you're going to be successful three-fourths of the time.

Vaktathi wrote:

In my earlier post I made a distinction between movement types. To repeat, normal movement is done at a practiced and intentional combat pace, while Charges and Running is far more hasty and haphazard, hence why normal movement has a set value while running and charging is random. It's also there to avoid some of the weird 0.1" manipulation silliness from old Fantasy.

As for weapon accuracy, the types of shooting done in 40k arent really the kind where those things would require additional rules. They already have a random factor built in (hence why nothing automatically hits and even superhuman super soldiers miss often).

Yes, there are rolls which reflect a model's skill at wielding weapons, but there is nothing that precludes ranged attacks from even occurring at all, except for the range of the weapon. That's the inconsistency. There are already an equal amount of rolls to determine whether or not melee and ranged weapons hit, wound, and pierce the defenses of their targets. In addition, assaulting models must move into contact with their target as opposed to having the benefit of range and are penalized for attempting to do so by suffering an additional round of fire. Now, in addition, there is a very good chance they won't make it at all on top of everything else.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Luciferian wrote:
I'm surprised that people are so accepting of the 2D6 charge. It just seems so unpredictable and random to me. I think something like half of the unit's move + D6 would be better.

well, it's variable but not unpredictable, you know 6-8"is your most likely sweetspot, and that nearly 75% will be at least 5". It's a pretty bog standard bell curve distribution.

In other words, it's pretty much the same as having a fixed 6"-ish charge, but sometimes will completely screw you over. And that's better how?

All of the arguments in favour of 2D6 random would be addressed sufficiently with Move+D3 semi-random except the whole "slow units always get charged first" line, and frankly my first thought to that was "Yes. And?". There's no reason your shambling, bloated, lumpen hulk unit with low movement should suddenly find itself capable of leaping forward at three or four times that rate - slow is slow, the answer is to account for that when balancing the unit's other rules not impose a hideously wide range of random results on all charge attempts in the game to give the slow units an occasional surprise attack.

I'd prefer fixed myself, but then I don't tend to play in tournaments and refuse to play against petty TFGs, so I've never run into people wasting half an hour trying to gain a 0.1" advantage, so Move+D3 sounds like a fine compromise, ensuring that most of the determining factor in whether a charge succeeds or not rests on the player but playing for minute advantage is confounded.

As far as I'm concerned, if I've positioned my unit properly accounting for distance, terrain, any special rules I or my enemy might have etc, I've earned the reward of a successful charge and shouldn't be denied that reward because I happened to roll snake eyes.

Its kinda funny how assaulting at realistic ranges is currently more unreliable than shooting with plasma weapons ; )

 Luciferian wrote:

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
If that one charge was so essential that I had to make it to win the game, and I failed it, then I made a error in my planning or execution and need to analyse the situations that lead up to that being the deciding factor, and possibly return to the drawing board to make a new list. Or sometimes just shrug it off an try again. It's statistically improbably enough sometimes I can write it off, and play another game.

That's where you're exactly wrong, though. It's not statistically improbable at all - you said earlier that you automatically assume a 7" charge is a sure thing, but the truth is that you will fail a 7" charge more than one out of four times. That's not negligible at all, and the only way to tactically plan for its occurrence is to never charge from further away than 3". These are facts. It actively takes away from your ability to make plans and choices as a player and leaves everything up to chance, even if you're going to be successful three-fourths of the time.

First off, the game should not have come down to the point where a single unit's charge or shooting in one turn determines the game.

I didn't say 7" was a sure thing, I said I by default try for 7" and down with regular units, 9" and down with fleet units, if I only risk bolter overwatch for trying. If it's a tank, I try at any range, because it can't fight back at all and there's no loss for trying.

And, as I also said, if my first squad of 5 vigilators have a 27% chance of failure, both of the teams have a combined 7% chance of not get either of them in. If 7% chance is still too high, then there's Celestine and some Repentia, or Bran and some Grey Hunters, or even the leftover survivors of my Dominions to throw at the enemy to absolutely make sure it happens.

 oldzoggy wrote:
Its kinda funny how assaulting at realistic ranges is currently more unreliable than shooting with plasma weapons ; )

What do you consider to be 'realistic ranges'?

Because the chance of charging 4" is equal to the chance of rolling a 1.

Most players that I know tend to assault at ranges 5-7" pre overwatch with normal no special rules models.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

First off, the game should not have come down to the point where a single unit's charge or shooting in one turn determines the game.

I didn't say 7" was a sure thing, I said I by default try for 7" and down with regular units, 9" and down with fleet units, if I only risk bolter overwatch for trying. If it's a tank, I try at any range, because it can't fight back at all and there's no loss for trying.

And, as I also said, if my first squad of 5 vigilators have a 27% chance of failure, both of the teams have a combined 7% chance of not get either of them in. If 7% chance is still too high, then there's Celestine and some Repentia, or Bran and some Grey Hunters, or even the leftover survivors of my Dominions to throw at the enemy to absolutely make sure it happens.

And if you play enough games, you'll likely have a game in which the Vigilators, Celestine, the Repentia, Grey Hunters and Dominions all fail due to pure, arbitrary chance. Is that the kind of thing that tournaments should hang on? Is it really a balanced mechanic if you have to throw every single melee unit in army army at one target just to be sure that you'll even get the chance to assault? How is that allowing you tactical choice as a player as opposed to you just throwing all of your units at the odds until something sticks? How does that allow for sound planning if there's only one plan available to you? You keep talking up your tactical prowess, while at the same time describing how this mechanic in particular dictates your tactics in a very specific and inflexible way.

I like it, in a wargame, nothing should be guranteed,

I can see a small measure of a random element for charging, but 2D6" is far too large a variable to make sense. The argument that some soldiers tripped gets very ridiculous when you consider 20+ trained close combat killers finally getting their chance to engage the enemy...and "oopsy!" The argument that one failed charge shouldn't cost you the game is utterly presumptuous; real battles have been won or lost on the very same principle. A close combat unit must risk a great deal to get into position to charge; penalizing it with such a wide range of outcomes reduces player agency and makes for a game based more on luck than skill.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I like it, in a wargame, nothing should be guranteed,

Again, so why is it guaranteed to be able to make ranged attacks? If you're going to be consistent, how about we make a mechanic where every ranged attack made at the average range of all weapons has a 27.7% chance to never happen?

I remember 5th edition when charging was a fixed 6 inches. Regardless of the ability of shooting armies being able to still dance away 12" from the units, I still remember getting into melee. And there's an important reason for that, ignoring a lock of pre-measuring: Because units can only move so far. the idea that shooting units can always move exactly 12.1" away is weak-sauce theory crafting. There's always a means to get in close enough where they can't get away, or be in a position that traps them against terrain.

A fixed charge ranged can be over come by a proper use of tactics, Random always allows a chance to fall flat on your face.

 Luciferian wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I like it, in a wargame, nothing should be guranteed,

Again, so why is it guaranteed to be able to make ranged attacks? If you're going to be consistent, how about we make a mechanic where every ranged attack made at the average range of all weapons has a 27.7% chance to never happen?

You do, its called "To Hit" and "to Wound"

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 Luciferian wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I like it, in a wargame, nothing should be guranteed,

Again, so why is it guaranteed to be able to make ranged attacks? If you're going to be consistent, how about we make a mechanic where every ranged attack made at the average range of all weapons has a 27.7% chance to never happen?

You do, its called "To Hit" and "to Wound"

Wrong. We're talking about a mechanic that has a 27.7% chance to preclude you from even being able to roll to hit, let alone wound, at optimal charging range. If you applied the same mechanic to range attacks you would roll to see if the weapon even fires, then roll to hit and wound.

 Luciferian wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

First off, the game should not have come down to the point where a single unit's charge or shooting in one turn determines the game.

I didn't say 7" was a sure thing, I said I by default try for 7" and down with regular units, 9" and down with fleet units, if I only risk bolter overwatch for trying. If it's a tank, I try at any range, because it can't fight back at all and there's no loss for trying.

And, as I also said, if my first squad of 5 vigilators have a 27% chance of failure, both of the teams have a combined 7% chance of not get either of them in. If 7% chance is still too high, then there's Celestine and some Repentia, or Bran and some Grey Hunters, or even the leftover survivors of my Dominions to throw at the enemy to absolutely make sure it happens.

And if you play enough games, you'll likely have a game in which the Vigilators, Celestine, the Repentia, Grey Hunters and Dominions all fail due to pure, arbitrary chance. Is that the kind of thing that tournaments should hang on? Is it really a balanced mechanic if you have to throw every single melee unit in army army at one target just to be sure that you'll even get the chance to assault? How is that allowing you tactical choice as a player as opposed to you just throwing all of your units at the odds until something sticks? How does that allow for sound planning if there's only one plan available to you? You keep talking up your tactical prowess, while at the same time describing how this mechanic in particular dictates your tactics in a very specific and inflexible way.

Eventually. I think I've had at least one game where everybody who wanted into melee on a given turn failed to make it. But the chance of that is incredibly low. It's at the extreme end of the curve. And even then, it's not necessarily vital for victory.

I lose more games because I pretend that flying monstrous creatures aren't a thing and just accept that I'm going to lose to Flyrants or the Daemon Flying Circus than I do because I failed to charge with 2 units.

How many times have you had a destroyer weapon roll a 1 when targeting an enemy tank? I lose more games because the Shadowsword failed to do damage on a given turn than because I couldn't get a unit into close quarters.

I can think of a game where I lost because a Longfang missed his mark. I can think of a game I lost because the Manticore or Exorcist rolled a 1 today, or because 4 Dominions with Meltaguns failed to kill an enemy tank, or because a Lascannon Battery couldn't get a pen on a Ghost Ark even with Tank Hunter and Prescience and Perfect Timing. I can think of many, many, many games I lost because I didn't get the initiative, or because my opponent seized it. I can think of games where I can trace defeat to failing an Act of Faith test.

And sure, I can trace defeats to my combat units failing their charge rolls. I know I lost at least once because Bran failed a 4" charge into a Demon Prince. But I don't think its a serious concern. Charges are reliable enough that losing games because I failed a single charge is few and far between.

The new charge mechanic isn't random. If your 6 inches away, you need a 6+ on 2 dice. 10 inches? 10+. 3 inches? 3+.
In the current edition, if your ballistic skill is 4 you hit on a 3+. BS5 =2+. BS1 = 6+. Same idea with weapon skill and wounding. There is a range on which you must achieve a certain score. The range is fixed (1-6 or 2-12) and the required score is dictated by both fixed variables (unit stats) and factors within your control (battlefield positions).

 Luciferian wrote:

And if you play enough games, you'll likely have a game in which the Vigilators, Celestine, the Repentia, Grey Hunters and Dominions all fail due to pure, arbitrary chance. Is that the kind of thing that tournaments should hang on? Is it really a balanced mechanic if you have to throw every single melee unit in army army at one target just to be sure that you'll even get the chance to assault?

And if you play enough games, you will have at least one where they all make their charge roll and then fail to score a single hit. I dont see people whining about the imbalanced brokenness of the To Hit and To Wound tables.

 Luciferian wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I like it, in a wargame, nothing should be guranteed,

Again, so why is it guaranteed to be able to make ranged attacks? If you're going to be consistent, how about we make a mechanic where every ranged attack made at the average range of all weapons has a 27.7% chance to never happen?

You need to provide a good game balance reason as to why the system should change from random to fixed.

This thread has gone back and forth on the fluff reasoning, and that's not an argument that can ever resolve, because everyone has a different interpretation of how battles actually play out in this game.

So, i'll ask again... Why should the game be changed so that charge distance is not random & based on movement? From a game balance perspective. How does this make the game more balanced?

Saying "why shouldn't it" is insufficient.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:


How many times have you had a destroyer weapon roll a 1 when targeting an enemy tank? I lose more games because the Shadowsword failed to do damage on a given turn than because I couldn't get a unit into close quarters.

