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Tyel wrote:


Obviously this invites the question of whether 40k needs to be 5 turns long. But it is why I think of a lot of 40k can be described as two people with big hammers swinging at each other for a few moments. A lot of this cat and mouse stuff just doesn't really work with that limitation in place.

I think alternative activations is probably a false panacea - but it does potentially change the game from having 5 moves to having say 50~ depending on army formation. (Although in turn a lot of games with alternate activations have a lower total "turn" count to account for this.)

I think shortening the game to 5 turns, and at competitive events dropping each game down to 1.5 hours, has been a serious negative overall. I mean...aren't we supposed to be playing a game and actually having some form of fun here?

Right now, it's boiled down to "you get 9 minutes to move everything, make all your decisions, pick up triple-handfuls of dices and try to delete your opponent's units. Make sure after you roll to hit and wound you put them back on their clock for making their saves. Then they'll do the same to you."

Yes, I realize that's not what happens in your buddy's garage over beers, but the "delete unit/trade the next turn" concept is still in full force. Every bit of subtlety has been stripped out of this edition.

As for alternating activations, while I'm a diehard Epic: Armageddon fan, it's not without it's issues as well. If I wanted to win a game of 40k playing with alternating activations, I'd do my best to bring 2x my opponent's number of units, so that when they run out of activations during the turn, I'm only half done (and have only used my chaff units so far), and now I'm just going to have my way with them with the best I brought. It would require a complete re-write/re-structuring of the game.

 Jidmah wrote:
Are you truly surprised that no one listened to you when, in fact, you didn't suggest anything?

Stratagems in 11th work way better than initiative ever did. Yet you think one is salvageable while the later is not.

The fact that you presumably don't like or approve of my suggestion does not make it any less valid than your own.

Unless your sole reference point is drooling over whatever GW chooses to do?

Sigh.

If there is a discussion about trying to fix stratagems, and you go in there screeching about how the whole system is terrible and that it should be thrown out, that's a non-contribution - no matter how popular this kind of behavior was among a certain group of people here at dakka.

Your opinion is not invalid. I can see why people feel a disconnect in immersion when only one unit can throw grenades per turn, that a landraider needs specific order from a commander to bust through a wall and that team bravo cannot duck into cover because team alpha already did. Maybe it's because 5th the first edition I was really invested in, but I never had the feeling that WH40k was game that was particularly close to simulating anything - therefore I also don't mind such a disconnect personally.

The stratagem framework doesn't come without advantages though. Limiting such actions to once per phase/turn and making them cost a resource allows these effects to be much more powerful. Throwing grenades and tank shock are things that really can have an impact and turn the tide in a battle. There is a limit to how powerful you can make grenades when an army like space marines or orks can have 10 units throwing them, and tripple and quadruple wave serpent tank shocks at the current power level wouldn't be healthy for the game at all.
Defensive stratagems allow you to actually do something during your opponent's turn and throw a wrench in their plans. Mean while they try to bait you into using it on a different unit, split fire to make that stratagem less effective or just force their way through it, or they could try to drain your CP pool by giving you chance to spend them. There also is the question whether it makes sense to keep a unit a live or use the CP to retaliate with a different unit next turn. That's a whole layer of tactical decisions added to the game, which is good in general as it gives players more options.
If you could just throw 'ard as nails, dodge or disgustingly resilient onto every unit which your opponent wants to kill, it's just a game of "who has the most CP". That's what why stratagems failed so spectacularly in 8th.

In my opinion stratagems, now implemented properly, add a lot to the game, despite not being represented properly in the narrative. I see that people in my playing group who struggle with complex rules have no issues with the current amount of stratagems or detachment rules. The main reason why I see people getting gotcha'ed these days are because they didn't pay attention or an opponent intentionally tried to obscure what his stratagems can do. So my two main points of criticism is gone as well.
It's also my opinion that a game should first and foremost be fun to play, and a simulation of realistic(whatever that means) events second. It's perfectly valid to not share this opinion. You just need to be aware that fun sells stuff, pseudo-realism doesn't

Overall I'm with Jidmah on stratagems and 10th is the best Implementation of the concept so far. However, I find widespread equipment like grenades should have stayed as just that, equipment. Tank shock as something tanks could do in general would also be something I'd prefer.
Stratagems in 8th started as something to reign in the insane Formation Boni that crashed 7th edition. And then GW crashed 8th and 9th with Stratagems again
However, I'd like strats as something truly outlandish that's not a usual tactic and they also shouldn't just be kill more things. Faction specific strats are usually okay for flavor and personally I'd even reduce strats to reactions. I like rapid ingress, overwatch and the CC one. These are strats that provoke tactical desicions and make your opponent ask you how many CP you have left. Kill stuff without a way to mitigate should be reduced or be extremely pricey, even the "hit back when already dead" stuff.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Overall I'm with Jidmah on stratagems and 10th is the best Implementation of the concept so far. However, I find widespread equipment like grenades should have stayed as just that, equipment. Tank shock as something tanks could do in general would also be something I'd prefer.
Stratagems in 8th started as something to reign in the insane Formation Boni that crashed 7th edition. And then GW crashed 8th and 9th with Stratagems again
However, I'd like strats as something truly outlandish that's not a usual tactic and they also shouldn't just be kill more things. Faction specific strats are usually okay for flavor and personally I'd even reduce strats to reactions. I like rapid ingress, overwatch and the CC one. These are strats that provoke tactical desicions and make your opponent ask you how many CP you have left. Kill stuff without a way to mitigate should be reduced or be extremely pricey, even the "hit back when already dead" stuff.

