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 Overread wrote:

For 40K it could easily become a situation where certain tanks are heavily superior to others. A lot of those big chunky Imperial tanks might even end up really poor choices compared to a lot of sleeker Xenos.

At the same time a lot of Xenos tanks and such don't have side guns.

Honestly that seems like a plus to me. More ways to differentiate units. OR of course you just bisect the model or split it into quads for facing arcs, and then all vehicles are on the same footing again.

And I would consider firing arcs to be a different mechanic than armor facing.

In the end I think it can be a cool mechanic, but its not a good one to have in a modern 2K points 40K game. It slows things down; encourages less terrain use and could be a nightmare for some factions over others.

I have no idea how vehicle facings encourages less terrain.

 Wyzilla wrote:
I really don't get the arguments about facings because deciding what facing is being shot at is extremely trivial when you are playing a game which requires a tape measure. If your opponent is being a dumbass, it ain't hard to literally draw a physical line from the model shooting to the armor facing. Even better if you carry around a laser pointer keychain or the like.

Not every vehicles a box where it's clear what facing you're looking at.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
I really don't get the arguments about facings because deciding what facing is being shot at is extremely trivial when you are playing a game which requires a tape measure. If your opponent is being a dumbass, it ain't hard to literally draw a physical line from the model shooting to the armor facing. Even better if you carry around a laser pointer keychain or the like.

Not every vehicles a box where it's clear what facing you're looking at.

I guarantee you that every vehicle in 40k will fit in a box & that you can determine where the center of that box is.

Maybe templates vs facing can be annoying but just drawing lines normally surely can't be the big deal I see people make it out to be.

Vehicle facings really, really was a source of arguments for non-imperial vehicles. Almost as bad as rolling scatter dice for blast templates far away from the template and then debating the finer points of 10 degrees that happens to hit/miss 5 or more models. Vehicle facings are a cute idea you could maybe make a case for front/rear only. Show me front, sidesL/R and rear facing on a Dark Eldar venom, that's partially obscured from the view of the firer...

Does it matter when it's AV10 on all sides?

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Baragash wrote:
I think you could determine crossfire fairly simply for a game of 40k scale. For example, you could define the minimum angle needed between two firing units, let's say 90 degrees, and simply have a cone-shaped template with that angle at the tip you can place on the table, if necessary use laser pointers to extend it the sides if it is marginal, and a lot of the time I would imaginei t would be obvious without needing the template.

Would you need 90 degrees or just do the "If you can draw a line through the taget unit between two of your units."?

90 degrees was just an example that I chose because I thought it was easy to visualise a quadrant template for the example, what the tolerance should be is really a matter of opinion (I think you would find that if you placed unit A in front of the target, and unit B to the side of the target, and then checked the arc was separated by the 90 degree cone, that would look like a reasonable flanking position to grant a bonus, YMMV though).

ccs wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
I really don't get the arguments about facings because deciding what facing is being shot at is extremely trivial when you are playing a game which requires a tape measure. If your opponent is being a dumbass, it ain't hard to literally draw a physical line from the model shooting to the armor facing. Even better if you carry around a laser pointer keychain or the like.

Not every vehicles a box where it's clear what facing you're looking at.

I guarantee you that every vehicle in 40k will fit in a box & that you can determine where the center of that box is.

Tell me where the center of an Eldar falcon or wave Serpent is, and where it's front becomes it's side.

Clearly the center is right around the inner side of the cockpit?

Is there a case where the difference between front/side on the main Eldar tanks matters when they're both AV12?

Maybe delineating the sides and rear is more tricky, but even just drawing a nice box around the whole thing puts the division at the engines which isn't too hard to argue with, and the edge of the engine cowling probably makes the most sense. If you really want a front/side delineation then the split between the first and second wing panel is easy to point to.

Obviously everything would be better if GW just provided diagrams for facings for all vehicles (they did for Knights at one point), but if there was something to be really worried about then it's something to bring up at the start of the game.

 Gibblets wrote:
Vehicle facings really, really was a source of arguments for non-imperial vehicles. Almost as bad as rolling scatter dice for blast templates far away from the template and then debating the finer points of 10 degrees that happens to hit/miss 5 or more models. Vehicle facings are a cute idea you could maybe make a case for front/rear only. Show me front, sidesL/R and rear facing on a Dark Eldar venom, that's partially obscured from the view of the firer...