I can think of a game where I lost because a Longfang missed his mark. I can think of a game I lost because the Manticore or Exorcist rolled a 1 today, or because 4 Dominions with Meltaguns failed to kill an enemy tank, or because a Lascannon Battery couldn't get a pen on a Ghost Ark even with Tank Hunter and Prescience and Perfect Timing. I can think of many, many, many games I lost because I didn't get the initiative, or because my opponent seized it. I can think of games where I can trace defeat to failing an Act of Faith test.

And sure, I can trace defeats to my combat units failing their charge rolls. I know I lost at least once because Bran failed a 4" charge into a Demon Prince. But I don't think its a serious concern. Charges are reliable enough that losing games because I failed a single charge is few and far between.

Now take all of those examples, add another roll in front of them with a significant chance of failure, and tell me how many more games you would have lost due to dumb luck.

Personally, I've always thought that the 2D6 was a little too long for the average Charge. Cavalry, Bikes, Beasts, and Jumpers, sure. But anything that couldn't move more than 6" a Phase? It didn't add up.

It was a great boon for Assault units, that's for sure, but then the Overwatch craziness of Grim Resolve and Supporting Fire came in to play to revert it right back.

 Marmatag wrote:


You need to provide a good game balance reason as to why the system should change from random to fixed.

This thread has gone back and forth on the fluff reasoning, and that's not an argument that can ever resolve, because everyone has a different interpretation of how battles actually play out in this game.

So, i'll ask again... Why should the game be changed so that charge distance is not random & based on movement? From a game balance perspective. How does this make the game more balanced?

Saying "why shouldn't it" is insufficient.

I have done so plenty of times in this thread. The requirements that need to be met for a successful assault are already greater than those of a successful ranged attack. Now there's yet one more node of chance thrown in before you even get to roll to hit in melee combat. How is that not unbalanced in favor of range-heavy lists, especially with the addition of being able to break combat during your movement phase?

Also, I'm not saying that it should be fixed instead of having any element of chance. I'm just saying that the only sure charge distance shouldn't be three fething inches.

 Luciferian wrote:

Yes, there are rolls which reflect a model's skill at wielding weapons, but there is nothing that precludes ranged attacks from even occurring at all, except for the range of the weapon. That's the inconsistency.

There's range, LoS, and (at least in 7E) Snapshots and now BS modifiers for various stressed shooting extrapolations that can prevent or degrade shooting, mostly that CC didnt have to worry about (except range).

There are already an equal amount of rolls to determine whether or not melee and ranged weapons hit, wound, and pierce the defenses of their targets. In addition, assaulting models must move into contact with their target as opposed to having the benefit of range and are penalized for attempting to do so by suffering an additional round of fire.

Well, they also had other advantages. All their attacks inherently ignore cover, they dont care about LoS, they could inflict a single casualty and wipe the opposing unit if it broke, making it into CC locked the opponents actions, you could directly attack characters through challenges, they hit tanks on rear armor, etc. Now some of that will change, but CC has historically had some very powerful advantages

, in addition, there is a very good chance they won't make it at all on top of everything else.

There is also a good chance they will, and with 2d6 they have a greater potential reach and longer average charge distance than they did with the old 6" move, at the risk of the occasional flub.

With my armies, I havent found random charge distance to be a big hindrance. Honestly, the biggest killer has been no assaulting from even stationary vehicles and no assaulting from walk on reserve.

 Yodhrin wrote:


In other words, it's pretty much the same as having a fixed 6"-ish charge, but sometimes will completely screw you over. And that's better how?

Because it also gives you double the potential reach (and you roll 12" as often as you roll 2"), longer average charge distance, and with premeasuring allowed it prevents some of the more gimmicky micromovement games.

All of the arguments in favour of 2D6 random would be addressed sufficiently with Move+D3 semi-random

This would result in most units having a very long guaranteed charge distance, and would result in units like Bikes being able to assault something 25" away or closer at the start of their turn guaranteed, which would quite ridiculous.


That said Bikes in general really need to be something other than SpaceCavalry, but that's for anothe thread

 Luciferian wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:


You need to provide a good game balance reason as to why the system should change from random to fixed.

This thread has gone back and forth on the fluff reasoning, and that's not an argument that can ever resolve, because everyone has a different interpretation of how battles actually play out in this game.

So, i'll ask again... Why should the game be changed so that charge distance is not random & based on movement? From a game balance perspective. How does this make the game more balanced?

Saying "why shouldn't it" is insufficient.

I have done so plenty of times in this thread. The requirements that need to be met for a successful assault are already greater than those of a successful ranged attack. Now there's yet one more node of chance thrown in before you even get to roll to hit in melee combat. How is that not unbalanced in favor of range-heavy lists, especially with the addition of being able to break combat during your movement phase?

Also, I'm not saying that it should be fixed instead of without any element of chance. I'm just saying that the only sure charge distance shouldn't be three fething inches.

So, in principle, I agree with you - it's intensely frustrating to fail what should be a guaranteed charge. Like, my terminators could fall over forward and be in base contact, yet i fail by some miracle. Of course this usually involves difficult terrain, but still.

I think the challenge with 2D6 for most people, is that you don't really plan to attempt a charge of distance 10+ without fleet. So, your realistic charge range is 2-10" on 2D6. With that in mind, I think 1+2D6" was the right call, and a step in the right direction. Before we start changing it wildly, why not see how it pans out? I would be on board for 2+2D6 as well, but with the caveat that you can't charge more than 12".

Comparing charge distance to shooting distance, right there, is a problem. Can you really run as far as a bullet can fly? Pistols in this universe are lethal up to 12". Can you really charge further than bullet can fly? Furthermore, are you SO FAST that you can charge someone before they could fire overwatch, from *further than the max weapon distance* away? Because that's what a 12"+ charge becomes. You're charging someone from so far away that their weapons are unable to fire, and you're faster than their ability to react and squeeze the trigger over that distance.

Really it boils down to counter play.

Charging more than 12" removes a lot of counter play scenarios. Because a lot of units are slow movement compared to fast units, and it isn't fundamentally fair for units to either (a) charge from outside overwatch range and (b) declare a charge without any risk of a return charge from the unit they're targeting.

 Marmatag wrote:

I think the challenge with 2D6 for most people, is that you don't really plan to attempt a charge of distance 10+ without fleet.

Nope the issue is charging 6-7" without fleet

Look, I know folks like to harp on the whole "they tripped on uneven ground!" thing, and certainly the random charge distance can be that.

But take a look at what's going on here. In warfare, people don't take turns moving and it doesn't happen in phases. Likewise, shooting is not just done at one point in time.

IGOUGO is a pretty stark abstraction to make the action easy to follow. But it is (like all turn-based systems) for accurately representing the sweep of battle.

When that charge fails? Probably because the enemy effectively suppressed that unit and slowed them down in the process. But that unit making a headlong charge isn't stopping for teat in the middle of each phase, just like that enemy unit isn't sitting on its thumbs waiting to see if the enemy will cross the gap once their crumpets are done. The unit that rushed forward in the movement phase was doing that while firing their guns like madmen, the enemy unit was returning fire, and that random charge range is culmination of this exchange. If they make contact then they were more effective at suppressing the enemy and they came to grips, if not then they have been slowed down, perhaps caught out of position and are now getting pelted with fire while trying to regroup.

But that's just the narrative. I don't much care why it happens, and focusing too much on the "why does this abstraction occur" is a red herring.

Random charge range is a game mechanic. It is in there to not only represent the fog of war (as above) and our imperfect knowledge as a commander, but it is also meant to destabilize decision making in an environment where all players have perfect information at all times. In an environment where all players have a perfect god's eye view of events, there can be little uncertainty of action where such action is not randomized.

So why charging? Why not shooting? Well, first, shooting happens more often than charging and shooting is already pretty rife with rolling and checking things (line of sight, cover, multiple ranges in a given unit, in addition to the hit/wound/armour thing that assault also deals with). But more importantly, weapon ranges are pretty homogeneous from army to army. Most armies want to get to 12-24" in order to use their weapons. Outside of having a massive range advantage (which is rare, since fast armies tend to have closer ranged guns than slower ones) you can't really kite shooting units in the same way you do assault ones. Thus there is no need to randomize basic movement, maneuver and weapon ranges to counteract perfect player knowledge and good movement giving an undue advantage to long-ranged combat. Bottom line, almost every army in the game want to get in to firing range already.

So still, why random charging? The bottom line is high movement units in an environment with perfect knowledge. Players are omniscient in a way a battlefield commander could never be. If you have a movement advantage over the enemy then you basically get to control the flow of the game and this is not good. This is attributing too much importance to a single stat. No other stat in the game can decide whether or not you opponent gets to actually play the game, but with perfect knowledge movement can do just this. A unit with a movement advantage never has to take a risk when it comes to charging or getting charged. Superior movement lets shooty units kite as long as they want and it lets close combat troops always get the charge off. This doesn't make the person a superior general, it is not a sign of superior skill, it is simply punishment for the player playing a slower army with a close combat bent. Generally, static charging in an environment of perfect knowledge kills a great deal of play styles and makes gunlines the default method of play for anything that can't control the flow of battle with movement.

Just look at WFB before it got the random charge. Gunlines, gunlines as far as the eye could see. Entire sections of many army lists were completely useless because no matter how skilled their players were, they simply couldn't compete with armies that could run circles around them. So instead of competing, everyone just loaded up on guns, bows, cannons and other artillery. Games became static and boring and everything degenerated, all because of the movement gap making it pointless for many armies to even attempt to compete in close combat. With 7th already being so shoot happy, I don't think folks want that trend to continue, but static charging absolutely will cause that to occur.

At the end of the day, the choice to randomize something or not randomize it is completely arbitrary and up to the designer. If one thing is static then there is no reason something else wont be. If one thing is randomized to a greater or lesser degree then there is no reason everything can't be. It's is a game, it is an abstraction by default. At the end of the day, whether a given mechanic should have randomized resolution should come down to whether or not it makes a better game (which is also subjective and down to the will of the designer).

Personally? Having seen the state WFB got left in, I have no desire for fast armies to dictate the entire pace of the battle. Movement shouldn't be the game's god stat. I also want to see foot-slogging close combatants have a chance to compete.

As for the specific way it is randomized? 2d6 is simple and elegant. Using the M value (even halved) and a random roll to make the range more predictable just puts power back in the hands of high movement. Using a bunch of d3's may give a higher minimum but it lacks elegance and simplicity of straight 2d6. Using a static value just goes back to the problem of having perfect knowledge of the situation which is always bad for slower armies because it produces no chance of counterplay.

So yeah, I've played every edition of 40k (because for some reason a popular "refutation" of why folks accept 2d6 charges is that they are noobies that just don't know better). I've been wargaming for over twenty years (and 40k isn't the first or only game to randomize movement, hell it doesn't even go as far as games that require activation rolls). And I am on board with 40k's adoption of 2d6 charge. It is a step in the right direction and it allows the game to skip pre-measurment without all the movement gaming that ends up happening (and that was technically happening when we were guessing ranges anyways because most of us can measure ranges by eye in our sleep).

I get that folks hate seeing snake-eyes come up to ruin an important charge, it feels random and capricious (and with how unlikely it is, it often strikes memorably and without warning). It doesn't feel good (I play Deathwing, I have a natural fear of 1's already built in here). Flubbing a roll never does. But in terms of the greater whole, random (weighted) charges have a positive effect on making the safety of high movement less assured. So I'm willing to take an 8.33% chance that I may only be able to engage out to 3" if it means those durn space elves/bugs/whatever can't dance around the edge of my charge range with utter impunity and completely control the pace of the game just because they get a couple extra points of movement. Just another thing to plan for. It helps that there are going to be special rules modifying it to high hell, but even as a base concept it still works for me and I'm glad it's in the game.

