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skyth wrote:Quite frankly, there are units designed to just tarpit other assault units (spinegaunts, conscripts, swarms of various descriptions) which can't do thier job any more.

Bingo, and at Redbeard, seconded, absolutely sir!

yakface wrote:

Augustus wrote:Ozymandias, I admit I wrote in a dramatic style, but even in an abstract game balance sense explain to me how always hitting rear armor is better than before>?

Does it reward careful play? No

Does it correct an old imbalance? No

Between the change to the damage table, the reduced effectiveness of glancing hits and potential cover saves for vehicles overall they have gotten much more durable against enemy firepower. So yes, I think it is a fair balance to make vehicles weaker in close combat.

Tell that to the Eldar and the Tau. Do you really think that?

insaniak wrote:

Redbeard wrote:There are no tactics involved in assault anymore.

The tactics in an assault are exactly where they should be: in deciding whether or not the unit should be charging into it in the first place.

All they've done is removed the extra little side-game that went on with model placement and casualty removal to remove your opponent's chance to strike with specific weapons, which should never have been there in the first place in a squad-based game. Now, the squad charges, and the squad fights. And if the squad is outmatched, the squad dies.

Oh really? What about defending cover, that use to be a tactic, so models behind over were harder to dislodge, makes some sense, rewards good set up, involves terrain as important, but now, oh yea, everyone has plasma grenades? What about intentional tarpitting, as in the 600 point chaplain and squad can spend the next 3 turns murdering a 200 point platoon and or onscripts/etc...

Those TACTICS are gone, redbeard has it, now you just charge, and basically win if you have better armor, immediatley.

Tacobake wrote:I like the changes to Transports. I think Defensive Weapons for vehicles should be defined on a tank-per-tank basis.

Rhino chasis: S4.
Russ chasis: S5.
Skimmers: S6.
Land Raider: S9 (S10?).

etc.

So Preds pill box but Russes can move and shoot.

That is brilliant! Great idea!

insaniak wrote:

Fair point... but I'm still not seeing a problem.

40K is intended to work for larger scale games. If that means leaning more towards 'strategy' than 'tactics' then so be it.

But I am. The title of this thread is "Why do you think 5e sucks in comparison to 4e?" To me, it sucks because they removed a part of the game that I enjoyed. I enjoyed both the strategic and the tactical side of the game. They've removed the tactics. To me, that sucks. Maybe it is a tradeoff to allowing a game to finish quickly. But, if I sit down for some gaming, I'm not trying to rush in a game, I'm planning on having a beer or two and occupying myself for a couple of hours. Shaving a few minutes off isn't as worth it to me as having a game that has some semblance of tactics in it.

How can you "pick your fight" when tarpitting, by definition, is throwing weaker units at stronger ones, sacrificing men for time.

The point is that a weaker unit simply isn't going to last as long as a slightly stronger unit.

But it used to. And now it doesn't.

Simply throwing your weakest unit at an enemy's assault squad and hoping that it will last as long as you want it to isn't 'tactical'... it's throwing away a unit in a role for which it isn't suited.

In 5e, you're right. It is just throwing a unit away. In 4e, it was a valuable tactic, to throw chumps in front of something in order to buy yourself time. Again, why does 5e suck to me? Because the new rules have neutered smart play in favour of finishing the game quickly.

It's a time-honoured military concept, as old as armies themselves.

That doesn't mean that it should always work regardless of the actual units involved.

Actually, yes, it does. In this case. Sure, there's a matter of scale. But, if you have 100 elite warriors, and I have 1000 newly mustered scrubs, it is going to take your guys some time to kill all of mine. Even if they're just running them down. Because, leaving them alive behind you isn't an option. Throwing men away to buy time somewhere else always works because, in reality, your opponent can't just wish them dead in an instant, and can't ignore them. They have to spend the time to deal with them.

