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Anyone that played when overwatch was around should remember why it was removed. Games became a lot less dynamic. Some games were just overwatch fests, first turn everything went on overwatch. I remember orks just getting hammered by it and eldar benefiting the most, but eldar were almost an instant win army back then. In the incarnation it was in, overwatch was bad .

A covering fire mechanic would be great, but I agree that overwatch was silly.

Nah they don't need a redo to get rid of AP.. it's as simple as writing:

"Hey kids, quit using AP because we finally realized it's stupid. Just do your armor saves like in fantasy so anything over str 3 will give you a -1 modifier per point. so a str 5 attack would give you a -2 save modifier, str 7 would be -4 and so on."

Many weapons would have basically the same effect as they do now, but some other high str low ap weapons (such as scatter lasers) will end up being used a lot more often and thus people will have a lot more variety in their armies since those weapons that no one ever uses because they can't kill marines will suddenly work a lot better. And grenade launchers won't suck anymore.

You don't really need overwatch just allow for charge reactions.  Just like WHFB.  That way you don't get overwatch (which does tend to make the game a little boring).  And you can still make it so you can not be charged without having a chance to shoot (a little more realistic).  And you can give some kind of negative to actually taking the time to stand and shoot.  Something like a minus to initiative or you can only get one attack in HtH for the rest of that turn.

Those are just some quickly thought out fixes and I am sure given some time it would be pretty easy to come up with something that worked and made it more balanced.

Posted By Necros on 08/30/2007 6:58 AM
Nah they don't need a redo to get rid of AP.. it's as simple as writing:

"Hey kids, quit using AP because we finally realized it's stupid. Just do your armor saves like in fantasy so anything over str 3 will give you a -1 modifier per point. so a str 5 attack would give you a -2 save modifier, str 7 would be -4 and so on."

Many weapons would have basically the same effect as they do now, but some other high str low ap weapons (such as scatter lasers) will end up being used a lot more often and thus people will have a lot more variety in their armies since those weapons that no one ever uses because they can't kill marines will suddenly work a lot better. And grenade launchers won't suck anymore.

I actually disagree with this.  Just give every weapon its own armor save modifier.  That is exactly the same as memorizing an AP (so it isn't any harder on noobs) and would allow you to keep a diversity of weapons that allows you to have high strength and low armor piercing weapons.  Easy and solves both problems.

But it is also what made marines cower in cover. The ap system actually allows for them to walk around the field a little more shrugging off light fire. It doesn't really change much, except 2+ and 3+ armour saves become much worse. If you want to revamp the ap system you would have to do a big overhaul of the entire game.

Doesnt really account for vehicles dashing between cover or stealth suits making their pop up attacks.

Personally I think that overwatch is needed more than hit mods and save mods. It just needs to be moderated enough so as not to hand all of the advantages to the defender.

well yeah they should be able to shrug off light fire... but a scatter laser or grenade launcher isn't light fire.. it's supposed to hurt when you get shot with it. I dunno I just never understood why they'd have a high str weapon that can't hurt marines. I mean, what's the use? Sure you get through the toughness easy but it stops there. I mean how many high toughness low armor critters are out there? maybe some nids... what else?

I'm not saying marines should be easy to kill, but it just seems, generally, folks that play against em will load up on just those weapons that will bust through their armor, when there's so much more variety to every army that hardly ever gets used. So I was just thinking something like str based armor saves would help add some spice to armies for folks that want to kill marines, so they're not always taking lascannons and plasma guns. A change like that would be able to be done without a total rewrite but if they just add different save modifiers to every gun, it will because there's currently no stat for it in any codexes

Posted By Necros on 08/30/2007 6:58 AM
Nah they don't need a redo to get rid of AP.. it's as simple as writing:

"Hey kids, quit using AP because we finally realized it's stupid. Just do your armor saves like in fantasy so anything over str 3 will give you a -1 modifier per point. so a str 5 attack would give you a -2 save modifier, str 7 would be -4 and so on."