Ok.
Find the centre of the Venom. Place an X over it. Now you know where it's f/sides/r arcs are.

Same applies to the Falcon chassis Chaos0xomega wants to argue about.

ccs wrote:

 Gibblets wrote:
Vehicle facings really, really was a source of arguments for non-imperial vehicles. Almost as bad as rolling scatter dice for blast templates far away from the template and then debating the finer points of 10 degrees that happens to hit/miss 5 or more models. Vehicle facings are a cute idea you could maybe make a case for front/rear only. Show me front, sidesL/R and rear facing on a Dark Eldar venom, that's partially obscured from the view of the firer...

Ok.
Find the centre of the Venom. Place an X over it. Now you know where it's f/sides/r arcs are.

Same applies to the Falcon chassis Chaos0xomega wants to argue about.

That feels really far forward of where the actual center of the vehicle is.

 JNAProductions wrote:

ccs wrote:

 Gibblets wrote:
Vehicle facings really, really was a source of arguments for non-imperial vehicles. Almost as bad as rolling scatter dice for blast templates far away from the template and then debating the finer points of 10 degrees that happens to hit/miss 5 or more models. Vehicle facings are a cute idea you could maybe make a case for front/rear only. Show me front, sidesL/R and rear facing on a Dark Eldar venom, that's partially obscured from the view of the firer...

Ok.
Find the centre of the Venom. Place an X over it. Now you know where it's f/sides/r arcs are.

Same applies to the Falcon chassis Chaos0xomega wants to argue about.

That feels really far forward of where the actual center of the vehicle is.

Tau vehicles suffer from the same, infact any vehicle that is longer than it is wide will have problems with 90 degree quadrants, which iirc is what the rules implied you should use.

No it doesn't specifically matter the vehicle was the same armour all round either, people want facings and they want a bonus of some kind for flank/rear attacks, so if you include one it needs to be able to be applied.

any vehicle with a base is a problem and the solution for odd shaped vehicles without base is simply to add a base with arcs to them

not like something like this does not already exists
of course if one only knows GW games and going with the premises that anything they are not doing must be impossible to do there might be an argument here

but saying that arcs/facings are impossible with odd shaped vehicles when Star Wars games use that without a problem is either ignorance or searching for reasons instead of just saying "I don't like it".

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
I really don't get the arguments about facings because deciding what facing is being shot at is extremely trivial when you are playing a game which requires a tape measure. If your opponent is being a dumbass, it ain't hard to literally draw a physical line from the model shooting to the armor facing. Even better if you carry around a laser pointer keychain or the like.

Not every vehicles a box where it's clear what facing you're looking at.

Who cares about being a box, it's a game with models. Everything is either geometric enough it has a center line or is a skimmer mounted on a base where you can just measure off of that. I swear everyone who has problems with AV or facings is just down to not treating things logically but encountering facings like it's the first time they played a wargame. Worst case scenario you just mark firing angles on the base itself like multiple star wars fleet games did over the decades.

chaos0xomega wrote:

ccs wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
I really don't get the arguments about facings because deciding what facing is being shot at is extremely trivial when you are playing a game which requires a tape measure. If your opponent is being a dumbass, it ain't hard to literally draw a physical line from the model shooting to the armor facing. Even better if you carry around a laser pointer keychain or the like.

Not every vehicles a box where it's clear what facing you're looking at.

I guarantee you that every vehicle in 40k will fit in a box & that you can determine where the center of that box is.

Tell me where the center of an Eldar falcon or wave Serpent is, and where it's front becomes it's side.

Very confusing and difficult to figure out the center of skimmers when skimmers come with belly buttons to mount stands on.

After 2+ consecutive years of playing a 40k ruleset with facings now I can attest that they, in fact, do not cause issues or slow down the game significantly.

In case of doubt where you are on the edge and not a 100% sure for the facing.. be a good sport and take the option that is worse for you.

 Wyzilla wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
I really don't get the arguments about facings because deciding what facing is being shot at is extremely trivial when you are playing a game which requires a tape measure. If your opponent is being a dumbass, it ain't hard to literally draw a physical line from the model shooting to the armor facing. Even better if you carry around a laser pointer keychain or the like.