In 4e, this was represented by the fact that negative Ld penalties weren't applied until after you outnumbered your opponent. Once you outnumbered them, it became easier to break them and finish them off. But, until then, good tarpit units would do their job as long as they made their base Ld tests. And, you're right, it didn't always work, sometimes you rolled an 11. But it had a chance to work.

Fighting naked swinging a gigantic sword around your head was a 'time honoured' military concept as well. Didn't work very well against certain opponents, though...

Unless you're playing any version of 40k, where, oddly, unarmoured green guys with swords and axes seem to do ok in the face of bolters and tanks.

The fact that if you throw a similarly points costed close combat unit at him, the outcome may well be very different?

How is this relevant. If I had a similarly costed CC unit, maybe I'd do that. But you don't always have that available. If my opponent brings a 500 point CC unit, and I don't have one, should I just lose? What if they don't afford me the opportunity to shoot them first? Think the new deep-striking assault marines.

Close combat units are good at close combat. Shooting units are good at shooting. Whether or not those units are squads or heroes is irrelevant... Throw a shooting unit into combat against an equal-pointed combat unit, and the shooty guys should lose, and lose badly.

I have never doubted this. I concur, an assault unit should beat an equal-cost shooty unit, or a smaller assault unit. What we don't agree on is how long it should take to reach this end. You seem to favour the 5e approach that if A can beat B, A should beat B in one round, and stop wasting time with it. I don't like that. I think that's stupid. I think that the difference between two units, especially units designed to slow an opponent, should take longer to kill than just the time it takes to charge them.

Otherwise, what's the point of having any difference between units at all?

Seriously, it sounds like what you really want is for every model on the board to have the exact same statline, so that the game can be more 'tactical' by your win relying solely on the cleverest model placement. Or something.

I fail to see how you have come to this conclusion. I have never mentioned anything about standardized statlines. In fact, with standardized statlines, you lose interplay between units, which is pretty much the opposite of what I'm arguing for.

throwing 1000 scrubs to 100 elite warriors, i agree would take some time if you think about it in a reality perspective.
we're talking 100 super human/close combat specialist with weapon/strength that swipe droves of guys in an instant, ever read some of the fluff? or the Battle repor thow archaon swiped the head of 10 imperial knights in one slash? i can see that lets say, conscripts charge these close combat specialist marines, i can see them just swipe after swipe killing droves of them. which isnt exactly 1000 to 100. but at a smaller scal of lets say 10 to 25. i see this a very viable concept of wiping em out with ease as the 40k universe is highly exaggerated with super human CC guys with awesome strength/weapons

Redbeard wrote:But, if you have 100 elite warriors, and I have 1000 newly mustered scrubs, it is going to take your guys some time to kill all of mine.

And unless you roll badly on your Morale checks, it still will.

If my opponent brings a 500 point CC unit, and I don't have one, should I just lose?

Er... no... you should shoot him instead of expecting a unit that's nowhere near as effective as him in close combat to stand a chance of holding him up for any length of time...

What if they don't afford me the opportunity to shoot them first?

Then you're going to have to spend some time thinking about how your squads are placed, and how many of them he's going to be able to assault before you can shoot him.

You seem to favour the 5e approach that if A can beat B, A should beat B in one round, and stop wasting time with it.

No, actually, I disagree that it will always happen in one round due to the vagaries of dice rolling and the fact that running away still relies on morale, and simply don't see the 5th ed changes as being a huge deal.

Maybe I'll change my mind after playing a few more games.

I think that the difference between two units, especially units designed to slow an opponent, should take longer to kill than just the time it takes to charge them.

Fair enough. I disagree... I think that the time taken to kill them should be directly proportional to how good they are in comparison to the unit trying to kill them. Yes, low cost, low stat models will be killed off quickly. That, in my opinion, is exactly as it should be. That's why those models are so cheap.

Units closer in skill will have more of an even fight.

I fail to see how you have come to this conclusion. I have never mentioned anything about standardized statlines.