Just my 0.02CDN (wait, I need to round that to 0.05 now don't I?) on the subject.

and the other issue is overwatch resulting in an additional 1 - 2"

 Vaktathi wrote:
Well, they also had other advantages. All their attacks inherently ignore cover, they dont care about LoS, they could inflict a single casualty and wipe the opposing unit if it broke, making it into CC locked the opponents actions, you could directly attack characters through challenges, they hit tanks on rear armor, etc. Now some of that will change, but CC has historically had some very powerful advantages

All true, but in my opinion this was balanced out by the requirements of moving into physical contact and suffering overwatch fire. And, as you said, many of those things are ALSO being changed in favor of units defending against charges. The only solid advantage that melee units have gained so far is the ability to attack first when charging, but given all of the other changes that seems to be somewhat of a paltry compensation. Outside of exploitative deathstar combos, would you say that melee units are effective when compared to ranged units in 7th? Well, they currently enjoy many of the advantages you mentioned, but most of those are changing.

Just to recap some of the changes to melee combat:

Nerfs
There is now a 27.7% chance to fail a charge at the most likely charge range of 7", and the only guaranteed charge distance is 3"
Units being charged can now overwatch multiple times per phase
Any units in combat can simply move out of combat up to their movement value with the penalty of not being able to take any offensive measures that turn. However, any other friendly units can fire at their newly disengaged opponents
It is no longer possible to sweep enemy units retreating from combat, they get to run away at will
Morale now simply causes an additional number of casualties and doesn't have the chance of the more extreme effects it used to have
Vehicles as a whole are much more survivable and can't be one shot. They will have to be whittled away by powerful, multi-wound weapons

Buffs
You now have to charge to within 1" instead of base to base contact
There is now a possibility of charging up to 13", but a successful 13" charge has a 2.78% probability of happening
Charging units strike first. However, we don't know how special rules are going to affect this for different weapon types and units

That's all I can think of.

So, my dudes, how is that balanced?

 Luciferian wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Well, they also had other advantages. All their attacks inherently ignore cover, they dont care about LoS, they could inflict a single casualty and wipe the opposing unit if it broke, making it into CC locked the opponents actions, you could directly attack characters through challenges, they hit tanks on rear armor, etc. Now some of that will change, but CC has historically had some very powerful advantages

All true, but in my opinion this was balanced out by the requirements of moving into physical contact and suffering overwatch fire. And, as you said, many of those things are ALSO being changed in favor of units defending against charges. The only solid advantage that melee units have gained so far is the ability to attack first when charging, but given all of the other changes that seems to be somewhat of a paltry compensation. Outside of exploitative deathstar combos, would you say that melee units are effective when compared to ranged units in 7th? Well, they currently enjoy many of the advantages you mentioned, but most of those are changing.

Just to recap some of the changes to melee combat:

Nerfs
There is now a 27.7% chance to fail a charge at the most likely charge range of 7", and the only guaranteed charge distance is 3"
Units being charged can now overwatch multiple times per phase
Any units in combat can simply move out of combat up to their movement value with the penalty of not being able to take any offensive measures that turn. However, any other friendly units can fire at their newly disengaged opponents
It is no longer possible to sweep enemy units retreating from combat, they get to run away at will
Morale now simply causes an additional number of casualties and doesn't have the chance of the more extreme effects it used to have
Vehicles as a whole are much more survivable and can't be one shot. They will have to be whittled away by powerful, multi-wound weapons

Buffs
You now have to charge to within 1" instead of base to base contact
There is now a possibility of charging up to 13", but a successful 13" charge has a 2.78% probability of happening
Charging units strike first. However, we don't know how special rules are going to affect this for different weapon types and units

That's all I can think of.

So, my dudes, how is that balanced?

I can think of one more buff: you can now assault out of transports [again. I don't know why they removed that]. That saves your assault units 2 rounds of getting shot at, so now they only get shot once, by overwatch.

You can also bump into other units and draw them into close combat while piling. I like this buff a lot.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
and my guess is that transports got more durable.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I even like this retreat from combat thingy (outside the obvious horrible abuse that is going to happen with some shooty builds).
Since it allows some tactics such as screening units and just stepping away from nightmarish monsters and to be fair you can't really more out of combat if you are fighting 1 on 1. Since you will be out, and can't do noting while your opponent will just assault you again. All that it does is allowing you to retreat to a safe position. It makes the game more dynamic, especially when combined with the ability to overflow into other combats, this I like a lot.

Not sure at all if I am a fan of the alternate activation for this seems to favor low unit count close combat armies and those are generally not that fun to play against.

2d6 is way too random. I don't mind a bit of dice, but, speaking from a tournament player perspective, I've seen many games where the most important roll looking back turned out to either be a unit failing to reach melee to either kill or lock down a threat (like the omnipresent riptide) at a silly short range like 4", or a key unit being lost due to a melee threat making a long bomb Hail Mary 12" charge.

I'm fine with set charge range, more stabilized random charge range, or something similar. I would've most preferred charging your move stat in the movement phase, IE 6+6 for marines.

Overwatch is also stupid. You're already shooting in your turn. If you could've shot faster just because someone started running towards you, why weren't you shooting that fast to begin with? And now a squad can go all trigger happy if the enemies keep failing charges, spitting out more fire in the enemy assault phase than they could across multiple game turns.

All told, assault-centric units better be cheap as chips compared to heavy weapons similar to shadow war if we're going to have any kind of melee-shooting balance.

 Marmatag wrote:


Comparing charge distance to shooting distance, right there, is a problem. Can you really run as far as a bullet can fly? Pistols in this universe are lethal up to 12". Can you really charge further than bullet can fly? Furthermore, are you SO FAST that you can charge someone before they could fire overwatch, from *further than the max weapon distance* away? Because that's what a 12"+ charge becomes. You're charging someone from so far away that their weapons are unable to fire, and you're faster than their ability to react and squeeze the trigger over that distance.

Really it boils down to counter play.

Charging more than 12" removes a lot of counter play scenarios. Because a lot of units are slow movement compared to fast units, and it isn't fundamentally fair for units to either (a) charge from outside overwatch range and (b) declare a charge without any risk of a return charge from the unit they're targeting.

Well I don't know how much distance 1" is supposed to represent in scale, but in real life a properly motivated person with an edged weapon is almost guaranteed a chance to cut you if they're within 21' of you, unless you already have them in your sights. Granted, a group of trained soldiers would have overlapping fields of fire and this isn't really a battlefield issue.

Anyway, I can agree with you that charging even 12" is a bit much. I would be happy with M+D3 or something like that. I would even be happy with fixed 6" charge. Having the extra charge range is NOT worth the random chance of failure, in my opinion.

For me, the current invariable sequence is:
1) Beginning of the turn, note that my unit is 10" from their unit.
2) Move out of cover and 6" towards target unit in the movement phase.
3) Declare a charge against the enemy unit now 4" from my unit.
4) Roll for charge distance.
5) Bang head against wall when I realize the 2 I rolled means my unit is in the open and in range of every unit my opponent has on the table.

A good you are all in rapid fire range I see.

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I can think of one more buff: you can now assault out of transports [again. I don't know why they removed that]. That saves your assault units 2 rounds of getting shot at, so now they only get shot once, by overwatch.

oldzoggy wrote:You can also bump into other units and draw them into close combat while piling. I like this buff a lot.

Yep, I forgot about both of those.

Don't forget, after a single round of blows, (and remember that there is no bonus attack for charging now,) the defenders can happily tip-toe away and let the rest of their army obliterate the foolish unit that dared to lay a hand on what has been the stronger army style in general for multiple editions now.

 Ronin_eX wrote:
Look, I know folks like to harp on the whole "they tripped on uneven ground!" thing, and certainly the random charge distance can be that.

But take a look at what's going on here. In warfare, people don't take turns moving and it doesn't happen in phases. Likewise, shooting is not just done at one point in time.

IGOUGO is a pretty stark abstraction to make the action easy to follow. But it is (like all turn-based systems) for accurately representing the sweep of battle.

When that charge fails? Probably because the enemy effectively suppressed that unit and slowed them down in the process. But that unit making a headlong charge isn't stopping for teat in the middle of each phase, just like that enemy unit isn't sitting on its thumbs waiting to see if the enemy will cross the gap once their crumpets are done. The unit that rushed forward in the movement phase was doing that while firing their guns like madmen, the enemy unit was returning fire, and that random charge range is culmination of this exchange. If they make contact then they were more effective at suppressing the enemy and they came to grips, if not then they have been slowed down, perhaps caught out of position and are now getting pelted with fire while trying to regroup.

But that's just the narrative. I don't much care why it happens, and focusing too much on the "why does this abstraction occur" is a red herring.

Random charge range is a game mechanic. It is in there to not only represent the fog of war (as above) and our imperfect knowledge as a commander, but it is also meant to destabilize decision making in an environment where all players have perfect information at all times. In an environment where all players have a perfect god's eye view of events, there can be little uncertainty of action where such action is not randomized.

So why charging? Why not shooting? Well, first, shooting happens more often than charging and shooting is already pretty rife with rolling and checking things (line of sight, cover, multiple ranges in a given unit, in addition to the hit/wound/armour thing that assault also deals with). But more importantly, weapon ranges are pretty homogeneous from army to army. Most armies want to get to 12-24" in order to use their weapons. Outside of having a massive range advantage (which is rare, since fast armies tend to have closer ranged guns than slower ones) you can't really kite shooting units in the same way you do assault ones. Thus there is no need to randomize basic movement, maneuver and weapon ranges to counteract perfect player knowledge and good movement giving an undue advantage to long-ranged combat. Bottom line, almost every army in the game want to get in to firing range already.

So still, why random charging? The bottom line is high movement units in an environment with perfect knowledge. Players are omniscient in a way a battlefield commander could never be. If you have a movement advantage over the enemy then you basically get to control the flow of the game and this is not good. This is attributing too much importance to a single stat. No other stat in the game can decide whether or not you opponent gets to actually play the game, but with perfect knowledge movement can do just this. A unit with a movement advantage never has to take a risk when it comes to charging or getting charged. Superior movement lets shooty units kite as long as they want and it lets close combat troops always get the charge off. This doesn't make the person a superior general, it is not a sign of superior skill, it is simply punishment for the player playing a slower army with a close combat bent. Generally, static charging in an environment of perfect knowledge kills a great deal of play styles and makes gunlines the default method of play for anything that can't control the flow of battle with movement.

Just look at WFB before it got the random charge. Gunlines, gunlines as far as the eye could see. Entire sections of many army lists were completely useless because no matter how skilled their players were, they simply couldn't compete with armies that could run circles around them. So instead of competing, everyone just loaded up on guns, bows, cannons and other artillery. Games became static and boring and everything degenerated, all because of the movement gap making it pointless for many armies to even attempt to compete in close combat. With 7th already being so shoot happy, I don't think folks want that trend to continue, but static charging absolutely will cause that to occur.

At the end of the day, the choice to randomize something or not randomize it is completely arbitrary and up to the designer. If one thing is static then there is no reason something else wont be. If one thing is randomized to a greater or lesser degree then there is no reason everything can't be. It's is a game, it is an abstraction by default. At the end of the day, whether a given mechanic should have randomized resolution should come down to whether or not it makes a better game (which is also subjective and down to the will of the designer).

Personally? Having seen the state WFB got left in, I have no desire for fast armies to dictate the entire pace of the battle. Movement shouldn't be the game's god stat. I also want to see foot-slogging close combatants have a chance to compete.

As for the specific way it is randomized? 2d6 is simple and elegant. Using the M value (even halved) and a random roll to make the range more predictable just puts power back in the hands of high movement. Using a bunch of d3's may give a higher minimum but it lacks elegance and simplicity of straight 2d6. Using a static value just goes back to the problem of having perfect knowledge of the situation which is always bad for slower armies because it produces no chance of counterplay.

So yeah, I've played every edition of 40k (because for some reason a popular "refutation" of why folks accept 2d6 charges is that they are noobies that just don't know better). I've been wargaming for over twenty years (and 40k isn't the first or only game to randomize movement, hell it doesn't even go as far as games that require activation rolls). And I am on board with 40k's adoption of 2d6 charge. It is a step in the right direction and it allows the game to skip pre-measurment without all the movement gaming that ends up happening (and that was technically happening when we were guessing ranges anyways because most of us can measure ranges by eye in our sleep).

