From what a lot of people have been saying one of the problems with the current edition is the increasing lethality making large vehicles that cost a lot of points basically useless as they get shot of the table in a single round of shooting. Aside from nerfing the firepower of various units, which I don't see happening, I had an idea of a way this could be mitigated; Armor facings.
It would seem that the new Horus Heresy is being basis on the old 7th edition rules including firing arc, templates and armor facings so I think it could be implemented into current 40k.
My very rough first draft:
Every vehicle model has four facings; front, left side, right side and rear.
For a model without a base each arc is determined as the area between two imaginary 1mm line coming out of each corner. (Not sure how to do it for models on a round or oval base, or with irregular shapes). Determine which facing a model firing at a vehicle is attacking; if the models base, or the hull if the model has no base, is at least 50% within one facing arc attacks are made against that armor facing.
When a vehicle makes a saving throw against an attack that saving throw is modified based on which facing was attacked:
Front - +2
Left and Right Side - +1
Rear - no modifier
Saving throws are them modified by AP as usual.
This means that a vehicle with a save of 3+ that is shot from the front with a -4 weapon would still have a save of 5+. This would also make positioning of models and units more important.
Armor facings pretend to give value in maneuvering but the truth is that you use weapons in the first place that generally don't care.
In theory this is a neat fix, but you're going to have to define how the vehicle is being targeted. It's also just silly that the manufacturers of the vehicles just forgot to put armor on the back.
If we want more importance to maneuvering, the Genestealer Cult rule of cross firing seems like something that should've been standard.
No, facings only add controversies. Not every vehicle is a perfect brick like a rhino, razorback, leman russ, or land raider. And even about those I've seen lots of controversies back in the old times.
EviscerationPlague wrote: Armor facings pretend to give value in maneuvering but the truth is that you use weapons in the first place that generally don't care.
In theory this is a neat fix, but you're going to have to define how the vehicle is being targeted. It's also just silly that the manufacturers of the vehicles just forgot to put armor on the back.
If we want more importance to maneuvering, the Genestealer Cult rule of cross firing seems like something that should've been standard.
Well the point of this is to make it that weapons' that don't care do care by making their -4 to AP effectively a -2 if you shoot it from the front.
Don't know if it wasn't clear enough in the rule but when a model attacks a vehicle which armor facing is targeted is based on the location of the attacking model and the lines that come out of the corners of the vehicle. The idea that the rear facing doesn't give a bonus comes from the idea that many vehicles in 7th had a weaker armor on in the rear. The Predator for example had the values of:
Front - 13
Sides - 11
Rear - 10
There were models like the Land Raiders that had the same armor on each side so I could see certain models getting special rules that allow them to get the bonus on all sides. Also take a look at the repulsor model. The front is covered in armor and is sloped. The sides are armored but are vertical and have doors. The rear is covered in parts like exhaust and a door making it the most vulnerable.
100% agree about the cross fire.
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Blackie wrote: No, facings only add controversies. Not every vehicle is a perfect brick like a rhino, razorback, leman russ, or land raider. And even about those I've seen lots of controversies back in the old times.
That is the biggest problem with this so it would require players with common sense. So unlikely.
I'm kind of a broken record whenever people pitch a return to armour facings, and others have already made a lot of my main points. So I'll try to keep this response brief:
* Not every vehicle is a break. You say it would require "common sense", but it's genuinely unclear on some vehicles. Where is the rear armor on a wave serpent? Does it start with the left/right-most "rear" parts beside the engines, or the 'rearmost" parts by the passenger hatch? Both seem reasonable, but that's a huge difference in the size of its weak points.
* It's weird that aliens with basically magical technology still leaves significant weak points on one or more quadrants of their vehicles.
* With weapon arcs not being a thing, armor facing is also less useful. You can turn your butt whatever direction you have to to almost never let the enemy shoot your rear unless you're surrounded.
* In past editions most(?) vehicles had the same front and side armor values. So in many (most?) cases, the only side that really mattered was the rear.
* With that last bullet point in mind, if you really want to include armor facings in some capacity, just represent the "rear" by placing a straight line against the rearmost part of the vehicle. Any model at least partially on the opposite side of that line from the vehicle is in its rear arc and gets whatever benefits come with that. This also saves the extra fiddlyness of figuring out how many models are in one arc versus another.
Having armour facings is absolutely realistic. It's not about being incompetent and leaving weakspots - it's about prioritising armour in quadrants most likely to be hit by enemy fire, you've only got so much weight to work with.
I do agree with the last point though - the only really practical armour facing for 40k is drawing a single line dividing the vehicle into two halves and having front/rear only.
EviscerationPlague wrote: Armor facings pretend to give value in maneuvering but the truth is that you use weapons in the first place that generally don't care.
In theory this is a neat fix, but you're going to have to define how the vehicle is being targeted. It's also just silly that the manufacturers of the vehicles just forgot to put armor on the back.
If we want more importance to maneuvering, the Genestealer Cult rule of cross firing seems like something that should've been standard.
Well the point of this is to make it that weapons' that don't care do care by making their -4 to AP effectively a -2 if you shoot it from the front.
Don't know if it wasn't clear enough in the rule but when a model attacks a vehicle which armor facing is targeted is based on the location of the attacking model and the lines that come out of the corners of the vehicle. The idea that the rear facing doesn't give a bonus comes from the idea that many vehicles in 7th had a weaker armor on in the rear. The Predator for example had the values of:
Front - 13
Sides - 11
Rear - 10
There were models like the Land Raiders that had the same armor on each side so I could see certain models getting special rules that allow them to get the bonus on all sides. Also take a look at the repulsor model. The front is covered in armor and is sloped. The sides are armored but are vertical and have doors. The rear is covered in parts like exhaust and a door making it the most vulnerable.
100% agree about the cross fire.
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Blackie wrote: No, facings only add controversies. Not every vehicle is a perfect brick like a rhino, razorback, leman russ, or land raider. And even about those I've seen lots of controversies back in the old times.
That is the biggest problem with this so it would require players with common sense. So unlikely.
And some of the AP-4 doesn't get use anyway because an Invul will exist in some capacity. So sure you're killing the Predator a little easier, but the Predator wasn't a hard target in the first place.
I agree that it'd be nice to see facings come back, the only practical way I can see it working on unusual vehicles is for them to have to have bespoke bases which have the quadrants marked out on the rim.
kirotheavenger wrote: the only really practical armour facing for 40k is drawing a single line dividing the vehicle into two halves and having front/rear only.
Ambiguity has been stripped out of later editions of 40k. Facings was one of them.
I likes facings, but if you are bringing that back, you're very close to having fire arcs, too.
Wyldhunt wrote: ...* Not every vehicle is a break. You say it would require "common sense", but it's genuinely unclear on some vehicles. Where is the rear armor on a wave serpent? Does it start with the left/right-most "rear" parts beside the engines, or the 'rearmost" parts by the passenger hatch? Both seem reasonable, but that's a huge difference in the size of its weak points...
In practice if you're going to do facings hard definitions like "arcs are always 90 degrees, lines drawn out from the outer corners of the vehicle's bounding box" or just doing Flames of War facings (180 degrees front, 180 degrees rear) are very necessary, yeah. The whole corner-to-corner thing GW did in the old days was funny but it made the front arc on basically everything too narrow.
Wyldhunt wrote: ...* Not every vehicle is a break. You say it would require "common sense", but it's genuinely unclear on some vehicles. Where is the rear armor on a wave serpent? Does it start with the left/right-most "rear" parts beside the engines, or the 'rearmost" parts by the passenger hatch? Both seem reasonable, but that's a huge difference in the size of its weak points...
In practice if you're going to do facings hard definitions like "arcs are always 90 degrees, lines drawn out from the outer corners of the vehicle's bounding box" or just doing Flames of War facings (180 degrees front, 180 degrees rear) are very necessary, yeah. The whole corner-to-corner thing GW did in the old days was funny but it made the front arc on basically everything too narrow.
Fair, although wouldn't that mean you'd have to identify the center of a vehicle to figure out where those 90* arcs are? Easier than figuring out where the side arcs are, but still runs into some ambiguities. Think I'd still prefer to just identify the rear arc. with a straight line.
EviscerationPlague wrote: It's also just silly that the manufacturers of the vehicles just forgot to put armor on the back.
Real life would kinda show that it is indeed the case.
The M4A3E2 Sherman's hull has 101mm on the front, 76mm on the side, and 38mm on the rear. The Turret is 177/152/152mm. The front is also angled at 47 degrees further increasing its effectiveness.
You can only put so much weight on a vehicle, better to concentrate the armor where it is most useful.
The main issue with armour facings is that stuff in this game isn't always box shaped, so there's arguments abound about what is and isn't the side/rear of some units.
I would love for armour facings and firing arcs to come back as it brings a cool tactical element back to vehicles, but it slows the game down and leads to arguments whenever anyone uses a unit that isn't a box with wheels.
Armor Faces used to cause a bit of problems back in 5th were I played if your at those "edge" angles between facings, however augmenting the save sounds like a possible fix. What if Vehicles got a +1 (Or +2, but that might be overkill) to armor saves vs weapons with a lower Strength then their Toughness, keep anti-tanks useful in dodging the bonus but makes the idea of "small arms" fire have less chance of doing damage since a 1 to save always fails anyway.
I would also add that it doesn't make sense to keep armor facings as a vehicle only thing.
Monsters that work as tanks also should have armor facings, hell arguably some infantry should also have facings, like those that are equipped with combat/storm shields. And on the other hand light vehicles like Dark Eldar skimmers and aircraft shouldn't have armor facings (as they barely have armor anyway).
It's easy to have an unarguable measurement for; can you draw a line of fire from one unit able to shoot to another unit able to shoot that passes through the model, and hence give you a benefit. It worked in Epic Armageddon and it's a nice simple rule that makes outflanking units, fast shooty things like land speeders and so on very effective and generally rewards aggressive manouvre with shooty things.
I like the fact that genestealer cults brought the rule in but I don't get why it's not a standard rule....
Tyran wrote: While it sounds good in theory, crossfire is an offensive rule and making it an universal rule will increase even more the game's lethality.
Lethality wouldn't be an issue if stacking modifiers for negatives to hit came back.
Tyran wrote: While it sounds good in theory, crossfire is an offensive rule and making it an universal rule will increase even more the game's lethality.
Lethality wouldn't be an issue if stacking modifiers for negatives to hit came back.
...Or if you reversed some of the last fifteen years of constant stat creep.
Tyran wrote: While it sounds good in theory, crossfire is an offensive rule and making it an universal rule will increase even more the game's lethality.
Lethality wouldn't be an issue if stacking modifiers for negatives to hit came back.
...Or if you reversed some of the last fifteen years of constant stat creep.
Not a terrible amount of that, considering GW didn't really adjust for their new wounding table.
Yea I hear a lot of people calling for balanced armies with more restrictions, no/less stratagems, templates, and vehicle facings. Like, uhhh, you're literally just describing 30k. You can play mechanicum, custodes or daemons if space marines aren't your thing. We don't need to turn 40k into 30k, just play 30k...
Yea I hear a lot of people calling for balanced armies with more restrictions, no/less stratagems, templates, and vehicle facings. Like, uhhh, you're literally just describing 30k. You can play mechanicum, custodes or daemons if space marines aren't your thing. We don't need to turn 40k into 30k, just play 30k...
No Necrons, Nids, Tau, etc. . .
Better to just play an older (and cheaper) version of 40K.
But to most of the thread, I am pro-Armor Facings. A 90 degree quadrant solution or a 180 split front/rear solution would be fine, though my preference is for quadrants. I'd be happy to have vehicles use different methods as well. Some as quadrants, some as split, and some as same-armor-at-all-angles, just for added texture.
Easiest solution with armor facings and vehicles is putting them on square/rectangular bases. Not so good looking probably (I'd hate that) but really effective, it would eliminate any controversy while vehicles that do not look like bricks could not be stuck on having the same AV value on each side.
Insectum7 wrote: ^No bases, please. A simple template to place over models in case of contention should be plenty good.
Yes, this.
The corner to corner thing doesn't work for a lot of vehicles. What we do is just determine the "center point" of the model (center of its hull as best we can deduce, sometimes will even make a little dot/mark on the model for it) and then just have 90-degree arcs centered on that center point. You can use a circular protractor for this or draw some lines on an old transparent blast template and use then. Whatever arc the shooting unit is within is the armor value that's used. If a unit touches on multiple arcs, we default to using whichever grants the most protection/armor for the vehicle.
The above is clean, and works, and arguments are pretty minimal.
Simplest solutiuon I've heard of is the straight line across the back of the vehicle. Most vehicles have moderately flat backsides, so it's practical in 90% of cases (necrons being one of the few with pointy rears).
Anything from in front of that line is in the front, anything behind is the rear.
Problem is you need to include weapon arcs again to make it work properly, which I also approve of, even if you keep the same simplicity of tividign the vehicle with an upside-down "T", where you have front left, front right, and rear left and rear right arcs for weapons. some sponsons shoot both left or right arcs, leman russes only cover front left or front right arcs.
But then ghost arcs are tricky. See how it all goes a bit odd?
Dedicated arcs would be fine though, provided they are kept as simple as possible!
some bloke wrote: Simplest solutiuon I've heard of is the straight line across the back of the vehicle. Most vehicles have moderately flat backsides, so it's practical in 90% of cases (necrons being one of the few with pointy rears).
Anything from in front of that line is in the front, anything behind is the rear.
Problem is you need to include weapon arcs again to make it work properly, which I also approve of, even if you keep the same simplicity of tividign the vehicle with an upside-down "T", where you have front left, front right, and rear left and rear right arcs for weapons. some sponsons shoot both left or right arcs, leman russes only cover front left or front right arcs.
But then ghost arcs are tricky. See how it all goes a bit odd?
Dedicated arcs would be fine though, provided they are kept as simple as possible!
I feel like this sort of gets into the topic of 40k's scale too. I'm not sure I want to bother with firing arcs and armor facings in a 2,000 point game where I'm trying to pilot 50 infantry models on top of my 5 vehicles. But I'm also not sure I want a whole sub-system dedicated to armor facings when I'm playing Combat Patrol and there's only one vehicle across the table from me.
Maybe armor facings, weapon arcs, etc. would be a better fit for a Spearhead game variant where the focus is entirely on vehicles and monsters? Like, if the entire game is your 3-5 imperial knight models versus my 10ish tank models, then by all means; let's break out the diagrams and vehicle speed counters and so forth.
Ahahaha, we've become Eldar. Look at this elegiac state of elgiac-ness! Pining for templates and vehicle facings, what's next? A return to the days of milk and honey where movement was dictated by unit type? Be still my aged heart...
KingGarland wrote: For a model without a base each arc is determined as the area between two imaginary 1mm line coming out of each corner. (Not sure how to do it for models on a round or oval base, or with irregular shapes). Determine which facing a model firing at a vehicle is attacking; if the models base, or the hull if the model has no base, is at least 50% within one facing arc attacks are made against that armor facing.
That's the thing about armour facings, they're inspired by real-world great war era tanks and a lot of 40k vehicles don't resemble them at all.
Where might armour facings be useful and thematic? For Astra Militarum as an army rule that all their vehicles get. You get the downside of some weapons being unable to shoot in every arc and the upside of greater durability on some arcs. Astra Militarum tanks were made with shooting arcs in mind, Necron Obelisks were not, Obelisks are alien death machines, they shouldn't care about which arc they are firing from or which of their arcs is being fired upon.
Necromunda is bringing vehicle facings to the game for Ash Wastes with the quad having different toughness values for each facing so it could be feasible for it to be introduced back into 40k. I am not sure how you determine which armor facing you use though.
I am in favour. It would lead you to maybe spending a few more moments considering where to put your vehicles, or make some grey areas you may need to resolve between players etc but its part of the challenge/fun in some circumstances.