Yeah. I'm kind of torn because I do think strats are handled much better now than they were in 8th and 9th, and I was excited for the concept of them when they were first introduced. But so many of them are either boring kill-more strats whose only downside is paying the CP, or effects that seem like they should just always be available to the army. It makes a lot of strats feel like I've clicked a button to use one of my video game abilities, and now it's on cooldown for the rest of the turn.

Like I said earlier, I think my preference would be to swap them for expanded detachment rules. But failing that, maybe they should just behave like doctrines? So instead of my autarch going,

"Okay Bob. Take evasive maneuvers. And I can't be bothered to tell the rest of you to do the same," we get,
"Okay everyone on a bike, take evasive maneuvers. Good job. Now next turn we're going to go on the offensive. Make sure you've set up enfillading fire against your target."

And then your autarch/captain type models who normally get CP discounts instead let you point at a unit and give them a different or extra doctrine for the turn.

In general, I just want strats to feel less like putting a video game ability on cooldown and more like a maneuver being pulled off by my forces. Instead of my guns suddenly hurting more because I paid a CP, I want rules that reward me for setting up a crossfire or that let me hit harder when I sneak up on the enemy. Instead of pointing at a single unit and telling it it's allowed to dodge, I want the army-wide ability to Jink.

Another way to make strategems more... strategic... is to use this little version we've tried out.

All stratagems cost nothing, but can only use 6 strategems in the game (they dont have to be different statagems, you can still only use each stratagem once each turn) which are placed face down at the start of the game.

Your opponent won't know what they are until used.

It adds a little strategy, without being overwhelming.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Another way to make strategems more... strategic... is to use this little version we've tried out.

All stratagems cost nothing, but can only use 6 strategems in the game (they dont have to be different statagems, you can still only use each stratagem once each turn) which are placed face down at the start of the game.

Your opponent won't know what they are until used.

It adds a little strategy, without being overwhelming.

Seems like that would run into problems. The basic concept seems to just encourage you to run into gotcha moments? And I feel like people will generally have a pretty good idea of what you took.

"I'm playing Thousand sons, so I can pretty safely ditch tank shock, heroic intervention, and counter charge. I shouldn't need go to ground either. I can safely ditch these two detachment strats that are super niche/I never us anyway. Cool. Now I get free overwatch with my flamer brick every turn, and my bolter shooting will always be strength 5, psychic, my choice of SH/LH/DW, and I can shoot through walls for free once per turn as needed. And I guess I'll ignore damage one per phase and grab Grenades just in case."

 Wyldhunt wrote:
It makes a lot of strats feel like I've clicked a button to use one of my video game abilities, and now it's on cooldown for the rest of the turn.

In general, I just want strats to feel less like putting a video game ability on cooldown and more like a maneuver being pulled off by my forces. Instead of my guns suddenly hurting more because I paid a CP, I want rules that reward me for setting up a crossfire or that let me hit harder when I sneak up on the enemy. Instead of pointing at a single unit and telling it it's allowed to dodge, I want the army-wide ability to Jink.

Yeah, that's what it feels like to me. Like one of those abilities from Call of Duty or League of Legends, where if you have enough of a resource you can pull off this move on your opponents and screw them over.

I would just drop CP, remove all of the silly equipment or unit ability strats, limit stratagems to only one activation in general and actually make them feel like a stratagem.
Like, when you activate this stratagem your army gets a bonus to movement and attack rolls to represent them going over the top, or conversely your army gets a defensive bonus for a turn to represent defensive strategies at play. But you only get one, because usually such gambits take a lot of planning to pull off and it's not something armies can do all the time.
And when I mean one I mean one. Not one stratagem per turn, not one use of each stratagem, I mean one.

A unit throwing a grenade is not a stratagem, it's just a tactical move that soldiers are trained to do. Using grenades in breaching tactics that are supported by long range precision shooting though? That's a stratagem.
Likewise, a soldier shooting at enemies that cross his line of sight isn't a stratagem either. That's just...basic military training.
Using artillery to flush enemies out of cover so they can be gunned down in a killzone though? That's a stratagem.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Another way to make strategems more... strategic... is to use this little version we've tried out.

All stratagems cost nothing, but can only use 6 strategems in the game (they dont have to be different statagems, you can still only use each stratagem once each turn) which are placed face down at the start of the game.

Your opponent won't know what they are until used.

It adds a little strategy, without being overwhelming.

Seems like that would run into problems. The basic concept seems to just encourage you to run into gotcha moments? And I feel like people will generally have a pretty good idea of what you took.

"I'm playing Thousand sons, so I can pretty safely ditch tank shock, heroic intervention, and counter charge. I shouldn't need go to ground either. I can safely ditch these two detachment strats that are super niche/I never us anyway. Cool. Now I get free overwatch with my flamer brick every turn, and my bolter shooting will always be strength 5, psychic, my choice of SH/LH/DW, and I can shoot through walls for free once per turn as needed. And I guess I'll ignore damage one per phase and grab Grenades just in case."