I get that folks hate seeing snake-eyes come up to ruin an important charge, it feels random and capricious (and with how unlikely it is, it often strikes memorably and without warning). It doesn't feel good (I play Deathwing, I have a natural fear of 1's already built in here). Flubbing a roll never does. But in terms of the greater whole, random (weighted) charges have a positive effect on making the safety of high movement less assured. So I'm willing to take an 8.33% chance that I may only be able to engage out to 3" if it means those durn space elves/bugs/whatever can't dance around the edge of my charge range with utter impunity and completely control the pace of the game just because they get a couple extra points of movement. Just another thing to plan for. It helps that there are going to be special rules modifying it to high hell, but even as a base concept it still works for me and I'm glad it's in the game.

Just my 0.02CDN (wait, I need to round that to 0.05 now don't I?) on the subject.

This is an excellent post. Having a high movement stat is already a huge advantage, no need to compound it.

What about a 4D3 charge distance? Same maximum result, better minimum.

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Saber wrote:
Well, if you want to get 'realistic' the entire of idea of charging is stupid. No one runs wildly at their enemy on the battlefield, and it certainly doesn't give them an advantage (like +1 attack or striking first). The exception, of course, is guys on horseback, but even then they don't go crashing into other people or nonsense like that.

An element of randomness and unpredictability is desirable in a wargame, both to make it a game and to accurately model the unpredictability of actual warfare. Of course there's a thing as too much randomness, but I don't think random charges pushes things too far. You could drop random charges but it should be replaced with some other mechanic that makes engaging with the foe less than 100% reliable.

What complete and utter bollocks. If you actually bothered to open a history book you'd know that charges are a major stable of history, with the charge becoming a key method of dispersing and routing the enemy with the advent of bayonet mounted on muskets and rifles.

Secondly randomness is a horrible excuse for gak mechanics. Randomness does not win battles, logistics and morale does.

I have two degrees in history and am pursuing a doctorate. I think I know what I am talking about.

To take your specific example of bayonets, they were almost never used in infantry on infantry combat. In the entire 7 years of the Peninsular War there is one example of infantry crossing bayonets in the open field. Bayonets were used to repel cavalry and in fights for fortified positions; field battles were decided by shooting and yelling until one side got tired or scared and ran away.

Cavalry charged. Infantry did not, at least not in the way we tend to envision it.

First priority is making the game good. A distant second is trying to appease realism.

If you're really wanting the realism, I would think you would go for attacking the criminally short ranges of some of the long range and barrage weapons, or the extremely vulnerable design of most walking titans, among the other numerous breaches of contract with reality.

 Bobthehero wrote:
What about a 4D3 charge distance? Same maximum result, better minimum.

In practice, it works and would probably be my #1 alternative. But it also lacks elegance and simplicity.

The d3 is already kind of an inefficient die, because for the most part (unless you're a nutter like me that owns a lot of Zocchi dice) it is a virtual die. That is, you use a d6 to make it and then divide the result by 2 (or just memorize 1-2 = 1, 3-4=2, 5-6=3). It takes an additional tick to read its result, and while its not a huge issue, it is less ideal than rolling a die and reading it at face value.

It is no doubt a useful die when all you have are d6's, but it should be used sparingly as well. Roll 1d3 for wounds or a small blast? Sure.

But rolling four of them and reading (then reformatting in your mind) the results isn't as ideal as rolling two dice and adding the face values together.

Further it gives you this distribution (percentage to roll at least that result):

4 = 100%
5 = 98.7%
6 = 98.83%
7 = 81.48%
8 = 61.73%
9 = 38.27%
10 = 18.52%
11 = 6.17%
12 = 1.23%

As compared to a 2d6 (percentage to roll at least that result):

2 = 100%
3 = 97.22%
4 = 91.67%
5 = 83.33%
6 = 72.22%
7 = 58.33%
8 = 41.67%
9 = 27.78%
10 = 16.67%
11 = 8.33%
12 = 2.78%

So after around 8" the values start to coalesce and start getting pretty close and after 10" the 4d3 is actually worse at achieving the extreme end on the other side. So you kind of flip things. Much more reliable results on the low-to-mid end, less reliable on the high-end.

So it makes 6" charge (i.e. 7" threat range) a lot more reliable (98.83% opposed to 72.22%) and brings the minimum range to 5" (including the 1" boost) but long-shot charges past 10" become longer shots with 10" charges being about the same. So a unit trying to stay just out of 12" after enemy movement can be quite a bit more confident that the enemy wont make that charge, and the chance of it is low enough that I probably wouldn't even risk it unless I had nothing to lose. 2d6 will hit a 12" charge (i.e. an 11 or 12 on the dice) 11.11% of the time. 4d3 manages it 7.4% of the time.

As I said, it is probably my favourite alternative posted, but I don't think the shrunken range and longer long shots are as beneficial as the rank simplicity of tossing two dice and reading the results. But if GW had their backs against the wall due to fan backlash (although the two polls seems to suggest otherwise) then I say this would be my hope for a replacement. But I still think the general simplicity of the 2d6 makes it a winner even if it can deliver a snake-eyes charge where 4d3 cannot.

Edit - I think the probability peak of a 2d6 is also easier to understand than the one produced by 4d3 which is smoother but a lot less intuitive. But that may just be because it is a fairly common pair of dice to toss.

 Ronin_eX wrote:

So after around 8" the values start to coalesce and start getting pretty close and after 10" the 4d3 is actually worse at achieving the extreme end on the other side. So you kind of flip things. Much more reliable results on the low-to-mid end, less reliable on the high-end.

So it makes 6" charge (i.e. 7" threat range) a lot more reliable (98.83% opposed to 72.22%) and brings the minimum range to 5" (including the 1" boost) but long-shot charges past 10" become longer shots with 10" charges being about the same. So a unit trying to stay just out of 12" after enemy movement can be quite a bit more confident that the enemy wont make that charge, and the chance of it is low enough that I probably wouldn't even risk it unless I had nothing to lose. 2d6 will hit a 12" charge (i.e. an 11 or 12 on the dice) 11.11% of the time. 4d3 manages it 7.4% of the time.

Sounds pretty much ideal to me.

Don't we have enough threads about charge range?

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
After lots of discussion back and forth, I wonder what people think of random charge distances.

This is about the random element only, I haven't included whether the unit gets to move first or not, this is just talking purely about the random element to the charge. It could be D6 or M+D6, 2xM+D6.... if you like any of those options, just select "I prefer random, but no more than D6".


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Gah sorry, totally missed the existing poll, I was looking for a poll on random charge distance, not D6 vs 2D6 Please lock this mods.

This is a great poll!
Thanks!
I hope that they don't close it!
Results are very interesting so far...

 jeff white wrote:
This is a great poll!
Thanks!
I hope that they don't close it!
Results are very interesting so far...

How are they interesting.. its pretty much 50/50

GodDamUser wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
This is a great poll!
Thanks!
I hope that they don't close it!
Results are very interesting so far...

How are they interesting.. its pretty much 50/50

How is "not random" being at 32% make it 50/50?

 CrownAxe wrote:

How is "not random" being at 32% make it 50/50?

When you consider that the I like 2d6 is also at roughly same percentage, based on a 2 party preference

Otherwise I could say 1/3rd don't like random so majority are for the random rolls

But in reality with this poll at the moment it is 1/3 no random, 1/3 2d6, 1/3 other/dead vote


and considering the 'others' (you could argue that the 1d6 have enough votes) are in such small numbers they can be negated you end up with a 50/50 result

GodDamUser wrote:

 CrownAxe wrote:

How is "not random" being at 32% make it 50/50?

When you consider that the I like 2d6 is also at roughly same percentage, based on a 2 party preference

Otherwise I could say 1/3rd don't like random so majority are for the random rolls

But in reality with this poll at the moment it is 1/3 no random, 1/3 2d6, 1/3 other/dead vote


and considering the 'others' (you could argue that the 1d6 have enough votes) are in such small numbers they can be negated you end up with a 50/50 result

The OP posed this thread for random charges vs non-random charges, not specifically about 2d6 charges. By that logic it's 58% for random to 32% against random

 CrownAxe wrote:

The OP posed this thread for random charges vs non-random charges, not specifically about 2d6 charges. By that logic it's 58% for random to 32% against random

I did say that as well

I see 49% that want charge range to be some amount less random than 2d6, and 38% that want it to stay as random or more.

 niv-mizzet wrote:
I see 49% that want charge range to be some amount less random than 2d6, and 38% that want it to stay as random or more.

That's a really forced reading of a poll in order to fit the conclusion you wanted to come to in the first place. It's 32% entirely non-random (a little under one third of respondants) and then ~56% who want some form of random with the most common (at 38%) being straight 2d6.

It would be unfair to assume that the 18% that chose for a random charge would automatically go for static if given the choice (considering that they didn't go for static when presented as a choice). The poll isn't asking what folk's second choice would be and it would be weird to lump folks looking for a random charge in with the static charge folks since you can't tell which of those, let's call them "swing" voters would go one way or the other if pressed.

Either way, the largest block of votes is still squarely on 2d6 straight. Combine it with the block of folks that don't give a grot's and that makes ~44% of the population just fine with the status quo as presented.

Not that anyone should use a forum poll as some kind of conclusive data (especially not with a sample size that small and pulled from what is likely a non-representative group of self-selected respondents), but if you wanted to draw any conclusions from this and the more poorly worded one, it is that Dakka isn't quite so universally against a 2d6 charge as some posters want to believe it is.

 Saber wrote:

Cavalry charged. Infantry did not, at least not in the way we tend to envision it.

There were bayonet charges even in the Ukrainian war a couple years ago. Sure, they are nothing close to what one would call mellee combat (fencing) - it's rather like run run run STAB STAB STAB. And it's aimed towards drawing the enemy off position - not necesserily killing everyone. In fact, historically, bayonet charges almost never ended up as mellee fights with mass casualties. They were used to take ground.

Would much prefer not random at all but if adding in random, something based upon the movement stat to give less variation i.e. movement + D3 though this would then double the benefit of fast movers. Something like 1/2 movement plus 2D3 would have also worked but moved away from the streamlining they are looking for.

 Ronin_eX wrote:

 niv-mizzet wrote:
I see 49% that want charge range to be some amount less random than 2d6, and 38% that want it to stay as random or more.

That's a really forced reading of a poll in order to fit the conclusion you wanted to come to in the first place. It's 32% entirely non-random (a little under one third of respondants) and then ~56% who want some form of random with the most common (at 38%) being straight 2d6.

I don't think it's forced, I read it as 49% want less variability, they just aren't in agreement whether less = D6 or less = none, with more of that group favouring none.

Likewise 55% want some sort of random, but they too can't agree on whether they want 2D6 or 1D6, with most of that group favouring 2D6.

I'm kind of surprised so many people like 2D6, I wonder if it's a true representation or biased by the fact this is a 40k forum and people who don't like random 2D6 charge range also have, well, quit 40k already I haven't met too many people who jumped up and said they love 2D6 but plenty saying that's part of the reason they quit, but obviously my sample size isn't huge in that case.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Luciferian wrote:
I'm surprised that people are so accepting of the 2D6 charge. It just seems so unpredictable and random to me. I think something like half of the unit's move + D6 would be better.

well, it's variable but not unpredictable, you know 6-8"is your most likely sweetspot, and that nearly 75% will be at least 5". It's a pretty bog standard bell curve distribution.

I would say not knowing the outcome exactly makes something unpredictable and the wider the variability, the less predictable it is.


If anyone's interested in what the spread is for 2D6, this is your chance of of failing a charge...

>2" - 3%
>3" - 8%
>4" - 17%
>5" - 28%
>6" - 42%
>7" - 58%
>8" - 72%
>9" - 83%
>10" - 92%
>11" - 97%
>12" - 100%

I'd say a 28% chance of failing a 5.1" charge isn't great when you also have a 28% chance of passing an 8" one.

I just find it so boring when games are won or lost due to the variability in a single dice roll that IMO should revolve around a player decision instead of randomness. My eagerness to play a game tanked after winning a game that I really should have lost if not for rolling a 10 for my charge and my opponent rolling 4's for their charges. Just end up feeling like I wasted time setting up my models.

