Out of all the blunders that GW committed during 6th edition overwatch is probably the biggest since it has had the longest lasting impact in this game, and I wonder why it wasn't removed from the rule set once 8th hit. Now why do I think that overwatch is a horrible rule, simple, it rewards bad gameplay of getting your shooting units into melee. The only way this would be good was if deep strike charging became a too big of an issue, but you could simply remove that instead of nerfing all melee accross the board.
It at the very least needs a mirror. When falling back a unit is subject to a full round of melee that hits on 6s. Sprinkle in some "this unit hits on 4s when units flee from them" Strategems.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: Overwatch is tedious and takes time, but as a mechanic it makes sense, is thematic, and ultimately doesn't slow the game.
IMO it's weird that a unit which normally will fire one round of shooting per turn can potentially fire as many times as units attempt (and fail) to charge it. 40K is otherwise generally rigid in its time modeling, with primarily just stratagems allowing units to shoot more than once.
More importantly, it lacks any kind of decision-making. You don't have to put your units into Overwatch like you did in 2nd, so you never have to decide between being prepared to repel an assault versus moving forward to engage. You just reflexively get to shoot, and your chance of success is the same regardless of what you did on your turn.
I've played a couple of games where the reaction system allowed you to take immediate actions in response to enemy activity, at the cost of both reduced effectiveness and losing an action when that unit's next opportunity to act comes along. Battlefleet Gothic used a similar system where you could elect to Brace For Impact in response to an attack, but then on your ship's next turn, it would have reduced effectiveness. This added some interesting decision space, because you were borrowing against the unit's next activation for the opportunity to do something now.
I'm not sure how to translate something like that to 40K, but there's room for greater interactivity.
Come on, it's really not that bad. There are many ways to avoid or minimize the damage you take, including out-of-LOS charges, sending in tougher units first, heroic interventions, and a variety of items and abilities. Working your way around overwatch is part of knowing how to use a melee-based army effectively. And I think it's good that there is something that makes you think twice before attempting a 10+ inch charge. "Is it worth taking a faceful of overwatch?"
But perhaps it should be a once-per-phase thing. Looking at you, Tau.
Some units across various factions could also have "flash grenades" or something of the sort, which deal no damage but keep a target non-vehicle unit from firing overwatch if you score a hit. Of course, to throw the grenade, you have to get within 6 inches in your movement phase.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: Overwatch is tedious and takes time, but as a mechanic it makes sense, is thematic, and ultimately doesn't slow the game.
IMO it's weird that a unit which normally will fire one round of shooting per turn can potentially fire as many times as units attempt (and fail) to charge it. 40K is otherwise generally rigid in its time modeling, with primarily just stratagems allowing units to shoot more than once.
More importantly, it lacks any kind of decision-making. You don't have to put your units into Overwatch like you did in 2nd, so you never have to decide between being prepared to repel an assault versus moving forward to engage. You just reflexively get to shoot, and your chance of success is the same regardless of what you did on your turn.
I've played a couple of games where the reaction system allowed you to take immediate actions in response to enemy activity, at the cost of both reduced effectiveness and losing an action when that unit's next opportunity to act comes along. Battlefleet Gothic used a similar system where you could elect to Brace For Impact in response to an attack, but then on your ship's next turn, it would have reduced effectiveness. This added some interesting decision space, because you were borrowing against the unit's next activation for the opportunity to do something now.
I'm not sure how to translate something like that to 40K, but there's room for greater interactivity.
I'd be all for limiting it to one Overwatch for a unit when being charged.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: Overwatch is tedious and takes time, but as a mechanic it makes sense, is thematic, and ultimately doesn't slow the game.
It seems like Overwatch was added as a consolation prize for shooting armies when they introduced 2D6" charge moves. There's an obvious solution: revert both changes. No overwatch, and fixed shorter charge moves. Boom: problem fixed, game sped up, rainbows and puppies live in peace and harmony!
My main issue with Overwatch is that it's not a choice. By letting you Overwatch every time until someone makes it in, there's no "Should I?" involved, it's just free extra shots that usually don't do much because you only hit on 6s.
It sort of made sense back when casualty removal was from the front of the unit. As despite inflicting very little damage, by taking out the front 1 or 2 models it would have a very meaningful impact on whether a charge was successful.
I'm not saying it was a fair mechanic, as assault units were at a big disadvantage even without it. But at least you could look at it from a game design perspective and see a logical interaction with the other assault rules.
It really should not have made it into 8th edition. With the changes to casualty removal in 8th, it just becomes nearly pointless dice rolling, barring the occasional army or unit having special rules to improve it to the point of relevancy. Since some armies like tau have it as their special thing, maybe they should keep some version of it. But as a core rule, it no longer has a purpose.
Arson Fire wrote: It sort of made sense back when casualty removal was from the front of the unit. As despite inflicting very little damage, by taking out the front 1 or 2 models it would have a very meaningful impact on whether a charge was successful.
I'm not saying it was a fair mechanic, as assault units were at a big disadvantage even without it. But at least you could look at it from a game design perspective and see a logical interaction with the other assault rules.
It really should not have made it into 8th edition. With the changes to casualty removal in 8th, it just becomes nearly pointless dice rolling, barring the occasional army or unit having special rules to improve it to the point of relevancy. Since some armies like tau have it as their special thing, maybe they should keep some version of it. But as a core rule, it no longer has a purpose.
It does though, it makes you balance the 'move out of turn' against 'maybe get shot a few times.'
Arson Fire wrote:It sort of made sense back when casualty removal was from the front of the unit. As despite inflicting very little damage, by taking out the front 1 or 2 models it would have a very meaningful impact on whether a charge was successful.
I'm not saying it was a fair mechanic, as assault units were at a big disadvantage even without it. But at least you could look at it from a game design perspective and see a logical interaction with the other assault rules.
It really should not have made it into 8th edition. With the changes to casualty removal in 8th, it just becomes nearly pointless dice rolling, barring the occasional army or unit having special rules to improve it to the point of relevancy. Since some armies like tau have it as their special thing, maybe they should keep some version of it. But as a core rule, it no longer has a purpose.
Absolutely this. Back when overwatch had a chance to impact charge range, it still had all the same problems it does today, but it was kind of "cinematic." Sure, tau denying orks the charge after they had to slog through no man's land wasn't necessarily great game design, but at least it was sort of cool to picture the tau army keeping the wave of charging foes at arm's length with desperate volleys of fire. Now, we've lost the cinematic excuse but still have the resulting slowdown and additional shooting/melee imbalance.
bullyboy wrote:agreed with earlier poster, falling back should allow melee units to swing needing 6s.
I see this suggested a lot, and I really dislike it. The main issue with falling back isn't that you don't damage the falling back unit enough; it's that the charging unit is left exposed to the enemy gunline after finally reaching melee. Your guard opponent doesn't care that you "reverse overwatched" a few of his falling back guardsmen. They're not in his list to survive. They're not falling back to turn around and shoot you later. They already did their job by getting you to charge them instead of some tanks, and now they're falling back so that those tanks can shoot you.
One of my preferred solutions to the falling back issue is to make units that were fallen back from untargetable out of X inches (with X being something like 6 or 12.) The result is that your opponent has to keep/bring his units close to your melee unit in order to shoot at it, thus leaving them more exposed to followup assaults in previous turns. Plus, unless his whole gunline is concentrated within X" of you, he's probably not going to be able to point all the guns at you that he'd normally like to.
JNAProductions wrote:My main issue with Overwatch is that it's not a choice. By letting you Overwatch every time until someone makes it in, there's no "Should I?" involved, it's just free extra shots that usually don't do much because you only hit on 6s.
Agreed. With that in mind, I do think that factions that have overwatch as their "thing" can keep some form of it for this reason. If Mordians retain overwatch, then you've opted to "buy" overwatch instead of cadian rerolls or catachan benefits. I also think that certain weapons can gain the "overwatch" rule that lets them overwatch as they do now (or possibly even at a better ballistics skill given that there would be so much less overwatch floating around).
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JimOnMars wrote: Biggest problem is that any unit gets to fire an infinite number of times. 8th made a bad rule simply unfair.
Disagree about the infinite overwatches being the real issue. It's pretty rare for me to charge a given unit with more than two or three of my own. And if I am charging with a dozen different units at the same enemy unit, it's pretty unusual for me to fail with so many charges that my opponent actually generates a meaningful amount of damage with their overwatch. Outside of units with an absurd number of shots, flamer-heavy units, and tau (who can only overwatch once anyway if they use supporting fire), most units don't reliably do much damage with overwatch.
The issues with overwatch as I see them are:
* It's normally a lot of dice rolling for not a lot of results. Meaning you slow the game down to accomplish little/nothing.
* When your overwatch gets lucky and actually does accomplish something, it feels unearned for the overwatcher and disempowering for the charger. I've had a dark lance ravager overwatch an unwounded Old One Eye to death. I didn't celebrate. I apologized.
* It's an advantage for shooty armies that punishes melee armies, and shooty armies really don't need another advantage over melee right now. Given that overwatch usually doesn't make a difference but favors the already advantaged gunlines when it does, it seems like it would make sense to simply remove the mechanic (with exceptions) and speed the game up as a result.
Honestly, I don't mind overwatch. If it was once per phase, that'd be cool.
As for melee overwatch, I'd rather the squad being ran from be given a free pile in of 3-6 inches to allow them to possibly capture another unit/catch the unit fleeing.
Unfortunately overwatch is a required mechanic for 8th, since we don't have bonus on charges.
In 7th if you multi charged, you lost your charge bonus. In 8th there wouldn't be any reason to not declare multi charges if it wasn't for overwatch.
That said, i don't like it.
It slows down the game and isn't working particularly effective without added rules. It also isn't a choice.
I would change it to be a full shooting, but the unit cannot fire in the next turn. It would represent the unit frantically reloading and shooting what they can at the enemy who got too close, but doing so they were distracted from shooting at the intended target.
Instead of applying a penalty to shooting (hit only on 6) which is absurd because it impacts elites more than grunts, you say than when you declare overwatch you roll a dice for every model. On a roll of 4+ they can shoot, -1 if they want to use heavy weapons, +1 if they want to shoot with a pistol.
You then convert all the overwatch bonuses of IH/Mordians/whatever to a bonus on that dice.
This creates a choice and more interaction. You could use your units to "scare" the opponent into shooting at it while trying some 10" or more inch charges, effectively representing forward units that try to grab the enemies attention.
The time spent doing overwatch is spared the next turn when not shooting.
warmaster21 wrote:IMO all dedicated melee units should have No escape 4+ see DE wyches
I love No Escape on my wyches, but it's not really a fix for the falling back issue. If we accept that falling back is a problem (because it lets gunline screens fall back and light up the melee units that had to cross the table to reach them), then making it so that you can only do the problematic thing some of the time means you'll still do the problematic thing some of the time. It reduces the frequency with which the problem occurs, but it doesn't deal with the root of the issue.
Carnikang wrote:Honestly, I don't mind overwatch. If it was once per phase, that'd be cool.
As for melee overwatch, I'd rather the squad being ran from be given a free pile in of 3-6 inches to allow them to possibly capture another unit/catch the unit fleeing.
But then units with a movement of 6" or less just automatically get caught some of the time while units with movement of 7"+ just autoescape all of the time. And if you randomize it, you're basically just creating a more complicated version of No Escape but with more time spent moving models.
This would potentially put the hypothetical gunline player in a position where they've messed up their positioning in a previous turn by putting non-essential units within 6" of a screen, but that's more of a punishment for not agonizing over precise model placement than an increase in interesting decisions. The gunliner will still be in a position where he'll just look at his screens and the units around them and then proceed to fall back if doing so will let him light up the enemy melee unit.
Nightlord1987 wrote:Not that it would see much use in 40k, I do like the Killteam approach of either fire Overwatch, or retreat 3 inches and screw your opponents charge.
I kinda hope 9th takes some of Killteam and some of Apocalypse to make a more interactive system for both players.
Agreed. Without some adjustments, however, wouldn't this just make it impossible to charge out of deepstrike without strats or charge range buffs?
Spoletta wrote:Unfortunately overwatch is a required mechanic for 8th, since we don't have bonus on charges.
In 7th if you multi charged, you lost your charge bonus. In 8th there wouldn't be any reason to not declare multi charges if it wasn't for overwatch.
That said, i don't like it.
It slows down the game and isn't working particularly effective without added rules. It also isn't a choice.
I would change it to be a full shooting, but the unit cannot fire in the next turn. It would represent the unit frantically reloading and shooting what they can at the enemy who got too close, but doing so they were distracted from shooting at the intended target.
Instead of applying a penalty to shooting (hit only on 6) which is absurd because it impacts elites more than grunts, you say than when you declare overwatch you roll a dice for every model. On a roll of 4+ they can shoot, -1 if they want to use heavy weapons, +1 if they want to shoot with a pistol.
You then convert all the overwatch bonuses of IH/Mordians/whatever to a bonus on that dice.
This creates a choice and more interaction. You could use your units to "scare" the opponent into shooting at it while trying some 10" or more inch charges, effectively representing forward units that try to grab the enemies attention.
The time spent doing overwatch is spared the next turn when not shooting.
Hmm. I don't know. You'd end up rolling fewer total dice doing it that way, but you'd probably end up rolling more individual pools of dice. Say you've got a scion squad with a laspistol sergeant, some hotshot lasgunners, and some plasmaguns. You'd have to roll 3 pools of dice to figure out which of those models get to fire overwatch, then roll the normal pools of to-hit/wound/saves. Except you'd have to roll your pistols separately from your lasguns because they'd hit on different numbers. And then you'd have a small added amount of book keeping as you track which units did and did not overwatch in the previous turn. And you are adding a small amount of complexity by adding in heavy weapon and pistol to-hit modifiers on top of that (which isn't a huge deal, but I'm a fan of trimming extra rules where reasonable).
So rather than adding complexity and book keeping to support a mechanic that favors already advantaged shooting armies, why not just drop the mechanic as a core rule (and turn it into a gimmick for Mordians, etc.) Is there a compelling reason to have overwatch in the game at all? I'd argue it adds complexity and a tiny amount of extra imbalance without adding interesting decisions or fun moments to the game. Unless you and your opponent really enjoy it when your charging unit gets evaporated by lucky overwatch. In which case, more power to you.
Eldarain wrote: It at the very least needs a mirror. When falling back a unit is subject to a full round of melee that hits on 6s. Sprinkle in some "this unit hits on 4s when units flee from them" Strategems.
Yup. This!
A charge is not automatic. You have to roll 2D6 and beat a number (distance). Same should apply for falling back (a 2D6Ld check or something).
A charge is risky. Whether it succeeds or not, you take overwatch. Same should apply for falling back (e.g. a "swing on 6s" by the opponent if you attempt to fall back).
Playing the 'deep strike charging is my game' army GSC, there's nothing terribly wrong with overwatch as is. It makes charging a consideration rather than a blanket yes whenever you have the opportunity.
Personally I wish the leadership rules reflected the old 'wipe out a squad in CC' rules, that would make it feel far more worth eating however much overwatch. But even still, it's just something to manage, even at t3 with a 5+ jockstrap save I'm rarely losing more than 2 models to it. Use the disposable mass you have up front to tie them up, and then move the more expensive models in behind those. You just can't constantly take MSU so you can absorb the loses.
And honestly, as GSC I use overwatch to my advantage constantly. It's real fun watching the thinking process kick in when I remind my opponent their counter charge from 5 inches is going to be eating 10 hand flamers in overwatch.
Overwatch is one of remarkably few ways positioning matters right now, even to my own gross benefit I'd rather not lose it.
It slows down the game and isn't working particularly effective without added rules. It also isn't a choice.
I would change it to be a full shooting, but the unit cannot fire in the next turn. It would represent the unit frantically reloading and shooting what they can at the enemy who got too close, but doing so they were distracted from shooting at the intended target.
Instead of applying a penalty to shooting (hit only on 6) which is absurd because it impacts elites more than grunts, you say than when you declare overwatch you roll a dice for every model. On a roll of 4+ they can shoot, -1 if they want to use heavy weapons, +1 if they want to shoot with a pistol.
You then convert all the overwatch bonuses of IH/Mordians/whatever to a bonus on that dice.
So your solution to something that slows the game down would be to slow it down even more? Rolling dice to see how many dice you can roll is one of the most annoying parts of 8th and pretty much epitomises its terrible design.
Overwatch is one of the most annoying elements of 40k for me, pretty much for the reasons everyone's mentioned. It involves no decisions, it doesn't reward good play and it further punishes close combat, which is absurd in a game that already favours shooting as much as it does. If overwatch stays I'd rather see it as an option to shoot instead of making attacks, but only after a successful charge and probably at the point you would have made your close combat attacks. So now a weak close combat unit like Guardsmen can swap their S3 4+ to hit attacks for double the number of S3 attacks hitting on 6s plus some higher strength attacks from their special/heavy weapons.
What I'd really like to see, though, is a complete rework of charging and close combat. Fall Back is a stupid rule with too few consequences and actually getting an effective close combat unit into assault is very difficult, while it's probably too easy to fly something like a Wave Serpent or Venom up the board and tag a unit to shut down their shooting without any real penalties for throwing a totally unsuitable unit into close combat. It's a bizarre paradox, but in terms of pure in-game effectiveness a Venom is probably "better" at close combat than Assault Terminators because it can reliably get there and all you care about achieving is denying a unit the ability to shoot next turn, not actually killing anything. GW dropped the ball when they massively increased movement distances in 8th so the first place to start would probably be reining them in a little bit. Then they could look at making Fall Back more punishing or making a unit that was fallen back from not quite such a sitting duck.
well that is good for horde style armies. But what about armies that have one big unit that does the charge. If it gets focused fired by buffed overwatch with re-rolls from a castel, it is ofte game over. It gets even worse if GW decides to not give you any range buffs just re-rolls, then half the time your not making it in to melee but still eat all the shots.
And honestly, as GSC I use overwatch to my advantage constantly. It's real fun watching the thinking process kick in when I remind my opponent their counter charge from 5 inches is going to be eating 10 hand flamers in overwatch.
To be fair, if your opponent takes those 10 hand flamers of overwatch, then they've simply failed to position their unit properly.
The hand flamers only have 6" range, so the opponent can move their unit to put a single guy slightly within 6" of one of the hand flamer models, so they take only 1 flamer of overwatch, and make it an easy 5" charge.
Maybe you can catch someone off guard from time to time, but personally I don't put much value in something that requires my opponent to make an easily correctable mistake in order to work.
Overwatch needs to be implemented in any shooting game. Either you do it like in 2nd or need a skill for it like in N17.
But one thing is certain: The "hitting only on 6" bs which doesn't takes account of the shooter's proficiency with a gun needs to go the way of the dodo.
I agree overwatch is a bad rule, it needs to go. It slows the game down, and usually does very little damage. Unless you play IH or AM, which is unfair. Why should these two factions get better overwatch, and the others dont ?
p5freak wrote: I agree overwatch is a bad rule, it needs to go. It slows the game down, and usually does very little damage. Unless you play IH or AM, which is unfair. Why should these two factions get better overwatch, and the others dont ?
Tau, get better, as do R&H. as do scourged.
it's more common then you think A, and B comparatively to multi charging and pile in shenanigans atm needed to make melee work it isn't taking that long.
I believe it ought to be a choice with an advantage and a disadvantage. If a unit gets charged, either it choses to fire at the incoming foe in hopes of blunting the charge by causing a few casualties, or either they brace themselves for the impact by drawing their knives, holstering their guns or something.
So in case of Overwatch, the unit suffers a minor bonus in CC, like striking ALWAYS last (and nothing can allow it to strike at any other point in time), or something more severe like reroll Hit rolls of 6 in CC to portray their unreadiness to fight correctly.
In the case of Bracing, the unit doesn't shoot, but suffers neither from any malus because of being engaged in CC. The charging unit still gets to fight first like it is the case today but can seize the initiative with stratagems and whatnot.
Additionally they should really implement back a system of pursuit or malus when a unit disengages, as it is it's plainly dumb to assume that 10 Berzerkers will stay right there when their Fire Warriors targets just draws back. And it shouldn't be hits on 6s like I saw earlier in the thread, you hit someone easier when he's turning his back to you and don't defend himself after all isn't it ?
But all this would probably see life only in the next edition, as there's just too many mechanics we'd have to change for this to happen, and several codex entries or stratagems.
Arson Fire wrote: Maybe you can catch someone off guard from time to time, but personally I don't put much value in something that requires my opponent to make an easily correctable mistake in order to work.
I am saying counter charge, as in my charge failed to work and they're considering their options. I swarm like hell and do my best to box the enemy in even in the case I fail a charge, I've left people with out other options than charging or eating a charge the next turn. Typically in cases where holding an objective is important. Go a head, pull back out of objective range to get the charge you can't re roll without wasting CP on it. You'll have to move far enough back to make closing back in a question to avoid the hand flamers, and that's even more than I could ask for in such things. These aren't specialized melee units, find a reason to make them not be able to move or not want to move and you can hammer them with things like this.
Typically I pull things like dropping a particularly large unit around someone at 3 inches, or drop 2 or 3 units on opposing sides of them and see if I can get them where I want them. It's really not that hard to pull off, it's just a matter of pulling the enemy out of their castle which objectives are great for.
Arson Fire wrote: Maybe you can catch someone off guard from time to time, but personally I don't put much value in something that requires my opponent to make an easily correctable mistake in order to work.
I am saying counter charge, as in my charge failed to work and they're considering their options. I swarm like hell and do my best to box the enemy in even in the case I fail a charge, I've left people with out other options than charging or eating a charge the next turn. Typically in cases where holding an objective is important. Go a head, pull back out of objective range to get the charge you can't re roll without wasting CP on it. You'll have to move far enough back to make closing back in a question to avoid the hand flamers, and that's even more than I could ask for in such things. These aren't specialized melee units, find a reason to make them not be able to move or not want to move and you can hammer them with things like this.
Typically I pull things like dropping a particularly large unit around someone at 3 inches, or drop 2 or 3 units on opposing sides of them and see if I can get them where I want them. It's really not that hard to pull off, it's just a matter of pulling the enemy out of their castle which objectives are great for.
There's no easy way to say this, but I think you might be playing against...well, let's just call them subpar opponents. Screening is both required and extremely simple to do in 40k at any reasonable level of competence. Anybody allowing you to drop units on multiple sides of them, even with the various Deep Strike tricks GSC can pull off, is a bit of an idiot. Also, making a 6" charge is hardly the most difficult thing in the world - about 72% chance in fact. There's no reason to pull back out of hand flamer range for next turn, especially since that would be out of charge range anyway so doesn't make any sense if you're trying to counter charge.
I find 40k takes a really long time because it assumes every unit might do about eight things a turn (move, cast power, shoot, charge, fight, deny power, overwatch, fight again), and that's without stratagems allowing you to do even more things. I recognize usually most units won't do eight things a turn but adding more steps to the turn to need to check whether units can do/whether it'd be a good idea for units to do independent of whether they actually do them in the end is just going to make things slow down even more.
And honestly, as GSC I use overwatch to my advantage constantly. It's real fun watching the thinking process kick in when I remind my opponent their counter charge from 5 inches is going to be eating 10 hand flamers in overwatch.
To be fair, if your opponent takes those 10 hand flamers of overwatch, then they've simply failed to position their unit properly.
The hand flamers only have 6" range, so the opponent can move their unit to put a single guy slightly within 6" of one of the hand flamer models, so they take only 1 flamer of overwatch, and make it an easy 5" charge.
Maybe you can catch someone off guard from time to time, but personally I don't put much value in something that requires my opponent to make an easily correctable mistake in order to work.
Oh yeah. That mechanic, where you can avoid getting shot by a flamethrower as you close to point-blank range as long as you start far enough away.
Actual footage of charging from outside Overwatch range:
I don't mind that overwatch is automatic and not a choice.
I don't find rolling dice boring or a waste of time (and always find this argument a bit strange, as fundamentally thats the core mechanic to the game alongside "pick up models").
My problem is that its so swingy.
Nothing, Nothing, Nothing, oh look your chaos lord took a lascannon to the face and is dead.
Which isn't indicative of good play by you or your opponent - its pure luck.
To some degree the whole game is about luck - but this always feels especially egregious.
The way it works also means you can build up shooting units that have a critical mass, and will, with reasonable luck, inflict terrible damage on anything that has the temerity to actually charge you directly. So you end up with this stupid "I'm charging X, but will position in such a way to tag unit Y in exchange for a couple of punches even though I can't now attack that unit because I didn't charge". Some would say this sort of thing is what makes playing an assault army fun - but I feel in some ways its not explicitly designed for by GW, and it feels a bit gamey.
AnomanderRake wrote: I find 40k takes a really long time because it assumes every unit might do about eight things a turn (move, cast power, shoot, charge, fight, deny power, overwatch, fight again), and that's without stratagems allowing you to do even more things. I recognize usually most units won't do eight things a turn but adding more steps to the turn to need to check whether units can do/whether it'd be a good idea for units to do independent of whether they actually do them in the end is just going to make things slow down even more.
A lot of post-40K wargames (eg Starship Troopers or Dust) have gotten around this by introducing an actions mechanic.
Typically each unit gets two actions, which can be spent to do things like move, shoot, use an ability, take cover, go on overwatch, etc, but can't do the same action twice. Then in addition, you can spend both actions to do one thing better- eg move faster, or shoot with sustained fire.
This then seamlessly blends with a reactions system. Enemy is charging you before you've had a chance to act? You can spend an action immediately to fire on the charging unit (often at reduced effectiveness), or move to try and evade the charge. Either way, when your unit activates, it'll only have one action available. Throw in alternating activation and you get some interestingly dynamic gameplay.
In the end units can't do eight things per turn so you have to make more choices about exactly what your units will do at any given moment, rather than just iterating through the phases and taking the actions available to you (eg I have little reason /not/ to try casting with all my psykers whenever I can). But this would represent a pretty massive departure from how 40K currently works, so it'll likely never happen.
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Tyel wrote: I don't find rolling dice boring or a waste of time (and always find this argument a bit strange, as fundamentally thats the core mechanic to the game alongside "pick up models").
Rolling dice is an action resolution mechanic, not a gameplay mechanic (ie something that gives you decision space to interact with the game and your opponent).
A good designer is always looking to reduce the amount of time spent on the mechanical tasks that are needed to facilitate gameplay. Placing and removing tokens is another common example.
If a mechanic involves a lot of tedious dice-rolling for ultimately little impact on the game or opportunity for meaningful decision-making, then it's a bad mechanic. This isn't Yahtzee; we're not rolling dice for its own sake.
Tyel wrote: My problem is that its so swingy.
Nothing, Nothing, Nothing, oh look your chaos lord took a lascannon to the face and is dead.
Which isn't indicative of good play by you or your opponent - its pure luck.
To some degree the whole game is about luck - but this always feels especially egregious.
The way it works also means you can build up shooting units that have a critical mass, and will, with reasonable luck, inflict terrible damage on anything that has the temerity to actually charge you directly. So you end up with this stupid "I'm charging X, but will position in such a way to tag unit Y in exchange for a couple of punches even though I can't now attack that unit because I didn't charge". Some would say this sort of thing is what makes playing an assault army fun - but I feel in some ways its not explicitly designed for by GW, and it feels a bit gamey.
If your Lord gets popped in the mouth by a lascannon then you've done something wrong - either by not supporting him or taking an unnecessary risk. Even if you were forced into that scenario you still had a choice.
Tyel wrote: My problem is that its so swingy.
Nothing, Nothing, Nothing, oh look your chaos lord took a lascannon to the face and is dead.
Which isn't indicative of good play by you or your opponent - its pure luck.
To some degree the whole game is about luck - but this always feels especially egregious.
The way it works also means you can build up shooting units that have a critical mass, and will, with reasonable luck, inflict terrible damage on anything that has the temerity to actually charge you directly. So you end up with this stupid "I'm charging X, but will position in such a way to tag unit Y in exchange for a couple of punches even though I can't now attack that unit because I didn't charge". Some would say this sort of thing is what makes playing an assault army fun - but I feel in some ways its not explicitly designed for by GW, and it feels a bit gamey.
If your Lord gets popped in the mouth by a lascannon then you've done something wrong - either by not supporting him or taking an unnecessary risk. Even if you were forced into that scenario you still had a choice.
The choice being charge the lascannon and rely on it missing when it has to hit on a 6 or not charge and get shot next turn by the lascannon at full BS?
I've had Leman Russ Demolishers annihilate a terminator squads on overwatch a few times, and I've had a ten man squad of lychguard cut in half by hellblasters on overwatch. As was said above, you don't feel good when you do it to someone, just apologetic, and it sucks when it's done to you because it's really just a lottery on whether you get your unit to combat.
What's been suggested already where there needs to be a consequence makes sense.
Maybe if it worked like denial on the psychic phase, where you can only OW one squad, but being tagged by a charging unit doesn't deny you your chance. Considering charges are meant to be concurrent, it wouldn't break immersion too much.
Or, if you chose to OW, then you can't fall back the following movement phase.
My IG squads are too effective at stopping assaults. They just take the hit, if they die, I can then delete the assaulting unit on my turn, and if they survive, they fall back, and I delete the unit.
The effort of getting value out of assault units just doesn't compare to the ease of denying or punishing it.
It is starting to become a joke in my gaming group that my Bad Moons can't hit anything unless it is in Overwatch where have been managing a few hits/kills. I am not really bothered by the Overwatch mechanics in general. As someone that almost always plays a more melee focused armies, it is just something you take into consideration before the assault.
Nightlord1987 wrote:Not that it would see much use in 40k, I do like the Killteam approach of either fire Overwatch, or retreat 3 inches and screw your opponents charge. I kinda hope 9th takes some of Killteam and some of Apocalypse to make a more interactive system for both players.
I forgot that wasn't allowed in full 40k. I do agree that it should be there though. I don't make use of it all that often in Kill Team, but it is nice to know you have it in your pocket when some wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall maniac is tying to grab your neck, tap the back of your favorite head up against the hab block wall, looking you crooked in the eye, and asking you if you paid your dues and tries a 10" charge. You can just stare that big sucker right back in the eye, and remember what ol' Jack Burton always says at a time like that: "Have you paid your dues, Jack? Yes sir, the check is in the mail." and I fall back 3" turning that into a 12" charge.
catbarf wrote:A lot of post-40K wargames (eg Starship Troopers or Dust) have gotten around this by introducing an actions mechanic.
I think Dust Warfare is a great example of a post-WWII weapons game can still be IGOUGO if the designers want it to be. I still miss Warfare's Command and Reaction mechanics. I think Andy Chambers did a great job with that one.
***
Coming from more games that get a free attack leaving melee than don't, not getting an attack in 40k always feels odd to me. Coupled with no reaction to say to try and move in to cover usually leaving a unit out in the open to get gunned Sonny Corleone style feels off to me. I am usually the assaulting player and I usually put some effort into getting that melee to happen. A lot of my melee units are great killing things fast (think Reivers) but given enough time they can chew through stuff most of the time. I never to like going to the effort to get into melee, get a round of attacks and have the unit I was bullying bugger off while his friends proceed to gun down my unit. Sure, be careful who and what you assault, but I would rather have a thing happen than not and usually get stuck in because it is more fun than not. I do agree that that free attack probably shouldn't be a full Weapon Skill. I don't know if 6s is going too far though.
The choice being charge the lascannon and rely on it missing when it has to hit on a 6 or not charge and get shot next turn by the lascannon at full BS?
That entirely depends on what units are left on the table for screening. If you HAVE to make the choice you go in with the full knowledge that it can go south, which is no different than a lascannon shooting a vehicle with 6 wounds left and hoping for a 6.
I think it would be cool if they brought back the notion from 2nd edition where you put a unit on overwatch, and that unit could shoot during an opponent's charge phase.
Oh yeah. That mechanic, where you can avoid getting shot by a flamethrower as you close to point-blank range as long as you start far enough away.
Actual footage of charging from outside Overwatch range:
Perhaps they could port the "overwatch" that certain units have in AoS: you only get to make the shooting attack if the enemy ends up in combat range as a result of their charge.
nurgle5 wrote: Perhaps they could port the "overwatch" that certain units have in AoS: you only get to make the shooting attack if the enemy ends up in combat range as a result of their charge.
Yeah, I think it would be easy enough to have it such that if the enemy unit successfully charges, any weapons that were previously out of range get to Overwatch.
I'd extend it to LOS, too, as the charge from around a corner feels similarly goofy.
You still benefit from charging from a distance or around cover, in that you'll only get Overwatched if you actually roll high enough to succeed, but it's not the cheap trick that it feels like currently.
nurgle5 wrote: Perhaps they could port the "overwatch" that certain units have in AoS: you only get to make the shooting attack if the enemy ends up in combat range as a result of their charge.
