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Because its essentially free shooting and yet every ranged unit did not have its points cost increased to reflect this. A flamer which can do d3 instant hits when charged is a lot better than it was before. In comparison nothing was done to give the charging player any kind of compensating advantage. This really hurts armies like DE and tyranids. Just had one game today where Lelith got overwatched by a plasma pistol (her squad and transport had been killed by a helldrake). A 150pt model killed because of some quirky rule in the core rulebook that didn't exist two editions ago gives free shooting to everything.

This is yet another problem that is solved by remembering that this is a scifi game and guns are inherently superior to swords. Just be glad that 40k's scale is such a mess that melee is even possible, if you demand a rebalance of shooting vs. assault GW might fix that problem.

 Peregrine wrote:
This is yet another problem that is solved by remembering that this is a scifi game and guns are inherently superior to swords. Just be glad that 40k's scale is such a mess that melee is even possible, if you demand a rebalance of shooting vs. assault GW might fix that problem.

The lore also says that regular dark elder can dodge bullets and kick grenades back at people. Let alone lelith. So I fail to see your point.

You also clearly never played 3rd, 4th or 5th edition. Nor have you ever read any black library novel or piece of lore in any of the codexes where CC is the major deciding factor of almost every battle unless you are Imperial Guard or Tau.

I like the over watch rule hitting on a 6 don't like any less than that being a it much. But adds a nice element and I am usual the one assulting. Flamers are a pain I do agree with that still think if OnE dies on a role of a 3+ it explodes with 3inch blast s3 ap- that would be fun

Well, the default charge range has the potential of going upto 12" now, and charging units get to lob a small blast grenade and disembark 4 more inches from vehicle exits compared to 5th and...humm...I'm out of ideas.

Callings it free shooting is slightly disingenuous, it's extremely unreliable, rarely does anything, and benefits armies inconsistently. Not enough was done to actually fully develop the idea, but it doesn't break the game in the slightest as an idea.

For instance, Space Marines have godawful overwatch. Their volume of fire is low, there's no benefit from their higher BS, and their access to flamers is quite poor, whereas Tau via markerlights have amazing overwatch, hitting people on 2s, and everything around the target gets to overwatch.

Overwatch was added as with vehicles being made more fragile, units would be more vulnerable to assault; GW predicted a rise in the prevalence of assault, and then also removed assault out of outflank, assault out of transport and assault out of deep-strike for certain units.

The combination of all of those weakens assault, but overwatch is not the straw that broke the camel's back. It's probably the least significant out of all of those. I often charge people with Guardsmen, and once in a while, I'll lose one guardsmen, and once I had a scout sniper kill a Wolf Lord in overwatch; one of these is far more likely than the other.

I agree with the idea of overwatch (and removing assault out of outflank), but the execution was bad. Applying a -2 to BS, and if BS were dropped to 0, the unit can not fire, and flamers can overwatch only if they don't fire in the shooting phase. So spamming BS2 units for overwatch blockers like Conscripts and Shoota Boyz wouldn't be more effective than a super-elite unit, and flamers would actually have to make a choice, rather than being, arguably, the best special weapon in the game.

 Sir Arun wrote:
Well, the default charge range has the potential of going upto 12" now, and charging units get to lob a small blast grenade and disembark 4 more inches from vehicle exits compared to 5th and...humm...I'm out of ideas.

I'd rather charge 6 and not get shot at all.

Why would I risk blowing myself up?

On average with two dice you will get 6 or seven so this really wasn't improved.

 Peregrine wrote:
This is yet another problem that is solved by remembering that this is a scifi game and guns are inherently superior to swords. Just be glad that 40k's scale is such a mess that melee is even possible, if you demand a rebalance of shooting vs. assault GW might fix that problem.

40k isn't really a science fiction game. Look at something like Dropzone Commander for that - there are barely even rules for close combat because it's almost irrelevant. 40k is science fantasy, where people habitually carry swords and the backstory portrays them somehow being used frequently. A big part of my frustration with 40k was the disconnect between the fluff (and the large number of fluffy close combat options so many armies have) and the complete ineffectiveness of those options on the tabletop. Or at least the lack of ability to get those units into close combat where they belong when pitted against a competent opponent with a decent list. There are only a few ways I think 40k's rules could stand to be more "realistic", and zero of them have to do with further neutering close combat.