Not every vehicles a box where it's clear what facing you're looking at.

Who cares about being a box, it's a game with models. Everything is either geometric enough it has a center line or is a skimmer mounted on a base where you can just measure off of that. I swear everyone who has problems with AV or facings is just down to not treating things logically but encountering facings like it's the first time they played a wargame. Worst case scenario you just mark firing angles on the base itself like multiple star wars fleet games did over the decades.

chaos0xomega wrote:

ccs wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
I really don't get the arguments about facings because deciding what facing is being shot at is extremely trivial when you are playing a game which requires a tape measure. If your opponent is being a dumbass, it ain't hard to literally draw a physical line from the model shooting to the armor facing. Even better if you carry around a laser pointer keychain or the like.

Not every vehicles a box where it's clear what facing you're looking at.

I guarantee you that every vehicle in 40k will fit in a box & that you can determine where the center of that box is.

Tell me where the center of an Eldar falcon or wave Serpent is, and where it's front becomes it's side.

Spoiler:

Very confusing and difficult to figure out the center of skimmers when skimmers come with belly buttons to mount stands on.

You can tell that that belly button mount is not actually in the center of the model, right? It's the point the model balances on (in theory), clearly not the center of an imaginary rectangle.

I loved vehicle facings as a mechanic but determining facings for eldar vehicles was always a challenge (source: eldar player). Sure it's doable when looking at a picture, but it's more tricky in real life/on the tabletop. It gets more fun when you realize the wave serpent and fire prism have extended posteriors, meaning their center is at a slightly different spot than the falcon's, despite the chassis being the same otherwise. And do you count the spirit vanes (whiskers) on the wave serpent too when determining the box? Because you should, and that broadens the front and rear faces of the imaginary box compared to the other grav tanks.

I half suspect gw gave them all the same front and side armor values to sidestep this issue back then. This is the main reason unclear facings didn't slow down gameplay for eldar vehicles; it rarely mattered.

The idea of painting facing markings on the base would work, but not with the current tiny skimmer disks. Those are far too fragile to glue on imo. You'd need actual full-sized vehicle bases.

So, applying the standard caveat of the 90 degree quadrants, it's entirely possible to be behind a hammerhead in cover and if the SMS is the only visible part sticking out, you're hitting it on front armour despite being behind and to the side of it.

If a blast lands loosely 130 degrees to the rear of a tank, but not directly on (so on the table but the blast marker hits the hull) good luck accurately working that one out.

You can paint arcs on bases, but look at the repulsor, it hangs over the base by a large amount making it both harder to extrapolate and again means the "front" doesn't make sense.

If you acknowledge a 90 degree arc doesn't always fit and want to use "logical" side arcs - where are those on eldar and necron vehicles?

All these things can and did come up and people act like it's easy or obvious to have a consensus with an opponent you maybe are just meeting for the first time. If you then add competitive play on top then "always take the worst result" when there are 2 players and either option is worse for one of them, creating a paradox, is time consuming and annoying the more it happens.

Same with templates, it's all fine to agree it's something you can negotiate fairly until you hit that one person who insists on perfect coherency due to not wanting an inherent disadvantage and wastes all your game time faffing with movement, arguing over scatter distance/direction, arguing over how many partials etc.

 Insectum7 wrote:

In the end I think it can be a cool mechanic, but its not a good one to have in a modern 2K points 40K game. It slows things down; encourages less terrain use and could be a nightmare for some factions over others.

I have no idea how vehicle facings encourages less terrain.

Because we have Baneblades. Big chunky tanks that take up a lot of board room and need space to turn to face where the player wants them too. They already encourage reduced terrain just to move around and that's without a facings system. Yes you can argue that its very thematic that you could bum-rush a Baneblade that gets stuck between buildings, but on the flipside that would either encourage people not to use them at all or to build boards that have fewer such spots and tight areas.