Yeah, I think it would be easy enough to have it such that if the enemy unit successfully charges, any weapons that were previously out of range get to Overwatch.
I'd extend it to LOS, too, as the charge from around a corner feels similarly goofy.
You still benefit from charging from a distance or around cover, in that you'll only get Overwatched if you actually roll high enough to succeed, but it's not the cheap trick that it feels like currently.
So feth melee, right?
It's already weaker than shooting, but now you want to make it impossible to charge D-Scythe Wraithguard without eating a faceful of S10 hits?
the game needs some sort of reaction mechanic, the only change I'd make concerns auto hit weapons.
have anything that rolls to hit, hit on a 6 as now
have anything that doesn't roll to hit, roll to hit, hitting on models BS with any applicable modifiers
perhaps also stop any <HEAVY> weapons from firing, just <PISTOL>, <RAPID FIRE> and <ASSAULT> weapons, would also allow all weapons to fire at any point as the enemy closes over 4" away
the game definitely needs a penalty for withdrawing from combat, I like the old "free hit" method, let every model in the unit being withdrawn from make one attack that inflicts one hit automatically - roll to wound, save etc as usual.
elites departing grots are probably ok, withdrawing in good order, grots departing elites will probably suffer more
On the subject of attacking units that flee from combat make consolidation a part of the exchange. Make withdrawing from melee a beginning of movement phase action along with disembarking and the withdrawing player now has considerations about wussing out.
Did I leave enough of a buffer to prevent the attacking unit from consolidating into more units and forcing them to forgo their shooting by wimping out before the assault phase?
Was the attacking unit’s charge effective enough to get them in range of another unit?
Can the attacking unit kill enough to even get consolidation?
The choice being charge the lascannon and rely on it missing when it has to hit on a 6 or not charge and get shot next turn by the lascannon at full BS?
That entirely depends on what units are left on the table for screening. If you HAVE to make the choice you go in with the full knowledge that it can go south, which is no different than a lascannon shooting a vehicle with 6 wounds left and hoping for a 6.
I guess you can look at it like this - but as said, its a bit of a false choice. Eat the overwatch or eat a full BS shooting. Really though it doesn't change the fact swingyness isn't very enjoyable. Its just bad luck hitting you in the face with a very high game-state impact..
Its a similar story when you take a load of casualties... and then fail the charge roll anyway, staying stood still.
I don't really get the idea that overwatch is there to stop you multi-charging everything. I guess the effect is that - but really its there as a legacy of a mechanic that has a checkered past going back 25~ years or whatever and had this incarnation for about a decade.
The equivalent of overwatch isn't getting to attack withdrawing enemies on 6. Its "overmovement" - you can move D6 inches forward if targeted by an enemy. Or getting to shoot back yourself on 6s.
I mean Infinity the game sort of has this system. But really you are talking about a fundamental change to 40k which I don't see happening. The closest you might get is that if you fail a charge, you can still move the higher of the 2 D6 forward - or something like that. But this is probably quite marginal.
I like Overwatch - especially since it was annoying as hell that vehicles equipped with Heavy flamers and the like used to just sit there when they were charged.
I def agree there should be a generic "No Escape" rule and that units like Wyches should get bonuses - something else that would have made a Succubus/Lelith more liek the lore was having a aura bonus to this ability
It's already weaker than shooting, but now you want to make it impossible to charge D-Scythe Wraithguard without eating a faceful of S10 hits?
I play melee Tyranids, dude.
I'm not interested in preserving illogical, 'gamey' mechanics solely because they work in my favor. Being able to hide units outside of LOS or outside charge range to avoid overwatch fire shouldn't be the trick that allows melee armies to overcome Overwatch.
I already said I'd like to see Overwatch overhauled to involve some kind of tradeoff, so that it's not the automatic, brainless response that it currently is. That'd make it weaker overall while still allowing flamers to function like they're supposed to.
catbarf wrote: I'm not interested in preserving illogical, 'gamey' mechanics solely because they work in my favor. Being able to hide units outside of LOS or outside charge range to avoid overwatch fire shouldn't be the trick that allows melee armies to overcome Overwatch.
"The Lictor moved without a sound as it stalked through the broken ruins of Hive Locina. It's was created for the ambush, ash peppered carapace blending in perfectly with the grey wastes that choked the service roads. It lacked the clicking of citain rubbing together that the adhoc defenders had grown accustomed, flushing out the Tyranid invaders from the claustrophobic cooridores that snaked through massive cargo containers and ancient, bellowing machines. The hunter drew closer to it's prey, it's acute senses allowed it to map the area to a pin point accuracy. A squad of ten guardsmen had taken a position on the second level of a broken down warehouse overlooking a gate they were using as a funnel. It's auto cannon team firing away into the wave of insects that were surging through, Termagants dying in piles under supressive lasgun fire.
It heard 1st Sergeant Leandros shouting orders to his men. The perfect hunter was made to eliminate this one man, who had become a thorn in the hive's side. It had slipped through the overlapping sights of the men's peers, shifted through the tanglewire defenses like a ghost. It couched behind a buttress riddled with prayers to the Emperor, one of many sacred pillars to glorify the Imperium. Now to be used against it's defenders. It could hear the men's breath, little clouds showing they had their backs turned. t was a mere 4 feet away from the team, its powerful legs could easily catapult itself besides the firing line to rip the human apart with the Lictor's rending talons. Along with the men besides him. As din of battle reached a crusendo, It leaped. There would be no warning, and now no escape.
Then, suddenly, Heavy Weapon Specialist Yarvic grabbed the bulk of his weapon autocannon, lifting it with both arms easily where previous he could barely drag it to position with help from his comrade. He spun a complete 180, pointing it in the direction of the ambush predator and fired the heavy weapon from the hip. The first shot went wide, bu the second embedded itself inside the Lictor's torso. Simultaneously, the other guardsmen turned upon the creature, lasguns ablazing, a few scoring perfect hits upon the enemy they did not know was there nano seconds ago. Only the armor of the creature saved it from a humiliating death, but it would be for naught as Private Jenkins fired a frag grenade into it's skull. The localized explosion reduced the lictor's body to pulp while the fragmentation miraculously avoided the braced men, the ruined body flying over their head before crumpling to the floor below them with a wet thud.
Sergeant Leandros gave the dead tyranid a slightly perturbed look, then glanced to the men as they turned back to the front as if nothing happened, then shrugs and begins shouting orders again."
There's a lot of problems with Overwatch, as mentioned before, but if we wanted to talk about how gamey a mechanic is, there's a few things to throw on the pile: *It's an Out of Sequence Attack. While there is ways to get extra actions, but these generally follow a certain line of progression in order make a flow out of an ordered system. Overwatch is the only real exception out of that. It's the one of two times Reactions exist in the system: Overwatch, and being able to attack in both fight phases. (both of which benefit being charged over charging, especially with fall back) The closest an assault unit has to an out of sequence ability is a charge move, since it's movement that's not in the Movement phase, but there's a trade off since you can't do that *And* advance without buying something extra to make it work.
*The Trigger for the Reaction is based purely on the action of the player, not the models as persons. You can run a conga line in front of the enemy army and they won't react to your movement. It's only when a charge is called does Overwatch happen. So the special weapon team full of meltaguns running at your tank isn't worth spending ammo on but the guy swinging a sword around is? And since the reaction is merely on the charge, you can get hurt even if you failed the charge in the first place, which is just rubbing salt in the wound.
I think there's a problem with charge reactions as a whole, and that generally because there's no "shooting reactions" in kind, which is just part of the overarching gap between Shooting and Melee: Shooting gets a lot of tools to do what they need to do, while Melee get a rock and some sticks and are told "figure it out."
I haven't had much trouble with it. I get the points being made. Does seem silly units can shoot repeatedly. But find in actual gameplay they hardly ever hit. And if they get charged by my assault squad or Furioso dread, they also get the worst of it...
catbarf wrote: I'm not interested in preserving illogical, 'gamey' mechanics solely because they work in my favor. Being able to hide units outside of LOS or outside charge range to avoid overwatch fire shouldn't be the trick that allows melee armies to overcome Overwatch.
"The Lictor moved without a sound as it stalked through the broken ruins of Hive Locina. It's was created for the ambush, ash peppered carapace blending in perfectly with the grey wastes that choked the service roads. It lacked the clicking of citain rubbing together that the adhoc defenders had grown accustomed, flushing out the Tyranid invaders from the claustrophobic cooridores that snaked through massive cargo containers and ancient, bellowing machines. The hunter drew closer to it's prey, it's acute senses allowed it to map the area to a pin point accuracy. A squad of ten guardsmen had taken a position on the second level of a broken down warehouse overlooking a gate they were using as a funnel. It's auto cannon team firing away into the wave of insects that were surging through, Termagants dying in piles under supressive lasgun fire.
It heard 1st Sergeant Leandros shouting orders to his men. The perfect hunter was made to eliminate this one man, who had become a thorn in the hive's side. It had slipped through the overlapping sights of the men's peers, shifted through the tanglewire defenses like a ghost. It couched behind a buttress riddled with prayers to the Emperor, one of many sacred pillars to glorify the Imperium. Now to be used against it's defenders. It could hear the men's breath, little clouds showing they had their backs turned. t was a mere 4 feet away from the team, its powerful legs could easily catapult itself besides the firing line to rip the human apart with the Lictor's rending talons. Along with the men besides him. As din of battle reached a crusendo, It leaped. There would be no warning, and now no escape.
Then, suddenly, Heavy Weapon Specialist Yarvic grabbed the bulk of his weapon autocannon, lifting it with both arms easily where previous he could barely drag it to position with help from his comrade. He spun a complete 180, pointing it in the direction of the ambush predator and fired the heavy weapon from the hip. The first shot went wide, bu the second embedded itself inside the Lictor's torso. Simultaneously, the other guardsmen turned upon the creature, lasguns ablazing, a few scoring perfect hits upon the enemy they did not know was there nano seconds ago. Only the armor of the creature saved it from a humiliating death, but it would be for naught as Private Jenkins fired a frag grenade into it's skull. The localized explosion reduced the lictor's body to pulp while the fragmentation miraculously avoided the braced men, the ruined body flying over their head before crumpling to the floor below them with a wet thud.
Sergeant Leandros gave the dead tyranid a slightly perturbed look, then glanced to the men as they turned back to the front as if nothing happened, then shrugs and begins shouting orders again."
There's a lot of problems with Overwatch, as mentioned before, but if we wanted to talk about how gamey a mechanic is, there's a few things to throw on the pile:
*It's an Out of Sequence Attack. While there is ways to get extra actions, but these generally follow a certain line of progression in order make a flow out of an ordered system. Overwatch is the only real exception out of that. It's the one of two times Reactions exist in the system: Overwatch, and being able to attack in both fight phases. (both of which benefit being charged over charging, especially with fall back) The closest an assault unit has to an out of sequence ability is a charge move, since it's movement that's not in the Movement phase, but there's a trade off since you can't do that *And* advance without buying something extra to make it work.
*The Trigger for the Reaction is based purely on the action of the player, not the models as persons. You can run a conga line in front of the enemy army and they won't react to your movement. It's only when a charge is called does Overwatch happen. So the special weapon team full of meltaguns running at your tank isn't worth spending ammo on but the guy swinging a sword around is? And since the reaction is merely on the charge, you can get hurt even if you failed the charge in the first place, which is just rubbing salt in the wound.
I think there's a problem with charge reactions as a whole, and that generally because there's no "shooting reactions" in kind, which is just part of the overarching gap between Shooting and Melee: Shooting gets a lot of tools to do what they need to do, while Melee get a rock and some sticks and are told "figure it out."
Thank you for this, I really enjoyed reading it! Especially the frag grenade part. I use frag grenades for overwatch whenever I can. It's like telling an old favorite joke or doing something goofy because it's fun, like starting a food fight.
I agree that overwatch as it is now needs to be fixed, and that there should be a penalty/consequence to falling back.
I disliked the ability to completely wipe out a unit if it failed to fallback or huge sweeping advances where a until could magically advance 12" extra because it won a combat, and hitting on a 6 isn't really worth the dice roll most of the time, so I'm not sure what the answer to that would be. Maybe a roll off between the attacking and falling back player - both make an advance roll (Move plus d6) if the falling back unit wins it can fall back as up to this distance, if the attacking unit scores equal to or higher, the other unit is unable to fall back.
As for overwatch itself, i'd only allow it once per charge phase, and the unit firing overwatch can fire as full BS but can only fire at the charging unit, and only weapon type assault, pistol or grenade.
Alkaline_Hound wrote: Out of all the blunders that GW committed during 6th edition overwatch is probably the biggest since it has had the longest lasting impact in this game, and I wonder why it wasn't removed from the rule set once 8th hit. Now why do I think that overwatch is a horrible rule, simple, it rewards bad gameplay of getting your shooting units into melee. The only way this would be good was if deep strike charging became a too big of an issue, but you could simply remove that instead of nerfing all melee accross the board.
Overwatch is fine. The mechanic is implemented poorly, that's all. It would be much better in an AA system. And no-one was intentionally allowing their units to be charged and hoping for 6's.
Alkaline_Hound wrote: Out of all the blunders that GW committed during 6th edition overwatch is probably the biggest since it has had the longest lasting impact in this game, and I wonder why it wasn't removed from the rule set once 8th hit. Now why do I think that overwatch is a horrible rule, simple, it rewards bad gameplay of getting your shooting units into melee. The only way this would be good was if deep strike charging became a too big of an issue, but you could simply remove that instead of nerfing all melee accross the board.
Overwatch is fine. The mechanic is implemented poorly, that's all. It would be much better in an AA system. And no-one was intentionally allowing their units to be charged and hoping for 6's.
I'm not sure if if there is a better way to implement it. Lets talk about how Overwatch worked in 1st-2nd edition (This is information I've read from other people, I did not play 1st-2nd personally, feel free to correct me).
In those editions, you could choose to forgo shooting in your shooting phase to instead fire in the opponent's movement. I believe this did come with a -1 penalty. This was important for dealing with some mechanics like grav-tanks ability to make pop-up attacks (Basically jump-shoot-jump), but the problem there was that it allowed you to shoot enemies that were trying to move out of cover or into LoS. Combined with Smoke (Andy Chambers had a nice rant about smoke here) which created games were both sides would sit in one spot, waiting for the other to move out of safety. This resulted in boring games which were won and lost based on who'd get bored faster rather than skill.
Alkaline_Hound wrote: Out of all the blunders that GW committed during 6th edition overwatch is probably the biggest since it has had the longest lasting impact in this game, and I wonder why it wasn't removed from the rule set once 8th hit. Now why do I think that overwatch is a horrible rule, simple, it rewards bad gameplay of getting your shooting units into melee. The only way this would be good was if deep strike charging became a too big of an issue, but you could simply remove that instead of nerfing all melee accross the board.
Overwatch is fine. The mechanic is implemented poorly, that's all. It would be much better in an AA system. And no-one was intentionally allowing their units to be charged and hoping for 6's.
I'm not sure if if there is a better way to implement it. Lets talk about how Overwatch worked in 1st-2nd edition (This is information I've read from other people, I did not play 1st-2nd personally, feel free to correct me).
In those editions, you could choose to forgo shooting in your shooting phase to instead fire in the opponent's movement. I believe this did come with a -1 penalty. This was important for dealing with some mechanics like grav-tanks ability to make pop-up attacks (Basically jump-shoot-jump), but the problem there was that it allowed you to shoot enemies that were trying to move out of cover or into LoS. Combined with Smoke (Andy Chambers had a nice rant about smoke here) which created games were both sides would sit in one spot, waiting for the other to move out of safety. This resulted in boring games which were won and lost based on who'd get bored faster rather than skill.
i find that the MEDGe version works well. Units can fire defensively under certain conditions, including being charged. That unit takes a morale test- if they pass, they fire at full BS, if they fail, they're hitting on sixes. The game also has a morale system that is integral to how the game plays, is AA instead of IGOUGO, and admittedly, is more focused on shooting than melee.
To me the casualties inflicted by overwatch should each reduce the charge dice by 1. The entire point of shooting overwatch is to deter the charging unit from actually pushing the assault home.
Likewise, the defending unit should be forced to choose between firing overwatch or getting to fight during the ensuing fight phase. I also wouldn't make all overwatch shooting hit on 6's. Some measurement (you are already measuring for the charge anyways) that reduces the effectiveness of the overwatch the shorter the charge distance.
I might reduce the number of flamer hits from d6 to d3 (maybe limiting the max hits to 1 hit for every 2" of charge distance) if it is a short charge. Restricting them to needing to be in range at the start of is silly when the charge still needs to go through the wall of fire they are putting up to defend themselves.
We don't use overwatch in our games, but use a dedicated reaction phase instead. The current player may either move OR shoot first with all units. The enemy player may then opt to react to any enemy unit in LOS and within 12" of the current player's units with a successful leadership test, or move D3". Heavy weapons may only shoot in a 45 degree arc and ordnance may only shoot straight ahead. Half of the hits are counted, rounding up. No models beyond 12" are affected.
Then the current player moves or shoots, whichever was not done earlier. The defender may react now if he did not do so earlier. The current player may then conduct assault moves.
The way I would change overwatch is make it a decision.
You can take that overwatch if you want, but on the following turn you wont get to shoot in the normal shooting phase or at the very least you wont get to swing in the following assault phase.
Eihnlazer wrote: The way I would change overwatch is make it a decision.
You can take that overwatch if you want, but on the following turn you wont get to shoot in the normal shooting phase or at the very least you wont get to swing in the following assault phase.
Still a no brain choice: gettng charged by genestealer? I'll gladly shoot you again cause the unit won't be alive next turn to shoot or to swing in the ensuing fight phase
I agree it should be an active decision. I also remember the days of "Sitzkreig", having witnessed at least one game where both sides sat still, passing on moving and just Overwatching until someone had to move in the last turn in the hopes of taking an objective to win the game (and paying the price for it).
Personally, I'd wish it would be a mode you put a unit to instead of firing. It's -1 to hit but otherwise normal BS, and you can only shoot at units at 1/2 range or less (charging OR moving in Overwatch range).
As for falling back out of melee, I feel you should forgo your melee attacks to do so, but that would move disengaging from the movement phase to the combat phase. Maybe make disengaging 1" or 3" (just enough to move away from the enemy), so that the subsequent move in your own turn isn't so massive. (This would have the side effect that the disengaging unit basically acts normally on its turn, but has now eaten a turn of melee without striking back, and is likely to get charged once again).
Could still built some special abilities around these - perhaps Tau have a stratagem that allow a unit to Overwatch after normal firing, or a commander/warlord ability to allow one unit to Overwatch after shooting. Could also have something like Beserkers having ability to prevent (or make it harder) for enemies to Disengage or a stratagem that cancels an enemy unit's attempt to disengage and so forth.
That's really the way I prefer things - give a player an option with consequences instead of dumb random chance and tactical options to enhance or compensate for these abilities with strategic choices of play.
Stormonu wrote: I agree it should be an active decision. I also remember the days of "Sitzkreig", having witnessed at least one game where both sides sat still, passing on moving and just Overwatching until someone had to move in the last turn in the hopes of taking an objective to win the game (and paying the price for it).
Personally, I'd wish it would be a mode you put a unit to instead of firing. It's -1 to hit but otherwise normal BS, and you can only shoot at units at 1/2 range or less (charging OR moving in Overwatch range).
As for falling back out of melee, I feel you should forgo your melee attacks to do so, but that would move disengaging from the movement phase to the combat phase. Maybe make disengaging 1" or 3" (just enough to move away from the enemy), so that the subsequent move in your own turn isn't so massive. (This would have the side effect that the disengaging unit basically acts normally on its turn, but has now eaten a turn of melee without striking back, and is likely to get charged once again).
Could still built some special abilities around these - perhaps Tau have a stratagem that allow a unit to Overwatch after normal firing, or a commander/warlord ability to allow one unit to Overwatch after shooting. Could also have something like Beserkers having ability to prevent (or make it harder) for enemies to Disengage or a stratagem that cancels an enemy unit's attempt to disengage and so forth.
That's really the way I prefer things - give a player an option with consequences instead of dumb random chance and tactical options to enhance or compensate for these abilities with strategic choices of play.
I like these ideas.
Something like overwatch belongs in a wargame but it is currently not done so well.
Making it more of a part of the game giving some armies like tau and perhaps necrons more overwatchiness than others makes sense.
Removing overwatch misses out on what shuld be an interesting and exciting strategic dimension of the game.
Unit1126PLL wrote: *brings knife to a gunfight, complains games are unbalanced*
*Game explodes trying to balance knives in a gunfight*
"Devs suck"
That's probably why.
The game presents a close combat army as a perfectly valid choice. There are a lot of armies that are primarily Close Combat, and some few that are PURE Close Combat.
It's like 3.5 D&D-the game presents a level 10 Fighter as equal to a level 10 Druid. When the Druid is astronomically more useful and powerful than the Fighter, then yes, I'm going to blame the devs for presenting two choices as equal when they're anything but.
Unit1126PLL wrote: *brings knife to a gunfight, complains games are unbalanced*
*Game explodes trying to balance knives in a gunfight*
"Devs suck"
That's probably why.
The game presents a close combat army as a perfectly valid choice. There are a lot of armies that are primarily Close Combat, and some few that are PURE Close Combat.
It's like 3.5 D&D-the game presents a level 10 Fighter as equal to a level 10 Druid. When the Druid is astronomically more useful and powerful than the Fighter, then yes, I'm going to blame the devs for presenting two choices as equal when they're anything but.
If they
Elbows wrote:Remove melee armies.
then they aren't presenting it as a valid choice, mmh?
Numerous reasons. Close-combat is suitable in the lore and narrative of the 40K universe but makes next to zero sense in a "balanced" (i.e. points equivalent) wargame.
Should you be using Daemons in normal Matched Play? Nope, probably not. They're not suited to it, and only exist because GW realized they could double-dip their model lines to both fan-bases.
Why do I need evidence? You asked my opinion, I've given it to you. A game which is based around science fiction and missile weapons should not pander to a handful of silly armies based around running across the field with swords.
Those style armies are better off reserved for narrative or special scenarios which better represent their presence in the lore of 40K. Desires by players to "make everything equal" just dumbs down the entire game. It's akin to someone trying to referee a game between paintballers and LARPers. Everyone loses.
I mean, to no present melee as viable and to avoid lying to any potential customers, you'd ALSO have to remove all the artwork of space marines fighting in climatic duels with chainswords and powerfists, orks clashing as a line of bodies into entrenched defenders, swarms of tyranids gribbies and bigguns washing over their foes in a wave of teeth and claws, Chaos warrior dedicating their bodied trophies to Khorne from martial combat, Banshees and Striking Scorpions coming for with blinding speed to attack a flat footed enemy, ect ect, as well as any lore pertaining to the same thing along with many of the iconic scenes that define the setting (Yarrick vs Ghazghkull, genestealers vs Terminators, Berserkers).
At which point, 40k would fail to resemble itself in any meaningful way.
Edit: 5th edition was actually a very good balance between shooting and melee, even if it was mostly vehicle based, the problem being that 6th edition and after did Games Workshop gak the bed by thinking "you know what would be a great idea? Random charge ranges"
JNAProductions wrote: You did not state that as opinion. You said, in effect, that you CANNOT balance melee armies.
THAT needs support, or it should be dismissed.
Why does that need support? You can't properly balance those two armies without the game suffering (as it already does), or bending reality in order to try to pander to one side. Simple.
If you arbitrarily change rules to give people with swords a fighting chance of running across a field under gunfire...you've basically yanked out any sense of purpose or realism in your game, even in a fictional setting. That doesn't need explanation. You're just hamstringing one side and boosting another to add in the false pretense of "being fair" which naturally has a poor impact on the game. That makes the game play and feel worse. It's not tough to comprehend.
There’s basically NOTHING realistic about 40k. Not marines. Not eldar. Not orks. Not bolters. Not necrons. Not space travel via the warp. Not the warp itself.
That right there is a perfect example of why you'll never understand anything I'm talking about. That's fine. You don't like my opinion? Cool, move on.
I know you think you're maneuvering for some kind of proof or evidence that you're right and I'm wrong - and you can have fun with that. Melee armies don't work or belong in 40K outside of narrative or thematic scenarios, simple as that. You can continue to say that they do, and that's cool - enjoy your armies, but you simply won't get an ounce of pity from me when they don't work.
If you don't understand the concept of "You're over there with a sword, and I'm over here with a firearm" and why that matters - nothing I can type is going to change that. The core concept is not present and that's cool. I'm not here to convince you. Carry on with whatever you feel like complaining about.
The thing missing here is that it isn’t just people in this “gunfight” it’s superhumans in super armour, hellspawn that barely have a place in reality until the moment that they strike, bugzilla with natural plating like slabs of steel and all his little buggy offspring that nobody knows are around because they’re literally hiding inside their neighbours, force fields, force fields miniaturised as personal shields and force fields generated by magic - this is space fantasy.
I’m not against overwatch, my army doesn’t have much of it but there are ways of turning overwatch off anyway.
My bigger gripe would be units just walking out of combat. I’d be for a swing back mechanic and consolidation following that. If a unit gets tangled in melee then they have to work out how to get themselves free with minimum penalty not just step away and have everything else shoot at the unit that charged. That’s even worse than the stupid knife to a gunfight analogy, try to run away from something that has just charged through hell to get you and it will just hit you in the back rather than the front.
Dakka Wolf wrote: The thing missing here is that it isn’t just people in this “gunfight” it’s superhumans in super armour, hellspawn that barely have a place in reality until the moment that they strike, bugzilla with natural plating like slabs of steel and all his little buggy offspring that nobody knows are around because they’re literally hiding inside their neighbours, force fields, force fields miniaturised as personal shields and force fields generated by magic - this is space fantasy.
I’m not against overwatch, my army doesn’t have much of it but there are ways of turning overwatch off anyway.
My bigger gripe would be units just walking out of combat. I’d be for a swing back mechanic and consolidation following that. If a unit gets tangled in melee then they have to work out how to get themselves free with minimum penalty not just step away and have everything else shoot at the unit that charged. That’s even worse than the stupid knife to a gunfight analogy, try to run away from something that has just charged through hell to get you and it will just hit you in the back rather than the front.
I generally agree with this, actually - disengaging from a melee is quite difficult if someone is trying to hit you.
But there also needs to be a way to not have units locked in combat that prevent other units from shooting at them, which was always weird in earlier editions. I used to find it funny when 20 Genestealers would wipe out everything except like one Guardsmen, who would then roll snakeeyes on his test and stick around due to Insane Heroism, and then the Leman Russ tanks literally just sit and watch the guardsman get eaten because they can't fire.
Now, this literally only happened to me once in 3 editions, but the point stands: walking out of melee scott-free should probably be impossible, but the enemy using a single model as a bullet-immunity-shield for their 30-boy Ork unit should also be probably impossible.
Honestly, making the melee rules make sense would probably require a complete overhaul of the rules, but I have ideas if anyone wants to hear them.
Elbows wrote: That right there is a perfect example of why you'll never understand anything I'm talking about. That's fine. You don't like my opinion? Cool, move on.
I know you think you're maneuvering for some kind of proof or evidence that you're right and I'm wrong - and you can have fun with that. Melee armies don't work or belong in 40K outside of narrative or thematic scenarios, simple as that. You can continue to say that they do, and that's cool - enjoy your armies, but you simply won't get an ounce of pity from me when they don't work.
If you don't understand the concept of "You're over there with a sword, and I'm over here with a firearm" and why that matters - nothing I can type is going to change that. The core concept is not present and that's cool. I'm not here to convince you. Carry on with whatever you feel like complaining about.
You seem to be coming from the angle that 40k should prioritize realism over rule of cool. Which... seems odd. 40k doesn't really present itself as a realistic setting. It's full of space knights wielding energy sword against fungus monsters and their jurry-rigged scrap pistols. Ninja elves use chainsaws to cut up booger demons and viking werewolves. So from a lore/aesthetics angle, you're insisting 40k be something it has never tried to be at all. And mechancially, melee armies have been viable in the past and could be viable again in the future. Heck, some competitive recent lists do include strong melee elements (smash captain for instance). So it's not as though making melee viable is an impossible ask.
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Stormonu wrote: I agree it should be an active decision. I also remember the days of "Sitzkreig", having witnessed at least one game where both sides sat still, passing on moving and just Overwatching until someone had to move in the last turn in the hopes of taking an objective to win the game (and paying the price for it).
Personally, I'd wish it would be a mode you put a unit to instead of firing. It's -1 to hit but otherwise normal BS, and you can only shoot at units at 1/2 range or less (charging OR moving in Overwatch range).
I kind of like this. I'd probably just simplify it to 12" rather than messing around with half range though. Flamers should probably be able to overwatch at least their normal 8" rather than 4", for instance.
As for falling back out of melee, I feel you should forgo your melee attacks to do so, but that would move disengaging from the movement phase to the combat phase. Maybe make disengaging 1" or 3" (just enough to move away from the enemy), so that the subsequent move in your own turn isn't so massive. (This would have the side effect that the disengaging unit basically acts normally on its turn, but has now eaten a turn of melee without striking back, and is likely to get charged once again).
That doesn't really address the main issue with falling back though. The real problem with falling back isn't that you're cheated from an extra round of stabbing; it's that the rest of your opponent's units can blast you away.
I mean, it's not like the current rules make it all that difficult for a melee unit to pursue and charge the enemy again on their own turn. Guardsmen fall back up to 6". Tac marines can move 6" and then charge 2d6". They'll catch those guardsmen no problem. Except that those tac marines won't be around to make another charge because the punisher russ off to the side and the bassilisk in the corner are going to wipe them out right after the guardsmen fall back.
Which is why I like the idea of making units that you fall back from untargetable by units outside of X". You can absolutely fall back and shoot the melee unit, but you're going to have to get close to do it. Maybe invest in some units or weapons you normally pass on in favor of more down-field shots. Charging wouldn't guarantee you'd be unshootable on your opponent's next turn, but it would shrink the number of guns that can shoot at you.
Elbows wrote: That right there is a perfect example of why you'll never understand anything I'm talking about. That's fine. You don't like my opinion? Cool, move on.
I know you think you're maneuvering for some kind of proof or evidence that you're right and I'm wrong - and you can have fun with that. Melee armies don't work or belong in 40K outside of narrative or thematic scenarios, simple as that. You can continue to say that they do, and that's cool - enjoy your armies, but you simply won't get an ounce of pity from me when they don't work.
If you don't understand the concept of "You're over there with a sword, and I'm over here with a firearm" and why that matters - nothing I can type is going to change that. The core concept is not present and that's cool. I'm not here to convince you. Carry on with whatever you feel like complaining about.
40k doesn't need "realism." It needs verisimilitude. Close combat being just as common as firefights is a core part of the space fantasy setting of 40k.
Keep in mind that the close combat phase isn't always described as outright melee. it's just an incredibly short distanced firefight. Yes, in some cases, it's going in with knives, but that's mostly because some models only have CC equipped, like hormagaunts.
In earlier editions, close combat was described as everyone throwing everything at an incoming assault--usually because that incoming assault was by specialists (or better generalists) that was going to wreck your face. Even chucking grenades while charging was considered flavor for the attack charge.
Overwatch is a terrible rule that is just something else that has to be looked after. Should it be removed? Maybe. I can't really think of a good way to keep it in. It either stays as is, which ridiculously favors shooty armies (or just shooting in general), or it gets changed to having some sort of downside.
If that downside were something like, sure, you could shoot overwatch, but you won't get to attack in melee, that may cause some consideration in using it, but it probably won't. Shooty armies with weak melee will always overwatch, and strong melee armies will always choose not to. I suppose the only armies that would benefit from that flexibility would be Space Marines.
Elbows wrote: And that's why you'll never understand what I'm talking about - so carry on.
You are just wasting your time trying to talk sense here.
These people won't be convinced by any reasonable argument. Just let them believe that knives are on par with guns.
In a realistic game, designed to emulate modern or futuristic reality, then yes. Melee shouldn't be a primary mode of combat.
But this is NOT realistic. This is NOT meant to emulate reality. This is about genetically altered, power armor wearing warrior monks fighting fungoid hooligan aliens. This is about ancient Egyptian robo space mummies going toe-to-toe with space elves. This is NOT meant to be realistic.
Numerous reasons. Close-combat is suitable in the lore and narrative of the 40K universe but makes next to zero sense in a "balanced" (i.e. points equivalent) wargame.
