I feel that in previous editions gauss was vital for the necron army to function. We weren't fast moving and we didn't have high AP or long range, but the rapid fire gauss weapons helped compensate. 40 shots from warriors would glance a tank to death.
In 8th edition we'd need the potential to do 12 or more wounds with the same volume of fire.

Focusing purely on gauss, how do we fix it? I don't think the extra AP in the current edition is much help. Ideas?

A mortal wound on 6's to hit in addition to normal damage.

It effectively whet we had in 3rd.

Could try something different and give them different profiles based on distance:

Gauss flayer 6" assault 2 s6 ap-3
12" assault 2 S5 ap-2
24" rapid fire 1 S4 ap-1

A mortal wound on 6's to hit is bonkers strong, a similar buff could be achieved by making it 6's autowound instead (similar to the infiltrators weapon)

We don't get special weapons.
Our main gun should be a bit bonkers.

6's already autowound. Maybe I'm missing something about the infiltrator weapon?

I believe they mean that 6's To Hit auto-wound without you needing to make a To Wound roll.

punisher357 wrote:
6's already autowound. Maybe I'm missing something about the infiltrator weapon?

There is no such thing as auto wounds on 6s.

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
I believe they mean that 6's To Hit auto-wound without you needing to make a To Wound roll.

Yeah should've made that clear, 6's to hit autowound.

The reason why it absolutely should NOT be 6's to hit do a MW is because a squad of 20 warriors now put out 6-7 mortal wounds in RF, while with MWBD that number doubles out to 13-14 and that doesn't consider the standard damage from the gauss rifles.

Vilehydra wrote:

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
I believe they mean that 6's To Hit auto-wound without you needing to make a To Wound roll.

Yeah should've made that clear, 6's to hit autowound.

The reason why it absolutely should NOT be 6's to hit do a MW is because a squad of 20 warriors now put out 6-7 mortal wounds in RF, while with MWBD that number doubles out to 13-14 and that doesn't consider the standard damage from the gauss rifles.

The squad of 20 Warriors with the durability of wet tissue paper that won't be able to get anywhere without the minimum of a relic + 80+ point HQ?

Yeah I don't think people are REALLY going to care.

Could be 1MW on unmodified wound roll of 6 only against vehicles, or unmodified 6s are AP-3 against vehicles.

I'd suggest

Rolls of 6+ to hit auto-wound
and
unmodified 6s to wound deal double damage

That gives you more wounds, and more punishing wounds, without relying on the broken Mortal Wounds Mechanic

I don't know if the broad buffs to gauss weapons are the right approach to fixing Necrons. Considering the Necrons for my own global rewrite project I've been looking at trying to do something different; gauss flayer spam shouldn't be an anti-tank weapon just because spamming any one weapon shouldn't be an efficient answer to everything, so I've been considering how to turn Immortals into more of a heavy support weapons unit sort of how they work in Dawn of War instead.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I don't know if the broad buffs to gauss weapons are the right approach to fixing Necrons. Considering the Necrons for my own global rewrite project I've been looking at trying to do something different; gauss flayer spam shouldn't be an anti-tank weapon just because spamming any one weapon shouldn't be an efficient answer to everything.

I see where you're coming from. The counter to that argument, I think, is that 'crons' model range was developed with the assumption that gauss weapons en masse could be a viable answer to vehicles. Currently, they're kind of not, and that forces you to pick from a relatively small number of dedicated AT units. That, combined with the fact that some AT options (like monoliths) aren't very points efficient means that you end up with a lack of list diversity and a pile of units that don't get taken because you have to pay the "anti tank tax."

Boosting the AT of gauss immortals is a good move in my book (lets them compete less directly with warriors), but it might also just be adding one more unit to the short list of viable AT options. If you made gauss flayers good against vehicles when taken en masse, then it spreads your AT around a lot and takes pressure off the rest of your picks to be the only AT in your army.

 p5freak wrote:

punisher357 wrote:
6's already autowound. Maybe I'm missing something about the infiltrator weapon?

There is no such thing as auto wounds on 6s.

Wound roll of a 6 causes a wound regardless of toughness and weapon strength was what I was referring to. I should have specified


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Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Vilehydra wrote:

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
I believe they mean that 6's To Hit auto-wound without you needing to make a To Wound roll.

Yeah should've made that clear, 6's to hit autowound.

The reason why it absolutely should NOT be 6's to hit do a MW is because a squad of 20 warriors now put out 6-7 mortal wounds in RF, while with MWBD that number doubles out to 13-14 and that doesn't consider the standard damage from the gauss rifles.

The squad of 20 Warriors with the durability of wet tissue paper that won't be able to get anywhere without the minimum of a relic + 80+ point HQ?

Yeah I don't think people are REALLY going to care.

When you factor in ghost arks I think that it would be too strong. I could see wound rolls of a 6 cause a mortal wound in addition to normal damage though.


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 AnomanderRake wrote:
I don't know if the broad buffs to gauss weapons are the right approach to fixing Necrons. Considering the Necrons for my own global rewrite project I've been looking at trying to do something different; gauss flayer spam shouldn't be an anti-tank weapon just because spamming any one weapon shouldn't be an efficient answer to everything, so I've been considering how to turn Immortals into more of a heavy support weapons unit sort of how they work in Dawn of War instead.

I don't think it would fix necrons, there are too many other issues, but that's not the point of this thread. However, I think a gauss buff would help.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Vilehydra wrote:

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
I believe they mean that 6's To Hit auto-wound without you needing to make a To Wound roll.

Yeah should've made that clear, 6's to hit autowound.

The reason why it absolutely should NOT be 6's to hit do a MW is because a squad of 20 warriors now put out 6-7 mortal wounds in RF, while with MWBD that number doubles out to 13-14 and that doesn't consider the standard damage from the gauss rifles.

The squad of 20 Warriors with the durability of wet tissue paper that won't be able to get anywhere without the minimum of a relic + 80+ point HQ?

Yeah I don't think people are REALLY going to care.

Try 2 ghost arks for 20 pts more. Fly 14", T6, quantum shield, throws in same amount of gauss flayers.

Howabout something like:

2 overlords, cryptek, 2x6+5 tesla immortal, 3+2 heavy destroyers, 3 dda, 7 ghost arks.

Okay no MWBD but that's at 24" 70 shots causing 11 mortal wounds. Get into rf range and 22 mortal wounds. Plus 3 doomsday arks, 5 heavy destroyers...

Want to face that? (not even nastiest list. Just something I came quickly on the spot)

What if 6s to wound cause an additional wound instead of mortal wounds?

 CadianGateTroll wrote:
What if 6s to wound cause an additional wound instead of mortal wounds?

Yes. 6s to wound cause 2 wounds instead of 1 on a failed save.
I'd add on the 6s to hit cause a wound regardless of strength and toughness as suggested in my post above.

That way you secure more wounds, and some of your wounds are more punishing, without spamming mortals.

Why not have it so it reads:

If a gauss weapon rolls a 6 to hit, add +1 to the wound roll and the damage is also doubled (to a maximum of 6). For example if a gauss weapon is D1 this becomes D2, if a gauss weapon is D3 and you roll a 4 to deal 2 damage this becomes 4. The opponents save roll and weapon AP are applied as normal.

No...

40 gauss flayer shots average out...
GEQ: 27 hits, 18 wounds, 18 unsaved, 18 kills
MEQ: 27 hits, 13 wounds, 9 unsaved, 9 kills (4.5 vs Primaris)
TEQ: 27 hits, 13 wounds, 6 unsaved, 3 kills
Rhino: 27 hits, 9 wounds, 6 unsaved (out of 10)
Leman Russ: 27 hits, 5 wounds, 3 unsaved (out of 12)

40 gauss flayer shots that autowound on a 6 to hit average out...
GEQ: 27 hits, 20 wounds, 20 unsaved, 20 kills
MEQ: 27 hits, 17 wounds, 12 unsaved, 12 kills (6 vs Primaris)
TEQ: 27 hits, 17 wounds, 8 unsaved, 4 kills
Rhino: 27 hits, 13 wounds, 8 unsaved (out of 10)
Leman Russ: 27 hits, 10 wounds, 6 unsaved (out of 12)

In principle, definitely the right direction. In practice, still not quite what they used to in anti-vehicle terms because of how wound tables work compared to the old damage tables. Can't give them D2, either, or they'll shred Primaris.

Proccing D2 would not Shred Primaris. I think that's the way to go to be honest: wounds of 6+ add 1 to the damage characteristic. It doesn't help against hordes but Tesla has that covered.

RevlidRas wrote:
40 gauss flayer shots average out...
GEQ: 27 hits, 18 wounds, 18 unsaved, 18 kills
MEQ: 27 hits, 13 wounds, 9 unsaved, 9 kills (4.5 vs Primaris)
TEQ: 27 hits, 13 wounds, 6 unsaved, 3 kills
Rhino: 27 hits, 9 wounds, 6 unsaved (out of 10)
Leman Russ: 27 hits, 5 wounds, 3 unsaved (out of 12)

40 gauss flayer shots that autowound on a 6 to hit average out...
GEQ: 27 hits, 20 wounds, 20 unsaved, 20 kills
MEQ: 27 hits, 17 wounds, 12 unsaved, 12 kills (6 vs Primaris)
TEQ: 27 hits, 17 wounds, 8 unsaved, 4 kills
Rhino: 27 hits, 13 wounds, 8 unsaved (out of 10)
Leman Russ: 27 hits, 10 wounds, 6 unsaved (out of 12)

In principle, definitely the right direction. In practice, still not quite what they used to in anti-vehicle terms because of how wound tables work compared to the old damage tables. Can't give them D2, either, or they'll shred Primaris.

Aren't Gauss flayers AP1? The math is slightly off on the save portion if so.

Regardless
Consider if it stacks with MWBD the same way tesla does. (I ignored saves because they aren't directly relevant)
Current gauss with MWBD
T3: 22 Wounds
T4: 16 Wounds
T7: 11 Wounds
T8: 5 wounds

Gauss with Autowound on 6's to hit and MWBD
T3: 26 Wounds (~15% Increase)
T4: 23 Wounds (~30% Increase)
T7: 20 Wounds (~81% Increase)
T8: 16 Wounds (~220% increase)

With MWBD active and 40 shots, 1/3 of those shots just wound - meaning 13.3 wounds from the roll to hit step. This doesn't scale with how tough a unit is. Against lower T units, some of those autowounding hits would have probably been wounds anyways. But against higher T units the static 13.3 becomes a larger percentage of wounds.

Tesla is still the choice for chaff clearing, but between the better AP and increased to wound rate gauss could be a better generalist option
There is also the added benefit of whenever the unit overwatches, they automatically wound when they hit.

Vilehydra wrote:
Aren't Gauss flayers AP1? The math is slightly off on the save portion if so.

Whoops, yes! Spend too much time playing against gauss blasters, I think...

I think mortal wounds on a 6 to wound is fine, but on a six to hit is too much

Maybe a silly suggestion, but what if gauss weapons just treated their damage as 1 higher against vehicles and monsters?

So a gauss flayer against a primaris marine would be damage 1, but against a rhino, it would be damage 2.

In the past, the advantage of gauss weapons was that they could threaten vehicles when taken en masse, but they never had any special benefit against infantry. "Mortal wounds on to-wound rolls of 6" is similar to this but runs into a couple weird interactions with how mortal wounds work (like spilling wounds over onto the second vehicle in a squadron).

It doesn't make a squad of warriors a dedicated anti-tank unit, but it does make them enough of a threat to tanks that you don't have to spam destroyers and doomsday arks to have a chance against an armored company.

That actually sounds like a fairly reasonable suggestion, particularly Warriors.

That change would give the keyword system more mileage, yes.
That's a problem I have with GW's use of keywords; they introduced keywords, but nothing really interacts with them. If you are going to have a keyword system, use it for more than 1 or 2 weapons.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
That change would give the keyword system more mileage, yes.
That's a problem I have with GW's use of keywords; they introduced keywords, but nothing really interacts with them. If you are going to have a keyword system, use it for more than 1 or 2 weapons.

Might be my drukhari bias showing, but off the top of my head...
* All types of poison weapons (of which there are roughly 10 I think) are weaker against the vehicle keyword.
* Haywire weapons (found in DE, CW, and harlequin armies) are stronger against vehicles
* Shredders are stronger against the infantry keyword
* Wyches' No Escape only works on infantry
* Lelith gets bonuses against characters

So those keywords are definitely seeing some use, at least by my spooky elves.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
That change would give the keyword system more mileage, yes.
That's a problem I have with GW's use of keywords; they introduced keywords, but nothing really interacts with them. If you are going to have a keyword system, use it for more than 1 or 2 weapons.

Might be my drukhari bias showing, but off the top of my head...
* All types of poison weapons (of which there are roughly 10 I think) are weaker against the vehicle keyword.
* Haywire weapons (found in DE, CW, and harlequin armies) are stronger against vehicles
* Shredders are stronger against the infantry keyword
* Wyches' No Escape only works on infantry
* Lelith gets bonuses against characters

So those keywords are definitely seeing some use, at least by my spooky elves.

See, that's how it should be. I don't think any other army gets that much usage out of keywords.
Necrons and Orks certainly don't.

It seems bizarre for it to work that way though. I much prefer just bonus damage on a 6 to wound.

I’ll throw my hat in for 6s to wound cause 2 damage for gauss flayers. It’s same as admech rad carbines, and I get some useful mileage from them against vehicles, since most wounds require a 6 anyway.
I’d also tweak gauss blasters to be 2 damage all the time, and maybe ap-2.

Dandelion wrote:
I’ll throw my hat in for 6s to wound cause 2 damage for gauss flayers. It’s same as admech rad carbines, and I get some useful mileage from them against vehicles, since most wounds require a 6 anyway.
I’d also tweak gauss blasters to be 2 damage all the time, and maybe ap-2.

Gauss Blasters are AP-2 already.

Dandelion wrote:
I’ll throw my hat in for 6s to wound cause 2 damage for gauss flayers. It’s same as admech rad carbines, and I get some useful mileage from them against vehicles, since most wounds require a 6 anyway.
I’d also tweak gauss blasters to be 2 damage all the time, and maybe ap-2.