I think the only way I could get behind 2D6 worth of variability is if winning or losing the charge didn't have such large consequences for the game as a whole, and you could certainly write a ruleset where that's the case, but I don't think 40k will ever be it unless they make some pretty drastic changes to how turns and phases operate.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
If anyone's interested in what the spread is for 2D6, this is your chance of of failing a charge...

2" - 3%
3" - 8%
4" - 17%
5" - 28%
6" - 42%
7" - 58%
8" - 72%
9" - 83%
10" - 92%
11" - 97%
12" - 100%

That doesn't seem accurate. You don't have a 100% chance of failing a 12 inch charge, because a result of double-6 IS possible, and a roll of double-1's at least gives you 2 inches. You need to shift everything there up one, with the 2 inch charge being 0%.

2" - 0%
3" - 3%
4" - 8%
5" - 17%
6" - 28%
7" - 42%
8" - 58%
9" - 72%
10" - 83%
11" - 92%
12" - 97%

Command points will grant charge range re-rolls and stuff like that

I have a tiny tiny attention span when it comes to tactics that always work and no random. The reason is that every game starts to become the same.

And that really burns me out.

So yeah - I'm fine with the level of random in 40k. If one wants to play like they have a pair, there is a game with a page 5 that states that very thing groomed particularly for ultra competitive players.

 Yarium wrote:
[That doesn't seem accurate. You don't have a 100% chance of failing a 12 inch charge....

I included > signs, > means "larger than". You can make a 12" charge, but you can't make a > 12" charge.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:
I have a tiny tiny attention span when it comes to tactics that always work and no random. The reason is that every game starts to become the same.

But why so random? Why not D6?

Personally I prefer not random at all, but I don't think it works well with premeasuring. However the amount of randomness I want to see is on the order of what guessed ranges used to be like rather than the crazy random 10" spread in threat range. When armies deploy 24" apart a 10" spread represents over 40% of the distance between the forces at the start of the game.

If one wants to play like they have a pair, there is a game with a page 5 that states that very thing groomed particularly for ultra competitive players.

I don't know what that reference is supposed to be, but a desire to minimise randomness isn't a subset of competitiveness.

 Yarium wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
If anyone's interested in what the spread is for 2D6, this is your chance of of failing a charge...

2" - 3%
3" - 8%
4" - 17%
5" - 28%
6" - 42%
7" - 58%
8" - 72%
9" - 83%
10" - 92%
11" - 97%
12" - 100%

That doesn't seem accurate. You don't have a 100% chance of failing a 12 inch charge, because a result of double-6 IS possible, and a roll of double-1's at least gives you 2 inches. You need to shift everything there up one, with the 2 inch charge being 0%.

2" - 0%
3" - 3%
4" - 8%
5" - 17%
6" - 28%
7" - 42%
8" - 58%
9" - 72%
10" - 83%
11" - 92%
12" - 97%

it also ignores the be within an inch you have to be within 12 inches to charge so bump em all up a slot. 3 inch is 100% 12" 92%

I don't find 2D6 to be mega random.

If I'm within 6" of someone then as the stats block above points out, I have a roughly 72% of succeeding that charge.

2D6 allows for improbable gambles to happen and also prevents one from just getting within 6" and knowing that they will 100% get the charge off. I enjoy that range of probabilities, it prevents the game from becoming super static and keeps replayability higher.

If we were to incorporate random charges in our game it would probably be D6 + 3" to narrow down the extremes given on 2D6.

I think if you're going to do D6+3" you might as well not even bother and just use static.

I think a lot are missing the point of the 2d6" charge. It is to add a level of chance and excitement to a game.

One of the more fun games I had I missed a 3" Assault with a pair of Snake Eyes after spending two turns setting up the 'Perfect" Assault including avoiding Overwatch using terrain and a second unit to engage the 20-30 model Ork Mob. Yes it was frustrating and we had a laugh about it. The next turn the Ork Player on a whim then pulled off a 10" and 11" Assault. I still won the Now Close game, but we enjoyed it a lot better than the walk over it was becoming.

12% do not matter.
Of the rest, 49/88 want less random than current rules.
39/88 want same or more.
Seems pretty clear where sentiments lie here.

 niv-mizzet wrote:
and remember that there is no bonus attack for charging now,

This isn't confirmed yet; but very likely

 jeff white wrote:
12% do not matter.
Of the rest, 49/88 want less random than current rules.
39/88 want same or more.
Seems pretty clear where sentiments lie here.

I would not call 10% Pretty Clear.
It seems that 32 out of 88 want No Random and 62 out of 88 want a Random Charge distance.

It can be read either way.

Yeah. There is no "pretty clear" here unless you want to try to push an agenda of a variant of appealing to authority or try to have the weight of a perceived majority to validate ones' opinion..

Its pretty clear that the community lies roughly split in half on the issue as it always has, and your poll results will vary by forum. On a more competitive tourney minded forum, people wll not like random as much as compared to a less serious casual forum.

And if you check the other thread/poll its now at 49% for 2D6 charges. However there's a sorta troll option in the pool that kind skewers it.

So,

I'd rather have 2d6 to 1d6.

1d6 has a flat probability distribution. I don't really like that.

It's easier to count on and plan around the 2d6 distribution than a 1d6 distribution.

 Anpu42 wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
12% do not matter.
Of the rest, 49/88 want less random than current rules.
39/88 want same or more.
Seems pretty clear where sentiments lie here.

I would not call 10% Pretty Clear.
It seems that 32 out of 88 want No Random and 62 out of 88 want a Random Charge distance.

It can be read either way.

...That's 94 out of 88...

I like 2d6, the gamble on a bell curve is an interesting drawback to the super deadly assault phase. However it can be frustrating failing a spectacularly short charge. A houserule that could be fun without massively skewing the charge distance would be...

Allow the charging unit to declare a "measured charge" before rolling, forgoing their 2d6 roll and instead charging 1/2 M.

Marines could "take 3", so not a big improvement over their minimum. Bikes could "take 6", which is a solid boost and eliminates the chance of an unlucky roll without allowing them ridiculous guaranteed 24" charges.

The above is obviously under the assumption that M values are unchanged.

Do we even know if Assault is as deadly as it was before? they removed sweeping advance, and with battleshock any wounds can cause a unit to lose models. even from overwatch.

 Luciferian wrote:

 Anpu42 wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
12% do not matter.
Of the rest, 49/88 want less random than current rules.
39/88 want same or more.
Seems pretty clear where sentiments lie here.

I would not call 10% Pretty Clear.
It seems that 32 out of 88 want No Random and 62 out of 88 want a Random Charge distance.

It can be read either way.

...That's 94 out of 88...

The numbers might have changed as I was typing , but the point was there.

 Anpu42 wrote:

 Luciferian wrote:

 Anpu42 wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
12% do not matter.
Of the rest, 49/88 want less random than current rules.
39/88 want same or more.
Seems pretty clear where sentiments lie here.

I would not call 10% Pretty Clear.
It seems that 32 out of 88 want No Random and 62 out of 88 want a Random Charge distance.

It can be read either way.

...That's 94 out of 88...

The numbers might have changed as I was typing , but the point was there.

As of 12:38 PCT on 05/04:

78 out of 229 want no rolls, versus 115 out of 229 who desire a roll.
106 are satisfied with the current state of affairs, versus 121 who desire a lower range and 2 who desire an increase.


Keep in mind, the probability distributions are different. 2d6 is less random than 1d6, but has a wider range.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 Anpu42 wrote:

 Luciferian wrote:

 Anpu42 wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
12% do not matter.
Of the rest, 49/88 want less random than current rules.
39/88 want same or more.
Seems pretty clear where sentiments lie here.

I would not call 10% Pretty Clear.
It seems that 32 out of 88 want No Random and 62 out of 88 want a Random Charge distance.

It can be read either way.

...That's 94 out of 88...

The numbers might have changed as I was typing , but the point was there.

As of 12:38 PCT on 05/04:

78 out of 229 want no rolls, versus 115 out of 229 who desire a roll.
106 are satisfied with the current state of affairs, versus 121 who desire a lower range and 2 who desire an increase.


Keep in mind, the probability distributions are different. 2d6 is less random than 1d6, but has a wider range.

I think an important thing to realize for some of the people clicking the 1d6 options...
Some of them aren't saying... "I want 1d6+ a number"
Some of them are saying... "I want 1d6 and no additional values because I want to nerf Assault ranges."
Same with the people with who don't want random.
Some of the people who don't want random want a flat value so they know exactly how far they need to be so that Assault will NEVER BE A THREAT.

That's part of the reason why this poll is pointless. Not enough options to really know what the people who voted are thinking.

 Talamare wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:


As of 12:38 PCT on 05/04:

78 out of 229 want no rolls, versus 115 out of 229 who desire a roll.
106 are satisfied with the current state of affairs, versus 121 who desire a lower range and 2 who desire an increase.


Keep in mind, the probability distributions are different. 2d6 is less random than 1d6, but has a wider range.

I think an important thing to realize for some of the people clicking the 1d6 options...
Some of them aren't saying... "I want 1d6+ a number"
Some of them are saying... "I want 1d6 and no additional values because I want to nerf Assault ranges."
Same with the people with who don't want random.
Some of the people who don't want random want a flat value so they know exactly how far they need to be so that Assault will NEVER BE A THREAT.

That's part of the reason why this poll is pointless. Not enough options to really know what the people who voted are thinking.

You can't tell any of that from the poll. You can tell exactly as follows: Of 249 respondents:
79 would rather have no roll.
3 would rather have a D3 roll.
41 would rather have a D6 roll.
95 would rather have the current system, a 2D6 roll.
2 would like a system with a greater range than 2D6.
16 do not have a preference for any of the above options
3 have a preference not described
and 9 are honest about not being interested in answering the poll.

They were arguing over numbers and what they mean, and were working on twisting statistics to their purposes, and then saying "you used statistics wrong". So, I broke it down with the most current numbers.

The poll isn't particularly great anyway. As I said, 2d6 is less random than 1d6, but has a wider range.

I like a bit of randomness about the charge range but the single shot on 2d6 is too often a slap in the face.
Still, since you actually move the failed distance forwards in 8th it does mean a melee force is still moving forwards which is nice - I'd still prefer 6" + 1d6.

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
Do we even know if Assault is as deadly as it was before? they removed sweeping advance, and with battleshock any wounds can cause a unit to lose models. even from overwatch.

The big thing that makes assault decisive and deadly in 40k is actually pretty firmly because it is the only time when a player gets to act and kill at their full effectiveness outside of regular turn order. This and the general trend of assault weapons often allowing for more attacks at higher strength or better AP than most shooting units can produce. It was never entirely down to things like sweeping advance and the like.

A shooting unit can fire on its own turn for full effect, and now it can sometimes overwatch for heavily reduced effect outside of the turn order.

An assault unit, once stuck in, is attacking on its owning player's turn and possibly on the opposing player's turn (assuming it wasn't immediately crushed and driven off).

With that said, with voluntary fallback in 8th this will be changed up a bit and more in the hands of the players than in the hands of chance. But we'll need to also see if assault also retains its higher-than-average number of attacks as well as a penchant for high strength and/or good AP in greater numbers. An individual shooting unit in 40k may have one or two high strength attacks with a good AP among a bunch of chaff. A good assault unit in 40k often made that output seem almost quaint for the amount of hurt they could lay down in one turn (the main issue always being "but can they get there to use it in a timely manner? as to whether or not assault was viable in a given edition).

So we'll have to see what CC weapon statistics and what the stats of proper assault troops look like to know the whole story. But either way, basically getting double the number of turns to kill things has made assault fairly decisive in past editions and if GW are aiming to make 1st/2nd turn charges a lot more common (depends on assaulting out of transports as well as what movement modifiers for assault armies look like) to be balanced out by voluntary fallback and overwatch then assault is likely to remain deadly and hopefully a viable strategy.

But it is still way too early to tell exactly how assault will go. The viability of assault is more than charge range and morale rules after all.

 auticus wrote:
Yeah. There is no "pretty clear" here unless you want to try to push an agenda of a variant of appealing to authority or try to have the weight of a perceived majority to validate ones' opinion..