Many weapons would have basically the same effect as they do now, but some other high str low ap weapons (such as scatter lasers) will end up being used a lot more often and thus people will have a lot more variety in their armies since those weapons that no one ever uses because they can't kill marines will suddenly work a lot better. And grenade launchers won't suck anymore.

 

No offense but it's not that simple.

High str low ap weapons tend to have multiple shots to compensate along with cost.  If suddenly it was straight WHFB modification, I would assume you would see all Warpspider armies .  To that point, I'm honestly more afraid of Warpspiders/Bladestorm Eldar then Reapers anymore...and I'm a marine player. 

The only way I would really be on board with a modification system is if each weapon had it's own ap.

I know I'll take a beating for this, but part of the reason I play 40k instead of Fantasy is that there is no save modifier BS.  If you want to play that game, play Fantasy.  I like the way the AP system works, except that I think Terminators should go back to a 3+ on 2d6, so that Terminator armor is closer to being as impervious as it's supposed to be. 

 

Posted By Toreador on 08/30/2007 7:25 AM
But it is also what made marines cower in cover. The ap system actually allows for them to walk around the field a little more shrugging off light fire. It doesn't really change much, except 2+ and 3+ armour saves become much worse. If you want to revamp the ap system you would have to do a big overhaul of the entire game.

I disagree.  You would only have to make the modifier indepedent of strength.  For instance a grenade would be relatively high strength but is completely lacking in any kind of armor penetration so would retain its strength value and have a 0 modifier to armor penetration.  Same thing with scatter lasers.  Makes weapons a little bit more realistic in my opinion.  It doesn't make sense to have weapons that are only better against heavily armored opponents and statistically worse against lighter armored opponents.  Other instances of these being chain axes (gone), choppas (gone), bright / dark lances (hopefully going soon), and of course low AP weapons. 

I for one think Jervis does have a master plan, and is slowly pursuing it on the codex side of things.

As others have said, the AP system is fundamentally sound. It is simple to understand, needs no complex charts to compute (remember the old 2nd Ed. list of save modifiers...uuug) and gets across what the designers are trying to achieve (marines are tough against small arms).

What got the game off kilter was the incredible proliferation and cheapness of the big guns (AP:3 and better). I have noticed starting with Codex: Eldar and continuing on through the "Jervis" codices, a reshuffling of not so much weapons stats and rules, but availability and cost.

Those plasma cannons ,bright lances and lascannons are really expensive now, and you see far fewer of them on tabletops than you used to. With vehicles we see steep price reductions for the basic chassis (you can build a super cheap anti-personnel Predator if you want), but the Las-cannon sponsons will cost an arm and a leg.

It is a slow process to be sure, being limited by the rate of codex releases, but the game's "meta" seems to be getting better with each new codex. I think the big hole in the scheme is the standard Marine codex, that is now "out of allignment" with the newer ones. It is such a common codex (supposedly 40-50% of all players), that if they go back and Redux it, it will go a long way towards balancing things out overall.

As for overwatch, it'll never happen again. Its a good idea, but just does not work in a you-go-i-go turn sequence. In an interleaved turn as seen in Epic, its a fine rule mechanic. In 40k, it just causes stalemates.

-bigred

I really loved old Epics put out orders, flip the chits system. You took gambles in your choices.

I never agreed with the idea that after shots are taken the next table is Strength of Weapon vs Toughness of model. THEN armor saves.

Armor is what is going to be hit first. So the Strength of the weapon should be rolled against the Toughness of the armor. Then after the armor is penetrated by the shot, the player rolls against the models toughness (not the armor) to see if it survived the hit or not. Simply put:

Roll to see if the model hits
Roll to see if the shot penetrates the armor
Roll to see if the model's constitution lets him survive the shot.

I realize this would be a COMPLETELY different system, and out of the realm of possibility.... but so is bringing back Overwatch

-Jmz

Posted By Jmznudd on 08/30/2007 1:39 PM
I never agreed with the idea that after shots are taken the next table is Strength of Weapon vs Toughness of model. THEN armor saves.