I'd be on board with this. D2 on 6's to wound is slightly less powerful than a flat D2 vs vehicles, and I haven't run enough math to defend one over the other. Gauss blasters being higher damage seems reasonable. My first game with necrons is later this week, and I was surprised to find that gauss blasters weren't D2 already. That would reinforce their niche as the "anti-hefty stuff" gun compared to the tesla's more-shots-more-kills approach. If intercessors can be D2 with fancy bolters, surely an upgraded version of exotic xenotech weaponry can do the same?

No because Space Marines are the Emperor's finest and Necrons are not.

 JNAProductions wrote:

Dandelion wrote:
I’ll throw my hat in for 6s to wound cause 2 damage for gauss flayers. It’s same as admech rad carbines, and I get some useful mileage from them against vehicles, since most wounds require a 6 anyway.
I’d also tweak gauss blasters to be 2 damage all the time, and maybe ap-2.

Gauss Blasters are AP-2 already.

that’s settled then


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Wyldhunt wrote:

Dandelion wrote:
I’ll throw my hat in for 6s to wound cause 2 damage for gauss flayers. It’s same as admech rad carbines, and I get some useful mileage from them against vehicles, since most wounds require a 6 anyway.
I’d also tweak gauss blasters to be 2 damage all the time, and maybe ap-2.

I'd be on board with this. D2 on 6's to wound is slightly less powerful than a flat D2 vs vehicles, and I haven't run enough math to defend one over the other. Gauss blasters being higher damage seems reasonable. My first game with necrons is later this week, and I was surprised to find that gauss blasters weren't D2 already. That would reinforce their niche as the "anti-hefty stuff" gun compared to the tesla's more-shots-more-kills approach. If intercessors can be D2 with fancy bolters, surely an upgraded version of exotic xenotech weaponry can do the same?

Also consider that tying damage to the vehicle keyword will screw you over versus nids and tau.

Dandelion wrote:

Also consider that tying damage to the vehicle keyword will screw you over versus nids and tau.

Just like old times then. Necrons had difficulty dealing with monsters in 3rd ed, and that was the point; in exchange for your basic weapons being able to eviscerate vehicles, you don't get special weapons and as such some enemy types would be harder to deal with.

Right now though Necrons don't get special weapons AND they don't kill vehicles as well as they used to.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Dandelion wrote:

Also consider that tying damage to the vehicle keyword will screw you over versus nids and tau.

Just like old times then. Necrons had difficulty dealing with monsters in 3rd ed, and that was the point; in exchange for your basic weapons being able to eviscerate vehicles, you don't get special weapons and as such some enemy types would be harder to deal with.

Right now though Necrons don't get special weapons AND they don't kill vehicles as well as they used to.

Except saying they were capable of killing vehicles is still an exaggeration in of itself.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Dandelion wrote:

Also consider that tying damage to the vehicle keyword will screw you over versus nids and tau.

Just like old times then. Necrons had difficulty dealing with monsters in 3rd ed, and that was the point; in exchange for your basic weapons being able to eviscerate vehicles, you don't get special weapons and as such some enemy types would be harder to deal with.

Right now though Necrons don't get special weapons AND they don't kill vehicles as well as they used to.

Except saying they were capable of killing vehicles is still an exaggeration in of itself.

Eh? In third in 4th ed a unit of warriors had a really good chance of destroying a vehicle in a single salvo. No other troop unit can do that. Its hardly an exaggeration.
In 5th and onwards it became less effective, as penalties to glancing hits removed the possibility of getting an vehicle destroyed / explodes result, and hullpoints didn't help matters.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Dandelion wrote:

Also consider that tying damage to the vehicle keyword will screw you over versus nids and tau.

Just like old times then. Necrons had difficulty dealing with monsters in 3rd ed, and that was the point; in exchange for your basic weapons being able to eviscerate vehicles, you don't get special weapons and as such some enemy types would be harder to deal with.

Right now though Necrons don't get special weapons AND they don't kill vehicles as well as they used to.

Good thing it’s not 3rd edition then.

6s to wound become mw?

How about just reduce the cost of Necron Warriors? Seriously, not every generic weapon must be more powerful than Bolter. A larger horde of Necron Warriors will be less likely to get one-shot, allowing them to reanimate later on. The Necron army should be built to be ultra-resilient, rather than hard-hitting.

bibotot wrote:
How about just reduce the cost of Necron Warriors? Seriously, not every generic weapon must be more powerful than Bolter. A larger horde of Necron Warriors will be less likely to get one-shot, allowing them to reanimate later on. The Necron army should be built to be ultra-resilient, rather than hard-hitting.

I disagree. Decreasing points is the laziest way to balance and doesn't do anything but put more of the unit on the board. The problem is at some point you hit a cost so low that it makes the unit too good. Points can easily throw something into overpowered territory or utter garbage.

Besides, the entire point of this thread is to discuss how to fix gauss, not the necron army or reanimation protocols.


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Oberron wrote:
6s to wound become mw?

In my opinion, this is still the best option. It seems like it's the only one that will consistently create more of an anti-monster, anti-tank force, while not blowing it out of proportion. I think it would create more of a spot in the army for gauss and create more synergy in the army as a whole....not a lot more synergy but some. MWBD would actually benefit warriors and Gauss Immortals.

Dropping points plays into the current trend of "we're running out of floor" and it doesn't make the rules for Gauss any better.
You just pay less for mediocrity.

I maintain that
1. Gauss should auto-wound on 6 to hit (If you roll a 6 to hit, just add a dice to the pool of saves required, do not roll to wound)

2. Do double damage on a 6 to wound.

Gives them better utility against vehicles and primaris. You get more consistent damage, along with damage spikes.

bibotot wrote:
How about just reduce the cost of Necron Warriors? Seriously, not every generic weapon must be more powerful than Bolter. A larger horde of Necron Warriors will be less likely to get one-shot, allowing them to reanimate later on. The Necron army should be built to be ultra-resilient, rather than hard-hitting.

Except flayers are supposed to be more powerful than bolters. That's the entire lore behind them, and why they have -1 AP. The problem though is that space marines now have a superior basic weapon in the form of bolt rifles, making flayers even more of a joke.

Reducing the price does nothing. Its a weak solution and lazy solution to a real problem.
If you want warriors to be more resiliant, give them back their 3+ saves and give immortals T5.

Always causing a wound on a 6 is absolute garbage and worse than splinter weapons. I think MW on 6's to wound is pretty cool given the amount of OP crap in the game at the moment

The thing about mortal wounds is that they spill over. If you only make the mortal wounds happen on vehicles, then that's probably okay, but otherwise it becomes better against infantry/hordes, and that means that the rule change would suddenly start stepping on tesla's toes. On the other hand, simply making gauss (sometimes/always) have a higher damage characteristic against vehicles (and possibly monsters) helps define their role as the "anti-big stuff and heavy armor" option compared to tesla's extra shots.

Does it really matter if they spill over?

bibotot wrote:
How about just reduce the cost of Necron Warriors? Seriously, not every generic weapon must be more powerful than Bolter.

I mean, not every gun, but maybe the basic rifle of the most technologically advanced playable faction in the game should be? Especially now that doctrines turn bolters into flayers and primaris bolter variants are comparable to gauss blasters?

Also, and this is kind of off-topic, I'd argue that quite a few non-marine factions should have guns that are more powerful than bolters.
* Necrons are supposed to be highly advanced, so a gun that maybe just breaks even with a bolter feels a little odd.
* Tau are all about having advanced tech and shooting things, so again, it would be weird if the ancient dinosaur of gun that is the bolter was significantly better than their own rifles.
* Eldar guns shouldn't necessarily be stronger than bolters, but they should probably at least be on par in their own alien way. Which, I'd argue they are between bladestorm and poison.
* Ad Mech notoriously keep the best tech for themselves.

Cut out all the marine variants, sisters (who have bolters), and daemons (who don't really shoot much), and that pretty much just leaves orks, guard, gsc cultists, and chaos cultists. All of whom have worse basic rifles (or at least worse BS in the case of orkz) So that checks out, doesn't it?


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Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Does it really matter if they spill over?

I don't think it would be absolutely game-breaking if they did. You're basically turning gauss flayers into mandrake baleblasts. From a design perspective, it just feels a little less clean and clear cut. Especially when it's just as easy to make the rule say, "treats is damage characteristic as 1 higher," as it is to say, "deals a mortal wound in addition to its normal damage." Again, it's mostly just about niches. Gauss weapons with more damage and better AP would obviously be intended for killing harder targets while tesla, while well-rounded, would be better than gauss at clearing through hordes. If 1/3rd or 1/4th of your wounding gauss shots are auto-killing an extra guardsman or genestealer, then the gauss weapon threatens to become either the best pick against all targets or at least best against some targets and good enough against hordes that it becomes an auto-take over tesla weapons.

Not that I've run the numbers to see exactly how well-defined those niches would be exactly.

Yeah, gauss weapons should be can openers. Its why I think extra damage is the way to go for them.

Having access to flat damage 2 in one way or the other would be great as we don't have a single shooting weapon with D2 in our entire arsenal (except relics/named characters weapons).

I don't know if the Flayers should be D2, but Gauss Blasters clearly needs it when you compare with all the super-duper-bolters primaris marines have access to.
It would also give Monolith some edge by having Gauss Flux Arcs D2 also, even if i think i would be better to upgrade this weapon to Gauss Cannon stats.

As we don't have special weapons, our lists are always bringing the same anti-tank weapons (you choose : DDA, Doomscythe, Destroyers/Heavy Destroyers and Stalkers) which reduce a lot the the list building and viability of other units.
Heck i've still have to play a 2000 point game without any DDA in my list, there are like the first things i put in any list

I like the idea of making them D2 against Vehicles and Monsters.

The third ed Codex effectively auto wounded on 6's to hit.
I'll walk back my call for MWs, but I still think it best represents the lore.

Would that make them super powerful as basic weaponry? Yes, but that's the whole point of .Necrons. We used to be able to take out tanks with squads of Warriors. Our Heavy
Destroyers could one hit taanks.

Giving all Gauss weapons an automatic wound on 6's to hit would bring us, partly back to the old days.

What if gauss weapons all had the following effect -

"This weapon deals double damage against models with the VEHICLE keyword"

The problem I have with effects proccing on a 6 is that one, you're relying on chance on a game that's already full of RNG nonsense, and two, it scales better with high damage weapons. If you go the proc on a 6 effect then you are favoring high RoF weapons, which is a problem in the game right now. Low RoF high damage weapons need some love.

What about MONSTERS?

 Blndmage wrote:
The third ed Codex effectively auto wounded on 6's to hit.

Nope. It auto-wounded on 6s to wound.

Also, it wasn't Rending so the unit still got their saves etc.

It was literally only of value against vehicles and Wraithlords.

Gauss never did anything special to monsters. I dunno why, but they didn't. I guess the implication is that the gauss "beam" is electromagnetic in nature (because that's what gauss is, a unit of magnetic flux density) so it messes up electronic systems.

Trying to make gauss effective against infantry and monsters goes against the rule history behind it, and game balance as well; Necrons can dunk on vehicles, but they have relatively more trouble against monsters, and that's fine.

Even against wraithlords it wasn't that great. Wraithlords still had enough wounds and armor to get into melee, and disruption fields did nothing against monsters, so your warriors were pretty much screwed unless you veiled or monolith'd them out.

If gauss flayers did 2D on wound rolls of 6, then against t5 or up, you get double damage on half the successful wounds, and against t8, you get double damage on all successful wounds. This makes flayers much better specifically against tough targets without needing to use a keyword.

And blasters should get 2D all the time. This would give immortals an anti tank load out, with tesla being anti infantry.


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 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Trying to make gauss effective against infantry and monsters goes against the rule history behind it, and game balance as well; Necrons can dunk on vehicles, but they have relatively more trouble against monsters, and that's fine..

I don’t think it’s fine that necrons should struggle with monsters. It’s a completely arbitrary distinction based solely on tradition. Bear in mind that vehicles used to have a completely different wounding system than monsters. Now, both operate the same way, so there’s no real need to make crons better vs one and not the other.

Edit, I just looked it up and gauss flayers do not use em pulses to destroy targets, they just disassemble matter (including flesh and bone).

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Even against wraithlords it wasn't that great. Wraithlords still had enough wounds and armor to get into melee, and disruption fields did nothing against monsters, so your warriors were pretty much screwed unless you veiled or monolith'd them out.

Just to clarify, I didn't mean that it was effective against Wraithlords.

I meant that Wraithlords were the only non-vehicles in the entire game for which the rule even mattered at all.

Every other monster had T7 or less, so a 6 would be enough to wound it with or without Gauss.

Dandelion wrote:


Edit, I just looked it up and gauss flayers do not use em pulses to destroy targets, they just disassemble matter (including flesh and bone).

Yes, by using a powerful magnetic field. Hence gauss.
The magnetic field is so strong it can split apart molecules or something. Because Necron science is the greatest in the world.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Dandelion wrote:


Edit, I just looked it up and gauss flayers do not use em pulses to destroy targets, they just disassemble matter (including flesh and bone).

Yes, by using a powerful magnetic field. Hence gauss.
Apparently the magnetic field is so strong it can split apart molecules or something. Warhammer science is weird.

Atoms are made of charged particles which could be affected by an electromagnetic field I suppose.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Gauss never did anything special to monsters. I dunno why, but they didn't. I guess the implication is that the gauss "beam" is electromagnetic in nature (because that's what gauss is, a unit of magnetic flux density) so it messes up electronic systems.

Trying to make gauss effective against infantry and monsters goes against the rule history behind it, and game balance as well; Necrons can dunk on vehicles, but they have relatively more trouble against monsters, and that's fine.

Even against wraithlords it wasn't that great. Wraithlords still had enough wounds and armor to get into melee, and disruption fields did nothing against monsters, so your warriors were pretty much screwed unless you veiled or monolith'd them out.

I'm pretty sure Gauss & Fields worked against Monsters in the 5th Ed Codex, so there is some precedent.

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Gauss never did anything special to monsters. I dunno why, but they didn't. I guess the implication is that the gauss "beam" is electromagnetic in nature (because that's what gauss is, a unit of magnetic flux density) so it messes up electronic systems.

Trying to make gauss effective against infantry and monsters goes against the rule history behind it, and game balance as well; Necrons can dunk on vehicles, but they have relatively more trouble against monsters, and that's fine.

Even against wraithlords it wasn't that great. Wraithlords still had enough wounds and armor to get into melee, and disruption fields did nothing against monsters, so your warriors were pretty much screwed unless you veiled or monolith'd them out.

I'm pretty sure Gauss & Fields worked against Monsters in the 5th Ed Codex, so there is some precedent.