Most non brickly models come with bases, so you can literally mark the front corners of the vehicle on the rim of the base for quick reference(in my opinion bases rims are very under used in regards to their ability to aid gameplay mechanics), all you would need is a old school top down picture from a codex/FAQ to go off. For any skimmers/flyers/ mechs this should work pretty intuitively. Even if you model your mech in the most unconventional pose, if you have marked down the requisite angle of degrees on the base, well its clear cut.
In friendly play working out arcs of fire is pretty simple and easy to just eyeball. you just need to be familiar with your models, and well most sponsons behave the same. It actually promotes playing with your tank, and moving bits around on it, rather than using it as a static brick that can shoot any direction it wants. Both of arcs of fire and armour facings actually work to make a difference between tanks and self propelled guns as well.
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KingGarland wrote: Necromunda is bringing vehicle facings to the game for Ash Wastes with the quad having different toughness values for each facing so it could be feasible for it to be introduced back into 40k. I am not sure how you determine which armor facing you use though.
I am not sure what you mean, the vehicle is basically still a rectangle so the front facing is still the quadrant between the front wheels. Its got a slightly narrower frontage but its still got distinct front/side corners and distinction, that being the front tyres.
KingGarland wrote: For a model without a base each arc is determined as the area between two imaginary 1mm line coming out of each corner. (Not sure how to do it for models on a round or oval base, or with irregular shapes). Determine which facing a model firing at a vehicle is attacking; if the models base, or the hull if the model has no base, is at least 50% within one facing arc attacks are made against that armor facing.
That's the thing about armour facings, they're inspired by real-world great war era tanks and a lot of 40k vehicles don't resemble them at all.
Where might armour facings be useful and thematic? For Astra Militarum as an army rule that all their vehicles get. You get the downside of some weapons being unable to shoot in every arc and the upside of greater durability on some arcs. Astra Militarum tanks were made with shooting arcs in mind, Necron Obelisks were not, Obelisks are alien death machines, they shouldn't care about which arc they are firing from or which of their arcs is being fired upon.
Well all tanks have armour facings that are not equal. Shoot an M1A2 Abrams in the rear with a WW2 era bazooka or a panzerfaust, and see what happens. Hell a PIAT would set the thing ablaze. Its sorta the commander's job to ensure that kind of thing ain't happening by using their vehicles appropriately, and what is the point in having big armoured and expensive tanks in a wargame if it has equal armour on all sides, and if their armour is cardboard? Expensive units like tanks should be great and hard to kill, but have vulnerabilities and facings should be an important mechanic.
Well tau, space marine, ork, chaos, dark eldar and eldar vehicles would also have different armour facings and different armour thicknesses. Mechs also seem to have their armour optimised on the frontal arch with things like imperial knights, dreadnoughts and wraithlords having their engines( or wraithbone array things)) mounted on the rear, along with substantially less armour plating, or platig less optimal for deflecting or stopping incoming rounds. Most necron vehicles would likely have all their facings are of equal armour anyway, it could be like an actual quirk of the faction, that their weird alien machines do not act like everyone else's and that they play differently.
In friendly play working out arcs of fire is pretty simple and easy to just eyeball. you just need to be familiar with your models...
It was rare for dramatic disagreements to break out about the exact firing/facing arcs. That said, it was pretty common for my opponent and I to politely disagree and for one of us to politely just concede the point to our disadvantage for the sake of not making a big deal over it. Which works, but doesn't feel great and is the sort of thing a good rules set should avoid. And even if you're familiar with your models, reasonable people can disagree. Look at the wave serpent. Does its rear arc start at the rearmost points by the passenger hatch, or does it start to the left/right most points to the sides of the thrusters? And back when the serpent shield had a shooting profile, what exactly was its firing arc? It's very unclear, and reasonable people who disagree with one another sort of end up having to agree to play to one player or the other's disadvantage. Unless you want to add topdown diagrams to all the vehicle datasheets in the game.
Well all tanks have armour facings that are not equal.
This point has merit, but it can still feel sort of... arbitrary in the context of 40k. AV 12/12/10 wave serpents didn't feel like they had weaker rear armor because there's an engine in the back; they felt like they had weaker rear armor so that space marines could punch them to death. But then also, a lot of factions didn't really have much variety in their front/side armor. Craftworld vehicles were pretty much either 12/12/10 or 10/10/10. Pretty sure the same was true for tau aside from the hammerhead, and drukhari/harlequins were 10/10/10 on everything except the ravager which was 11/11/10. I think marines tended to be uniform on the front/sides unless you were talking about something like a vindicator. What I'm getting at is that side armor mostly only mattered for imperial guard and maybe orks. And rear armor mostly only mattered when you were punching it or if you'd just deepstruck into rear armor popping position.
So in practice, if imperial guard aren't on the table, you probably only cared about armor facings when deepstriking or punching. And we can reintroduce those situations with stratagems if you really want. No need to reintroduce a wonky alternative attack resolution system that makes vehicles immune to half the units in the game.
...and what is the point in having big armoured and expensive tanks in a wargame if it has equal armour on all sides, and if their armour is cardboard? Expensive units like tanks should be great and hard to kill, but have vulnerabilities and facings should be an important mechanic.
Haven't been getting a ton of games in lately, but the last time I checked, small arms fire was an ineffective way to kill tanks compared to anti-vehicle weapons. It takes a lot fewer meltagun shots to kill a leman russ than lasgun shots. Vehicles may be "carboard" right now, but that's mostly against relatively heavy weapons. Unless the meta has really gotten away from me, people aren't generally fielding lasguns to kill tanks. It's just that fielding a parking lot army doesn't make me immune to all my opponent's small arms fire either.
Honestly, bringing back armor facings wouldn't be the end of the world. I just don't see much point in it, and I feel like those who advocate for it are generally wearing rose-tinted glasses. (Or in some cases just want to run skew lists.)
The issue is that small arms can do damage at all. It's really dumb that a volley of 30 lasguns will likely do 1-2 wounds on average to anything regardless of its save or toughness. And there is the small chance however unlikely that it can straight up kill something like a Knight from full to dead.
Vehicles should be immune to half the units in the game, because they're vehicles. The entire point of tanks is that they are immune to small arms fire, both real world and fictional. It kinda breaks any sort of immersion that a heavy tank can take damage from a bunch of pew pews.
Honestly, bringing back armor facings wouldn't be the end of the world. I just don't see much point in it, and I feel like those who advocate for it are generally wearing rose-tinted glasses. (Or in some cases just want to run skew lists.)
No, it wouldn't be the end of the world but it was a mechanic that was neither balanced or immersive. Too many arguments about what facing is getting the hits and why only vehicles have to be weaker if attacked from the rare or flank? Also an infantry or a monster should be weaker if attacked from the back then, don't you think?
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Grey Templar wrote: The issue is that small arms can do damage at all. It's really dumb that a volley of 30 lasguns will likely do 1-2 wounds on average to anything regardless of its save or toughness. And there is the small chance however unlikely that it can straight up kill something like a Knight from full to dead.
Vehicles should be immune to half the units in the game, because they're vehicles. The entire point of tanks is that they are immune to small arms fire, both real world and fictional. It kinda breaks any sort of immersion that a heavy tank can take damage from a bunch of pew pews.
None of this has nothing to do with armor facings though. In 3rd-7th units with T7+ were immune to small arms fire without needing AV values.
Honestly, bringing back armor facings wouldn't be the end of the world. I just don't see much point in it, and I feel like those who advocate for it are generally wearing rose-tinted glasses. (Or in some cases just want to run skew lists.)
No, it wouldn't be the end of the world but it was a mechanic that was neither balanced or immersive. Too many arguments about what facing is getting the hits and why only vehicles have to be weaker if attacked from the rare or flank? Also an infantry or a monster should be weaker if attacked from the back then, don't you think?
In friendly play working out arcs of fire is pretty simple and easy to just eyeball. you just need to be familiar with your models...
It was rare for dramatic disagreements to break out about the exact firing/facing arcs. That said, it was pretty common for my opponent and I to politely disagree and for one of us to politely just concede the point to our disadvantage for the sake of not making a big deal over it. Which works, but doesn't feel great and is the sort of thing a good rules set should avoid. And even if you're familiar with your models, reasonable people can disagree. Look at the wave serpent. Does its rear arc start at the rearmost points by the passenger hatch, or does it start to the left/right most points to the sides of the thrusters? And back when the serpent shield had a shooting profile, what exactly was its firing arc? It's very unclear, and reasonable people who disagree with one another sort of end up having to agree to play to one player or the other's disadvantage. Unless you want to add topdown diagrams to all the vehicle datasheets in the game.
Well all tanks have armour facings that are not equal.
This point has merit, but it can still feel sort of... arbitrary in the context of 40k. AV 12/12/10 wave serpents didn't feel like they had weaker rear armor because there's an engine in the back; they felt like they had weaker rear armor so that space marines could punch them to death. But then also, a lot of factions didn't really have much variety in their front/side armor. Craftworld vehicles were pretty much either 12/12/10 or 10/10/10. Pretty sure the same was true for tau aside from the hammerhead, and drukhari/harlequins were 10/10/10 on everything except the ravager which was 11/11/10. I think marines tended to be uniform on the front/sides unless you were talking about something like a vindicator. What I'm getting at is that side armor mostly only mattered for imperial guard and maybe orks. And rear armor mostly only mattered when you were punching it or if you'd just deepstruck into rear armor popping position.
So in practice, if imperial guard aren't on the table, you probably only cared about armor facings when deepstriking or punching. And we can reintroduce those situations with stratagems if you really want. No need to reintroduce a wonky alternative attack resolution system that makes vehicles immune to half the units in the game.
...and what is the point in having big armoured and expensive tanks in a wargame if it has equal armour on all sides, and if their armour is cardboard? Expensive units like tanks should be great and hard to kill, but have vulnerabilities and facings should be an important mechanic.
Haven't been getting a ton of games in lately, but the last time I checked, small arms fire was an ineffective way to kill tanks compared to anti-vehicle weapons. It takes a lot fewer meltagun shots to kill a leman russ than lasgun shots. Vehicles may be "carboard" right now, but that's mostly against relatively heavy weapons. Unless the meta has really gotten away from me, people aren't generally fielding lasguns to kill tanks. It's just that fielding a parking lot army doesn't make me immune to all my opponent's small arms fire either.
Honestly, bringing back armor facings wouldn't be the end of the world. I just don't see much point in it, and I feel like those who advocate for it are generally wearing rose-tinted glasses. (Or in some cases just want to run skew lists.)
The rear of wave serpent is a pretty simple case in my opinion. The rear facing would start at the outside edge of the thrusters. The rear ramp is not likely to be very thick. Forward of thruster you actually have armour plating so clearly you that is a more armoured facing. Whilst punching the thruster would certainly end in a scorched hand i can actually imagine an astartes being able to damage the engines with close combat weapons. So yeah marines probably could realistically "punch" a falcon or wave serpent to death. We are talking about a swift and lightly armoured vehicle. Its likely not designed to have amped up apes in power armourwailing on its engines.
Just Tony wrote: This is one of the many reasons I went back to 3rd Edition 40K
I went back to 3rd edition of 40k (still my favorite edition), convincing a couple of hobby veterans to play oldhammer occasionally, because codexes had 20-30 datasheets and the dice rolling was a fraction of what it started to be since 5th. Which are basically the only things I'd ask for new editions of 40k: much smaller rosters and severely reduced dice rolling.
Jarms48 wrote: If GW made it more simplistic. Say instead of arcs, just make it so the you have to be basically flat on the side or rear for those faces to count.
This basically removes all issues of arguments when measuring weird angles
So sort of draw a # symbol with your vehicle in the middle? I could see that. I guess you'd have to clarify which arc the corners used.
I'd imagine the most favorable facing so the front corners would be the front. The rear corner angles would be the side. I'd say again i don't see the issue with having a simple X like they used to.
Great idea, would love to see it come back, i think every vehicle that GW puts out or in each codex, shows a top down view of each vehicle hull for that army and clearly marks what are considered the "corners" of the vehicles so that front, side, and back armor is easily determined.
What 10th should do is make the table size for Strike Force games 48"x72", but only allow infantry and bikers to fielded in the center 44"x60". Then add vehicle and monster facings. That way, vehicles and monsters with weaker rear armor can protect it if they are a reasonable distance from the fighting.
Tyran wrote: I don't think every vehicle needs armor facings.
They don't make sense on aircraft nor on Dark Eldar skimmers.
On the other hand, many monsters should have armor facings.
On dark eldar skimmers there is plating on the sides and front and this would offer protection from small arms when the vehicle is above the shooters. And I'd imagine this to be the same level of plating all the way down the sides from behind it should totally be vulnerable. Its got exsposed machinery that small arms fire could totally damage.
Why should melee always target rear? If models are not in contact with the rear why should they get the bonus of hitting it? What's more what is a melee weapon actually going to do to a vehicle like a tank etc? Actual AT weapons like melta bombs should trump wailing on something with a power weapon any day of the week.
OldMate wrote: Why should melee always target rear? If models are not in contact with the rear why should they get the bonus of hitting it? What's more what is a melee weapon actually going to do to a vehicle like a tank etc?
Back in the day, going after rear armor was framed as the attackers basically going after all the vehicle's weak spots in ways that you kind of can't when shooting a gun straight at it. So an ork probably isn't literally punching armored plates; he's scrabbling up onto the tank and jamming his slugga into vision slits/fire points, wrenching hatches and doors open, jabbing at treads with his choppa, peeling away metal from damaged sections, etc.
Actual AT weapons like melta bombs should trump wailing on something with a power weapon any day of the week.
I mean, presumably a melta bomb would trump wailing on the tank with a power weapon. In the ancient past, when we had to ride dinosaurs to the game store, meltabombs weren't shooting attacks. Being equipped with a meltabomb meant that you could give up your normal melee attacks to make a single attack with the meltabomb. Which had a very high strength and special rules to make it likely to hurt and meaningfully damage/kill a vehicle. It was sort of like a meltagun, but in punch form.
Regardless of whether or not vehicle facings make a comeback, we could presumably make the melta bomb a melee attack again.
OldMate wrote: Why should melee always target rear? If models are not in contact with the rear why should they get the bonus of hitting it? What's more what is a melee weapon actually going to do to a vehicle like a tank etc?
Back in the day, going after rear armor was framed as the attackers basically going after all the vehicle's weak spots in ways that you kind of can't when shooting a gun straight at it. So an ork probably isn't literally punching armored plates; he's scrabbling up onto the tank and jamming his slugga into vision slits/fire points, wrenching hatches and doors open, jabbing at treads with his choppa, peeling away metal from damaged sections, etc.
Actual AT weapons like melta bombs should trump wailing on something with a power weapon any day of the week.
I mean, presumably a melta bomb would trump wailing on the tank with a power weapon. In the ancient past, when we had to ride dinosaurs to the game store, meltabombs weren't shooting attacks. Being equipped with a meltabomb meant that you could give up your normal melee attacks to make a single attack with the meltabomb. Which had a very high strength and special rules to make it likely to hurt and meaningfully damage/kill a vehicle. It was sort of like a meltagun, but in punch form.
Regardless of whether or not vehicle facings make a comeback, we could presumably make the melta bomb a melee attack again.
Dinosaurs? I thought it was those first fish crawling up on the land.
Well agaimst a heavily armoured vehicle, all of that is not going to work. Tracks are heavy steel, whacking one will only chip a good choppa, vision ports are often closable with perescopes, to use instead, and also ballistic glass and even internal steel plates to close the aperture. sturdy armour can't just be pulled away, unless by something truely monsterous. A terminator or mega armoured nob, yeah, a giant tyrannid or demn yeah, some random slugga or nob? Nah. Hatches and doors should be able to be closed from the inside. But a magnetic mine, melta bomb or even a molotov cocktail on the engine deck, on the rear facing or arc if you like, is going to put your armoured vehicle down. I think these kinds of weapons should be upgrades to squads and they should be what gives troops punch against enemy armour in melee. Depending on the vehicle's armour level of course. Melee weapons dhould be pretty alright against light vehicles, especially in for strong factions or units.