Elbows presented melee and ranged balance as impossible, not as opinion, but as a fact.
If you don't want to see melee in 40k, that's a fine opinion (though I'd recommend finding a different game, then-melee is pretty big in 40k's narrative and theme) but when you present melee as being OBJECTIVELY bad for the game... I've got an issue with that.
I think it would be an idea to borrow a concept from Epic Armageddon and have gun-fights resolved at the same time as knife-fights.
In Epic engagements your units use their Close Combat rating to score hits in base contact, and their Firefight rating to score hits when not in base contact but within the Epic equivalent of 24". Plus enemies within 24" of the attacking detachment, or one of the defending detachments, can also contribute.
Adapting that for Warhammer would be easy if we reduce the range of engagements to 12", swap detachments for units, and track morale using blast markers rather than casualties. No need for special FF and CC scores when the usual rules for pistols, assault weapons, rapid fire, and basically all non-heavy weapons don't need abstracting. Roll the charge phase into the Movement phase and you have an opportunity for knife-duders to charge gun-duders and likewise an opportunity for them to be gunned down attempting to do so.
Choosing the order of units attacking in the Close Combat phase is wonderfully game-y, in the good sense of making players feel in control.
a few fixes to combat in general that a friend and i came up with while venting on the current ruleset of 40k:
Overwatch isn't available to all models, make it a keyword of give it only to certain types of weapons (FLAMERS...) OR a unit needs to "ready" itself to be allowed to overwatch, basically delaying its shooting phase.
The unit that charge can move the distance it rolled even if the charge failed (closer to the target only).
The range and line of sight are calculated after the movement was made (so flamers would always overwatch on a sucessful charge but if you failed it you could stop right out of range to not get shot at.
When falling back, the unit needs to make a No Escape test of some sorts. Or even simpler, if you fall back, i get to attack you for free.
Or let those released by FallBack moves make a move action, sans the 1"-of-enemy restriction. At the end of the opponent's movement phase.
Walking back out of melee from a stronger force won't be nearly as appetizing. And getting thsoe Guardsmen to hold the line against that tide of Orks just became so much more critical.
I think you should be able to use your guns in melle at -1 to hit instead of overwatch.
Sound fair?
Or how about a d6 run move away from your charging units to make up for the fact they aren't just going to stand there while people are charging them with swords.
Stop bitching about melle. This is the strongest melle has ever been. It is high risk high reward. deal with it.
Dakka Wolf wrote: The thing missing here is that it isn’t just people in this “gunfight” it’s superhumans in super armour, hellspawn that barely have a place in reality until the moment that they strike, bugzilla with natural plating like slabs of steel and all his little buggy offspring that nobody knows are around because they’re literally hiding inside their neighbours, force fields, force fields miniaturised as personal shields and force fields generated by magic - this is space fantasy.
I’m not against overwatch, my army doesn’t have much of it but there are ways of turning overwatch off anyway.
My bigger gripe would be units just walking out of combat. I’d be for a swing back mechanic and consolidation following that. If a unit gets tangled in melee then they have to work out how to get themselves free with minimum penalty not just step away and have everything else shoot at the unit that charged. That’s even worse than the stupid knife to a gunfight analogy, try to run away from something that has just charged through hell to get you and it will just hit you in the back rather than the front.
I generally agree with this, actually - disengaging from a melee is quite difficult if someone is trying to hit you.
But there also needs to be a way to not have units locked in combat that prevent other units from shooting at them, which was always weird in earlier editions. I used to find it funny when 20 Genestealers would wipe out everything except like one Guardsmen, who would then roll snakeeyes on his test and stick around due to Insane Heroism, and then the Leman Russ tanks literally just sit and watch the guardsman get eaten because they can't fire.
Now, this literally only happened to me once in 3 editions, but the point stands: walking out of melee scott-free should probably be impossible, but the enemy using a single model as a bullet-immunity-shield for their 30-boy Ork unit should also be probably impossible.
Honestly, making the melee rules make sense would probably require a complete overhaul of the rules, but I have ideas if anyone wants to hear them.
This seems like a good moment to draw comparison to another tabletop game I enjoy - Judgement.
Judgement is a MOBA-like tabletop game where you use a small pool of heroes to compete, instead of a wargame like 40k, but that's not super relevant to the point. The point is that, like in 40k, Judgement uses a lot of maneuvering and movement in order to tie up enemy units/models so that they can't shoot, have to disengage, are stunlocked by positioning, or are otherwise incapable of acting due to careful positioning and use of abilities.
The main difference between 40k isn't actually in the way that mechanics work, it's in the way that the mechanics are framed and setup. Judgement is deliberately gamey, designed to feel like online MOBAs, and the gameplay reflects this. When you carefully move 1.1" away from an enemy, hit them with a pair of different stuns, and then force them to spend their whole turn recovering from your actions, it feels like you're playing the way the game was meant to be played because this is explicitly explained in the rules and is presented as what you're supposed to do for optimal play.
With 40k, though, whenever I play optimally, I always feel less like I'm playing the game how it's supposed to be played, and more like I'm exploiting loopholes that the developers didn't properly think through. Optimally, the best way to use my horde of Ork Boys is to charge a unit that they can't see because it's inside a building, surround them, pile in so that I've only got one model in base-to-base when I attack but they can't possibly fall back while also tying up as many other non-melee units so that they have to fall back, and then move in for the kill next turn after my opponent fails to hurt me because most of their shooty units had to fall back and my horde is still technically engaged. (Or, alternatively: The optimal thing to do is charge a drop pod with my Imperial Knight, attack with my weaker melee option so that I don't kill it, then laugh because my opponent can't attack me next turn since I'm engaged in melee with his immobile, unable-to-fall-back unit.)
Strictly speaking, the function is the same, but one feels a lot more fun because it feels intended and encouraged instead of feeling like a dirty trick. I think the best fix to things like the falling back mechanics isn't necessarily to significantly change them, it might just be to make them clearly and explicitly intentional and encourage players to gamify the rules whenever possible.
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Xenomancers wrote: I think you should be able to use your guns in melle at -1 to hit instead of overwatch.
Sound fair?
No, it does not. That's a terrible idea.
Or how about a d6 run move away from your charging units to make up for the fact they aren't just going to stand there while people are charging them with swords.
Xenomancers wrote: I think you should be able to use your guns in melle at -1 to hit instead of overwatch.
Sound fair?
Or how about a d6 run move away from your charging units to make up for the fact they aren't just going to stand there while people are charging them with swords.
Stop bitching about melle. This is the strongest melle has ever been. It is high risk high reward. deal with it.
That's like saying "Stop bitching about Iron Hands, because IH could have given S10T10W10 to every model instead!"
I like most of what you write but wish that a move stat was reintroduced with charges effectively 2x move minus terrain influences
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VladimirHerzog wrote: a few fixes to combat in general that a friend and i came up with while venting on the current ruleset of 40k:
Overwatch isn't available to all models, make it a keyword of give it only to certain types of weapons (FLAMERS...) OR a unit needs to "ready" itself to be allowed to overwatch, basically delaying its shooting phase.
The unit that charge can move the distance it rolled even if the charge failed (closer to the target only).
The range and line of sight are calculated after the movement was made (so flamers would always overwatch on a sucessful charge but if you failed it you could stop right out of range to not get shot at.
When falling back, the unit needs to make a No Escape test of some sorts. Or even simpler, if you fall back, i get to attack you for free.
Xenomancers wrote: Stop bitching about melle. This is the strongest melle has ever been. It is high risk high reward. deal with it.
Can you share some examples of meta, tournament-winning melee builds in 8th? Because all the ones I can think of off the top of my head (Alaitoc flier spam, Knights + Guard, Iron Hands gunline, Tau gunline) are shooting-oriented, with the second of those having a minor melee contingent (smash captains).
Melee requires you to get into combat while getting shot, eat overwatch, roll high enough to make it to the target, then pin your target so that they can't retreat and don't wipe them out or you'll get shot. It's definitely high risk but I have a hard time seeing the reward.
Back in 3rd Ed, Rapid Fire weapons only got one shot out to 12" if they moved, Heavy couldn't move and shoot, charging gave you an extra attack, winning the melee and forcing the enemy to fall back carried a significant chance of instantly killing the entire unit, and cover worked. No overwatch, gunlines were completely static, and nobody could voluntarily retreat. I have a hard time seeing how melee is stronger than it was back then; my Hormagaunts with their 18" threat radius and 3 attacks on the charge used to mulch Guard and SM gunlines. Now not so much, and the tricks I have to get into melee faster are offset by things like shoot-twice abilities and better Overwatch.
Elbows wrote: That right there is a perfect example of why you'll never understand anything I'm talking about. That's fine. You don't like my opinion? Cool, move on.
I know you think you're maneuvering for some kind of proof or evidence that you're right and I'm wrong - and you can have fun with that. Melee armies don't work or belong in 40K outside of narrative or thematic scenarios, simple as that. You can continue to say that they do, and that's cool - enjoy your armies, but you simply won't get an ounce of pity from me when they don't work.
If you don't understand the concept of "You're over there with a sword, and I'm over here with a firearm" and why that matters - nothing I can type is going to change that. The core concept is not present and that's cool. I'm not here to convince you. Carry on with whatever you feel like complaining about.
This is the issue. Look at the war in Afghanistan, CQC is literally the last resort of a desperate soldier, who has found themselves within 10 feet of their opponent. Nothing more, it's not viable in a game with laser guns. If anything, they need to cut CC from the next edition. Shooting only.
Or steer even heavier into space fantasy. Drastically reduce the killing power of long range shooting.
Add more suppression and functioning morale rules. Close range shooting remains deadly.
Game becomes one of close range firefights and melee while ranged specialists mess with support pieces (snipers etc) and disruption (allowing you to gain localized advantages in said close range firefights/melee)
Elbows wrote: That right there is a perfect example of why you'll never understand anything I'm talking about. That's fine. You don't like my opinion? Cool, move on.
I know you think you're maneuvering for some kind of proof or evidence that you're right and I'm wrong - and you can have fun with that. Melee armies don't work or belong in 40K outside of narrative or thematic scenarios, simple as that. You can continue to say that they do, and that's cool - enjoy your armies, but you simply won't get an ounce of pity from me when they don't work.
If you don't understand the concept of "You're over there with a sword, and I'm over here with a firearm" and why that matters - nothing I can type is going to change that. The core concept is not present and that's cool. I'm not here to convince you. Carry on with whatever you feel like complaining about.
This is the issue. Look at the war in Afghanistan, CQC is literally the last resort of a desperate soldier, who has found themselves within 10 feet of their opponent. Nothing more, it's not viable in a game with laser guns. If anything, they need to cut CC from the next edition. Shooting only.
I'm seriously debating with myself if you are all very sarcastic or just never read a single piece of WH40k lore ever. Realism has never entered the picture and melee is a big thing in both the fluff and the game. Does it make sense to have melee be at all viable? No, but then realism was the first thing to be kicked to the curb when over half the fluff was written. Removing melee as a viable option? Alrighty so I just need to permanently shelf half my Ork army because suddenly melee "doesn't make sense anymore"? Not too mention all the other armies reliant on melee for half their codex entries. As for balance, while this is the first edition of the game I've played, melee does have it's place and while hard to pull off successfully the rewards are equally enticing. Does it make a lot of sense, no. But as established common sense doesn't come within the same postcode as Warhammer 40K fluff.
Realism is the stronghold of the pedant. It's not about making a system or setting better, it's about "being right", often at the expense of other people's enjoyment.
EDIT: It's most egregious when you consider how lopsided people are with using realism in these discussion: as they claim Melee isn't accurately represented without how they think it's used in real life... but they're fine with Ranged units being near-omniscience (as long as you can see even the smallest part of a model, or have LoS ignoring weapons, you can hit all models in a unit regardless of any other logic,), near-omnipotent (bottomless magazines, can fire as many weapons as they can carry regardless of size or handedness as long as they're not pistols or grenades), immune to psychology (able to split fire at as many targets as they want regardless of personal threat) and have machine like precision (consistent range and the same accuracy regardless of range).
Elbows wrote: That right there is a perfect example of why you'll never understand anything I'm talking about. That's fine. You don't like my opinion? Cool, move on.
I know you think you're maneuvering for some kind of proof or evidence that you're right and I'm wrong - and you can have fun with that. Melee armies don't work or belong in 40K outside of narrative or thematic scenarios, simple as that. You can continue to say that they do, and that's cool - enjoy your armies, but you simply won't get an ounce of pity from me when they don't work.
If you don't understand the concept of "You're over there with a sword, and I'm over here with a firearm" and why that matters - nothing I can type is going to change that. The core concept is not present and that's cool. I'm not here to convince you. Carry on with whatever you feel like complaining about.
This is the issue. Look at the war in Afghanistan, CQC is literally the last resort of a desperate soldier, who has found themselves within 10 feet of their opponent. Nothing more, it's not viable in a game with laser guns. If anything, they need to cut CC from the next edition. Shooting only.
I'm seriously debating with myself if you are all very sarcastic or just never read a single piece of WH40k lore ever. Realism has never entered the picture and melee is a big thing in both the fluff and the game. Does it make sense to have melee be at all viable? No, but then realism was the first thing to be kicked to the curb when over half the fluff was written. Removing melee as a viable option? Alrighty so I just need to permanently shelf half my Ork army because suddenly melee "doesn't make sense anymore"? Not too mention all the other armies reliant on melee for half their codex entries. As for balance, while this is the first edition of the game I've played, melee does have it's place and while hard to pull off successfully the rewards are equally enticing. Does it make a lot of sense, no. But as established common sense doesn't come within the same postcode as Warhammer 40K fluff.
I'm approaching it from a game standpoint. I do not care about the lore, I play the game, because it's a game.
In my experience, CC only serves to slow down the game. So, I say just axe it and make this a shooting game 100%.
And to me, close combat is the good stuff. Get rid of all that boring shooting! /s
I live in a world governed by realism, it's going to bleed into my thinking. High Fantasy is fine as a story, not so much as a game mechanic.
If there are 1000 guardsmen on a wall with heavy weapons and lasrifles, the support of artillery and naval bombardment, a charging ork warband with axes and pistols has a .001% chance of winning. That's just reality. It doesn't matter if that ork warband numbers 10,000 individual soldiers. They will lose. Every. Single. Time.
So you play a game, that has had melee as a significant portion for, as far as I can tell, it's inception and complain about it's inclusion? Not too mention a game were roughly half the armies have a significant interest in melee, and complain about CC being there? It just makes no sense to me. This is not a realistic wargame but a wargame set in the 40k universe which like it or not features a lot of melee combat.
Castozor wrote: So you play a game, that has had melee as a significant portion for, as far as I can tell, it's inception and complain about it's inclusion? Not too mention a game were roughly half the armies have a significant interest in melee, and complain about CC being there? It just makes no sense to me. This is not a realistic wargame but a wargame set in the 40k universe which like it or not features a lot of melee combat.
I would reckon that 9/10 games I've played since I started have been against shooting armies, so much so that when I got my CSM marines, I had to look up all the rules for CC because I didn't know them. Like at all.
Castozor wrote: So you play a game, that has had melee as a significant portion for, as far as I can tell, it's inception and complain about it's inclusion? Not too mention a game were roughly half the armies have a significant interest in melee, and complain about CC being there? It just makes no sense to me. This is not a realistic wargame but a wargame set in the 40k universe which like it or not features a lot of melee combat.
The high point of the validity of CC as a strategy was 4e, it's only gone downhill from there. The fact that 8e had to introduce reliable charge out of Deep Strike to resurrect it says a lot.
Castozor wrote: So you play a game, that has had melee as a significant portion for, as far as I can tell, it's inception and complain about it's inclusion? Not too mention a game were roughly half the armies have a significant interest in melee, and complain about CC being there? It just makes no sense to me. This is not a realistic wargame but a wargame set in the 40k universe which like it or not features a lot of melee combat.
What's really obnoxious about it is that if you want to play an army with only ranged units, you can. Tau and imperial guard cater to those play styles, while space marines and eldar can be played that way with rules can encourage it. Meanwhile, Melee armies still generally have to take ranged units to deal with some problems. Even THE melee army, daemons, will have skull cannons in their lists.
So they can play the way they want... but they can't apparently handle other people having fun, and blame other people for their own lack of imagination.
Well shooting slows down the game too, so does movement. Why not axe everything? Just Mathhammer everything turn 1 and decide games that way. Singling out melee is arbitrary.
Melee is such an integral part of the lore and history of 40k it would be a disservice to the franchise to remove it from the game IMO.
There's been suggestions floating around for ages around there being some sort of penalty or detriment for trying to leave combat, rather than just freely walking away.
This is a ridiculous line of discussion. You might as well say, "Why does this game have to have these stupid aliens and 9 foot tall super soldiers? It's so unrealistic!"
If all you like is Tau and shooty guard, just play Bolt Action
JNAProductions wrote: Elbows presented melee and ranged balance as impossible, not as opinion, but as a fact.
If you don't want to see melee in 40k, that's a fine opinion (though I'd recommend finding a different game, then-melee is pretty big in 40k's narrative and theme) but when you present melee as being OBJECTIVELY bad for the game... I've got an issue with that.
I'd go as far to say that melee is crucial to actually making this game interesting.
And to me, close combat is the good stuff. Get rid of all that boring shooting! /s
I live in a world governed by realism, it's going to bleed into my thinking. High Fantasy is fine as a story, not so much as a game mechanic.
If there are 1000 guardsmen on a wall with heavy weapons and lasrifles, the support of artillery and naval bombardment, a charging ork warband with axes and pistols has a .001% chance of winning. That's just reality. It doesn't matter if that ork warband numbers 10,000 individual soldiers. They will lose. Every. Single. Time.
What does your sense of realism tell you about the ballistic resistance of animated fungus?
Or do you refuse to play against Orks because their lack of hemoglobin or vascular system precludes a mammalian metabolism, and the lack of realism in their biology is an immediate deal-breaker?
Who else remembers third/fourth edition when you could charge, kill a unit, consolidate into another unit, and continue hurting things?
I do, and it was awful.
Overwatch helped balance things out when a single model Melee unit could literally obliterate enemy units via Sweeping Advance, and the enemy unit couldn't do anything back since it was too tough for them to punch in melee.
Now a days, maybe it could use toning down, like costing a CP to overwatch with a unit or something.
Crazyterran wrote: Who else remembers third/fourth edition when you could charge, kill a unit, consolidate into another unit, and continue hurting things?
I do, and it was awful.
Overwatch helped balance things out when a single model Melee unit could literally obliterate enemy units via Sweeping Advance, and the enemy unit couldn't do anything back since it was too tough for them to punch in melee.
Now a days, maybe it could use toning down, like costing a CP to overwatch with a unit or something.
How long ago was that? Because modern melee in 40k isn't that powerful.
15+ years ago. I temember a game where a Chaos army was killled down to one guy, and that guy turned into a Bloodthirster and went on to table his opponent. It was pretty epic.
And to me, close combat is the good stuff. Get rid of all that boring shooting! /s
I live in a world governed by realism, it's going to bleed into my thinking. High Fantasy is fine as a story, not so much as a game mechanic.
If there are 1000 guardsmen on a wall with heavy weapons and lasrifles, the support of artillery and naval bombardment, a charging ork warband with axes and pistols has a .001% chance of winning. That's just reality. It doesn't matter if that ork warband numbers 10,000 individual soldiers. They will lose. Every. Single. Time.
You could set that scenario up in 40k and get that result. So what's your beef?
People saying 40K would be better without melee sound pretty hilarious to me. Star Wars would be cooler without the force and Jedi and Star Trek is pretty interesting aside from the Enterprise I guess and why are there Wizards in Harry Potter?!
Castozor wrote: Well then why do you want them removed completely if they don't bother you? This makes even less sense to me.
Because it slows down the game. So, just axe it and move on. CC belongs in AoS
Shooting with all the rerolls handed out to Lineinfantrye eerrrrrm i mean glorious deathblob of Spacemarines, sorry no i meant clearly structured and codexified line formations for Shocktroops .
Also Orkz shooting. nuff said.
IF time is your sole deciding factor then you'd have to axe shooting way more then melee.
Crazyterran wrote: Who else remembers third/fourth edition when you could charge, kill a unit, consolidate into another unit, and continue hurting things?
I do, and it was awful.
Overwatch helped balance things out when a single model Melee unit could literally obliterate enemy units via Sweeping Advance, and the enemy unit couldn't do anything back since it was too tough for them to punch in melee.
Now a days, maybe it could use toning down, like costing a CP to overwatch with a unit or something.
How long ago was that? Because modern melee in 40k isn't that powerful.
Hell, compare an Obliterator to a
Spoiler:
Mutilator
.
This thing does not exist.
it was dead as a concept before it even was done, due to beeing schizophrenic as all hell design wise.
The obliterator was supposed to be the ultimate swiss army knife terminator originally. A non-feeling chaotic being that could morph its body into whatever weapon it needed at the given time.
When GW released the mutilator, they were trying to sell more models, period. There was no need for a melee version of the oblit, when the oblit itself could just morph its hands into power fists.
They never should have amalgamized the weapon profiles on the oblit. It should flat out be pick a profile every turn and you are stuck with that profile whole turn. You could have even given them a strat that let them swap profiles for CP and it would have meshed with this edition just fine.
Give them the plasma cannon, auto-cannon, heavy flamer, and the new rotary cannon for shooting profiles, and Power fist, Power axe, and Lighting claw melee profiles to choose from.
With regard to the melee debate, do you think it would help if 40k took some inspiration from games like Warmachine?
See, in Warmachine, if a unit wants to attack another unit in close combat, they simply move into melee range (no special Charge move required) and hit them with one or more melee weapons.
Meanwhile, melee in 40k is like a random battle in one of those JRPGs, where combat might as well be taking place in a different plane of existence from the rest of the game.
I bring this up because it seems the current method basically leads to a lot of bad and nonsensical design elements that then have to be balanced by *even more* bad and nonsensical design elements.
Meanwhile, melee in 40k is like a random battle in one of those JRPGs, where combat might as well be taking place in a different plane of existence from the rest of the game.
I bring this up because it seems the current method basically leads to a lot of bad and nonsensical design elements that then have to be balanced by *even more* bad and nonsensical design elements.
I'm just glad challenges have gone. As a CSM player, man were they a pain in the bum
vipoid wrote: With regard to the melee debate, do you think it would help if 40k took some inspiration from games like Warmachine?
See, in Warmachine, if a unit wants to attack another unit in close combat, they simply move into melee range (no special Charge move required) and hit them with one or more melee weapons.
Meanwhile, melee in 40k is like a random battle in one of those JRPGs, where combat might as well be taking place in a different plane of existence from the rest of the game.
I bring this up because it seems the current method basically leads to a lot of bad and nonsensical design elements that then have to be balanced by *even more* bad and nonsensical design elements.
40k is what happens when you start with a simple WWI era game after having a fantasy game, and then mess with it for twenty five years.
If you've seen games like Corvus Belli's Infinity, or (I forget who makes it now) Bolt Action, a game designer can take a concept like Overwatch and turn it into something really interesting. But to do that, there's a lot more effort required than just "Everybody gets to stand and shoot."
To be honest, I think 40k would have been better off just stealing WHFB charge reactions. Your gun line is being charged, you say? Well then, here are your options:
* Run away
* Stand and fire (doing the sensible thing and waiting until the enemy is visible/in range)
* Brace to receive charge (the default reaction)
and then go from there. And then do things with the close combat based forces (bloodletters, daemonettes, Wyches, gene stealers, etc.) like giving the scary or fast units partial or complete immunity to getting shot at while charging in.
And then they could have considered things like "If you didn't move and/or shoot last turn, negate some of the penalties that you're going to receive when you choose the 'stand and fire' option.
Instead, 40k has overwatch, revision whatever. :shrug:
steelhead177th wrote: Would a change such as only allowing a unit to disengage from melee during that unit's combat phase, not the movement phase, make it "more balanced"?
I would rather see something like a 2d6 leadership test to leave melee in the movement phase, would also make leadership penalties for melee units actually worth a damn.
steelhead177th wrote: Would a change such as only allowing a unit to disengage from melee during that unit's combat phase, not the movement phase, make it "more balanced"?
Def an intersting idea - that they have to fight their way out but it could risk tipping the other way?
Prefer all subject to No Escape but with penalties and bonuses.
Having never served in the military - anyone nay experience in how difficult it is to break off from hand to hand combat?
steelhead177th wrote: Would a change such as only allowing a unit to disengage from melee during that unit's combat phase, not the movement phase, make it "more balanced"?
Def an intersting idea - that they have to fight their way out but it could risk tipping the other way?
Prefer all subject to No Escape but with penalties and bonuses.
Having never served in the military - anyone nay experience in how difficult it is to break off from hand to hand combat?
I haven’t served but I asked my roommate(army) and he said usually you make a little space and someone else shoots him or jumps in and pulls them off and then shoots them. So relatively easy.
steelhead177th wrote: Would a change such as only allowing a unit to disengage from melee during that unit's combat phase, not the movement phase, make it "more balanced"?
Def an intersting idea - that they have to fight their way out but it could risk tipping the other way?
Prefer all subject to No Escape but with penalties and bonuses.
Having never served in the military - anyone nay experience in how difficult it is to break off from hand to hand combat?
I haven’t served but I asked my roommate(army) and he said usually you make a little space and someone else shoots him or jumps in and pulls them off and then shoots them. So relatively easy.
That is if you CAN make space.
I'd imagine that lictors or hormagaunts and other such things have NO issue with staying on you.
steelhead177th wrote: Would a change such as only allowing a unit to disengage from melee during that unit's combat phase, not the movement phase, make it "more balanced"?
Def an intersting idea - that they have to fight their way out but it could risk tipping the other way?
Prefer all subject to No Escape but with penalties and bonuses.
Having never served in the military - anyone nay experience in how difficult it is to break off from hand to hand combat?
I haven’t served but I asked my roommate(army) and he said usually you make a little space and someone else shoots him or jumps in and pulls them off and then shoots them. So relatively easy.
That is if you CAN make space.
I'd imagine that lictors or hormagaunts and other such things have NO issue with staying on you.
That depends on what they're doing though, right? I can imagine a Hormagaunt too busy finishing off George to chase Ted. It's the whole "when running from a bear, the only thing you have to outrun is the person with you" thing. Which folds neatly into the "the enemy hits me while I withdraw, to represent them catching some dudes off guard" mechanic. Perhaps you get full melee power, but only from models within 1", that way it's still diminished from the phase before and it represents on the the front rank leaping out to kill baddies.
steelhead177th wrote: Would a change such as only allowing a unit to disengage from melee during that unit's combat phase, not the movement phase, make it "more balanced"?
Def an intersting idea - that they have to fight their way out but it could risk tipping the other way?
Prefer all subject to No Escape but with penalties and bonuses.
Having never served in the military - anyone nay experience in how difficult it is to break off from hand to hand combat?
I haven’t served but I asked my roommate(army) and he said usually you make a little space and someone else shoots him or jumps in and pulls them off and then shoots them. So relatively easy.
That is if you CAN make space.
I'd imagine that lictors or hormagaunts and other such things have NO issue with staying on you.
That depends on what they're doing though, right? I can imagine a Hormagaunt too busy finishing off George to chase Ted. It's the whole "when running from a bear, the only thing you have to outrun is the person with you" thing. Which folds neatly into the "the enemy hits me while I withdraw, to represent them catching some dudes off guard" syndrome. Perhaps you get full melee power, but only from models within 1", that way it's still diminished from the phase before and it represents on the the front rank leaping out to kill baddies.
Which would basically make a disengage tax necessary.
Which i am not opposed on. You want to disengage, yeah better let jhony there hold the line whilest i scram
Not Online!!! wrote: Which would basically make a disengage tax necessary.
Which i am not opposed on. You want to disengage, yeah better let jhony there hold the line whilest i scram
Yes.
Like I tried to illustrate earlier, the idea of being "locked in combat" is fundamentally flawed. Entire tank companies aren't going to cease firing into the enemy because one guardsman is in combat with one model at the right front corner of the enemy's 30" by 30" spread out square of 50 dudes or whatever.
"Some guy in the same squad as me 50 yards away is in melee" should not be a protection against shooting.
Not Online!!! wrote: Which would basically make a disengage tax necessary.
Which i am not opposed on. You want to disengage, yeah better let jhony there hold the line whilest i scram
Yes.
Like I tried to illustrate earlier, the idea of being "locked in combat" is fundamentally flawed. Entire tank companies aren't going to cease firing into the enemy because one guardsman is in combat with one model at the right front corner of the enemy's 30" by 30" spread out square of 50 dudes or whatever.
"Some guy in the same squad as me 50 yards away is in melee" should not be a protection against shooting.
This.
I could see there being some sort of penalty. Maybe hit rolls of 1 are resolved against a friendly unit in melee with the target.
However, having melee provide 100% protection from shooting is - and always has been - a horrible, crutch of a rule.
Not Online!!! wrote: I'd say a flat modifier or range for beeing to close and therefore stuck would be rather interesting for melee consideration.
It would also make fallback less of a nobrainer aswell.
Especially if you HAVE to consider that you will take casualities.
I don't mean the unit that is actually stuck in combat.
I mean other units trying to shoot the enemy. Consider the following: A Wraithknight charges a Predator and, say, 2 Space Marines. On its turn, it smashes the Predator to bits. The Marines flail back, doing whatever.
Now, the Wraithknight is completely immune to the entire gamut of enemy shooting. There could be 80 shadowswords surrounding the Wraithknight on all sides, but because of 2 Space Marines who barely come up to its ankles, the WK is completely immune.
8th Edition permits the Marines to fall back, which is one way. Another way is to simply let the shadowswords shoot and vaporize both the Marines and the WK. Another option is to let the Marines fall back, but let the WK stomp them/stab them/eat them / whatever on the way out.
Each of those has its problems:
1) Flawless fall-back is in some ways unintuitive and seems too easy.
2) Shooting Marines in the back makes sense in this scenario, but would a Russ shoot at his own commander's Russ? Would a Guardsman with a meltagun shoot at an enemy fighting a Baneblade? Would anyone try to take a shot and risk hitting their friend when it's Guilliman, Lord Commander of the Imperium who is in danger?
3) Serious issues with action economy - if you touch 4 units in your charge, and all 4 try to fall back, do you get to try to hit all four? Why is your Guardsman suddenly four times better at meleeing the enemy than he is in the melee phase? How does he run from one unit to the other? Do you restrict them to picking one unit falling back to attack? How are attacks split if they all fall back at the same time? If they don't fall back at the same time, then do you hit all of them, or will you let them all go?
Not Online!!! wrote: Which would basically make a disengage tax necessary.
Which i am not opposed on. You want to disengage, yeah better let jhony there hold the line whilest i scram
Yes.
Like I tried to illustrate earlier, the idea of being "locked in combat" is fundamentally flawed. Entire tank companies aren't going to cease firing into the enemy because one guardsman is in combat with one model at the right front corner of the enemy's 30" by 30" spread out square of 50 dudes or whatever.
"Some guy in the same squad as me 50 yards away is in melee" should not be a protection against shooting.
Much like any sort of tank shouldn't give a hot damn about those two idiots with chainswords carving their names into the camo-paintwork. Why fall back? Just keep firing. Or run them over first, and then keep firing.
I get that – and very much approve of – 40k incorporates the notion of personal armour capable of withstanding high-powered ranged weaponry. It's basically a point you'll inevitably encounter in an arms race. There have been eras in human history when the ranged weaponry available was not powerful enough to make personal armour obsolete, although at present it most certainly is that powerful. But if you factor in personal armour that can and will stop bullets from general issue firearms, then chainswords start making sense again. Of course, so do titans and orbital bombardment, but perhaps sometimes you want to preserve elements of the engagement theatre, right?
I actually don't mind how overwatch works. It's overly simplistic and can kick you in the nuts just when you least expect it to, but sometimes that can be as hilarious as as it can be aggravating. The total lack of any equivalent when your opponents bail out definitely stings far more.
I think the ban on firing after falling back should just go. Applying a penalty to ranged attacks after falling back would make sense, but I see how that would add the kind of bookkeeping 8th seems intent on avoiding.
Consolidation should be made more lenient, i.e. let units consolidate any which way, and increase the range back to 6", and then let the assaulting unit consolidate after their opponents have fallen back. This would force players who want to fall back and fire to consider more carefully whether the angry bastards trying to chew their unit's legs off might not then be able to get to an even juicier target.
In addition, let units with the VEHICLE or MONSTER keyword deal hits to INFANTRY by moving over them in the movement phase. You want to lock a Land Raider in CC? Don't use grots. You want to stand there, blocking that Leman Russ's way? If you're a Chaos Cultist, it's Tiananmen Square 2.0, dude.
