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One last questions. How does S4 at long range disbalance the game even thought you got majority of shoots at close range with the new fire and flee rules?

devestator 7777777 wrote:
One last questions. How does S4 at long range disbalance the game even thought you got majority of shoots at close range with the new fire and flee rules?

If you go first, you're getting 2 shots at long range.
In an army where you spam shooters, that's 150 S4 hits, instead of 150 S3 hits. Against hard targets (T4 3+ saves) its 37 kills at long range, instead of 16 kills at long range. That's a pretty huge increase.
Also, when you spam shooting, a lot of your models are going to be out on a flank, firing inward at long range to finish off units.
I don't want a wood elf army where 150 glade guard is a good idea.

Your not going to get hits150 only 150 shoots times 0,5= 75 hits, that's a big difference. That's 19 wounds.

devestator 7777777 wrote:
Your not going 150 only 75 hits, that's a big difference. That's 19 wounds.

150 models at long range = 75 hits per turn.
If I go first, that's 150 hits at long range.
vs T4, S4 wounds on 4's, S3 Wounds on 5's.
vs 3+ armor, S4 is saved on 4+, S3 is saved on 3+.
Going from 5+ to wound and 3+ save to 4+ to wound and 4+ save is a huge jump in killing power.

In an army with 150 glade guard, a lot of the shots turns 3 are still at long range. You want to spread out to limit your losses, limit panic, and prevent overrun into a new unit.

If all you get is 2 shots and long, 1 at short and a stand and fire, you're looking at inflicting 150 S3 hits and 175 S4 hits.
If it's S4 at all ranges, thats 325 S4 hits.
That's firepower tabling a lot of army builds. Those that it doesn't table it cripples.
IMO, any change in wood elves needs to make melee as viable as shooting, with the strongest build being a combined list.
Fighting the mobile gunline is really not fun.
After all, I'm rolling tons of dice. You charge, I flee. It's entire possible that you're only rolling dice for th emagic phase, armor saves and panic tests.

-Matt

Agreed, Matt. 100%.

So, with some of these new ideas considered, which would suite Glade Guard best?

1. Fire and Flee!
2. rally and shoot
3. march and shoot
4. any combination of 1-3

Warpsolution wrote:
Agreed, Matt. 100%.

So, with some of these new ideas considered, which would suite Glade Guard best?

1. Fire and Flee!
2. rally and shoot
3. march and shoot
4. any combination of 1-3

I like rally and shoot. You have to get away, not get charged again, and not have the game end.
Fire and flee means you get to do your damage, then check for the risk.
I prefer Risk->Reward, not Reward->Risk.
March and shoot is too annoying. I don't want my opponent to not get to play. March and shoot is for skirmishers and fast cav anyway, which woodies have plenty of.

-Matt

I see what you're saying. If it's just #2, does the army need anything else? It's the weakest option in the list.

Should't the wood elfs get both fire and flee and rally and shoot.

I dunno. That seems like a step in the other direction,

#1 and 2 play a bit too well with each other. #3 is the most potentially obnoxious on its own.

devestator 7777777 wrote:
Should't the wood elfs get both fire and flee and rally and shoot.

No.

Fire and flee, and rally and shoot is giving you more than 6 shooting phases in a game.
Figure 3 turns of shooting, fire and flee, rally and fire, fire and flee, rally and fire. Stand and fire.
8 Volleys over 5 turns.

-Matt

Rember when we were discussing that the points of glade guard are not returned. I assumed the glade guards have both fire and fire and rally and shoot and S4. Then the cost of glade guard returned only in 2/3. It will look dramatic if they will get only one of the three options. Options 1+2 is not op. Without it glade guards are not going to be better then quarrels or peasant archers. I understand that S4 is op. However now were heading the rong direction, finaly wood elfs are supposed to be the best archers, additionaly they should get a lot for their 12 points per model.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
You may fire and flee only once, second time there is a very high risk of geting caught.

@devastator7777777: Once more-

1. Ranged units should not be able to get their points back all on their own.
Because they don't have to put themselves at risk in close combat.
Because, if they could, everyone would just field all-shooting armies forever.

2. Getting both option would increase the volume of their shots by over 30%. That's a big shift in the average number of casualties, and an even bigger shift in the maximum potential.
Glade Guard are not that bad in their current incarnation.

3. Dwarf Quarrelers are tougher and more effective in close combat. But they're also slower and have less effective shooting.
Peasant Bowmen take up a ton more space on the board, and are much easier to scare off.