Well agaimst a heavily armoured vehicle, all of that is not going to work. Tracks are heavy steel, whacking one will only chip a good choppa, vision ports are often closable with perescopes, to use instead, and also ballistic glass and even internal steel plates to close the aperture. sturdy armour can't just be pulled away, unless by something truely monsterous. A terminator or mega armoured nob, yeah, a giant tyrannid or demn yeah, some random slugga or nob? Nah. Hatches and doors should be able to be closed from the inside.
At the risk of getting lost in the weeds...
* Land raiders appear to have partially exposed tracks. Even if they're jointed metal or something rather than super rubber, it seems like they would be relatively vulnerable to something like a bolt pistol shot. And orks and bolt pistols are apparently both in the same S4 ballpark.
* Fire points used to be a thing vehicles had that let a certain number of models shoot out of the slits. Even if there are ways to seal those holes from inside, it doesn't necessarily mean that the crew was quick enough to close them. After all, they were open for the passengers to shoot a flamer out of on the previous player turn.
* Apparently a sufficiently determined Salamander can (barely) lift the side of an overturned land raider enough to unpin his brother's trapped limb. So I buy that a marine atop a tank could peel back damaged plates to widen the hole left by a lascannon. And orks and marines are both in the same S4 ballpark.
* Imperial vehicles aren't the most practical of machines. I'd absolutely buy that rhino doors are based on ancient tractor that were meant to be easily(ish) removed in case of emergencies or whatever.
* Tbf, the way the rules worked, you had to be S4 to have a 1/6th chance of inflicting damage. And that damage would be a glancing hit meaning you were basically just freaking out the crew rather than blowing up engines. In 5th edition, you had to roll high to immobilize the vehicle and probably strip away a lot of its guns before you had a chance at actually wrecking it. Which, in board game terms, means that you could kill a tank with S4 melee, but it wasn't a reliable tactic for most units.
* Honestly, it was mostly a gameplay thing. Most vehicles were immune to S4 and worse on all sides except the rear armor. So letting S4 units go after the rear armor in melee meant that things like blood letters, striking scorpions, ork boyz, etc. were still allowed to interact with enemy vehicles. Not much fun when big chunks of your army aren't allowed to attack the enemy's tank company. Most imperial factions had krak grenades on everything, which basically let you trade in your S3 or S4 attacks for a single S6 attack. (Which gave you 50/50 odds of hurting the tank once you landed a hit.)
But a magnetic mine, melta bomb or even a molotov cocktail on the engine deck, on the rear facing or arc if you like, is going to put your armoured vehicle down. I think these kinds of weapons should be upgrades to squads and they should be what gives troops punch against enemy armour in melee. Depending on the vehicle's armour level of course. Melee weapons dhould be pretty alright against light vehicles, especially in for strong factions or units.
I understand the impulse, but consider: lots of armies/units don't really have anti-tank equipment currently. So without these hypothetical upgrades, it's easy to end up with matchups where one army can barely touch the other. If we did introduce a bunch of anti-tank options to deal with this, then at that point we're writing rules to fix the problems we created with our first set of changes. Which is a red flag.
And then, if we did create the anti-tank options and players were expected to need those options to have a chance of dealing with tank armies, then you create this uncomfortable situation where you might win or lose during army creation based on how many points you spent on anti-tank grenades that you might not need. Take every anti-tank grenade you can get, and you're set against the tank company, but you're at a 200 point disadvantage against the swarm of gaunts. Ignore the anti-tank so you can face the gaunts on even footing, and the tank company blasts you. Split the difference and you're probably okay (unless there's a really tanky tank build out there), BUT now X% of your army is being spent on semi-mandatory anti-tank grenades every game plus the units that have the option to carry them. Which hurts list diversity. And if you're a casual player who doesn't know how many anti-tank grenades they'll need for a pickup game, you're potentially screwing yourself over or playing at a disadvantage because the option to take the wrong amount of grenades exists and no one told you about it.
We ran into a similar problem (though not quite as extreme) in 6th when flyers and anti-air weapons became a thing. Did you take flakk missiles on your devastators? Feels bad when your opponent has no flyers meaning you wasted the points. Did you field an anti-air tank? Feels bad that you didn't field that other unit you really wanted to take instead.
There's also the issue of balancing tank durability around a small number of models being able to threaten them. If a rhino is immune to boyz but can be threatened by a power klaw nob, then how many attacks from the nob should it take (on average) to kill the rhino? Now put a points cost on that. Now also put a points cost on the squad of all nobz each wielding a power klaw.
I hope you appreciate how dangerous attacking a tank's tracks with a hand weapon is. There is the whole rabbit hole of tank melee attack but I shan't tread there today.
Attacking the rear should totally be viable I totally agree, but should things like striking scorpions and marines have some grenades(or a frikin breaching laser cutter?) or something to do that with? Its a bit more sensible...
Tau have EMP grenades, Tyrannids have spore mines, necrons standard infantry weapon is an AT weapon, eldar and dark eldar have haywire grenades, all the humans have bombs, genestealer cults have blasting charges, (shaped charges) and demons are literal demons so they kinda get a free pass, I am at a loss for the faction you are talking about. You could make these weapons 'already equipted' to squads that take up elites slots, figuring that guys like sternguards, veterans and elite aspect warriors are going to be packing the good stuff.
Well yes but a marine's armour is meant to withstand the same amount of punishment as a tank, and you do not see bolter marines having better armour saves than a light vehicle like sentinels, medium armoured vehicle like chimeras or rhinos or armour saves like legitimate actual tanks.
Well something like a rhino is just a carrier so the nobs would have to balance against any number of potential cargoes.
As for facing enemy lists your army is not suited to face, well you just have to put you faith in the emperor and do your best. If you sink all your points into giving your squads melta guns they will fare less well against the gaunt swarm than if you gave them flamethrowers. It would be boring to have all the right tools in the right places all of the time.
Things do not have to be fair when armies clash on the tabletop as long as all factions are balanced and have a decent range of options for countering eachother and every faction has the potential to beat every other on the table top. The most welly balanced army in the world could meet its bane. As it should be.
Tau have EMP grenades, Tyrannids have spore mines, necrons standard infantry weapon is an AT weapon, eldar and dark eldar have haywire grenades, all the humans have bombs, genestealer cults have blasting charges, (shaped charges) and demons are literal demons so they kinda get a free pass, I am at a loss for the faction you are talking about.
Spore mines are not equipment. Moreover they have never been good at AT work.
Also the effectiveness of Necron gauss weapons really depends on the ruleset, they sucked in 5th given that it was nearly impossible to destroy a vehicle with glances in 5th.
Tyran wrote:
Spore mines are not equipment. Moreover they have never been good at AT work.
There was that acid spore mine upgrade for biovores back in 3rd or 4th edition that was something like S4 but rolled 2d6 for armor pen. I keep expecting that to make a comeback as a stratagem or something. I guess GW figures that the potential for a small number of mortal wounds basically accomplishes the same thing.
OldMate wrote:
Attacking the rear should totally be viable I totally agree, but should things like striking scorpions and marines have some grenades(or a frikin breaching laser cutter?) or something to do that with? Its a bit more sensible...
Tau have EMP grenades, Tyrannids have spore mines, necrons standard infantry weapon is an AT weapon, eldar and dark eldar have haywire grenades, all the humans have bombs, genestealer cults have blasting charges, (shaped charges) and demons are literal demons so they kinda get a free pass, I am at a loss for the faction you are talking about.
Eldar are kind of an odd duck. Historically, the only craftworld units to have access to haywire grenades have been swooping hawks and (presumably formerly swooping hawk) autarchs. I love haywire grenades in general and wouldn't mind seeing them brought back with a proper weapon profile, but the existence of haywires in the past didn't mean that they were necessarily readily available. You could even argue that it would be sort of unfluffy for aspect warriors to have equipment that isn't part of their (highly symbolically significant) kit. Scorpions with breaching lasers sound cool and all, but it would definitely be adding a previously absent element to their lore.
Fire warriors have EMP grenades, but kroot traditionally don't. So do we discourage people from taking kroot even more than we do now? Demons could get a free pass even though they traditionally haven't. 'Crons traditionally had gauss, but it basically translated to fishing for 6s to wound. Which wouldn't be very effective unless you also overhauled every vehicle statline in the game or overhauled gauss weapons to do more damage to vehicles.
Human factions, admittedly, did usually have krak grenades and/or meltabombs. Almost like GW designs the game with them in mind but is prone to overlooking the impact on non-human factions...
Basically, yes. You could theoretically invent or adjust a bunch of anti-tank options for each codex. But if you have to do all that to keep invulnerable tanks from breaking the game, maybe just give up on the invulnerable tanks.
You could make these weapons 'already equipted' to squads that take up elites slots, figuring that guys like sternguards, veterans and elite aspect warriors are going to be packing the good stuff.
Painting with a pretty broad brush there. Should runtherds really be packing bomb squigs? Should krootox riders be the only kroot carrying EMP grenades? Do crisis suits suddenly count as having emp grenades? I think ripper swarms got moved to elites (or was it FA?) Seems weird to assume they're "packing the good stuff." This strikes me as one of those sweeping changes that would end up creating a bunch of problems.
And again, if you have to give every elite slot free anti-tank gear to make up for the balance issues you created by changing tanks, then we should probably just not use your proposed change to tanks. :(
As for facing enemy lists your army is not suited to face, well you just have to put you faith in the emperor and do your best...
Things do not have to be fair when armies clash on the tabletop as long as all factions are balanced and have a decent range of options for countering eachother and every faction has the potential to beat every other on the table top. The most welly balanced army in the world could meet its bane. As it should be.
The thing is, the game would still be in a worse place overall. Sure, maybe your dice roll hot and you occasionally manage to pull off an underdog win. Sure, maybe there's a highly specific build in your codex that can hard counter the new tank spam meta. But outliers like those don't change the fact that you're increasing the likelihood that one player will show up with a list that basically isn't allowed to fight back against the other. And that's bad.
(Also, anti-tank options existing somewhere in the codex don't matter after the lists have been built. If I don't feel like shoving fire dragons into every single list, then their existence doesn't improve my experience when I field a sans-dragons list against a tank regiment.)
Tyran wrote:
Spore mines are not equipment. Moreover they have never been good at AT work.
There was that acid spore mine upgrade for biovores back in 3rd or 4th edition that was something like S4 but rolled 2d6 for armor pen. I keep expecting that to make a comeback as a stratagem or something. I guess GW figures that the potential for a small number of mortal wounds basically accomplishes the same thing.
OldMate wrote:
Attacking the rear should totally be viable I totally agree, but should things like striking scorpions and marines have some grenades(or a frikin breaching laser cutter?) or something to do that with? Its a bit more sensible...
Tau have EMP grenades, Tyrannids have spore mines, necrons standard infantry weapon is an AT weapon, eldar and dark eldar have haywire grenades, all the humans have bombs, genestealer cults have blasting charges, (shaped charges) and demons are literal demons so they kinda get a free pass, I am at a loss for the faction you are talking about.
Eldar are kind of an odd duck. Historically, the only craftworld units to have access to haywire grenades have been swooping hawks and (presumably formerly swooping hawk) autarchs. I love haywire grenades in general and wouldn't mind seeing them brought back with a proper weapon profile, but the existence of haywires in the past didn't mean that they were necessarily readily available. You could even argue that it would be sort of unfluffy for aspect warriors to have equipment that isn't part of their (highly symbolically significant) kit. Scorpions with breaching lasers sound cool and all, but it would definitely be adding a previously absent element to their lore.
Fire warriors have EMP grenades, but kroot traditionally don't. So do we discourage people from taking kroot even more than we do now? Demons could get a free pass even though they traditionally haven't. 'Crons traditionally had gauss, but it basically translated to fishing for 6s to wound. Which wouldn't be very effective unless you also overhauled every vehicle statline in the game or overhauled gauss weapons to do more damage to vehicles.
Human factions, admittedly, did usually have krak grenades and/or meltabombs. Almost like GW designs the game with them in mind but is prone to overlooking the impact on non-human factions...
Basically, yes. You could theoretically invent or adjust a bunch of anti-tank options for each codex. But if you have to do all that to keep invulnerable tanks from breaking the game, maybe just give up on the invulnerable tanks.
You could make these weapons 'already equipted' to squads that take up elites slots, figuring that guys like sternguards, veterans and elite aspect warriors are going to be packing the good stuff.
Painting with a pretty broad brush there. Should runtherds really be packing bomb squigs? Should krootox riders be the only kroot carrying EMP grenades? Do crisis suits suddenly count as having emp grenades? I think ripper swarms got moved to elites (or was it FA?) Seems weird to assume they're "packing the good stuff." This strikes me as one of those sweeping changes that would end up creating a bunch of problems.
And again, if you have to give every elite slot free anti-tank gear to make up for the balance issues you created by changing tanks, then we should probably just not use your proposed change to tanks. :(
As for facing enemy lists your army is not suited to face, well you just have to put you faith in the emperor and do your best...
Things do not have to be fair when armies clash on the tabletop as long as all factions are balanced and have a decent range of options for countering eachother and every faction has the potential to beat every other on the table top. The most welly balanced army in the world could meet its bane. As it should be.
The thing is, the game would still be in a worse place overall. Sure, maybe your dice roll hot and you occasionally manage to pull off an underdog win. Sure, maybe there's a highly specific build in your codex that can hard counter the new tank spam meta. But outliers like those don't change the fact that you're increasing the likelihood that one player will show up with a list that basically isn't allowed to fight back against the other. And that's bad.
(Also, anti-tank options existing somewhere in the codex don't matter after the lists have been built. If I don't feel like shoving fire dragons into every single list, then their existence doesn't improve my experience when I field a sans-dragons list against a tank regiment.)
In 3rd Edition Striking Scorpions had Haywire grenades as well. One of my batreps involved me using them to smoke a Vindicator.
OldMate wrote: I hope you appreciate how dangerous attacking a tank's tracks with a hand weapon is.
Exactly. It should be like it was in previous editions, you auto-hit a stationary tank but a moving tank is only hit on 6s. And TBH trying to hit and failing should have a chance of instant death as you slip and get crushed under the tracks.
Wyldhunt wrote: Basically, yes. You could theoretically invent or adjust a bunch of anti-tank options for each codex. But if you have to do all that to keep invulnerable tanks from breaking the game, maybe just give up on the invulnerable tanks.
I don't see why you need to invent anything. Who cares if kroot have no anti-tank and fire warriors have only limited anti-tank, you have heavy support slots full of railguns and elites with fusion guns. Why does every unit need to be capable of killing tanks?
Wyldhunt wrote: We ran into a similar problem (though not quite as extreme) in 6th when flyers and anti-air weapons became a thing. Did you take flakk missiles on your devastators? Feels bad when your opponent has no flyers meaning you wasted the points. Did you field an anti-air tank? Feels bad that you didn't field that other unit you really wanted to take instead.
IMO that's not really a comparable situation. AA units in 6th-7th had two major problems: most of them were actually pretty bad at killing flyers, and flyers were still a fairly rare unit type. If you wanted to do more than possibly annoy a flyer you had to commit heavily to overcome poor stat lines with sheer volume of fire, and then once you built your anti-flyer list you weren't all that likely to encounter enough relevant flyers to make it worth it. Tanks are way more common than 6th edition flyers and anti-tank weapons are way more effective at killing them. I'm perfectly fine with dedicated anti-tank units being a tool you're expected to bring in a game that is full of tanks and tank-equivalent monsters.
Exactly. It should be like it was in previous editions, you auto-hit a stationary tank but a moving tank is only hit on 6s. And TBH trying to hit and failing should have a chance of instant death as you slip and get crushed under the tracks.