Not Online!!! wrote: I'd say a flat modifier or range for beeing to close and therefore stuck would be rather interesting for melee consideration.
It would also make fallback less of a nobrainer aswell.
Especially if you HAVE to consider that you will take casualities.
I don't mean the unit that is actually stuck in combat.
I mean other units trying to shoot the enemy. Consider the following: A Wraithknight charges a Predator and, say, 2 Space Marines. On its turn, it smashes the Predator to bits. The Marines flail back, doing whatever.
Now, the Wraithknight is completely immune to the entire gamut of enemy shooting. There could be 80 shadowswords surrounding the Wraithknight on all sides, but because of 2 Space Marines who barely come up to its ankles, the WK is completely immune.
8th Edition permits the Marines to fall back, which is one way. Another way is to simply let the shadowswords shoot and vaporize both the Marines and the WK. Another option is to let the Marines fall back, but let the WK stomp them/stab them/eat them / whatever on the way out.
Each of those has its problems:
1) Flawless fall-back is in some ways unintuitive and seems too easy.
2) Shooting Marines in the back makes sense in this scenario, but would a Russ shoot at his own commander's Russ? Would a Guardsman with a meltagun shoot at an enemy fighting a Baneblade? Would anyone try to take a shot and risk hitting their friend when it's Guilliman, Lord Commander of the Imperium who is in danger?
3) Serious issues with action economy - if you touch 4 units in your charge, and all 4 try to fall back, do you get to try to hit all four? Why is your Guardsman suddenly four times better at meleeing the enemy than he is in the melee phase? How does he run from one unit to the other? Do you restrict them to picking one unit falling back to attack? How are attacks split if they all fall back at the same time? If they don't fall back at the same time, then do you hit all of them, or will you let them all go?
As for 2, 8th doesn't really take into account that your units might not do what you want them to. You're the almighty omniscient general, if you want them to shoot into melee and risk vaporising Guilliman, your troops will execute your orders without a second thought. I suppose this might offer an avenue for adding meaningful leadership tests, though.
The action economy issue would be addressed by the pursuit option. Unless you're going to cut your model in half, that guardsman could only pursue one of the fleeing enemies (or head towards another unit entirely or, hey, even run back into cover or something).
Not Online!!! wrote: I'd say a flat modifier or range for beeing to close and therefore stuck would be rather interesting for melee consideration.
It would also make fallback less of a nobrainer aswell.
Especially if you HAVE to consider that you will take casualities.
I don't mean the unit that is actually stuck in combat.
I mean other units trying to shoot the enemy. Consider the following: A Wraithknight charges a Predator and, say, 2 Space Marines. On its turn, it smashes the Predator to bits. The Marines flail back, doing whatever.
Now, the Wraithknight is completely immune to the entire gamut of enemy shooting. There could be 80 shadowswords surrounding the Wraithknight on all sides, but because of 2 Space Marines who barely come up to its ankles, the WK is completely immune.
8th Edition permits the Marines to fall back, which is one way. Another way is to simply let the shadowswords shoot and vaporize both the Marines and the WK. Another option is to let the Marines fall back, but let the WK stomp them/stab them/eat them / whatever on the way out.
Each of those has its problems:
1) Flawless fall-back is in some ways unintuitive and seems too easy.
2) Shooting Marines in the back makes sense in this scenario, but would a Russ shoot at his own commander's Russ? Would a Guardsman with a meltagun shoot at an enemy fighting a Baneblade? Would anyone try to take a shot and risk hitting their friend when it's Guilliman, Lord Commander of the Imperium who is in danger?
3) Serious issues with action economy - if you touch 4 units in your charge, and all 4 try to fall back, do you get to try to hit all four? Why is your Guardsman suddenly four times better at meleeing the enemy than he is in the melee phase? How does he run from one unit to the other? Do you restrict them to picking one unit falling back to attack? How are attacks split if they all fall back at the same time? If they don't fall back at the same time, then do you hit all of them, or will you let them all go?
Honestly it's simple: Vehicle keyword / beast keyword , can be freely targeted even in melee. Caveat, add a miss trhow of 1 as a hit against your allies. (like the purge stratagem)
Secondly, falling back from big singular stuff, should be a non issue because that is frankly simple. However if you tell me 8 marines are falling back out of my 50 mutant blob there will start to be issues imo, overrrunning should favour massed units, because these units suffer the most from the bad melee rules of 8th. The Fire and forget smashcaptains etc work perfectly fine, but the horde melee just doesn't. my solution, all models within 1" of multiple enemy combatants that falls back either A: takes as many hits or B : remains to buy time for it's comrades leading to a minor fight phase after which the holding back one dies.
3) Serious issues with action economy - if you touch 4 units in your charge, and all 4 try to fall back, do you get to try to hit all four? Why is your Guardsman suddenly four times better at meleeing the enemy than he is in the melee phase? How does he run from one unit to the other? Do you restrict them to picking one unit falling back to attack? How are attacks split if they all fall back at the same time? If they don't fall back at the same time, then do you hit all of them, or will you let them all go?
yeah but if i fail multiple charges on the same unit, it gets to overwatch for every single one of them, which is the same problem yet seems to be accepted.
Honestly it's simple: Vehicle keyword / beast keyword , can be freely targeted even in melee. Caveat, add a miss trhow of 1 as a hit against your allies. (like the purge stratagem)
Secondly, falling back from big singular stuff, should be a non issue because that is frankly simple. However if you tell me 8 marines are falling back out of my 50 mutant blob there will start to be issues imo, overrrunning should favour massed units, because these units suffer the most from the bad melee rules of 8th. The Fire and forget smashcaptains etc work perfectly fine, but the horde melee just doesn't. my solution, all models within 1" of multiple enemy combatants that falls back either A: takes as many hits or B : remains to buy time for it's comrades leading to a minor fight phase after which the holding back one dies.
To address your points:
1) Tau battlesuits are now immune to being targeted in melee, despite being far larger than most Tyranid monstrous creatures (e.g. the Riptide). Keywords don't fix everything and aren't very future proofed.
2) 8 Marines could easily fall back from 50 mutants, since they're faster, stronger and more skilled, IMO. Making "overrun" rules makes sense in historical games where the physical capabilities of the combatants are roughly equal, but are you really telling me that 10 grots could overrun 7 Marines simply because they outnumber them? Additionally, they're likely not fighting all 50. They're fighting the front rank of, say, 10. And the rest are milling around in the back waiting for their turn. If you have the marines completely swamped by mutants, they can't fall back anyways as they are surrounded.
3) Allowing people to make swings has serious action economy issues. Why would the enemy get to hit me more times in the 6 seconds (or whatever) of combat that a turn represents if I choose to leave rather than stay? If I choose to stay, should he get those attacks added anyways since he had time to make them? Or does staying locked in combat warp time so that they lose the time they'd've spent making them?
3.5) Leaving a lone fallback guy to die is fine, if he actually dies. How many would you have to leave behind if, say, four separate units fell back? 1 from one of them, or 1 from each of them? What would falling back with a one-model-unit (say, an Astropath) look like in this situation?
3) Serious issues with action economy - if you touch 4 units in your charge, and all 4 try to fall back, do you get to try to hit all four? Why is your Guardsman suddenly four times better at meleeing the enemy than he is in the melee phase? How does he run from one unit to the other? Do you restrict them to picking one unit falling back to attack? How are attacks split if they all fall back at the same time? If they don't fall back at the same time, then do you hit all of them, or will you let them all go?
yeah but if i fail multiple charges on the same unit, it gets to overwatch for every single one of them, which is the same problem yet seems to be accepted.
Yes, that's certainly a problem, I'm not sure what you mean by "accepted". I certainly would like it to be changed so that it makes sense. Also, it's easier to swallow them hitting on 6s, because they're not taking their time to aim like they do in the shooting phase. (though I still think it should be changed).
Unit1126PLL wrote: ...2) 8 Marines could easily fall back from 50 mutants, since they're faster, stronger and more skilled, IMO. Making "overrun" rules makes sense in historical games where the physical capabilities of the combatants are roughly equal, but are you really telling me that 10 grots could overrun 7 Marines simply because they outnumber them? Additionally, they're likely not fighting all 50. They're fighting the front rank of, say, 10. And the rest are milling around in the back waiting for their turn. If you have the marines completely swamped by mutants, they can't fall back anyways as they are surrounded...
Maybe we could have some kind of stat to reflect the differing speeds of models to make it easier/harder to overrun. What might you call such a thing? Agility? Alacrity? Maybe Initiative?
Honestly it's simple: Vehicle keyword / beast keyword , can be freely targeted even in melee. Caveat, add a miss trhow of 1 as a hit against your allies. (like the purge stratagem)
Secondly, falling back from big singular stuff, should be a non issue because that is frankly simple. However if you tell me 8 marines are falling back out of my 50 mutant blob there will start to be issues imo, overrrunning should favour massed units, because these units suffer the most from the bad melee rules of 8th. The Fire and forget smashcaptains etc work perfectly fine, but the horde melee just doesn't. my solution, all models within 1" of multiple enemy combatants that falls back either A: takes as many hits or B : remains to buy time for it's comrades leading to a minor fight phase after which the holding back one dies.
To address your points:
1) Tau battlesuits are now immune to being targeted in melee, despite being far larger than most Tyranid monstrous creatures (e.g. the Riptide). Keywords don't fix everything and aren't very future proofed.
2) 8 Marines could easily fall back from 50 mutants, since they're faster, stronger and more skilled, IMO. Making "overrun" rules makes sense in historical games where the physical capabilities of the combatants are roughly equal, but are you really telling me that 10 grots could overrun 7 Marines simply because they outnumber them? Additionally, they're likely not fighting all 50. They're fighting the front rank of, say, 10. And the rest are milling around in the back waiting for their turn. If you have the marines completely swamped by mutants, they can't fall back anyways as they are surrounded.
3) Allowing people to make swings has serious action economy issues. Why would the enemy get to hit me more times in the 6 seconds (or whatever) of combat that a turn represents if I choose to leave rather than stay? If I choose to stay, should he get those attacks added anyways since he had time to make them? Or does staying locked in combat warp time so that they can make them?
3.5) Leaving a lone fallback guy to die is fine, if he actually dies. How many would you have to leave behind if, say, four separate units fell back? 1 from one of them, or 1 from each of them? What would falling back with a one-model-unit (say, an Astropath) look like in this situation?
1:Well alternatively you could go for a size mechanic.
2. Non argument game mechanics wise, you manouverd yourself to be surrounded you don't get to fall back. Simple as that. and secondly i didn't say all of them need to remain, however if 6 marines have a frontrank in combat then those 6 shouldn't get to just turn tail as it is now and get out unscathed whiles my unit now can go commit seppuku might aswell.
3 Generally , if you turn tail you present the enemy an oppurtunity to strike. Also your action is to run and maybee safe your hide and basically have removed the future agency of the melee unit by exposing it. If anything the action economy is allready stacked against the melee units anyways. Due to having to take atm counter melee anyways.
Unit1126PLL wrote: ...2) 8 Marines could easily fall back from 50 mutants, since they're faster, stronger and more skilled, IMO. Making "overrun" rules makes sense in historical games where the physical capabilities of the combatants are roughly equal, but are you really telling me that 10 grots could overrun 7 Marines simply because they outnumber them? Additionally, they're likely not fighting all 50. They're fighting the front rank of, say, 10. And the rest are milling around in the back waiting for their turn. If you have the marines completely swamped by mutants, they can't fall back anyways as they are surrounded...
Maybe we could have some kind of stat to reflect the differing speeds of models to make it easier/harder to overrun. What might you call such a thing? Agility? Alacrity? Maybe Initiative?
Xenomancers wrote: I think you should be able to use your guns in melle at -1 to hit instead of overwatch.
Sound fair?
Or how about a d6 run move away from your charging units to make up for the fact they aren't just going to stand there while people are charging them with swords.
Stop bitching about melle. This is the strongest melle has ever been. It is high risk high reward. deal with it.
That's like saying "Stop bitching about Iron Hands, because IH could have given S10T10W10 to every model instead!"
It doesn't move the needle.
Ironhands flat out get insane free rules for no reason. How is that the same as - I'm chosing to play high risk high reward playstyle using melle in a game with guns and failing a lot because it's high risk.
Unit1126PLL wrote: ...2) 8 Marines could easily fall back from 50 mutants, since they're faster, stronger and more skilled, IMO. Making "overrun" rules makes sense in historical games where the physical capabilities of the combatants are roughly equal, but are you really telling me that 10 grots could overrun 7 Marines simply because they outnumber them? Additionally, they're likely not fighting all 50. They're fighting the front rank of, say, 10. And the rest are milling around in the back waiting for their turn. If you have the marines completely swamped by mutants, they can't fall back anyways as they are surrounded...
Maybe we could have some kind of stat to reflect the differing speeds of models to make it easier/harder to overrun. What might you call such a thing? Agility? Alacrity? Maybe Initiative?
That sounds far too complicated.
What we really need is a precise formula taking into account movement, toughness, save, invulnerable save, FNP, current day of the week, time until St Swithin's Day, each player's respective BMI, and whether they squeeze their toothpaste from the bottom or the middle. This formula will be completely unmodifiable except for a mere 146 Stratagems and every SM model (which will ignore it entirely).
2. Non argument game mechanics wise, you manouverd yourself to be surrounded you don't get to fall back. Simple as that. and secondly i didn't say all of them need to remain, however if 6 marines have a frontrank in combat then those 6 shouldn't get to just turn tail as it is now and get out unscathed whiles my unit now can go commit seppuku might aswell.
3 Generally , if you turn tail you present the enemy an oppurtunity to strike. Also your action is to run and maybee safe your hide and basically have removed the future agency of the melee unit by exposing it. If anything the action economy is allready stacked against the melee units anyways. Due to having to take atm counter melee anyways.
Size still doesn't really address the problem. A powerful dude in combat with much much much less powerful dudes of almost the same size (e.g. an SM captain in combat with 3 Guardsmen) should still be shoot-able, even if the guardsmen are caught in the cross fire. No commander is going to be like "well, guess we'll just get carved up then." In reality, of course, they'd hold their fire until the powerful dude slew each guardsman, then blow him away. But there's no real mechanic for that. (Think a 'readied action' in D&D).
I agree that you shouldn't be able to fall back if surrounded (duh) but are you seriously telling me the stronger, better, faster Marines can't get away from the 10 mutants fighting them? The "unit" may have 50, but if they're not surrounded, they're not fighting all 50. That's a fact, jack.
Are we doing combats based on opportunity to strike, now? Does a Crisis Suit flying away from the enemy give as much of an opportunity to be hit (even though he can do it by facing the enemy) as, say, a Guardsman turning tail and fleeing? Remember, falling back isn't fleeing; they're separate mechanics. It's not like the person is just literally turning around and sprinting away - likely, they're parrying blows with the goal of opening space for them to back off. Agreed that melee units sometimes suffer in the current system though.
Unit1126PLL wrote: ...2) 8 Marines could easily fall back from 50 mutants, since they're faster, stronger and more skilled, IMO. Making "overrun" rules makes sense in historical games where the physical capabilities of the combatants are roughly equal, but are you really telling me that 10 grots could overrun 7 Marines simply because they outnumber them? Additionally, they're likely not fighting all 50. They're fighting the front rank of, say, 10. And the rest are milling around in the back waiting for their turn. If you have the marines completely swamped by mutants, they can't fall back anyways as they are surrounded...
Maybe we could have some kind of stat to reflect the differing speeds of models to make it easier/harder to overrun. What might you call such a thing? Agility? Alacrity? Maybe Initiative?
if only
LOL.
It's not just speeds, though. It's the whole gamut. Should a Crysis suit be overrun by Grots? Tau used to be Initiative 2. Should a Baneblade be overrun by some orks? Should a Baneblade be overrun by some Knights?
Xenomancers wrote: I think you should be able to use your guns in melle at -1 to hit instead of overwatch.
Sound fair?
Or how about a d6 run move away from your charging units to make up for the fact they aren't just going to stand there while people are charging them with swords.
Stop bitching about melle. This is the strongest melle has ever been. It is high risk high reward. deal with it.
That's like saying "Stop bitching about Iron Hands, because IH could have given S10T10W10 to every model instead!"
It doesn't move the needle.
Ironhands flat out get insane free rules for no reason. How is that the same as - I'm chosing to play high risk high reward playstyle using melle in a game with guns and failing a lot because it's high risk.
I didn't compare IH being OP to melee being weak. I compared saying "It's OK, because it could have been worse" in response to CC players' complataints to saying "It's OK, because it could have been worse" in response to IH opponents' complaints.
Reducto ad absurdum doesn't suggest the absurd is true, it shows how absurd the form of the original argument was.
Xenomancers wrote: Stop bitching about melle. This is the strongest melle has ever been. It is high risk high reward. deal with it.
Can you share some examples of meta, tournament-winning melee builds in 8th? Because all the ones I can think of off the top of my head (Alaitoc flier spam, Knights + Guard, Iron Hands gunline, Tau gunline) are shooting-oriented, with the second of those having a minor melee contingent (smash captains).
Melee requires you to get into combat while getting shot, eat overwatch, roll high enough to make it to the target, then pin your target so that they can't retreat and don't wipe them out or you'll get shot. It's definitely high risk but I have a hard time seeing the reward.
Back in 3rd Ed, Rapid Fire weapons only got one shot out to 12" if they moved, Heavy couldn't move and shoot, charging gave you an extra attack, winning the melee and forcing the enemy to fall back carried a significant chance of instantly killing the entire unit, and cover worked. No overwatch, gunlines were completely static, and nobody could voluntarily retreat. I have a hard time seeing how melee is stronger than it was back then; my Hormagaunts with their 18" threat radius and 3 attacks on the charge used to mulch Guard and SM gunlines. Now not so much, and the tricks I have to get into melee faster are offset by things like shoot-twice abilities and better Overwatch.
Ork da jump. TS tzangor bombs. Bloodletter bombs. 3x gallant. Disco lord + Chas knights. Eldar shinning spears. Catachan brigade with ogrins. Basically...the majority of all competitive lists have featured a lot of melle most having it be their strongest aspect.
Xenomancers wrote: I think you should be able to use your guns in melle at -1 to hit instead of overwatch.
Sound fair?
Or how about a d6 run move away from your charging units to make up for the fact they aren't just going to stand there while people are charging them with swords.
Stop bitching about melle. This is the strongest melle has ever been. It is high risk high reward. deal with it.
That's like saying "Stop bitching about Iron Hands, because IH could have given S10T10W10 to every model instead!"
It doesn't move the needle.
Ironhands flat out get insane free rules for no reason. How is that the same as - I'm chosing to play high risk high reward playstyle using melle in a game with guns and failing a lot because it's high risk.
I didn't compare IH being OP to melee being weak. I compared saying "It's OK, because it could have been worse" in response to CC players' complataints to saying "It's OK, because it could have been worse" in response to IH opponents' complaints.
Reducto ad absurdum doesn't suggest the absurd is true, it shows how absurd the form of the original argument was.
Xenomancers wrote: Stop bitching about melle. This is the strongest melle has ever been. It is high risk high reward. deal with it.
Can you share some examples of meta, tournament-winning melee builds in 8th? Because all the ones I can think of off the top of my head (Alaitoc flier spam, Knights + Guard, Iron Hands gunline, Tau gunline) are shooting-oriented, with the second of those having a minor melee contingent (smash captains).
Melee requires you to get into combat while getting shot, eat overwatch, roll high enough to make it to the target, then pin your target so that they can't retreat and don't wipe them out or you'll get shot. It's definitely high risk but I have a hard time seeing the reward.
Back in 3rd Ed, Rapid Fire weapons only got one shot out to 12" if they moved, Heavy couldn't move and shoot, charging gave you an extra attack, winning the melee and forcing the enemy to fall back carried a significant chance of instantly killing the entire unit, and cover worked. No overwatch, gunlines were completely static, and nobody could voluntarily retreat. I have a hard time seeing how melee is stronger than it was back then; my Hormagaunts with their 18" threat radius and 3 attacks on the charge used to mulch Guard and SM gunlines. Now not so much, and the tricks I have to get into melee faster are offset by things like shoot-twice abilities and better Overwatch.
Ork da jump. TS tzangor bombs. Bloodletter bombs. 3x gallant. Disco lord + Chas knights. Eldar shinning spears. Catachan brigade with ogrins. Basically...the majority of all competitive lists have featured a lot of melle most having it be their strongest aspect.
IG + Custodes - mostly shooting, with some capable melee. Neither a lot of melee, nor is the melee the strongest.
Castellan IoM Soup - The Castellan might be good in melee, but it's a shooting unit. It's a shooty list. It's biggest threats are dakka.
IG + SM Beatstick - The SM beatstick is a nasty individual, but most of the list is shooty
Ynnari Reapers - Might have had some lesser CC support in some cases, but was almost entirely a shooty list. It's strongest unit is shooty by far.
Ynnari Spectres - Same as Reapers
Eldar Airwing - Shooty
Biel-Tan Shuriken Spam - Shooty
Gman Bubbles - Shooty
IH Stupidity - Shooty
The majority of competitive lists have been *strongly* skewed to shooty. There have been some competitive CC lists, but they've been the minority. Not sure how you're seeing them as the majority.
Xenomancers wrote: I think you should be able to use your guns in melle at -1 to hit instead of overwatch.
Sound fair?
Or how about a d6 run move away from your charging units to make up for the fact they aren't just going to stand there while people are charging them with swords.
Stop bitching about melle. This is the strongest melle has ever been. It is high risk high reward. deal with it.
That's like saying "Stop bitching about Iron Hands, because IH could have given S10T10W10 to every model instead!"
It doesn't move the needle.
Ironhands flat out get insane free rules for no reason. How is that the same as - I'm chosing to play high risk high reward playstyle using melle in a game with guns and failing a lot because it's high risk.
I didn't compare IH being OP to melee being weak. I compared saying "It's OK, because it could have been worse" in response to CC players' complataints to saying "It's OK, because it could have been worse" in response to IH opponents' complaints.
Reducto ad absurdum doesn't suggest the absurd is true, it shows how absurd the form of the original argument was.
Melle is not weak ^^^ see above.
"Melee is not weak because it could be made weaker" doesn't support the claim. The above you quoted is refuting that logic.
Imagine a claim like "Marines weren't weak before the 'Dex because they could have been given a 5+ armor save! So quit bitching about Marines being weak!". Would that convince anyone? Should that convince anyone?
Dude... every eldar list takes spears. because they are the best unit they have - they can shoot but they melle much harder. So you just listed 4 lists as 1 list. Space marines are too slow to be an assault list - most their melle is counter charge except now they have a bunch of melle lists using the same stratagies as tzangore bombs. Castellan + IG brigade was a huge amount of melle. 3x sheild captain on bike....Those are melle units. Smash captains...melle.
I wouldnt say guard squads holding up better melee units as really being real melee units. Sure catachan make them hit back harder but their real purpose isnt to go beat up the enemy in melee. If the guard player could remove their ability to even fight in CC for +1 to toughness and armor save they would take that in a heartbeat and happily replace straken and priest with even more dakka.
I have heard that good Tau players sometimes charge with their shield drones and riptides so we better count Tau as a melee army.
250-350pts of smash captains in a 2000pts list isnt really a melee list and showing how good melee is. They ignore overwatch, have better charges than average and dont care about being in the open since they have already done their purpose by then. All made viable due to how CP works rather than the melee mechanics. Its like saying BA were in a good place since Imperium lists used a smash captain since theirs were the best one despite nothing else in the whole codex were worth taking.
Xenomancers wrote: Dude... every eldar list takes spears. because they are the best unit they have - they can shoot but they melle much harder. So you just listed 4 lists as 1 list.
Umwhat?
Back when Ynnari Dark Reaper stars were the deathstar du jour, most of those lists did *not* also take a Shining Spear deathstar. Most of those lists can only fit a single deathstar, and even if it could have fit two, only one gets to be the deathstar - the other wasn't nearly as deadly or survivable. The whole point of the CWE deathstar structure is that one unit can be made silly-OP by stacking buffs/stratagems/powers. Stuff that can only be applied to one.
Spectre stars before them, same deal.
With points changes, Reapers took over for Spectres early on. And with later points changes, Spears took over for Reapers. But Spectre and Reaper stars (and the rest of their lists) were *terrible* at CC. A basic Tac squad would beat a Reaper Star in CC.
You're vastly misremembering those lists if you think they had a spare 300-400 points for a Spear deathstar, or the spare buffs to make the Spears a deathstar along with the core deathstar of the list.
Also, that's only 2 lists (Reaper stars and Spectre stars). Airwing might take some Spears. but that's not a lot of melee. And it's not their strongest aspect - that'd be the flyers' shooting. Shuriken Spam is similar in that it could take some melee, but not a lot of it. And it's focused on shooting, too. Although it might be overstating it's capabilities to list it. Still, that's 3 mostly-shooting CWE list types (Reaper Stars, Spectre Stars, and Airwing) versus one hybrid/mixed list (Spear Stars) and zero melee-centric lists, from the CWE (+Ynnari) faction.
Space marines are too slow to be an assault list
Yeah, Marines are almost as slow as Eldar these days! You do realize that White Scars easily outcharge almost every other faction?
most their melle is counter charge
Captain Smashfether? Countercharge?
except now they have a bunch of melle lists using the same stratagies as tzangore bombs.
They exist, but so do Marine shooty lists. Marines tend to do a *lot* more shooting than chopping.
Castellan + IG brigade was a huge amount of melle.
Charging the Castellan was just about the only way to kill it. It killed things more by shooting and soaking firepower.
And IG could survive a charge cheaply, but they're a shooty threat.
3x sheild captain on bike....Those are melle units. Smash captains...melle.
Congratulations, you've identified a couple melee elements in mostly-shooty lists where their strongest aspects are clearly shooting.
How are those lists that "feature[d] a lot of melle[sic]"? Three SHield Captains or a Smash Captain or three isn't "a lot".
How are those lists that "having it [melee] be their strongest aspect" when they're token threats to support their shooting firepower?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also, in case you comment on Spears again:
2 S6 AP-4 attacks vs 1 S6 AP-4 attack + 4 S4 Pseudorending attacks? They shoot much harder than they fight. They're still a CC unit, no argument there, but your supporting facts are wrong.
The same is true for the Ork lists BTW; Shokk Attack Gun relic, Lootas and Smasha Gunz made up the core killing power, the Boyz are there to buy time and screen.
bharring an eldar list that doesn't contain shinning spears or replaces them with tons of harliquen bikes is not a competitive list. Spears are the best unit in the entire game. Oh and they just removed their 4 point increase. The only exception to spears would be eldar lists including 6 flyers.
Spears get 2x the number of laser lance hits in CC. The ap-4 2 damage weapon. Plus the exarch with his 3 attacks at str 8. They melle much better than they shoot.
Unit1126PLL wrote: ...2) 8 Marines could easily fall back from 50 mutants, since they're faster, stronger and more skilled, IMO. Making "overrun" rules makes sense in historical games where the physical capabilities of the combatants are roughly equal, but are you really telling me that 10 grots could overrun 7 Marines simply because they outnumber them? Additionally, they're likely not fighting all 50. They're fighting the front rank of, say, 10. And the rest are milling around in the back waiting for their turn. If you have the marines completely swamped by mutants, they can't fall back anyways as they are surrounded...
Maybe we could have some kind of stat to reflect the differing speeds of models to make it easier/harder to overrun. What might you call such a thing? Agility? Alacrity? Maybe Initiative?
Using Space Marines might be a poor example, since in the editions where there were overrun rules, ATSKNF did some serious shenanigans. If Marines lost combat, they could choose to fail their morale test (and I think they could auto pass it, but more on that later), retreat, and if they were caught, where most players would have that unit obliterated, Marines were just locked back in combat.
Fearless creatures, though, if they lost combat, would take additional hits which might result in even more wounds.
And keep in mind, these were the editions where there was no turn 1 assaults (except a very specific scenario with DE and some truly ridiculous rolling), no assaulting from transports (except BA's, I think), no assaulting from drop pods or after deep striking, etc. So if you're a shooty armor, and you're not prioritizing the 20-gribbly genestealer squad led by a broodlord meandering its way to your lines (and meandering it was because, hey, the broodlord can't fleet so enjoy those 6 inch movements a turn or d6 inches with terrain and a 6 inch charge or d6 with terrain), then you deserved what you got, especially if you had nothing that could counter charge.
Xenomancers wrote: bharring an eldar list that doesn't contain shinning spears or replaces them with tons of harliquen bikes is not a competitive list. Spears are the best unit in the entire game. Oh and they just removed their 4 point increase. The only exception to spears would be eldar lists including 6 flyers.
Only 2 of the 5 random Eldar winning lists I pulled up had Spears at all. One was Air Wing with a couple spears (so definitely not a melee list, just the one minor element), although the other had a notable number. Hard to see those 5 lists as overwhelmingly "melee lists".
Spears get 2x the number of laser lance hits in CC. The ap-4 2 damage weapon. Plus the exarch with his 3 attacks at str 8. They melle much better than they shoot.
I have a hard time trading 1 S6 attack, even at Ap-4 D2, for *four* S4 Pseudorend shots. Without running the numbers, it may be better against super durable multi wound targets without invulns, but worse against most things.
Xenomancers wrote: bharring an eldar list that doesn't contain shinning spears or replaces them with tons of harliquen bikes is not a competitive list. Spears are the best unit in the entire game. Oh and they just removed their 4 point increase. The only exception to spears would be eldar lists including 6 flyers.
Spears get 2x the number of laser lance hits in CC. The ap-4 2 damage weapon. Plus the exarch with his 3 attacks at str 8. They melle much better than they shoot.
dude, shining spears are far from auto-include in competitive eldar lists. The last time they were ran was when ynnari still was a thing. Theres been some people testing them out with the new 2++ exarch power but its quickly being overshadows by MSU spam with expert crafters + masters of concealment. And before that, flyer spam was the list.
And the fact that shining spears are played doesnt change the fact that melee sucks this edition, theres jsut too many ways to feth it up. Melee units need to either be undercosted (smash captain), have an efficient delivery method (shining spears, smash captains, bloodletters) or be just so efficient when they connect that the risk is actually worth it (smash captains). apart from that, melee feels miserable because you need to reach the gunline to do anything and even when you reach it, if youre not an OP killing machine, the enemy will fall back and vaporize your unit.
here are the ways to render melee useless:
screen (duh),
put your important stuff in ruins and fill the first floor so charging them is impossible,
everything has flying (feth grav tanks) so even going all in to lock a tank isnt worth it anymore,
hyperefficient overwatch,
Hyperefficient buff characters to defend the castle (captains, lieutenants)
1 - A unit can only fire overwatch once per turn, but they can shoot at any unit in range, and split fire if desired. This gives agency to the overwatching player. Why would they shoot at the charging trukk if they were really worried about the boyz?
2 - If they do, they can't fight in the fight phase this player turn (instead of preventing shooting next turn.) It's too easy to forget which units fired by the time the next turn rolls around. Also...preventing a full shooting phase just cripples TAU. It's not really fair to single them out...or is it?
3 - Fallback gives an instant (and complete) fight phase to the opponent, but they hit on sixes.
Xenomancers wrote: bharring an eldar list that doesn't contain shinning spears or replaces them with tons of harliquen bikes is not a competitive list. Spears are the best unit in the entire game. Oh and they just removed their 4 point increase. The only exception to spears would be eldar lists including 6 flyers.
Spears get 2x the number of laser lance hits in CC. The ap-4 2 damage weapon. Plus the exarch with his 3 attacks at str 8. They melle much better than they shoot.
dude, shining spears are far from auto-include in competitive eldar lists. The last time they were ran was when ynnari still was a thing. Theres been some people testing them out with the new 2++ exarch power but its quickly being overshadows by MSU spam with expert crafters + masters of concealment. And before that, flyer spam was the list.
And the fact that shining spears are played doesnt change the fact that melee sucks this edition, theres jsut too many ways to feth it up. Melee units need to either be undercosted (smash captain), have an efficient delivery method (shining spears, smash captains, bloodletters) or be just so efficient when they connect that the risk is actually worth it (smash captains). apart from that, melee feels miserable because you need to reach the gunline to do anything and even when you reach it, if youre not an OP killing machine, the enemy will fall back and vaporize your unit.
here are the ways to render melee useless:
screen (duh),
put your important stuff in ruins and fill the first floor so charging them is impossible,
everything has flying (feth grav tanks) so even going all in to lock a tank isnt worth it anymore,
hyperefficient overwatch,
Hyperefficient buff characters to defend the castle (captains, lieutenants)
It's okay. You are allowed to be wrong. LOL. Eldar list without spears is hilarious.