4. Wood Elves already have the best archers.
For 12pts, you get a model with BS4, S3(4), and that can move and shoot without penalty. It's also got WS4, I5, and M5.
That's a fair deal on paper. The only issue comes from 8th's focus on massed infantry (30 arrows fired by the finest archers in the land still only kill, at most, 30 foes). In 7th, Wood Elves were a good army. They don't need bigger numbers and cheaper costs (we tried BS5 Glade Guard. It was...ugly). They need a few adjustments here and there, and another tactical option or two, to make the concept of the army viable.

Rally and shoot vs Fire and flee.

Rally and shoot is supposed to be a ablity for wood elfs that will give them an advantage over other races. Rally and shoot works only if you flee from combat and have a ability to shoot. As you know you can not win again only with shooting. What will often happen is that you will flee from combat with glade guards, your close combat unit will engage your opponent's unit, your glade gurds will rally, but will not be able to shoot, because you can not shoot in to close combat. Fire and flee is more certain in this situation, because you shoot before the units get engaged. Such situations will occur often.

devestator 7777777 wrote:
Rally and shoot vs Fire and flee.

Rally and shoot is supposed to be a ablity for wood elfs that will give them an advantage over other races. Rally and shoot works only if you flee from combat and have a ability to shoot. As you know you can not win again only with shooting. What will often happen is that you will flee from combat with glade guards, your close combat unit will engage your opponent's unit, your glade gurds will rally, but will not be able to shoot, because you can not shoot in to close combat. Fire and flee is more certain in this situation, because you shoot before the units get engaged. Such situations will occur often.

Unless of course, your opponent is coming at you with more than one unit, or has any other unit within 30". Then you can flee the charge. On your turn, charge into his combat block with one of your own, and rally to shoot his support.
Fire and Flee has a problem. If you fire and flee, you can get a situation where both sides are fleeing. If your shooting panics me, my charging unit turns and runs, and your shooting unit also runs.
Rally and Shoot doesn't have this problem.

You mean that it may occur that both units will flee to the same edge of the table and they might overlap each other, or one unit will flee through the other one. If this is what you ment then the unit that was charging can flee in to the opposite, or second closest edge of the table.

Rally and shoot will only work if the line of sight will not be obscured by the two or more engaged units. Your Oponent's units might be out of glade guards arc of sight or range. It's to uncertain for the ablity that is supposed to give advantage to wood elfs over other races. Plus Glade riders and Warhawk riders already have it. Rally and shoot is uncertain, but it is certain glade guards will always cost 12 points, which is a lot compering to other archers. Glade gurds already lose to quarrels and peasant bowmen, let them have a firm special ability so their high cost is justified, wood elfs are supposed to be the best archers anyway. Fire and flee is more certain than rally and shoot.

devestator 7777777 wrote:
You mean that it may occur that both units will flee to the same edge of the table and they might overlap each other, or one unit will flee through the other one. If this is what you ment then the unit that was charging can flee in to the opposite, or second closest edge of the table.

Rally and shoot will only work if the line of sight will not be obscured by the two or more engaged units. Your Oponent's units might be out of glade guards arc of sight or range. It's to uncertain for the ablity that is supposed to give advantage to wood elfs over other races. Plus Glade riders and Warhawk riders already have it. Rally and shoot is uncertain, but it is certain glade guards will always cost 12 points, which is a lot compering to other archers. Glade gurds already lose to quarrels and peasant bowmen, let them have a firm special ability so their high cost is justified, wood elfs are supposed to be the best archers anyway. Fire and flee is more certain than rally and shoot.

I'd argue that shooting at S4 at short range, shooting at 30", moving and shooting, and shooting without a movement penalty is what puts glade guard over other shooters.
Trying to balance them to two really old books isn't a good idea. Balance them in 8th edtion to 8th edition books.
So what 8th edition lists have shooters as core?
Tomb Kings, Empire and Orcs.
You want to take a look at how 12 point glade guard fair in the 8th edition shooting world?

I'd also argue that wood elves as a race feature mobility.
Fire and flee leaves you with a reactionary effect limited to who charges you in your front arc.
Rally and fire leaves you with a reform in any direction in any formation threatening a huge area of the table.

-Matt

Empire cross bowmen have a range of 30 and S4 at all range. Empire handguners have S4 and armour piercing at a range of 24. Of course these units have worse balistic skill and have penalty for moving and shooting (crossbowmen can not move and shoot) but they cost only 9 points. Moving and shooting is not that great, because you wan't move forward so you don't come to close to enemy, you rather will stand and shoot.(If you find yourself out of range you may make one move, but not more) Both empire units are better at fighting armoured units at range of 16+ inches assuming they haven't moved. Most units have armour save. Empire crossbowmen and handgunners cost only 9 points per model. Glade guards cost 12 points. That ends up with glade guards beeing slightly better and they have slightly better LD ,I and bs of course. However glade guards are more expensive and are wood elfs. However we both agreed that wood elfs need to have special ability like rally and shoot or similar. There is no point in continuing the discussion about shooters. What I was trying to say that wood elfs need a ability like raly and shoot or fire and flee. I just worry rally and shoot might be uncertain and not good enough. If your missile unit will rally right behind two engaged close combat units then it often might find it's line of sight obscured. Fire and flee is more certain and it allows you to do one awesome thing. Fire and flee throuh your unit forcing your opponet's unit to charge a unit you fled through.