OK, so you take 5 turns of overwatch, that leaves you with one stratagem remaining. You have 6 stratagems total throughout the entire game.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Yeah, that's what it feels like to me. Like one of those abilities from Call of Duty or League of Legends, where if you have enough of a resource you can pull off this move on your opponents and screw them over.

I would just drop CP, remove all of the silly equipment or unit ability strats, limit stratagems to only one activation in general and actually make them feel like a stratagem.
Like, when you activate this stratagem your army gets a bonus to movement and attack rolls to represent them going over the top, or conversely your army gets a defensive bonus for a turn to represent defensive strategies at play. But you only get one, because usually such gambits take a lot of planning to pull off and it's not something armies can do all the time.
And when I mean one I mean one. Not one stratagem per turn, not one use of stratagem each, I mean one.

A unit throwing a grenade is not a stratagem, it's just a tactical move that soldiers are trained to do. Coordinating grenades with breaching tactics and supported by long range precision shooting though? That's a stratagem.
Likewise, a soldier shooting at enemies that cross his line of sight isn't a stratagem either. That's just...basic military training.
Using artillery to flush enemies out of cover so they can be gunned down in a killzone though? That's a stratagem.

Yeah. This. Like, when stratagems were first announced, I thought we were going to see things like "put a bunch of your army in outflank because they arrived from a webway portal off camera," or, "choose a quadrant of the table to bombard rad weapons pregame. Standing in that quadrant makes your Toughness worse," or, "Scout all your drukhari raiders pregame, and give them a 4+ cover save because this is a high-speed night raid."

So something like doctrines and/or a pregame rule of some sort would probably fit that vibe better than the commander yelling, "Use your guns better for a few seconds, vespid unit C!"

Lathe Biosas wrote:
OK, so you take 5 turns of overwatch, that leaves you with one stratagem remaining. You have 6 stratagems total throughout the entire game.

Oh. I like that even less but for very different reasons. You only get to do a cool thing 6 times per game? You only get to do a flavorful detachment-related thing less than 6 times per game if you want someone in your army to throw a grenade or tank shock a target or overwatch with their flamers? And you kind of just remove all the more situational stratagems from the game because no one should ever take a niche option at the expense of a more powerful/generally useful/improtant option. And the artificial nature of only being able to do all these things a limited number of times and having to choose which ones you'll use in advance kind of doubles down on the "gamey" feeling of them.

Not trying to be harsh. If you and your group are enjoying this, then that's awesome. But holy cow that sounds like the worst of all worlds to me.

Maybe its bias from playing too many computer games (and idk, Warmachine), but this idea that you activate abilities that are then limited by cooldowns or resources never felt unreasonable to me.

As Jidmah says, it allows you to have powerful abilities while constraining them from being army wide and all the time.

Tbh I really like the detachment system. There are some negatives - the recent EC codex for example feels a bit 8th edition Harlequins where you are trying for 6 detachments in a faction that only has about 6 units. But for the most part it works well in combining flavour, fluff and power.

 Jidmah wrote:
The stratagem framework doesn't come without advantages though. Limiting such actions to once per phase/turn and making them cost a resource allows these effects to be much more powerful. Throwing grenades and tank shock are things that really can have an impact and turn the tide in a battle. There is a limit to how powerful you can make grenades when an army like space marines or orks can have 10 units throwing them, and tripple and quadruple wave serpent tank shocks at the current power level wouldn't be healthy for the game at all.
Defensive stratagems allow you to actually do something during your opponent's turn and throw a wrench in their plans. Mean while they try to bait you into using it on a different unit, split fire to make that stratagem less effective or just force their way through it, or they could try to drain your CP pool by giving you chance to spend them. There also is the question whether it makes sense to keep a unit a live or use the CP to retaliate with a different unit next turn. That's a whole layer of tactical decisions added to the game, which is good in general as it gives players more options.
If you could just throw 'ard as nails, dodge or disgustingly resilient onto every unit which your opponent wants to kill, it's just a game of "who has the most CP". That's what why stratagems failed so spectacularly in 8th.

In general, I like the use of resource systems to promote interesting decision-making and am not against stratagems in principle. It reminds me a fair bit of the Focus system in Warmachine.

What I don't like about stratagems, even in this best-yet implementation, is how they sideline capabilities that I feel ought to be core systems. Crossfire, tank shock, suppression, overwatch, opportunity fire, etc are all things that I would like to see baked into the game, not special abilities that only certain armies get sometimes. Yeah, maybe it's harder to balance those capabilities when everyone has them- but it's also easier to balance in general when you don't have to account for situational power buffs or try to put a resource cost on an ability that could potentially be applied to any unit in your army, so I'd call that a wash.

Essentially, stratagems are being used to graft some tactical depth onto otherwise bland and shallow core rules. You indirectly point this out in talking about defensive stratagems- if they're the only thing keeping you from going to make a sandwich while your opponent takes their turn, that says more about the lack of interaction in 80s-era IGOUGO than it does about the value of stratagems as a mechanic.

I don't think even GW has a good idea of what stratagems are. We all have a very good idea of what they do, which is enable resource-locked and once-per-turn abilities, but they represent everything from logistical decisions to command directives to innate capabilities to special equipment to spur-of-the-moment reactions, and that lack of coherent identity both contributes to the abstract video game feel and makes it all the more apparent when a unit's capabilities have been excised and locked behind a stratagem. I think a lot of people would be happier if the designers took cues from AOS and how command abilities are handled there; tying the abilities to leaders both reinforces the implicit narrative and helps to scope which things ought to be strats and which ought to be wargear or core rules.