You do realize they have a natural 4++ to shooting. One of the highest damage output per point in the game. On one of the most credible first turn charge units in the game. 22" move. Holy crap dude. It would be like a DE list not including ravagers. Or an IG list not including command tanks. Sure some people don't use them - but some people just do things to do things - it's not because it's the best move.
Xenomancers wrote: bharring an eldar list that doesn't contain shinning spears or replaces them with tons of harliquen bikes is not a competitive list. Spears are the best unit in the entire game. Oh and they just removed their 4 point increase. The only exception to spears would be eldar lists including 6 flyers.
Spears get 2x the number of laser lance hits in CC. The ap-4 2 damage weapon. Plus the exarch with his 3 attacks at str 8. They melle much better than they shoot.
dude, shining spears are far from auto-include in competitive eldar lists. The last time they were ran was when ynnari still was a thing. Theres been some people testing them out with the new 2++ exarch power but its quickly being overshadows by MSU spam with expert crafters + masters of concealment. And before that, flyer spam was the list.
And the fact that shining spears are played doesnt change the fact that melee sucks this edition, theres jsut too many ways to feth it up. Melee units need to either be undercosted (smash captain), have an efficient delivery method (shining spears, smash captains, bloodletters) or be just so efficient when they connect that the risk is actually worth it (smash captains). apart from that, melee feels miserable because you need to reach the gunline to do anything and even when you reach it, if youre not an OP killing machine, the enemy will fall back and vaporize your unit.
here are the ways to render melee useless:
screen (duh),
put your important stuff in ruins and fill the first floor so charging them is impossible,
everything has flying (feth grav tanks) so even going all in to lock a tank isnt worth it anymore,
hyperefficient overwatch,
Hyperefficient buff characters to defend the castle (captains, lieutenants)
It's okay. You are allowed to be wrong. LOL. Eldar list without spears is hilarious.
You do realize they have a natural 4++ to shooting.
Says the SM player with their 2ppm 3++ vs shooting and CC
One of the highest damage output per point in the game.
Says the Marine player with all that "free AP" and doubletap and stuff
On one of the most credible first turn charge units in the game. 22" move.
Says the Marine player with White Scars outcharging Spears in most cases
Holy crap dude. It would be like a DE list not including ravagers. Or an IG list not including command tanks.
Then why do most of the Top 5 CWE lists I've pulled up *not have them*?
Sure some people don't use them - but some people just do things to do things - it's not because it's the best move.
Is this another "I know better than all the people winning tournaments" thing? Regardless, the claim was what's seen, not what you'd autowin with because of your abilities. And what's seen is documented - Spears are not even nearly in every competitive CWE list.
Which is more likely? That the vast majority of competitive players either don't understand that Spears are OP or don't want to use them, but still win without using them, including against other players who do use them? Or that, instead of the overwhelming majority of competitive CWE players being wrong on this thing, you might be?
to be white scars you are giving up a superdoctrine...not worth it. Ironhands > white scars.
So "Shining Spears are OP because they can do something I traded away for something even stronger! So clearly, Spears are OP!"
Spears are still good, they're just not good enough to go toe-to-toe with the best stuff out there. Regardless of how you might twist the numbers and mangle the examples, it's easily shown, as done above, that Spears are *not* in the vast majority of CWE competitive lists.
Note that these are, intentionally, not the same 5 I sampled previously. That sure of my conclusion.
One of these 5 has the Harlie bikes in large number you said sometimes replace Spears. 0 of the 5 have Spears. 2 of them happen to have significant CC in them - but only 2 of 5. That's nowhere near the vast majority.
Spears were really, really big for a while. Their points cost mixed with Ynnari not-nerfed-enough rules were absolutely brutal (and OP). But that isn't the only "top tier" list CWE has had this edition. Most of the good CWE lists have been dakka lists.
In keeping with the least amount of changes possible to the rules as is, just by changing disengaging to CC phase, from the movement phase you force the defensive player to not shoot the attacking unit, unless they have a strat/special ability that can move the engaged unit away from the engaging unit before the shooting phase to allow targeting of the enemy unit.
This would mean counter charging with a different unit or using your engaged unit to melee, or pulling back, taking no losses(but not shooting unless armed with pistols) and doing no melee for the turn.
edit: no one should fire into melee, but that could be a special rule for certain characters to allow heavy weapons to fire into engaged units. Some sort of forgo actions to allow tank/HWP fire into melee with misses/splash damage/spillover going to friendlies. I could see CSM, Demons, GSC, 'Nids, and Guard using this strongly/ alot. Orks for a laugh/infrequently.
Honestly, Overwatch isn't horrible game design, but the product of certain game design choices. IGOUGO leaves a person out of the loop at some point, often leaving them unable to respond.
Bolt Action gets around this by having every unit having a random chance to activate that turn so rarely does one player dominates half the turn.
Battletech gets around this by having all the actions happen at the "same time" by everyone moves in the Movement Phase, everyone who wants to shoot will shoot in the Shooting Phase (with damage taking hold at the end of the Phase), etc.
But Overwatch was implemented to allow players to respond to the Charge, which is actually quite effective for many units of the game.
Charistoph wrote: But Overwatch was implemented to allow players to respond to the Charge, which is actually quite effective for many units of the game.
It doesn't allow units to 'respond to the charge', though, and that's the problem. In a game like Dust, Bolt Action, or Infinity the reaction system gives you the opportunity to select what action (if any) to perform in retaliation. This provides more opportunity for player interaction and counterplay.
Overwatch occurs automatically, and unless you need to pick a plasma profile or activate a stratagem there's no actual interactivity. You just roll the dice to resolve the mechanic. It might as well be a difficult terrain test.
Charistoph wrote: But Overwatch was implemented to allow players to respond to the Charge, which is actually quite effective for many units of the game.
It doesn't allow units to 'respond to the charge', though, and that's the problem. In a game like Dust, Bolt Action, or Infinity the reaction system gives you the opportunity to select what action (if any) to perform in retaliation. This provides more opportunity for player interaction and counterplay.
Overwatch occurs automatically, and unless you need to pick a plasma profile or activate a stratagem there's no actual interactivity. You just roll the dice to resolve the mechanic. It might as well be a difficult terrain test.
Apparently you are going on some base assumptions.
First is that Overwatch was always prevalent, it hasn't been. For quite a few Editions the only thing to do with a Charge was wait for your opponent to move his models in. Sometimes preparing your model's pants while you wait was also something you could do. Charges were brutally powerful and close combat specialists could wipe units off the map (though, you didn't want to kill everyone on your Charge, oddly enough).
Second, that I think Overwatch is sufficient as the only reaction. I do not think that it is, but GW can be really lazy about game design.
I don't hate overwatch, I do think it should be something like
player 1 declares all charges.
player 2 declares overwatch where they choose which units they will be shooting at hitting on 6's. can split fire like in regular squads but only at things charging them.
player 1 makes charge rolls
and at the end of combat everybody stays in combat because fleeing combat should not be a thing that happens. maybe add an option where they can declare the unit destroyed or ran and pull the models from the table but this ever falling back screen play is so annoying
G00fySmiley wrote: I don't hate overwatch, I do think it should be something like
player 1 declares all charges.
player 2 declares overwatch where they choose which units they will be shooting at hitting on 6's. can split fire like in regular squads but only at things charging them.
player 1 makes charge rolls
and at the end of combat everybody stays in combat because fleeing combat should not be a thing that happens. maybe add an option where they can declare the unit destroyed or ran and pull the models from the table but this ever falling back screen play is so annoying
I think a tank or walker falling back from combat is reasonable, it’s going to be hard for an infantry squad to stop them. Even for other units it should’ve be some type of test to leave after all melee shouldn’t be stuck until dead add in some kind of damage for failing the fall back test. While we’re at it we should also add a penalty for failing to make a charge or if we go with no falling back at all like you proposed we should just remove,a unit who failed a charge from the board they ran out into open ground to make the charge failed to reach their target so they got cut down.
G00fySmiley wrote: I don't hate overwatch, I do think it should be something like
player 1 declares all charges.
player 2 declares overwatch where they choose which units they will be shooting at hitting on 6's. can split fire like in regular squads but only at things charging them.
player 1 makes charge rolls
and at the end of combat everybody stays in combat because fleeing combat should not be a thing that happens. maybe add an option where they can declare the unit destroyed or ran and pull the models from the table but this ever falling back screen play is so annoying
I think a tank or walker falling back from combat is reasonable, it’s going to be hard for an infantry squad to stop them. Even for other units it should’ve be some type of test to leave after all melee shouldn’t be stuck until dead add in some kind of damage for failing the fall back test. While we’re at it we should also add a penalty for failing to make a charge or if we go with no falling back at all like you proposed we should just remove,a unit who failed a charge from the board they ran out into open ground to make the charge failed to reach their target so they got cut down.
vehicles i agree. i am more thinking infantry. I have a hard time thinking 20 bloodletters or 30 ork boys are going to calmly let the infantry just walk away and not just keep pursuing them until they are slain. As for a penalty for a failed charge.. that is basically the overwatch. you took the overwatch and did not get to attack so have to take overwatch again the next turn assuming you survive to attempt another charge.
the purpose of the player 2 decision there is shooty armies get to allocate overwatch as they wish rather than just overwatchign the first declared charge. no more.. i charge your group of 10 guardman with the flamer with a rhino before charging with a unit of agggressors. nope now it would be i see both coming at me... fetch it i cannot hurt the tank so will flame and shoot the space marines instead maybe causing some casualties on the way in. .
G00fySmiley wrote: I don't hate overwatch, I do think it should be something like
player 1 declares all charges.
player 2 declares overwatch where they choose which units they will be shooting at hitting on 6's. can split fire like in regular squads but only at things charging them.
player 1 makes charge rolls
and at the end of combat everybody stays in combat because fleeing combat should not be a thing that happens. maybe add an option where they can declare the unit destroyed or ran and pull the models from the table but this ever falling back screen play is so annoying
I think a tank or walker falling back from combat is reasonable, it’s going to be hard for an infantry squad to stop them. Even for other units it should’ve be some type of test to leave after all melee shouldn’t be stuck until dead add in some kind of damage for failing the fall back test. While we’re at it we should also add a penalty for failing to make a charge or if we go with no falling back at all like you proposed we should just remove,a unit who failed a charge from the board they ran out into open ground to make the charge failed to reach their target so they got cut down.
vehicles i agree. i am more thinking infantry. I have a hard time thinking 20 bloodletters or 30 ork boys are going to calmly let the infantry just walk away and not just keep pursuing them until they are slain. As for a penalty for a failed charge.. that is basically the overwatch. you took the overwatch and did not get to attack so have to take overwatch again the next turn assuming you survive to attempt another charge.
the purpose of the player 2 decision there is shooty armies get to allocate overwatch as they wish rather than just overwatchign the first declared charge. no more.. i charge your group of 10 guardman with the flamer with a rhino before charging with a unit of agggressors. nope now it would be i see both coming at me... fetch it i cannot hurt the tank so will flame and shoot the space marines instead maybe causing some casualties on the way in. .
I think then we should take into account the comparative unit sizes for if you can fall back or not, like a single captain is going to be stuck vs 30 orks but a 5 man tac squad would be easily able to escape a 5 man or less unit.
G00fySmiley wrote: I don't hate overwatch, I do think it should be something like
player 1 declares all charges.
player 2 declares overwatch where they choose which units they will be shooting at hitting on 6's. can split fire like in regular squads but only at things charging them.
player 1 makes charge rolls
and at the end of combat everybody stays in combat because fleeing combat should not be a thing that happens. maybe add an option where they can declare the unit destroyed or ran and pull the models from the table but this ever falling back screen play is so annoying
I think a tank or walker falling back from combat is reasonable, it’s going to be hard for an infantry squad to stop them. Even for other units it should’ve be some type of test to leave after all melee shouldn’t be stuck until dead add in some kind of damage for failing the fall back test. While we’re at it we should also add a penalty for failing to make a charge or if we go with no falling back at all like you proposed we should just remove,a unit who failed a charge from the board they ran out into open ground to make the charge failed to reach their target so they got cut down.
vehicles i agree. i am more thinking infantry. I have a hard time thinking 20 bloodletters or 30 ork boys are going to calmly let the infantry just walk away and not just keep pursuing them until they are slain. As for a penalty for a failed charge.. that is basically the overwatch. you took the overwatch and did not get to attack so have to take overwatch again the next turn assuming you survive to attempt another charge.
the purpose of the player 2 decision there is shooty armies get to allocate overwatch as they wish rather than just overwatchign the first declared charge. no more.. i charge your group of 10 guardman with the flamer with a rhino before charging with a unit of agggressors. nope now it would be i see both coming at me... fetch it i cannot hurt the tank so will flame and shoot the space marines instead maybe causing some casualties on the way in. .
I think then we should take into account the comparative unit sizes for if you can fall back or not, like a single captain is going to be stuck vs 30 orks but a 5 man tac squad would be easily able to escape a 5 man or less unit.
Positioning matters as much as numbers. Think of a big square of 50 Guard Conscripts (bear with me) all spread out:
o o o o o o
o o o o o o
o o o o o o
A Space Marine Captain charges one corner:
o o o o o o
o o o o o o
o o o o o o
*
The IG player might pile in with a couple guys or not, but he certainly won't get even close to the 50 man unit in. He'll probably get like 3 guys on the gigantic titan of a man that is an SM captain.
G00fySmiley wrote: I don't hate overwatch, I do think it should be something like
player 1 declares all charges.
player 2 declares overwatch where they choose which units they will be shooting at hitting on 6's. can split fire like in regular squads but only at things charging them.
player 1 makes charge rolls
and at the end of combat everybody stays in combat because fleeing combat should not be a thing that happens. maybe add an option where they can declare the unit destroyed or ran and pull the models from the table but this ever falling back screen play is so annoying
I think a tank or walker falling back from combat is reasonable, it’s going to be hard for an infantry squad to stop them. Even for other units it should’ve be some type of test to leave after all melee shouldn’t be stuck until dead add in some kind of damage for failing the fall back test. While we’re at it we should also add a penalty for failing to make a charge or if we go with no falling back at all like you proposed we should just remove,a unit who failed a charge from the board they ran out into open ground to make the charge failed to reach their target so they got cut down.
vehicles i agree. i am more thinking infantry. I have a hard time thinking 20 bloodletters or 30 ork boys are going to calmly let the infantry just walk away and not just keep pursuing them until they are slain. As for a penalty for a failed charge.. that is basically the overwatch. you took the overwatch and did not get to attack so have to take overwatch again the next turn assuming you survive to attempt another charge.
the purpose of the player 2 decision there is shooty armies get to allocate overwatch as they wish rather than just overwatchign the first declared charge. no more.. i charge your group of 10 guardman with the flamer with a rhino before charging with a unit of agggressors. nope now it would be i see both coming at me... fetch it i cannot hurt the tank so will flame and shoot the space marines instead maybe causing some casualties on the way in. .
I think then we should take into account the comparative unit sizes for if you can fall back or not, like a single captain is going to be stuck vs 30 orks but a 5 man tac squad would be easily able to escape a 5 man or less unit.
Positioning matters as much as numbers. Think of a big square of 50 Guard Conscripts (bear with me) all spread out:
o o o o o o
o o o o o o
o o o o o o
A Space Marine Captain charges one corner:
o o o o o o
o o o o o o
o o o o o o
*
The IG player might pile in with a couple guys or not, but he certainly won't get even close to the 50 man unit in. He'll probably get like 3 guys on the gigantic titan of a man that is an SM captain.
Why shouldn't the captain be able to fall back?
in theory if those conscripts were trying to fight the space marine captain each trying to reach him they wouldn't just let him walk away. it would at the best be a fighting retreat in the theatre of the mind... but I am more lookign at the tabletop balance. this edition like most before it heavily favors shooting lists. Even mroe so than any i have played in to be honest. the plight of the melee player used to be reaching combat and then you have a shot getting stuck in, judging how much to push in to finish off the assaults on your opponent's turn to keep going. Now they just fall back the next turn and destroy melee list with impunity by pouring in enough shots at front units and the melee armies generally cannot ever reach the backlines of say a tau or space marine list.
G00fySmiley wrote: I don't hate overwatch, I do think it should be something like
player 1 declares all charges.
player 2 declares overwatch where they choose which units they will be shooting at hitting on 6's. can split fire like in regular squads but only at things charging them.
player 1 makes charge rolls
and at the end of combat everybody stays in combat because fleeing combat should not be a thing that happens. maybe add an option where they can declare the unit destroyed or ran and pull the models from the table but this ever falling back screen play is so annoying
I think a tank or walker falling back from combat is reasonable, it’s going to be hard for an infantry squad to stop them. Even for other units it should’ve be some type of test to leave after all melee shouldn’t be stuck until dead add in some kind of damage for failing the fall back test. While we’re at it we should also add a penalty for failing to make a charge or if we go with no falling back at all like you proposed we should just remove,a unit who failed a charge from the board they ran out into open ground to make the charge failed to reach their target so they got cut down.
vehicles i agree. i am more thinking infantry. I have a hard time thinking 20 bloodletters or 30 ork boys are going to calmly let the infantry just walk away and not just keep pursuing them until they are slain. As for a penalty for a failed charge.. that is basically the overwatch. you took the overwatch and did not get to attack so have to take overwatch again the next turn assuming you survive to attempt another charge.
the purpose of the player 2 decision there is shooty armies get to allocate overwatch as they wish rather than just overwatchign the first declared charge. no more.. i charge your group of 10 guardman with the flamer with a rhino before charging with a unit of agggressors. nope now it would be i see both coming at me... fetch it i cannot hurt the tank so will flame and shoot the space marines instead maybe causing some casualties on the way in. .
I think then we should take into account the comparative unit sizes for if you can fall back or not, like a single captain is going to be stuck vs 30 orks but a 5 man tac squad would be easily able to escape a 5 man or less unit.
Positioning matters as much as numbers. Think of a big square of 50 Guard Conscripts (bear with me) all spread out:
o o o o o o
o o o o o o
o o o o o o
A Space Marine Captain charges one corner:
o o o o o o
o o o o o o
o o o o o o
*
The IG player might pile in with a couple guys or not, but he certainly won't get even close to the 50 man unit in. He'll probably get like 3 guys on the gigantic titan of a man that is an SM captain.
Why shouldn't the captain be able to fall back?
in theory if those conscripts were trying to fight the space marine captain each trying to reach him they wouldn't just let him walk away. it would at the best be a fighting retreat in the theatre of the mind... but I am more lookign at the tabletop balance. this edition like most before it heavily favors shooting lists. Even mroe so than any i have played in to be honest. the plight of the melee player used to be reaching combat and then you have a shot getting stuck in, judging how much to push in to finish off the assaults on your opponent's turn to keep going. Now they just fall back the next turn and destroy melee list with impunity by pouring in enough shots at front units and the melee armies generally cannot ever reach the backlines of say a tau or space marine list.
Well part of the issue is that in a universe with pretty good guns melee focused units and armies don’t make much sense, there is a reason h2h combat in a modern military is all but dead. The armors are better than modern body armor but the ability of the ranged weapons to penetrate said armor is also much better.
G00fySmiley wrote: I don't hate overwatch, I do think it should be something like
player 1 declares all charges.
player 2 declares overwatch where they choose which units they will be shooting at hitting on 6's. can split fire like in regular squads but only at things charging them.
player 1 makes charge rolls
and at the end of combat everybody stays in combat because fleeing combat should not be a thing that happens. maybe add an option where they can declare the unit destroyed or ran and pull the models from the table but this ever falling back screen play is so annoying
I think a tank or walker falling back from combat is reasonable, it’s going to be hard for an infantry squad to stop them. Even for other units it should’ve be some type of test to leave after all melee shouldn’t be stuck until dead add in some kind of damage for failing the fall back test. While we’re at it we should also add a penalty for failing to make a charge or if we go with no falling back at all like you proposed we should just remove,a unit who failed a charge from the board they ran out into open ground to make the charge failed to reach their target so they got cut down.
vehicles i agree. i am more thinking infantry. I have a hard time thinking 20 bloodletters or 30 ork boys are going to calmly let the infantry just walk away and not just keep pursuing them until they are slain. As for a penalty for a failed charge.. that is basically the overwatch. you took the overwatch and did not get to attack so have to take overwatch again the next turn assuming you survive to attempt another charge.
the purpose of the player 2 decision there is shooty armies get to allocate overwatch as they wish rather than just overwatchign the first declared charge. no more.. i charge your group of 10 guardman with the flamer with a rhino before charging with a unit of agggressors. nope now it would be i see both coming at me... fetch it i cannot hurt the tank so will flame and shoot the space marines instead maybe causing some casualties on the way in. .
I think then we should take into account the comparative unit sizes for if you can fall back or not, like a single captain is going to be stuck vs 30 orks but a 5 man tac squad would be easily able to escape a 5 man or less unit.
Positioning matters as much as numbers. Think of a big square of 50 Guard Conscripts (bear with me) all spread out:
o o o o o o
o o o o o o
o o o o o o
A Space Marine Captain charges one corner:
o o o o o o
o o o o o o
o o o o o o
*
The IG player might pile in with a couple guys or not, but he certainly won't get even close to the 50 man unit in. He'll probably get like 3 guys on the gigantic titan of a man that is an SM captain.
Why shouldn't the captain be able to fall back?
in theory if those conscripts were trying to fight the space marine captain each trying to reach him they wouldn't just let him walk away. it would at the best be a fighting retreat in the theatre of the mind... but I am more lookign at the tabletop balance. this edition like most before it heavily favors shooting lists. Even mroe so than any i have played in to be honest. the plight of the melee player used to be reaching combat and then you have a shot getting stuck in, judging how much to push in to finish off the assaults on your opponent's turn to keep going. Now they just fall back the next turn and destroy melee list with impunity by pouring in enough shots at front units and the melee armies generally cannot ever reach the backlines of say a tau or space marine list.
Well part of the issue is that in a universe with pretty good guns melee focused units and armies don’t make much sense, there is a reason h2h combat in a modern military is all but dead. The armors are better than modern body armor but the ability of the ranged weapons to penetrate said armor is also much better.
sure but that is real world vs game design.
in 40k a psychic unit can send a mind bullet through a tank. Last i checked no military is using mind bullets or tearing holes in reality to release demons.
As part of game design you should want balanced armies and different play styles to be viable. With shooting being markedly better and having been for most editions without attempts to address it. we end up with "oh you want to play a melee army, I guess you are at a distinct disadvantage" vs properly fixing the rules so different factions and builds are on equal footing
The problem with that is that even though this is a sci-fi fantasy game the things that made guns better tan h2h combat are still going to exist and still going to make melee weaker. Unless you make melee brokenly OP is always going to be worse.
TheAvengingKnee wrote: The problem with that is that even though this is a sci-fi fantasy game the things that made guns better tan h2h combat are still going to exist and still going to make melee weaker. Unless you make melee brokenly OP is always going to be worse.
I am not saying make melee OP rather just that the game mechanics should be worked on to allow for both. I am saying the ability to just choose to fall back made shooting armies who were already stronger than melee builds even more powerful. literally just saying hey this thing that caused a pretty big imbalance to get worse... lets revert that back. I think GW was on the right track with Ogryn/Bulgryn where dedicated melee units should probably be tougher and have better armor to bring things in like within reason but agian only to the point that its comperable to shooty armies, I want a balanced game not a shift in the imbalance to just melee better.
TheAvengingKnee wrote: The problem with that is that even though this is a sci-fi fantasy game the things that made guns better tan h2h combat are still going to exist and still going to make melee weaker. Unless you make melee brokenly OP is always going to be worse.
I am not saying make melee OP rather just that the game mechanics should be worked on to allow for both. I am saying the ability to just choose to fall back made shooting armies who were already stronger than melee builds even more powerful. literally just saying hey this thing that caused a pretty big imbalance to get worse... lets revert that back. I think GW was on the right track with Ogryn/Bulgryn where dedicated melee units should probably be tougher and have better armor to bring things in like within reason but agian only to the point that its comperable to shooty armies, I want a balanced game not a shift in the imbalance to just melee better.
Would make more sense if you could fall back but only if there is still another unit engaged with the enemy so they can't chase. Would allow you to pull a valuable/shooty unit out of combat but your not just walking out of melee leaving the enemy unit open to getting gunned down.
TheAvengingKnee wrote: The problem with that is that even though this is a sci-fi fantasy game the things that made guns better tan h2h combat are still going to exist and still going to make melee weaker. Unless you make melee brokenly OP is always going to be worse.
I am not saying make melee OP rather just that the game mechanics should be worked on to allow for both. I am saying the ability to just choose to fall back made shooting armies who were already stronger than melee builds even more powerful. literally just saying hey this thing that caused a pretty big imbalance to get worse... lets revert that back. I think GW was on the right track with Ogryn/Bulgryn where dedicated melee units should probably be tougher and have better armor to bring things in like within reason but agian only to the point that its comperable to shooty armies, I want a balanced game not a shift in the imbalance to just melee better.
Would make more sense if you could fall back but only if there is still another unit engaged with the enemy so they can't chase. Would allow you to pull a valuable/shooty unit out of combat but your not just walking out of melee leaving the enemy unit open to getting gunned down.
But like, letting the enemy not get gunned down is the problem.
Why is a company of Leman Russ tanks not firing into the horde of Boyz simply because one Guardsman is fighting one or two Orks on the outermost extreme edge of the unit?
Why would a Warlord not shoot another Warlord simply because it's fighting Chaos Cultists that don't even reach its ankles?
That's the whole problem with melee (and I mean this in a global sense, not a game sense). So you made it to their first trench line, great. Now you have to get through the other 7, because defense in depth is a thing. Having an artificial rule where you're safe simply because the enemy exists in some ill-defined proximity (seriously, a Guardsman within 1" of an Ork is just as likely to be cowering as he is to be clashing blades with something twice his size and strength) is silly and unintuitive.
TheAvengingKnee wrote: The problem with that is that even though this is a sci-fi fantasy game the things that made guns better tan h2h combat are still going to exist and still going to make melee weaker. Unless you make melee brokenly OP is always going to be worse.
I am not saying make melee OP rather just that the game mechanics should be worked on to allow for both. I am saying the ability to just choose to fall back made shooting armies who were already stronger than melee builds even more powerful. literally just saying hey this thing that caused a pretty big imbalance to get worse... lets revert that back. I think GW was on the right track with Ogryn/Bulgryn where dedicated melee units should probably be tougher and have better armor to bring things in like within reason but agian only to the point that its comperable to shooty armies, I want a balanced game not a shift in the imbalance to just melee better.
Would make more sense if you could fall back but only if there is still another unit engaged with the enemy so they can't chase. Would allow you to pull a valuable/shooty unit out of combat but your not just walking out of melee leaving the enemy unit open to getting gunned down.
But like, letting the enemy not get gunned down is the problem.
Why is a company of Leman Russ tanks not firing into the horde of Boyz simply because one Guardsman is fighting one or two Orks on the outermost extreme edge of the unit?
Why would a Warlord not shoot another Warlord simply because it's fighting Chaos Cultists that don't even reach its ankles?
That's the whole problem with melee (and I mean this in a global sense, not a game sense). So you made it to their first trench line, great. Now you have to get through the other 7, because defense in depth is a thing. Having an artificial rule where you're safe simply because the enemy exists in some ill-defined proximity (seriously, a Guardsman within 1" of an Ork is just as likely to be cowering as he is to be clashing blades with something twice his size and strength) is silly and unintuitive.
Totally agree. If you want to buff melle you will have to get ride of these silly rules like - Not being able to shoot characters and not being able to shoot into hopelessly lost melees.
TheAvengingKnee wrote: The problem with that is that even though this is a sci-fi fantasy game the things that made guns better tan h2h combat are still going to exist and still going to make melee weaker. Unless you make melee brokenly OP is always going to be worse.
I am not saying make melee OP rather just that the game mechanics should be worked on to allow for both. I am saying the ability to just choose to fall back made shooting armies who were already stronger than melee builds even more powerful. literally just saying hey this thing that caused a pretty big imbalance to get worse... lets revert that back. I think GW was on the right track with Ogryn/Bulgryn where dedicated melee units should probably be tougher and have better armor to bring things in like within reason but agian only to the point that its comperable to shooty armies, I want a balanced game not a shift in the imbalance to just melee better.
Would make more sense if you could fall back but only if there is still another unit engaged with the enemy so they can't chase. Would allow you to pull a valuable/shooty unit out of combat but your not just walking out of melee leaving the enemy unit open to getting gunned down.
But like, letting the enemy not get gunned down is the problem.
Why is a company of Leman Russ tanks not firing into the horde of Boyz simply because one Guardsman is fighting one or two Orks on the outermost extreme edge of the unit?
Why would a Warlord not shoot another Warlord simply because it's fighting Chaos Cultists that don't even reach its ankles?
That's the whole problem with melee (and I mean this in a global sense, not a game sense). So you made it to their first trench line, great. Now you have to get through the other 7, because defense in depth is a thing. Having an artificial rule where you're safe simply because the enemy exists in some ill-defined proximity (seriously, a Guardsman within 1" of an Ork is just as likely to be cowering as he is to be clashing blades with something twice his size and strength) is silly and unintuitive.
makes perfect sense from a real world perspective... but how about a game mechanic balance perspective? If i choose a melee army should it be possible for me to win? should I have an even chance of winning with the same skill level as a player doing a gunline army with multiple layers of bubble wrap, or should I just concede before the game starts because I don't stand a chance?
as for the above I think it should be an option to just pick up the unit, just not to fall back from combat. have 3 guardsman left in the squad? well they are removed as casualties if you don't want them locked in. The issue is them walking out of combat and setting up 2 inches apart and creating a 7 inch wide road block (9 when you count not being able to go withing an inch of the base) that the melee player now has to move up to and charge again or work around. pull the 3 guardsman off the table and go ahead, shoot away.
G00fySmiley wrote: makes perfect sense from a real world perspective... but how about a game mechanic balance perspective? If i choose a melee army should it be possible for me to win? should I have an even chance of winning with the same skill level as a player doing a gunline army with multiple layers of bubble wrap, or should I just concede before the game starts because I don't stand a chance?
Which gets back to the conversation earlier in the thread:
1) Why is a game designed to be World War 1 (or 2) in Space also billing melee as an effective build option? There are more swords in one, say, Sororitas army, than probably existed for combat purposes in all the Allied armies in World War II (and no, a bayonet isn't a sword).
2) If Melee is intended to be an effective build option, why is Warhammer 40k's rule-set written like World War 1 (or 2) in space? With tanks and aircraft and heavy weapons and mechanization and artillery?
The designers are trying to have their cake and eat it to. They want a game that looks and feels like all the wars that have been fought since melee became a largely irrelevant form of engagement, and then they want to shoehorn melee into it. It's causing all sorts of problems in the game - unintuitive rules interactions, unrealistic (even within the setting, not Real Life) behaviors, broken narratives, mechanical hiccups within the game's play, etc.
G00fySmiley wrote: makes perfect sense from a real world perspective... but how about a game mechanic balance perspective? If i choose a melee army should it be possible for me to win? should I have an even chance of winning with the same skill level as a player doing a gunline army with multiple layers of bubble wrap, or should I just concede before the game starts because I don't stand a chance?
Which gets back to the conversation earlier in the thread:
1) Why is a game designed to be World War 1 (or 2) in Space also billing melee as an effective build option? There are more swords in one, say, Sororitas army, than probably existed for combat purposes in all the Allied armies in World War II (and no, a bayonet isn't a sword).
2) If Melee is intended to be an effective build option, why is Warhammer 40k's rule-set written like World War 1 (or 2) in space? With tanks and aircraft and heavy weapons and mechanization and artillery?
The designers are trying to have their cake and eat it to. They want a game that looks and feels like all the wars that have been fought since melee became a largely irrelevant form of engagement, and then they want to shoehorn melee into it. It's causing all sorts of problems in the game - unintuitive rules interactions, unrealistic (even within the setting, not Real Life) behaviors, broken narratives, mechanical hiccups within the game's play, etc.
narratively I love some of the melee armies. really nothing I love more than a demon incursion on an imperial planet scenario. The prototypical demons of korne coming out of portals from the immeterium falling upon guardsman and/or space marines. Either they overrun the imperial forces or are held back thanks to the fighting and bravery of the imperial soldier. Either way it is a costly battle with many casualties on both sides... in theory. in practice khorne is a joke that never gets past the imperial guard player's 2nd lien of bubble wrap.