 MajorStoffer wrote:
Callings it free shooting is slightly disingenuous, it's extremely unreliable, rarely does anything, and benefits armies inconsistently. Not enough was done to actually fully develop the idea, but it doesn't break the game in the slightest as an idea.

For instance, Space Marines have godawful overwatch. Their volume of fire is low, there's no benefit from their higher BS, and their access to flamers is quite poor, whereas Tau via markerlights have amazing overwatch, hitting people on 2s, and everything around the target gets to overwatch.

Overwatch was added as with vehicles being made more fragile, units would be more vulnerable to assault; GW predicted a rise in the prevalence of assault, and then also removed assault out of outflank, assault out of transport and assault out of deep-strike for certain units.

The combination of all of those weakens assault, but overwatch is not the straw that broke the camel's back. It's probably the least significant out of all of those. I often charge people with Guardsmen, and once in a while, I'll lose one guardsmen, and once I had a scout sniper kill a Wolf Lord in overwatch; one of these is far more likely than the other.

I agree with the idea of overwatch (and removing assault out of outflank), but the execution was bad. Applying a -2 to BS, and if BS were dropped to 0, the unit can not fire, and flamers can overwatch only if they don't fire in the shooting phase. So spamming BS2 units for overwatch blockers like Conscripts and Shoota Boyz wouldn't be more effective than a super-elite unit, and flamers would actually have to make a choice, rather than being, arguably, the best special weapon in the game.

My experience is that overwatch can reliably kill a third of a squad. This really hurts wyches where the simple act of getting intact units to the enemy lines is enough of a herculean challenge without scumbag helldrakes and massed shooting wiping you out. So to have, say, 10 wyches charge a squad of chaos marines, a hugely risky proposition anyway I'll just pint out and then have one flamer kill three of them and another 2 to lucky bolt rounds really kills the units effectiveness. Plus, people obviously start taking more flamers if their effectiveness gets better.

The fact wyches don't get their inv save on overwatch is just stupid. They can dodge a bolt pistol to the face but can't dodge one fired a few metres away...

The slowing of the game is a bigger problem IMO. Flamers aren't so bad in regular squads. One flamer doing d3 hits is okay, but units with multiple flamers is a real pain. Charging Wraithguard with 5 Flamers is a real problem.

Then, to be quite frank, you're remarkably unlucky.

Statistically, a squad of CSM with a flamer will hit 3 times with a boltgun, and once or twice with a flamer, between those doing 2 wounds.

Assuming the squad is naked, they cost slightly less than 50% more than your unit, assuming both are ten, and it stands to reason they should be able to do some damage a unit of unarmoured eldar charging them. The difference between 10 and 8 wyches is not significant, especially as ten of them won't beat 10 Chaos Marines even if they don't get to overwatch.

And while I wish the game followed the fluff more closely, and then yes, Eldar units would get a chance to avoid shots and whatnot, but then said Marine would also have multiple wounds, FNP, and boltguns'd be St 6 Ap4 Assault 4 or something like that; don't make the mistake of thinking the game is broken for not following the fluff and that an extremely fragile, mediocre assault unit is going to take a loss or two charging high-end generalist infantry.

Last game I played, I lost 4 Honour Guard, 2+ armour veterans representing the seniormost marines in the chapter to Termagants overwatching, and I correctly attributed that to good rolls on his part and bad on mine, and I still slaughtered the unit handidly, and three others, as the matchup was strongly in my favour overwatch or no, and never once thought that the mechanic was broken; lazy and underdeveloped, yes, ruining assault armies? hardly.

I wrote thos a while back in a discussion as to whether assault had been nerfed in 6th and as to whether it was as strong as shooting... At the time we were talking about all the editions so some of these changes occured in 5th.