That's a horrible idea as it would make tanks almost invulnerable in melee as long as they moved.
Also the crushing death by tracks only really applies to light infantry, it doesn't apply to things like Terminators or Carnifexes.
IMO that's not really a comparable situation. AA units in 6th-7th had two major problems: most of them were actually pretty bad at killing flyers, and flyers were still a fairly rare unit type. If you wanted to do more than possibly annoy a flyer you had to commit heavily to overcome poor stat lines with sheer volume of fire, and then once you built your anti-flyer list you weren't all that likely to encounter enough relevant flyers to make it worth it. Tanks are way more common than 6th edition flyers and anti-tank weapons are way more effective at killing them.
Fair points. The comparison is a little shaky.
Wyldhunt wrote: Basically, yes. You could theoretically invent or adjust a bunch of anti-tank options for each codex. But if you have to do all that to keep invulnerable tanks from breaking the game, maybe just give up on the invulnerable tanks.
I don't see why you need to invent anything. Who cares if kroot have no anti-tank and fire warriors have only limited anti-tank, you have heavy support slots full of railguns and elites with fusion guns. Why does every unit need to be capable of killing tanks?
...
I'm perfectly fine with dedicated anti-tank units being a tool you're expected to bring in a game that is full of tanks and tank-equivalent monsters.
The problems arise when you don't have enough anti-tank for whatever list your opponent is bringing. And generally, people don't know what their opponent's list will be ahead of time. Trying to break it down into digestible points:
* It's not much fun when enemy units are invulnerable. Ask people how they felt about invisible death stars back in the day. The core engagement of 40k is our dudes attacking each other. Not my dudes taking a one-sided beating from your dudes.
* To avoid enemy vehicles feeling invulnerable (assuming we bring back AV), you have to bring X amount of anti-tank.
* The value of X varies based on how much of your opponent's army is made up of tanks, how hard those tanks are to kill, etc.
* The possibility that my opponent will bring a skew list where their army contains a lot of tanks exists. Such lists would set the value of X very high.
* I can't really change how much anti-tank I have outside of list creation. So I basically have to guess what the value of X will be when writing my list. In order to avoid having less than X anti-tank, I will be more likely to take anti-tank options over options that don't threaten tanks. This is where the kroot vs fire warriors point comes in. If I take the kroot instead of the fire warriors, I risk not reaching my anti-tank quota of X and having a frustrating game because of it. Because of this, list diversity is hurt, and units that would be fine in the current system become never-takes or rarely-takes because they don't contribute towards X. This has happened before.
* Bonus point: sometimes it's fun to run a themed army list, but not all themes lend themselves to having a lot of anti-tank. In the current rules, such a theme army might struggle against enemy tanks, but they'd still be allowed to fight/interact/play the game. If we make tanks immune to non-anti-tank, our theme army is much more likely to result in an unenjoyable game due to non-interactivity.
OldMate wrote: I hope you appreciate how dangerous attacking a tank's tracks with a hand weapon is.
Exactly. It should be like it was in previous editions, you auto-hit a stationary tank but a moving tank is only hit on 6s. And TBH trying to hit and failing should have a chance of instant death as you slip and get crushed under the tracks.
Not sure that would improve the game experience. Unless you have a mechanic encouraging you to hold completely still, people would just move their tanks at least 0.01" every movement phase to become semi-invulnerable to melee. And unless you let enemy units opt out of attacking, this would increase tank melee lethality by quite a bit which would then need to cost points.
(That said, I don't hate the idea of giving tanks a "tank shock" melee weapon that can only be used on the charge. It wouldn't have to be all that impressive, but upping the melee lethality of tanks when they intentionally drive into the enemy lines seems like an appropriate way to model vehicular splatter kills. )
OldMate wrote: I hope you appreciate how dangerous attacking a tank's tracks with a hand weapon is.
Exactly. It should be like it was in previous editions, you auto-hit a stationary tank but a moving tank is only hit on 6s. And TBH trying to hit and failing should have a chance of instant death as you slip and get crushed under the tracks.
Not sure that would improve the game experience. Unless you have a mechanic encouraging you to hold completely still, people would just move their tanks at least 0.01" every movement phase to become semi-invulnerable to melee. And unless you let enemy units opt out of attacking, this would increase tank melee lethality by quite a bit which would then need to cost points.
(That said, I don't hate the idea of giving tanks a "tank shock" melee weapon that can only be used on the charge. It wouldn't have to be all that impressive, but upping the melee lethality of tanks when they intentionally drive into the enemy lines seems like an appropriate way to model vehicular splatter kills. )
IIRC the way it worked in 5e was a bit more granular:
0" movement = auto-hit
0" >=6" movement = hit on 4+
6+" movement = hit on 6+
And if you moved, you likely couldn't fire some/all of your weapons.
Tyran wrote: That's a horrible idea as it would make tanks almost invulnerable in melee as long as they moved.
Yep. Bring guns or risk getting crushed. Tanks also shouldn't be locked in combat by infantry units, if a tank gets surrounded by infantry it just drives over them like they don't even exist and continues fighting.
Tyran wrote: That's a horrible idea as it would make tanks almost invulnerable in melee as long as they moved.
Yep. Bring guns or risk getting crushed. Tanks also shouldn't be locked in combat by infantry units, if a tank gets surrounded by infantry it just drives over them like they don't even exist and continues fighting.
Yeah, because a Rhino can run over a Centurion like nothing.
Gameplay matters-more than what’s “realistic”.
Especially given how unrealistic the majority of 40k is.
Wyldhunt wrote: * The possibility that my opponent will bring a skew list where their army contains a lot of tanks exists. Such lists would set the value of X very high.
And here's the root of the problem: the ability to bring skew lists. If you get rid of knights as an independent faction, go back to the 5th edition FOC, remove vehicle squadrons, and go back to only troops being able to score objectives you force more balanced TAC lists. Even if you can theoretically figure out a way to bring nothing but vehicles (probably in a small game where the FOC isn't as restrictive) you'll still lose every game because you can't score VP. And a more realistic tank-heavy list is going to have 3-4 true tanks at most, the rest of the list is going to be light tanks and transports that are much easier to kill without the strongest anti-tank weapons.
* Bonus point: sometimes it's fun to run a themed army list, but not all themes lend themselves to having a lot of anti-tank. In the current rules, such a theme army might struggle against enemy tanks, but they'd still be allowed to fight/interact/play the game. If we make tanks immune to non-anti-tank, our theme army is much more likely to result in an unenjoyable game due to non-interactivity.
I don't think this is true in any meaningful way. The ability to wound anything on a 6 is maybe psychologically reassuring to some people but in reality a "thematic" list with no anti-tank threats is just going to get wiped off the table by a tank-heavy skew list. You might plink off a few wounds before getting tabled but it's not going to make any real difference in the final outcome.
Not sure that would improve the game experience. Unless you have a mechanic encouraging you to hold completely still, people would just move their tanks at least 0.01" every movement phase to become semi-invulnerable to melee.
This would probably be necessary, going back to the concept of movement speeds that existed at the time. Vehicles could only fire one weapon (plus low-strength "defensive weapons") if they moved and no weapons if they moved more than half speed. Fast vehicles counted as being one movement step less for shooting purposes. So moving was a tradeoff between defense and offense.
And unless you let enemy units opt out of attacking, this would increase tank melee lethality by quite a bit which would then need to cost points.
I would be happy to get rid of tank melee entirely. Bring back an ability like tank shock, where in the movement phase you can smash into a bunch of infantry and force them to fall back out of the way, but otherwise tanks don't have an engagement range or make melee attacks. If you don't wish to attack the tank you can just decline to do so.
(Obviously tanks with actual melee weapons would have rules for using them.)
Tyran wrote: That's a horrible idea as it would make tanks almost invulnerable in melee as long as they moved.
Yep. Bring guns or risk getting crushed. Tanks also shouldn't be locked in combat by infantry units, if a tank gets surrounded by infantry it just drives over them like they don't even exist and continues fighting.
You are aware that there are factions like Daemons that barely have guns, right?
In fact I'm pretty sure Space Marines ripping apart tanks in melee is a part of the lore, and the same goes for all the walkers and monsters in the game. A tank getting surrounded by an Ork mob or a Tyranid swarm is usually a very dead tank (Tyranids in particular are known to immobilize tanks by throwing their bodies into the internal parts of the tracks).
Yep. That centurion can be killed by small arms fire, run over him with a tank and it's going to be like those videos of tanks crushing cars.
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Tyran wrote: You are aware that there are factions like Daemons that barely have guns, right?
One faction, singular. And it's a faction that never should have been made into a separate faction for exactly this reason. Demons made a lot of sense as summoned units in a chaos marine and cultist army, where they were thematically appropriate and their limited set of abilities was not a problem. Making them an independent faction created too many redundant units and an army with too many holes, in addition to not really fitting the aesthetic theme of 40k. Correct this mistake and the one faction that barely has guns is no longer a problem.
In fact I'm pretty sure Space Marines ripping apart tanks in melee is a part of the lore, and the same goes for all the walkers and monsters in the game. A tank getting surrounded by an Ork mob or a Tyranid swarm is usually a very dead tank (Tyranids in particular are known to immobilize tanks by throwing their bodies into the internal parts of the tracks).
This is a major lore failure then, if that's the version that is well known. In reality a tank surrounded by a mob of light infantry is going to have a bunch of light infantry remains to hose off and no damage, unless the tank just sits there allowing itself to be hit. I'm not sure you realize just how little a 50+ ton armored vehicle is even going to be slowed down by driving over light infantry, but the driver is barely going to notice the bump and it's a spectacularly bad idea to get anywhere near a moving tank without a tank of your own.
One faction, singular. And it's a faction that never should have been made into a separate faction for exactly this reason. Demons made a lot of sense as summoned units in a chaos marine and cultist army, where they were thematically appropriate and their limited set of abilities was not a problem. Making them an independent faction created too many redundant units and an army with too many holes, in addition to not really fitting the aesthetic theme of 40k. Correct this mistake and the one faction that barely has guns is no longer a problem.
This is a major lore failure then, if that's the version that is well known. In reality a tank surrounded by a mob of light infantry is going to have a bunch of light infantry remains to hose off and no damage, unless the tank just sits there allowing itself to be hit. I'm not sure you realize just how little a 50+ ton armored vehicle is even going to be slowed down by driving over light infantry, but the driver is barely going to notice the bump and it's a spectacularly bad idea to get anywhere near a moving tank without a tank of your own.
And I'm not sure you realize we are not talking about real life but a fantasy in space setting in which everyone (except the Imperial Guard) is different degrees of super-human bioengineered monstrosities if not outright magic. A tank may have no issues running over a human mob, but a Space Marine, Daemon, Ork, Eldar, or Tyranid is just going to jump over it, rip the hatches off and kill the guys inside.
And that's assuming we are just talking about infantry and not monsters like Dreadnoughts, Greater Daemons, Wraithlords or Carnifexes which can just throw the tank around like a toy, because again fantasy in space setting that only occasionally cares about physics (which BTW kinda helps 40k tanks, because 40k tank design utterly sucks).
“The lore is wrong! That’s not how physics work,” is not the argument you think it is.
And, not that you care, but I play Daemons. I like them as a faction-without needing to take Marines. (I do mix them, usually-but I shouldn’t be forced to.)
Tyran wrote: And I'm not sure you realize we are not talking about real life but a fantasy in space setting in which everyone (except the Imperial Guard) is different degrees of super-human bioengineered monstrosities if not outright magic. A tank may have no issues running over a human mob, but a Space Marine, Daemon, Ork, Eldar, or Tyranid is just going to jump over it, rip the hatches off and kill the guys inside.
And then get stabbed to death by some normal humans with pointy bits of metal and wood clubs. Sorry, but the whole superman marine thing is not backed up by lore or game mechanics.
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JNAProductions wrote: “The lore is wrong! That’s not how physics work,” is not the argument you think it is.
In your opinion. In my opinion it's a great argument and some bits of lore need to change.
And, not that you care, but I play Daemons. I like them as a faction-without needing to take Marines. (I do mix them, usually-but I shouldn’t be forced to.)
I don't really care. I accept that some people may be unhappy with a necessary change for the greater good of the game. Every change always has people who don't like it.
Tyran wrote: That's a horrible idea as it would make tanks almost invulnerable in melee as long as they moved.
Yep. Bring guns or risk getting crushed. Tanks also shouldn't be locked in combat by infantry units, if a tank gets surrounded by infantry it just drives over them like they don't even exist and continues fighting.
You are aware that there are factions like Daemons that barely have guns, right?
In fact I'm pretty sure Space Marines ripping apart tanks in melee is a part of the lore, and the same goes for all the walkers and monsters in the game. A tank getting surrounded by an Ork mob or a Tyranid swarm is usually a very dead tank (Tyranids in particular are known to immobilize tanks by throwing their bodies into the internal parts of the tracks).
The issue is at the moment is that tanks get destroyed very easily.
Demons and nids have plenty of medium and large monsters that can take on a tank, why bemoan that their infantry can't? Besides nuds swarming and immobilising a tank by throwing vast numbers into the literal meat grinder sounds like a tactic ill suited to tabletop play. If you ad an immbolisination mechanic yeah sure, but you'd still be tasking your bigger creature to dealing with the then static bunker.
Tanks are covered in armour. Could besaid in a basic sense they are made out of the stuff. Armour stops catastrophic damage being rendered to the vehicle and to the crew. They are also pretty robust item. To knock a tank out you need to deliver exsplosive force into the crew compartment, kill all crew members or set fire to the fuel or ammo. Everything else is going to immobilise it or be highly inefficent. And if the thing is imobilised its still an amoured box. Its still a bunker that can shoot. What is more what is whacking armour with hand weapons going to do? If a russ was made that flimsy you'd think that autocannon fire would shred straight through the vehicle from the front and sides. If a marine or ork can remove buckled plates of armour with their hands battle cannon shells should blow through intact plates with ease and explode within the vehicle essentially oneshotting it. But marines and orks get bombs, krak grenades, mrlta bombs, rokkit llaunchers, missile launchers, and las cannons, why the heck should they be able to melee swarm a vehicle as well? What woulf it actually achieve without things like AT grenades that should be pretty common.
Wyldhunt wrote: * The possibility that my opponent will bring a skew list where their army contains a lot of tanks exists. Such lists would set the value of X very high.
And here's the root of the problem: the ability to bring skew lists. If you get rid of knights as an independent faction, go back to the 5th edition FOC, remove vehicle squadrons, and go back to only troops being able to score objectives you force more balanced TAC lists. Even if you can theoretically figure out a way to bring nothing but vehicles (probably in a small game where the FOC isn't as restrictive) you'll still lose every game because you can't score VP. And a more realistic tank-heavy list is going to have 3-4 true tanks at most, the rest of the list is going to be light tanks and transports that are much easier to kill without the strongest anti-tank weapons.
Respectfully, I see a few problems here.
1. The FOC had problems of its own. In addition to being less fluffy for some armies, requiring a greater troop tax of some armies than others, and failing to support certain army themes without extra rules, it also didn't prevent people from taking skew lists.
2. Only scoring with troops also created problems. It compounded the troop tax issue and rewarded armies with cheap or durable troops. If your troops weren't cheap or powerful enough to be worth spamming, games often devolved into seeing whether or not you could keep your troops alive long enough for end game scoring which in turn meant that your troops often ended up hiding all game rather than contributing.
3. I'd argue that the current game actually encourages "balanced TAC" lists pretty well and that making the rules reward tank spam and make troops worse at killing tanks would actually result in more skewed (and less diverse) list building.
I don't mean this as an attack, but it kind of seems like you've got your nostalgia goggles on or that the armies you like to play happened to do really well under the 5th edition rules.