G00fySmiley wrote: makes perfect sense from a real world perspective... but how about a game mechanic balance perspective? If i choose a melee army should it be possible for me to win? should I have an even chance of winning with the same skill level as a player doing a gunline army with multiple layers of bubble wrap, or should I just concede before the game starts because I don't stand a chance?
Which gets back to the conversation earlier in the thread:
1) Why is a game designed to be World War 1 (or 2) in Space also billing melee as an effective build option? There are more swords in one, say, Sororitas army, than probably existed for combat purposes in all the Allied armies in World War II (and no, a bayonet isn't a sword).
2) If Melee is intended to be an effective build option, why is Warhammer 40k's rule-set written like World War 1 (or 2) in space? With tanks and aircraft and heavy weapons and mechanization and artillery?
The designers are trying to have their cake and eat it to. They want a game that looks and feels like all the wars that have been fought since melee became a largely irrelevant form of engagement, and then they want to shoehorn melee into it. It's causing all sorts of problems in the game - unintuitive rules interactions, unrealistic (even within the setting, not Real Life) behaviors, broken narratives, mechanical hiccups within the game's play, etc.
narratively I love some of the melee armies. really nothing I love more than a demon incursion on an imperial planet scenario. The prototypical demons of korne coming out of portals from the immeterium falling upon guardsman and/or space marines. Either they overrun the imperial forces or are held back thanks to the fighting and bravery of the imperial soldier. Either way it is a costly battle with many casualties on both sides... in theory. in practice khorne is a joke that never gets past the imperial guard player's 2nd lien of bubble wrap.
And in a game like AoS where ranged weapons aren’t as good a melee bloodbath is practical in a game with better shooting melee specialists don’t make sense.
G00fySmiley wrote: makes perfect sense from a real world perspective... but how about a game mechanic balance perspective? If i choose a melee army should it be possible for me to win? should I have an even chance of winning with the same skill level as a player doing a gunline army with multiple layers of bubble wrap, or should I just concede before the game starts because I don't stand a chance?
Which gets back to the conversation earlier in the thread:
1) Why is a game designed to be World War 1 (or 2) in Space also billing melee as an effective build option? There are more swords in one, say, Sororitas army, than probably existed for combat purposes in all the Allied armies in World War II (and no, a bayonet isn't a sword).
2) If Melee is intended to be an effective build option, why is Warhammer 40k's rule-set written like World War 1 (or 2) in space? With tanks and aircraft and heavy weapons and mechanization and artillery?
The designers are trying to have their cake and eat it to. They want a game that looks and feels like all the wars that have been fought since melee became a largely irrelevant form of engagement, and then they want to shoehorn melee into it. It's causing all sorts of problems in the game - unintuitive rules interactions, unrealistic (even within the setting, not Real Life) behaviors, broken narratives, mechanical hiccups within the game's play, etc.
narratively I love some of the melee armies. really nothing I love more than a demon incursion on an imperial planet scenario. The prototypical demons of korne coming out of portals from the immeterium falling upon guardsman and/or space marines. Either they overrun the imperial forces or are held back thanks to the fighting and bravery of the imperial soldier. Either way it is a costly battle with many casualties on both sides... in theory. in practice khorne is a joke that never gets past the imperial guard player's 2nd lien of bubble wrap.
And in a game like AoS where ranged weapons aren’t as good a melee bloodbath is practical in a game with better shooting melee specialists don’t make sense.
Right and the only way melle can be viable is if the melle range of a unit is higher than a guns range. LOL. Which is just dumb.
Unit1126PLL wrote:1) Why is a game designed to be World War 1 (or 2) in Space also billing melee as an effective build option?
Well, it's funny you put it that way, because actual honest-to-god hand-to-hand combat was a big thing in WW1. Trench fighting made close combat inevitable, and bolt-action rifles were unwieldy and difficult to maneuver in close quarters. At night, with reduced visibility, trench raiders would traverse no man's land to engage with grenades, pistols, and melee weapons. Ernst Junger talks a lot about it in the book Storm of Steel.
Keep in mind as well that in all prior editions of 40K, assault has been supposed to also represent short-range firefights, depending upon the troops in question. So by that metric, most decisive actions in WW1 were resolved via what 40K would consider 'melee'.
Xenomancers wrote:Right and the only way melle can be viable is if the melle range of a unit is higher than a guns range. LOL. Which is just dumb.
First, it's melee, not melle.
Second, that's only the case if you make no effort to model the real-world conditions that allow for close assault, nor take advantage of the fantastic nature of the 40K setting.
Examples include:
-Suppression of enemy positions to mitigate return fire.
-Visual concealment (eg smoke) to allow attackers to close without observation.
-Use of armored transport to mitigate fire (this was Soviet mechanized infantry doctrine for the entirety of the Cold War- pile out of the BMPs at 100m and assault).
-Use of sci-fi personal body armor to mitigate fire.
-Ambush from unobserved positions (ie model the fact that not everybody has a perfect bird's-eye view of the battlefield).
-Use hard cover and obstructions to avoid contact until close range.
None of these are particularly difficult to model in a wargame. And then, yes, you can have units with very high movement that brute force the issue by moving as quickly as possible.
It is entirely possible to have a system where both melee and ranged combat are situationally powerful without one simply dominating the other, or both always being evenly matched.
G00fySmiley wrote: makes perfect sense from a real world perspective... but how about a game mechanic balance perspective? If i choose a melee army should it be possible for me to win? should I have an even chance of winning with the same skill level as a player doing a gunline army with multiple layers of bubble wrap, or should I just concede before the game starts because I don't stand a chance?
Which gets back to the conversation earlier in the thread:
1) Why is a game designed to be World War 1 (or 2) in Space also billing melee as an effective build option? There are more swords in one, say, Sororitas army, than probably existed for combat purposes in all the Allied armies in World War II (and no, a bayonet isn't a sword).
2) If Melee is intended to be an effective build option, why is Warhammer 40k's rule-set written like World War 1 (or 2) in space? With tanks and aircraft and heavy weapons and mechanization and artillery?
The designers are trying to have their cake and eat it to. They want a game that looks and feels like all the wars that have been fought since melee became a largely irrelevant form of engagement, and then they want to shoehorn melee into it. It's causing all sorts of problems in the game - unintuitive rules interactions, unrealistic (even within the setting, not Real Life) behaviors, broken narratives, mechanical hiccups within the game's play, etc.
narratively I love some of the melee armies. really nothing I love more than a demon incursion on an imperial planet scenario. The prototypical demons of korne coming out of portals from the immeterium falling upon guardsman and/or space marines. Either they overrun the imperial forces or are held back thanks to the fighting and bravery of the imperial soldier. Either way it is a costly battle with many casualties on both sides... in theory. in practice khorne is a joke that never gets past the imperial guard player's 2nd lien of bubble wrap.
Right, but narratively, those Daemons are literally exploding into reality a few feet away from the guardsmen, or literally bursting from the heads of their comrades right next to them, or rampaging around through a disorganized mess as they possess/seduce the command structure and order units to do contradictory things, etc. Never in the 40k Narrative have I seen Daemons fight the way they fight on the tabletop, where they line up in a perfectly straight, almost Napoleonic line (since the front of the DZ is flat and you must be right against it) and run across the open ground towards an enemy armed with tanks and machine guns.
The whole scary thing about Daemons was that they don't fight like a normal army, instead using their Warp-powers to do things well beyond the capabilities of, say, the Orks. Yet the designers try to shoehorn the Daemons into a game where they have to, essentially, act like the Orks.
I play Slaanesh Daemons as one of my armies. It makes me facepalm every time, seeing the "lithe and swift daemons" trundle forwards, eat a bunch of bullets, and then trundle into combat with the smoking remains of their army. And they're the lightning-fast ones.
catbarf wrote:
Unit1126PLL wrote:1) Why is a game designed to be World War 1 (or 2) in Space also billing melee as an effective build option?
Well, it's funny you put it that way, because actual honest-to-god hand-to-hand combat was a big thing in WW1. Trench fighting made close combat inevitable, and bolt-action rifles were unwieldy and difficult to maneuver in close quarters. At night, with reduced visibility, trench raiders would traverse no man's land to engage with grenades, pistols, and melee weapons. Ernst Junger talks a lot about it in the book Storm of Steel.
Keep in mind as well that in all prior editions of 40K, assault has been supposed to also represent short-range firefights, depending upon the troops in question. So by that metric, most decisive actions in WW1 were resolved via what 40K would consider 'melee'.
Melee wasn't a "big thing" in World War 1. Close Combat was, but those involved things like pistols, shotguns (especially relevant), hand grenades, and that sort of thing (essentially sub-12" range in 40k). No army in the world deliberately equipped its men with swords/axes and a pistol and ordered them to go hack the enemy apart. The melee weapons that did exist were designed to be purely supplemental - small and light enough that it didn't meaningfully impede the soldier, since 99% of the time he'd be carrying it, it'd be unused deadweight. Trench Raider-type soldiers fight in 40k" within 12", but aren't really in "assault (40k version)" the way Orks and Khorne are portrayed to be. That hasn't happened since the medieval era.
And no, 40k's close-combat was never a short-ranged firefight. As someone who played Sororitas, the quintessential "close combat" army, equipped with devastating weapons sub-12" (Meltas were the only anti-tank, Flamers were the only templates, and Bolters were shoddy outside of 12" and in some editions you couldn't even shoot that far with them unless you stood perfectly still). But when they got into what 40k calls "assault" they folded like wet tissue paper. Being in "assault" or "melee" in 40k is literally having a swordfight.
Unit1126PLL wrote:1) Why is a game designed to be World War 1 (or 2) in Space also billing melee as an effective build option?
Well, it's funny you put it that way, because actual honest-to-god hand-to-hand combat was a big thing in WW1. Trench fighting made close combat inevitable, and bolt-action rifles were unwieldy and difficult to maneuver in close quarters. At night, with reduced visibility, trench raiders would traverse no man's land to engage with grenades, pistols, and melee weapons. Ernst Junger talks a lot about it in the book Storm of Steel.
Keep in mind as well that in all prior editions of 40K, assault has been supposed to also represent short-range firefights, depending upon the troops in question. So by that metric, most decisive actions in WW1 were resolved via what 40K would consider 'melee'.
Xenomancers wrote:Right and the only way melle can be viable is if the melle range of a unit is higher than a guns range. LOL. Which is just dumb.
First, it's melee, not melle.
Second, that's only the case if you make no effort to model the real-world conditions that allow for close assault, nor take advantage of the fantastic nature of the 40K setting.
Examples include:
-Suppression of enemy positions to mitigate return fire.
-Visual concealment (eg smoke) to allow attackers to close without observation.
-Use of armored transport to mitigate fire (this was Soviet mechanized infantry doctrine for the entirety of the Cold War- pile out of the BMPs at 100m and assault).
-Use of sci-fi personal body armor to mitigate fire.
-Ambush from unobserved positions (ie model the fact that not everybody has a perfect bird's-eye view of the battlefield).
-Use hard cover and obstructions to avoid contact until close range.
None of these are particularly difficult to model in a wargame. And then, yes, you can have units with very high movement that brute force the issue by moving as quickly as possible.
It is entirely possible to have a system where both melee and ranged combat are situationally powerful without one simply dominating the other, or both always being evenly matched.
Supression could be a neat feature but suppression doesn't work against tanks and titans and aircraft. It really shouldn't work on armored super soldiers that literally have 0 fear of being shot. Or a hive mind controlled warrior that has no concept of fear. (also even more silly considering this is a thread about removing over-watch then you talk about suppression - dudes afraid to stick their head up because they are getting shot at but dudes are totally fine running at an opponent with a gun with an axe as they shoot them? It's just unrealistic)
We have visual concealment abilities -they aren't super well distributed but they are almost always better used on a shooting unit to give advantage against another shooting unit.
Ambsuh exist. It's deep strike and infiltration - it is incredibly effective for both shooting and melee alike. Why does it work? Because like I said - it effectively makes assault units have longer range than shooting units instead of charging up the field they just start in charge range.
hard cover exists. It is actually mandatory to have melee in your army because of this. Cause tanks can't blow up buildings in this game - they are immune to damage.
It really comes down to this fact. Range is better than melee do to the fact....range is better than melee. You have to invent an unrealistic scenario where it is not better.
For something like nid hormagants and geensteelers in the fluff they have practically unlimited numbers that is why it is interesting. In a "fair" fight they would just be bird food.
Suppression doesn't equal being scared-a Space Marine, despite not being afraid, is sure as hell going to stick to cover when facing down twenty Lascannons.
And why is "Melee being usable" too unrealistic for you, but Space Marines, Space Elves, Space Mummies, Space Fungus Soccer Hooligans, and all that other stuff not?
Unit1126PLL, you are quite incorrect in denying the importance of melee in WWI. It became MORE common toward the end of the war on the western front, and armies did issue overly long bayonets specifically to deal with enemy soldiers. The troops found bayonets virtually useless in the confines of the trenches, so made their own ad hoc weaponry to deal with combat up close and personal. Many raids were executed for the sole reason of discouraging the troops from fraternizing with the enemy. To say melee wasn't important in WW I is quite false.
Ambush 100% does not and cannot work well in 40k. DS and infiltrate have their weird distance restrictions. Visual concealments exist but half the time don't get rules to reflect it.
At a certain point you have to compromise the effectiveness of shooting so the game can work. It's perfectly fine to have melee in such a system considering all the other things that get abstractly limited.
JNAProductions wrote: Suppression doesn't equal being scared-a Space Marine, despite not being afraid, is sure as hell going to stick to cover when facing down twenty Lascannons.
And why is "Melee being usable" too unrealistic for you, but Space Marines, Space Elves, Space Mummies, Space Fungus Soccer Hooligans, and all that other stuff not?
Because I'm not talking about "realism" from a "this is our universe and must follow physics" sense, but rather "immersion" or "sensemaking". One might say "realism within the setting."
It's a setting with tanks, aircraft, and machine-guns. These are all things that exist. Either they are effective, in which case, melee doesn't make sense (because an effective machine-gun will always beat an effective sword), or they are not effective, so why do the factions bother having so many? Because they think they look cool?
It's a problem with the designers, as I've mentioned. They want the game to look like the early 20th century in space, with WAR, but have some armies fight like it's the 9th Century, and have both those things be balanced and workable.
amanita wrote: Unit1126PLL, you are quite incorrect in denying the importance of melee in WWI. It became MORE common toward the end of the war on the western front, and armies did issue overly long bayonets specifically to deal with enemy soldiers. The troops found bayonets virtually useless in the confines of the trenches, so made their own ad hoc weaponry to deal with combat up close and personal. Many raids were executed for the sole reason of discouraging the troops from fraternizing with the enemy. To say melee wasn't important in WW I is quite false.
Sure, but like, not melee the way it is in 40k. Not entire companies of men charging screaming towards the enemy trench with the intent to hit them with axes. Not armies solely equipping their forces with melee weapons, absent even guns and hand-grenades.
When people say a "melee army" in 40k, they don't mean guys with pistols, rifles, grenades, shotguns, etc. who are willing to get into melee to do the job, the way it was in World War 1. They mean people who run screaming forwards armed only with an axe, and even sometimes a sidearm.
Why can't there be armor sufficiently strong to tank the machine gun fire?
Why can't Daemons materialize from the Warp an inch from your face, and then stab it?
Why can't a hyper-specialized alien predator that's virtually invisible due to chameleonic skin sneak its way close to a commander, then gank him?
JNAProductions wrote: Why can't there be armor sufficiently strong to tank the machine gun fire?
Why can't Daemons materialize from the Warp an inch from your face, and then stab it?
Why can't a hyper-specialized alien predator that's virtually invisible due to chameleonic skin sneak its way close to a commander, then gank him?
Careful, you'll interrupt the fluff to cognitive bias feedback loop.
G00fySmiley wrote:
vehicles i agree. i am more thinking infantry. I have a hard time thinking 20 bloodletters or 30 ork boys are going to calmly let the infantry just walk away and not just keep pursuing them until they are slain. As for a penalty for a failed charge.. that is basically the overwatch. you took the overwatch and did not get to attack so have to take overwatch again the next turn assuming you survive to attempt another charge.
Falling back isn't a terrible thing in and of itself, but it probably shouldn't be free. Something like a reverse overwatch / attack of opportunity on a falling back unit that hits on 6's, or opposed movement checks to show that a unit is trying to outmaneuver its foe (say 1d6 + movement stat, if you beat your opponents roll, you can fall back).
TheAvengingKnee wrote: The problem with that is that even though this is a sci-fi fantasy game the things that made guns better tan h2h combat are still going to exist and still going to make melee weaker. Unless you make melee brokenly OP is always going to be worse.
I am not saying make melee OP rather just that the game mechanics should be worked on to allow for both. I am saying the ability to just choose to fall back made shooting armies who were already stronger than melee builds even more powerful. literally just saying hey this thing that caused a pretty big imbalance to get worse... lets revert that back. I think GW was on the right track with Ogryn/Bulgryn where dedicated melee units should probably be tougher and have better armor to bring things in like within reason but agian only to the point that its comperable to shooty armies, I want a balanced game not a shift in the imbalance to just melee better.
Would make more sense if you could fall back but only if there is still another unit engaged with the enemy so they can't chase. Would allow you to pull a valuable/shooty unit out of combat but your not just walking out of melee leaving the enemy unit open to getting gunned down.
But like, letting the enemy not get gunned down is the problem.
Why is a company of Leman Russ tanks not firing into the horde of Boyz simply because one Guardsman is fighting one or two Orks on the outermost extreme edge of the unit?
Why would a Warlord not shoot another Warlord simply because it's fighting Chaos Cultists that don't even reach its ankles?
That's the whole problem with melee (and I mean this in a global sense, not a game sense). So you made it to their first trench line, great. Now you have to get through the other 7, because defense in depth is a thing. Having an artificial rule where you're safe simply because the enemy exists in some ill-defined proximity (seriously, a Guardsman within 1" of an Ork is just as likely to be cowering as he is to be clashing blades with something twice his size and strength) is silly and unintuitive.
This is something that never really made sense to me, especially for armies that care little for casualties like Imperial Guard, or Tyranids firing into melees involving their chaff units.
G00fySmiley wrote: makes perfect sense from a real world perspective... but how about a game mechanic balance perspective? If i choose a melee army should it be possible for me to win? should I have an even chance of winning with the same skill level as a player doing a gunline army with multiple layers of bubble wrap, or should I just concede before the game starts because I don't stand a chance?
Which gets back to the conversation earlier in the thread:
1) Why is a game designed to be World War 1 (or 2) in Space also billing melee as an effective build option? There are more swords in one, say, Sororitas army, than probably existed for combat purposes in all the Allied armies in World War II (and no, a bayonet isn't a sword).
2) If Melee is intended to be an effective build option, why is Warhammer 40k's rule-set written like World War 1 (or 2) in space? With tanks and aircraft and heavy weapons and mechanization and artillery?
The designers are trying to have their cake and eat it to. They want a game that looks and feels like all the wars that have been fought since melee became a largely irrelevant form of engagement, and then they want to shoehorn melee into it. It's causing all sorts of problems in the game - unintuitive rules interactions, unrealistic (even within the setting, not Real Life) behaviors, broken narratives, mechanical hiccups within the game's play, etc.
narratively I love some of the melee armies. really nothing I love more than a demon incursion on an imperial planet scenario. The prototypical demons of korne coming out of portals from the immeterium falling upon guardsman and/or space marines. Either they overrun the imperial forces or are held back thanks to the fighting and bravery of the imperial soldier. Either way it is a costly battle with many casualties on both sides... in theory. in practice khorne is a joke that never gets past the imperial guard player's 2nd lien of bubble wrap.
This is just kind of an aside for me, but I find it annoying that there are very few ranged daemons. I understand it is because they share a range with Sigmar, but it would be super interesting to have daemons that are meshes of warp flesh and machine. Just doing a casual glance through the daemon range, and basically everything just has a sword or a claw with just a few exceptions. I dunno, maybe its just me, but I'd rather see a group of blood letters wielding hell forced hand canons suppressing the enemy while the melee units charge in than just a melee blob.
JNAProductions wrote: Why can't there be armor sufficiently strong to tank the machine gun fire?
Because the enemy will just shoot heavier weapons at it, and take the machine-gun out of production. Remember, either the MG is effective, or it isn't. If it is, then your armor has a hard time stopping it. If it isn't, then the enemy won't use it. (i.e. it won't be taken in people's lists).
JNAProductions wrote: Why can't Daemons materialize from the Warp an inch from your face, and then stab it?
Because the rule designers said so. This is possible in the narrative - heck, I even mentioned it in my post - but the designers fethed it up, like I just mentioned in my post.
JNAProductions wrote: Why can't a hyper-specialized alien predator that's virtually invisible due to chameleonic skin sneak its way close to a commander, then gank him?
Because we're playing an army game, not a skirmish game. This can happen, sure, but has basically no impact on the outcome of the battle (except a point for Slay the Warlord). Again, this is a designer thing, but it's also a game-scale thing. This would be much more meaningful in a smaller game where the commander actually does meaningful things.
JNAProductions wrote: Why can't a hyper-specialized alien predator that's virtually invisible due to chameleonic skin sneak its way close to a commander, then gank him?
Because we're playing an army game, not a skirmish game. This can happen, sure, but has basically no impact on the outcome of the battle (except a point for Slay the Warlord). Again, this is a designer thing, but it's also a game-scale thing. This would be much more meaningful in a smaller game where the commander actually does meaningful things.
I mean, sneaking up on a farseer, or a chapter master, or a cryptek, or any other characters that provide buffs does have a pretty big impact on a game.
JNAProductions wrote: Suppression doesn't equal being scared-a Space Marine, despite not being afraid, is sure as hell going to stick to cover when facing down twenty Lascannons.
And why is "Melee being usable" too unrealistic for you, but Space Marines, Space Elves, Space Mummies, Space Fungus Soccer Hooligans, and all that other stuff not?
It's an interesting idea. Maybe tie it to leadership to give the stat some actual utility. fearless things like a bug can chose to embrace the bullets and suffer no penalty. Disciplined things like a custodian or a marine can embrace the bullets on a 2+ - roll of a 1 they are suppressed and cant over-watch. For guardsmen who are less disciplined on a 1 or 2 can't overwatch.
JNAProductions wrote: Suppression doesn't equal being scared-a Space Marine, despite not being afraid, is sure as hell going to stick to cover when facing down twenty Lascannons.
And why is "Melee being usable" too unrealistic for you, but Space Marines, Space Elves, Space Mummies, Space Fungus Soccer Hooligans, and all that other stuff not?
It's an interesting idea. Maybe tie it to leadership to give the stat some actual utility. fearless things like a bug can chose to embrace the bullets and suffer no penalty. Disciplined things like a custodian or a marine can embrace the bullets on a 2+ - roll of a 1 they are suppressed and cant over-watch. For guardsmen who are less disciplined on a 1 or 2 can't overwatch.
That sounds like an incredibly minor thing.
I'd much, MUCH rather see Suppression implemented similarly to Maelstrom's Edge, where it actually has an impact on the game.
Xenomancers wrote: Supression could be a neat feature but suppression doesn't work against tanks and titans and aircraft. It really shouldn't work on armored super soldiers that literally have 0 fear of being shot. Or a hive mind controlled warrior that has no concept of fear. (also even more silly considering this is a thread about removing over-watch then you talk about suppression - dudes afraid to stick their head up because they are getting shot at but dudes are totally fine running at an opponent with a gun with an axe as they shoot them? It's just unrealistic)
Go tell a tanker that it's impossible to suppress a vehicle with rounds ricocheting off its hull and see what they tell you.
Suppression isn't just fear, it's also forcing the enemy to respond by maximizing their ability to survive incoming fire. When a tank hears machine gun rounds pinging off the hull, they have no idea if there's an ATGM lining up too. Even the most disciplined or fearless of troops will respond to overwhelming firepower by maximizing their own survivability. They don't have the omniscience that a wargame commander does to say just keep advancing, they don't have any guns that can penetrate our armor.
Xenomancers wrote: We have visual concealment abilities -they aren't super well distributed but they are almost always better used on a shooting unit to give advantage against another shooting unit.
No we don't. We have a bunch of scattered -1-to-hit abilities that are wholly automatic and require no skill or foresight to use. A tiny handful of units (eg Leman Russes) have elective abilities to gain such a bonus at the expense of shooting.
The passive abilities are useful to gunlines because these abilities generally don't inhibit their ability to shoot at all. If players had the ability to deploy LOS-blocking smoke, no sane gunline would be dropping smoke in front of their own position.
Both of which are bespoke unit abilities that do not apply to conventional units. You do not need to be a specialist to flank the enemy and approach from concealment.
Not enough of it, on most boards- but what's relevant is that you stated that melee must have a longer threat range than ranged fire for it to be useful. This is mechanically untrue, provided the board provides the geometry to situationally limit the effective range of fire such that a melee unit can get close enough.
Xenomancers wrote: Range is better than melee do to the fact....range is better than melee. You have to invent an unrealistic scenario where it is not better.
You mean a scenario like a completely over-the-top, disconnected-from-reality, exaggerated sci-fi setting where people are running around in magical immune-to-bullets armor and scientific plausibility has gone completely out the window?
I mean you don't see me arguing that bayonets > machine guns in the modern era, now do you?
JNAProductions wrote: Why can't a hyper-specialized alien predator that's virtually invisible due to chameleonic skin sneak its way close to a commander, then gank him?
Because we're playing an army game, not a skirmish game. This can happen, sure, but has basically no impact on the outcome of the battle (except a point for Slay the Warlord). Again, this is a designer thing, but it's also a game-scale thing. This would be much more meaningful in a smaller game where the commander actually does meaningful things.
I mean, sneaking up on a farseer, or a chapter master, or a cryptek, or any other characters that provide buffs does have a pretty big impact on a game.
I don't disagree, and if it has that kind of impact, certainly. But when people say "melee should be viable" they mean "why can't I charge across No Man's Land armed only with an axe and the sound of my voice?". But yes, this should be do-able and have proportionate impact on the battlefield (whether the designers allow it to or not). But this isn't the kind of melee we're talking about when we ask if 5 Space Marines can fall back from 50 mutants or whatever.
Xenomancers wrote: Range is better than melee do to the fact....range is better than melee. You have to invent an unrealistic scenario where it is not better.
You mean a scenario like a completely over-the-top, disconnected-from-reality, exaggerated sci-fi setting where people are running around in magical immune-to-bullets armor and scientific plausibility has gone completely out the window?
I mean you don't see me arguing that bayonets > machine guns in the modern era, now do you?
My reply to this is earlier in the thread:
Unit1126PLL wrote: Because I'm not talking about "realism" from a "this is our universe and must follow physics" sense, but rather "immersion" or "sensemaking". One might say "realism within the setting."
It's a setting with tanks, aircraft, and machine-guns. These are all things that exist. Either they are effective, in which case, melee doesn't make sense (because an effective machine-gun will always beat an effective sword), or they are not effective, so why do the factions bother having so many? Because they think they look cool?
It's a problem with the designers, as I've mentioned. They want the game to look like the early 20th century in space, with WAR, but have some armies fight like it's the 9th Century, and have both those things be balanced and workable.
I like the idea of rolling under your LD score to fall back, with monsters and walkers getting to roll 3D6 and discarding the lowest. Then everyone gets to try and hit you at their WS-1.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: I like the idea of rolling under your LD score to fall back, with monsters and walkers getting to roll 3D6 and discarding the lowest. Then everyone gets to try and hit you at their WS-1.
Do you mean rolling 2d6? For the regular guys.
And for monsters/vehicles, do you mean discarding the HIGHEST? Since you're trying to roll under.
It really comes down to this fact. Range is better than melee do to the fact....range is better than melee. You have to invent an unrealistic scenario where it is not better.
That's like saying being stronger is better. Of course it's better, sans cost. But it's not always better for the cost.
Consider Alexander the Great. Of all his battles, in only one did his ranged forces play a significant role. Because, while range is better, it was not cost effective (in those days) to do so. So the heavy lifting in his battles was done by "melee units" - phalanx and heavy cavalry.
Melee outperformed ranged for the vast majority of human history. While there were some cultures and scenarios before the proliferation of firearms where ranged weaponry was celebrated, they were the exception not the rule. It's only since crossbows/guns and economic advances (that made producing such arms in sufficient volume viable) that our tech allowed us to punch strong enough easily enough and far enough compared to competing technologies to change that.
It's entirely possible (but unlikely) that tech could progress in such a way to change that.
It takes resources and incurs costs to cause action over distance. Weapons are bound by those inefficiencies, too.
This is just kind of an aside for me, but I find it annoying that there are very few ranged daemons. I understand it is because they share a range with Sigmar, but it would be super interesting to have daemons that are meshes of warp flesh and machine. Just doing a casual glance through the daemon range, and basically everything just has a sword or a claw with just a few exceptions. I dunno, maybe its just me, but I'd rather see a group of blood letters wielding hell forced hand canons suppressing the enemy while the melee units charge in than just a melee blob.
Like, I don't see a reason they couldn't give them ranged options/profiles. Like they're shooting warp Beams from their eyes or Kamehameha-ing stuff?
It really comes down to this fact. Range is better than melee do to the fact....range is better than melee. You have to invent an unrealistic scenario where it is not better.
That's like saying being stronger is better. Of course it's better, sans cost. But it's not always better for the cost.
Consider Alexander the Great. Of all his battles, in only one did his ranged forces play a significant role. Because, while range is better, it was not cost effective (in those days) to do so. So the heavy lifting in his battles was done by "melee units" - phalanx and heavy cavalry.
Melee outperformed ranged for the vast majority of human history. While there were some cultures and scenarios before the proliferation of firearms where ranged weaponry was celebrated, they were the exception not the rule. It's only since crossbows/guns and economic advances (that made producing such arms in sufficient volume viable) that our tech allowed us to punch strong enough easily enough and far enough compared to competing technologies to change that.
It's entirely possible (but unlikely) that tech could progress in such a way to change that.
It takes resources and incurs costs to cause action over distance. Weapons are bound by those inefficiencies, too.
Which gets back to my comment with regards to the designers. They want to have their cake and eat it too. They want a world that resembles the industrial or even post-industrial modern earth (Tanks, aircraft, artillery, mechanized warfare, etc), but then they also want people to be able to fight like it's the 9th century (or 2-400 BC if that floats your boat).
I can conceive of a universe where melee dominates (see, Dune), where things like aircraft and mechanization are used to get melee troops where they need to be on the front line, but because of [plot element], only melee can do the killing. But this setting looks nothing like 40k - it'd never give birth to the Fire Prism, or the Basilisk, or even the humble lasgun or bolter - at least, they wouldn't currently exist. In fact, this is exactly the plot of Dune; personal shields rendered such weapons ineffective or outright counterproductive (lol laser blast causing nuclear explosion), so it really did come down to the knives. Guns are considered obsolete relics.
I can, alternatively, conceive of a universe where guns dominate (see, most "modern [but in the future]" settings). Tanks looks like tanks, with cannons and treads, designed to engage and defeat the enemy with direct fire. Aircraft use air-to-ground weapons, even cannons or machine-guns, and the average trooper is armed with a man-portable ranged weapon. Artillery, whether orbital or ground-based, still plays a big role in fights.
I cannot conceive of a universe where tanks can be tanks, artillery is useful, guns are effective, but somehow entire armies manage to be based around melee as a core build component. And that's what the designers are trying to do here.
Even Aliens, where the xenomorphs are essentially daemons that can pop out of [nearby] at will and nearly undetected, shows a small number of ranged foes killing a much larger (a seriously large) amount of melee foes before being overwhelmed and succumbing, once ammunition and options are depleted.
It really comes down to this fact. Range is better than melee do to the fact....range is better than melee. You have to invent an unrealistic scenario where it is not better.
That's like saying being stronger is better. Of course it's better, sans cost. But it's not always better for the cost.
Consider Alexander the Great. Of all his battles, in only one did his ranged forces play a significant role. Because, while range is better, it was not cost effective (in those days) to do so. So the heavy lifting in his battles was done by "melee units" - phalanx and heavy cavalry.
Melee outperformed ranged for the vast majority of human history. While there were some cultures and scenarios before the proliferation of firearms where ranged weaponry was celebrated, they were the exception not the rule. It's only since crossbows/guns and economic advances (that made producing such arms in sufficient volume viable) that our tech allowed us to punch strong enough easily enough and far enough compared to competing technologies to change that.
It's entirely possible (but unlikely) that tech could progress in such a way to change that.
It takes resources and incurs costs to cause action over distance. Weapons are bound by those inefficiencies, too.