Huh, did they? It's been a while, so I don't remember that.
I do know that the 5th ed codex gave necrons a lot more options in dealing with monsters / vehicles through cryptek loadouts.

I really miss having different types of crypteks and the necron court. That was the best part of 5th ed. The fluff was crap, the vehicles don't look right and some stat lines were borked, but it did have some nice flavoring and loadouts that 8th ed lacks.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

I really miss having different types of crypteks and the necron court. That was the best part of 5th ed. The fluff was crap, the vehicles don't look right and some stat lines were borked, but it did have some nice flavoring and loadouts that 8th ed lacks.

Likewise.

I also enjoyed Crypteks basically being stand-in squad sergeants.

I actually had an army back then that consisted primarily of 6 Immortal squads, each led by a Cryptek. It wasn't the most effective but it was a lot of fun to play.

Gauss always had the theme of being able to damage any kind of target. This is back in the days of two major things: 1) You were unable to deal damage to something that had double your S in T and 2) Vehicles used a unique damage system where they required specific high-S high AP weapons for a chance to explode, most of the time, vehicles would only suffer glancing hits, even from said high T/AP weapons.

Gauss had 2 special rules:
1) It would bypass the immunity of double T by automatically wounding anything on a wound roll of 6. This made them "special" against monsters, allowing basic infantry to wound a Wraithlord.
2) Gauss weapons would also automatically deal a glancing hit to any vehicle on an armor penetration roll of 6, meaning massed infantry had a good shot at destroying tough vehicles (it would usually take 2-3 glancing hits to destroy one).

Since 8th edition removed the special armor penetration system AND made it a universal rule that 6's auto-wound they essentially removed from Necrons the special game impacting abilities they had. Instead, gauss weapons have 1 extra AP than an equivalent weapon and that simply does not result in the same in-game impact of past editions.

I do believe that access to D2 on wounds of 6 could bring back some of this power and would go miles into making Necron infantry meaningful against vehicles again, but I'd even argue that it should be D d3 against Vehicles and D 2 against anything else.

It is interesting to notice that at the same time warscythes were extremelly powerful against vehicles due to having the Armor Penetration rule, allowing it to roll 2d6 (instead of a single one) on armor penetration rolls, which coupled with high-AP made lords and overlords the bane of any vehicle in melee. that has also been lost in the translation from 8th.


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Edit addition: They can increase the costs to whatever feels appropriate but I'd love to get back this versatility of Necron weaponry.

Gauss special rule: This weapon deals +1 damage on wound rolls of 6. Against vehicle targets it instead deals d3 damage on wound rolls of 6.

Warscythes: Deal +3 damage on wound rolls of 6. Against vehicle targets it instead deals d6 damage on wound rolls of 6.

We could figure out balance later but from the legacy of gauss weapons and their impact in the game this would do nicely to bring back the ability to "glance to death" and the punch that necron Warscythes would bring to the table. They are very underwhelming now.

I was partly right, in that there was a time Gauss auto-wounded on 6s.
It just that it wasn't in 5th (which was still just auto-glancing), it was in 7th Ed.

arhurt wrote:
Gauss always had the theme of being able to damage any kind of target. This is back in the days of two major things: 1) You were unable to deal damage to something that had double your S in T and 2) Vehicles used a unique damage system where they required specific high-S high AP weapons for a chance to explode, most of the time, vehicles would only suffer glancing hits, even from said high T/AP weapons.

Gauss had 2 special rules:
1) It would bypass the immunity of double T by automatically wounding anything on a wound roll of 6. This made them "special" against monsters, allowing basic infantry to wound a Wraithlord.
2) Gauss weapons would also automatically deal a glancing hit to any vehicle on an armor penetration roll of 6, meaning massed infantry had a good shot at destroying tough vehicles (it would usually take 2-3 glancing hits to destroy one).

Since 8th edition removed the special armor penetration system AND made it a universal rule that 6's auto-wound they essentially removed from Necrons the special game impacting abilities they had. Instead, gauss weapons have 1 extra AP than an equivalent weapon and that simply does not result in the same in-game impact of past editions.

I do believe that access to D2 on wounds of 6 could bring back some of this power and would go miles into making Necron infantry meaningful against vehicles again, but I'd even argue that it should be D d3 against Vehicles and D 2 against anything else.

It is interesting to notice that at the same time warscythes were extremelly powerful against vehicles due to having the Armor Penetration rule, allowing it to roll 2d6 (instead of a single one) on armor penetration rolls, which coupled with high-AP made lords and overlords the bane of any vehicle in melee. that has also been lost in the translation from 8th.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Edit addition: They can increase the costs to whatever feels appropriate but I'd love to get back this versatility of Necron weaponry.

Gauss special rule: This weapon deals +1 damage on wound rolls of 6. Against vehicle targets it instead deals d3 damage on wound rolls of 6.

Warscythes: Deal +3 damage on wound rolls of 6. Against vehicle targets it instead deals d6 damage on wound rolls of 6.

We could figure out balance later but from the legacy of gauss weapons and their impact in the game this would do nicely to bring back the ability to "glance to death" and the punch that necron Warscythes would bring to the table. They are very underwhelming now.

Good summary. I think I agree with all of that.

As an aside, I also miss the 5th edition flexibility of crypteks. The different disciplines were a cool concept that really drove home just how high-tech necrons were.

I don't get why you'd want to deal d3 (average 2) instead of 2.

I get even less why you'd want to deal d6 (average 3.5) instead of 5 (2+3).

I don't think making a rule about added damage will work. Even if your weapons does 6 damage, it takes a single save to negate it. The fact that wound count is so much higher makes me think the added damage solution wouldn't work well.
I think I'm stuck in the mortal wounds camp. I'm going to see if I can get someone to playtest some variations just for fun.

punisher357 wrote:
I don't think making a rule about added damage will work. Even if your weapons does 6 damage, it takes a single save to negate it. The fact that wound count is so much higher makes me think the added damage solution wouldn't work well.
I think I'm stuck in the mortal wounds camp. I'm going to see if I can get someone to playtest some variations just for fun.

I mean, going from damage 1 to damage 2 means that gauss troops would be doubling their damage against vehicles. The goal here isn't necessarily to make warriors highly efficient tank killers; it's to take some of the burden off of the rest of your list and to spread your threat around so that you're not throwing a trio of doomsday arks into every list you build.

Sloppy math says...
10 warriors = 20 shots = ~14 hits = ~4.5 wounds. Assuming 3+ armor, you'll half of those through (so 2.25). So at damage 2, a basic warrior squad without buffs just did 4.5 wounds to something with the defensive profile of a rhino. That's just shy of half a dead rhino in a single volley. Now at 110 points, that's not a game-breaking amount of offense, but it also means that the rest of your army only has to get through about half as many wounds to finish that rhino off. And that means you can more comfortably spend some of those doomsday ark points on something a bit less cookie cutter.

Yeah, D3 would actually be a downgrade from D2. You have a 33% chance of dealing just 1 damage, and in terms of game flow it would slow things down. Furthermore, there are already gauss weapons that deal variable damage, and as such adding an effect that adds variable damage would be awkward. Double damage is a much simpler solution that doesn't cause any complications.

Or do you mean +D3? Because that would scale a little better with the stronger weapon types.


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punisher357 wrote:
I don't think making a rule about added damage will work. Even if your weapons does 6 damage, it takes a single save to negate it. The fact that wound count is so much higher makes me think the added damage solution wouldn't work well.
I think I'm stuck in the mortal wounds camp. I'm going to see if I can get someone to playtest some variations just for fun.

Because the game totally needs an army that can spam mortal wounds like no tomorrow in the shooting phase, which can spill over to other models.
You might as well make deathmarks troops.

Death marks are a whole other story. Give them the ability to wound anything on a 2+ that's not a vehicle and call it a day.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:


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punisher357 wrote:
I don't think making a rule about added damage will work. Even if your weapons does 6 damage, it takes a single save to negate it. The fact that wound count is so much higher makes me think the added damage solution wouldn't work well.
I think I'm stuck in the mortal wounds camp. I'm going to see if I can get someone to playtest some variations just for fun.

Because the game totally needs an army that can spam mortal wounds like no tomorrow in the shooting phase, which can spill over to other models.
You might as well make deathmarks troops.

Well, you could always make it mortal wounds on 6s against vehicles, but then you could just reword it as a higher damage characteristic and avoid weird interactions.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Yeah, D3 would actually be a downgrade from D2. You have a 33% chance of dealing just 1 damage, and in terms of game flow it would slow things down. Furthermore, there are already gauss weapons that deal variable damage, and as such adding an effect that adds variable damage would be awkward. Double damage is a much simpler solution that doesn't cause any complications.

Or do you mean +D3? Because that would scale a little better with the stronger weapon types.


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punisher357 wrote:
I don't think making a rule about added damage will work. Even if your weapons does 6 damage, it takes a single save to negate it. The fact that wound count is so much higher makes me think the added damage solution wouldn't work well.
I think I'm stuck in the mortal wounds camp. I'm going to see if I can get someone to playtest some variations just for fun.

Because the game totally needs an army that can spam mortal wounds like no tomorrow in the shooting phase, which can spill over to other models.
You might as well make deathmarks troops.

Like no tomorrow? BS +3 means that roughly 13/20 hit. Let's say 10 hits wound, it would generate, 1-2 mortal wounds on a 6. Doesn't sound game breaking to me, but I'm not going to argue about it.

Deathmarks are already fairly useless.


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I'm still in favor of mortal wounds on a 6. I haven't heard a better idea yet, but that's just my opinion.

punisher357 wrote:

Like no tomorrow? BS +3 means that roughly 13/20 hit. Let's say 10 hits wound, it would generate, 1-2 mortal wounds on a 6. Doesn't sound game breaking to me, but I'm not going to argue about it.

10 wounds is much closer to 12 than 6, so you'd be doing just under 2 mortal wounds on average. 20 shots comes from 10 warriors, so you'd be looking at about the same number of mortal wounds as a smite on top of tactical doctrine bolter shooting. I'm not saying that's broken, but it does seem pretty strong.

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I'm still in favor of mortal wounds on a 6. I haven't heard a better idea yet, but that's just my opinion.

Is there any particular reason you want gauss to kill multiple models with a single shot? From a fluff perspective, I don't see the connection. Form a mechanical perspective, that overlaps with tesla's gimmick.

Wyldhunt wrote:

punisher357 wrote:

Like no tomorrow? BS +3 means that roughly 13/20 hit. Let's say 10 hits wound, it would generate, 1-2 mortal wounds on a 6. Doesn't sound game breaking to me, but I'm not going to argue about it.

10 wounds is much closer to 12 than 6, so you'd be doing just under 2 mortal wounds on average. 20 shots comes from 10 warriors, so you'd be looking at about the same number of mortal wounds as a smite on top of tactical doctrine bolter shooting. I'm not saying that's broken, but it does seem pretty strong.

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I'm still in favor of mortal wounds on a 6. I haven't heard a better idea yet, but that's just my opinion.

Is there any particular reason you want gauss to kill multiple models with a single shot? From a fluff perspective, I don't see the connection. Form a mechanical perspective, that overlaps with tesla's gimmick.

First of all, there is no guarantee you will kill multiple models with a single shot. The first damage dealt is a normal wound and could be saved.You're also assuming the warriors are in rapid fire range, which I wasn't. I was referring to a 20 man unit outside RFR.

Also, at this point, I'm sick of hearing people say "from a fluff perspective". It's an asinine argument. You can't make the game work based on fluff. Besides, the fluff regularly gets thrown out. How is it that warriors and immortals are subject to morale? That doesn't line up with fluff and I could not care less about having a discussion about that. Most "fluff rules", in my opinion, don't contribute much to the game, but that's a discussion for a different thread.

Second of all, there is no way in hell that from 13 hits you'll average 10 wounds.

Of course 10 wounds is closer to 12 than 6. However, the AVERAGE number of 6's you'd roll with 10 wounds is 1.67, which is why I said 1-2 mortal wounds.

Even assuming you have a full squad of 20 warriors (or a ghost ark) in rapid fire range, that averages 26.6 hits. Being generous and assuming 20 of them wound, the result would still only be 2-4 mortal wounds on average. Let's split the difference and say 3.
Remember, that's assuming an abnormally high number of wounds to hits ratio.

I see no problem with this at all. However, that's my opinion and someone else may be of the opinion that it does cause a problem. To each their own.

All of this is hypothetical and GW isn't going to listen, regardless.

punisher357 wrote:

First of all, there is no guarantee you will kill multiple models with a single shot.

I... certainly didn't mean to imply that every single gauss shot would hit and then proceed to roll a 6 to-wound. But one of the main differences between doing mortal wounds on 6+ and simply increasing the damage of the weapon is that it would spill over onto additional models. This would make gauss better at clearing out horde. To my mind, gauss should lean towards killing hard targets, and tesla should lean towards clearing out hordes. So with that in mind, I was wondering if you saw some reason to have gauss step on tesla's toes by making it better at clearing out hordes.Sincere question.

The first damage dealt is a normal wound and could be saved.

Are you making the argument that a certain percentage of gauss wounds should automatically ignore saves of all kinds then? Reasonable people could be of that opinion.

You're also assuming the warriors are in rapid fire range, which I wasn't. I was referring to a 20 man unit outside RFR.

Apologies. I might be missing something. Why does the source of the 20 shots matter?

Second of all, there is no way in hell that from 13 hits you'll average 10 wounds.

True enough. I was using the numbers that you gave.

Of course 10 wounds is closer to 12 than 6. However, the AVERAGE number of 6's you'd roll with 10 wounds is 1.67, which is why I said 1-2 mortal wounds.

Sure. 1.67 is significantly closer to 2 than to 1. I was attempting to emphasize that between the options of 1 and 2, 2 was closer to the average. Although as you've pointed out, 10 wounds was not, in fact, an average number of wounds for 20 shots.

Even assuming you have a full squad of 20 warriors (or a ghost ark) in rapid fire range, that averages 26.6 hits. Being generous and assuming 20 of them wound, the result would still only be 2-4 mortal wounds on average. Let's split the difference and say 3.
Remember, that's assuming an abnormally high number of wounds to hits ratio.

I see no problem with this at all. However, that's my opinion and someone else may be of the opinion that it does cause a problem. To each their own.