* Bonus point: sometimes it's fun to run a themed army list, but not all themes lend themselves to having a lot of anti-tank. In the current rules, such a theme army might struggle against enemy tanks, but they'd still be allowed to fight/interact/play the game. If we make tanks immune to non-anti-tank, our theme army is much more likely to result in an unenjoyable game due to non-interactivity.
I don't think this is true in any meaningful way. The ability to wound anything on a 6 is maybe psychologically reassuring to some people but in reality a "thematic" list with no anti-tank threats is just going to get wiped off the table by a tank-heavy skew list. You might plink off a few wounds before getting tabled but it's not going to make any real difference in the final outcome.
I'd argue that the psychological factor is a meaningful one given that it can directly impact the player's perceived game experience. To clarify, I'm also not necessarily talking about a list with "no anti-tank threats," as you put it. Just a list whose theme encourages taking fewer units that contribute towards X. If I want to run a thematic striking scorpions shrine list, for instance, I might want to field three squads of striking scorpions. Which in 5e terms would be heresy because it would mean I wasn't fielding my mandatory fire dragon squads.
And unless you let enemy units opt out of attacking, this would increase tank melee lethality by quite a bit which would then need to cost points.
I would be happy to get rid of tank melee entirely. Bring back an ability like tank shock, where in the movement phase you can smash into a bunch of infantry and force them to fall back out of the way, but otherwise tanks don't have an engagement range or make melee attacks. If you don't wish to attack the tank you can just decline to do so.
(Obviously tanks with actual melee weapons would have rules for using them.)
See, I remember the tank shock rules being the 40k equivalent of D&D 3.5's grappling rules. Which is to say that they were convoluted, confusing, generally people avoided using them to save everyone the headache. Between this and the points above, I'm guessing you played an imperial army (probably IG) in 5th edition, Bob?
JNAProductions wrote: “The lore is wrong! That’s not how physics work,” is not the argument you think it is.
In your opinion. In my opinion it's a great argument and some bits of lore need to change.
And, not that you care, but I play Daemons. I like them as a faction-without needing to take Marines. (I do mix them, usually-but I shouldn’t be forced to.)
I don't really care. I accept that some people may be unhappy with a necessary change for the greater good of the game. Every change always has people who don't like it.
May have to agree to disagree here. As I understand it, your desired changes in this thread seem like they would (re)introduce a lot of problems without much upside beyond satisfying your personal beliefs on how tanks ought to behave when being wailed on by super soldiers and aliens.
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OldMate wrote: What is more what is whacking armour with hand weapons going to do? If a russ was made that flimsy you'd think that autocannon fire would shred straight through the vehicle from the front and sides. If a marine or ork can remove buckled plates of armour with their hands battle cannon shells should blow through intact plates with ease and explode within the vehicle essentially oneshotting it. But marines and orks get bombs, krak grenades, mrlta bombs, rokkit llaunchers, missile launchers, and las cannons, why the heck should they be able to melee swarm a vehicle as well? What woulf it actually achieve without things like AT grenades that should be pretty common.
Grenades are in a mechanically weird place right now, but I've always interpreted melee vs tanks to include their use. When imperial infantry charge a tank in 40k and take some wounds off of it, I interpret that to be the result of them lobbing grenades into its path or wedging explosives into its treads, turrets, and any other fragile-looking bits. They're not pistol whipping metal plates, but the might be shooting into fire points or shooting bolt pistols at access hatches. S4 models might be manually bending gun barrels to prevent weapons from firing or cause misfires that harm the crew.
The issue is at the moment is that tanks get destroyed very easily.
Demons and nids have plenty of medium and large monsters that can take on a tank, why bemoan that their infantry can't? Besides nuds swarming and immobilising a tank by throwing vast numbers into the literal meat grinder sounds like a tactic ill suited to tabletop play. If you ad an immbolisination mechanic yeah sure, but you'd still be tasking your bigger creature to dealing with the then static bunker.
Tanks are covered in armour. Could besaid in a basic sense they are made out of the stuff. Armour stops catastrophic damage being rendered to the vehicle and to the crew. They are also pretty robust item. To knock a tank out you need to deliver exsplosive force into the crew compartment, kill all crew members or set fire to the fuel or ammo. Everything else is going to immobilise it or be highly inefficent. And if the thing is imobilised its still an amoured box. Its still a bunker that can shoot. What is more what is whacking armour with hand weapons going to do? If a russ was made that flimsy you'd think that autocannon fire would shred straight through the vehicle from the front and sides. If a marine or ork can remove buckled plates of armour with their hands battle cannon shells should blow through intact plates with ease and explode within the vehicle essentially oneshotting it. But marines and orks get bombs, krak grenades, mrlta bombs, rokkit llaunchers, missile launchers, and las cannons, why the heck should they be able to melee swarm a vehicle as well? What woulf it actually achieve without things like AT grenades that should be pretty common.
Tanks are covered in armor, but most of that armor is usually concentrated on the front facing of the vehicle. In fact that kinda is the whole point of this thread.
I mean, even during 5th it wasn't impossible for a horde unit to glance a vehicle in melee as long as the horde unit in question had S4 and the vehicle in question had a rear armor value of 10 (most tanks had rear AV of 10).
IIRCGW even noted that the "melee always targets rear" was to represent ripping hatches off and other weak points, and to be blunt 40k tanks are full of weak points like sponsons and hull mounted weapons (really if we really want tank armor realism, there should be a rule that sponsons and hull weapons reduce the armor of the side they are mounted on).
Also my issue with Bob's argument was making tanks 6s to be hit in melee, which is silly.
If a Space Marine player spent the points in power fists or thunder hammers, they should get to wreck a tank if they managed to get into melee with it.
Tyran wrote: Also my issue with Bob's argument was making tanks 6s to be hit in melee, which is silly.
If a Space Marine player spent the points in power fists or thunder hammers, they should get to wreck a tank if they managed to get into melee with it.
Why? It worked just fine in previous editions.
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Wyldhunt wrote: Respectfully, I see a few problems here.
1. The FOC had problems of its own. In addition to being less fluffy for some armies, requiring a greater troop tax of some armies than others, and failing to support certain army themes without extra rules, it also didn't prevent people from taking skew lists.
2. Only scoring with troops also created problems. It compounded the troop tax issue and rewarded armies with cheap or durable troops. If your troops weren't cheap or powerful enough to be worth spamming, games often devolved into seeing whether or not you could keep your troops alive long enough for end game scoring which in turn meant that your troops often ended up hiding all game rather than contributing.
3. I'd argue that the current game actually encourages "balanced TAC" lists pretty well and that making the rules reward tank spam and make troops worse at killing tanks would actually result in more skewed (and less diverse) list building.
1) Was it perfect? Maybe not. But it was certainly better than the "ignore slot limits, take whatever you like" that followed it. And it did a lot to minimize the ability to take skew lists, especially if you also remove vehicle squadrons from all but the lightest of vehicles (Sentinels, Piranhas, etc).
2) That's a balance issue with certain troops units, not the concept of only troops scoring. I'd be fine with balance adjustments to the individual units to fix this. And the progressive scoring system of 9th edition's standard missions eliminates the "hide your token troops until the end" problem since you have to get out and score VP as aggressively as possible.
3) By coincidence, maybe, not by design. GW sometimes manages to have a meta where there's enough diversity in powerful units that you are encouraged to take a somewhat diverse range of stuff. But when there's a single obvious winner you get stuff like Tau crisis spam, Tyranid MC spam, etc, and there's nothing stopping you from going all-in on a heavily skewed list concept. It's just too easy to get more detachment slots to bring more copies of the thing you want to spam. Contrast that with a proper FOC and no vehicle squadrons, where true tanks would only be available in your heavy support slots. That's a maximum of three AV13-14 tanks, maybe 4-5 if you have a HQ tank commander option and you burn both your HQ slots on it.
I'd argue that the psychological factor is a meaningful one given that it can directly impact the player's perceived game experience. To clarify, I'm also not necessarily talking about a list with "no anti-tank threats," as you put it. Just a list whose theme encourages taking fewer units that contribute towards X. If I want to run a thematic striking scorpions shrine list, for instance, I might want to field three squads of striking scorpions. Which in 5e terms would be heresy because it would mean I wasn't fielding my mandatory fire dragon squads.
Why are you limited to fire dragons? You have plenty of other units that can kill tanks, or at least should be able to kill tanks. Why not take a trio of Fire Prisms and arm your Wave Serpents with lances, if you don't want to spend any of your elite slots on anti-tank units? The only lists that would really suffer here would be deliberate stupidity like "I took nothing but basic guardsmen with lasguns lol", and do we really care about the psychological factor with lists that are deliberately made to be non-functional?
See, I remember the tank shock rules being the 40k equivalent of D&D 3.5's grappling rules. Which is to say that they were convoluted, confusing, generally people avoided using them to save everyone the headache. Between this and the points above, I'm guessing you played an imperial army (probably IG) in 5th edition, Bob?
I played guard, yeah, but I don't remember tank shock being all that complicated. And I'm certainly not committed to that particular set of rules, I just think that something like it would be a better mechanic than the weird melee mechanic tanks currently have.
May have to agree to disagree here. As I understand it, your desired changes in this thread seem like they would (re)introduce a lot of problems without much upside beyond satisfying your personal beliefs on how tanks ought to behave when being wailed on by super soldiers and aliens.
Yes, my changes are because I want to see the rules match the fluff. I'm not sure why this is a bad thing?
Tyran wrote: Also my issue with Bob's argument was making tanks 6s to be hit in melee, which is silly.
If a Space Marine player spent the points in power fists or thunder hammers, they should get to wreck a tank if they managed to get into melee with it.
Why not? Plenty of tanks were killed in melee back then. Are you afraid that you won't get guaranteed kills just because you made a successful charge?
If a Sentinel has 2 Hull Points (or whatever you want to call it) and AV 10, you'd need 18 attacks with a S8 Powerfist to kill it.
Does that seem reasonable? That a 5-man squad of Vanguard Veterans, all armed with Powerfists, would on average FAIL to kill a single Sentinel in close combat?
Why not? Plenty of tanks were killed in melee back then. Are you afraid that you won't get guaranteed kills just because you made a successful charge?
I mean, the way it worked in previous editions wasn't how you phrased it. A tank needed to go at its max speed (and thus be unable to fire weapons) to need 6s to be hit.
Tyran wrote: I mean, the way it worked in previous editions wasn't how you phrased it. A tank needed to go at its max speed (and thus be unable to fire weapons) to need 6s to be hit.
I'm probably thinking of Tau/Eldar then, where all of the tanks were either fast or counted as fast for shooting purposes. Although moving tanks were definitely not hit as easily as stationary ones.
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JNAProductions wrote: If a Sentinel has 2 Hull Points (or whatever you want to call it) and AV 10, you'd need 18 attacks with a S8 Powerfist to kill it.
Does that seem reasonable? That a 5-man squad of Vanguard Veterans, all armed with Powerfists, would on average FAIL to kill a single Sentinel in close combat?
15 attacks, you mean. Hitting on 6s, glancing on a 2+, possibly fewer attacks if you roll that wrecked or explodes result. And walkers fought with normal WS back then (and fought back), so for a 2 HP conventional vehicle you're talking about something more like a Piranha. And yeah, I think it's fair that it's really hard to do anything to a skimmer as it flashes past at 100mph. You get only a fleeting moment to attack it and if your swing isn't perfect you miss by a mile.
Tyran wrote: I mean, the way it worked in previous editions wasn't how you phrased it. A tank needed to go at its max speed (and thus be unable to fire weapons) to need 6s to be hit.
I'm probably thinking of Tau/Eldar then, where all of the tanks were either fast or counted as fast for shooting purposes. Although moving tanks were definitely not hit as easily as stationary ones.
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JNAProductions wrote: If a Sentinel has 2 Hull Points (or whatever you want to call it) and AV 10, you'd need 18 attacks with a S8 Powerfist to kill it.
Does that seem reasonable? That a 5-man squad of Vanguard Veterans, all armed with Powerfists, would on average FAIL to kill a single Sentinel in close combat?
15 attacks, you mean. Hitting on 6s, glancing on a 2+, possibly fewer attacks if you roll that wrecked or explodes result. And walkers fought with normal WS back then (and fought back), so for a 2 HP conventional vehicle you're talking about something more like a Piranha. And yeah, I think it's fair that it's really hard to do anything to a skimmer as it flashes past at 100mph. You get only a fleeting moment to attack it and if your swing isn't perfect you miss by a mile.
I did indeed goof the math-I was thinking of a 3+, so that'd be AV 11.
But that's an entire Vanguard Veteran Squad, armed with Power Fists, to kill a 2 HP vehicle.
135 points of melee antitank to kill a flimsy little speeder.
JNAProductions wrote: But that's an entire Vanguard Veteran Squad, armed with Power Fists, to kill a 2 HP vehicle.
135 points of melee antitank to kill a flimsy little speeder.
I'm still not sure why this is a problem. It's not that the "flimsy little speeder" is durable, it's that it's flying around at 100mph and troops on foot have little hope of managing to hit it. That seems entirely accurate to the fluff.
JNAProductions wrote: But that's an entire Vanguard Veteran Squad, armed with Power Fists, to kill a 2 HP vehicle.
135 points of melee antitank to kill a flimsy little speeder.
I'm still not sure why this is a problem. It's not that the "flimsy little speeder" is durable, it's that it's flying around at 100mph and troops on foot have little hope of managing to hit it. That seems entirely accurate to the fluff.
A Piranha moves 16".
That's slightly faster than a Space Marine Bike-but it doesn't have the 6" auto-advance rule, meaning it's slower than a bike going all out, usually.
Should a Bike that advances (for 20" of movement) also only be hit on 6s in close combat?
In game mechanics. In the fluff it has a top speed of 100mph and, unlike the bike, it can fly so it doesn't have to slow down for rough terrain. IMO this is one of these issues with 40k not being proper 28mm scale, the Piranha should be significantly faster than the bikes in rule terms.
Wyldhunt wrote: Respectfully, I see a few problems here.
1. The FOC had problems of its own. In addition to being less fluffy for some armies, requiring a greater troop tax of some armies than others, and failing to support certain army themes without extra rules, it also didn't prevent people from taking skew lists.
2. Only scoring with troops also created problems. It compounded the troop tax issue and rewarded armies with cheap or durable troops. If your troops weren't cheap or powerful enough to be worth spamming, games often devolved into seeing whether or not you could keep your troops alive long enough for end game scoring which in turn meant that your troops often ended up hiding all game rather than contributing.
3. I'd argue that the current game actually encourages "balanced TAC" lists pretty well and that making the rules reward tank spam and make troops worse at killing tanks would actually result in more skewed (and less diverse) list building.
1) Was it perfect? Maybe not. But it was certainly better than the "ignore slot limits, take whatever you like" that followed it. And it did a lot to minimize the ability to take skew lists, especially if you also remove vehicle squadrons from all but the lightest of vehicles (Sentinels, Piranhas, etc).
I feel like the rule of three has done a lot more to cut down on spam than the FOC ever did. Especially given how arbitrary battlefield roles are. So even ignoring vehicle squadrons, you had 5e IG putting hellhounds/devildogs/banewolves into FA, various artillery or russes into HS, and then giving chimeras to everyone else. Marines were in a similar position and could even field vehicular HQs (Bjorn, I think that tank upgrade guy, etc.). And of course 'nids could stick MCs into their HQ, Elite, HS, and Troop (tervigon) slots. So from where I stand, the FOC didn't really do any of the good you mentioned but it did come with extra problems.
2) That's a balance issue with certain troops units, not the concept of only troops scoring. I'd be fine with balance adjustments to the individual units to fix this. And the progressive scoring system of 9th edition's standard missions eliminates the "hide your token troops until the end" problem since you have to get out and score VP as aggressively as possible.