We are trying new things out... some work better than others.

You should see some of the horrible house missions we play.

1. Eyes of the Storm

Your forces were caught in a Warp Storm, and are desperately trying to locate a stable break in the storm to signal your ship in orbit.


Deploy 6 objectives on the map, alternate between players. Each objective is numbered 1 through six.

At the start of turn 2, and each subsequent turn, the player who is first rolls a d6. Only the objective rolled counts as a viable objective this turn.

(ie Player 2 rolls a "3." Only objective 3 counts for VP, until a new number is rolled)

2. Undercover Operations

Both sides are fighting a shadow war that their commands are unaware of. Your enemy knows which of your forces have been infiltrated and are looking to destroy them.

Before Deployment, select one BATTLELINE unit from your enemy's army list and make a note of it in secret.

If that unit has been destroyed by the end of the game, you gain 25 VP.

 Hellebore wrote:

While you are absolutely correct, Initiative was a larger piece of that pie than the other components.

If for example you went back to those editions and remove initiative and installed the current system where whoever activates a unit strikes first with it, you'd find that effectively genestealers would do half as much damage on average, because they'd go from doing damage first against 95% of enemy units (nothing but characters or harlequins/wyches were striking at the same initiative, let alone higher), to a ~50% of doing damage first against everything, because the opponent gets to undercut them and would do so if it was their turn to activate a unit and they had guys in melee with stealers. They only strike like their old counterparts if they've charged first, leaving every other scenario dependent on the order of unit selection, favouring the non charging player.

On the other hand, the current system is all about movement and placing well your charging units. Genestealers more often than not still hit first because they have a high movement value and access to run and charge rules, which gives them a larger threat range.

If they fail to do is either because they are going against an even faster movement unit, a "Fight First" unit (which historically had even better initiative than Genestealers) or you basically got outplayed.

The tools, decisions and counterplay are still there, even if they are different.

 Jidmah wrote:
Sigh.

If there is a discussion about trying to fix stratagems, and you go in there screeching about how the whole system is terrible and that it should be thrown out, that's a non-contribution - no matter how popular this kind of behavior was among a certain group of people here at dakka.

If someone has a malignant tumour, and a doctor suggests removing it, would you screech and whine at them for not properly contributing to your highly special and productive discussion about what colour to paint the tumour?

I am under absolutely no obligation to like stratagems as a concept. And the idea that suggesting removing them is in some way verboten to a discussion on their future is beyond absurd. The game worked just fine without them for 7 entire editions, yet suddenly we're supposed to pretend that the game can't possibly survive without them? It's like claiming that a statue can't survive without the pile of bird-droppings splattered on it.

Moreover, Stratagems are not merely superfluous , they are an active detriment to the game. They absorb what might otherwise be interesting rules and wargear and lock them behind a limited resource and often a specific subfaction. Further, they take up valuable design space in an edition where GW is determined to limit faction and subfaction resources. So that this godawful mechanic takes up literally half the available space for every single subfaction.

We're not talking about a core mechanic that the entire game has been built around from the offset. We're talking about a relatively new mechanic that's been badly bolted on to the main game to try and hide how shallow the core rules are. And while I do appreciate the desire to fix things, sometimes the best fix is to remove the bad mechanic and start again. This wasn't me screeching in anger. This was merely me giving an honest assessment of a mechanic that's so botched in both concept and execution that I don't consider it to be salvageable, nor worth the effort of trying to save.

But no, instead I'm supposed to look at this and say "Why yes, what a splendid leap forward this obnoxious and extraneous mechanic has been. How great it is that a unit's wargear and even physiology exists in a constant state of quantum flux and may exist or not exist at any given moment. How splendid that we don't need to go through the arduous process of setting up cross-fire on a unit when you can just yell 'CROSSFIRE!' and slap down your Yugioh card, irrespective of the actual position of your units relative to their target. Why, with just a few more small tweaks, we could turn Stratagems into a still-extraneous but marginally-less-obnoxious mechanic. This is definitely far better than just not having this bad mechanic."

 Tyran wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

While you are absolutely correct, Initiative was a larger piece of that pie than the other components.

If for example you went back to those editions and remove initiative and installed the current system where whoever activates a unit strikes first with it, you'd find that effectively genestealers would do half as much damage on average, because they'd go from doing damage first against 95% of enemy units (nothing but characters or harlequins/wyches were striking at the same initiative, let alone higher), to a ~50% of doing damage first against everything, because the opponent gets to undercut them and would do so if it was their turn to activate a unit and they had guys in melee with stealers. They only strike like their old counterparts if they've charged first, leaving every other scenario dependent on the order of unit selection, favouring the non charging player.

On the other hand, the current system is all about movement and placing well your charging units. Genestealers more often than not still hit first because they have a high movement value and access to run and charge rules, which gives them a larger threat range.

If they fail to do is either because they are going against an even faster movement unit, a "Fight First" unit (which historically had even better initiative than Genestealers) or you basically got outplayed.

The tools, decisions and counterplay are still there, even if they are different.