Again most of the games you see with facings tend to be skirmishers with vastly smaller model counts and often smaller models; whilst those with larger ones tend to be naval in nature with much more open terrain setup than your typical 40K board uses/needs to function. Granted that's also because the naval games are often doing wheel turns whilst at least tanks can turn on the spot

Taken to extreme GW can just print pictures in the codex with shaded parts of the model and say "this is the front, this is the side" etc. If you really want to get into vehicle minutiae, you don't even need to define things by front/side etc, you can breakdown the armour values of different parts. And people can learn where to shoot by playing the 40k equivalent of War Thunder etc etc. You can make this system as complex as you want.

I admit however to thinking this doesn't really serve to make the game more fun. If you want a game where maneuvering to hit people from the flank or back is the key skill, I think you fundamentally have to change how movement and IGOUGO works. Have some sort of mechanism like in X-Wing or something. At which point you are playing a completely different game.

Dudeface wrote:
So, applying the standard caveat of the 90 degree quadrants, it's entirely possible to be behind a hammerhead in cover and if the SMS is the only visible part sticking out, you're hitting it on front armour despite being behind and to the side of it.

If your line of sight is only to the (front/side/rear), why is it a problem that you can only hit the model on the (front/side/rear)? Unless you have a rule to ignore solid walls to determine line of sight, this is how it would work "in reality" and is not a disconnect to the rules system. Or do I not get your example?

Dudeface wrote:

If a blast lands loosely 130 degrees to the rear of a tank, but not directly on (so on the table but the blast marker hits the hull) good luck accurately working that one out.

Straight line from the center of the blast marker hole to the middle of the vehicle or "always from the direction of the shooting unit" are two examples how to solve it.

Dudeface wrote:

All these things can and did come up and people act like it's easy or obvious to have a consensus with an opponent you maybe are just meeting for the first time. If you then add competitive play on top then "always take the worst result" when there are 2 players and either option is worse for one of them, creating a paradox, is time consuming and annoying the more it happens.

Have you ever been in the situation where you wanted to let a complete stranger go in front of you and they wanted to let you go first as well? If that causes issues, then change it to "if you are the attacker, then take the worse result for yourself when in doubt".

Dudeface wrote:

Same with templates, it's all fine to agree it's something you can negotiate fairly until you hit that one person who insists on perfect coherency due to not wanting an inherent disadvantage and wastes all your game time faffing with movement, arguing over scatter distance/direction, arguing over how many partials etc.

A game system should try to minimise situations where a discussion about the proper application of the rules comes up, but a person like that does not sound like you would want to play a second time, anyway.

That actually reminds me - most games that are designed for facings also print them on the base. Warmachine, Infinity - both have little notches on the base to denote the front and sides of the model.

Starwars Armada has them on the base too and whilst Naval games often don't use bases for their models, they do generally have fairly simple ship designs that make it mindlessly easy to tell which is the front and which is the side.

So basically games that use facings often use tools to aid them. GW tanks don't even come on a base and skimmer bases don't have any orientation notches or markings.


The game isn't built for it nor designed for it and whilst you can impose it on the game, the game doesn't have the gameplay aids to make it easier to use. So adding it might mean adding new functions (including tank bases) and other elements to make it work.

Thing is with how GW changes edition to edition I suspect many wouldn't adapt to the change because it could be all gone in 3 years time.

 Kothra wrote:
Obviously everything would be better if GW just provided diagrams for facings for all vehicles (they did for Knights at one point), but if there was something to be really worried about then it's something to bring up at the start of the game.

If facings were to return, this is the solution that's needed - heck, GW could even do a card pack release per faction with an index card for each vehicle in a faction illustrating the facings from a top-down perspective.

If you heavily convert or scratchbuild something, use the original as a guide - and use the interpretation that's worse for you if it comes up.

a_typical_hero wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
So, applying the standard caveat of the 90 degree quadrants, it's entirely possible to be behind a hammerhead in cover and if the SMS is the only visible part sticking out, you're hitting it on front armour despite being behind and to the side of it.

If your line of sight is only to the (front/side/rear), why is it a problem that you can only hit the model on the (front/side/rear)? Unless you have a rule to ignore solid walls to determine line of sight, this is how it would work "in reality" and is not a disconnect to the rules system? Or do I not get your example?