It's not so much a problem with specific troops as a problem with the concept of troops in the first place. GW has been wildly inconsistent with what is and is not a troop. Sometimes they're seemingly intentionally cost-ineffective (read: underpowered) units that you have to take as a troops tax. Sometimes they're among the most lethal or durable or cheap units in your codex. So mechanically, what constitutes a troop is all over the place, and narratively, GW only sometimes supports the idea that troops are whatever your subfaction fields the most of. So you end up with winners and losers when you make troops mandatory.
Progressive scoring would avoid making troops hide all game, but it would swap it out with troops getting hunted down immediately so that the winner just becomes whoever scores highest before all their troops die. So again, this ends up favoring cheap or durable troops over squishy or just generally meh troops. Tbf, these problems exist in 40k already, but making FOCs mandatory makes the problems worse.
3) By coincidence, maybe, not by design. GW sometimes manages to have a meta where there's enough diversity in powerful units that you are encouraged to take a somewhat diverse range of stuff. But when there's a single obvious winner you get stuff like Tau crisis spam, Tyranid MC spam, etc, and there's nothing stopping you from going all-in on a heavily skewed list concept. It's just too easy to get more detachment slots to bring more copies of the thing you want to spam. Contrast that with a proper FOC and no vehicle squadrons, where true tanks would only be available in your heavy support slots. That's a maximum of three AV13-14 tanks, maybe 4-5 if you have a HQ tank commander option and you burn both your HQ slots on it.
I think if you're going to bank on a "proper FOC", you probably have to start by defining what units would hypothetically go where. Because historically, units have ended up in some unusual force org slots. AV12 didn't keep dreadnaughts ought of the Elites slot or devil dogs out of the FA slot. Also, I'm less worried about the especially high AV units (AV13-14) and more worried about the AV11+ in general; the units that would be immune to bolters, shurikens, splinters, shootas, etc. In 5e, I could consistently kill a land raider or a couple of battle wagons. What created an issue were the hordes of AV 11-12 tanks that I wasn't allowed to interact with.
But if we're talking list diversity, I definitely don't think of 5e (or 6e or 7e) as glowing examples. Even in editions where formations weren't a thing, many factions tended to be very monobuild.
Why are you limited to fire dragons? You have plenty of other units that can kill tanks, or at least should be able to kill tanks. Why not take a trio of Fire Prisms and arm your Wave Serpents with lances, if you don't want to spend any of your elite slots on anti-tank units? The only lists that would really suffer here would be deliberate stupidity like "I took nothing but basic guardsmen with lasguns lol", and do we really care about the psychological factor with lists that are deliberately made to be non-functional?
At the risk of derailing us into eldar-specific territory...
Spoiler:
Eldar guardians (and thus eldar vehicles) hit on 4+ in 5e, and many of the platforms that could take multiple anti-tank weapons twin-linked those guns. So if you wanted to take a bright lance, you were looking at...
...A guardian squad that ended up being about 100 points for a single BS3 (hit on a 4+) shot or
....a falcon that would spend the whole game stun-locked and/or turbo boosting so that it could land its cargo of dire avengers on an objective on turns 5 or 6 where it would then pray that the game ended. (See: DAVU falcon). Also hits on a 4+. Or
...A war walker squad that wasn't terrible for its cost, but was also AV10 and open-topped and still hit on a 4+. So they'd probably do some decent damage for a turn or two, and then the squad would be dead.
... A wraith lord. Whose bright lances became a single twin-linked shot if you took two of them, so you usually went with a lance and a missile launcher. Not a terrible unit really, but we're talking something like 120ish points (iirc) for two shots that needed a spirit sight babysitter. Also, the wraithlord was T8 (pretty solid), but W3, so they tended to die pretty quickly to missile launchers and lascannons due to the all-or-nothing AP system.
...A wave serpent. Expensive, and fired a single twin-linked lance shot, and wasn't all that durable if you were moving slowly enough to shoot with it. So you tended to spend half the moving flat out to give them a 4+ cover save in an effort to deliver their expensive passengers.
... Oh. Or a vyper. Which was basically a less cost-effective war walker because you only got one anti-tank gun.
Fire prisms were okay, but they were still only hitting every other turn, and the ease with which you could shake/stun a vehicle meant that they tended to spend a lot of the game not shooting. Wraithguard were pretty good anti-tank, but they were also slow, expensive, were a good target for high-strength/good AP weapons, and putting a half-sized squad into a transport (they took up two seats) meant you were putting even more eggs into a very expensive basket. A squad of 5 was something like 200 points after you added in the spiritseer that kept them from freezing up. A squad of 10 (walking across the table) was something like 400 points. You could also field a seer council (to the irritation of everyone you played) who also ended up being something like 300 or 400 points but were crazy durable for the time and could reliably take on pretty much anything. Seer council was one of the spammy monobuild options.
And then you had fire dragons. Who were very killy for their cost, couldn't be stun-locked, and could be hidden in one of those transports that wanted to spend all game flying in circles to avoid being killed. You would drop the dragons off. They would obliterate the one tank you were allowed to point them at. Your opponent would freak out. And then the dragon unit would promptly be declared a priority target and die. So you basically got to kill one enemy tank per fire dragon unit each game, and then you were praying that your bright lances and wych blades could pick up their slack.
tldr; eldar were an expensive, elite army who only had a couple of reliable anti-tank options. So in an edition where parking lots were common, list diversity took a back seat to spamming the decent anti-tank units. And what you're proposing seems like it would be a return to that.
Yes, my changes are because I want to see the rules match the fluff. I'm not sure why this is a bad thing?
Not sure I'd use the word "bad." The problem is that you seem to want the rules to match your very specific interpretation of the fluff (which seems to ignore established canon). And you want to match that fluff interpretation so badly that you seem to be willing to make the game worse (as a game) to do so.
Wyldhunt wrote: I feel like the rule of three has done a lot more to cut down on spam than the FOC ever did. Especially given how arbitrary battlefield roles are. So even ignoring vehicle squadrons, you had 5e IG putting hellhounds/devildogs/banewolves into FA, various artillery or russes into HS, and then giving chimeras to everyone else. Marines were in a similar position and could even field vehicular HQs (Bjorn, I think that tank upgrade guy, etc.). And of course 'nids could stick MCs into their HQ, Elite, HS, and Troop (tervigon) slots. So from where I stand, the FOC didn't really do any of the good you mentioned but it did come with extra problems.
IMO the problem with Ro3 alone is that there are too many things that escape it. I can take three LRBTs in heavy support (or nine if we still allow squadrons) but then also three Basilisks, three Medusas, three Hydras, three Baneblades, etc. Space marines can take three each of the Gladiator variants (which for some reason aren't a single datasheet), three each of the two Predator variants, three each of the Land raider variants, and three each of the Repulsor variants. A space marine army is going to be way beyond 2000 points before they even come close to running out of different tanks to take. But with a hard limit of three heavy support slots and no vehicle squadrons you get three of those tanks, period, no matter what combination you try to take them in.
And yeah, you'll have stuff outside of heavy support. But if you stick to proper slot discipline it's much less of an issue. A whole bunch of Chimeras on the table isn't a big deal when they're all side AV 10 and require the purchase of an infantry squad to unlock.
It's not so much a problem with specific troops as a problem with the concept of troops in the first place. GW has been wildly inconsistent with what is and is not a troop. Sometimes they're seemingly intentionally cost-ineffective (read: underpowered) units that you have to take as a troops tax. Sometimes they're among the most lethal or durable or cheap units in your codex. So mechanically, what constitutes a troop is all over the place, and narratively, GW only sometimes supports the idea that troops are whatever your subfaction fields the most of. So you end up with winners and losers when you make troops mandatory.
Or we could fix the issue with troops balance so there aren't winners and losers to that degree. Make all troops reasonably balanced in point efficiency terms but always basic infantry with few special rules so that if you want to have any chance of winning you need a healthy investment in basic guardsmen/tactical marines/fire warriors/etc.
I think if you're going to bank on a "proper FOC", you probably have to start by defining what units would hypothetically go where. Because historically, units have ended up in some unusual force org slots. AV12 didn't keep dreadnaughts ought of the Elites slot or devil dogs out of the FA slot. Also, I'm less worried about the especially high AV units (AV13-14) and more worried about the AV11+ in general; the units that would be immune to bolters, shurikens, splinters, shootas, etc. In 5e, I could consistently kill a land raider or a couple of battle wagons. What created an issue were the hordes of AV 11-12 tanks that I wasn't allowed to interact with.
Is AV 11-12 really that much of a problem? Yes, you ignore bolters but you don't ignore autocannons, missile launchers, scatter lasers, etc. I don't care if basic rifles are unable to kill vehicles, the interactivity issue was when you had a bunch of AV 13-14 that only a few specialized weapons could effectively attack and even a lot of supposed anti-tank weapons couldn't even roll dice against it. If true tanks and their AV 13-14 are limited then the only lists that will have a major interactivity problem are the deliberately non-functional ones like "lol, Tau with no ranged weapons". And I don't think any system should ever worry about handling deliberately stupid choices.
tldr; eldar were an expensive, elite army who only had a couple of reliable anti-tank options. So in an edition where parking lots were common, list diversity took a back seat to spamming the decent anti-tank units. And what you're proposing seems like it would be a return to that.
Sure, but those are all unit-specific problems. There's no inherent rule that says a Falcon has to be an ineffective anti-tank unit. It has a lance and a pulse laser, two weapons that are thematically appropriate for killing tanks. We're talking about borrowing some concepts from 5th edition, not returning every unit to its exact 5th edition performance.
IMO the problem with Ro3 alone is that there are too many things that escape it. I can take three LRBTs in heavy support (or nine if we still allow squadrons) but then also three Basilisks, three Medusas, three Hydras, three Baneblades, etc. Space marines can take three each of the Gladiator variants (which for some reason aren't a single datasheet), three each of the two Predator variants, three each of the Land raider variants, and three each of the Repulsor variants. A space marine army is going to be way beyond 2000 points before they even come close to running out of different tanks to take. But with a hard limit of three heavy support slots and no vehicle squadrons you get three of those tanks, period, no matter what combination you try to take them in.
Tbf, that's really mostly an IG/marine problem, and all those loophole units could absolutely stand to be reduced down a handful of datasheets. My dark lance ravager isn't a separate unit from my disintegrator ravager, for instance.
And yeah, you'll have stuff outside of heavy support. But if you stick to proper slot discipline it's much less of an issue. A whole bunch of Chimeras on the table isn't a big deal when they're all side AV 10 and require the purchase of an infantry squad to unlock.
I'd be willing to see what the revised force org role breakdown would look like, but I feel like there's a good chance that any such breakdown is going to run into its own issues. Example: Fluffy Saim-hann lists want to field guardian jetbikes, shining spears, and vypers all in one list with the the guardians making up the bulk of their army. FOC has 3 FA slots. All of those units probably make sense in the FA slot. The current system at least lets the Saim-Hann player field 3 squads of each of those units even if he's probably paying an Outrider tax to do so.
It's not so much a problem with specific troops as a problem with the concept of troops in the first place. GW has been wildly inconsistent with what is and is not a troop. Sometimes they're seemingly intentionally cost-ineffective (read: underpowered) units that you have to take as a troops tax. Sometimes they're among the most lethal or durable or cheap units in your codex. So mechanically, what constitutes a troop is all over the place, and narratively, GW only sometimes supports the idea that troops are whatever your subfaction fields the most of. So you end up with winners and losers when you make troops mandatory.
Or we could fix the issue with troops balance so there aren't winners and losers to that degree. Make all troops reasonably balanced in point efficiency terms but always basic infantry with few special rules so that if you want to have any chance of winning you need a healthy investment in basic guardsmen/tactical marines/fire warriors/etc.
This has been discussed in depth in threads dedicated to the topic, but basically, what you're describing doesn't really work. You've got custodes and harlequins whose troops are the equivalent of other factions' elites or even HQs. You've got tactical marines who are basically distinguished from devastators by the fact that they have worse weapon options and are thus just plain worse. You've got the entire eldar troop section that has generally been seen as a tax with the possible exception of right this moment when the army is riding a new codex high. (But even there, you'd probably rather take avengers over guardians if you still had the option, and rangers are kind of barely holding on by virtue of being cheap, easy to hide, and good at scoring points.)
Terminators are elites in one book, but better-and-also-psychic terminators are troops in another. And those troop terminators are apparently filling the same battlefield role as rangers, guardsmen, and (until recently) ripper swarms. So you can't really categorize troops based on their qualities, and you can't really balance some troops internally without overhauling what they are because "what they are" is "a worse version of a different unit that doesn't satisfy a troop tax."
Is AV 11-12 really that much of a problem? Yes, you ignore bolters but you don't ignore autocannons, missile launchers, scatter lasers, etc. I don't care if basic rifles are unable to kill vehicles, the interactivity issue was when you had a bunch of AV 13-14 that only a few specialized weapons could effectively attack and even a lot of supposed anti-tank weapons couldn't even roll dice against it.
If I field a vanilla list with a bit of everything and the army across from me is a wall of AV11+, then none of my S4 or worse weapons are allowed to interact with that wall. They can finish off the troop tax and HQ tax units once the transports are popped, but they can't meaningfully engage with 95% of my opponent's army. That's how things were in 5th edition, and it sucked if you weren't the guy playing the parking lot. >_>
tldr; eldar were an expensive, elite army who only had a couple of reliable anti-tank options. So in an edition where parking lots were common, list diversity took a back seat to spamming the decent anti-tank units. And what you're proposing seems like it would be a return to that.
Sure, but those are all unit-specific problems. There's no inherent rule that says a Falcon has to be an ineffective anti-tank unit. It has a lance and a pulse laser, two weapons that are thematically appropriate for killing tanks. We're talking about borrowing some concepts from 5th edition, not returning every unit to its exact 5th edition performance.
That's true, but the eldar-specific woes were meant to illustrate the broader point that encouraging a parking lot meta means that you punish people for taking non-anti-tank options. If you can take a flamer or a meltagun, you'll always take the meltagun and leave the flamer at home. If you're an eldar player, you'll leave the striking scorpions and banshees on the shelf because you need more dragons to pop tanks. If you're a 'cron player, you'll just mentally edit tesla carbines out of your 'dex because you'll need gauss to glance tanks to death.
You're writing a 2,000 point list. X represents the amount of anti-tank you'll need comfortably play against a parking lot. To reach X, you'll need to spend Y% of your points on anti-tank, Z% of your points on your mandatory HQ and troop tax (which might not be contributing towards X if your troops don't do anti-tank), and then you 100-Y-Z is how many points are left over to take units that don't do anti-tank but you want to field anyway.
So for a given army what do you think the value of Y is if you're facing a hard skew parking lot list? For that same army, what is the cheapest combination of mandatory HQ and troops you can take? (The HQ and troops may or may not count towards X). The remaining points are what you can spend on hormagaunts or kroot or what have you. In the current system, every unit in your army contributes towards X because everything can hurt a tank. Some units contribute less towards X than others, but it all goes towards X. In your system, only units that can hurt tanks count towards X.
In the past, GW tried to balance this out by making vehicles die relatively easily to weapons that contributed towards X. So you had the Hull Point system where glancing hits plinked vehicles to death (and parking lot players hated it). You had editions where a single meltagun shot had pretty good chances of blowing up a leman russ, but your opponent was basically only allowed to interact with your army using his meltaguns (and people hated it especially if their army didn't have meltaguns.) In 8th, GW said, "Okay, yeah. It sort of sucks when half your army can't hurt your opponent's wall of tanks. Let's allow everything to hurt everything, but anti-infantry guns will only take out a small sliver of a tank's health." That's basically what we've stuck with, and I personally prefer that to the other systems we've had in the past. Yes, the power sword that can cut through a terminator is able to hurt a russ'; just don't expect to whittle your way to the engine block in a hurry.
Wyldhunt wrote: Tbf, that's really mostly an IG/marine problem, and all those loophole units could absolutely stand to be reduced down a handful of datasheets. My dark lance ravager isn't a separate unit from my disintegrator ravager, for instance.