Being able to move and shoot is a huge deal.

Matt brings up a good point about the potential silliness of shooting into a unit, breaking them via Panic, and then running yourself.
Being allowed to shoot in a turn you rally is simpler and more active.

Are there any other similar situations where you're not normally allowed to shoot?

Warpsolution wrote:
Being able to move and shoot is a huge deal.

Matt brings up a good point about the potential silliness of shooting into a unit, breaking them via Panic, and then running yourself.
Being allowed to shoot in a turn you rally is simpler and more active.

Are there any other similar situations where you're not normally allowed to shoot?

You can panic an enemy and be panicked yourself with magic, so I don't see it as too silly.

I don't think Rally and Shoot! is the answer. We have Fast Cavalry and Skirmishers. We can already skirmish Glade Guard(in this rework), so the Rally and Shoot! rule is completely redundant.

How about an indirect bow fire ability?

Say drop a large template? S4 for all bows fired in this way..
Make it 1 template for 10 warriors 1 S4 attack per unit hit or 2 S4 attacks for 20 warriors... As an alternative, allow a super long ranged shot... Say +50% to range... i0

DAaddict wrote:
How about an indirect bow fire ability?

Say drop a large template? S4 for all bows fired in this way..
Make it 1 template for 10 warriors 1 S4 attack per unit hit or 2 S4 attacks for 20 warriors... As an alternative, allow a super long ranged shot... Say +50% to range... i0

I'd say minimum 20-man unit for the small blasts, and perhaps 30-man for large. Perhaps S4 for small (to represent a large volume of arrows striking a small area) and S3 for the large. Due to the accuracy issues, perhaps the small blast scatters artillery dice inches, while the large scatters only d6 inches. A misfire for the small blast would mean anything from the aim being completely wrong to a crosswind taking them off target?

Also, same with Warmachines - Move or Shoot. Would give WE access to a small amount of artillery anyway.

Why would you need a form of indirect fire beyond Volley Fire?

Warpsolution wrote:
Why would you need a form of indirect fire beyond Volley Fire?

Why do you need March and Shoot or Rally and Shoot, when you can Skirmish for +1 pt and get both?

EDIT: Sorry if that sounded rude, rushed a bit when I made the post.

As for indirect fire other than Volley Fire, I'm not sure. If the blast templates had a larger range than 30" then it may be a incentive to take larger blocks of Glade Guard.

It gives us a sort of Warmachine-esque function, I suppose? I guess an immobile treant who throws rocks could work as well.

Jirin wrote:

Warpsolution wrote:
Why would you need a form of indirect fire beyond Volley Fire?

Why do you need March and Shoot or Rally and Shoot, when you can Skirmish for +1 pt and get both?

EDIT: Sorry if that sounded rude, rushed a bit when I made the post.

As for indirect fire other than Volley Fire, I'm not sure. If the blast templates had a larger range than 30" then it may be a incentive to take larger blocks of Glade Guard.

It gives us a sort of Warmachine-esque function, I suppose? I guess an immobile treant who throws rocks could work as well.

Skirmish is actually pretty bad on a large scale. It really starts to eat up table space and a shooty army needs to be able to focus a high amount of its units on a small area to be effective. Especially skirmishing shooting units. A unit of 20 wound be 12.5" long and ~2.2" deep. None skirmishing is 8" long by 1.7" deep. Skirmishing basically takes away 4.5" worth of shooting space. It's like having 12 less shooters on the table (6 from the front rank and 6 from the 2nd rank).

On smaller elite shooters (shades, chaemeleons, gutter runners with poison slings) small units can do enough damage to pay off. But long range cheap units? Not so much.

-Matt

Agreed. I mean, I wouldn't consider Glade Guard cheap, but the point stands.
Really, I think the Skirmish rule needs to be changed up. They should deploy and take up space like other units, but be allowed all their other benefits and drawbacks. That would fix everything, I believe.