As a mainly eldar player, I've never liked the, "You got an extra inch of movement, so it balances out," argument. The issue isn't with scenarios where my units get the charge off. (Although the interrupt strat weirdly punishes people for wanting to charge with more than one squishy unit in a single turn.) The issue is when one of my oppononet's units subsequently charges in and proceeds to wipe the floor with my squishy melee unit and takes no damage in return.

In the past, charging into a unit of harlequins or incubi or a squad of daemonettes generally meant you were going to feel it afterwards. You might still win the combat. Getting the charge off meant that your (surviving) models would hit that much harder. But the story being told was that getting within sword's reach of the stabby unit usually meant that you had some scratches to show for it afterwards. And on the flip side, even melee specialists weren't usually completely wiping out tanky melee specialists like meganobz or terminators or hordes of melee models like hormagaunts or bloodletters. So the end result was that, when you get into melee with a melee unit, you came away bloody.

Compare that to now where a squad of hormagaunts can charge some harlies and, and the harlies might not get a chance to swing a single attack before the mooks wipe them out. It feels wrong. It feels weird.

Being able to get the first charge off is mostly irrelevant to discussing that weirdness.

And without going too far on a tangent, slightly higher basic movement is absolutely not a replacement for the old speed/skill -as-defense mechancis we used to have. Like flatout cover saves on vehicles that normally didn't have saves, comapred WS, jink, etc. As I said earlier, old initiative was bad and shouldn't come back in the same form, but it feels like armies that depended on it to mitigate incoming damage never really received any sort of replacement. And as a result, our units feel more like suicide missiles being launched across the table as trade pieces. Whereas before it was more about trying to pace the momentum of your melee units so that they'd stay hidden in melee, or finding ways to tie up or debuff threats around them to keep them safe.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

As a mainly eldar player, I've never liked the, "You got an extra inch of movement, so it balances out," argument. The issue isn't with scenarios where my units get the charge off. (Although the interrupt strat weirdly punishes people for wanting to charge with more than one squishy unit in a single turn.) The issue is when one of my oppononet's units subsequently charges in and proceeds to wipe the floor with my squishy melee unit and takes no damage in return.

In the past, charging into a unit of harlequins or incubi or a squad of daemonettes generally meant you were going to feel it afterwards. You might still win the combat. Getting the charge off meant that your (surviving) models would hit that much harder. But the story being told was that getting within sword's reach of the stabby unit usually meant that you had some scratches to show for it afterwards. And on the flip side, even melee specialists weren't usually completely wiping out tanky melee specialists like meganobz or terminators or hordes of melee models like hormagaunts or bloodletters. So the end result was that, when you get into melee with a melee unit, you came away bloody.

Compare that to now where a squad of hormagaunts can charge some harlies and, and the harlies might not get a chance to swing a single attack before the mooks wipe them out. It feels wrong. It feels weird.

Out of interest, do you think it would help if Eldar had a bonus consolidation move? So they could reduce the chance of being counter-charged after wiping out a unit.

Just trying to think of something that would work in the current paradigm.

I suppose you could give them Always Strikes First, but at that point we might as well just bring Initiative back.

It pays to remember that this is a game people play for fun. Melee already has hosts of restrictions relative to shooting-if you also took damage for charging wide varieties of targets that'd be pretty rough.

My Nurgle Daemons could handle it, since they're more durable than killy and they take damage back already anyway.
But Khorne Daemons, for example? They'd have a much, much rougher time.

 JNAProductions wrote:
It pays to remember that this is a game people play for fun. Melee already has hosts of restrictions relative to shooting-if you also took damage for charging wide varieties of targets that'd be pretty rough.

Ah, but if there were more substantial effects (like Morale in previous editions) from losing an assault, then there's a bigger payoff for the CC players.

A friend of mine and I are getting into Epic:Armageddon at the moment, and the effect of losing assaults in that game are brutal.

 JNAProductions wrote:
It pays to remember that this is a game people play for fun. Melee already has hosts of restrictions relative to shooting-if you also took damage for charging wide varieties of targets that'd be pretty rough.

But surely it works both ways?

The point is, at the moment, many melee units have lost the degree of protection high initiative used to afford them. So even if they win a combat, it's often a Pyrrhic victory because even a relatively weak enemy unit can counter-charge and wipe them out.

vipoid wrote:
Out of interest, do you think it would help if Eldar had a bonus consolidation move? So they could reduce the chance of being counter-charged after wiping out a unit.

Hmm. I mean, if it was like, a 6" consolidation in any direction, maybe? We already have the agile maneuver for when enemies fall back from us, and I haven't found that to be super useful because I need to have some terrain to hide behind (to protect my unit from shooting), and then I need to roll high enough to get there.

Something I've suggested in the past is to basically just give sufficiently "elite" melee units guaranteed fights on death. It's a far from perfect solution, but it basically guarantees your badass melee specialists do *some* damage whenever they end up in melee.

There's also probably a way to do a variation on the old initiative system where you shrink the gaps between base initiative stats and/or have more ways to modify initiative. So like, maybe orks are I1, humans I2, eldar I3, but charging grants +1d3I for that turn. So orks aren't stuck forever going last, and charging is rewarded, but my eldar are still typically going to be swinging either first or simultaneously.