Its pretty clear that the community lies roughly split in half on the issue as it always has, and your poll results will vary by forum. On a more competitive tourney minded forum, people wll not like random as much as compared to a less serious casual forum.

Pretty clear that most polled want change if they care enough to report on it. The degree of change is not clear but the desire for change seems to be especially given general resistance to change.

Frankly I have no agenda though I wonder how people complain about things like balance and end up looking at Yahtzee to get it.

 jeff white wrote:

 auticus wrote:
Yeah. There is no "pretty clear" here unless you want to try to push an agenda of a variant of appealing to authority or try to have the weight of a perceived majority to validate ones' opinion..

Its pretty clear that the community lies roughly split in half on the issue as it always has, and your poll results will vary by forum. On a more competitive tourney minded forum, people wll not like random as much as compared to a less serious casual forum.

Pretty clear that most polled want change if they care enough to report on it. The degree of change is not clear but the desire for change seems to be especially given general resistance to change.

Frankly I have no agenda though I wonder how people complain about things like balance and end up looking at Yahtzee to get it.

Hahahahaha....


Okay, agenda aside. 2d6 is not Yahtzee. It's actually pretty reliable.

 Saber wrote:
Well, if you want to get 'realistic' the entire of idea of charging is stupid. No one runs wildly at their enemy on the battlefield, and it certainly doesn't give them an advantage (like +1 attack or striking first). The exception, of course, is guys on horseback, but even then they don't go crashing into other people or nonsense like that.

You failed your history classes didn't you?

 Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:

 Saber wrote:
Well, if you want to get 'realistic' the entire of idea of charging is stupid. No one runs wildly at their enemy on the battlefield, and it certainly doesn't give them an advantage (like +1 attack or striking first). The exception, of course, is guys on horseback, but even then they don't go crashing into other people or nonsense like that.

You failed your history classes didn't you?

Charging like that is a great way to get piked.

You advance at a steady and fast walk, in good order and staying in formation. A headlong charge at a run across the battlefield with make you tired and dead.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Charging like that is a great way to get piked.

You advance at a steady and fast walk, in good order and staying in formation. A headlong charge at a run across the battlefield with make you tired and dead. You run the last short distance to close with the enemy and cut off a final volley.

A lot really depends on the time frame in question.

If you're used to running in battle kit all the time, and many of these soldiers and warriors were back in the day, then a Charge wouldn't tire you out so much. Take Celts, African, and American tribesmen as several examples. Now, their battle kit wasn't a full armor or even a shield of the mass seen in a phalanx or a Roman legion set up, either.

A lot of tactics and strategy relied on what you knew your people could do and what you knew your equipment could do. You then shaped that around what you thought your opponent could do. Let's face it, a naked "giant" running and screaming at you with a huge sword is going to have a certain amount of psychological shock.

Charges really lost their oomph in WWI, but then we had the machine gun at that time, and that was the best weapon for breaking up a charge. Add artillery on top of it, and you have a scenario where only the craziest person would try to cross it.

But charges needed to happen, as those were the only way to get your men in to their machine gun nests and artillery positions and advance the line. Trenchwarfare is very nasty and effective in disallowing infantry charges to be effective, as it pretty much requires them to cross a kill zone. Vehicle Armour changed much of that, as it allowed the infantry protection to hit the trenches. Then warfare was centered around maneuver of the vehicles, both ground and air.

Then you get in to guerilla warfare where vehicle combat is limited, such as extremely rugged mountains, dense rain forest/jungle, or even urban environments, and things start working more and more to "small" units operating with light vehicle support.

40K changes much of that because of the willingness for certain enemies to engage in melee for their own reasons (Orks, Tyranids, and Eldar) and personal armor and modifications which allow one to traverse the average kill zone in relative safety (Astartes), while other armies try to establish that kill zone (Tau, IG, Necron).

I think a simple solution would be 1d6 + leadership value.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:

 Saber wrote:
Well, if you want to get 'realistic' the entire of idea of charging is stupid. No one runs wildly at their enemy on the battlefield, and it certainly doesn't give them an advantage (like +1 attack or striking first). The exception, of course, is guys on horseback, but even then they don't go crashing into other people or nonsense like that.

You failed your history classes didn't you?

Charging like that is a great way to get piked.

You advance at a steady and fast walk, in good order and staying in formation. A headlong charge at a run across the battlefield with make you tired and dead.

A medievil charge, while pikes were still in use, was made under the pinning effects of arrows and usually in cases of high mobility warfare so the enemy didn't get much of a chance to set up an immobile pike wall that couldn't be shot down by said arrows, it was also usually led by cavalry which is why the pikes mattered at all. So, what do we get from this information? The effective range of a longbow is debated a ranges between 180 metres and 300 metres, not a big distance for a horse to travel, even weighed down in armour and carrying an armoured rider. Modern soldiers carry around a hundred pounds on their back, some less, most more and can run three hundred metres pretty handily, the most heavy medieval armour was dedicated medieval jousting armour, which only saw use on horseback and was specialised to a single task, usually weighed less than a hundred pounds and was spread over their entire body.
So, we know charges were not made over long distances, were made under suppressing fire and were made in armour that weighs less than a modern soldier's backpack.

Push forwards a few centuries to the age of the musket, once again the furthest possible range is less than 300 metres and takes up to a minute to reload, about six times the reloading and firing time of a slow person with a longbow. The English, Scottish and some American militaries used to add extras to the powder to get more smoke in order to cover their next actions, particularly in the case of a charge.

Another few centuries and weaponry has advanced well beyond the ability to grant mobility to said weaponry so units bunkered down in trenches, still often less than 300 metres from the enemy.

Back to 40k.
*We're talking planetary scale assault that for some reason is often not open to orbital bombardment for whatever reason.
*We have "negotiable" terrain - apparently everyone just respects landscapers that much.
*We have "no man's land" an expression from trench warefare but trenches in the 40k universe don't work because they supply easily ignored cover but don't block line of sight - possibly because nobody in the 40k universe is smart enough to dig down another few feet.
*No melee army has ranged weaponry that makes it hard for the enemy to shoot them.
*We have magic.
*We also have armies that just don't work - tough luck if you purchased Nids or Orks.

 Dakka Wolf wrote:
*No melee army has ranged weaponry that makes it hard for the enemy to shoot them..

This always bugged me, honestly. From a mechanics stand point, armies with a focus on assault would have supporting elements, either on their assault units or even in their shooting units, that allow them to suppress or deny other army's units. Yet pinning seems solely a shooting army thing, and I think there's one item in the whole game that prevents overwatch and that the CSM dirge caster. And that's a vehicle upgrade.

Hopefully GW fixes that, but eh

 Luke_Prowler wrote:

 Dakka Wolf wrote:
*No melee army has ranged weaponry that makes it hard for the enemy to shoot them..

This always bugged me, honestly. From a mechanics stand point, armies with a focus on assault would have supporting elements, either on their assault units or even in their shooting units, that allow them to suppress or deny other army's units. Yet pinning seems solely a shooting army thing, and I think there's one item in the whole game that prevents overwatch and that the CSM dirge caster. And that's a vehicle upgrade.

Hopefully GW fixes that, but eh

There's also a mask availiable to the Harlequinns - who never make it into charge range.

 davou wrote:

 niv-mizzet wrote:
and remember that there is no bonus attack for charging now,

This isn't confirmed yet; but very likely

It was directly stated in the live q&a, when he revealed that the bonus for charging would be striking first. Someone asked about bonus attacks and he reiterated that no, the bonus for charging was just striking first.

 Dakka Wolf wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:


Charging like that is a great way to get piked.

You advance at a steady and fast walk, in good order and staying in formation. A headlong charge at a run across the battlefield with make you tired and dead.

A medievil charge, while pikes were still in use, was made under the pinning effects of arrows and usually in cases of high mobility warfare so the enemy didn't get much of a chance to set up an immobile pike wall that couldn't be shot down by said arrows, it was also usually led by cavalry which is why the pikes mattered at all. So, what do we get from this information? The effective range of a longbow is debated a ranges between 180 metres and 300 metres, not a big distance for a horse to travel, even weighed down in armour and carrying an armoured rider. Modern soldiers carry around a hundred pounds on their back, some less, most more and can run three hundred metres pretty handily, the most heavy medieval armour was dedicated medieval jousting armour, which only saw use on horseback and was specialised to a single task, usually weighed less than a hundred pounds and was spread over their entire body.
So, we know charges were not made over long distances, were made under suppressing fire and were made in armour that weighs less than a modern soldier's backpack.

Push forwards a few centuries to the age of the musket, once again the furthest possible range is less than 300 metres and takes up to a minute to reload, about six times the reloading and firing time of a slow person with a longbow. The English, Scottish and some American militaries used to add extras to the powder to get more smoke in order to cover their next actions, particularly in the case of a charge.

Another few centuries and weaponry has advanced well beyond the ability to grant mobility to said weaponry so units bunkered down in trenches, still often less than 300 metres from the enemy.

Back to 40k.
*We're talking planetary scale assault that for some reason is often not open to orbital bombardment for whatever reason.
*We have "negotiable" terrain - apparently everyone just respects landscapers that much.
*We have "no man's land" an expression from trench warefare but trenches in the 40k universe don't work because they supply easily ignored cover but don't block line of sight - possibly because nobody in the 40k universe is smart enough to dig down another few feet.
*No melee army has ranged weaponry that makes it hard for the enemy to shoot them.
*We have magic.
*We also have armies that just don't work - tough luck if you purchased Nids or Orks.

Orbital Barrage is a part of 40k. Note that all those Space Marine ships carry bombardment cannons for softening up defenses before and assault and providing harassing fire against enemy positions. However, the Imperial Guard doesn't get orbital support because the Imperial Army was split into the Imperial Navy and Imperial Guard in an effort to limit the effects of units from either turning renegade. The Imperial Guard is expressly denied orbital bombardment to make them weak if they rebel.

Trenches are also a thing. In Siege of Vraks there are a lot of pictures of trenches dug into the ground and Kriegsmen hiding inside them, and they're described as being fairly protective. WWI is the DKoK's whole thing, so it makes sense. On the tabletop, we have the Wall of Martyrs and the Aegis Defense Barricade, which have to be above ground out of necessity: we can't really have trenches dug into our table!

And with regards to pinning, it's not so much that suppressive fire doesn't exist, it's just that everybody can ignore it and steel their resolve to continue their advance into the teeth of the enemy guns while their comrades are gunned down around them.


Anyway, the point I was making wasn't that medieval charges weren't headlong rush at the enemy, because you'd end up on the pointy end of the enemy's pointy sticks. Remaining close order and keeping formation was essential. A lone man or a man separated from his formation was a dead man when he reached the enemy lines.



40k also represents more of tiny firefight than an major battle. I put what, five-dozen soldiers and a half-dozen tanks on the field? There were 900 tanks in battle at Prokhorovka. A million men fought in the first day's assault on the Somme. Even the largest games we play are tiny.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 Dakka Wolf wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:


Charging like that is a great way to get piked.

You advance at a steady and fast walk, in good order and staying in formation. A headlong charge at a run across the battlefield with make you tired and dead.

A medievil charge, while pikes were still in use, was made under the pinning effects of arrows and usually in cases of high mobility warfare so the enemy didn't get much of a chance to set up an immobile pike wall that couldn't be shot down by said arrows, it was also usually led by cavalry which is why the pikes mattered at all. So, what do we get from this information? The effective range of a longbow is debated a ranges between 180 metres and 300 metres, not a big distance for a horse to travel, even weighed down in armour and carrying an armoured rider. Modern soldiers carry around a hundred pounds on their back, some less, most more and can run three hundred metres pretty handily, the most heavy medieval armour was dedicated medieval jousting armour, which only saw use on horseback and was specialised to a single task, usually weighed less than a hundred pounds and was spread over their entire body.
So, we know charges were not made over long distances, were made under suppressing fire and were made in armour that weighs less than a modern soldier's backpack.

Push forwards a few centuries to the age of the musket, once again the furthest possible range is less than 300 metres and takes up to a minute to reload, about six times the reloading and firing time of a slow person with a longbow. The English, Scottish and some American militaries used to add extras to the powder to get more smoke in order to cover their next actions, particularly in the case of a charge.