That is not entirely accurate. Range has always outperformed melee. Range required skills though. Range weapons are often more expensive to utilize and less available so you couldn't arm you whole force with ranged weapons. As soon as ranged combat was affordable for your whole force melee because outclassed except in the case of Calvary where speed of the horse and ROF of the weapons of the time created an interesting situation - however it was really only useful for surprise attacks and to chase down retreating armies which are shooting you a lot less. As soon as the machine gun was created melee became suicide. There is just no getting around that. Which I think the game pretty much represents that pretty well. The best melee units are the fast ones. Dudes walking up the field to hit with swords...that idea just needs to die.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Which gets back to my comment with regards to the designers. They want to have their cake and eat it too. They want a world that resembles the industrial or even post-industrial modern earth (Tanks, aircraft, artillery, mechanized warfare, etc), but then they also want people to be able to fight like it's the 9th century (or 2-400 BC if that floats your boat).
I can conceive of a universe where melee dominates (see, Dune), where things like aircraft and mechanization are used to get melee troops where they need to be on the front line, but because of [plot element], only melee can do the killing. But this setting looks nothing like 40k - it'd never give birth to the Fire Prism, or the Basilisk, or even the humble lasgun or bolter - at least, they wouldn't currently exist. In fact, this is exactly the plot of Dune; personal shields rendered such weapons ineffective or outright counterproductive (lol laser blast causing nuclear explosion), so it really did come down to the knives. Guns are considered obsolete relics.
I can, alternatively, conceive of a universe where guns dominate (see, most "modern [but in the future]" settings). Tanks looks like tanks, with cannons and treads, designed to engage and defeat the enemy with direct fire. Aircraft use air-to-ground weapons, even cannons or machine-guns, and the average trooper is armed with a man-portable ranged weapon. Artillery, whether orbital or ground-based, still plays a big role in fights.
I cannot conceive of a universe where tanks can be tanks, artillery is useful, guns are effective, but somehow entire armies manage to be based around melee as a core build component. And that's what the designers are trying to do here.
Even Aliens, where the xenomorphs are essentially daemons that can pop out of [nearby] at will and nearly undetected, shows a small number of ranged foes killing a much larger (a seriously large) amount of melee foes before being overwhelmed and succumbing, once ammunition and options are depleted.
Have you seen Edge of Tomorrow? That film features both a relatively conventional force and practical close combat against an asymmetric foe.
Having actual aliens and sci-fi technology in the setting makes this a lot easier than trying to shoehorn melee in amongst otherwise conventional, modern combatants.
That's nonsense. The Greeks weren't relying on formations of heavy infantry because they couldn't afford more slings, or because it took more time to train slingers than professional line infantry. You have to get up to the Thirty Years War for infantry combat to be dominated by missile weaponry, and even then they required melee-armed pikemen for mutual support against heavy cavalry. Even in the American Civil War, massed bayonet charges were more effective as decisive action than ranged fire. You have to get up to WW1 for fire superiority alone to be decisive.
Melee combat has occurred literally a century after the invention of the machine gun- under specific circumstances, which 40K makes no attempt to replicate.
catbarf wrote: Have you seen Edge of Tomorrow? That film features both a relatively conventional force and practical close combat against an asymmetric foe.
Having actual aliens and sci-fi technology in the setting makes this a lot easier than trying to shoehorn melee in amongst otherwise conventional, modern combatants.
I have not, but it sounds like a good movie. I do remember it.
Unfortunately, 40k's designers didn't take this tack, and so once again the blame for the melee-shooting clusterfeth falls squarely on their shoulders.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Which gets back to my comment with regards to the designers. They want to have their cake and eat it too. They want a world that resembles the industrial or even post-industrial modern earth (Tanks, aircraft, artillery, mechanized warfare, etc), but then they also want people to be able to fight like it's the 9th century (or 2-400 BC if that floats your boat).
I can conceive of a universe where melee dominates (see, Dune), where things like aircraft and mechanization are used to get melee troops where they need to be on the front line, but because of [plot element], only melee can do the killing. But this setting looks nothing like 40k - it'd never give birth to the Fire Prism, or the Basilisk, or even the humble lasgun or bolter - at least, they wouldn't currently exist. In fact, this is exactly the plot of Dune; personal shields rendered such weapons ineffective or outright counterproductive (lol laser blast causing nuclear explosion), so it really did come down to the knives. Guns are considered obsolete relics.
I can, alternatively, conceive of a universe where guns dominate (see, most "modern [but in the future]" settings). Tanks looks like tanks, with cannons and treads, designed to engage and defeat the enemy with direct fire. Aircraft use air-to-ground weapons, even cannons or machine-guns, and the average trooper is armed with a man-portable ranged weapon. Artillery, whether orbital or ground-based, still plays a big role in fights.
I cannot conceive of a universe where tanks can be tanks, artillery is useful, guns are effective, but somehow entire armies manage to be based around melee as a core build component. And that's what the designers are trying to do here.
Even Aliens, where the xenomorphs are essentially daemons that can pop out of [nearby] at will and nearly undetected, shows a small number of ranged foes killing a much larger (a seriously large) amount of melee foes before being overwhelmed and succumbing, once ammunition and options are depleted.
Have you seen Edge of Tomorrow? That film features both a relatively conventional force and practical close combat against an asymmetric foe.
Having actual aliens and sci-fi technology in the setting makes this a lot easier than trying to shoehorn melee in amongst otherwise conventional, modern combatants.
That's nonsense. The Greeks weren't relying on formations of heavy infantry because they couldn't afford more slings, or because it took more time to train slingers than professional line infantry. You have to get up to the Thirty Years War for infantry combat to be dominated by missile weaponry, and even then they required melee-armed pikemen for mutual support against heavy cavalry. Even in the American Civil War, massed bayonet charges were more effective as decisive action than ranged fire. You have to get up to WW1 for fire superiority alone to be decisive.
Melee combat has occurred literally a century after the invention of the machine gun- under specific circumstances, which 40K makes no attempt to replicate.
That movie was dope. However - I seem to remember that they needed about a million "retries" to make their strategy work. Plus everyone had a heavy machine gun and an armored power suit and they were fighting against an enemy that could literally travel through time and keep failing until they win.
Your opinion on the effectiveness of bayonet charges in the civil war really says a lot. You are talking about the war that everyone learned that melee doesn't work anymore. Entire divisions died trying to charge gunlines. The most bloody battles ever fought in the history of man kind.
It really comes down to this fact. Range is better than melee do to the fact....range is better than melee. You have to invent an unrealistic scenario where it is not better.
That's like saying being stronger is better. Of course it's better, sans cost. But it's not always better for the cost.
Consider Alexander the Great. Of all his battles, in only one did his ranged forces play a significant role. Because, while range is better, it was not cost effective (in those days) to do so. So the heavy lifting in his battles was done by "melee units" - phalanx and heavy cavalry.
Melee outperformed ranged for the vast majority of human history. While there were some cultures and scenarios before the proliferation of firearms where ranged weaponry was celebrated, they were the exception not the rule. It's only since crossbows/guns and economic advances (that made producing such arms in sufficient volume viable) that our tech allowed us to punch strong enough easily enough and far enough compared to competing technologies to change that.
It's entirely possible (but unlikely) that tech could progress in such a way to change that.
It takes resources and incurs costs to cause action over distance. Weapons are bound by those inefficiencies, too.
That is not entirely accurate. Range has always outperformed melee. Range required skills though. Range weapons are often more expensive to utilize and less available so you couldn't arm you whole force with ranged weapons.
Training, costs, and logistics are all part of why melee outperformed ranged. But the contemporary ranged soldiers (slingers) were cheaper and required less training than a member of the phalanx Alexander's day. The core of his force was made up of more heavily trained and more costly equipped soldiers. Because phalanxes outperformed slingers.
As soon as ranged combat was affordable for your whole force melee because outclassed
A throwing spear was a lot cheaper than a pike or footman's spear.
For the cost of a hoplite's equipment, and for a fraction of his training, you could get someone to chuck a stone or shoot a bow rather well. And equip them. The phalanx still dominated that world's warfare.
Dudes walking up the field to hit with swords...that idea just needs to die.
For a human, limited to physical means, in the modern technological world, sure. But not for most of human history. And there are plenty of possible developments that could change that.
Bharring wrote: And there are plenty of possible developments that could change that.
But a world where that was effective probably wouldn't still be using M1 Abrams-style tanks, MV-22-style aircraft, or M109-style artillery. It probably wouldn't see many soldiers equipped with rifles and heavy weapons.
But Warhammer 40k has those things, and therefore isn't that world.
Bharring wrote: And there are plenty of possible developments that could change that.
But a world where that was effective probably wouldn't still be using M1 Abrams-style tanks, MV-22-style aircraft, or M109-style artillery. It probably wouldn't see many soldiers equipped with rifles and heavy weapons.
But Warhammer 40k has those things, and therefore isn't that world.
Warhammer has those things and many, many other things. Like highly effective personal body armor, and alien ships to board.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Unfortunately, 40k's designers didn't take this tack, and so once again the blame for the melee-shooting clusterfeth falls squarely on their shoulders.
In 40K, basically everyone is wearing armor that could plausibly be justified as reducing the lethality of missile weapons, along with Dune-style technological justifications (eg power weapons) for melee being comparatively effective.
Xenomancers wrote: Your opinion on the effectiveness of bayonet charges in the civil war really says a lot. You are talking about the war that everyone learned that melee doesn't work anymore. Entire divisions died trying to charge gunlines. The most bloody battles ever fought in the history of man kind.
Longstreet took out over a third of the Union army with a decisive charge at Chickamauga. At Spotsylvania Hancock led a bayonet charge to break through Lee's line. Wright's breakthrough at Petersburg. Little Round Top. Jackson at Chancellorsville. Gaine's Mill. If you're actually interested in learning about the ACW and not parroting garbage pop-history analysis, pick up a copy of Paddy Griffith's The Civil War.
Bharring wrote: And there are plenty of possible developments that could change that.
But a world where that was effective probably wouldn't still be using M1 Abrams-style tanks, MV-22-style aircraft, or M109-style artillery. It probably wouldn't see many soldiers equipped with rifles and heavy weapons.
But Warhammer 40k has those things, and therefore isn't that world.
Warhammer has those things and many, many other things. Like highly effective personal body armor, and alien ships to board.
Yes, but if that personal body armor were truly effective against guns, then the armies would throw out the guns - after all, no use carrying around useless heavy junk. See Dune for a universe where personal protection exceeds the capability of man-portable ranged weapons - which promptly become legacy relics.
As for boarding alien ships - that's not the typical type of tabletop battle people are thinking of when they say "ranged is better than melee" because I suspect it isn't as true in such tight terrain.
Bharring wrote: And there are plenty of possible developments that could change that.
But a world where that was effective probably wouldn't still be using M1 Abrams-style tanks, MV-22-style aircraft, or M109-style artillery. It probably wouldn't see many soldiers equipped with rifles and heavy weapons.
But Warhammer 40k has those things, and therefore isn't that world.
What about a universe where the vast majority of engagements were fought like WWI/WWII? And in only isolated circumstances, there were these factors that changed the equation?
Couple that with, most of the time that "these factors" were involved, they were hushed-up by a shadowy galaxy-spanning governmental organization?
Couple that with an Imperium who's logistics are in deep decay, and whos administration is a byzantine burocratic hellscape (sometimes literally)?
Couple that with an understanding that any improvement, adaption, or other change could result in damnation of everyone involved, and destruction of entire worlds?
In such a universe, the Imperium's forces would be mostly styled like WWI/WWII forces. Their foes, not so much.
Bharring wrote: And there are plenty of possible developments that could change that.
But a world where that was effective probably wouldn't still be using M1 Abrams-style tanks, MV-22-style aircraft, or M109-style artillery. It probably wouldn't see many soldiers equipped with rifles and heavy weapons.
But Warhammer 40k has those things, and therefore isn't that world.
What about a universe where the vast majority of engagements were fought like WWI/WWII? And in only isolated circumstances, there were these factors that changed the equation?
Couple that with, most of the time that "these factors" were involved, they were hushed-up by a shadowy galaxy-spanning governmental organization?
Couple that with an Imperium who's logistics are in deep decay, and whos administration is a byzantine burocratic hellscape (sometimes literally)?
Couple that with an understanding that any improvement, adaption, or other change could result in damnation of everyone involved, and destruction of entire worlds?
In such a universe, the Imperium's forces would be mostly styled like WWI/WWII forces. Their foes, not so much.
I don't quite get your point?
If the vast majority of engagements are fought like World War I / World War II, but in some other isolated circumstances melee became important, then I'd expect ranged fire to be generally dominant, except in some other isolated circumstances.
IOW: "shooting is overpowered because melee only works in some other isolated circumstances"
Bharring wrote: And there are plenty of possible developments that could change that.
But a world where that was effective probably wouldn't still be using M1 Abrams-style tanks, MV-22-style aircraft, or M109-style artillery. It probably wouldn't see many soldiers equipped with rifles and heavy weapons.
But Warhammer 40k has those things, and therefore isn't that world.
Warhammer has those things and many, many other things. Like highly effective personal body armor, and alien ships to board.
Yes, but if that personal body armor were truly effective against guns, then the armies would throw out the guns - after all, no use carrying around useless heavy junk. See Dune for a universe where personal protection exceeds the capability of man-portable ranged weapons - which promptly become legacy relics.
As for boarding alien ships - that's not the typical type of tabletop battle people are thinking of when they say "ranged is better than melee" because I suspect it isn't as true in such tight terrain.
No no, that's not how it works. The guns are ALSO still useful, because there is such a high variety of target types, environments, etc. The body armor doesn't make the wearer impervious as the Dune shields do, the body armor offers great protection against common small arms that (often less or unarmored) foes have. So, guns are still useful because you want to kill unarmored stuff at range, but power swords/fists are also useful because there is a bunch of stuff wearing armor that's really effective protection against YOUR guns. The point is that there's enough variety that having access to both is useful.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Yes, but if that personal body armor were truly effective against guns, then the armies would throw out the guns
Why is it so binary? Surely there's a point where missile weaponry is generally effective, but not the sole weapon on the battlefield?
During the Thirty Years War (and in the same era, the English Civil War), most arquebusiers kept swords as personal weapons. Despite the utility of firearms, it was not uncommon for them to be caught in melee. There existed a relative parity of missile and melee weapons.
In fact, we already live in an era where body armor is becoming effective against guns- modern body armor can stand up to 5.56/5.45 projectiles, especially at longer distances, which is why the US is currently procuring a new caliber (likely 6.5/6.8mm) to re-equip troops. That means heavier weapons, heavier ammunition, and greater recoil, all reasons why we ditched the 7.62s in the first place.
This isn't going to lead to melee combat anytime soon, but the point is that the reaction to incremental improvement in personal survivability is rarely a complete overhaul of the weapons in use. There's a gradual shift and degrees of utility.
Bharring wrote: And there are plenty of possible developments that could change that.
But a world where that was effective probably wouldn't still be using M1 Abrams-style tanks, MV-22-style aircraft, or M109-style artillery. It probably wouldn't see many soldiers equipped with rifles and heavy weapons.
But Warhammer 40k has those things, and therefore isn't that world.
What about a universe where the vast majority of engagements were fought like WWI/WWII? And in only isolated circumstances, there were these factors that changed the equation?
Couple that with, most of the time that "these factors" were involved, they were hushed-up by a shadowy galaxy-spanning governmental organization?
Couple that with an Imperium who's logistics are in deep decay, and whos administration is a byzantine burocratic hellscape (sometimes literally)?
Couple that with an understanding that any improvement, adaption, or other change could result in damnation of everyone involved, and destruction of entire worlds?
In such a universe, the Imperium's forces would be mostly styled like WWI/WWII forces. Their foes, not so much.
I don't quite get your point?
If the vast majority of engagements are fought like World War I / World War II, but in some other isolated circumstances melee became important, then I'd expect ranged fire to be generally dominant, except in some other isolated circumstances.
IOW: "shooting is overpowered because melee only works in some other isolated circumstances"
What's to say that, as far as IG is concerned, that's not the case?
Most of their engagements are probably WWI/WWII style. But they're lopsided engagements, and not the ones we play out on the battlefield.
Marines are super rare, compared to Guardsmen. Most Guardsmen engagements would not see even a single Marine.
Traitor Marines are rarer still.
Custodes, almost unheard of.
Most Guard engagements would be against rebels, PDFs, and annexed colonies.
Most Guard engagements against Orks look a lot like WWI/II, in that Guard do best with ranged weapons. The difference is that Orkz will often overwhelm them anyways. Shifting to melee weapons would actually make things worse for the Guard.
Same story for Nids or Necrons - shifting out of WWI/WWII fighting styles won't actually help them.
Even if Guard did have to worry about going up aginst Orkz or Nids or (traitor) Marines on a regular basis, what would change? Melee might have an advantage in those fights, but only because of the Ork or Nid or Marine - a Guard with a Lasgun might be ineffective, but a Guard with a sword is even *worse*. So you could kit and train your Guardsmen to fight the "normal" fights better, or you could kit and train your Guardsmen to lose the "rare" fights worse - not much of a choice.
Bharring wrote: And there are plenty of possible developments that could change that.
But a world where that was effective probably wouldn't still be using M1 Abrams-style tanks, MV-22-style aircraft, or M109-style artillery. It probably wouldn't see many soldiers equipped with rifles and heavy weapons.
But Warhammer 40k has those things, and therefore isn't that world.
Warhammer has those things and many, many other things. Like highly effective personal body armor, and alien ships to board.
Yes, but if that personal body armor were truly effective against guns, then the armies would throw out the guns - after all, no use carrying around useless heavy junk. See Dune for a universe where personal protection exceeds the capability of man-portable ranged weapons - which promptly become legacy relics.
As for boarding alien ships - that's not the typical type of tabletop battle people are thinking of when they say "ranged is better than melee" because I suspect it isn't as true in such tight terrain.
No no, that's not how it works. The guns are ALSO still useful, because there is such a high variety of target types, environments, etc. The body armor doesn't make the wearer impervious as the Dune shields do, the body armor offers great protection against common small arms that (often less or unarmored) foes have. So, guns are still useful because you want to kill unarmored stuff at range, but power swords/fists are also useful because there is a bunch of stuff wearing armor that's really effective protection against YOUR guns. The point is that there's enough variety that having access to both is useful.
But that's how "ranged combat" (generalized) works. Like, we have tanks impervious to small arms in the Modern Era, but you don't see troopers getting out their power-fists because the rifles don't work. You just see them getting more gun.
Somebody impervious to your rifle is the responsibility of your squad's grenadier. Someone impervious to your grenadier and your rifle is the responsibility of your squad's rocketeer. Someone impervious to your grenadier, your rifle, and your rocket launcher is probably important enough to be on the radar of your platoon leader, at which point he becomes a target for crew served weapons like lascannons and ATGMs. If those can't hurt him, then your own armored transports and tanks will have a go - because at this point, he's big enough to get the notice of your company commander. If that doesn't work, you'll need support from the battalion artillery units...
Ranged combat won't suddenly become melee combat simply because some of the combatants are more resistant to bullets than you expected. Your bullets have to literally be unable to stop them, which is rarely the case in 40k canon. Lasguns kill space marines. Lascannons kill land raiders. Artillery barrages/airstrikes kill baneblades, and tank companies kill titans.
To wrap that up, even if "Shooting is overpowered because melee only works in some other isolated circumstances", we'd see something like what we see in 40k. Most "normal" factions are built and fight as if they're in a shooty war. Those factions that leverage the "isolated circumstances" are likely built and fight with melee in mind.
Bharring wrote: What's to say that, as far as IG is concerned, that's not the case?
Most of their engagements are probably WWI/WWII style. But they're lopsided engagements, and not the ones we play out on the battlefield.
Marines are super rare, compared to Guardsmen. Most Guardsmen engagements would not see even a single Marine.
Traitor Marines are rarer still.
Custodes, almost unheard of.
Most Guard engagements would be against rebels, PDFs, and annexed colonies.
Most Guard engagements against Orks look a lot like WWI/II, in that Guard do best with ranged weapons. The difference is that Orkz will often overwhelm them anyways. Shifting to melee weapons would actually make things worse for the Guard.
Same story for Nids or Necrons - shifting out of WWI/WWII fighting styles won't actually help them.
Even if Guard did have to worry about going up aginst Orkz or Nids or (traitor) Marines on a regular basis, what would change? Melee might have an advantage in those fights, but only because of the Ork or Nid or Marine - a Guard with a Lasgun might be ineffective, but a Guard with a sword is even *worse*. So you could kit and train your Guardsmen to fight the "normal" fights better, or you could kit and train your Guardsmen to lose the "rare" fights worse - not much of a choice.
So where are you going with this argument? Because when the rubber hits the road and the lore hits the tabletop, to make this happen you have to:
1) Either give the Guard ammunition limits, or make the orks and nids outnumber them so drastically that the world's plastic supply will be strained as ork and nid players try to buy enough models to make an army.
2) Make Necrons and Traitor Marines effectively immune to shooting (which gets back to the Dune syndrome - players will pay as little as possible in the weapons that can't hurt them, and as much as possible in the weapons that can. So shooting is, still, OP - unless you say that no weapon can hurt them, or cost those weapons so prohibitively that the Traitor Marines and Necrons outnumber the Imperial Guard!).
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: I like the idea of rolling under your LD score to fall back, with monsters and walkers getting to roll 3D6 and discarding the lowest. Then everyone gets to try and hit you at their WS-1.
Do you mean rolling 2d6? For the regular guys.
And for monsters/vehicles, do you mean discarding the HIGHEST? Since you're trying to roll under.
I sometimes type too fast for my mind. Yes that's what I meant. Hey at least you got my RAI!
Bharring wrote: To wrap that up, even if "Shooting is overpowered because melee only works in some other isolated circumstances", we'd see something like what we see in 40k. Most "normal" factions are built and fight as if they're in a shooty war. Those factions that leverage the "isolated circumstances" are likely built and fight with melee in mind.
Right, but current 40k, melee is underpowered (or so the complaint goes, ref: this thread). So clearly only functioning in "isolated circumstances" isn't good enough for Melee players, and to be fair, they have a point - lots of 40k art and fluff depicts open field battles fought like they're the Battle of Cannae.
Bharring wrote: And there are plenty of possible developments that could change that.
But a world where that was effective probably wouldn't still be using M1 Abrams-style tanks, MV-22-style aircraft, or M109-style artillery. It probably wouldn't see many soldiers equipped with rifles and heavy weapons.
But Warhammer 40k has those things, and therefore isn't that world.
Warhammer has those things and many, many other things. Like highly effective personal body armor, and alien ships to board.
Yes, but if that personal body armor were truly effective against guns, then the armies would throw out the guns - after all, no use carrying around useless heavy junk. See Dune for a universe where personal protection exceeds the capability of man-portable ranged weapons - which promptly become legacy relics.
As for boarding alien ships - that's not the typical type of tabletop battle people are thinking of when they say "ranged is better than melee" because I suspect it isn't as true in such tight terrain.
No no, that's not how it works. The guns are ALSO still useful, because there is such a high variety of target types, environments, etc. The body armor doesn't make the wearer impervious as the Dune shields do, the body armor offers great protection against common small arms that (often less or unarmored) foes have. So, guns are still useful because you want to kill unarmored stuff at range, but power swords/fists are also useful because there is a bunch of stuff wearing armor that's really effective protection against YOUR guns. The point is that there's enough variety that having access to both is useful.
But that's how "ranged combat" (generalized) works. Like, we have tanks impervious to small arms in the Modern Era, but you don't see troopers getting out their power-fists because the rifles don't work. You just see them getting more gun.
Somebody impervious to your rifle is the responsibility of your squad's grenadier. Someone impervious to your grenadier and your rifle is the responsibility of your squad's rocketeer. Someone impervious to your grenadier, your rifle, and your rocket launcher is probably important enough to be on the radar of your platoon leader, at which point he becomes a target for crew served weapons like lascannons and ATGMs. If those can't hurt him, then your own armored transports and tanks will have a go - because at this point, he's big enough to get the notice of your company commander. If that doesn't work, you'll need support from the battalion artillery units...
Ranged combat won't suddenly become melee combat simply because some of the combatants are more resistant to bullets than you expected. Your bullets have to literally be unable to stop them, which is rarely the case in 40k canon. Lasguns kill space marines. Lascannons kill land raiders. Artillery barrages/airstrikes kill baneblades, and tank companies kill titans.
Your bullets don't need to be literally unable to stop them. The slings and arrows of the dark ages were literally able to stop a contemporary solider. But they were practically or feasibly unable to stop them. So slings and arrows were used *in conjunction with* other forms of warfare.
In WW2, it didn't take a particularly heavy rifle to take down an aircraft. But rifles weren't a useful way to take down an aircraft. So they used other tools to take down aircraft. But they didn't throw away their rifles.
The imperial guard is ranged dominant and so is the Tau. They are the only 2 "normal" armies and behave as such.
99% of the imperiums battle is fought ranged but those engagement arent that interesting. All the factions with serious melee component have factors that reduce the lethality of normal ranged weapons. But in a typical battle for the Imperial Guard their lasguns work. When they fight power armor or tougher is a tiny minority of their engagements.
Space marines are mostly close ranged combat but they also engage close and have massive armor not available to the common soldiers. Eldar are faster and orks or demons sturdy enough that small arms fire isnt a danger unless massed.
Even though some enemies can shrug off the fire from a squad or two of guardsmen most cant and even space marine armor could succumb under a critical mass. Most fighting in the 40k universe is more "boring" than what we see on the table top so weak weapons like lasguns wouldnt be abandoned just because space marines can shrug it off.
Orks, Tyranids and some times demons comes in such numbers that even though ranged weapons are effective and cause huge casualties the horde just wont stop and sooner or later they will get in close combat no matter what you shoot them with. In a 40k game we might have 100-200 models of orks or tyranids fighting sub 100 models from the other faction. Sure in the lore the orks or tyranids would have 0 chance with those numbers but the game is an abstraction and if you instead treat the 150 orks as 1500 against the 60 marines then it makes more sense if it ends with close combat. The power armor can withstand the orks shooting but 60 marines cant kill 1500 orks before they get close and in melee orks insane strength can come into play.
Looks like I made exactly the same post as Bharring but written more slowly.
Bharring wrote: And there are plenty of possible developments that could change that.
But a world where that was effective probably wouldn't still be using M1 Abrams-style tanks, MV-22-style aircraft, or M109-style artillery. It probably wouldn't see many soldiers equipped with rifles and heavy weapons.
But Warhammer 40k has those things, and therefore isn't that world.
Warhammer has those things and many, many other things. Like highly effective personal body armor, and alien ships to board.
Yes, but if that personal body armor were truly effective against guns, then the armies would throw out the guns - after all, no use carrying around useless heavy junk. See Dune for a universe where personal protection exceeds the capability of man-portable ranged weapons - which promptly become legacy relics.
As for boarding alien ships - that's not the typical type of tabletop battle people are thinking of when they say "ranged is better than melee" because I suspect it isn't as true in such tight terrain.
No no, that's not how it works. The guns are ALSO still useful, because there is such a high variety of target types, environments, etc. The body armor doesn't make the wearer impervious as the Dune shields do, the body armor offers great protection against common small arms that (often less or unarmored) foes have. So, guns are still useful because you want to kill unarmored stuff at range, but power swords/fists are also useful because there is a bunch of stuff wearing armor that's really effective protection against YOUR guns. The point is that there's enough variety that having access to both is useful.
But that's how "ranged combat" (generalized) works. Like, we have tanks impervious to small arms in the Modern Era, but you don't see troopers getting out their power-fists because the rifles don't work. You just see them getting more gun.
Somebody impervious to your rifle is the responsibility of your squad's grenadier. Someone impervious to your grenadier and your rifle is the responsibility of your squad's rocketeer. Someone impervious to your grenadier, your rifle, and your rocket launcher is probably important enough to be on the radar of your platoon leader, at which point he becomes a target for crew served weapons like lascannons and ATGMs. If those can't hurt him, then your own armored transports and tanks will have a go - because at this point, he's big enough to get the notice of your company commander. If that doesn't work, you'll need support from the battalion artillery units...
Ranged combat won't suddenly become melee combat simply because some of the combatants are more resistant to bullets than you expected. Your bullets have to literally be unable to stop them, which is rarely the case in 40k canon. Lasguns kill space marines. Lascannons kill land raiders. Artillery barrages/airstrikes kill baneblades, and tank companies kill titans.
You are stuck on the notion that life is precious and we're only talking about humans fighting humans in roughly symmetrical warfare. 40K isn't bound to that. Life is not precious, armies have wildly different equipment and oftentimes you're having to fight gorillas or lion equivalents that have human intelligence or better. Like, the IG fight as you say they do, more or less. But Tyranids? Orks? They don't follow the same rules. Likewise, Space Marines have the very particular job of boarding spacecraft and defenses, as well as bully renegade human factions. They function on a different doctrine than a "normal" army. They'll fight in CC to conserve ammunition and keep the battle momentum up.
Bharring wrote: Your bullets don't need to be literally unable to stop them. The slings and arrows of the dark ages were literally able to stop a contemporary solider. But they were practically or feasibly unable to stop them. So slings and arrows were used *in conjunction with* other forms of warfare.
In WW2, it didn't take a particularly heavy rifle to take down an aircraft. But rifles weren't a useful way to take down an aircraft. So they used other tools to take down aircraft. But they didn't throw away their rifles.
Okay, I'll replace "practically or feasibly" unable to stop them instead of Literally.
But the point stands: make a shooting weapon bad against the expected target types, and players stop taking it and start taking the good weapon. The only option is to price shooting incredibly high compared to melee (e.g. an anti-space-marine gun like the Basilisk should be 300-400 pts, to give a 20-man khorne berzker squad a chance to walk into melee like they do in the fluff - if they're only 100 like now, the army will still stop the Zerkers, even if they have a 2+ rerolling 1s against lasguns). Which is a bit silly, since in the fluff, the Imperial Guard are supposed to do most of the outnumbering.
Klickor wrote: The imperial guard is ranged dominant and so is the Tau. They are the only 2 "normal" armies and behave as such.
99% of the imperiums battle is fought ranged but those engagement arent that interesting. All the factions with serious melee component have factors that reduce the lethality of normal ranged weapons. But in a typical battle for the Imperial Guard their lasguns work. When they fight power armor or tougher is a tiny minority of their engagements.
Space marines are mostly close ranged combat but they also engage close and have massive armor not available to the common soldiers. Eldar are faster and orks or demons sturdy enough that small arms fire isnt a danger unless massed.
Even though some enemies can shrug off the fire from a squad or two of guardsmen most cant and even space marine armor could succumb under a critical mass. Most fighting in the 40k universe is more "boring" than what we see on the table top so weak weapons like lasguns wouldnt be abandoned just because space marines can shrug it off.
Orks, Tyranids and some times demons comes in such numbers that even though ranged weapons are effective and cause huge casualties the horde just wont stop and sooner or later they will get in close combat no matter what you shoot them with. In a 40k game we might have 100-200 models of orks or tyranids fighting sub 100 models from the other faction. Sure in the lore the orks or tyranids would have 0 chance with those numbers but the game is an abstraction and if you instead treat the 150 orks as 1500 against the 60 marines then it makes more sense if it ends with close combat. The power armor can withstand the orks shooting but 60 marines cant kill 1500 orks before they get close and in melee orks insane strength can come into play.
Looks like I made exactly the same post as Bharring but written more slowly.
I'm not sure why melee is even being debated as an element of 40K. It's integral to the setting. Arguing otherwise is from a position of ignorance. Ignoring plenty of real world examples doesn't give any weight to the idea that melee is not viable. War typically does NOT allow for a tidy arrangement of optimal weapons against an enemy as well as ideal conditions for battle. The Japanese attack on Saipan with over 4000 troops (some of which were unarmed) may have been desperate and suicidal...but it happened. Why expect less from 40K, which at its core is all inclusive?
Postulating that melee shouldn't be possible in such a setting filled with violent warp-enhanced super soldiers, blood-thirsty fungoid hooligans and all-consuming lizard insect beasts is utterly ridiculous, much less dismissing the motivation for such entities. 40K has never represented an accurate assessment of futuristic combat, and why should it? Pushing a panel of buttons to eliminate an enemy over the horizon doesn't have much visceral appeal, does it?
The current Overwatch mechanic is a poor way of addressing the inevitable assault, but the principle is sound even if its execution has much to be desired. Current 40K rules seem to lean toward using buckets of dice to have minimal yet possible effect, and Overwatch is no different.