@Jirin: March and Shoot isn't something I'm considering any more, and Rally and Shoot would give Glade Guard the opportunity to do something they're not currently allowed to do (and for less points and real estate than the upgrade to Skirmish them costs).
This "indirect fire" idea is just another version of Volley Fire, but usually better. It doesn't add anything to the army or the game, it just replaces the current mechanic with one that would be better and less elegant.

IMO skirmish should be a half in gap between ranks, and no gap between columns. Maybe GW wanted skirmishing units to be smaller and not be the major focus. I think this is a rule issue though, and not an army issue.

Honestly, if you want to make dryads better, drop skirmish off them. That's a unit that needs to be in bigger blocks, and the ability to be and strip steadfast would improve the army by leaps and bounds.

-Matt

I like the Rally and Fire idea, it doesn't make glade guard more powerful so much as more reliable. Fire and Flee looks a bit cheesy by comparison! But seriously I think it makes GG a more attractive unit choice just because they are more reliable, being able to move and fire and rally and fire means every unit [i]should[i] be firing every turn.

Side note though the more I like the idea the more spammable it seems. It would be interesting to play test with a GG heavy list. For context, if anyone has read SneakyGobbo's batreps with his skink-cloud army imagine that but with rally-and-fire GG, nasty

Beeing able to fire and flee through a friendly unit forcing the enemy unit to charge the friendly unit is certainly not cheesy. This allows you to have a volley of arrows at a charging unit and the friendly unit that enemy was forced to charge at can still fight. This allows to slaughter even a strong unit in a turn it charged. As for indirect fire I would propose that big blast template will inflict 2d6 hits for every 10 gg in a unit. S3 at long range and S4 at short range. Same with small blast, just the same ammount of hits focused over smaller area.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Small blast may be used to kill a preferable targets within a unit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I would say that the big blast scatters artilery dice inches minus the highest bs in a unit and the small blast d6 inches minus highest bs in a unit.

devestator 7777777 wrote:
Beeing able to fire and flee through a friendly unit forcing the enemy unit to charge the friendly unit is certainly not cheesy. This allows you to have a volley of arrows at a charging unit and the friendly unit that enemy was forced to charge at can still fight. This allows to slaughter even a strong unit in a turn it charged. As for indirect fire I would propose that big blast template will inflict 2d6 hits for every 10 gg in a unit. S3 at long range and S4 at short range. Same with small blast, just the same ammount of hits focused over smaller area.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Small blast may be used to kill a preferable targets within a unit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I would say that the big blast scatters artilery dice inches minus the highest bs in a unit and the small blast d6 inches minus highest bs in a unit.

So the small blast scatters 0 to 2" at most, unless you have a character where it does scatter at all?
Why even use a template if your just doing 2D6 hits?
Because it is way better than volley fire?
Because it is better than normal shooting?

Think about it. 10 guys average 7 hits with this rule.
10 guys shoot an opponent in the open at close range only average 6.66 hits.
With you rule, everyone sudden becomes better for aiming into the sky instead of aiming at the enemy.

It's another bad idea. It's overly complex.

-Matt

HawaiiMatt wrote:

devestator 7777777 wrote:
Beeing able to fire and flee through a friendly unit forcing the enemy unit to charge the friendly unit is certainly not cheesy. This allows you to have a volley of arrows at a charging unit and the friendly unit that enemy was forced to charge at can still fight. This allows to slaughter even a strong unit in a turn it charged. As for indirect fire I would propose that big blast template will inflict 2d6 hits for every 10 gg in a unit. S3 at long range and S4 at short range. Same with small blast, just the same ammount of hits focused over smaller area.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Small blast may be used to kill a preferable targets within a unit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I would say that the big blast scatters artilery dice inches minus the highest bs in a unit and the small blast d6 inches minus highest bs in a unit.

So the small blast scatters 0 to 2" at most, unless you have a character where it does scatter at all?
Why even use a template if your just doing 2D6 hits?
Because it is way better than volley fire?
Because it is better than normal shooting?

Think about it. 10 guys average 7 hits with this rule.
10 guys shoot an opponent in the open at close range only average 6.66 hits.
With you rule, everyone sudden becomes better for aiming into the sky instead of aiming at the enemy.

It's another bad idea. It's overly complex.

-Matt

. It can only be used if a unit stands and does't move. Furthermore it is easier to fire at the area instead of firing at the moving target. Archers just point their bows in the sky at the angle Lord's bowman shows them and release arrows at his command. This way of shooting is more precise then firing dircetly. For the lord's bowman is more experienced and has better tact then any of the other archers. So it scores more hits than shooting directly. This is how shooting in medival times looked like. When soldiers followed orders the scatter was very small if at all. The volume of shoots is already spread over the area of the template. Adding such a ability for the best cordinated archers in the game is reasonable.