Fair enough. I still haven't run the numbers to compare that kind of damage output to comparable units/weapons (like intercessors with bolters). Maybe throwing mortal wounds on top of current gauss shooting would math out to something perfectly acceptable. My concern is more with internal balance/niche protection. Again, I haven't run the numbers, but I suspect tesla would start to look a lot less appealing in slots where it competes with a gauss alternative. But again, maybe not. I'd have to break out the abacus.

Also, at this point, I'm sick of hearing people say "from a fluff perspective". It's an asinine argument. You can't make the game work based on fluff. Besides, the fluff regularly gets thrown out. How is it that warriors and immortals are subject to morale? That doesn't line up with fluff and I could not care less about having a discussion about that. Most "fluff rules", in my opinion, don't contribute much to the game, but that's a discussion for a different thread.

While fluff shouldn't be used as an excuse for poor game balance, fluff is still an important consideration in matters of game design. Part of the function of 40k's rules is to evoke the fluff. Having one's faction and units "feel" like they do in the fluff is one of the appeals of the hobby to many of us. So, if the rules fail to satisfy in that regard, they're missing out on one of the sources of "fun" they could provide. 40k without satisfyingly fluffy rules is like pizza with a soggy crust. The pizza on the whole might be great, but it would've been better if they'd gotten the crust right.

To use hyperbole to illustrate a point, let's pretend we ran some numbers and found that giving hormagaunts a 2+ armor save somehow added a lot to the mechanics of the game. Somehow, 2+ save hormagaunts does a lot for game balance, creates interesting tactical decisions, etc. However, there's still going to be a weird disconnect between the fluff and the crunch when a cheap, expendable gribbly is actually more survivable than something like a space marine.

But eh. You're not wrong. That's really a discussion for another thread.

Give it 'on a to wound roll of 6+, this weapon's AP is improved by 2 (AP-2 becomes AP-4)'.

This could give scaling guass weapon crits?

I don't like the idea of giving Gauss weapons a Mortal Wounds mechanic. Specifically the ability to ignore invulnerable saves.

I think Gauss should do double damage on a unmodded 6 to wound. That way it still gives the D2 people are looking for in Necron Warriors and Immortals with Gauss Blasters, while also making Heavy Gauss Cannons have a significantly larger damage spike compared to regular Gauss Cannons. The chances of you rolling a 6 to wound and a corresponding 6 for damage is very unlikely, and it still can be stopped by invulns/saves so it's not like you're taking 12 damage a turn.

Wyldhunt wrote:

Fair enough. I still haven't run the numbers to compare that kind of damage output to comparable units/weapons (like intercessors with bolters). Maybe throwing mortal wounds on top of current gauss shooting would math out to something perfectly acceptable. My concern is more with internal balance/niche protection. Again, I haven't run the numbers, but I suspect tesla would start to look a lot less appealing in slots where it competes with a gauss alternative. But again, maybe not. I'd have to break out the abacus.

While fluff shouldn't be used as an excuse for poor game balance, fluff is still an important consideration in matters of game design. Part of the function of 40k's rules is to evoke the fluff. Having one's faction and units "feel" like they do in the fluff is one of the appeals of the hobby to many of us. So, if the rules fail to satisfy in that regard, they're missing out on one of the sources of "fun" they could provide. 40k without satisfyingly fluffy rules is like pizza with a soggy crust. The pizza on the whole might be great, but it would've been better if they'd gotten the crust right.

To use hyperbole to illustrate a point, let's pretend we ran some numbers and found that giving hormagaunts a 2+ armor save somehow added a lot to the mechanics of the game. Somehow, 2+ save hormagaunts does a lot for game balance, creates interesting tactical decisions, etc. However, there's still going to be a weird disconnect between the fluff and the crunch when a cheap, expendable gribbly is actually more survivable than something like a space marine.

But eh. You're not wrong. That's really a discussion for another thread.

I wouldn't care if the mortal wounds generated by gauss didn't ignore invulnerable saves.
Even with mortal wounds, I think Tesla would be better at clearing hordes. It generates more hits/volume of fire. I think people would take Tesla immortals to clear hordes and use gauss on monsters and vehicles.

My biggest gripe about fluff is how it's often used as a one way street. People constantly use it in a biased fashion. It would be more correct fluff wise to have warriors and immortals ignore morale, but that's not the case. I think it would add to the feel of the army too.

Ah, but I digress....

I'm open to other mechanics. I just haven't heard any that are better, in my opinion, than mortal wounds.

Once upon a time, when vehicles were the power houses on the field necrons killed them with volume of fire and glancing hits. We didn't have much for anti tank, but it was fine because gauss covered it well enough. It was a weapon that threatened everything. We lost that this edition and have been paying for it.
A tank or monster now has around 8-12 wounds. By adding mortal wounds to gauss we would be closer to the old mechanic.

(I hope no one is pedantic enough to suggest I'm advocating that we go back to a past edition.)



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 skchsan wrote:
Give it 'on a to wound roll of 6+, this weapon's AP is improved by 2 (AP-2 becomes AP-4)'.

This could give scaling guass weapon crits?

That could potentially work. I'd like to play test that.

 Grimskul wrote:
I think Gauss should do double damage on a unmodded 6 to wound. That way it still gives the D2 people are looking for in Necron Warriors and Immortals with Gauss Blasters, while also making Heavy Gauss Cannons have a significantly larger damage spike compared to regular Gauss Cannons. The chances of you rolling a 6 to wound and a corresponding 6 for damage is very unlikely, and it still can be stopped by invulns/saves so it's not like you're taking 12 damage a turn.

This is terrible board-game design, it prevents fast dice, any rule or profile that prevents fast dice should be changed. I have personally advocated IF get the rule vs vehicles (in that case it rarely prevents fast dice) and GW have made several weapons with damage determined by wound rolls so don't take it as a personal attack.

With a rule like this against Terminators, you would need to make wound rolls one at a time and then your opponent would need to make saves in the right order. If you limited the rule to against vehicles it would only slow the game down when it comes to vehicle units with multiple models which is a rare thing.

Technically you can't fast-dice Damage anyway RAW - you're meant to roll them 1 by one.

Well if tesla is the score extra hits on 6s weapon. Why not make gaus the score extra wounds on 6s weapon. Instead of D2 on 6s to wound as suggested, why not have it score an extra wound on 6s to wound?
Personally I like the MW suggestion, but .maybe this could be the middle ground?

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
Technically you can't fast-dice Damage anyway RAW - you're meant to roll them 1 by one.

It's not the damage and saving throws I am concerned with, it's the wound rolls. Lets say you have 16 hits, now you roll to wound one at a time so you end up with a damage order that looks like this 1-1-1-2-1-1-2-2 and then your opponent rolls saves one at a time or rolls the three 1s, then the 2, then two 1s, then the two 2s. Another way of doing it would be rolling the wound rolls one at a time, then each time a wound is successful your opponent immediately makes a saving throw. Either way, you are going to have 20-ish rolls for something that should be done by 2 rolls. Making the weapons D3-1 (to a minimum of 1) damage would be way better in terms of speeding the game up, it would mean you only have to slow dice the damage rolls, but fast dice the wound and save rolls.

Why would you need to roll the wound rolls one at a time? There are plenty of effects that go off on wound rolls of a 6 (Eldar Shuriken & Slaanesh Daemon Claws) and it's not like those force us to roll Wound rolls one at a time. The owner of the targeted unit chooses the order in which wounds are allocated when fast-rolling, so some of them dealing double damage vs not doesn't matter either.

I don't see the problem. Allocate the wounds as normal, use different colored dice for the sixes. Barely any slow down.

I roll 16 wound rolls, five 6s (dealing 2 damage each), eleven 4s and 5s (dealing 1 damage each). Which save does the Terminator take first, what save does he take second? Your opponent can roll 1 damage one at a time until he takes a wound then save the two damage wounds one at a time until the model dies, that way you essentially never benefit from the 2 damage. If you roll your wound rolls one at a time your opponent has to do them in order and the 2 damage might actually come into play.

The AP thing is also problematic if your opponent has some models in cover. You can take the high ap wounds on the guys outside and the guys inside will get cover against the wounds with less AP. I have never thought of the issue before, in melee the order is irrelevant.

Before anyone says this is wasting time I'd argue taking saves for Ork Boyz is as much a waste of time and all the Ork players I've played usually take their saves anyways. It's up to GW to make a ruleset that doesn't force or reward players for dragging out the game.

So its more effective against single multi wound models then? Sounds working as intended to me.

I thought you allocate all wounds model by model first before saving? Or am I thinking of early editions?

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
So its more effective against single multi wound models then? Sounds working as intended to me.

I thought you allocate all wounds model by model first before saving? Or am I thinking of early editions?

Yes it is more effective against single units, who cares? Isn't it more important that you could be spending five minutes to do a shooting attack for a unit of Warriors?

5th or 6th you had to spread as evenly as possible, 7th was front-man takes all the heat, 8th is allocate 1 w at a time anywhere you please unless a model is wounded in which case he takes the heat.

I still maintain that mortal wounds is not the way to go. I'd say double damage on 6+ to wound.

punisher357 wrote:


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 skchsan wrote:
Give it 'on a to wound roll of 6+, this weapon's AP is improved by 2 (AP-2 becomes AP-4)'.

This could give scaling guass weapon crits?

That could potentially work. I'd like to play test that.

I was thinking the same thing - it gives the feel of Gauss cutting through armor but not energy/mystical shields and avoids the issue of creating extra wounds from mortals.

I would make it -3 so that even the humble warrior would ignore virtually all armor on a 6 to wound.

Cryptek of Awesome wrote:

punisher357 wrote:


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 skchsan wrote:
Give it 'on a to wound roll of 6+, this weapon's AP is improved by 2 (AP-2 becomes AP-4)'.

This could give scaling guass weapon crits?

That could potentially work. I'd like to play test that.

I was thinking the same thing - it gives the feel of Gauss cutting through armor but not energy/mystical shields and avoids the issue of creating extra wounds from mortals.

I would make it -3 so that even the humble warrior would ignore virtually all armor on a 6 to wound.

Whilst extra AP would be welcome on flayers, it would be wasted on heavier gauss weapons, and such such a gimmick isn't great. Double damage is the way to go, imo
Mortal wounds only really benefits flayers due to volume of fire. Everything benefits from extra damage.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Cryptek of Awesome wrote:

punisher357 wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 skchsan wrote:
Give it 'on a to wound roll of 6+, this weapon's AP is improved by 2 (AP-2 becomes AP-4)'.

This could give scaling guass weapon crits?

That could potentially work. I'd like to play test that.

I was thinking the same thing - it gives the feel of Gauss cutting through armor but not energy/mystical shields and avoids the issue of creating extra wounds from mortals.

I would make it -3 so that even the humble warrior would ignore virtually all armor on a 6 to wound.

Whilst extra AP would be welcome on flayers, it would be wasted on heavier gauss weapons, and such such a gimmick isn't great. Double damage is the way to go, imo
Mortal wounds only really benefits flayers due to volume of fire. Everything benefits from extra damage.

Yeah, and the extra AP on a 6 to wound seems to steal the shuriken schtick that eldar have, and it would make dynasties like Mephrit feel redundant outside of Tesla. Currently Necrons aren't hurting for sources of AP, it's consistent flat damage at reasonable range.

Shot in the dark here, what if the unmodified hit rolls on a 6 get +1 to wound against the vehicle and monster keyword?

That would be overall useful. Heavy Gauss Cannons in particular would benefit, as that 3+ to wound (not many vehicles are T9) becomes a 2+ to wound.

Flayers, gauss cannons and gauss blasters would mostly be 4+ to wound, which is still beneficial, but does make them sort of the same?

Either that or double damage would be a welcome buff.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Cryptek of Awesome wrote:

punisher357 wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:

 skchsan wrote:
Give it 'on a to wound roll of 6+, this weapon's AP is improved by 2 (AP-2 becomes AP-4)'.

This could give scaling guass weapon crits?

That could potentially work. I'd like to play test that.

I was thinking the same thing - it gives the feel of Gauss cutting through armor but not energy/mystical shields and avoids the issue of creating extra wounds from mortals.

I would make it -3 so that even the humble warrior would ignore virtually all armor on a 6 to wound.

Whilst extra AP would be welcome on flayers, it would be wasted on heavier gauss weapons, and such such a gimmick isn't great. Double damage is the way to go, imo
Mortal wounds only really benefits flayers due to volume of fire. Everything benefits from extra damage.

I was under the impression this discussion evolved into about how gauss weapon under performs tesla, especially at infantry level, and not a proposal to buff gauss weapon so it performs better than tesla at all points?

The point of this proposal is to provide a buff whose benefit diminishes as the weapons scale up. The heavier gauss weapons don't under perform teslas - infact tesla weapons fall off as they scale up to heavier weapons.

If your point is to make flayers more viable through mechanics that favor weight of fire, I don't see why the AP suggestion falling off at heavier gauss weapon would be an issue. Double damage scales poorly IMO because it's exponential increase as D goes up. Mechanics with diminishing returns generally work better.
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 Grimskul wrote:
Yeah, and the extra AP on a 6 to wound seems to steal the shuriken schtick that eldar have, and it would make dynasties like Mephrit feel redundant outside of Tesla. Currently Necrons aren't hurting for sources of AP, it's consistent flat damage at reasonable range.

1. Necrons are mid range army with effective range of 12"~36". Can you define what reasonable range is?
2. Don't ALL armies, barring the obvious outliers, if not the game as a whole, operate on dealing various damage based on chance and not consistent flat damage?
3. Under this proposal, mephrit warriors at half range will be hitting at S4AP-4 on a roll of 6. That sounds pretty scary to me.

And yes, the AP is a variant of CWE shuriken mechanics. Shuriken crit effect's scaling is handled by scaling S and flat AP. As Gauss weapons have flat & scaling S and scaling AP, I thought it would be interesting to suggest a AP modifier that provides +buff as opposed to flat value.

Having said, I suppose my suggestion is more of a game design suggestion as opposed to flat out buffing necrons. Currently in the game, we notice a few patterns:

1. vehicles rarely have ++Sv
2. ++Sv's are given out like candies, but often capped at 5++ for ones that are given out like candies.