Another few centuries and weaponry has advanced well beyond the ability to grant mobility to said weaponry so units bunkered down in trenches, still often less than 300 metres from the enemy.

Back to 40k.
*We're talking planetary scale assault that for some reason is often not open to orbital bombardment for whatever reason.
*We have "negotiable" terrain - apparently everyone just respects landscapers that much.
*We have "no man's land" an expression from trench warefare but trenches in the 40k universe don't work because they supply easily ignored cover but don't block line of sight - possibly because nobody in the 40k universe is smart enough to dig down another few feet.
*No melee army has ranged weaponry that makes it hard for the enemy to shoot them.
*We have magic.
*We also have armies that just don't work - tough luck if you purchased Nids or Orks.

Orbital Barrage is a part of 40k. Note that all those Space Marine ships carry bombardment cannons for softening up defenses before and assault and providing harassing fire against enemy positions. However, the Imperial Guard doesn't get orbital support because the Imperial Army was split into the Imperial Navy and Imperial Guard in an effort to limit the effects of units from either turning renegade. The Imperial Guard is expressly denied orbital bombardment to make them weak if they rebel.

Trenches are also a thing. In Siege of Vraks there are a lot of pictures of trenches dug into the ground and Kriegsmen hiding inside them, and they're described as being fairly protective. WWI is the DKoK's whole thing, so it makes sense. On the tabletop, we have the Wall of Martyrs and the Aegis Defense Barricade, which have to be above ground out of necessity: we can't really have trenches dug into our table!

And with regards to pinning, it's not so much that suppressive fire doesn't exist, it's just that everybody can ignore it and steel their resolve to continue their advance into the teeth of the enemy guns while their comrades are gunned down around them.


Anyway, the point I was making wasn't that medieval charges weren't headlong rush at the enemy, because you'd end up on the pointy end of the enemy's pointy sticks. Remaining close order and keeping formation was essential. A lone man or a man separated from his formation was a dead man when he reached the enemy lines.

Uh... how do you think IG get from planet to planet?
The Imperial Navy carry's them around everywhere, it is just that the captains of ships follow a different command structure and are not beholden to IG officers,
You can ask them to blow things up, but it is up to them if they will.
Most planets don't have any IG stationed on them, most planets have PDF forces, only important locations and sectors tend to have some IG that are there as a garrison.
Otherwise they are constantly on the move to the next battle, they practically live on ships when they aren't fighting.
IG digs in and makes fortifications and trenches all of the time to hold defensive lines.
The issue with IG and not having Orbital Bombardments is that they can't just pickup their Vox line and tell the captain of the ship to drop his ship batteries on a specific target. They don't have the authority to do so, it has to come from way up the chain in order to happen. SM's on the other hand have their own ships and need merely request that their cruiser or battle barge kindly obliterate said enemy position. Usually the ships perform bombardments from space then launch the IG into a cleared safezone. They get orbital bombardments, they just can't control when and where.

To the point at hand, charges need to have a degree of variability in order to account for combat, if you are about to charge at some guys they could...run away maybe? Which could easily account for a failed charge. I do agree that charging should definitely have some kind of advantage when done successfully, but there also needs to be somewhat of a variability to them as well esp at the longer ranges, I have no issue with shorter range charges trending towards a guarantee.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 Dakka Wolf wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:


Charging like that is a great way to get piked.

You advance at a steady and fast walk, in good order and staying in formation. A headlong charge at a run across the battlefield with make you tired and dead.

A medievil charge, while pikes were still in use, was made under the pinning effects of arrows and usually in cases of high mobility warfare so the enemy didn't get much of a chance to set up an immobile pike wall that couldn't be shot down by said arrows, it was also usually led by cavalry which is why the pikes mattered at all. So, what do we get from this information? The effective range of a longbow is debated a ranges between 180 metres and 300 metres, not a big distance for a horse to travel, even weighed down in armour and carrying an armoured rider. Modern soldiers carry around a hundred pounds on their back, some less, most more and can run three hundred metres pretty handily, the most heavy medieval armour was dedicated medieval jousting armour, which only saw use on horseback and was specialised to a single task, usually weighed less than a hundred pounds and was spread over their entire body.
So, we know charges were not made over long distances, were made under suppressing fire and were made in armour that weighs less than a modern soldier's backpack.

Push forwards a few centuries to the age of the musket, once again the furthest possible range is less than 300 metres and takes up to a minute to reload, about six times the reloading and firing time of a slow person with a longbow. The English, Scottish and some American militaries used to add extras to the powder to get more smoke in order to cover their next actions, particularly in the case of a charge.

Another few centuries and weaponry has advanced well beyond the ability to grant mobility to said weaponry so units bunkered down in trenches, still often less than 300 metres from the enemy.

Back to 40k.
*We're talking planetary scale assault that for some reason is often not open to orbital bombardment for whatever reason.
*We have "negotiable" terrain - apparently everyone just respects landscapers that much.
*We have "no man's land" an expression from trench warefare but trenches in the 40k universe don't work because they supply easily ignored cover but don't block line of sight - possibly because nobody in the 40k universe is smart enough to dig down another few feet.
*No melee army has ranged weaponry that makes it hard for the enemy to shoot them.
*We have magic.
*We also have armies that just don't work - tough luck if you purchased Nids or Orks.

Orbital Barrage is a part of 40k. Note that all those Space Marine ships carry bombardment cannons for softening up defenses before and assault and providing harassing fire against enemy positions. However, the Imperial Guard doesn't get orbital support because the Imperial Army was split into the Imperial Navy and Imperial Guard in an effort to limit the effects of units from either turning renegade. The Imperial Guard is expressly denied orbital bombardment to make them weak if they rebel.

Trenches are also a thing. In Siege of Vraks there are a lot of pictures of trenches dug into the ground and Kriegsmen hiding inside them, and they're described as being fairly protective. WWI is the DKoK's whole thing, so it makes sense. On the tabletop, we have the Wall of Martyrs and the Aegis Defense Barricade, which have to be above ground out of necessity: we can't really have trenches dug into our table!

And with regards to pinning, it's not so much that suppressive fire doesn't exist, it's just that everybody can ignore it and steel their resolve to continue their advance into the teeth of the enemy guns while their comrades are gunned down around them.


Anyway, the point I was making wasn't that medieval charges weren't headlong rush at the enemy, because you'd end up on the pointy end of the enemy's pointy sticks. Remaining close order and keeping formation was essential. A lone man or a man separated from his formation was a dead man when he reached the enemy lines.

Note that not even all loyalist Space Marine forces actually have tabletop access to said bombardments. It doesn't matter if they have it in the fluff, if there is no tabletop representation then it might as well not exist.

Again with the fluff, the problem is that none of those fortifications like the aegis actually work anything like a trench, they work like a wall made by squad that was short changed on sandbags.

40k armies resist supppressing fire because it literally has no tabletop representation, it's all good and well to say "Oh, they would have resisted it anyway" but armies like Tau and Eldar don't, they regularly fail leadership checks, problem is that melee armies can only force these tests when they've already made it past the firepower to get into combat. Orks and Daemons and Astra Militarum aren't too fond of leadership tests either.

As for charges being slow, orderly affairs there have been plenty of successful charges throughout history that were neither, distraction raids come to mind, as do berserkers and wolf warriors, charging units were often sacrificial so that another charge could play out as an ambush and even charging by its very definition is a rapid and aggressive advance. Nobody is trying to say that no-one died charging or that some charges weren't pointless, they're saying they happened and were often pivotal and what's the point of making melee armies for the tabletop if you aren't going to make the damn things capable of making melee!?

 Dakka Wolf wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Anyway, the point I was making wasn't that medieval charges weren't headlong rush at the enemy, because you'd end up on the pointy end of the enemy's pointy sticks. Remaining close order and keeping formation was essential. A lone man or a man separated from his formation was a dead man when he reached the enemy lines.

Note that not even all loyalist Space Marine forces actually have tabletop access to said bombardments. It doesn't matter if they have it in the fluff, if there is no tabletop representation then it might as well not exist.

Again with the fluff, the problem is that none of those fortifications like the aegis actually work anything like a trench, they work like a wall made by squad that was short changed on sandbags.

40k armies resist supppressing fire because it literally has no tabletop representation, it's all good and well to say "Oh, they would have resisted it anyway" but armies like Tau and Eldar don't, they regularly fail leadership checks, problem is that melee armies can only force these tests when they've already made it past the firepower to get into combat. Orks and Daemons and Astra Militarum aren't too fond of leadership tests either.

As for charges being slow, orderly affairs there have been plenty of successful charges throughout history that were neither, distraction raids come to mind, as do berserkers and wolf warriors, charging units were often sacrificial so that another charge could play out as an ambush and even charging by its very definition is a rapid and aggressive advance. Nobody is trying to say that no-one died charging or that some charges weren't pointless, they're saying they happened and were often pivotal and what's the point of making melee armies for the tabletop if you aren't going to make the damn things capable of making melee!?

Vikings used formations when met with opposing forces in battle. An arrowhead formation was particularly common offensively, as I understand it, with shields locked along the flank of the arrowhead and advancing into the enemy, slowly at first and accelerating to a run before colliding with the enemy lines, using the momentum of the formation to break the opposing formation.

A disordered, dispersed charge has fairly minimal effect, and results in lots of your dead people and not a lot of their dead people. I've tried it. Running dispersed at a shield line is fairly ineffective, but advancing upon a shield line shoulder to shoulder works out much better.

As someone who plays primarily shooty armies, I felt that 2d6 was upgrade over old fixed 6 inches. In the past I was always safe over 6 inches away, now 8 inches is pretty routine and only at around 11 inches I feel somewhat safe. And then of course Eldar, whose threat range on foot increased from 12 to 18 inches to 24 inches...longer than my basic guns range.

Of course sometimes they roll 2 or 3 and flop, and that is always hilarious...

oooooh man, this thread, lol. I don't like the results so i'll change the poll, i don't like the new results so lets pull out our 9th grade stats class and follow it up with another rousing discussion of 40k and realism.

Good times, good times.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
In real life, charges do not fail because someone stumbled on a rock (rather, the success of a charge usually depends on the morale of both sides). Neither should it be that way in 40k. That is ridiculous.
If we want to keep a degree of randomness for whether a charge fails or succeed, I feel it would be better to have an alternative, more realistic system where charge distance is more or less fixed but whether your troops get to reach the enemy depends on passing morale checks.

That's a really good point IMO. I think it's a good idea to link randomness in charging to morale rather than, well, just random randomness.

A Space Wolf should be pretty bloody consistent with their ability to succeed at a charge, an Ork maybe slightly less so, a Guardsman even less so again.

I was rather disappointed with the morale system for 8th just being "well, if you lose morale you lose more models!". A morale system could be so much more than that, having a unit's state of morale contributing to things like random rolls to determine if a unit can charge, shoot and even move would be a much more interesting system IMO.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ERJAK wrote:
oooooh man, this thread, lol. I don't like the results so i'll change the poll, i don't like the new results so lets pull out our 9th grade stats class and follow it up with another rousing discussion of 40k and realism.

Good times, good times.

I didn't even see the other poll when I posted this one

I always attempt to write my polls in a less biased way, I won't say I always succeed, but having a scientific background I don't like anything that can be dismissed because of bias.

As for "9th grade stats class", I don't get why people are acting like we're doing some sort of mathematical trickery here. 50% of people would prefer it to be less random than it currently is.... people are acting like adding numbers together is somehow manipulating them There are 3 poll answers that represent less randomness than we currently have and 2 that represent equal or greater randomness, I don't see any problem with adding those together.

I will admit I expected it to be more than 50%.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 Dakka Wolf wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Anyway, the point I was making wasn't that medieval charges weren't headlong rush at the enemy, because you'd end up on the pointy end of the enemy's pointy sticks. Remaining close order and keeping formation was essential. A lone man or a man separated from his formation was a dead man when he reached the enemy lines.