It's a pretty much everything but Eldar and their AV12-only problem. Tau can take four Hammerheads and three Sky Rays, orks have three each of three different Battlewagons, Tyranids have a ton of different heavy support monsters. Are all those units good currently? Of course not. But if they ever are and you want a skew list there are a lot of options for taking nothing but tanks and making Ro3 irrelevant.
I'd be willing to see what the revised force org role breakdown would look like, but I feel like there's a good chance that any such breakdown is going to run into its own issues. Example: Fluffy Saim-hann lists want to field guardian jetbikes, shining spears, and vypers all in one list with the the guardians making up the bulk of their army. FOC has 3 FA slots. All of those units probably make sense in the FA slot. The current system at least lets the Saim-Hann player field 3 squads of each of those units even if he's probably paying an Outrider tax to do so.
Obviously this is all hypothetical and I'm not really familiar with the exact list of units that is acceptable for the theme, but IMO a variant army list giving guardian jetbikes as troops at the expense of being able to take certain other units (and possibly other balancing factors) would probably be the best way to handle it. Or maybe each phoenix lord could take a no-slot command squad of their specific unit. But for most of the game the FOC is a pretty straightforward solution as-is.
This has been discussed in depth in threads dedicated to the topic, but basically, what you're describing doesn't really work.
It hasn't worked but that doesn't mean it can't work. Yes, some factions have troops that are equivalent to the elites in other factions but they should still be the basic infantry relative to their own faction. And those factions should pay an appropriate price for the scoring buff on their upgraded troops. Or maybe you do a bit of re-balancing to the units, simplifying the elite troops a bit and giving other units in the codex some better tools to compensate.
(And TBH gold marines should just be removed from the game. As a concept they're broken and putting them into the game required some major retcons that took away too much of what made them interesting.)
If I field a vanilla list with a bit of everything and the army across from me is a wall of AV11+, then none of my S4 or worse weapons are allowed to interact with that wall. They can finish off the troop tax and HQ tax units once the transports are popped, but they can't meaningfully engage with 95% of my opponent's army. That's how things were in 5th edition, and it sucked if you weren't the guy playing the parking lot. >_>
If 95% of your opponent's army is a wall of AV11+ then you put troops on objectives and automatically win because those AV11+ boxes can't score anything. More realistically a wall of AV 11+ is going to be 50-60% of your opponent's list, and each time you kill one of those light tanks with your anti-tank weapons you get a nice pile of targets for your lower-strength stuff.
That's true, but the eldar-specific woes were meant to illustrate the broader point that encouraging a parking lot meta means that you punish people for taking non-anti-tank options. If you can take a flamer or a meltagun, you'll always take the meltagun and leave the flamer at home. If you're an eldar player, you'll leave the striking scorpions and banshees on the shelf because you need more dragons to pop tanks. If you're a 'cron player, you'll just mentally edit tesla carbines out of your 'dex because you'll need gauss to glance tanks to death.
But that's only if you allow the extreme skew lists. If heavy support, where your actual tanks are taken, is capped at three models period and you need basic infantry to score objectives then you absolutely need those other options. Every list will have lots of infantry targets (or auto-lose), and even the vehicle-heavy lists will have primarily AV10-11 targets where your mid-strength weapons are relevant.
The problem with one-dimensional weapon choices is in the exact opposite situation: with the removal of AV you effectively combine anti-tank weapons with anti-MEQ weapons and take plasma guns on everything. High volume of fire mid-strength weapons are the ideal tool for pretty much everything. Melta is irrelevant because plasma does the same damage but divided over two shots for better anti-MEQ, vanquisher cannons are just battle cannons but worse, railguns didn't become relevant until GW added mortal wounds to kill multiple infantry models with one shot, Manticores went from being a specialist anti-tank weapon that sucked against marines to a generalist "kill every target type" balance mistake, etc. With the AV mechanic restored you regain the design space to have mid-strength marine killers that aren't great against vehicles and high-strength tank killers with AP 4 or worse so they don't effortlessly kill elite infantry.
,
In 8th, GW said, "Okay, yeah. It sort of sucks when half your army can't hurt your opponent's wall of tanks. Let's allow everything to hurt everything, but anti-infantry guns will only take out a small sliver of a tank's health." That's basically what we've stuck with, and I personally prefer that to the other systems we've had in the past. Yes, the power sword that can cut through a terminator is able to hurt a russ'; just don't expect to whittle your way to the engine block in a hurry.
But I don't really see the value here. The lists that will struggle with a FOC-limited game with AV, deliberately stupid lists with no anti-tank threats in a game with tanks, will still auto-lose in standard 9th edition games. Does it really matter if a comedy Tau list with no ranged weapons can theoretically plink away a couple of wounds before getting tabled 100-0? Or a list with nothing but conscripts and lasguns? At some point you just have to say no, that's not a competently built list and I don't care if the person playing it feels bad before they lose.
'This discussion highlights the difference in philosophy between 8th/9th edition and earlier editions. I can see why people like 8th/9th, and a large part of it stems from the desire to have it such that "you can take any units / army composition you want and have a chance at victory." It's letting people customize their army however they want with the promise that, "in theory" you can have a pathway to victory. Yes, 100 lasguns will eventually wound a titan, etc.
The problem of course is that in any sort of competitive or even lightly-competitive play (aka any time you agree to "matched play") there is a tendency to optimize your list around the most effective units. And since everything can wound everything, the incentive is to take as many of your best units as you can - hence the adoption of rule of 3. So now you take 3 of the strongest units and then 3 of the next strongest, etc. So while "in theory" you can take whatever you want and theoretically have a way to still damage your opponent, in practice that isn't what people are doing. People are tuning their list around the strongest units - as they have always done.
Which begs the question of what the heck is even the point of allowing ultimate freedom in list designing and allowing everything to potentially wound everything else, when the game isn't even remotely balanced enough to achieve that. And perhaps worst of all - what if it actually was balanced to achieve that? Would the game be even more of a pure luck dice fest?
I greatly prefer the older editions where there were possibilities for hard counters or situations where unit X just can't damage unit Y. Those mechanics required diversifying your list and accounting for a range of potential threats - or even more importantly utilize some out of the box thinking to mitigate the problem. I had a recent game (using ProHammer) where I had a land raider that my opponent couldn't actually wound (he was playing guard and didn't have anything stronger than S7 weapons). What did he do? He waited for my land raider to advance and used a few cheap Taurox's to road-block the land raider against a terrain piece. It tied the land raider up for a couple turns and neutralized where it was trying to drive to, forced the units to disembark early and made them susceptible to fire. It was pretty epic and well played.
Or take a much simpler route and give rectangular base for all vehicles that have armor facing values.
Then use line laser pointer and check if you have LOS to a certain side you're trying to hit.
Vehicle that don't have a reinforced front armor may not have a separate 'front armor' value - maybe you can make it so that only some of the vehicles have a 'front armor' and call what we're accustomed to calling a 'side armor' as 'hull armor' that serves as the general armor value, then have a "weak point" i.e. 'back armor' to suggest vulnerability on the vehicle, say the engine parts.
The problem with units being inmune to certain weapons isn't Land Raiders, because no list is entirely made of Land Raiders, but lists like Imperial Knights or 12 Leman Russes.
It is one of the issues that comes from 40k having scaled way beyond the original squad level
CadianSgtBob wrote: It's a pretty much everything but Eldar and their AV12-only problem. Tau can take four Hammerheads and three Sky Rays, orks have three each of three different Battlewagons, Tyranids have a ton of different heavy support monsters. Are all those units good currently? Of course not. But if they ever are and you want a skew list there are a lot of options for taking nothing but tanks and making Ro3 irrelevant.
Hmm. Fair. Guess I lost track of how some of the non-eldar datasheets were being split up these days.
Obviously this is all hypothetical and I'm not really familiar with the exact list of units that is acceptable for the theme, but IMO a variant army list giving guardian jetbikes as troops at the expense of being able to take certain other units (and possibly other balancing factors) would probably be the best way to handle it. Or maybe each phoenix lord could take a no-slot command squad of their specific unit. But for most of the game the FOC is a pretty straightforward solution as-is.
I'm confident you could come up with something that would work reasonably well, but I'm not sure whatever we came up with would be better so much as it would just be different. But I think it's worth pointing out that in order to justify a change to vehicles, we're talking about having to overhaul the army composition rules including adding in a bunch of special rules to modify those revised army creation rules. Which seems like a lot of bending over backwards to justify the initial change.
I don't consider the FOC to be better than what we have now, but it was... okay. Flawed, but okay. You could basically do the Rites of Battle thing to adjust the army composition rules for a given army theme. So if you choose a "Wild Riders" theme for your army, then you have the option to field guardian bikers as troops provided that only 1 in 3 bikes (at most) has a heavy weapon. And then you could adjust the number of FA slots or something. So then the trick is just to create Rites of Battle rules for every conceivable army theme.
This has been discussed in depth in threads dedicated to the topic, but basically, what you're describing doesn't really work.
It hasn't worked but that doesn't mean it can't work. Yes, some factions have troops that are equivalent to the elites in other factions but they should still be the basic infantry relative to their own faction. And those factions should pay an appropriate price for the scoring buff on their upgraded troops. Or maybe you do a bit of re-balancing to the units, simplifying the elite troops a bit and giving other units in the codex some better tools to compensate.
I am skeptical. Feels like you're hand waiving the issue by saying,"All you have to do is perfect the internal and external balance of every codex, and then my idea is fine." And sure. If you do that first, then mandatory troop taxes are fine provided you also let people redefine what units can be taken as troops based on their army theme. But at that point, if troops are as good as non-troops and non-troops can be made into troops with the right HQ or Rite of Battle or whatever, then why bother having mandatory troops in the first place? Like, if you've theoretically balanced guardians against dire avengers against swooping hawks, then why force me to take guardians before I'm allowed to take the other two? If the goal is to reduce my ability to take tanks, then why restrict what non-tanks I'm allowed to field?
(And TBH gold marines should just be removed from the game. As a concept they're broken and putting them into the game required some major retcons that took away too much of what made them interesting.)
Largely agree. Custodes should have been Imperial Agents that you could take a single unit of; maybe even a single model.
If 95% of your opponent's army is a wall of AV11+ then you put troops on objectives and automatically win because those AV11+ boxes can't score anything.
That's basically just the excuse people give for imperial knights though, right? They'll say it doesn't matter that your army can't hurt them because you win the game by standing on objectives and accepting your beating. You can win the match, sure, but you're not really getting the core engagement of "our dudes attack each other."
That's true, but the eldar-specific woes were meant to illustrate the broader point that encouraging a parking lot meta means that you punish people for taking non-anti-tank options. If you can take a flamer or a meltagun, you'll always take the meltagun and leave the flamer at home. If you're an eldar player, you'll leave the striking scorpions and banshees on the shelf because you need more dragons to pop tanks. If you're a 'cron player, you'll just mentally edit tesla carbines out of your 'dex because you'll need gauss to glance tanks to death.
But that's only if you allow the extreme skew lists. If heavy support, where your actual tanks are taken, is capped at three models period and you need basic infantry to score objectives then you absolutely need those other options. Every list will have lots of infantry targets (or auto-lose), and even the vehicle-heavy lists will have primarily AV10-11 targets where your mid-strength weapons are relevant.
Depends on your definition of "extreme" skew, I suppose. I remember this exact problem being a thing in 5th edition against marine and IG lists. Again, it was a bit worse for eldar than most because our anti-tank tended to be concentrated into specific units rather than scattered around (ex: one melta gun hiding in a tac marine squad). What tended to happen was that I'd reliably kill my opponent's most powerful tanks, but then my anti-tank units mostly gone halfway through the game. So by the end of the game, I just didn't have enough units that could kill tanks well enough to get through the parking lot of razorbacks or chimeras and the troops inside them. Granted, this was partly due to 5th edition's vehicle damage chart and glancing rules. Things died perfectly quickly in 6th(?) when everything had hull points because eldar could spam enough S6 to blast transports off the table. But no one seemed to like that very much.
The problem with one-dimensional weapon choices is in the exact opposite situation: with the removal of AV you effectively combine anti-tank weapons with anti-MEQ weapons and take plasma guns on everything. High volume of fire mid-strength weapons are the ideal tool for pretty much everything. Melta is irrelevant because plasma does the same damage but divided over two shots for better anti-MEQ, vanquisher cannons are just battle cannons but worse, railguns didn't become relevant until GW added mortal wounds to kill multiple infantry models with one shot, Manticores went from being a specialist anti-tank weapon that sucked against marines to a generalist "kill every target type" balance mistake, etc. With the AV mechanic restored you regain the design space to have mid-strength marine killers that aren't great against vehicles and high-strength tank killers with AP 4 or worse so they don't effortlessly kill elite infantry.
I think the simpler solution here is to just up the wounds on vehicles and the damage on anti-tank guns; which is what GW seems to be doing with the recent books. D2 plasma is great for killing marines and okay at chipping away at vehicle health, but it's not as good at hurting vehicles as a Dd6+2 lascannon. And if vehicles all went up in wounds by, say, 25%, you probably wouldn't want to rely on D2 alone.
But I don't really see the value here. The lists that will struggle with a FOC-limited game with AV, deliberately stupid lists with no anti-tank threats in a game with tanks, will still auto-lose in standard 9th edition games. Does it really matter if a comedy Tau list with no ranged weapons can theoretically plink away a couple of wounds before getting tabled 100-0? Or a list with nothing but conscripts and lasguns? At some point you just have to say no, that's not a competently built list and I don't care if the person playing it feels bad before they lose.
I feel like you're going a bit hyperbolic here. I'm not talking about lists with literally zero anti-tank in them; I'm talking about lists that have slightly less anti-tank than they would typically need for a well-rounded enemy list. And if they have less than they'd need against a well-rounded list, they have way less than they'd needed for a parking lot. And then their opponent will likely prioritize killing what anti-tank threats the thematic list has meaning that the skew list will spend most of the game being essentially invulnerable.
Don't think all kroot all the time. Think a bunch of kroot but with a couple squads of crisis suits and hammerheads for support.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Mezmorki wrote: 'This discussion highlights the difference in philosophy between 8th/9th edition and earlier editions. I can see why people like 8th/9th, and a large part of it stems from the desire to have it such that "you can take any units / army composition you want and have a chance at victory."
...
Which begs the question of what the heck is even the point of allowing ultimate freedom in list designing and allowing everything to potentially wound everything else, when the game isn't even remotely balanced enough to achieve that.
Yeah. This is sort of the heart of the skew problem. Basically, the game doesn't have any guard rails preventing you from fielding really strong or really weak lists, nor does it do anything to take matchups into account. For instance, it doesn't account for the disadvantage a horde army has when facing an opponent that has loaded up on high rate of fire and blast weapons.
Conceptually, it might be useful to have some sort of formula for measuring the overall power/synergy of your list as well as how skewed your offensive and defensive stats are against various types of opponents. So you might be restricted on how hard you could skew into a horde or parking lot lists. And then if the formula spotted a bad matchup, you could give the underdog some sort of advantage to hopefully balance things out. That's probably an unrealistic ask though.
Wyldhunt wrote: And then you could adjust the number of FA slots or something. So then the trick is just to create Rites of Battle rules for every conceivable army theme.
I doubt it. Most themes will either work fine within the FOC or be edge case concepts that don't really need official support. I suspect that once you start writing lists by reference to the actual fluff, not commitments to previous lists and their specific units, there would only be a fairly small number of iconic list themes that would need additional support.
Like, if you've theoretically balanced guardians against dire avengers against swooping hawks, then why force me to take guardians before I'm allowed to take the other two?