So what if Necrons are designed in a way that it almost always forces the ++Sv, and units that dont have ++Sv MUST rely on high T to mitigate damage from gauss weapons? With base S of 5, gauss weapons are never forced a roll of a 6 to wound. So in that sense, Necrons ARE the epitome the 'consistent flat damage' of 1 - no other army actually has base S5 with 3+BS.

 skchsan wrote:
So what if Necrons are designed in a way that it almost always forces the ++Sv, and units that dont have ++Sv MUST rely on high T to mitigate damage from gauss weapons? With base S of 5, gauss weapons are never forced a roll of a 6 to wound. So in that sense, Necrons ARE the epitome the 'consistent flat damage' of 1 - no other army actually has base S5 with 3+BS.

Gauss flayers and flayer arrays are S4 so they wound T8 on 6+, something you never want. Yes it makes sense Necrons deal consistent damage, but they don't vs vehicles. It's too inefficient in terms of pts to go shooting your flayers even at a T7 unit. A Heavy Destroyer (37 pts R36") does as much damage vs a Predator as 14 Warriors (154 pts R24") or 7 Warriors in RF (77 pts R12"). When you go up to a Knight you need 19 Warriors to do the job of 1 Heavy Destroyer. Warriors do not deal consistent damage any more than Guardsmen do. You need 3 Guardsmen (12 pts) for every Warrior (11 pts) to kill a Predator, to kill a Knight you need 1,5 Guardsmen (6 pts) for every Warrior. Gauss weapons are terrible vs vehicles, they are anti heavy infantry, against vehicles tesla is better because you either have Mephrit or Methodical Destruction stratagem to help destroy them. Gauss weapons should be far better against vehicles than lasguns.

The shuriken mechanic is also BS and not something Eldar should have, Necrons should be the crit on a 6 faction (because they don't get to re-roll all wounds and historically they have had an anti-armour effect on 6+ to wound), Eldar should be the flat AP faction.

 vict0988 wrote:

 skchsan wrote:
So what if Necrons are designed in a way that it almost always forces the ++Sv, and units that dont have ++Sv MUST rely on high T to mitigate damage from gauss weapons? With base S of 5, gauss weapons are never forced a roll of a 6 to wound. So in that sense, Necrons ARE the epitome the 'consistent flat damage' of 1 - no other army actually has base S5 with 3+BS.

Gauss flayers and flayer arrays are S4 so they wound T8 on 6+, something you never want. Yes it makes sense Necrons deal consistent damage, but they don't vs vehicles. It's too inefficient in terms of pts to go shooting your flayers even at a T7 unit. A Heavy Destroyer (37 pts R36") does as much damage vs a Predator as 14 Warriors (154 pts R24") or 7 Warriors in RF (77 pts R12"). When you go up to a Knight you need 19 Warriors to do the job of 1 Heavy Destroyer. Warriors do not deal consistent damage any more than Guardsmen do. You need 3 Guardsmen (12 pts) for every Warrior (11 pts) to kill a Predator, to kill a Knight you need 1,5 Guardsmen (6 pts) for every Warrior. Gauss weapons are terrible vs vehicles, they are anti heavy infantry, against vehicles tesla is better because you either have Mephrit or Methodical Destruction stratagem to help destroy them. Gauss weapons should be far better against vehicles than lasguns.

The shuriken mechanic is also BS and not something Eldar should have, Necrons should be the crit on a 6 faction (because they don't get to re-roll all wounds and historically they have had an anti-armour effect on 6+ to wound), Eldar should be the flat AP faction.

I understand the sentiments, but bad tactics aren't appropriate grounds for buffs. Having said:

1. Flayers being able to glance a vehicle to death was an unfortunate side effect of the AV mechanics and its shortcoming. Also, it may be worth noting Necrons had one of the weakest new model support even within xenos, so I think was more of lack of proper "counter" units problem which GW just said "hey, lets just let Necrons glance vehicles to death". Necrons have ample ways to deal with T7 and above, given that you're utilizing all the available tricks.
2. Comparing guardsmen & warriors vs T8's and knights - they're both bad. They're both not meant to deal with knights or T8's. If they do any damage, it's by sheer luck.
3. As Necron, You don't send in warriors to deal with knights. You send in your wraiths and lock them up for rest of the game with their BEAST keyword and 3++.
4. Necrons have 11 pt anti-heavy infantry units. Then they have 15 pt all-rounder infantry units. They both regenerate themselves on 5+, or 4+ with a cryptek.

If gauss can deal double damage or cause mortal wounds, warriors and immortals probably need 4~5 point bump per model.

And Eldar IS the flat AP army. Shurikens have 0 AP which gets bumped up to -3 on 6's.

Furthermore, attempting to replicate old 'cron's ability to glance vehicles to death by raising its damage output is not the way to go about it. It will make them stronger against everything, and extra damage against 20W model is not the same as landing glancing shots against it. What you should be trying to achieve is "gauss effectively ignores T of units on roll of 6" in order to replicate the old crons as the rule for old gauss weapon essentially got folded into the game as a core rule with the changes to wound chart, where anything can hurt anything on a roll of 6.

I think the most elegant solution for this problem would be either
-on a to hit roll of 6, this weapon wounds on 2+ (still has issues with high Sv)
-on a to hit roll of 6, improve this weapons AP by X (still has issues piercing thru high T)
but in comparison, the latter would have more profound improvement as high Sv's are more prevalent than high T.

 skchsan wrote:
1. Flayers being able to glance a vehicle to death was an unfortunate side effect of the AV mechanics and its shortcoming. Also, it may be worth noting Necrons had one of the weakest new model support even within xenos, so I think was more of lack of proper "counter" units problem which GW just said "hey, lets just let Necrons glance vehicles to death". Necrons have ample ways to deal with T7 and above, given that you're utilizing all the available tricks.

Not completely. Necrons were the last codex of 5th, so many of the concepts were designed to work with whatever they were testing for 6th Ed at the time (such as the Character unit type), and they had the gauss Glancing mechanic since their first codex.

The reason for the Gauss mechanic, though, is the fact that Necrons do not have any special weapons in their units (with the exception of the Wraiths and Destroyers). Warriors and Immortals do not have access to Flamers, Meltaguns, Rokkit Launchas, or similar, so needed a way to deal with Vehicles This originated before Tesla weapons were released, though, leaving Gauss as the 95% of the army's ranged weapon loadouts when they were first created. Gauss was used as compensation for this and the fact that the Heavy Gauss Cannon and Particle Whip were the only weapons that could Penetrate heavy armor back then. Of course, new models and weapons came in and things are different now and GW sometimes have a hard time breaking traditional aspects of the xenos.

 skchsan wrote:
I think the most elegant solution for this problem would be either
-on a to hit roll of 6, this weapon wounds on 2+ (still has issues with high Sv)
-on a to hit roll of 6, improve this weapons AP by X (still has issues piercing thru high T)
but in comparison, the latter would have more profound improvement as high Sv's are more prevalent than high T.

Those are definitely possibilities, but might I make another suggestion:

Gauss: On a To-Wound roll of 6, models hit with this weapon will have their M reduced to half, rounding up, till the Necron player's next turn. In addition, on a To-Wound roll of 6 instead of rolling for Damage, the full damage capacity of the weapon is applied (for example: a D6 weapon will have a Damage of 6).

 Charistoph wrote:
Not completely. Necrons were the last codex of 5th, so many of the concepts were designed to work with whatever they were testing for 6th Ed at the time (such as the Character unit type), and they had the gauss Glancing mechanic since their first codex.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Necrons were out since 3rd edition. Sorry. Completely misread the post.

 Charistoph wrote:


Gauss: On a To-Wound roll of 6, models hit with this weapon will have their M reduced to half, rounding up, till the Necron player's next turn. In addition, on a To-Wound roll of 6 instead of rolling for Damage, the full damage capacity of the weapon is applied (for example: a D6 weapon will have a Damage of 6).

Interesting suggestion. I like it. There's not that many things in the game that affects the move characteristic, so seeing a gimmick like that might be fun

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:
Gauss: On a To-Wound roll of 6, models hit with this weapon will have their M reduced to half, rounding up, till the Necron player's next turn. In addition, on a To-Wound roll of 6 instead of rolling for Damage, the full damage capacity of the weapon is applied (for example: a D6 weapon will have a Damage of 6).

Interesting suggestion. I like it. There's not that many things in the game that affects the move characteristic, so seeing a gimmick like that might be fun

I was figuring that it was as close to the original Glance mechanic results as we could get without making it insane, not to mention just the shock of the hit would cause a reduction of mobility. Add on to that, while it doesn't directly double damage, it will double the amount of time it takes to get in to close combat with them or change cover, so same results in the long run.

Inspired by your two-part effect:

Gauss: On to hit roll of 6+, this weapon wounds on 2+. Additionally, on to wound roll of 6+, improve this weapon's AP by X.

 skchsan wrote:
Inspired by your two-part effect:

Gauss: On to hit roll of 6+, this weapon wounds on 2+. Additionally, on to wound roll of 6+, improve this weapon's AP by X.

What about:
Gauss: On to hit roll of 6+, this weapon gains 2+ to wound rolls this phase. Additionally, on to wound roll of 6+, improve this weapon's AP by X.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:


Gauss: On a To-Wound roll of 6, models hit with this weapon will have their M reduced to half, rounding up, till the Necron player's next turn. In addition, on a To-Wound roll of 6 instead of rolling for Damage, the full damage capacity of the weapon is applied (for example: a D6 weapon will have a Damage of 6).

Interesting suggestion. I like it. There's not that many things in the game that affects the move characteristic, so seeing a gimmick like that might be fun

Halving movement distance on a wound roll of 6 is a little much. A 10 man warrior squad at 24” is very very likely to get this ability to trigger and the board control it offers is insane. It’s basically a death sentence to any melee unit that doesn’t arrive from reserves and any transport is useless. The game hardly needs more incentive to castle up either. Plus this interacts really weirdly with flyers that have a minimum move to not die. No one likes that thunder fire stratagem that does this. There’s no reason to give it to an entire army.

 Blndmage wrote:

 skchsan wrote:
Inspired by your two-part effect:

Gauss: On to hit roll of 6+, this weapon wounds on 2+. Additionally, on to wound roll of 6+, improve this weapon's AP by X.

What about:
Gauss: On to hit roll of 6+, this weapon gains 2+ to wound rolls this phase. Additionally, on to wound roll of 6+, improve this weapon's AP by X.

Maybe it could work. But + to wound system scales poorly due to how to wound works in 8th ed. It's effect tapers off as T gets higher, which would be redundant as far as this exercise of 'make gauss more effective against vehicles' goes. To best imitate the effect of gauss in previous editions without resorting to MW treatment, it needs to effectively ignore the effect of T when resolving damage I think.


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 evil_kiwi_60 wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:


Gauss: On a To-Wound roll of 6, models hit with this weapon will have their M reduced to half, rounding up, till the Necron player's next turn. In addition, on a To-Wound roll of 6 instead of rolling for Damage, the full damage capacity of the weapon is applied (for example: a D6 weapon will have a Damage of 6).

Interesting suggestion. I like it. There's not that many things in the game that affects the move characteristic, so seeing a gimmick like that might be fun

Halving movement distance on a wound roll of 6 is a little much. A 10 man warrior squad at 24” is very very likely to get this ability to trigger and the board control it offers is insane. It’s basically a death sentence to any melee unit that doesn’t arrive from reserves and any transport is useless. The game hardly needs more incentive to castle up either. Plus this interacts really weirdly with flyers that have a minimum move to not die. No one likes that thunder fire stratagem that does this. There’s no reason to give it to an entire army.

I agree. Halving movement scales poorly especially for flyers whose 20"-X" movement gets halved to 10"-X/2" vs 5" halved to 2.5".

 evil_kiwi_60 wrote:
Halving movement distance on a wound roll of 6 is a little much. A 10 man warrior squad at 24” is very very likely to get this ability to trigger and the board control it offers is insane. It’s basically a death sentence to any melee unit that doesn’t arrive from reserves and any transport is useless. The game hardly needs more incentive to castle up either. Plus this interacts really weirdly with flyers that have a minimum move to not die. No one likes that thunder fire stratagem that does this. There’s no reason to give it to an entire army.

I was comparing it to the Stun affect of a Glance. Now, it could be limited to just models with the Vehicle and Monster keywords, in fact, I was originally considering that option. As an option, it could be just a flat reduction of speed, like 2".

Now, as I presented it won't affect units as much for two reasons: 1) The model would have to survive the Wound (obviously this would affect higher Wound and higher AP models, so Boyz and Conscripts it would rarely affect), 2) Unit coherency can leave the slowest behind while the rest of the unit can forge ahead. Yes, it would affect Lords of War, Vehicles, and Monsters far more, but then, Gauss always affected those models more.

 Blndmage wrote:

 skchsan wrote:
Inspired by your two-part effect:

Gauss: On to hit roll of 6+, this weapon wounds on 2+. Additionally, on to wound roll of 6+, improve this weapon's AP by X.

What about:
Gauss: On to hit roll of 6+, this weapon gains 2+ to wound rolls this phase. Additionally, on to wound roll of 6+, improve this weapon's AP by X.

I'm a little iffy on this. You'd go from having a single pool of to-hit/to-wound/save rolls to having two pools of to-wound rolls to resolve (6s and not-6s) and two pools of saves (6's and not-6's). So you'd end up rolling 5 sets of dice instead of 3. And you'd be adding those 2 extra sets of dice frequently because gauss weapons appear on tons of units in the codex.




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 Charistoph wrote:

Gauss: On a To-Wound roll of 6, models hit with this weapon will have their M reduced to half, rounding up, till the Necron player's next turn. In addition, on a To-Wound roll of 6 instead of rolling for Damage, the full damage capacity of the weapon is applied (for example: a D6 weapon will have a Damage of 6).

Aren't attacks technically resolved one at a time even though we all use speed rolling? With this rule, rolling a 6 to wound early on in the series of attacks would be less good than rolling a 6 at the end of the series of attacks. So if you speed roll your attacks and get 8 wounds, three of which are a 6+, then how do we determine where those 6s are in the series of saves I'm about to take? If those three 6s were the first to-wound rolls you would have rolled if you'd done it one at a time, then they're irrelevant provided you kill three of my single-wound models. If one of those 6s was the very last wound to be resolved, then it would be the one that decides whether my unit has its movement reduced.

Or am I misunderstanding something critical about how speed rolling works?

 Charistoph wrote:

I was comparing it to the Stun affect of a Glance. Now, it could be limited to just models with the Vehicle and Monster keywords, in fact, I was originally considering that option. As an option, it could be just a flat reduction of speed, like 2".