No, but you've repeatedly stated that the current rules somehow lead to the best hero winning, regardless of what he's up against. An attitude that ignores the fact that the game is based around forces with equal points costs, so having the best indidivual hero doesn't automatically mean you have a better army...


Edit: Incidentally, it occurs to me that some of what I've been posting may have come across a little strong. As you said, this is a thread asking what you dislike about 5th edition... I'm not trying to say your opinion is wrong, just interested in the reasoning behind it, and in discussing why I disagree. No slight intended.

insaniak wrote:
And unless you roll badly on your Morale checks, it still will.

No, this is one of the things that 5e has changed. If you kill three more of my guys than I kill of yours, my Ld drops 3 points. If I had a pretty solid Ld 9, that means I'm testing on a 6, which means that the odds of me failing that check are greater than of passing it.

Stacking negative modifiers have always been more effective than simply rolling dice.

The problem with this is that it takes part of the Fantasy CC resolution system, without taking all of it. In fantasy, your Ld tests are modified by the kill differential as well. However, they also have modifiers for things like outnumbering (which 40k could do), ranks (which 40k couldn't), and banners (which 40k shouldn't). The net result is that heros cannot engage units on their own and hope to win, because even if they score three more kills, the unit has ranks and outnumbering and the hero ends up losing the combat.

5e takes half of this equation, ignores the other parts of it, and ends up with a system where one man can slaughter 50 in an instant.

If my opponent brings a 500 point CC unit, and I don't have one, should I just lose?

Er... no... you should shoot him instead of expecting a unit that's nowhere near as effective as him in close combat to stand a chance of holding him up for any length of time...

If my opponent has something like a winged hive tyrant, with high toughness, a 2+ save, and has managed to get a cover save, you're asking me to take 4 wounds off it in the shooting phase. What sort of dice do you use? Mine don't work nearly that well.

No, actually, I disagree that it will always happen in one round due to the vagaries of dice rolling and the fact that running away still relies on morale, and simply don't see the 5th ed changes as being a huge deal.

You haven't seen a necron army phase out before their own turn two yet then. Simply because their warriors had to take Ld tests at -5 and got cut down. The negative modifiers for kills really skew the odds of passing those morale tests, you know.

No, but you've repeatedly stated that the current rules somehow lead to the best hero winning, regardless of what he's up against. An attitude that ignores the fact that the game is based around forces with equal points costs, so having the best indidivual hero doesn't automatically mean you have a better army...

No, but the fact that special characters are now so much better than normal models. Look at the winner of the Vegas GT. Ran two special character HQs. And the combat rules only help characters and hurt squads. It's a trend that started with the Eldar codex and has been getting progressively worse. Look at what people are talking about running with the new marine codex. Two special characters from different chapters... because they have the best rules...

insaniak wrote:

Redbeard wrote:But, if you have 100 elite warriors, and I have 1000 newly mustered scrubs, it is going to take your guys some time to kill all of mine.

And unless you roll badly on your Morale checks, it still will.

Ok, calling bogus on this one. That is just ridiculous, there is no rolling badly, once the difference is -3 kills, Ld 7/8 models are almost certainly going to fail the morale check and get destroyed in the single phase, and that is the usual situation now, it NEVER takes a long time to chew up a large unit.

Redbeard wrote:
...5e takes half of this equation, ignores the other parts of it, and ends up with a system where one man can slaughter 50 in an instant.

Yup, which is one good example where 4E>5E

To tell the truth I think just giving everybody a blanket 4+ cover save no matter what would be better than the issues with TLoS, casualty removal, and some of the other issues I have expressed here and elsewhere.

If the goal is to simplify the game so it can play faster with more models on the board, the rules will reflect it and I think 5th has gone too far in that direction. I don't see my proposal as conflicting much with what I've seen in the few games of 5th I've played. I know it'd solve a lot of questions and free me of wondering if 1 warrior is in the open then all my guys can die in shooting.