1.. A shooty opponent generally gets to reduce a percentage of an assaulty opponents army without suffering much in return. By turn 3 when most assaults can occur, this disadvantage in percentages has become huge. 
2. Overwatch. 
3. Removing models from the front. 
4. Can only disembark if a vehicle has moved 6" or less. 
5. Cannot assault from vehicles unless open topped or assault catagory. 
6. Opentopped vehicles tend to be made of wet paper. 
7. Assault vehicles tend to cost more than the unit they are transporting. 
8. Random charge distances. 
9. Jump shoot jump. 
10. Extremely cheap high strength high rate of fire weapons avaliable. 
11. Excessive amount of ignores cover weapons. 
12. Focus fire. 
13. Disorganised charges. 
14. Unable to sweep into another combat. 
15. Unable to charge from outflank. 
16. Unable to charge from infiltrate on turn 1. 
17. Unable to assault from reserve unless given a specific rule (only BA VV that I can think of) 
18. Gunline army abilities to mass overwatch (IG platoons/tau supporting fire) 
19. Huge amount of armies with access to prescience for rerolls to hit. 
20. Assault units tend to be overcosted for what they achieve. 
21. Shooting units can attack from turn 1 until turn 7. Assault units tend to be 2 or 3 turns max at efficiency (if they make it). 
22. Shooting does not suffer return shots in own phase, assault does.
23. Shooty units can stay in cover. Assault units cannot.
24. Objectives - shooty units are usually at an advantage when holding an objective. Assault units are being wasted.
25. Can measure shooting distances.
26. Counter assault USR.

So as you can see - overwatch was not the issue that was broken but instead a combination of many changes and things that were already in play.

That being said, maelstrom missions have brought a move away from gunlines to a small extent which of course helps assault a teeny weeny little bit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The two advantages assault has of course is that you cannot be shot at when engaged in assault and you can sweep entire units (that are not fearless or have atsknf).

 docdoom77 wrote:
The slowing of the game is a bigger problem IMO. Flamers aren't so bad in regular squads. One flamer doing d3 hits is okay, but units with multiple flamers is a real pain. Charging Wraithguard with 5 Flamers is a real problem.

Rolling up 100 dice to overwatch with conscripts is the worst. Especially when the odds of killing the thing charging them is like 2%.

 TheSilo wrote:

 docdoom77 wrote:
The slowing of the game is a bigger problem IMO. Flamers aren't so bad in regular squads. One flamer doing d3 hits is okay, but units with multiple flamers is a real pain. Charging Wraithguard with 5 Flamers is a real problem.

Rolling up 100 dice to overwatch with conscripts is the worst. Especially when the odds of killing the thing charging them is like 2%.

It's funny because maxing out on conscripts led by a fearless character (who is waay at the back) is an awesome way to roll up a flank


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Personally I think the way overwatch can be fixed is if the same ruled are applied to it as are applied to who can land blows in cc (i.e. models upto 2" away from the frontline).

That way it prevents overwatch shenanigans from huge blobs since it is realistically impossible for that many guys to shoot without shooting through their own guys.

 MajorStoffer wrote:
Then, to be quite frank, you're remarkably unlucky.

Statistically, a squad of CSM with a flamer will hit 3 times with a boltgun, and once or twice with a flamer, between those doing 2 wounds.

Assuming the squad is naked, they cost slightly less than 50% more than your unit, assuming both are ten, and it stands to reason they should be able to do some damage a unit of unarmoured eldar charging them. The difference between 10 and 8 wyches is not significant, especially as ten of them won't beat 10 Chaos Marines even if they don't get to overwatch.

And while I wish the game followed the fluff more closely, and then yes, Eldar units would get a chance to avoid shots and whatnot, but then said Marine would also have multiple wounds, FNP, and boltguns'd be St 6 Ap4 Assault 4 or something like that; don't make the mistake of thinking the game is broken for not following the fluff and that an extremely fragile, mediocre assault unit is going to take a loss or two charging high-end generalist infantry.

Last game I played, I lost 4 Honour Guard, 2+ armour veterans representing the seniormost marines in the chapter to Termagants overwatching, and I correctly attributed that to good rolls on his part and bad on mine, and I still slaughtered the unit handidly, and three others, as the matchup was strongly in my favour overwatch or no, and never once thought that the mechanic was broken; lazy and underdeveloped, yes, ruining assault armies? hardly.