Now, as I presented it won't affect units as much for two reasons: 1) The model would have to survive the Wound (obviously this would affect higher Wound and higher AP models, so Boyz and Conscripts it would rarely affect), 2) Unit coherency can leave the slowest behind while the rest of the unit can forge ahead. Yes, it would affect Lords of War, Vehicles, and Monsters far more, but then, Gauss always affected those models more.

If it was each unsaved wound of a 6+ it wouldn’t be as bad because 1 wound models won’t survive most of the time. As it is now, the effect would trigger when you roll a 6 to wound. If that wound is saved the effect would still trigger. Making the effect only for monsters and vehicles and keeping it a flat -2 would make this much more reasonable.

Here's an outside the box approach to this problem.

For every 10 hits scored by a unit using weapons with the gauss keyword against models with T6 or higher keyword treat the target as being -1T for wound rolls made against by the firing unit. This cannot reduce a model's toughness below T5.

Even a block of 20 Warriors outside of Rapid Fire range now treats vehicles as T7 instead of T8. Inside Rapid Fire Range that might go as low as T5.

It doesn't scale to high strength low volume fire, but the idea was to improve the humble Gauss Flayer, so...

 Canadian 5th wrote:
Here's an outside the box approach to this problem.

For every 10 hits scored by a unit using weapons with the gauss against models with T6 or higher keyword treat the target as being -1T for wound rolls made against by the firing unit. This cannot reduce a model's toughness below T5.

Even a block of 20 Warriors outside of Rapid Fire range now treats vehicles as T7 instead of T8. Inside Rapid Fire Range that might go as low as T5.

It doesn't scale to high strength low volume fire, but the idea was to improve the humble Gauss Flayer, so...

Interesting idea. I'd not add a lower bound, though-well, outside not dropping below Toughness 1 to avoid breaking the game.

At max squad size, you have 40 shots. If all 40 hit, you've reduced a T8 model to T4 (for that shooting) which is great! But also only happens .000000000000000008% (yes, PERCENT! that's not a typo) of the time. (Admittedly, you do get into reasonable numbers, as in seven percent of a percent chance with MWBD, but still really unlikely).

More realistically, you could probably get a T7 vehicle down to T4 (requiring 30/40 shots to hit) which actually has a just over 17% chance of happening (94% with MWBD! I was surprised too) or a T6 model down to T3.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:
Here's an outside the box approach to this problem.

For every 10 hits scored by a unit using weapons with the gauss against models with T6 or higher keyword treat the target as being -1T for wound rolls made against by the firing unit. This cannot reduce a model's toughness below T5.

Even a block of 20 Warriors outside of Rapid Fire range now treats vehicles as T7 instead of T8. Inside Rapid Fire Range that might go as low as T5.

It doesn't scale to high strength low volume fire, but the idea was to improve the humble Gauss Flayer, so...

Interesting idea. I'd not add a lower bound, though-well, outside not dropping below Toughness 1 to avoid breaking the game.

At max squad size, you have 40 shots. If all 40 hit, you've reduced a T8 model to T4 (for that shooting) which is great! But also only happens .000000000000000008% (yes, PERCENT! that's not a typo) of the time. (Admittedly, you do get into reasonable numbers, as in seven percent of a percent chance with MWBD, but still really unlikely).

More realistically, you could probably get a T7 vehicle down to T4 (requiring 30/40 shots to hit) which actually has a just over 17% chance of happening (94% with MWBD! I was surprised too) or a T6 model down to T3.

I added the lower bound so they don't go crazy against infantry. Dropping GEQ (even MEQ or Bikers) to where they're wounded on a 2+ seems a bit much and steps on Telsa's toes.

EDIT: I completely forgot that I made it so a unit needs a starting toughness above 6 before the rules kicks in so you're correct, the lower bound is currently unnecessary.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:
Here's an outside the box approach to this problem.

For every 10 hits scored by a unit using weapons with the gauss against models with T6 or higher keyword treat the target as being -1T for wound rolls made against by the firing unit. This cannot reduce a model's toughness below T5.

Even a block of 20 Warriors outside of Rapid Fire range now treats vehicles as T7 instead of T8. Inside Rapid Fire Range that might go as low as T5.

It doesn't scale to high strength low volume fire, but the idea was to improve the humble Gauss Flayer, so...

Interesting idea. I'd not add a lower bound, though-well, outside not dropping below Toughness 1 to avoid breaking the game.

At max squad size, you have 40 shots. If all 40 hit, you've reduced a T8 model to T4 (for that shooting) which is great! But also only happens .000000000000000008% (yes, PERCENT! that's not a typo) of the time. (Admittedly, you do get into reasonable numbers, as in seven percent of a percent chance with MWBD, but still really unlikely).

More realistically, you could probably get a T7 vehicle down to T4 (requiring 30/40 shots to hit) which actually has a just over 17% chance of happening (94% with MWBD! I was surprised too) or a T6 model down to T3.

I added the lower bound so they don't go crazy against infantry. Dropping GEQ (even MEQ or Bikers) to where they're wounded on a 2+ seems a bit much and steps on Telsa's toes.

EDIT: I completely forgot that I made it so a unit needs a starting toughness above 6 before the rules kicks in so you're correct, the lower bound is currently unnecessary.

Honestly, I'd nix the requirement for starting Toughness of 6 or better. It just feels unneeded.

I don't think that, even with it working on any models, it'd be OP. The ABSOLUTE BEST is T8->T4 (triple the wounding power) or T5/6->T2 (5+ to 2+ wound roll) but considering all the other bits...

It'd be fine-or at least close enough to be worth testing.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Honestly, I'd nix the requirement for starting Toughness of 6 or better. It just feels unneeded.

I don't think that, even with it working on any models, it'd be OP. The ABSOLUTE BEST is T8->T4 (triple the wounding power) or T5/6->T2 (5+ to 2+ wound roll) but considering all the other bits...

It'd be fine-or at least close enough to be worth testing.

Thematically I pictured them all 'crossing the streams' against a single larger target to take it down and I wanted to stick to adding anti-tank power without upping the ability to kill infantry. Given how weak people say 'Crons are they could probably get the bonus against all targets and be fine but I like to avoid the Proposed Rules trend of making overpowered rules.

You could do what the Scrouge do in DZC with their plasma rifles and just have the hits combine into a single, more powerful hit.

I think a lot of the mechanics are getting over-complicated.

I'm 100% against the "if a vehicle" or "if a monster" rules. The whole point is that Gauss used to wound EVERYTHING on a wound roll of a six. This was at a time when no other army could do that.

As far as increasing damage, I don't think it would scale well and anything requiring another dice roll is out. The last thing we need is more unreliable damage/shooting/dice rolls.

In my opinion, the mechanic needs to be simple, quick, and reliable. Rolling a to wound roll of a 6 does "______".

The only two viable solutions I've seen are increasing the ap value and adding a mortal wound. Increasing the armor penetration definitely loses value on the more powerful weapons we have. However, I don't think that would necessarily matter because they're strong enough that they already have enough bite to do whatever they need to do.

I play tested a little with the mortal wounds mechanic and it seems to work just fine, without being over-bearing. It wouldn't be difficult to just modify the rule to state "On a wound roll of a 6 this weapon generates an additional wound that ignores armor saves. Invulnerable saves may still be rolled as normal."

I also think this would add some much needed synergy as MWBD would benefit Tesla, but TLW would benefit Gauss.

punisher357 wrote:
I think a lot of the mechanics are getting over-complicated.

I'm 100% against the "if a vehicle" or "if a monster" rules. The whole point is that Gauss used to wound EVERYTHING on a wound roll of a six. This was at a time when no other army could do that.

As far as increasing damage, I don't think it would scale well and anything requiring another dice roll is out. The last thing we need is more unreliable damage/shooting/dice rolls.

In my opinion, the mechanic needs to be simple, quick, and reliable. Rolling a to wound roll of a 6 does "______".

The only two viable solutions I've seen are increasing the ap value and adding a mortal wound. Increasing the armor penetration definitely loses value on the more powerful weapons we have. However, I don't think that would necessarily matter because they're strong enough that they already have enough bite to do whatever they need to do.

I play tested a little with the mortal wounds mechanic and it seems to work just fine, without being over-bearing. It wouldn't be difficult to just modify the rule to state "On a wound roll of a 6 this weapon generates an additional wound that ignores armor saves. Invulnerable saves may still be rolled as normal."

I also think this would add some much needed synergy as MWBD would benefit Tesla, but TLW would benefit Gauss.

What do you feel is too complex about my suggestion that every 10 hits with gauss weapons reduce the targets toughness by 1? I only ask because we've had toughness lowering effects in the game before and while counting hits is already something most players do as they go to roll to wound. If you can think of a cleaner way to do this sort of effect please let me know.

 Canadian 5th wrote:


What do you feel is too complex about my suggestion that every 10 hits with gauss weapons reduce the targets toughness by 1? I only ask because we've had toughness lowering effects in the game before and while counting hits is already something most players do as they go to roll to wound. If you can think of a cleaner way to do this sort of effect please let me know.

For one, keeping tally of number of hits is an entirely new type of bookkeeping. Also, it's another layer of keeping track for a unit with both non-gauss and gauss weapons.

The only other similar mechanics in the game would be marker lights, but its distinctively clear cut and straight forward.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

punisher357 wrote:
I think a lot of the mechanics are getting over-complicated.

I'm 100% against the "if a vehicle" or "if a monster" rules. The whole point is that Gauss used to wound EVERYTHING on a wound roll of a six. This was at a time when no other army could do that.

As far as increasing damage, I don't think it would scale well and anything requiring another dice roll is out. The last thing we need is more unreliable damage/shooting/dice rolls.

In my opinion, the mechanic needs to be simple, quick, and reliable. Rolling a to wound roll of a 6 does "______".

The only two viable solutions I've seen are increasing the ap value and adding a mortal wound. Increasing the armor penetration definitely loses value on the more powerful weapons we have. However, I don't think that would necessarily matter because they're strong enough that they already have enough bite to do whatever they need to do.

I play tested a little with the mortal wounds mechanic and it seems to work just fine, without being over-bearing. It wouldn't be difficult to just modify the rule to state "On a wound roll of a 6 this weapon generates an additional wound that ignores armor saves. Invulnerable saves may still be rolled as normal."

I also think this would add some much needed synergy as MWBD would benefit Tesla, but TLW would benefit Gauss.

I think most viable MW route is to replace the normal damage with MW instead of generating addtional MW.

'On a 6+ to wound, this weapon deals 1 mortal wounds instead of it's normal damage'

 skchsan wrote:
For one, keeping tally of number of hits is an entirely new type of bookkeeping. Also, it's another layer of keeping track for a unit with both non-gauss and gauss weapons.

The only other similar mechanics in the game would be marker lights, but its distinctively clear cut and straight forward.

You're already likely to roll your weapons separately (or use different colored dice) so that's not an issue. From there once you record your number of hits the math is easy and rolling your wounds is hardly different than normal.

I bet if you tried this in a game you'd probably get used to it after a shooting phase or two.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 skchsan wrote:
For one, keeping tally of number of hits is an entirely new type of bookkeeping. Also, it's another layer of keeping track for a unit with both non-gauss and gauss weapons.

The only other similar mechanics in the game would be marker lights, but its distinctively clear cut and straight forward.

You're already likely to roll your weapons separately (or use different colored dice) so that's not an issue. From there once you record your number of hits the math is easy and rolling your wounds is hardly different than normal.

I bet if you tried this in a game you'd probably get used to it after a shooting phase or two.

No one is arguing its difficult to keep track. It's simply additonal layer instead of working within given system. For that reason its not 'clean' method.

I would like to suggest 2 different (even tough one was kinda mentioned) proposals

The focus of the rules is to enhance the gauss weapons in their suggested field role. Tesla = GEQ/Hordes, Gauss = MEQ/TEQ and anti-vehicle

The first rule would be something like that:
Gauss-Weapon: If the targets Toughness is greater then the weapons S add +1 to the wound roll.
This would not increase the amount of rolls nedded or splitt the weapon poll like exploding 6s or any of the other yet proposed rules. Instead it would increase the damage significantly against T8+ targest (an increase of 100% damage output! (still a bad idea to shoot them though))
It would also only improve the weapons against strong targets without buffing the weapon against hordes like MW would do. (While not increasing the damage of the already good anti tank weapons to greatly)

the second rule and probably to complicated one would be this:
Gauss-Weapon: If a unit sufferd a wound from a weapon with this rule, the toughness is permenantly decreased by 1. This can only occur once per phase.
I am not sure if there are any meele gauss weapons anyway (had to think about the old scarab rule), just tought it would prohibit spamming.
That way the "fluffy" would be satisfied by the fact that the defencing layers of the target would slowly be eradicated.
Necrons IMHO are a force that play the attrition game the best. With this rule they could weaken tanks and monster over time without hurting bursting trough a target to fast (so no alpha strike non-sense)
It also opens up some more strategic thinking. You might want to consider when to use your anti big thing weapon. At the start of the shooting phase to increase the potentail damage output of your weaker weapons or open up with those weak weapons to hopefully land one lucky wound which would boost the strong weapons further.

I might oversee some crucial things in those rules (you are not supossed to use both if someone got that wrong. Either the 1 or the 2 as a solution!) but I believe they could give the gauss weapons some mechanicl improvment while also lighten up (or grimdark up) my fluff loving heart

I actually really like that, if the toughness of the target is equal to or higher than the strength of the gauss, add +1 to wound rolls.

That's functionally just a slightly superior poison. I'm not a fan of mosifiers to dice rolls when stats have smaller increments. +1 strength is less useful than +1 to wound.

There are a lot of options you can pursue that could produce good effects.

6+ to wound inflicts 2 wounds on models with the vehicle or monster keyword.

Weapon is double strength against targets within half range - ie flayers are strength 8 at 12". Again against vehicle/monster keyword

6s to hit inflict two hits. Roll to damage.

I’d give gauss weapons a special rule that wound rolls of 5 or 6 always pass. It won’t do anything against infantry, but it doubles the effectiveness against T8 or higher without making the weapons super tank killers. Also it doesn’t add any messy counting up, re-rolls or new steps in the shooting sequence.

Aash wrote:
I’d give gauss weapons a special rule that wound rolls of 5 or 6 always pass. It won’t do anything against infantry, but it doubles the effectiveness against T8 or higher without making the weapons super tank killers. Also it doesn’t add any messy counting up, re-rolls or new steps in the shooting sequence.