Extra wonky solution that I don't like but would maybe work: break up a unit's offense into "sets" of attacks. So instead of a melee unit getting 4 attacks when it activates, maybe it gets 2 attacks but can activate twice. And only your first set of activations benefits from strikes first/charging. So the end result is that my hypothetical 2x2 Attacks unit charges, gets to swing its first batch of attacks to take the edge off the enemy, but then the enemy is going to get to do their first set of attacks back. And then my unit gets to do their second set of attacks, and if the enemy is still around, the survivors get to do their second set of attacks. It makes charging a lot less beneficial, but you could maybe play around with that by moving attacks from one set to the other. So maybe my unit specializes in alpha strike melee attacks, so they actually swing a set of 3 and a set of 1 instead of two sets of 2.

But as I said, I probably don't like that approach. It would slow things down a fair bit and seems like it has a good chance of disproportionately hurting squishy armies.

Insectum7 wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
It pays to remember that this is a game people play for fun. Melee already has hosts of restrictions relative to shooting-if you also took damage for charging wide varieties of targets that'd be pretty rough.

Ah, but if there were more substantial effects (like Morale in previous editions) from losing an assault, then there's a bigger payoff for the CC players.

A friend of mine and I are getting into Epic:Armageddon at the moment, and the effect of losing assaults in that game are brutal.

You can definitely still feel the ghost of Sweeping Advance in the game. It used to be that melee was about "winning combat" by giving better than you got and letting the sweep mechanic be responsible for actually finishing up fights. When we lost that, we had to start transitioning towards just wiping out every last model through overwhelming force. Which I suspect might be why we don't have opposed weapon skill any more. Marines always hitting on 3s instead of sometimes hitting on 4s means that they finish up melee fights faster.

 Tyran wrote:
IMHO battleshock only needs to be made more punishing and battleshock modifiers need to be written into the core rules so it actually matters.

My personal suggestion is that a battleshocked unit can only shoot and charge the nearest enemy unit.

That would be a good solution, since it has more to do with the unit being out of effective command rather than the individual troops becoming weaker (which wouldn't make sense for over half of the armies).

Many fast Aeldari units have been given invulnerable saves that only apply in melee to represent speed-as-defense.

Sometimes it's a split invul- like 6+ vs guns/ 4+ vs melee.

Ain't saying it's an adequate replacement, just saying don't forget it's there.

 JNAProductions wrote:
It pays to remember that this is a game people play for fun. Melee already has hosts of restrictions relative to shooting-if you also took damage for charging wide varieties of targets that'd be pretty rough.

My Nurgle Daemons could handle it, since they're more durable than killy and they take damage back already anyway.
But Khorne Daemons, for example? They'd have a much, much rougher time.

I think this is the issue. It creates an artificial barrier.

I think if charging is hard, you should get a major benefit to successfully making a charge - i.e. fighting first.
There can be a class of units which have fights first - but they should be elite, and pay for it. YMMV on whether GW has got it right - but I feel it comes down to that pecking order again.

I think rules where there's whole factions that say Hormagaunts or Boyz get insta-deleted if they charge is just horrible gameplay. The obvious conclusion is to never take Hormagaunts or Boyz.
I'm afraid I think "+D3 initiative" is incredibly weak. So I might get to fight, or I might get deleted? Okay we are back to "never run these units". Or they have to be incredibly cheap, and they'll destroy in some games and be destroyed in others. Which I don't think is great.

You could create a system of intiative+ a flat bonus for charging, where the charging unit gets to go first except for certain special combos. But then I feel the stat would need to be set on game-play based reasons, rather than anything to do with simulating fluff.

9th and 10th are so much more melee friendly than 7th and 8th. Partly this is because of objectives. But it kind of makes me think you are chasing shadows. DE have many problems - the fact Incubi might die if they get charged isn't one of them.

 PenitentJake wrote:
Many fast Aeldari units have been given invulnerable saves that only apply in melee to represent speed-as-defense.

Sometimes it's a split invul- like 6+ vs guns/ 4+ vs melee.

Ain't saying it's an adequate replacement, just saying don't forget it's there.

I think we might be down to only two units having this actually: banshees and wyches. Minus wyches if you don't consider that they've had that rule since before initiative went away. Or plus avengers if you count the shimmershield (which I think also existed in more or less its current form back when initiative was a thing.) Shining spears lost their 4++ but might have gained it as a shimmer shield exarch option?

Not a lot of places is what I'm getting at. The 5++ they gave aspect warriors in general seems like it was maybe meant to be our "speed as defense" mechanic. It's reasonably impactful, but I'd trade it away fast for something that works against all/most attacks instead.


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Tyel wrote:

I think rules where there's whole factions that say Hormagaunts or Boyz get insta-deleted if they charge is just horrible gameplay. The obvious conclusion is to never take Hormagaunts or Boyz.
I'm afraid I think "+D3 initiative" is incredibly weak. So I might get to fight, or I might get deleted? Okay we are back to "never run these units". Or they have to be incredibly cheap, and they'll destroy in some games and be destroyed in others. Which I don't think is great.

Well, in the example I threw together, it would be a 2/3rds chance to strike simultaneously with or before baseline eldar, and be even more potent against slower targets. But also, this is where the game's hyperlethality comes into play. Back in the day, it was fairly common to not wipe out enemies with your attacks; you had to hope you swept the enemy, and generally you were more focused on trading well than wiping the enemy out.

Getting rid of sweep is understandable, but it means units need to be able to finish eachother off in melee at a reasonable rate. And some units are tougher than others. So we've ended up in this place where something like a squad of incubi or harlequins is pretty likely to just get wiped out without doing any damage back in melee. And again, that lack of retaliation is what makes it feel weird.