No, they should be able to kill them in close combat for the exact same reason genestealers (who lorewise are a hoard/swarm unit that should be worse, not better than wyches) should be able to butcher tactical marines. You are paying for a unit that is incredibly fragile against shooting but should be really strong assault. Its called a GLASS. HAMMER. It is utterly pointless paying points for units that at full strength and having taken no losses to enemy shooting (near miraculous in this edition BTW) should just bounce off whatever they charge. Because seriously tactical marines with bolters are garbage and little better than cannon fodder. Any CC unit that cannot kill a unit of tac marines in CC is not worthy of the title.

2 Assault phases. I shooting phase. Assault units attack in both. Shooting units get one proper phase and hit on a six in the other. .

yeah, I'm not buying it.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

 Sir Arun wrote:
Well, the default charge range has the potential of going upto 12" now, and charging units get to lob a small blast grenade and disembark 4 more inches from vehicle exits compared to 5th and...humm...I'm out of ideas.

I'd rather charge 6 and not get shot at all.

Why would I risk blowing myself up?

On average with two dice you will get 6 or seven so this really wasn't improved.

You're far more likely to roll greater than 6" than you are to get more than 1 or 2 hits with Overwatch, so if you don't consider the extra assault range much of an improvement I don't understand why Overwatch is a problem as that is far less likely to have an effect.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

 Sir Arun wrote:
Well, the default charge range has the potential of going upto 12" now, and charging units get to lob a small blast grenade and disembark 4 more inches from vehicle exits compared to 5th and...humm...I'm out of ideas.

I'd rather charge 6 and not get shot at all.

Why would I risk blowing myself up?

On average with two dice you will get 6 or seven so this really wasn't improved.

You're far more likely to roll greater than 6" than you are to get more than 1 or 2 hits with Overwatch, so if you don't consider the extra assault range much of an improvement I don't understand why Overwatch is a problem as that is far less likely to have an effect.

5 hits. Flamers in every squad. Wyches have no armor and toughness 3. This=big problem.

Wait till they introduce Claymore Anti Personnel mines into the game

 Jihadin wrote:
Wait till they introduce Claymore Anti Personnel mines into the game

IG vets have snare mines, others have defensive grenades.

Easy fix, get rid of overwatch, keep wall of death. The game was fine before it.

Maybe don't charge a Unit that is exactly equipped to fight and repel CC units then?

Well yeah, if you have an incredibly specific situation like that, bad things can happen. This doesn't change the fact that 99% of the time Overwatch barely does anything. Anecdotal evidence doesn't carry a lot of weight on Dakka.

 GoonBandito wrote:
Maybe don't charge a Unit that is exactly equipped to fight and repel CC units then?

Its was a chaos marine squad, this is hardly charging terminators. In fact it was the only chaos marine squad in his army.


Believe me. If I had a codex that let me take 2 troop choices and let me spam all my points on elite units I would do that. As it is DE have no powerful CC units outside of incubi and HQ choices meaning you are pushed into using them as a shooting army.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

 GoonBandito wrote:
Maybe don't charge a Unit that is exactly equipped to fight and repel CC units then?

Its was a chaos marine squad, this is hardly charging terminators. In fact it was the only chaos marine squad in his army.


Believe me. If I had a codex that let me take 2 troop choices and let me spam all my points on elite units I would do that. As it is DE have no powerful CC units outside of incubi and HQ choices meaning you are pushed into using them as a shooting army.

Are you really complaining that army structure in 7th isn't FLEXIBLE enough?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

 GoonBandito wrote:
Maybe don't charge a Unit that is exactly equipped to fight and repel CC units then?

Its was a chaos marine squad, this is hardly charging terminators. In fact it was the only chaos marine squad in his army.


Believe me. If I had a codex that let me take 2 troop choices and let me spam all my points on elite units I would do that. As it is DE have no powerful CC units outside of incubi and HQ choices meaning you are pushed into using them as a shooting army.

Are you really complaining that army structure in 7th isn't FLEXIBLE enough?

I am not allying my army. If I want to put grey knights in my army for CC then I would just play grey knights not combine two armies. I want to be able to play DE as a CC wych army. However doing that is impossible with the ruleset which has decided to make them a crappy troops choice that they expect you to spam in order to kill mediocre units like tactical marines.