That would pretty much change nothing at all. I tought about that first, too. "Back in the days we always wounded on 6+, why not just make it a 5+ nowadays?"
Simply put becouse it wouldn´t change the feeling of the weapon.
Quick math says it would change the damage output of warriors from 5,5 Damage against a Knight (T8, 3+/4+ vs flayers) to 11 damage. This would still not get it into its second braket.
If they are in RF range. Which would mean they get stomped by the knight next round

Zuwi wrote:

Aash wrote:
I’d give gauss weapons a special rule that wound rolls of 5 or 6 always pass. It won’t do anything against infantry, but it doubles the effectiveness against T8 or higher without making the weapons super tank killers. Also it doesn’t add any messy counting up, re-rolls or new steps in the shooting sequence.

That would pretty much change nothing at all. I tought about that first, too. "Back in the days we always wounded on 6+, why not just make it a 5+ nowadays?"
Simply put becouse it wouldn´t change the feeling of the weapon.
Quick math says it would change the damage output of warriors from 5,5 Damage against a Knight (T8, 3+/4+ vs flayers) to 11 damage. This would still not get it into its second braket.
If they are in RF range. Which would mean they get stomped by the knight next round

Its still an extra 5.5 points of damage.
If you measure everything against knights then of course its going to look weak, as knights are pretty op.

Zuwi wrote:

Aash wrote:
I’d give gauss weapons a special rule that wound rolls of 5 or 6 always pass. It won’t do anything against infantry, but it doubles the effectiveness against T8 or higher without making the weapons super tank killers. Also it doesn’t add any messy counting up, re-rolls or new steps in the shooting sequence.

That would pretty much change nothing at all. I tought about that first, too. "Back in the days we always wounded on 6+, why not just make it a 5+ nowadays?"
Simply put becouse it wouldn´t change the feeling of the weapon.
Quick math says it would change the damage output of warriors from 5,5 Damage against a Knight (T8, 3+/4+ vs flayers) to 11 damage. This would still not get it into its second braket.
If they are in RF range. Which would mean they get stomped by the knight next round

It won’t kill a knight in one round, or even drop it to the next bracket, but then I really don’t think it should. It does double the damage output though which is not insignificant, and might be enough to finish it off when combined with other dedicated anti-armour weapons, which is, I think, exactly how it should be. And it will also give significant anti tank firepower against many vehicles, again, exactly as I think it should.

Aash wrote:
I’d give gauss weapons a special rule that wound rolls of 5 or 6 always pass. It won’t do anything against infantry, but it doubles the effectiveness against T8 or higher without making the weapons super tank killers. Also it doesn’t add any messy counting up, re-rolls or new steps in the shooting sequence.

I think I prefer +1 damage or +1 to-wound versus vehicles (and probably monsters too). Wounding on 5's regardless of toughness only matters for strength 4 gauss, and only against T8 or higher targets. Oldschool gauss was useful against all vehicles with an AV of 11 or greater (so anything as tough as a rhino). +1 damage or +1 to-wound against vehicles gives gauss weapons a little more bite, but probably not enough to be broken, and it's a benefit that helps against all vehicular targets; not just russes and knights.

Wyldhunt wrote:

Aash wrote:
I’d give gauss weapons a special rule that wound rolls of 5 or 6 always pass. It won’t do anything against infantry, but it doubles the effectiveness against T8 or higher without making the weapons super tank killers. Also it doesn’t add any messy counting up, re-rolls or new steps in the shooting sequence.

I think I prefer +1 damage or +1 to-wound versus vehicles (and probably monsters too). Wounding on 5's regardless of toughness only matters for strength 4 gauss, and only against T8 or higher targets. Oldschool gauss was useful against all vehicles with an AV of 11 or greater (so anything as tough as a rhino). +1 damage or +1 to-wound against vehicles gives gauss weapons a little more bite, but probably not enough to be broken, and it's a benefit that helps against all vehicular targets; not just russes and knights.

That’s true, this would give a similar effect with a better utility without being over powered I think. My only reservation is I dislike using modifiers if there’s another option for 2 reasons: modifiers stacking can really get out of hand and it seems GW often overlook these interactions. Secondly, with the way modifiers interact with various abilities in the game seems messy to me (plasma, re-roll fails etc) so if there’s away you achieve the desired outcome without them I’d rather go that route.

Maybe an option would be for the Gauss keyword to have the ability: “wound rolls of a x or more are always successful” and for S4 weapons x=5. Higher strength Gauss weapons x could be 4 or even more if appropriate.

Aash wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

Aash wrote:
I’d give gauss weapons a special rule that wound rolls of 5 or 6 always pass. It won’t do anything against infantry, but it doubles the effectiveness against T8 or higher without making the weapons super tank killers. Also it doesn’t add any messy counting up, re-rolls or new steps in the shooting sequence.

I think I prefer +1 damage or +1 to-wound versus vehicles (and probably monsters too). Wounding on 5's regardless of toughness only matters for strength 4 gauss, and only against T8 or higher targets. Oldschool gauss was useful against all vehicles with an AV of 11 or greater (so anything as tough as a rhino). +1 damage or +1 to-wound against vehicles gives gauss weapons a little more bite, but probably not enough to be broken, and it's a benefit that helps against all vehicular targets; not just russes and knights.

That’s true, this would give a similar effect with a better utility without being over powered I think. My only reservation is I dislike using modifiers if there’s another option for 2 reasons: modifiers stacking can really get out of hand and it seems GW often overlook these interactions. Secondly, with the way modifiers interact with various abilities in the game seems messy to me (plasma, re-roll fails etc) so if there’s away you achieve the desired outcome without them I’d rather go that route.

Maybe an option would be for the Gauss keyword to have the ability: “wound rolls of a x or more are always successful” and for S4 weapons x=5. Higher strength Gauss weapons x could be 4 or even more if appropriate.

I think "wound rolls of x or more are always successful" is a good option. It's essentially mortal wounds that don't spill over and it would help with the army's kill power, but not be overbearing. I'm planning on play testing it whenever I can get a game in.

Gauss weapons never need more than a 5 to wound.

No save taken vs gauss weapons can be greater than 4+, including fixed saves. (Yeah, superior technology meatbags!)

This would fit in with the scarab special rules, even tho theirs is limited to melee attacks. It also deals with the Gauss weapon issue of being weak vs tough targets and targets with high armor saves. It also puts those obnoxious custodes in their place.It doesn't make them more effective against low T and save targets as they don't really need a boost there.

It is less effective on the high end gauss weapons which is pretty much ok as they're generally effective enough as is. It would only really reduce ++ saves to 4+ in their case. To those units that already have a ++ save of higher than 4++, .

Problems with this fix.

Lots of special/unique saves like makari's 2++ luck save might need to be exempted. Perhaps if a "one to an army" character model has a higher than 4++ save it might be exempted.

(I'm trying to acknowledge potential problems with rules I propose so as to make it clear I recognize them, the question is are the rules worth the problems.)

 Matt Swain wrote:
Gauss weapons never need more than a 5 to wound.

No save taken vs gauss weapons can be greater than 4+, including fixed saves. (Yeah, superior technology meatbags!)

This would fit in with the scarab special rules, even tho theirs is limited to melee attacks. It also deals with the Gauss weapon issue of being weak vs tough targets and targets with high armor saves. It also puts those obnoxious custodes in their place.It doesn't make them more effective against low T and save targets as they don't really need a boost there.

It is less effective on the high end gauss weapons which is pretty much ok as they're generally effective enough as is. It would only really reduce ++ saves to 4+ in their case. To those units that already have a ++ save of higher than 4++, .

Problems with this fix.

Lots of special/unique saves like makari's 2++ luck save might need to be exempted. Perhaps if a "one to an army" character model has a higher than 4++ save it might be exempted.

(I'm trying to acknowledge potential problems with rules I propose so as to make it clear I recognize them, the question is are the rules worth the problems.)

Too strong, in my opinion. This makes it so that every shot is more effective and would be over-powering due to the volume of Gauss fire necrons can produce.

The shots would only be more effective on anything that had T8 or higher and a save higher than 4+ after the normal gauss weapon AP.

Against Geq and Meq it would do nothing. Against a lot of vehicles it would do nothing.

Not allowing saves over a 4+ is too much. Most units with a 2+ save are overpaying for it before adding in this rule. It also guts the cover system even more. Units that pay to get bonuses to their cover save suddenly don’t get that option. Under the current rules cover represents both cover and concealment. Even if you the fanboyism to 11 and say that a basic infantry weapon can pierce any cover, that power should not help them hit a unit that is using the terrain for concealment. It’s also invalidates units that can ignore AP-1 like steel legion vehicles and units that add to their save with D1 weapons like rubrics.

What if instead guass makes the target reroll any save roll that is a natural 6?

I'd say in that case, we're inflating the number of dice needed when rerolling.

I'd go back to an idea on page 1.

Wound rolls of 6s do 2 damage instead of 1.

It’s really not that bad. Death to the false emperor (when I remember it) takes maybe 30 seconds extra in close combat. Plus I always thought it was odd that the Deathwatch phase blade could make targets reroll their invul save but the necron codex didn’t give them access to the same. D2 on a wound roll of 6 wouldn’t be bad either. That or +1 to wound on in modified hot rolls of 6.

 evil_kiwi_60 wrote:
It’s really not that bad. Death to the false emperor (when I remember it) takes maybe 30 seconds extra in close combat. Plus I always thought it was odd that the Deathwatch phase blade could make targets reroll their invul save but the necron codex didn’t give them access to the same. D2 on a wound roll of 6 wouldn’t be bad either. That or +1 to wound on in modified hot rolls of 6.

Lol, we could make a whole different thread about adding the phase blade ability to hyperphase swords, voidscythes, warscythes and voidscythes.

+1 to wound on 6s isn't bad. Would it be harder to remember? You'd have to roll your 6s to hit separately from the rest of the wound rolls.

 iGuy91 wrote:

Lol, we could make a whole different thread about adding the phase blade ability to hyperphase swords, voidscythes, warscythes and voidscythes.

+1 to wound on 6s isn't bad. Would it be harder to remember? You'd have to roll your 6s to hit separately from the rest of the wound rolls.

We should make that the next order of business haha. But at a minimum those characters with scythes should be able to. It would make up for the low attacks.

There are multiple abilities that trigger on 6’s including Dakka Dakka Dakka, Death to the False Emperor, Storm of Fire, And whatever makes the eldar weapons get AP-3. Plus you’d still have to roll the D2 saves separately anyways.

 evil_kiwi_60 wrote:
Not allowing saves over a 4+ is too much. Most units with a 2+ save are overpaying for it before adding in this rule. It also guts the cover system even more. Units that pay to get bonuses to their cover save suddenly don’t get that option. Under the current rules cover represents both cover and concealment. Even if you the fanboyism to 11 and say that a basic infantry weapon can pierce any cover, that power should not help them hit a unit that is using the terrain for concealment. It’s also invalidates units that can ignore AP-1 like steel legion vehicles and units that add to their save with D1 weapons like rubrics.

What if instead guass makes the target reroll any save roll that is a natural 6?

Ok, good point on cover saves. Maybe allow them? I'm cool with that. Of course necrons have the solar pulse strategem and tomb blades can take cover negating options.

 evil_kiwi_60 wrote:

 iGuy91 wrote:

Lol, we could make a whole different thread about adding the phase blade ability to hyperphase swords, voidscythes, warscythes and voidscythes.

+1 to wound on 6s isn't bad. Would it be harder to remember? You'd have to roll your 6s to hit separately from the rest of the wound rolls.

We should make that the next order of business haha. But at a minimum those characters with scythes should be able to. It would make up for the low attacks.

There are multiple abilities that trigger on 6’s including Dakka Dakka Dakka, Death to the False Emperor, Storm of Fire, And whatever makes the eldar weapons get AP-3. Plus you’d still have to roll the D2 saves separately anyways.

Eh. There are some differences there though. DttFE and DDD! both add dice to the to-hit pool. I mean, technically you end up with a second to-hit pool whose successes get mixed in with the first pool's, but you don't have to track and resolve them separately. The eldar AP-3 rule triggers on to-wound rolls rather than to-hit rolls. So none of those abilities creating multiple to-wound pools that need to be resolved separately. Well, I guess the eldar one forces you to roll two save pools, but that's the immediate next step; you don't have to keep track of which dice were 6s in the to-hit step when resolving FNPs and such.

I still kind of like +1D on to-wound rolls of 6. Makes gauss slightly scarier against multi-wound targets. Easy to track/resolve. Pretty unique (maybe radcarbines do something similar?) Makes the army less dependent on destroyers/arks/scythes for anti-tank.

It would basically just mean pulling the sixes out and rolling them separately for the wound rolls. You’d have to separate the dice for the save rolls anyways if you had a pool of 1 and 2 damage dice. of fire adds 1 AP for wound rolls of a six too. The bonus to wounding also effects any target which seems to be what a lot of people want for guass. I’m all for the the +1D as well. I do think that any ability should trigger only on a natural six. I feel like most abilities were intended that way but GW forgot about all the ways people could modify dice rolls.

I dont know if everyone is working towards the same goal. I think everyone wants Gaus to be better against heavy vehicles and monsters, so T7/8 , Save 3+/2+ , Wounds>10 There seems to be some discord about heavy infantry like TEQ. Most people probably want Gaus weapons to stay the same against MEQ and GEQ and want invulnerable saves to continue working. The one stat that distinguishes monsters and vehicles from any other units is their high toughness so every bonus has to scale with the to wound roll. There are four possible changes that I think are reasonable.
1) Wound rolls of 6 do +1 damage: If you were to wound only on 6+ your damage output is doubled. If you wound only on 5+ your damage output is increased 50%, on 4+ its 33% and 3+ 25%. So the effect is stronger against vehicles than against TEQ. Another group of units that would be penalized are Primaris and characters with multiple wounds like Company Commanders. The damage increase is the small against them but this is probably a class of units nobody wants to be affected. Normal GEQ and MEQ would be completely unaffected as they only have one wound.

2) Wound rolls 6 cause an additional -2 ap. This bonus not only scales with toughness but also with the armour save of the target. This bonus is generally smaller than the first one because the armour is already reduced by the Gauss weapons. Problems with this bonus could be that it doesnt affect vehicles if they have a bad armour save. Also, it affects MEQ just as much as it affects TEQ which could be problematic because of the commonness of MEQ units. By affecting such a wide range of units this bonus is only slightly stronger against vehicles than against other units so its not very useful.