9th and 10th are so much more melee friendly than 7th and 8th. Partly this is because of objectives. But it kind of makes me think you are chasing shadows. DE have many problems - the fact Incubi might die if they get charged isn't one of them.

We agree. Incubi dying in melee isn't a problem, and no one ever said it was.

To reiterate the stance I'm taking:
* It feels weird when melee specialists (be they incubi or meganobz) die in melee without doing any damage in retaliation.
* Armies like eldar feel this more keenly because initiative was more important to our ability to do return damage than it was for other factions. Those meganobz are beefy enough that they have a pretty good chance of having survivors who will then proceed to punch something back. Similarly, horde units might survive reasonably well in some matchups thanks to raw numbers. But squishier elite units like wyches or incubi or harlies don't have a bunch of extra bodies and are T3 W1. They have a good chance of dying when the enemy swings first. Their "defense stats" were WS and Initiative back in the day. One of those went away, and the other is no longer a defense stat, but eldar largely didn't get any kind of defensive rule to replace it.

Imagine if 11th edition decided to switch us over to AoS's flat wounding system. Setting aside all the other balance issues that would create, you'd have units like Nobz who just lost one of their main sources of durability. Now imagine if 11th didn't give them something to replace that removed Toughness stat. It would feel a bit off, right?

vipoid wrote:We're not talking about a core mechanic that the entire game has been built around from the offset. We're talking about a relatively new mechanic that's been badly bolted on to the main game to try and hide how shallow the core rules are. And while I do appreciate the desire to fix things, sometimes the best fix is to remove the bad mechanic and start again. This wasn't me screeching in anger. This was merely me giving an honest assessment of a mechanic that's so botched in both concept and execution that I don't consider it to be salvageable, nor worth the effort of trying to save.

But no, instead I'm supposed to look at this and say "Why yes, what a splendid leap forward this obnoxious and extraneous mechanic has been. How great it is that a unit's wargear and even physiology exists in a constant state of quantum flux and may exist or not exist at any given moment. How splendid that we don't need to go through the arduous process of setting up cross-fire on a unit when you can just yell 'CROSSFIRE!' and slap down your Yugioh card, irrespective of the actual position of your units relative to their target. Why, with just a few more small tweaks, we could turn Stratagems into a still-extraneous but marginally-less-obnoxious mechanic. This is definitely far better than just not having this bad mechanic."

To clarify my previous post: I would like to see wargear stratagems return to just being wargear, and abilities like overwatch or crossfire become part of the core rules. I think the biggest opportunity with stratagems, which has not been properly explored, is to represent command-and-control. Use stratagems, with their attendant resource cost, as proxy for the generals and officers exerting control over their troops to improve their capabilities.

In other words, return all the things that were turned into stratagems, and then use the stratagem mechanic to add something new. I think a lot of the resentment towards the stratagem system has to do with, as you put it, a unit's wargear and physiology being abstracted out into these one-off abilities. But if it were instead about spending a limited resource so that your characters lead their troops to perform better, I think that would go over a lot better.

JNAProductions wrote:Melee already has hosts of restrictions relative to shooting-if you also took damage for charging wide varieties of targets that'd be pretty rough.

Adding on to Insectum's post, not only could a better morale system incentivize melee as a means of killing units, it could also make melee more viable by making it possible to temporarily incapacitate a unit in preparation for assault. If pinning a unit with fire caused it to strike last and be incapable of overwatch, then getting into melee without getting shot up on the way in could become more viable.

(Admittedly, that's not a direct response to the concern of melee specialists getting charged and wiped out before they can strike- something which I'm not convinced is a huge problem, given that it inherently rewards positioning and maneuver- but it would add another tool to the toolbox for both softening up units prior to assault and incapacitating threatening assault units)

That also has an issue of not all armies being able to participate in the shooting phase.

Which could be solved if Nurgle Daemons and other forces in a similar spot got guns or other ranged attacks. Doesn’t have to do lots of damage, but disruption would be cool.

 catbarf wrote:

To clarify my previous post: I would like to see wargear stratagems return to just being wargear, and abilities like overwatch or crossfire become part of the core rules.

Technically, Overwatch is still a core mechanic: yes it's a strat, but it's BRB from and appears in the free digital rules, so everyone can use it- as are some of the others (Heroic intervention, Insane Bravery, etc.). Now we can debate whether or not you want it to continue to be a strat, but it IS a core mechanic.

So to take overwatch as an example, do you want EVERY unit to be able to use overwatch every turn? I'm personally fine with that- needing 6 to hit prevents it from being OP if it does become something that everyone can just do... But some abilities make units better at Overwatching... And that might take it to an OP place if you make it a thing that every unit can do every turn. One of the things fans of 10th have said is that it's somewhat friendlier to melee than some other editions... And I don't know, maybe overwatch being a strat is part of that.