I actually liked sniping, tactical casualty removal, tarpitting etc. I must be in the minority, but at least some others feel the same. Point and click combat should be relegated to computer games like Civ.

To me, the worst part about the leadership modifiers is how low they can go in what are really pretty even fights (or even, by any real measure, a "win" for the side that is going to get swept in-game)

I see this most with my Kroot, which of course are maybe an extreme example. If my 18 kroot and 12 hounds get charged by 10 space marines, I'll kill maybe 5, and take 10 causalties. So I've lost a third of my force and he's lost half of his, and now we outnumber them 4-1. So, what decision do the kroot make? AUGH! SPAZE MARINES! RUNNNN! I'm testing on a 2 or a 3 if I have a shaper. Even if I was leadership 9 i'm testing on a 4, against a force where I'll win handily if I don't run.

This doesn't make any sense. As has been said before, it rewards low saves more than anything else. With the current rules, the only way a superiority-in-numbers squad can win a close combat is if they wipe out their opponent in one round. I've killed all but one marine or CSM in fights and still lost combat by enough to watch 18 remaining kroot get swept by that guy. It's nonsense

Redbeard wrote:No, this is one of the things that 5e has changed. If you kill three more of my guys than I kill of yours, my Ld drops 3 points. If I had a pretty solid Ld 9, that means I'm testing on a 6, which means that the odds of me failing that check are greater than of passing it.

Odds which are improved somewhat by the availability for many armeis of Ld boosts or rerolls.

And then you still have to fail the Sweep roll-off for them to actually be destroyed. It's not automatic.

If my opponent has something like a winged hive tyrant, with high toughness, a 2+ save, and has managed to get a cover save, you're asking me to take 4 wounds off it in the shooting phase.

If you have an army geared towards shooting instead of close combat, that's kind of what they're supposed to do.


I think what it really boils down to is that tarpitting with really poor troops is simply going to require a couple of waves, rather than a single unit being able to tie the enemy up indefinitely. I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was the intention... it certainly seems to fit with the scale of the game otherwise. Co-ordinated units, rather than single units being automatically able to do whatever you want them to do unassisted... which requires more tactical thinking on the player's part.

Which I love. To me, tactics in a wargame aiming at games larger than a half a dozen model skirmish should be about how the units interact, not about how you can position individual models to skew the results of a given action.

The difference between poor troops (Ld 7) and typical troops (Ld 8) is not big numerically however most armies get a fairly easy boost to Ld 9 or 10 while the few that get stuck on 7 or 8 are very seriously disadvantaged.

The reason is the non-linear progression of Ld rolls.

Agree with Lambadomy.

I disagree. If I'm in a unit and suddenly there are ten less of us and only 5 less of them, I'm gonna start thinking about how to get away from that situation. That's what Morale is all about, it's about your troops reacting to situations that you as the player can't control. Same goes for the 50 conscripts vs. Marneus. The 50 conscripts see this super-human killing machine and decide that they are dead unless they get away, hence the morale check.

And there are still ways to tarpit, it's just not automatic anymore. Independent Commissars, Chem-inhalers, Book of St. Lucius', Synapse, etc.

You just need to adapt your tactics to the new cc environment.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Truthfully, I think a quick fix would be to keep the rules as they are, but also return outnumbering. Not sure exactly how to do it, either a bonus to the combat resolution or a bonus to the leadership check. Something like:

2:1 +2 LD (min 4)
3:1 +3 LD (Min 5)
4:1+ +4 LD (Min 6)

It might be better to add it to the combat resolution score instead, this would help fearless tarpits.

2:1 +2 combat resolution
3:1 +3
4:1 +4

I mean, seriously - I really like a lot of the changes to make close combat quick and brutal and avoid some of the cheesier kill zone manipulation, etc. But the pendulum swung too far towards simplistic.

Well, imagine the scenario where you get two of your squads charged - say, 10 guardsmen and 5 grey knights get charged by 5 harlequins.