Armor is what is going to be hit first. So the Strength of the weapon should be rolled against the Toughness of the armor. Then after the armor is penetrated by the shot, the player rolls against the models toughness (not the armor) to see if it survived the hit or not. Simply put:

Roll to see if the model hits
Roll to see if the shot penetrates the armor
Roll to see if the model's constitution lets him survive the shot.

I realize this would be a COMPLETELY different system, and out of the realm of possibility.... but so is bringing back Overwatch

-Jmz

GW did their ap saves the way they did to stop the issues it had in 2nd edition. (going through countless calculations to figure out penetration of vehicles, and seperate charts for armor and weapons str and .... etc.   it would be nice to find a happy medium as you suggest, but I highly doubt that will happen any time soon. 

overwatch would be a nice addition. if there was a motivator for the army to move into overwatch.  I always hated the 18+inch charge that I could do nothing to counter.. but sit and watch.. but I think that there should be a negative modifier for those on overwatch.  Of course, here's the kicker. I have no idea how to make it work right..

GW puts the saving throws last because its the most FUN for the person taking the casualties. It is a game after all. Putting the save first means the defender rolls more dice, then sits and waits while the attacker computes how many of his models he removes. Putting the save last, lets the attacker (who is obviously self-motivated) do the hard computations and narrow his rolls to the smaller number of victims. The defender then makes his "saves" as a fun chance to earn some of those "dead" soldiers back.

Posted By bigred on 08/30/2007 4:55 PM
GW puts the saving throws last because its the most FUN for the person taking the casualties. It is a game after all. Putting the save first means the defender rolls more dice, then sits and waits while the attacker computes how many of his models he removes. Putting the save last, lets the attacker (who is obviously self-motivated) do the hard computations and narrow his rolls to the smaller number of victims. The defender then makes his "saves" as a fun chance to earn some of those "dead" soldiers back.

You mean, it gives someone something to do while the other player takes his turn.

Except of course that it isnt. The order in which you roll your dice has absolutely no bearing on the result. You could even roll to hit last and get the same numbers.

It might affect rending, not so sure about that one.

Posted By AgeOfEgos on 08/30/2007 10:22 AM

No offense but it's not that simple.

High str low ap weapons tend to have multiple shots to compensate along with cost.  If suddenly it was straight WHFB modification, I would assume you would see all Warpspider armies .  To that point, I'm honestly more afraid of Warpspiders/Bladestorm Eldar then Reapers anymore...and I'm a marine player. 

The only way I would really be on board with a modification system is if each weapon had it's own ap.

Everyone else would play Tau since we'd have long-range choppas. Oh and hello large-template submunition shot.

overwatch would be a nice addition. if there was a motivator for the army to move into overwatch.  I always hated the 18+inch charge that I could do nothing to counter.. but sit and watch.. but I think that there should be a negative modifier for those on overwatch.  Of course, here's the kicker. I have no idea how to make it work right..

Try this on for size:  Leadership check in your own shooting phase to be able to place a unit into overwatch.  If this fails, the unit does not go into overwatch, but also may only fire at the closest unit (like a failed target priority roll).  At the end of the opponent's movement phase and before his shooting phase, any units in overwatch may fire following normal rules (normal target priority roll) and with a -1 modifier to hit.  

Biggest losers are vehicles and transports.  A unit could choose to go into overwatch rather than fire at a vehicle concealed by smoke, waiting for it to disappear in the opponents following turn to fire at it when it is no longer concealed.  Units in transports would get shot at twice before they could attempt a charge (once in their own turn after disembarking, once in the following opponent's turn.)

Of course, modifiers just don't happen any more, so this won't work....

I like the leadership roll idea. Add to that the earlier idea of overwatch only allowing you to fire in an opponent's shooting phase instead of your own, and I would add that your shots are only take AFTER an opponent's shots. I think we'd have a workable system then.

As for AP: The 2nd edition armor penetration and to-hit calculations really slowed the game down, bad. That said, I'm going to contradict myself and say that going back to an easy mod system with AP would be fine with me, justdon't go back to range modifiers and all that stuff.

Oh, and what a really want back is grenades as a weapon with a statline instead of the rules now where a frag works like a flashbang.