3) Hit rolls of 6 automatically pass the to wound roll. The damage increase of this bonus is +125% at 6+ to wound; +50% at 5; 25% at 4+; +12,5% at 3+; +5% at 2+. It affects every unit type the same so it isnt focussed enough and is more like a general buff to Gaus weapons.

4) Gaus weapons always wound on 4+. This would increase the damage of 6+ wounds by 200% and 5+ by +50%. By affecting only targets with higher toughness this bonus only works against the desired targets of vehicles and monsters. MEQ, GEQ and TEQ are completely unaffected by this because they are already wounded on at least 4+. The falloff of this bonus is very steep so it actually changes the target profile of Gaus weapons towards higher toughness. The bonus for 6+ to wound seems very high but it only affects Gaus Flayers against toughness 8 so it doesnt occur very often. Its also very fluffy and shows that it really doesnt matter what you are shooting at. The problem with this bonus is that it blurs the line between the different strengths of Gaus weapons. It might not sound very exiting but mathematically this bonus is the most effective.

Why not give them the ability to roll to wound again if you successfully wound, all successes requiring saves as normal.

Basically a burrowing effect

Why not give them the ability to roll to wound again if you successfully wound, all successes requiring saves as normal.

This would actually make them much better against low toughness hordes and wouldnt really help against stronger units.
A better way would be to reroll failed wounds. This helps the most against high toughness enemys. Despite being best against high toughness rerolling wounds is still a very general buff so I dont think that it helps to fix Gaus.

Currywurst wrote:

Why not give them the ability to roll to wound again if you successfully wound, all successes requiring saves as normal.

This would actually make them much better against low toughness hordes and wouldnt really help against stronger units.
A better way would be to reroll failed wounds. This helps the most against high toughness enemys. Despite being best against high toughness rerolling wounds is still a very general buff so I dont think that it helps to fix Gaus.

It would be more all or nothing, but it would reflect that if their weapons wine they model doing damage, rather than making their weapons more likely to wound.

My proposal above means that if a gauss cannon does wound it can roll to wound again, potentially doubling it's damage.

I think one of the issues with any Gauss rule is that there are so many different Gauss weapons.

You've got the basic rifle (Rapid Fire 1 S4 AP-1 D1)
You've got the Blaster (Rapid Fire 1 S5 AP-2 D1)
You've got the Cannon (Heavy 3 S6 AP-3 Dd3)
You've got the Heavy Cannon (Heavy 1 S9 AP-4 Dd3)

It's really hard to make a rule that isn't pointless on at least two of those.

In terms of the rules discussed, I did like the 'Gauss weapons never need worse than a 4+ to wound', but at the same time it also seems to be yet another slap in the face to Dark Eldar. "Hey, Dark Eldar, now Necrons have Poisoned Weapons, too. Except that theirs are better in every way because they work on vehicles and aren't restricted to wounding low-toughness models on 4s.'

 vipoid wrote:
I think one of the issues with any Gauss rule is that there are so many different Gauss weapons.

You've got the basic rifle (Rapid Fire 1 S4 AP-1 D1)
You've got the Blaster (Rapid Fire 1 S5 AP-2 D1)
You've got the Cannon (Heavy 3 S6 AP-3 Dd3)
You've got the Heavy Cannon (Heavy 1 S9 AP-4 Dd3)

It's really hard to make a rule that isn't pointless on at least two of those.

In terms of the rules discussed, I did like the 'Gauss weapons never need worse than a 4+ to wound', but at the same time it also seems to be yet another slap in the face to Dark Eldar. "Hey, Dark Eldar, now Necrons have Poisoned Weapons, too. Except that theirs are better in every way because they work on vehicles and aren't restricted to wounding low-toughness models on 4s.'

Maybe make them the mechanical counterpoint to poison- always wounds on a 4+ but only applies against targets with the vehicle (Vehicle and/or battle suit and/or drone etc?) key word?

Gauss weapons hits of 6 could gain +2S and AP. That would make them more effective. This might need to be limited to natural 6's as MWBD and a 20 blob of warriors doing this on a 5+ is a little too powerful. OTOH it would kick in even if there was a -1 or more to hit.

I'd say let it work in OW as A. Gauss explodes on 6's in OW and B. it makes rushing necron warriors with your close combat monsters a little riskier.

Granting Gaus weapons +2 strength and ap on a 6+hit would be a very general buff and has many other problems.
Gaus Flayers only go from S4 to S6 so it doesnt have any effect against vehicles. On the other hand they would become very potent against Meq. Gaus Cannons also get disproportionately better against infantry.

Aash wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
I think one of the issues with any Gauss rule is that there are so many different Gauss weapons.

You've got the basic rifle (Rapid Fire 1 S4 AP-1 D1)
You've got the Blaster (Rapid Fire 1 S5 AP-2 D1)
You've got the Cannon (Heavy 3 S6 AP-3 Dd3)
You've got the Heavy Cannon (Heavy 1 S9 AP-4 Dd3)

It's really hard to make a rule that isn't pointless on at least two of those.

In terms of the rules discussed, I did like the 'Gauss weapons never need worse than a 4+ to wound', but at the same time it also seems to be yet another slap in the face to Dark Eldar. "Hey, Dark Eldar, now Necrons have Poisoned Weapons, too. Except that theirs are better in every way because they work on vehicles and aren't restricted to wounding low-toughness models on 4s.'

Maybe make them the mechanical counterpoint to poison- always wounds on a 4+ but only applies against targets with the vehicle (Vehicle and/or battle suit and/or drone etc?) key word?

That's an interesting concept. It wouldn't really help out the heavy cannon, but that's an outlier than doesn't need help against vehicles. It helps higher strength gauss less than lower strength gauss, but I'm not sure that's a problem. I haven't run the numbers, but does it make gauss too lethal against vehicles? Is my 10 man warrior squad going to be killing a rhino in a single volley or anything?

20 shots of Gaus Flayers against T7 Save3+ will do 3.3 instead of 2.2 wounds. Even at strength 4 the to wound roll only goes from 5+ to 4+ so it doesnt change very much.
The only very noticable case is Gaus Flayers against T8 Save3+. With the new rules they also do 3,3 damage but under the old rules they would have only caused 1.1 wounds.

I think Gauss weapon should have a poisoned rule, but only for vehicles. Back in 7th ed, the gauss rule only had an effect on vehicles, so why not make a wounding rules that would only work on vehicles ? Plus, it would reflect the gauss rule from the past pretty well.

Something like wounding vehicles on 4+ or causing vehicles mortal on a wound role of 6 would be awesome.

In the first case, the vehicle can still make his save, while in the second case, each shot only have 1/6 chance to auto wound the vehicle. It would provide a reason to field huge blobs of necron warriors.

 Khornate25 wrote:
I think Gauss weapon should have a poisoned rule, but only for vehicles. Back in 7th ed, the gauss rule only had an effect on vehicles, so why not make a wounding rules that would only work on vehicles ? Plus, it would reflect the gauss rule from the past pretty well.

Something like wounding vehicles on 4+ or causing vehicles mortal on a wound role of 6 would be awesome.

In the first case, the vehicle can still make his save, while in the second case, each shot only have 1/6 chance to auto wound the vehicle. It would provide a reason to field huge blobs of necron warriors.

That was for only the 5th edition. At some point it regained the ability to always wound on a 6 too, though that was more limited to Flayers really using the ability overall. It's silly how Necrons have always struggled to kill Monstrous Creatures AND vehicles. Anyone saying they destroyed vehicles easily was literally wrong as even bad anti-tank like Lascannons would do more against the 100 and less point tanks.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Khornate25 wrote:
I think Gauss weapon should have a poisoned rule, but only for vehicles. Back in 7th ed, the gauss rule only had an effect on vehicles, so why not make a wounding rules that would only work on vehicles ? Plus, it would reflect the gauss rule from the past pretty well.

Something like wounding vehicles on 4+ or causing vehicles mortal on a wound role of 6 would be awesome.

In the first case, the vehicle can still make his save, while in the second case, each shot only have 1/6 chance to auto wound the vehicle. It would provide a reason to field huge blobs of necron warriors.

That was for only the 5th edition. At some point it regained the ability to always wound on a 6 too, though that was more limited to Flayers really using the ability overall. It's silly how Necrons have always struggled to kill Monstrous Creatures AND vehicles. Anyone saying they destroyed vehicles easily was literally wrong as even bad anti-tank like Lascannons would do more against the 100 and less point tanks.

Gauss was rather against vehicles in 6E and 7E as a result of the Gauss rule, it very much affected vehicles, when that basically meant 3 "wounds" and no armor saves across the board.

Looking at the 7E codex here, it's pretty much identical to the 5E codex, it states that an Armour Penetration roll of a 6 that does not cause a penetrating hit automatically causes a glancing hit, in addition to wounding anything on a 6 regardless of T.

It was just overshadowed by Tesla weapons against lighter vehicles because most of them were S7 and had a gazillion twin-linked shots.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Khornate25 wrote:
I think Gauss weapon should have a poisoned rule, but only for vehicles. Back in 7th ed, the gauss rule only had an effect on vehicles, so why not make a wounding rules that would only work on vehicles ? Plus, it would reflect the gauss rule from the past pretty well.

Something like wounding vehicles on 4+ or causing vehicles mortal on a wound role of 6 would be awesome.

In the first case, the vehicle can still make his save, while in the second case, each shot only have 1/6 chance to auto wound the vehicle. It would provide a reason to field huge blobs of necron warriors.

That was for only the 5th edition. At some point it regained the ability to always wound on a 6 too, though that was more limited to Flayers really using the ability overall. It's silly how Necrons have always struggled to kill Monstrous Creatures AND vehicles. Anyone saying they destroyed vehicles easily was literally wrong as even bad anti-tank like Lascannons would do more against the 100 and less point tanks.

Gauss was rather against vehicles in 6E and 7E as a result of the Gauss rule, it very much affected vehicles, when that basically meant 3 "wounds" and no armor saves across the board.

Looking at the 7E codex here, it's pretty much identical to the 5E codex, it states that an Armour Penetration roll of a 6 that does not cause a penetrating hit automatically causes a glancing hit, in addition to wounding anything on a 6 regardless of T.

It was just overshadowed by Tesla weapons against lighter vehicles because most of them were S7 and had a gazillion twin-linked shots.

Anyone making that claim never did the math for Gauss vs vehicles and you really just proved that. If your vehicle was like 150 points and had 3HP yeah it looked amazing. If your vehicle wasn't BAD though it was a different story.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Looking at the 7E codex here, it's pretty much identical to the 5E codex, it states that an Armour Penetration roll of a 6 that does not cause a penetrating hit automatically causes a glancing hit, in addition to wounding anything on a 6 regardless of T.

Ignoring the fact of more vehicles getting a save than they did back then and that 1 wound is rarely as worthwhile as shaking a vehicle. Imagine a unit of Warriors preventing a Leman Russ from shooting for a turn each time they shot until your anti-tank guns have time to deal with it. Now they cause a single stinky wound and it has 11 left so it was basically all for nothing with most Necron weapons being so random that overkill is a guarantee. Even back in 5th with the 3rd ed Codex where Necrons were trash AFAIK they were better at harassing vehicles with their gauss flayers than now.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Khornate25 wrote:
I think Gauss weapon should have a poisoned rule, but only for vehicles. Back in 7th ed, the gauss rule only had an effect on vehicles, so why not make a wounding rules that would only work on vehicles ? Plus, it would reflect the gauss rule from the past pretty well.

Something like wounding vehicles on 4+ or causing vehicles mortal on a wound role of 6 would be awesome.

In the first case, the vehicle can still make his save, while in the second case, each shot only have 1/6 chance to auto wound the vehicle. It would provide a reason to field huge blobs of necron warriors.

That was for only the 5th edition. At some point it regained the ability to always wound on a 6 too, though that was more limited to Flayers really using the ability overall. It's silly how Necrons have always struggled to kill Monstrous Creatures AND vehicles. Anyone saying they destroyed vehicles easily was literally wrong as even bad anti-tank like Lascannons would do more against the 100 and less point tanks.

Gauss was rather against vehicles in 6E and 7E as a result of the Gauss rule, it very much affected vehicles, when that basically meant 3 "wounds" and no armor saves across the board.

Looking at the 7E codex here, it's pretty much identical to the 5E codex, it states that an Armour Penetration roll of a 6 that does not cause a penetrating hit automatically causes a glancing hit, in addition to wounding anything on a 6 regardless of T.

It was just overshadowed by Tesla weapons against lighter vehicles because most of them were S7 and had a gazillion twin-linked shots.

Anyone making that claim never did the math for Gauss vs vehicles and you really just proved that. If your vehicle was like 150 points and had 3HP yeah it looked amazing. If your vehicle wasn't BAD though it was a different story.

I didn't say it was the straight best AT across the board, but it wasn't awful and allowed basic Troops Warriors to be about as, if not more, effective as any other Troop unit against vehicles, certainly relative to something like a typical Imperial troops unit like a Tac or Infantry squad unless they were at very close range with multiple Meltas (and certainly moreso than with a single Lascannon HW). You'd need to get something like a quad brace of stationary BS4 Lascannons to achieve broadly the same HP stripping potential against light/medium vehicles as a squad of 10 rapid-firing Warriors would (the LC's would do more against AV10, same against AV 11, worse against anything higher, including stuff like 55/65pt Chimeras), and while having the potential to Explode a tank or inflict other results through a Pen that was significantly more variable and HP stripping was by far the most effective vehicle kill option in that era (especially so if the vehicle actually was getting a save as volume of fire was more consistent than swingy single shot big AT guns, something that still plagues 8E actually ).

vict0988 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Looking at the 7E codex here, it's pretty much identical to the 5E codex, it states that an Armour Penetration roll of a 6 that does not cause a penetrating hit automatically causes a glancing hit, in addition to wounding anything on a 6 regardless of T.

Ignoring the fact of more vehicles getting a save than they did back then and that 1 wound is rarely as worthwhile as shaking a vehicle. Imagine a unit of Warriors preventing a Leman Russ from shooting for a turn each time they shot until your anti-tank guns have time to deal with it. Now they cause a single stinky wound and it has 11 left so it was basically all for nothing with most Necron weapons being so random that overkill is a guarantee. Even back in 5th with the 3rd ed Codex where Necrons were trash AFAIK they were better at harassing vehicles with their gauss flayers than now.

Yeah in this edition the same effect wouldn't be anywhere near as powerful for sure.