You get lucky and lose 8 guardsmen, and kill 2 harlequins. So now your 5 Grey knights are testing on a...3? 4? When they outnumber the Harlequins 2:1. What exactly is happening there? "Man, those Harlies sure kill Guardsmen good, lets run"

Obviously Ozy is right as to what Morale is about...but that doesn't make it sensical in game terms. Really, I just think strength in numbers got the shaft in 5e, in the name of simplicity. I like the new rules. I like how they play mostly. I'm glad we dont have weird kill zone manipulation on charges and that everything is quicker and more brutal. But I think the pendulum swung too far towards simplicty and they shoehorned a fantasy rule (combat resolution by casualties) into 40k without thinking it out.

I think a simple and fair compromise would have been to keep the rules as is, but also add bonuses for outnumbering into combat. Either for combat resolution or for the leadership check after combat res, something like:

2:1 +2 combat resolution
3:1 +3
4:1 +4

or conversely for leadership

2:1 +2 LD (min 4 max 10)
3:1 +3 LD (min 5 max 10)
4:1 +4 LD (min 6 max 10)

Something, anything to return what was actually one of the clearer, more coherent rules in 4e, where they wrote about why outnumbering gives an advantage in CC

Some armies don't have ways to adapt to these new tactics. As I said before, I've seen a necron player phased out before they took their second turn because they lost something like six models in CC, and lost two squads of warriors because they were swept.

Well, that's ok, I guess, they can just wait for their new codex, which will, no doubt, include two or three must-have special characters that will allow their army to survive in the new 5th ed environment.

It's a poorly thought-out mish-mash of rules that doesn't work well. It blatantly rewards some armies and penalizes others. As someone mentioned earlier, the whole idea is that if I have the same number of points as you, our forces should be somewhat even.

But, because of the ham-fisted CC rules, they're not. My large number of low-quality men cannot stand up to your few high-quality men, because winnng the battle is based on the number of models lost, not the number of points lost. As Lambadomy shows, you can win the point-for-point battle and still end up losing your whole unit because of the morale rules.

There are 4 conscripts to a marine. If I have an officer with a decent leadership, I should be able and willing to lose men at a 3-to-1 ratio in that fight. This is what the imperial guard is all about. This is how the fluff presents the army. Imperial commanders expend men as other commanders might count bullets. This should be representable in the game. It is not. My guys are going to be swept because you killed 5 of them.

If you cannot see how stupid this is, then go ahead and be GW fanboyz. Everything they do is obviously great, and Marneus R0xx0rs. I, for one, think this ruleset is worse than 4e. I gave it a chance, I've played games, and I'm not a fan.

Ozymandias wrote:
You just need to adapt your tactics to the new cc environment.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Agree, but then, the people who are willing to adapt aren't the ones griping, so it is probably a lost message.

Redbeard wrote:Some armies don't have ways to adapt to these new tactics. As I said before, I've seen a necron player phased out before they took their second turn because they lost something like six models in CC, and lost two squads of warriors because they were swept.

Okay, you are a saying that a codex that is 2 editions old doesn't really work that well? Hmm...

Also, seemed to do fine at the Vegas GT.

Redbeard wrote:If you cannot see how stupid this is, then go ahead and be GW fanboyz. Everything they do is obviously great, and Marneus R0xx0rs.

So, liking one particular change to the rules, or disagreeing with you on a given aspect of the game, automatically makes someone a 'fanboy'...?

Sorry, thought we were having an actual discussion here. Obviously I was wrong. I'll stop infringing on your valuable complaining time with my rabid, fanboyish drooling.

Well, this thread has gotten a lot more attention than I would have thought when I started it. Let's try to let it keep rolling, guys?

Somnicide wrote:

Ozymandias wrote:
You just need to adapt your tactics to the new cc environment.

Agree, but then, the people who are willing to adapt aren't the ones griping, so it is probably a lost message.