I am complaining that in order to field what is sold quite forcefully in the codex itself as a viable army build is not possible because incubi are the only good CC unit in the codex and wyches are just aweful. Rather than add an elites option that has rending and better inv saves. I don't want crappy juves on combat drugs with knives; which all these "elite shock troops" are.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

 MajorStoffer wrote:
Then, to be quite frank, you're remarkably unlucky.

Statistically, a squad of CSM with a flamer will hit 3 times with a boltgun, and once or twice with a flamer, between those doing 2 wounds.

Assuming the squad is naked, they cost slightly less than 50% more than your unit, assuming both are ten, and it stands to reason they should be able to do some damage a unit of unarmoured eldar charging them. The difference between 10 and 8 wyches is not significant, especially as ten of them won't beat 10 Chaos Marines even if they don't get to overwatch.

And while I wish the game followed the fluff more closely, and then yes, Eldar units would get a chance to avoid shots and whatnot, but then said Marine would also have multiple wounds, FNP, and boltguns'd be St 6 Ap4 Assault 4 or something like that; don't make the mistake of thinking the game is broken for not following the fluff and that an extremely fragile, mediocre assault unit is going to take a loss or two charging high-end generalist infantry.

Last game I played, I lost 4 Honour Guard, 2+ armour veterans representing the seniormost marines in the chapter to Termagants overwatching, and I correctly attributed that to good rolls on his part and bad on mine, and I still slaughtered the unit handidly, and three others, as the matchup was strongly in my favour overwatch or no, and never once thought that the mechanic was broken; lazy and underdeveloped, yes, ruining assault armies? hardly.

No, they should be able to kill them in close combat for the exact same reason genestealers (who lorewise are a hoard/swarm unit that should be worse, not better than wyches) should be able to butcher tactical marines. You are paying for a unit that is incredibly fragile against shooting but should be really strong assault. Its called a GLASS. HAMMER. It is utterly pointless paying points for units that at full strength and having taken no losses to enemy shooting (near miraculous in this edition BTW) should just bounce off whatever they charge. Because seriously tactical marines with bolters are garbage and little better than cannon fodder. Any CC unit that cannot kill a unit of tac marines in CC is not worthy of the title.

So you feel that a 10 point per model unit should easily overpower a 13 point per model unit based on what? You do realize that tactical marines are technically veteran marines who have done time in both devastator and assault squads. Why would an unarmoured, acrobatic gladiator be able the steamroll a stronger, extremely well armoured and equipped elite soldier?

Losing a special character to a lone plasma pistol to overwatch is a rare occurrence. Overwatch is unreliable in general and hardly breaks the game. Most of the time you're losing 1 or 2 models.

Honestly, I think overwatch should be revamped. Like you can have a unit forgo it's shooting to gain access to full BS overwatch because as it stands now it's a very unreliable way of defending against assaulting unit.

I think what ruins assault is a cocktail of rules changes that happened between 5th and 6th. Removal of by unit cover, reducing the ability of units to assault out from a rapid deployment and the proliferation of ignores cover weaponry. The shift from vehicles to infantry couldn't have helped much as people started to get more anti-infantry crap too (I believe).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

So you feel that a 10 point per model unit should easily overpower a 13 point per model unit based on what? You do realize that tactical marines are technically veteran marines who have done time in both devastator and assault squads. Why would an unarmoured, acrobatic gladiator be able the steamroll a stronger, extremely well armoured and equipped elite soldier?

Dark Eldar are depicted as being lethal combatants in close quarters. I don't know if their ability to butcher marines is canon or not but it's certainly an idea prevalent in the 40k community.

Keep overwatch, allow consolidation into a new unit (who can overwatch as well), allow assault out of a stationary vehicle. Start there, see how it goes.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

The lore also says that regular dark elder can dodge bullets and kick grenades back at people. Let alone lelith.

Obviously, this time she couldn't.

I think it would be nice if Overwatch was a bit more tactical. e.g. if you could chose to go on overwatch instead of shooting, but got to resolve it at full BS.

If nothing else, I think 40k could benefit from more in-game options.

 Peregrine wrote:
This is yet another problem that is solved by remembering that this is a scifi game and guns are inherently superior to swords.

So why can't you shoot them in combat? Or into combat?

Instead, if some Tau Fire Warriors get assaulted by a Daemon Prince, they think the best thing to do is run towards it and attempt to hit it with their rifle butts.