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Fear doesn't represent falling back though... the falling back rules represent falling back.

Fear represents a unit literally being paralyzed with terror, to the point where they start fighting poorly. Marines do not get paralyzed with terror.

Ever.

Unless they're traitors. lol

I constantly forgot which of my Units had Fear, that is how little it was used....

Fear is for the most part useless, as a Marine player I ignore it entirely

 Grey Templar wrote:

topaxygouroun i wrote:
Sorta yes. Not as useless as it was in fantasy tho. It's one of the rules I just skip all the time because of how little application it actually has.

Oh no, Fear in fantasy actually matters. In 40k its useless because the vast majority of codices have fearless or ATSKNF. And everyone else just has naturally high leadership or doesn't care.

Sure, there were more ways to mitigate Fear in fantasy through Inspiring Presence and the BSB reroll, but there was very little out there that was outright immune to it. And then it scaled with Terror on top of that. And it had a pretty debilitating effect as well. Plus with magic you could actually built around it if you had Death or Shadow magic.

I was gonna say, my VCs loved their Fear, and Terror....mmmm, Delicious delicious Terror.

So ya, Fear sucks and it works on Orks now (it shouldnt because Orks have a very lousy sense of self preservation when there are a bunch of them, but somebody decided to "fix" our Mob Rule )

It'll be useful when the new tau codex drops. A nice little extra usr when the bandwagoneers pick up the latest hot armee d'jour. Against the more experienced tau players its more of a nuisance.

 Savageconvoy wrote:

 Baldeagle91 wrote:

So a sentinel would cause fear?

Why not? It's two powerful mechanical legs swinging around. Those would hit with a lot of force and most infantry would probably rather worry about dodging than trying to punch it.

I dunno. Astartes/Nobz/equivalents seem to takedown Sentinels rather handily in melee.

the_scotsman wrote:
I've been playing Harlequins (fear across the board stacked with AOE LD debuffs) and it's weak as an incidental rule but strong if your list takes advantage of it as a neat bonus.

While ATSKNF is my constant bane and nemesis, it has been amazing against armies that "traditionally" don't have morale issues like Necrons and Chaos thanks to the debuffs.

Most people don't seem to have encountered this, yet, but it can be huge, as you say.

GrafWattenburg wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:

CSM: Majority of units are fearless or vehicles, the ones that aren't can purchase fearless for relatively cheap.

I wish that was true for regular CSM and CSM bikers. Khorne bikers from the C:KDK Gorepack failing their Fear test against Nurglings 3 turns in a row is not an impressive sight

Most champions, once given votlw, boost the unit to Ld 10 for CSM

Even Orks can mitigate it in some builds.

GreenTide usually sports Big Boss Pole or Mad Doc for Fearless (army wide), Ghazskulls Bullyboyz are Fearless too.

Fear is garbage. There are just so many things wrong with this rule. I mean, let's say I have a unit with Fear and I want to take advantage of it:

1) Well, firstly, there are a great deal of units that are outright immune to Fear - up to and including entire armies. Are you playing against 'nids, Coven DE, Daemons, Knights or one of the 20 billion SM armies? Well, enjoy your utterly worthless rule.

2) Of the units that aren't immune to Fear, there are many for which Fear makes basically no difference anyway. Oh, you've frightened a unit of Tau Fire Warriors. Hooray for you. I'm sure you would have really struggled if it wasn't for this amazing rule.

3) So, we're left with the units that are threatening in melee, but not immune to Fear. So, Orks, Incubi (when not accompanied by a Coven Haemonculus for turn 1 Fearless), maybe a few others. Basically, we're down to affecting 1 army and a handful of units from other armies.

4) Even on those few units it can affect, the odds are still drastically against it doing anything. When most units are Ld9-10, you're looking at them failing 1/6 or 1/12 Fear tests. So, you either need to do yet more work to try and reduce their Ld enough that the odds are at least in your favour, or else accept that the units not immune to Fear will still ignore it most of the time.

5) Even if you can reduce their Ld, there's still no guarantee that it will work. I mean, even if you stack Ld penalties to get a unit down to, say, Ld6, there's still a reasonable chance that it will pass its test.

To put it another way, you can't ever rely on Fear working. You can't use it to try and tarpit a unit or tip a fight in your favour, because you have no idea whether or not it will work.

It is a rule that badly needs to die.

Fear worked out great for my Crimson Slaughter units against low LD orks! Even the cultists got in on the action.

The idea of changing Fear to a ranged Ld debuff, I _really_ think could be interesting. Gives you the option of upgrades that extend the range or the debuff too.Terror being a bigger effect from the big gribblies would be a welcome return.

Fear: Units within 6" of a model with Fear suffer -1 Ld. Units with Fearless ignore this effect. Units with And They Shall Know No Fear halve the range of effect, rounding up.
Daemon Musician upgrade: Extend the effect of Fear to 12"
Greater Daemons, and the like gain Terror.
Terror: Units within 12" of a model with Fear suffer -2 Ld. Models with Terror are not affected by Fear. Units with Fearless ignore this effect. Units with And They Shall Know No Fear halve the range of effect, rounding up.

Quite useless agaisnt my armies.

Kriegsmen are straight immune to it (and I think its fine), while Scions just evaporate so quickly in melee that fear is really not needed.