Insectum7 wrote: You are stuck on the notion that life is precious and we're only talking about humans fighting humans in roughly symmetrical warfare. 40K isn't bound to that. Life is not precious, armies have wildly different equipment and oftentimes you're having to fight gorillas or lion equivalents that have human intelligence or better. Like, the IG fight as you say they do, more or less. But Tyranids? Orks? They don't follow the same rules. Likewise, Space Marines have the very particular job of boarding spacecraft and defenses, as well as bully renegade human factions. They function on a different doctrine than a "normal" army. They'll fight in CC to conserve ammunition and keep the battle momentum up.
I agree, fluffwise.
But we're talking about melee being overpowered in the context of the battlefield upon which 8th edition is played - a 6x4, typically with a bunch of LOS blocking terrain (hopefully) and deployment zones roughly 24" apart for most missions.
I agree that in the narrative, melee is effective in certain situations. And I actually think if you set those situations on the tabletop, melee would prove to be pretty damn effective. But the current set of 40k missions played on a 6x4 and about which players who like melee complain, it's literally a trench line of Imperial Guardsmen, a tank squadron, and some artillery with pre-registered fire (apparently, since there's no negative to-hit), dug in to optimal defensive positions with commanding fields of fire.
That's the kind of engagement that the current 40k game represents, and that's the kind of engagement where "lions or gorillas with human intelligence" would be better off using guns than their natural gifts. So it's no surprise that shooting is utterly ridiculous.
EDIT:
I want people to realize I'm not saying melee shouldn't be possible. I'm saying that the designers wrote themselves into a corner, by making a setting that is inherently self-contradictory. "Open field battles often devolve into medieval-style swordfights" is inherently incompatible with "mechanized warfare with tanks, artillery, and airstrikes is a viable form of war!" because they're mutually exclusive. If one is true, then the other isn't - except in specific, isolated cases. But the game of 40k doesn't reflect those specific isolated cases as it stands, because the designers choose not to.
Insectum7 wrote: Also, if you take two roughly-real-world equivalent armies in 40K, IG, it will naturally just turn into a shooting match.
This is also true but not exactly relevant to what people are complaining about (or what I am trying to assert).
Well they're wrong.
40K incorporates a very wide array of units to use, some of which have excellent armor or straight up magical abilities, or are simply so fast and aggressive that CC becomes a thing in spite of all the guns that are available.
I want people to realize I'm not saying melee shouldn't be possible. I'm saying that the designers wrote themselves into a corner, by making a setting that is inherently self-contradictory. "Open field battles often devolve into medieval-style swordfights" is inherently incompatible with "mechanized warfare with tanks, artillery, and airstrikes is a viable form of war!" because they're mutually exclusive. If one is true, then the other isn't - except in specific, isolated cases. But the game of 40k doesn't reflect those specific isolated cases as it stands, because the designers choose not to.
My point is effectively that it's not self-contradictory because the elements involved are non-real-world and extremely diverse. Like, if we had awesome speed enhancing armor and a lack of fear against small arms fire, then clearing a house of baddies-with-guns while using a super-sword isn't really too far fetched. You gotta clear that house, you want to save your bullets, and your religion tells you that hand to hand combat is glorious and honorable. . . get out your sword. S***, a marine could kill a guy buy forcibly sitting on them.
As for charging across open ground into a gunline, Tyranids haven't a care in the world as long as they think that'll get the job done. Also, Tyranids have a lot of guns if they want to do that instead.
I generally agree with you - but players are complaining about the tabletop situation, not the lore situation.
Since the game-designers haven't included house-clearing, and haven't given tyranids infinite melee monsters, then melee is worse than shooting, because the game-designers have painted themselves into a corner by either:
1) Not following the lore (seems to be your argument - the missions and rules don't allow for house clearing and infinite tyranids)
2) Having to follow lore that's contradictory (which you assert it isn't. I don't personally care)
Unit1126PLL wrote: I generally agree with you - but players are complaining about the tabletop situation, not the lore situation.
Since the game-designers haven't included house-clearing, and haven't given tyranids infinite melee monsters, then melee is worse than shooting, because the game-designers have painted themselves into a corner by either:
1) Not following the lore (seems to be your argument - the missions and rules don't allow for house clearing and infinite tyranids)
2) Having to follow lore that's contradictory (which you assert it isn't. I don't personally care)
If the argument is that melee is worse than shooting. . . that seems to be a terrain issue. One expects a CC army to be at a disadvantage in more open terrain, and an advantage in dense terrain. The game reflects this. It could reflect it even better with better terrain rules, but the basics are already there.
Example: A Charging unit can only be overwatched against if it can be seen. In dense terrain they are more likely to be able to pounce from out of LOS.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I generally agree with you - but players are complaining about the tabletop situation, not the lore situation.
Since the game-designers haven't included house-clearing, and haven't given tyranids infinite melee monsters, then melee is worse than shooting, because the game-designers have painted themselves into a corner by either:
1) Not following the lore (seems to be your argument - the missions and rules don't allow for house clearing and infinite tyranids)
2) Having to follow lore that's contradictory (which you assert it isn't. I don't personally care)
If the argument is that melee is worse than shooting. . . that seems to be a terrain issue. One expects a CC army to be at a disadvantage in more open terrain, and an advantage in dense terrain. The game reflects this. It could reflect it even better with better terrain rules, but the basics are already there.
Example: A Charging unit can only be overwatched against if it can be seen. In dense terrain they are more likely to be able to pounce from out of LOS.
This is an excellent idea. Granted it mostly pushes units that have Fly already and those are the ones being used.
Depends on the terrain rules. If bikes cant enter buildings than jetbikes with Fly can't assault into structures. Same with tanks. Used to be that bikes took a risk when moving through a forest. Maybe there are other problems with flyers, and attacking troops in certain types of cover should be more difficult from the air.
Insectum7 wrote: Depends on the terrain rules. If bikes cant enter buildings than jetbikes with Fly can't assault into structures. Same with tanks. Used to be that bikes took a risk when moving through a forest. Maybe there are other problems with flyers, and attacking troops in certain types of cover should be more difficult from the air.
I'm glad you're at least in agreement with me on there needing a change on terrain rules.
Insectum7 wrote: Depends on the terrain rules. If bikes cant enter buildings than jetbikes with Fly can't assault into structures. Same with tanks. Used to be that bikes took a risk when moving through a forest. Maybe there are other problems with flyers, and attacking troops in certain types of cover should be more difficult from the air.
I'm glad you're at least in agreement with me on there needing a change on terrain rules.
I always felt that overwatch should be better (like -2 to hit instead of flat 6s) BUT eat that unit's next shooting phase. As in they aren't able to shoot the next turn. Doing that would create a situation where weapons don't magically gain extra ammunition & firing rate when enemies look at them funny and having a charging unit shot to death on overwatch still provides a benefit to the owning player, while also offering interesting tactical options where the unit that overwatched can now advance since its shooting is already gone regardless.
Of course this would also have to be accompanied by a unit that overwatches cannot retreat in its next movement phase. Which I feel should be a thing anyways.
For me, Overwatch should only be allowed when a successful charge has been made - not when attempted.
In terms of balance - the failed chargers don't get to move any closer - yet the defending unit got a free round of shooting regardless (although limited).
It'd be nice if you could opt to move up to your failed charge distance because it'd open up opportunities.
Say there's a terrain piece between the charger and chargee, the charger fails, takes the overwatch but gets to move into the terrain piece. I think this is all that would need to be done because now a melee unit can't just be kited around
Sumilidon wrote: For me, Overwatch should only be allowed when a successful charge has been made - not when attempted.
In terms of balance - the failed chargers don't get to move any closer - yet the defending unit got a free round of shooting regardless (although limited).
Removing Overwatch kills any risk for the charger in declaring long distance charges, or charging multiple units. Without Overwatch there would be no downside to just declaring a charge against everything in 12" and seeing how well you rolled before deciding what to do.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
NinthMusketeer wrote: I always felt that overwatch should be better (like -2 to hit instead of flat 6s) BUT eat that unit's next shooting phase. As in they aren't able to shoot the next turn. Doing that would create a situation where weapons don't magically gain extra ammunition & firing rate when enemies look at them funny and having a charging unit shot to death on overwatch still provides a benefit to the owning player, while also offering interesting tactical options where the unit that overwatched can now advance since its shooting is already gone regardless.
I think that's the wrong representation of what's happening. Instead of a unit full-firing multiple times and only hitting on 6's, imagine instead that a unit has limited situational awareness, and that the roll of 6 to hit represents more the fact that the defending unit is barely able to take shots beyond what they would otherwise normally be doing during their own turn. Overwatch isn't full battle rounds of concentrated fire the way that it is in the firing phase, but ad-hoc snap firing in addition to normal firing. Not much extra ammunition is being expended. An Overwatch to-hit roll isn't just a literal "to-hit", but mostly a "do I even have a chance to fire?".
I think 9th should have a blanket "No Retreat" roll of 5+ when your opponent wants to fall back from combat with a unit. Unit's with Fly modify it to a 6+, units that have lash whips, whip coils, etc... modify it to a 4+. Falling back for free punishes melee and while I like the concept of a mirror action (another combat hitting on 6's as they try to fall back) that will ultimately slow the game down versus a single die roll.
I just would like to add that Overwatch in general isn't that bad, it's when units get to modify it, for instance, with rerolls to hit or 5+ hits WITH rerolls that it becomes toxic and just another free shooting phase. The sad part is the factions that get to do this are not factions that feature a low number of high quality shooting but rather typically have high volume of shots. That's what becomes absurd IMO.
Removing Overwatch kills any risk for the charger in declaring long distance charges, or charging multiple units. Without Overwatch there would be no downside to just declaring a charge against everything in 12" and seeing how well you rolled before deciding what to do.
And? You don't have any risk when you decide to target something by shooting.
Melee is bland anyway in this edition. How can the "fighting twice" stratagem cost 3 CPs when the "shoot twice" one is just 2 is beyond me.
I must admit I like Overwatch if I'm honest. Had first game since like Fifth Edition this afternoon. GK vs. Necrons, and Overwatch (which I've never experienced before) was rather decent, didn't affect the Knights all that much but due to the sheer volume of Storm Bolter fire I had did it's job quite well.
It makes sense to be fair that a unit that is being charged from a bunch of crazed, power armoured, sword wielding nut cases would chose to shoot them before engaging in hand to hand. It almost gives the Tau Empire (the second force I own) a chance to survive Close Combat without being curb stomped.
Removing Overwatch kills any risk for the charger in declaring long distance charges, or charging multiple units. Without Overwatch there would be no downside to just declaring a charge against everything in 12" and seeing how well you rolled before deciding what to do.
And? You don't have any risk when you decide to target something by shooting.
Melee is bland anyway in this edition. How can the "fighting twice" stratagem cost 3 CPs when the "shoot twice" one is just 2 is beyond me.
Merely touching many targets stops them from shooting the following turn, and that is incredibly powerful. Shooting a single bolter at a unit cannot claim the same. Charging everything within 12" has the potential to effectively shut down whole portions of an army. 30 Termagants can shut down a tank company, for example.
Additionally, only a few powerful shooting units have access to shoot-twice. The damage/maneuver manipulation ability of fight-twice is often higher. The top performer for shoot-twice I can think of is Obliterators. Powerfull CC units can do better with fight-twice.
Quick math:
Full unit of Obliterators rolling average get 6 wounds against a Knight.
Full unit of TH Terminators rolling average get 18 wounds, 3x the damage.
You can't reposition after fighting once to fight again, but you can choose a new target after shooting once to shoot again. It's much easier to actually use without just overkilling one thing.
Removing Overwatch kills any risk for the charger in declaring long distance charges, or charging multiple units. Without Overwatch there would be no downside to just declaring a charge against everything in 12" and seeing how well you rolled before deciding what to do.
And? You don't have any risk when you decide to target something by shooting.
Melee is bland anyway in this edition. How can the "fighting twice" stratagem cost 3 CPs when the "shoot twice" one is just 2 is beyond me.
Merely touching many targets stops them from shooting the following turn, and that is incredibly powerful. Shooting a single bolter at a unit cannot claim the same. Charging everything within 12" has the potential to effectively shut down whole portions of an army. 30 Termagants can shut down a tank company, for example.
Additionally, only a few powerful shooting units have access to shoot-twice. The damage/maneuver manipulation ability of fight-twice is often higher. The top performer for shoot-twice I can think of is Obliterators. Powerfull CC units can do better with fight-twice.
Quick math:
Full unit of Obliterators rolling average get 6 wounds against a Knight.
Full unit of TH Terminators rolling average get 18 wounds, 3x the damage.
Yes, touching a unit prevents from shooting on paper, but in practice majority of the best shooting units have fly or other ways to fall back and still shoot. This is obvious in the top 3 shooty factions in the game: elves, marines and tau. So yes, bad touching units is powerful on paper, but highly situation in practice. I'd say that being able to wrap a unit to stay safe in combat is the most powerful aspect of melee in the current state of the game.
Also I think your comparison between oblits and terminator is cherry picking. Knights are explicitly designed to be vulnerable in melee since they have a 4++ at range and no invul in melee at all, that's like me saying melee is worse than shooting because I do fewer wounds in melee against wyches.
Knight is a bad comparison choice, thats fair. But I think the point stands. As the Terminators still do 50% more wounds if the 4++ was in place for them, too.
JNAProductions wrote: But the Terminators also have to tank an entire round of stomps before they can Fight Again. Oblits just shoot again with no response.
Fair, but I still think that overall Damage+Lockdown is greater than just Damage, and Damage+Additional Move+More Lockdown is greater than Damage.
Overall, Shooting vs. Assault dont have to be even, they have to be justified.
Additionally, I think the Fall Back/Lockdown(a Grot stopping a Russ from firing) are greater issues than Overwatch.
JNAProductions wrote: But the Terminators also have to tank an entire round of stomps before they can Fight Again. Oblits just shoot again with no response.
Fair, but I still think that overall Damage+Lockdown is greater than just Damage, and Damage+Additional Move+More Lockdown is greater than Damage.
Right, but you also have to eat Overwatch, make your charge, and then survive counterattack all before you can fight again. Not to mention, if you charged, you can ONLY fight what you charge, so if you get lucky and punk out the Knight in your first fight, you can't even pile in and fight something else-you can spend the 3 CP, but you cannot actually attack anything else, only move around.
Shooting may, in this specific instance, be less potent, but it's also a hell of lot easier and more reliable.
Insectum7 wrote: But again, Overwatch puts a mechanic against declaring charges against everything, and is therefore good.
Fall Back and Lockdown are the points of error, I think.
While I agree there should be some penalty for declaring a massive multicharge, or some incentive to stick to one target, I don't think Overwatch in its current form is good.
Insectum7 wrote: But again, Overwatch puts a mechanic against declaring charges against everything, and is therefore good.
Fall Back and Lockdown are the points of error, I think.
While I agree there should be some penalty for declaring a massive multicharge, or some incentive to stick to one target, I don't think Overwatch in its current form is good.
Ok, so given that it does serve a mechanical purpose, how would you change Overwatch?
Why should your guns fire faster just because you have people running at you? Not to mention, take something like a Mordian (I think) Baneblade, with sponsons. It hits on a 5+ in Overwatch. (Which can be better than its normal BS, if it's bracketed enough.) But, it has...
JNAProductions wrote: Why should your guns fire faster just because you have people running at you? Not to mention, take something like a Mordian (I think) Baneblade, with sponsons. It hits on a 5+ in Overwatch. (Which can be better than its normal BS, if it's bracketed enough.) But, it has...
14.40 GEQs 9.48 MEQs (with a lot of it being multiple damage, so even Primaris won't help a ton)
So it can quite realistically wipe an entire charging squad. And if you charge another squad? They can get wiped too.
Agreed. Prehaps this thread ahould be renamed "overwatch is unbalenced game design and needs adjustments"
Personally, I would be in favor of either a small change like "Can only be fired once per unit per turn" or a full rework such as "unit may fire at full ballistic skill at charging enemy if they did not fire in the previous turn."
JNAProductions wrote: Why should your guns fire faster just because you have people running at you?
There's a few things going on. I believe 6's to hit represents that it's difficult to get those extra shots off. A normal firing phase is disciplined fire and overwatch is a few extra rounds snapped off in a panicked situation. There's also plenty of room for more rounds when the ---- is hitting the fan. Like listen to any combat footage and you'll see that units can raise the level of fire output when they need to.
Overwatch isn't anywhere equivalent to a bonus firing phase, thats why 6's.
JNAProductions wrote: Why should your guns fire faster just because you have people running at you?
There's a few things going on. I believe 6's to hit represents that it's difficult to get those extra shots off. A normal firing phase is disciplined fire and overwatch is a few extra rounds snapped off in a panicked situation. There's also plenty of room for more rounds when the ---- is hitting the fan. Like listen to any combat footage and you'll see that units can raise the level of fire output when they need to.
Overwatch isn't anywhere equivalent to a bonus firing phase, thats why 6's.
Mordians + defensive gunners says otherwise. Iron hand + Optimal Repulsion Doctrines or T'au + For the Greater Good get pretty close as well, and that's before the ease of access to rerolls.
NinthMusketeer wrote: I always felt that overwatch should be better (like -2 to hit instead of flat 6s) BUT eat that unit's next shooting phase. As in they aren't able to shoot the next turn. Doing that would create a situation where weapons don't magically gain extra ammunition & firing rate when enemies look at them funny and having a charging unit shot to death on overwatch still provides a benefit to the owning player, while also offering interesting tactical options where the unit that overwatched can now advance since its shooting is already gone regardless.
I think that's the wrong representation of what's happening. Instead of a unit full-firing multiple times and only hitting on 6's, imagine instead that a unit has limited situational awareness, and that the roll of 6 to hit represents more the fact that the defending unit is barely able to take shots beyond what they would otherwise normally be doing during their own turn. Overwatch isn't full battle rounds of concentrated fire the way that it is in the firing phase, but ad-hoc snap firing in addition to normal firing. Not much extra ammunition is being expended. An Overwatch to-hit roll isn't just a literal "to-hit", but mostly a "do I even have a chance to fire?".
That is a much better way of looking at it than mine, thank you.
JNAProductions wrote: Why should your guns fire faster just because you have people running at you?
There's a few things going on. I believe 6's to hit represents that it's difficult to get those extra shots off. A normal firing phase is disciplined fire and overwatch is a few extra rounds snapped off in a panicked situation. There's also plenty of room for more rounds when the ---- is hitting the fan. Like listen to any combat footage and you'll see that units can raise the level of fire output when they need to.
Overwatch isn't anywhere equivalent to a bonus firing phase, thats why 6's.
Mordians + defensive gunners says otherwise. Iron hand + Optimal Repulsion Doctrines or T'au + For the Greater Good get pretty close as well, and that's before the ease of access to rerolls.
I'd evaluate the viability of core mechanics separately from bonuses.
Mordians + defensive gunners says otherwise. Iron hand + Optimal Repulsion Doctrines or T'au + For the Greater Good get pretty close as well, and that's before the ease of access to rerolls.
Which also adds to the fact that overwatch is a bad rule. Why should some armys get 33% or even 50% more hits when overwatching ? Tau can compensate a bit, for having almost no melee abilites, but IH really dont need it.
Insectum7 wrote: But again, Overwatch puts a mechanic against declaring charges against everything, and is therefore good.
Killing all the human beings solves climate change instantly, therefore it's good... Or is it ?
Overwatch is a terrible mechanic because it's just a "tax" melee units have to pay in order to do they were made for. It will never dissuade anyone from charging multiples units because multiple charges in 8th do not provoke Overwatch attacks from secondary targets anyway (except from T'au and UM). Anyone with a clue simply engages secondary targets during Consolidation in order to lock them.
As it is right now, it's just a penalty for charging SINGLE units.
Overwatch should be about making choices, and forcing your opponent to make choices himself. Right now it's terrible for this.
Additionally, only a few powerful shooting units have access to shoot-twice. The damage/maneuver manipulation ability of fight-twice is often higher. The top performer for shoot-twice I can think of is Obliterators. Powerfull CC units can do better with fight-twice.
Orks have two stratagems that allow them to fire twice. One is bad moons only, and the other one is restricted to walkers and big meks. But in practise you can have 15 lootas/tankbustas and a naut/SSAG big mek shooting twice for 4 CPs. It's more than the average to instant kill a knight, especially if you combine one of these stratagems with More Dakka.
Overwatch is terrible game design that punishes even harder melee units, which are already punished enough by the prevalent shooting in this edition. I'd justify overwatch if even shooting units get some drawback when declare a target, with a rule that punishes them like units that declare an assault. Something like: when a unit selects a target, before firing its weapons roll a D6; on the result of 1 all the shooting is resolved against the firing unit or the nearest friendly one. Shots hitting on 6s like overwatch. And that wouldn't even punish shooting units like assault ones since it would be activated only on the bad roll of the D6 while overwatch is automatic and can be resolved more than a time per unit. How does it sound?
I really miss some 3rd or 5th edition mechanics, when nonsense like overwatch didn't exist. I do prefer the roll for deciding if a charge is successful or not rather than making the charge automatic but with a shoter range like it used to be in those old editions.
Insectum7 wrote: But again, Overwatch puts a mechanic against declaring charges against everything, and is therefore good.
Killing all the human beings solves climate change instantly, therefore it's good... Or is it ?
Overwatch is a terrible mechanic because it's just a "tax" melee units have to pay in order to do they were made for. It will never dissuade anyone from charging multiples units because multiple charges in 8th do not provoke Overwatch attacks from secondary targets anyway (except from T'au and UM). Anyone with a clue simply engages secondary targets during Consolidation in order to lock them.
As it is right now, it's just a penalty for charging SINGLE units.
Overwatch should be about making choices, and forcing your opponent to make choices himself. Right now it's terrible for this.
Where are you seeing that multiple charges don't provoke overwatch? The core rules say each target of the charge gets to make an overwatch attack. Multi-charges are for sure punished by the current overwatch system.
Blackie wrote: I do prefer the roll for deciding if a charge is successful or not rather than making the charge automatic but with a shoter range like it used to be in those old editions.
One of my issues with how Overwatch is implemented (taking fire before you even roll to charge) is that you get double-punished if you fail the charge. You get shot on Overwatch without going anywhere, and then you get blasted by the entire enemy army because you're caught in the open.
I'm inclined to think a beneficial tweak might be that you only got to fire Overwatch against a successful charge. Sure, it means people would try for those 11" or 12" charges more often since there's no downside- but with a 1/12 and 1/36 chance of succeeding respectively, I don't think that would really mess with balance, and it would make melee combatants a little more threatening once they get in range. Throw in that Overwatch is always treated as being resolved from minimum range (so flamers still get to shoot) and I think it'd be a net improvement.
There were times in the past when getting into close combat was as good as game over. Now, with overwatch it's not a 'simple' case of just running in and murdering the squad. Races like Tau can now punish people for attempting to charge them, it's no different than in the World War I and prior wars when gun lines were prepared to repel the advance of such things as horses and such.
It makes having a close combat murder force kinda not a great plan.
There were times in the past when getting into close combat was as good as game over. Now, with overwatch it's not a 'simple' case of just running in and murdering the squad. Races like Tau can now punish people for attempting to charge them, it's no different than in the World War I and prior wars when gun lines were prepared to repel the advance of such things as horses and such.
It makes having a close combat murder force kinda not a great plan.
But this isn't an earlier edition. You can walk out of close combat with no penalties for other units (and sometimes, little to no penalties for the unit leaving combat too!), and shooting is in general more dominant than close combat.
There were times in the past when getting into close combat was as good as game over. Now, with overwatch it's not a 'simple' case of just running in and murdering the squad. Races like Tau can now punish people for attempting to charge them, it's no different than in the World War I and prior wars when gun lines were prepared to repel the advance of such things as horses and such.
It makes having a close combat murder force kinda not a great plan.
But this isn't an earlier edition. You can walk out of close combat with no penalties for other units (and sometimes, little to no penalties for the unit leaving combat too!), and shooting is in general more dominant than close combat.
Was about to say this. Fall back prevents game over from melee. Overwatch isn’t going to stop slugga boyz from declaring a charge. What else are they going to do anyway?
Imo the game would be better off without overwatch, and I’m a tau player. Ranged units had their chance to shoot in their turn, they shouldn’t get another in the opponents turn.
units should get a chance to forego shooting n the shooting phase to stand ready to fire overwatch at a -1 or unaffected BS when enemy units come into line of sight and range of weaponry, not only when being charged
so for example if a unit only moves within 30inches of an intercessor on overwatch then that unit can be fired upon by said intercessor and all other models armed with weapons in that intercessor's unit as the enemy unit comes further into field.
If advancing and then charging into a unit on overwatch, all overwatch models can fire according to the range of the weapon. For example, if an enemy unit fails a charge by 3", then overwatching weapons with range 3+" can attempt to fire overwatch.
But, the idea is that it costs a shooting phase to be on overwatch, and overwatching models get a chance to shoot according to normal shooting and targeting rules.
Different rules about how this is handled can be faction specific.
In older editions, I liked the idea of bonus attacks on the charge being a general mechanic. So, some guard units might be really good at withholding fire until they see the whites of their eyes so to speak, some fusillade rule or something...
and such an ability might be considered a hard counter to charge dedicated units, not unlike such units are used now bubble wrap and all that. more realistically, the strength of a guard unit is massed fire and following orders. makes sense...
anyways, each unit shoots once per turn.
just as each unit should fight melee once per turn.
note that shooting and charging makes those turns in which units can both shot and charge very important,
because when this is the case then units effectively double.
overwatch in the way that i am describing it
should be a rock to the first turn charge scissors.
There were times in the past when getting into close combat was as good as game over. Now, with overwatch it's not a 'simple' case of just running in and murdering the squad. Races like Tau can now punish people for attempting to charge them, it's no different than in the World War I and prior wars when gun lines were prepared to repel the advance of such things as horses and such.
It makes having a close combat murder force kinda not a great plan.
But this isn't an earlier edition. You can walk out of close combat with no penalties for other units (and sometimes, little to no penalties for the unit leaving combat too!), and shooting is in general more dominant than close combat.
Was about to say this. Fall back prevents game over from melee. Overwatch isn’t going to stop slugga boyz from declaring a charge. What else are they going to do anyway?
Imo the game would be better off without overwatch, and I’m a tau player. Ranged units had their chance to shoot in their turn, they shouldn’t get another in the opponents turn.
But Overwatch WILL stop them from declaring a charge against 6 units, three of whom might be sitting at 10+ inches.
There were times in the past when getting into close combat was as good as game over. Now, with overwatch it's not a 'simple' case of just running in and murdering the squad. Races like Tau can now punish people for attempting to charge them, it's no different than in the World War I and prior wars when gun lines were prepared to repel the advance of such things as horses and such.
It makes having a close combat murder force kinda not a great plan.
But this isn't an earlier edition. You can walk out of close combat with no penalties for other units (and sometimes, little to no penalties for the unit leaving combat too!), and shooting is in general more dominant than close combat.
Then the issue seems to be the Fall Back mechanic, less so the Overwatch mechanic.
The idea of Shooting being more dominant than Assaults is actually not really relevant to the mechanics themselves, as the armies and terrain will have a huge effect on the dominance of either. (As They Should)
Insectum7 wrote: Additionally, only a few powerful shooting units have access to shoot-twice. The damage/maneuver manipulation ability of fight-twice is often higher. The top performer for shoot-twice I can think of is Obliterators. Powerfull CC units can do better with fight-twice.
Orks have two stratagems that allow them to fire twice. One is bad moons only, and the other one is restricted to walkers and big meks. But in practise you can have 15 lootas/tankbustas and a naut/SSAG big mek shooting twice for 4 CPs. It's more than the average to instant kill a knight, especially if you combine one of these stratagems with More Dakka.
I'd be interested to know the numbers on those. Unfortunately I rarely see them and I'm really not familiar with them.
Blackie wrote: Overwatch is terrible game design that punishes even harder melee units, which are already punished enough by the prevalent shooting in this edition.
The problem is that you can easily change that circumstance with different armies and different terrain. Any "imbalance" of Shooting vs. Assault is built out of too many variables to then claim it's the fault of Overwatch. And Overwatch has a purpose mechanically, which is to cut down on frivolous charging.
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Slayer-Fan123 wrote: I agree with Insectum (wow that's twice in the last week. Probably need to get some lottery numbers). Fall Back is the core problem here.
Either buy lottery tickets or find a fallout shelter. Maybe hedge your bets and do both!
units should get a chance to forego shooting n the shooting phase to stand ready to fire overwatch at a -1 or unaffected BS when enemy units come into line of sight and range of weaponry, not only when being charged
so for example if a unit only moves within 30inches of an intercessor on overwatch then that unit can be fired upon by said intercessor and all other models armed with weapons in that intercessor's unit as the enemy unit comes further into field.
If advancing and then charging into a unit on overwatch, all overwatch models can fire according to the range of the weapon. For example, if an enemy unit fails a charge by 3", then overwatching weapons with range 3+" can attempt to fire overwatch.
But, the idea is that it costs a shooting phase to be on overwatch, and overwatching models get a chance to shoot according to normal shooting and targeting rules.
Different rules about how this is handled can be faction specific.
In older editions, I liked the idea of bonus attacks on the charge being a general mechanic. So, some guard units might be really good at withholding fire until they see the whites of their eyes so to speak, some fusillade rule or something...
and such an ability might be considered a hard counter to charge dedicated units, not unlike such units are used now bubble wrap and all that. more realistically, the strength of a guard unit is massed fire and following orders. makes sense...
anyways, each unit shoots once per turn.
just as each unit should fight melee once per turn.
note that shooting and charging makes those turns in which units can both shot and charge very important,
because when this is the case then units effectively double.
overwatch in the way that i am describing it
should be a rock to the first turn charge scissors.
I get that you're trying to rebuild 2nd Ed style overwatch. (which I used to abuse the **** out of, back in the day). But I think the issue with it is it makes games a little less fluid. It's a cool mechanic but I felt that armies wound up taking fewer broad-stroke actions because of it. My army oftentimes barely moved in 2nd. Like I don't think it's a bad mechanic, but I think 40K moved away from it for a reason. It'd be interesting to try with modern 40K though.
But Overwatch WILL stop them from declaring a charge against 6 units, three of whom might be sitting at 10+ inches.
I’m not seeing why that’s important or necessary. If units are that close together then consolidation would let them tag who they want anyway.
Regardless, whatever merits overwatch might have, I don’t enjoy it. It costs nothing and can be devastating on occasion. If you want to keep it, it needs to cost the defending player something, like not being able to fight or fall back or whatever.
But Overwatch WILL stop them from declaring a charge against 6 units, three of whom might be sitting at 10+ inches.
I’m not seeing why that’s important or necessary. If units are that close together then consolidation would let them tag who they want anyway.
But not attack them, while the defender fights back. Declaring the charge allows you to attack more units.
And? The unit doesn’t get more attacks, and they also then have to deal with all 6 units swinging back. The biggest win is just tagging many units to force them to fall back and not shoot. It just seems like you’re preventing a mild edge case scenario with a mechanic that many people have expressed they don’t like.
Plus, charging tau means all 6 units get to shoot you anyway.
Gary_1986 wrote: t makes having a close combat murder force kinda not a great plan.
And so it fundamentally cripples entire armies and goes against the style and ideas of 40k.
40k is not a realistic universe; 40k weapons and strategies do not function like real life weapons and strategies. 40k should not be bound by or attempt to emulate reality except on the most basic of levels because it ceases to function.
Overwatch is a terrible rule because it reinforces the fact that there is simply no reason to ever go into close combat because there is no disadvantage to shooting, ever. It units could respond to shooting attacks like they do in Bolt Action or Battlegroup, things might be different.
I do feel like a failed charge should still move. While unrealism is obviously rampant (and, as in any wargame, necessary) there is a point where it becomes so eggregious that it breaks immersion. That charging units either go all the distance or none is one of the most frequent triggers of that for me. It is silly that a unit could need a 8" charge, roll a 7 and not budge a single millimeter yet it they had just a little more momentum by rolling an 8 they would go the full distance. Have chargers move half the distance they charge directly towards the target, or something. Yeah that will leave them exposed, but that is what failed charges are supposed to do.
That couples with me second most immersion breaking thing that a unit can hit a target at maximum range, on the other side of terrain, with only their shoulder visible, and have the exact same hit chance as if they were 3" away in the open. There should be way more context-specific hit penalties in the game. Shooting through terrain? -1. Shooting through solid terrain (like ruins)? -1 and cover. Another unit between the shooter and the target? -1. Unit moved and isn't firing an assault weapon? -1. Unit moved and is firing a heavy weapon? -2. Majority of the target unit is not visible? -1. First turn? -1.