I'll do my best with some brief knock ups, excuse the rubbish paint job. Here are 90 degree quadrants centred over the base mount hole (which means the middle point would be different if it was built on it's landing gear), there is a section of the front wings that despite being visible side on, become "front", likewise the rear of the thrusters become "side".

The other image with a dodgy wall and a red base is showing that despite being to the rear and side of a tank, because of the weird quirk you could be forced to fire at the front facing from an implausible angle. (it shoved them at the bottom and I can't seem to move them)

Dudeface wrote:

If a blast lands loosely 130 degrees to the rear of a tank, but not directly on (so on the table but the blast marker hits the hull) good luck accurately working that one out.

Straight line from the center of the blast marker hole to the middle of the vehicle or "always from the direction of the shooting unit" are two examples how to solve it.

So you still need to measure to the "middle" which is ill defined and it still doesn't help visually work out which 5 degree angle it falls in whether it's side or rear. and "always direction from the shooting unit" isn't clear? If I'm to the right of a vehicle, my blast lands on the rear/left boundary, are you suggesting it'd be a rear shot?

Dudeface wrote:

All these things can and did come up and people act like it's easy or obvious to have a consensus with an opponent you maybe are just meeting for the first time. If you then add competitive play on top then "always take the worst result" when there are 2 players and either option is worse for one of them, creating a paradox, is time consuming and annoying the more it happens.

Have you ever been in the situation where you wanted to let a complete stranger go in front of you and they wanted to let you go first as well? If that causes issues, then change it to "if you are the attacker, then take the worse result for yourself when in doubt".

You've introduced a social contract to handle a situation that's unfortunately based on ambiguity and as such isn't going to fly in the fact of needing a rules clarity from a judge or whatever. There does need to be a right or wrong answer eventually.

Dudeface wrote:

Same with templates, it's all fine to agree it's something you can negotiate fairly until you hit that one person who insists on perfect coherency due to not wanting an inherent disadvantage and wastes all your game time faffing with movement, arguing over scatter distance/direction, arguing over how many partials etc.

A game system should try to minimise situations where a discussion about the proper application of the rules comes up, but a person like that does not sound like you would want to play a second time, anyway.

 Kothra wrote:
Clearly the center is right around the inner side of the cockpit?

Is there a case where the difference between front/side on the main Eldar tanks matters when they're both AV12?

Maybe delineating the sides and rear is more tricky, but even just drawing a nice box around the whole thing puts the division at the engines which isn't too hard to argue with, and the edge of the engine cowling probably makes the most sense. If you really want a front/side delineation then the split between the first and second wing panel is easy to point to.

Obviously everything would be better if GW just provided diagrams for facings for all vehicles (they did for Knights at one point), but if there was something to be really worried about then it's something to bring up at the start of the game.

Is it? The bulk of the wave serpent is basically behind the cockpit, do you consider the wings protruding towards the front of it to be part of the hull? If so, then the centerpoint of some of the forgeworld vehicles, such as the Scorpion and the Lynx, is actually in front of the cockpit in empty space.

 Wyzilla wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
I really don't get the arguments about facings because deciding what facing is being shot at is extremely trivial when you are playing a game which requires a tape measure. If your opponent is being a dumbass, it ain't hard to literally draw a physical line from the model shooting to the armor facing. Even better if you carry around a laser pointer keychain or the like.

Not every vehicles a box where it's clear what facing you're looking at.

Who cares about being a box, it's a game with models. Everything is either geometric enough it has a center line or is a skimmer mounted on a base where you can just measure off of that. I swear everyone who has problems with AV or facings is just down to not treating things logically but encountering facings like it's the first time they played a wargame. Worst case scenario you just mark firing angles on the base itself like multiple star wars fleet games did over the decades.

chaos0xomega wrote:

ccs wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
I really don't get the arguments about facings because deciding what facing is being shot at is extremely trivial when you are playing a game which requires a tape measure. If your opponent is being a dumbass, it ain't hard to literally draw a physical line from the model shooting to the armor facing. Even better if you carry around a laser pointer keychain or the like.

Not every vehicles a box where it's clear what facing you're looking at.

I guarantee you that every vehicle in 40k will fit in a box & that you can determine where the center of that box is.

Tell me where the center of an Eldar falcon or wave Serpent is, and where it's front becomes it's side.