Note that not even all loyalist Space Marine forces actually have tabletop access to said bombardments. It doesn't matter if they have it in the fluff, if there is no tabletop representation then it might as well not exist.

Again with the fluff, the problem is that none of those fortifications like the aegis actually work anything like a trench, they work like a wall made by squad that was short changed on sandbags.

40k armies resist supppressing fire because it literally has no tabletop representation, it's all good and well to say "Oh, they would have resisted it anyway" but armies like Tau and Eldar don't, they regularly fail leadership checks, problem is that melee armies can only force these tests when they've already made it past the firepower to get into combat. Orks and Daemons and Astra Militarum aren't too fond of leadership tests either.

As for charges being slow, orderly affairs there have been plenty of successful charges throughout history that were neither, distraction raids come to mind, as do berserkers and wolf warriors, charging units were often sacrificial so that another charge could play out as an ambush and even charging by its very definition is a rapid and aggressive advance. Nobody is trying to say that no-one died charging or that some charges weren't pointless, they're saying they happened and were often pivotal and what's the point of making melee armies for the tabletop if you aren't going to make the damn things capable of making melee!?

Vikings used formations when met with opposing forces in battle. An arrowhead formation was particularly common offensively, as I understand it, with shields locked along the flank of the arrowhead and advancing into the enemy, slowly at first and accelerating to a run before colliding with the enemy lines, using the momentum of the formation to break the opposing formation.

A disordered, dispersed charge has fairly minimal effect, and results in lots of your dead people and not a lot of their dead people. I've tried it. Running dispersed at a shield line is fairly ineffective, but advancing upon a shield line shoulder to shoulder works out much better.

Yes, vikings used formation advances - they generally still moved forward at a fair clip rather than staying on the beach, they also used the Berserkers because a few big crazy dudes hitting the front or side of any resistance as the shield wall moved forwards made the resistance softer for when the invaders closed closed, they also charged straight up out of the boats because being disorganised and barbaric often has a shock and intimidation value that formations simply lack and some people struggle to respond to.

As for your results - is there any reason in particular people should care about your success, or lack of it?

 Dakka Wolf wrote:


Yes, vikings used formation advances - they generally still moved forward at a fair clip rather than staying on the beach, they also used the Berserkers because a few big crazy dudes hitting the front or side of any resistance as the shield wall moved forwards made the resistance softer for when the invaders closed closed, they also charged straight up out of the boats because being disorganised and barbaric often has a shock and intimidation value that formations simply lack and some people struggle to respond to.

As for your results - is there any reason in particular people should care about your success, or lack of it?

Where are you getting this knowledge about "real life berserkers"?

What i've heard of zerkers is that they were kind of champions that didn't really fight in battles and instead specialised in duels.

Good points in the thread.

Random effect is good, but I would suggest that you roll 2D6 but you can change one of the roll for guaranteed 6 but then you lose the extra attack due to charging. This would guarantee you around 8-9 inch charge most times.

I think most armies should have kind of very fast (Fast Attack!!??) unit available that can easily do first turn charge. This way even shooty armies would be forced to take some sort of melee-fodder units on front to absorb this fast unit. The fast unit should at the same time be designed in a way that you cannot make death star out of it. The only function would be to punish armies that go for static big guns only armies with no actual line holders.

Also I really dont understand the mentality that fast units cannot be faster than slower units. But I think faster units shouldn't be too strong in close combat, even fluffwise you would have your bikes and jump packs flank and dive in from the sky to attack artillery and other shooting units. With fast you attack the weak targets, however this kind of equilibrium certainly doesn't exist in current 7th Ed. as bikes are much better than jump marines with hardly any price increase. Although bike models are significantly more expensive than jump marines, so I see what GW did there...

 Dakka Wolf wrote:


Yes, vikings used formation advances - they generally still moved forward at a fair clip rather than staying on the beach, they also used the Berserkers because a few big crazy dudes hitting the front or side of any resistance as the shield wall moved forwards made the resistance softer for when the invaders closed closed, they also charged straight up out of the boats because being disorganised and barbaric often has a shock and intimidation value that formations simply lack and some people struggle to respond to.

As for your results - is there any reason in particular people should care about your success, or lack of it?

The speed and distance you can charge is governed by how fast and how long you can maintain your formation. If your formation separates because not everyone is running at the same speed, then your charge fails.

The vikings primarily used a shield line defensively, and as I said, a arrowhead offensively. Lone warriors were incredibly uncommon. Their best troops would be at the point of the arrowhead, and as I said, they'd advance and gather speed until they impacted at a run, hoping to disperse the enemy formation using their momentum.

They also made extensive use of ambush tactics, and when landing would either land unopposed, or would beach their ships, debark, form up, and then charge.

Random charge distance is probably one of the biggest reasons I went retrogamer, I'd cheer if it got quashed.

 jeff white wrote:
12% do not matter.
Of the rest, 49/88 want less random than current rules.
39/88 want same or more.
Seems pretty clear where sentiments lie here.

The only thing clear is that you're still butthurt that the majority don't agree with you.

Let it go, bruh. Let it go...

 koooaei wrote:

 Dakka Wolf wrote:


Yes, vikings used formation advances - they generally still moved forward at a fair clip rather than staying on the beach, they also used the Berserkers because a few big crazy dudes hitting the front or side of any resistance as the shield wall moved forwards made the resistance softer for when the invaders closed closed, they also charged straight up out of the boats because being disorganised and barbaric often has a shock and intimidation value that formations simply lack and some people struggle to respond to.

As for your results - is there any reason in particular people should care about your success, or lack of it?

Where are you getting this knowledge about "real life berserkers"?

What i've heard of zerkers is that they were kind of champions that didn't really fight in battles and instead specialised in duels.

Mostly they're mentioned in enemy scources, they also get a fair shout out in The Volsunga saga - it's probably about as historic as the story of Musashi but all the best stories have grains of truth.

The Norse were claimed to have Berserkers, people who would transform into bear and wolf monsters, bite on their shields and launch themselves roaring into battle to break the enemy at the front. Others claimed they were immune to fire and steel in battle.

What I believe is more likely is they were a shock force that wore bear-shirts/bear-skins over or as part of their armour and were successful at ambush or crackerjack tactics. Rather than admit they got blindsided and their front was broken by a small number of whackjobs in animal cloaks the soldiers perpetuated the image of monsters, same with people who failed at guard duty.
As for the other stuff I've never really looked into Northern European medicine but it sounds like an early version of Ice.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
[
As for "9th grade stats class", I don't get why people are acting like we're doing some sort of mathematical trickery here. 50% of people would prefer it to be less random than it currently is.... people are acting like adding numbers together is somehow manipulating them There are 3 poll answers that represent less randomness than we currently have and 2 that represent equal or greater randomness, I don't see any problem with adding those together.

I will admit I expected it to be more than 50%.

In some parts of the United States, Mathematics are akin to witchcraft and are treated as such.

 Crimson Devil wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
[
As for "9th grade stats class", I don't get why people are acting like we're doing some sort of mathematical trickery here. 50% of people would prefer it to be less random than it currently is.... people are acting like adding numbers together is somehow manipulating them There are 3 poll answers that represent less randomness than we currently have and 2 that represent equal or greater randomness, I don't see any problem with adding those together.

I will admit I expected it to be more than 50%.

In some parts of the United States, Mathematics are akin to witchcraft and are treated as such.

Are? You mean are as in currently?

It is interesting to see this poll today, and how close the two most popular choices are now.

Apple fox wrote:
It is interesting to see this poll today, and how close the two most popular choices are now.

Exactly. Even up for no random charge distance at all. A big shift from the first days of the poll. Interesting what happens given a little time for reflection...


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 Talamare wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 Anpu42 wrote:

 Luciferian wrote:

 Anpu42 wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
12% do not matter.
Of the rest, 49/88 want less random than current rules.
39/88 want same or more.
Seems pretty clear where sentiments lie here.

I would not call 10% Pretty Clear.
It seems that 32 out of 88 want No Random and 62 out of 88 want a Random Charge distance.

It can be read either way.

...That's 94 out of 88...

The numbers might have changed as I was typing , but the point was there.

As of 12:38 PCT on 05/04:

78 out of 229 want no rolls, versus 115 out of 229 who desire a roll.
106 are satisfied with the current state of affairs, versus 121 who desire a lower range and 2 who desire an increase.


Keep in mind, the probability distributions are different. 2d6 is less random than 1d6, but has a wider range.

I think an important thing to realize for some of the people clicking the 1d6 options...
Some of them aren't saying... "I want 1d6+ a number"
Some of them are saying... "I want 1d6 and no additional values because I want to nerf Assault ranges."
Same with the people with who don't want random.
Some of the people who don't want random want a flat value so they know exactly how far they need to be so that Assault will NEVER BE A THREAT.

That's part of the reason why this poll is pointless. Not enough options to really know what the people who voted are thinking.

Never be a threat?
How so?



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 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 jeff white wrote:

 auticus wrote:
Yeah. There is no "pretty clear" here unless you want to try to push an agenda of a variant of appealing to authority or try to have the weight of a perceived majority to validate ones' opinion..

Its pretty clear that the community lies roughly split in half on the issue as it always has, and your poll results will vary by forum. On a more competitive tourney minded forum, people wll not like random as much as compared to a less serious casual forum.

Pretty clear that most polled want change if they care enough to report on it. The degree of change is not clear but the desire for change seems to be especially given general resistance to change.

Frankly I have no agenda though I wonder how people complain about things like balance and end up looking at Yahtzee to get it.

Hahahahaha....


Okay, agenda aside. 2d6 is not Yahtzee. It's actually pretty reliable.

Yes. I prefer less random but to each his own. Some people get off tossing numbered cubes. I like chess with near infinite variability in different ways. A difference of taste does not equal an agenda. Just a difference.


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 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:

 Saber wrote:
Well, if you want to get 'realistic' the entire of idea of charging is stupid. No one runs wildly at their enemy on the battlefield, and it certainly doesn't give them an advantage (like +1 attack or striking first). The exception, of course, is guys on horseback, but even then they don't go crashing into other people or nonsense like that.

You failed your history classes didn't you?

Charging like that is a great way to get piked.

You advance at a steady and fast walk, in good order and staying in formation. A headlong charge at a run across the battlefield with make you tired and dead.

A reliable fast pace... Hmmm? Like maybe 2x movement taking into account terrain and obstacles and...


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ERJAK wrote:
oooooh man, this thread, lol. I don't like the results so i'll change the poll, i don't like the new results so lets pull out our 9th grade stats class and follow it up with another rousing discussion of 40k and realism.

Good times, good times.

Insightful. Thanks for sharing errr, Jack.


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 Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
12% do not matter.
Of the rest, 49/88 want less random than current rules.
39/88 want same or more.
Seems pretty clear where sentiments lie here.

The only thing clear is that you're still butthurt that the majority don't agree with you.

Let it go, bruh. Let it go...

You are projecting again sunflower.
That feeling of certainty you seem to have is false.
You are not seeing what you think that you are seeing.
Besides you might want to check those numbers again...


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 Crimson Devil wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
[
As for "9th grade stats class", I don't get why people are acting like we're doing some sort of mathematical trickery here. 50% of people would prefer it to be less random than it currently is.... people are acting like adding numbers together is somehow manipulating them There are 3 poll answers that represent less randomness than we currently have and 2 that represent equal or greater randomness, I don't see any problem with adding those together.

I will admit I expected it to be more than 50%.

In some parts of the United States, Mathematics are akin to witchcraft and are treated as such.

This is an increasingly prevalent disposition apparently.

From what I can see now,
160/330 want something less than two dice rolled for charge distance.
117/330 prefer the same or more dice rolling.

Apple fox wrote:
It is interesting to see this poll today, and how close the two most popular choices are now.

Ony problem, they are still minority in consideration that over half the community wants some randomness. Over 50% combined.

Assuming, of course, that the entire community voted.

Charge is on top of movement.

You already get M+2D6+1 charge range.

A unit with fleet and a 6 inch move has an expected charge threat range of 15.5 inches.
A unit with a 12 inch move has an expected charge threat range of 20 inches.

That's pretty solid.