Being willing to adapt is not the same as enjoying it. I am willing to adapt. My IG army is nicely put away on a display shelf. I am playing something new. That's "adapting". Between the changes to combat resolution and the introduction of Kill Points, I find it simply cannot perform with any degree of reliability. My friend's necron army has, likewise, been put away. He has "adapted" by playing sisters instead of necrons.

I've spent too much money and time on my armies to refuse to adapt. It doesn't mean that I think the new rules are good. It means that I'm kind of invested.

Don't get me wrong, I think there are some good things about 5e. I like the change to the vehicle damage table. I like the removal of SMF. I am ok with the removal of casualty-pulling tactics (I think the game was better with them, but removing them doesn't upset me). I like that infantry can run now. I like the greater emphasis on troops. But, I find that the things I don't like, I really don't like.

I'm reading all the hand-wringing about HtH in 5E, and I don't see the problem. If you have numbers of guys, then the point would be to have enough of them to kill the other guys. If they're not getting the job done, despite overwhelming weight of numbers, isn't that, by definition, failure?

5E allows pretty much all models to fight. You can't kill models in BtB to prevent them from getting their attacks. That is a huge benefit compared to 3E.

And you don't get the ability to move into other enemy units, to deny them a chance to shoot.

So you don't get to tarpit with large, crappy units? Why is that a bad thing? 40k is supposed to be a lethal environment. HtH is supposed to be decisive.

If you want to tie an enemy model up, then you need to orchestrate something with multiple units working together.

Refine your tactics. Don't blame the rules.

Augustus wrote:
Tell that to the Eldar and the Tau. Do you really think that?

Tau vehicles absolutely got much, much tougher from enemy shooting. Eldar overall are a wash. While they are more vulnerable if they fly slow enough to shoot, fast moving Wave Serpents are much tougher to shoot down before and both types of vehicles (Wave Serpent and Falcon) are uber if moving fast while fortuned.

Redbeard wrote:

Ignoring that there are units that exist for just this purpose, as Skyth pointed out, this change removes the possibility for 'good play' from the game, replacing it with "well, that would have happened anyway."

I think that detracts from the overall game experience. In my opinion, a good game has a number of opportunities for smart play to overcome differences in stats. A good game has both strategic and tactical opportunities that are more important than the simple numbers game that is rolling dice.

The new assault rules remove this. There are no tactics involved in assault anymore. None. You declare a charge, that's a strategic decision. And then you follow a very specific set of rules to move all your pieces, and then your opponent follows the same rules to move his, and then you both roll dice and then the loser runs away. Or doesn't.

There are no choices that either player can make to alter this. Once the strategic decision to charge has been made, the game practically goes on auto-pilot until a result is obtained. And, while many people refered to casualty removal tactics as shenanigans, the fact was that they allowed a more skilled player an edge over the raw statistical matchup that two assault units had. I agree, some of the casualty removal tricks were dumb. I did not like (although I understood) the ability to deny a model it's attacks by pulling the right models.

I disagree with you as to what constitutes a strategic choice as opposed to a tactical one. Overall strategic choices that a player makes (IMO) would be how they deploy and whether they plan to push up the left, middle or right flank. Or things like deciding to hold their force in reserve and outflank or Deep strike with X number of units. In other words, how is the army as a whole going to approach this game.

The tactics in 40K are now most exclusively on a unit-based level. So I do agree with you that they did take almost all of the individual model-based tactics out of an assault, such as tactical casualty pulling, combat-stalling, etc.

And frankly, I believe this is exactly what needed to be done to 40K. It is a unit based game that just happens to use individual models because they are cool looking. When a unit charges into combat they shouldn't have some god-like ability to decide that they only want to kill a couple of enemies so they can stay locked in combat a little bit longer. That just doesn't make any sense from any common sense point-of-view from the models fighting in the close combat or from a unit-based level. Overall the only thing that should ultimately matter is if unit 'A' is better than unit 'B' in combat.