Spoiler:

Very confusing and difficult to figure out the center of skimmers when skimmers come with belly buttons to mount stands on.

Ah, but thats not the center of the vehicle, according to Kothra. Nor is it the center of the vehicle according to geometry.

And this is why facings didn't work, because they were unclear and arbitrary and GW didn't do the work to actually set up a ruleset where centerpoints and arcs were clearly defined for every vehicle.

Tau vehicles have a similar problem, where depending on where you define your centerpoint, parts of the vehicle are considered to be in its front arc despite only actually being visible from the side or the rear.

I think I googled the exact same words and results

This is how I would do facings for vehicles, if I were in charge. Basically what seems to look like the middle of the chassis and go from there. I reckon that, depending on the model, it still can happen that you get a weird angle, but this might be more a problem with the "it is enough to see the discarded magazine on the scenic base of a model to be able to shoot the whole damn squad behind that solid wall of concrete".

Why not just put each vehicle on a base the same way all other models are, mold quarters in to the base and then what ever is the quarter of the base you see closest is the facing you are shoting, charing or using your abilities on.

All the problems with facing come with trying to add non abstract LoS in to a system with abstract LoS , to what degrees is irrelevant, for everything else.

If a unit has a base that decides the facing then it doesn't matter how the vehicle looks like, if the player modeled it doing a wheele or a front stand. Add arbitrary hight for all units, terrain etc and almost all LoS problems, terrain probles etc are gone from w40k. But GW design team, for some reason wants to have elements of a skirmish 10 model per side game in their mass combat one.

Karol wrote:
Why not just put each vehicle on a base the same way all other models are, mold quarters in to the base and then what ever is the quarter of the base you see closest is the facing you are shoting, charing or using your abilities on.

That is how most games that do facing handle it - thing is GW tanks have historically only had bases if they were a skimmer, otherwise they don't have them. so it means releasing bases for those tanks and then having base sizes for the tanks and getting everyone to start upgrading.

So it means a huge rework of existing models and so forth to make it work. At which point you've got a 3 year cycle to consider; how many are going to rebase and add bases to everything only to have the risk that next edition they vanish as a mechanic.

Plus things like baneblades are big enough; adding a base makes them marginally even bigger



Plus we have to account for the fact that none of the vehicles were built for a facings style game. Their scale compared ot infantry and the board is not good for allowing facings to be practical along with everything else.

So what. GW is making their games worse to play, on purpose for 30+ years, because they want to save up on bases for tanks. Because it is not like they can't make really big bases. They have the for knights, scenic models etc

And for some big stuff, if it would be a problem, they can just decide that unit X is either super tough, or super weak, and it always has one facing. They could even be vehicle upgrades, some sort of sand bags or extra armour or mini force fields, that turns the "side" or maybe even in extrem cases the "back" facing the same as the front.

They can come with handicaps too, as a trade. Either making tanks slower, replacing a weapon or the drain of energy for the fields is so big that maybe the weapons on the tank are weaker. etc.

Karol wrote:
Why not just put each vehicle on a base the same way all other models are, mold quarters in to the base and then what ever is the quarter of the base you see closest is the facing you are shoting, charing or using your abilities on.

All the problems with facing come with trying to add non abstract LoS in to a system with abstract LoS , to what degrees is irrelevant, for everything else.

If a unit has a base that decides the facing then it doesn't matter how the vehicle looks like, if the player modeled it doing a wheele or a front stand. Add arbitrary hight for all units, terrain etc and almost all LoS problems, terrain probles etc are gone from w40k. But GW design team, for some reason wants to have elements of a skirmish 10 model per side game in their mass combat one.

Because theres a very vocal segment of the community that thinks its gross to put vehicles on bases, for some inexplicable reason. And that aesthetic judgement is seemingly influencing (and by extension compromising) sound game design.

Its also not just 40k, if you notice most vehicles don't have bases in LI either.

 Overread wrote:
Plus we have to account for the fact that none of the vehicles were built for a facings style game. Their scale compared ot infantry and the board is not good for allowing facings to be practical along with everything else.

Well, that's just factually untrue - the vast majority of vehicle designs were released (or, at least, originally released) prior to 8th edition, when the game did use facings.