Because the goal is to ensure that every list has a substantial percentage of its points (at least 25-50%) invested in straightforward and relatively basic infantry. Balance issues are a lot easier to deal with if 50% of your army needs to be basic tactical marines with no special rules attached vs. the current situation where you can ignore them and only spam the overpowered skew thing. When a balance issue does come up there's an inherent limit to how much of the game it can be and the focus of the game will always be on the simplest and easiest to balance units.
That's basically just the excuse people give for imperial knights though, right? They'll say it doesn't matter that your army can't hurt them because you win the game by standing on objectives and accepting your beating. You can win the match, sure, but you're not really getting the core engagement of "our dudes attack each other."
People make it but it's stupid in 9th. Knights have access to obsec and even before they got it they could still score objectives. It was more of a defense by knight apologists than a realistic strategy for beating them. But what I'm talking about isn't just removing obsec, it's removing the ability to score objectives at all. That's a very different scenario and genuinely does become "you can never win a game with this list".
I think the simpler solution here is to just up the wounds on vehicles and the damage on anti-tank guns; which is what GW seems to be doing with the recent books. D2 plasma is great for killing marines and okay at chipping away at vehicle health, but it's not as good at hurting vehicles as a Dd6+2 lascannon. And if vehicles all went up in wounds by, say, 25%, you probably wouldn't want to rely on D2 alone.
This is a partial solution, but I don't see how it's any better than AV. If you implement it thoroughly enough to remove the plasma issue you risk creating the same scenario as AV, where everything but a short list of anti-tank weapons is completely ineffective at killing tank skew. Yeah, you'll have the psychological comfort of being able to at least pretend to roll dice but that doesn't have much practical value. Contrast this with the AV system, where you can have S6 anti-elite weapons that can't hurt tanks and AP4 anti-tank weapons that always allow the 2+/3+ armor saves on elites. There's an inherent block on those weapons overlapping so that even if GW makes the anti-elite weapon too cheap or gives it too many shots spamming it doesn't become an effective anti-everything tool..
Don't think all kroot all the time. Think a bunch of kroot but with a couple squads of crisis suits and hammerheads for support.
Then I don't really see the problem. A couple squads of crisis suits and multiple Hammerheads is quite a few anti-tank weapons. Maybe, because you went light on anti-tank, you reach a point in the game where you run out of anti-tank weapons before your opponent runs out of tanks but that's way short of "I can't even interact with 95% of that list". And I don't see a problem with "how much anti-tank do I bring" being a strategic decision, not something you're guaranteed to have every game no matter what you choose. Sometimes you just brought the wrong list for the meta and you have an uphill climb to win.
Wyldhunt wrote: And then you could adjust the number of FA slots or something. So then the trick is just to create Rites of Battle rules for every conceivable army theme.
I doubt it. Most themes will either work fine within the FOC or be edge case concepts that don't really need official support. I suspect that once you start writing lists by reference to the actual fluff, not commitments to previous lists and their specific units, there would only be a fairly small number of iconic list themes that would need additional support.
Off the top of my head... Saim-Hann wants bike troops. Iyanden wants wraith troops. Iybraesil wants banshee troops. Raven Wing wants bike troops. Death Wing wants terminator troops. White Scars want bike troops. Death Company wants Death Company troops. First company of any chapter wants terminator troops. Tank company wants tank troops. EC want noise marine troops. Night Lords might want raptor troops? (I don't know NL super well). And reasonable people probably have their own homebrew forces where unit X makes up the bulk of their force to the exclusion of conventional troops as well.
Like, if you've theoretically balanced guardians against dire avengers against swooping hawks, then why force me to take guardians before I'm allowed to take the other two?
Because the goal is to ensure that every list has a substantial percentage of its points (at least 25-50%) invested in straightforward and relatively basic infantry. Balance issues are a lot easier to deal with if 50% of your army needs to be basic tactical marines with no special rules attached vs. the current situation where you can ignore them and only spam the overpowered skew thing. When a balance issue does come up there's an inherent limit to how much of the game it can be and the focus of the game will always be on the simplest and easiest to balance units.
Ah. We may have to agree to disagree here. I'm strongly against the view that 50% of an army should be the same handful of units over and over again. It's mechanically punishing for some factions and narratively inappropriate for others. But again, I'd be willing to re-examine the issue once you've solved all internal and external troop-related balance issues.
That's basically just the excuse people give for imperial knights though, right? They'll say it doesn't matter that your army can't hurt them because you win the game by standing on objectives and accepting your beating. You can win the match, sure, but you're not really getting the core engagement of "our dudes attack each other."
People make it but it's stupid in 9th. Knights have access to obsec and even before they got it they could still score objectives. It was more of a defense by knight apologists than a realistic strategy for beating them. But what I'm talking about isn't just removing obsec, it's removing the ability to score objectives at all. That's a very different scenario and genuinely does become "you can never win a game with this list".
I still maintain that only being able to score with troops was terrible in 5th edition and would be terrible if reintroduced. But again, I guess the issue of some troops being inherently worse and/or worse at scoring than others might go away once you've solved all internal and external unit balance issues in the game. Think you can knock those balance changes out by Monday? (I tease.)
I think the simpler solution here is to just up the wounds on vehicles and the damage on anti-tank guns; which is what GW seems to be doing with the recent books. D2 plasma is great for killing marines and okay at chipping away at vehicle health, but it's not as good at hurting vehicles as a Dd6+2 lascannon. And if vehicles all went up in wounds by, say, 25%, you probably wouldn't want to rely on D2 alone.
This is a partial solution, but I don't see how it's any better than AV. If you implement it thoroughly enough to remove the plasma issue you risk creating the same scenario as AV, where everything but a short list of anti-tank weapons is completely ineffective at killing tank skew. Yeah, you'll have the psychological comfort of being able to at least pretend to roll dice but that doesn't have much practical value. Contrast this with the AV system, where you can have S6 anti-elite weapons that can't hurt tanks and AP4 anti-tank weapons that always allow the 2+/3+ armor saves on elites. There's an inherent block on those weapons overlapping so that even if GW makes the anti-elite weapon too cheap or gives it too many shots spamming it doesn't become an effective anti-everything tool..
If we're only talking about raising vehicle wounds by about 25%, then I don't think we fall into the trap you're describing. Currently, S4 attacks are able to meaningfully contribute against something like a rhino without being an efficient way to completely take it out. Giving the rhino an extra 2 or 3 wounds probably doesn't change that, but it does make the rhino a smidge more durable against anti-tank guns.
Don't think all kroot all the time. Think a bunch of kroot but with a couple squads of crisis suits and hammerheads for support.
Then I don't really see the problem. A couple squads of crisis suits and multiple Hammerheads is quite a few anti-tank weapons. Maybe, because you went light on anti-tank, you reach a point in the game where you run out of anti-tank weapons before your opponent runs out of tanks but that's way short of "I can't even interact with 95% of that list".
Depends on when you reach that point. If the parking lot kills your hammerheads on turn 1 and your crisis suits on turn 2, then you've still got 3 out of 5 game rounds where the remaining parking lot is untouchable. And the kroot might never get to fire a shot if your hammerheads and crisis suits were prioritizing non-transport threats while they were alive.
And I don't see a problem with "how much anti-tank do I bring" being a strategic decision, not something you're guaranteed to have every game no matter what you choose. Sometimes you just brought the wrong list for the meta and you have an uphill climb to win.
The thing is that it's less of a strategic decision and more of a gamble. Do you take the amount of AT you'll need to deal with a conventional list, or do you play it safe and take ALL THE AT so that you can deal with a skew list? If you choose the form and face the latter, then you end up spending multiple hours having a bad matchup because you didn't play it safe. But playing it safe means the scenarios I've describe above where you leave the flamers and the scorpions at home in favor of meltaguns and fire dragons.
Though tbf, you can also just opt to not play against skew lists. Which is maybe the best/easiest solution.
The problem of course is that in any sort of competitive or even lightly-competitive play (aka any time you agree to "matched play") there is a tendency to optimize your list around the most effective units. And since everything can wound everything, the incentive is to take as many of your best units as you can - hence the adoption of rule of 3. So now you take 3 of the strongest units and then 3 of the next strongest, etc. So while "in theory" you can take whatever you want and theoretically have a way to still damage your opponent, in practice that isn't what people are doing. People are tuning their list around the strongest units - as they have always done.
Which begs the question of what the heck is even the point of allowing ultimate freedom in list designing and allowing everything to potentially wound everything else, when the game isn't even remotely balanced enough to achieve that. And perhaps worst of all - what if it actually was balanced to achieve that? Would the game be even more of a pure luck dice fest?
I don't really agree. It's in 3rd-7th that people spammed the best units and then the next strongest. There was a FOC but ultimately it could have been bypassed by fielding multiple CADs, and updates were not very frequent so people were encouraged to chase the best builds of the moment. Now the freedom is only in theory since with not many CPs available from start slots are kinda precious. Furthemore, there's much more internal balance now than what we had in the past, when in tournaments each faction had 10ish competitive units and that's it.
Everything potentially wounding everything is a false problem, in practise if you face a skew list with lots of tanks and you don't have the anti tank sure you could strip some wounds here and there, maybe even killing a tank, but at the end of the game the opponent would have the majority of his force intact anyway. And everything potentially wounding everything is countered by the fact that armoured stuff is now much harder to kill: in 3rd-7th I used to lose vehicles to a single hit everytime, even AV14 tanks. AV10 trukks always instant killed by single shot from a heavy bolter, assault cannon or scatter laser. A single melta hit had a guaranteed kill or make useless one of my ork vehicles. On the other hand a single pk dude was enough to kill the vast majority of the tanks in the game. Now all of thise scenarios are flat out impossible.
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skchsan wrote: Or take a much simpler route and give rectangular base for all vehicles that have armor facing values.
It's the only way to make armor facings reasonable and clean. But aesthetically many players wouldn't be ok with that, and lots of vehicles already have round/oval base so having to re-base those would be an additional issue.
skchsan wrote: Or take a much simpler route and give rectangular base for all vehicles that have armor facing values.
It's the only way to make armor facings reasonable and clean. But aesthetically many players wouldn't be ok with that, and lots of vehicles already have round/oval base so having to re-base those would be an additional issue.
Or give every vehicle a base of whatever shape they prefer and put notches on it. The game really does need base on every unit IMHO.
Earlier in the thread someone asked "why stop at vehicles, space Marines could have facings too since their armor is weaker from behind."
This is true for all practically made (ie. not Necron) armor, but the point of vehicle facing and flanking is that vehicles like tanks turn slowly and have limited peripheral vision. Even a Carnifex could whip around quickly to cover its arse.
Getting a backstab in on infantry, space Marines, etc is just represented by getting through the saving throw.
However, walkers are a different case. I know from MechWarrior that anything like a Titan is very susceptible to facings. But Sentinels are more like AT-ST's from Star Wars and I don't think anyone bothered flanking those. And Tau battlesuits are like Gundams that can do cartwheels and play limbo, so even though they have exposed rear armor aren't they maneuverable enough to cover it?
I also want to say that I like the idea of just identifying "weak points" like the rear armor of the vehicle and not bothering with side armor. If you draw a T on the vehicle and you shoot from behind the rear line, it counts as higher AP or strength or something. Symmetrical vehicles like the Necron pyramid thing wouldn't have a weak point.
Oh, and I play a house rule that gives double Strength vs Toughness an advantage or disadvantage. When Strength 3 tries to wound Toughness 6, it rolls with disadvantage, re-rolling successful hit rolls so only double sixes make it though.
Likewise S6 vs T3 rerolls failed wound rolls. This helps lessen the lasgun vs titan thing. I've considered pushing the threshold to triple though, so S3 vs T9 would have to roll with disadvantage.
kingpbjames wrote: Even a Carnifex could whip around quickly to cover its arse.
A Carnifex sure, but the larger monsters (Exocrine, Maleceptor, Tyrannofex, Harpy, FW stuff, etc) are unlikely to be able to quickly whip around to cover their arse.
A Carnifex sure, but the larger monsters (Exocrine, Maleceptor, Tyrannofex, Harpy, FW stuff, etc) are unlikely to be able to quickly whip around to cover their arse.
I forgot to mention those. I was going to point out that they're in a sort of grey area too, but now that I think about it, any sort of giant monster is a lot less static than a tank. I would draw the line between mechanical giants that are mostly static and organic giants that are mostly moving. Let's lump demon engines in with the monsters since once you think you've got a clear shot at it's rear armor it will probably grow a face there and stick its tongue out at you. Or maybe not.
A Carnifex sure, but the larger monsters (Exocrine, Maleceptor, Tyrannofex, Harpy, FW stuff, etc) are unlikely to be able to quickly whip around to cover their arse.
I forgot to mention those. I was going to point out that they're in a sort of grey area too, but now that I think about it, any sort of giant monster is a lot less static than a tank. I would draw the line between mechanical giants that are mostly static and organic giants that are mostly moving. Let's lump demon engines in with the monsters since once you think you've got a clear shot at it's rear armor it will probably grow a face there and stick its tongue out at you. Or maybe not.
Honestly, I think it varies too much to really be clearly cut between monsters and vehicles. Exocrines look like they should be sluggish to respond like a tank. Penitent engines are controlled via brain jack and seem like they should be pretty nimble. Sentinels are described as being maneuverable enough to change their facing (and as walkers, it used to be that you counted as targeting their front armor in melee), but they also look vulnerable in the rear. Daemon princes should probably be perfectly nimble, but great unclean ones maybe shouldn't be. It's all over the place.
kingpbjames wrote:
Oh, and I play a house rule that gives double Strength vs Toughness an advantage or disadvantage. When Strength 3 tries to wound Toughness 6, it rolls with disadvantage, re-rolling successful hit rolls so only double sixes make it though.
Likewise S6 vs T3 rerolls failed wound rolls. This helps lessen the lasgun vs titan thing.
Do you not find attacking T6+ with S3 kind of pointless? If we're talking lasgun guardsmen, you'd normally need...
36 shots at BS4+ to get 18 hits to get 3 wounds to fail 1 3+ save to put a single wound on a rhino.
But with "disadvantage" on the to-wound roll, you'd need...
216 shots at BS4+ to get 108 hits with a 1/36th chance of wounding to get 3 wounds against a 3+ save to get 1 unsaved wound.
At 36 shots per 1 unsaved wound, the small arms fire is a pretty minor threat, but you might chip in enough damage against vehicles over the course of the game to matter. At 216 shots, you may as well save the time and not bother rolling. And that's with dirt cheap guardsmen. With sisters or kabalites or what have you shooting at something T8+ (even counting in their better BS), you're paying more points for each shot but still not getting enough wounds through for it to really matter.
Personally, I like that massed bolters and shurikens can contribute against tanks, but I'd rather give that damage up than have to roll 200 attacks to get a single point of damage through.
When you put it that way, 216 lasgun beams is a lot of las on one target...
On one hand, I like games with hard counters as said previously. I like investing in a tank to become immune to small arms fire so I can focus it on heavy targets and anti-tankers.
On the other hand I understand it's not a complaint against fielding a well rounded army but not every army has a fun way of handling armor-heavy lists.
I would like to see more anti-tank troop options, like high explosive grenades on basic infantry.
On one hand, I like games with hard counters as said previously. I like investing in a tank to become immune to small arms fire so I can focus it on heavy targets and anti-tankers.
On the other hand I understand it's not a complaint against fielding a well rounded army but not every army has a fun way of handling armor-heavy lists.
Yep. That's a perfectly reasonable way to feel. Lots of people have made solid arguments for making vehicles immune to small arms fire. Personally, I've had enough bad experiences with skew lists (or armies that are bad at anti-tank) to not be a fan. Currently, bolters can meaningfully contribute towards killing tanks but are bad enough at it that you really want to field a decent amount of AT. And that's where I like it. Your bolters aren't useless against a parking lot, but they're also not nearly good enough against tanks to be a replacement for meltaguns and lascannons. Everyone in the tactical marine or sororitas squad is pitching in against the enemy tank, but the meltagun is contributing a lot more.