So instead, all the tactical decisions are made at the squad level:

Do I move the unit or not to maximize shooting and/or cover?
Do I keep my unit bunched together (to maximize cover and to be able to charge as a clump) or spread out (to avoid blast weapons but lose cover bonuses and be more suscpetible to not having every model get into combat on the charge/counter-charge)?
Do I shoot or run or do I need to assault with this unit and if so do I still fire (if so, at what unit)?
Do I charge into cover or stand and shoot and let them charge me next turn?
If I charge will I win the combat? If no, am I likely to get run down? If so, can I send multiple units into the combat to try to win it?
As an assaulter, do I push my luck and assault multiple enemy units?


Once you add in the outflank rules, transported units, etc you have all sorts of tactical choices that a player has to make but they are all at the unit level.


I would certainly agree that certain builds with certain armies lend themselves to a more singular strategy, such as horde Orks, but that's really up to the player to decide if he likes the 'style' of that army. The more diverse an army is, with units capable of different types of deployment (infiltrate, outflank, deep strike) the more choices you'll have of ways to play.


Finally, there still are tarpit units, but not as many.

Gaunts, for example still work wonderfully as a tarpit, but they just suffer horrendous extra damage for doing so (rightly so, IMO).

Other pinner horde units like Grots and Conscripts are now better used as a bullet-screen to give a cover save. But I do disagree that these horde units are incapable of contributing to combat. The fact is, in most cases the majority of the models in the unit will get to swring in combat and if you have the numbers you absolutely can win a combat with these units. This is especially true if you charge them in along with another CC unit of yours.

But the change is now that as the commander you actually have to assess the situation and decide if your models can actually win the combat, and if they can't you're better off doing something else with your unit than suicidally sending them to their death in close combat.

Nevermind.

yakface wrote:

The tactics in 40K are now most exclusively on a unit-based level. So I do agree with you that they did take almost all of the individual model-based tactics out of an assault, such as tactical casualty pulling, combat-stalling, etc.

And frankly, I believe this is exactly what needed to be done to 40K. It is a unit based game that just happens to use individual models because they are cool looking. When a unit charges into combat they shouldn't have some god-like ability to decide that they only want to kill a couple of enemies so they can stay locked in combat a little bit longer. That just doesn't make any sense from any common sense point-of-view from the models fighting in the close combat or from a unit-based level. Overall the only thing that should ultimately matter is if unit 'A' is better than unit 'B' in combat.

And, yet, winning combat is based on counting models, not unit's strength. A 200 point kroot unit that loses 5 kroot has lost 17% of it's effective strength. A 200 point terminator unit that loses one terminator has lost 20% of its effective strength. If your assertion that everything is unit based was correct, the kroot would have won this fight. But, the terminators did, and convincingly, by 4 wounds.

But the change is now that as the commander you actually have to assess the situation and decide if your models can actually win the combat, and if they can't you're better off doing something else with your unit than suicidally sending them to their death in close combat.

I understand this. It goes against the fluff. It goes against real-world military history. It detracts from the game, in my opinion. As a general, one should be able to send men to their death to buy time. It should be a more reliable move than hoping your guys hit and that your opponent doesn't make his omnipresent 4+ cover save.

Hold on...wasn't aware you could hold back on attacks, and certainly, now everyone has a watered down Counter Attack, you can't just pick and choose how many you kill. If you can attack, you must attack.

Gaunts, for example still work wonderfully as a tarpit, but they just suffer horrendous extra damage for doing so (rightly so, IMO).

Yeah, just make sure that they aren't too close to your other shooty units if they get assualted. I was shielding warriors w/ guants and had a transport tank shock the guants and then unload its contents into CC with the guants, DS warriors and a Sniper Tyrant. Oponents CC units targeted guants. I lose cc by 6 wounds. Every unit takes 6 armour saves = 2/3 warriors wiped out, guants wiped out, and HT dead. The hit to my ego still hurts .

Just takes a little getting used to I guess.