Before I move on, some other cool interactions that can happen when overwatch is a strat: not only can you buff the to-hit, you can lower the CP cost, or your enemy can raise that CP cost, representing the enemy commander anticipate overwatch and taking action to disrupt that tactic. My personal favourite is the Bespoke strats that AREN'T Overwatch, but let you take an overwatch shot (often with a better to-hit) IF a fluff trigger occurs- the example of the top of my head is the Sisters one- I think it's from the Martyr detachment, and it lets a unit the unit do Overwatch shots that hit 4+, but only in response to the Martyrdom of fellow sisters (I think the unit itself can shoot back if the offending attack killed anyone in the unit, but it might also be that a unit can do this to avenge a unit that was wiped out). The best part is that using the Triggered Overwatch allows another unit to use the regular Overwatch strat. So the units avenging the Martyrs have such righteous fury that they hit on 4+ while another unit that's just reacting to enemy movement is snap firing and hoping for 6's (except for the specials, which will burn MD to autohit, relying on the Emperor rather than mere hope).

That ecosystem of rules interactions DOES tell a story, right? ANd I find that tended to happen less with "Everyone just gets to overwatch every turn."

But again, I myself am ambivalent- Ive played both ways and enjoyed them both, so it's more just a discussion question.

 catbarf wrote:

I think the biggest opportunity with stratagems, which has not been properly explored, is to represent command-and-control. Use stratagems, with their attendant resource cost, as proxy for the generals and officers exerting control over their troops to improve their capabilities.

Some strats already do this- you actually have to target a nearby leader in order for the unit to be able to use the strat, representing the leader's role in commanding the unit that is receiving the bonus. And sometimes it's not a leader unit: I was reading the EC Daemon detachment today, and there's one strat in there that makes Daemons better at melee when they're near EC and another that makes EC better at melee when they're near daemons. And it's cool, because if you send one unit of each, both units can use their respective strat if you have the CP and feel like burning it- or you have to shoose which gets to use their strat... And again, that feels like a story to me, whereas if you make that a unit rule or a detachment rule, it feels less narrative, because both units are ALWAYS going to use it, even in situations where it isn't important just because they can.

 catbarf wrote:

In other words, return all the things that were turned into stratagems, and then use the stratagem mechanic to add something new.

As I hope I've at least somewhat succeeded in pointing out, many strats already DO add something new, whether it's the action that the strat facilitates itself or other rules that influence the ecosystem in which the strat is used in order to add narrative differentiation between uses of the same strat. It just isn't as simple as "All current strats are flavourless and dull, so make them core rules and then use strats to do something cooler." It's very nuanced, and again, that's not to say that improvements can't be made.

 catbarf wrote:

I think a lot of the resentment towards the stratagem system has to do with, as you put it, a unit's wargear and physiology being abstracted out into these one-off abilities.

Agreed- and I am whole-heartedly onboard with the 100% removal of Equipment strats, and there probably are others that could go too, but....

 catbarf wrote:

But if it were instead about spending a limited resource so that your characters lead their troops to perform better, I think that would go over a lot better.

a lot of strats... probably at least half ALREADY do this.

 catbarf wrote:

Adding on to Insectum's post, not only could a better morale system incentivize melee as a means of killing units, it could also make melee more viable by making it possible to temporarily incapacitate a unit in preparation for assault.

What, like forcing a Battleshock test against the unit you want to charge so they can't use a strat to overwatch you or use the strat theat lets you run when someone charges you? (Many factions have a detachment that includes one of these, though being strats, they all have different names)

Cuz that's also kinda how it already works. And of course, the thing that provokes the Battleshock test might be regular attrition, a unit rule, or a strat, and the Battleshock test might also be modified by a unit rule or a strat... Which again is a narrative thing.

 catbarf wrote:

If pinning a unit with fire caused it to strike last and be incapable of overwatch, then getting into melee without getting shot up on the way in could become more viable.

Or battle shock' em to deny overwatch as described above and use your strat to make them strike last? Now again, not everyone has one of those, but a lot of factions do.

Anyway, I'm not 100% white-knighting here- I'm ambivalent on most of your suggestions, and again 100% endorse all equipment strats dying a humiliating and permanent death... But I think that the current system may already have more of the things you want than you think it does.

 JNAProductions wrote:
That also has an issue of not all armies being able to participate in the shooting phase.

Which could be solved if Nurgle Daemons and other forces in a similar spot got guns or other ranged attacks. Doesn’t have to do lots of damage, but disruption would be cool.

Nurgle Demons have guns/shooting. Not alot, but they're there.
They also have access to Chaos Knights....

ccs wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
That also has an issue of not all armies being able to participate in the shooting phase.

Which could be solved if Nurgle Daemons and other forces in a similar spot got guns or other ranged attacks. Doesn’t have to do lots of damage, but disruption would be cool.

Nurgle Demons have guns/shooting. Not alot, but they're there.
They also have access to Chaos Knights....

Splashing in another faction is not the answer to a faction missing something.

As for shooting, Nurgle Daemons have...

GUO has one gun always, at 12" range. Can take a second with 6" range.
Rotigus has the 12" gun.
Scrivener has a 6" sneeze.
The FW GUO has the Torrent vomit, but at 6".
Plague Drones have d3+Blast 12" range guns.
Plague Toads and Pox Riders have 9" Tongues.

If you include generic Daemon units...

Be'Lakor has an 18" Witchfire.
Daemon Princes (both types) have a Heavy Bolter that trades SH1 for 2+ BS.
Soul Grinder has a 36" Battle Cannon and a 36" Phlegm Mortar.

So yes. They technically have shooting. A full 2,000 point list might have the equivalent of a few Heavy Bolters and maybe a Battle Cannon for anything past 12".