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I also think there needs to be heavy penalties for attempting to engage in melee during the first turn, say double the combat attrition rate for charging units on first turn, so instead of losing 4-6 boys after the charge, they lose 6-10.

You should also get bonuses to wounds against first turn chargers.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I also think there needs to be heavy penalties for attempting to engage in melee during the first turn, say double the combat attrition rate for charging units on first turn, so instead of losing 4-6 boys after the charge, they lose 6-10.

You should also get bonuses to wounds against first turn chargers.

I'm not sure increasing lethality against chargers on turn 1 is a good way to reduce lethality on turn 1. Kind of seems like your goal with that change is just to make turn 1 charges so undesirable that people opt not to do them. Plus, this would hurt mediocre-to-poor melee units more than it would hurt really stacked melee units that don't leave anyone alive to punch back.

Are turn 1 chargers a big problem that I'm unaware of right now?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Nurglitch wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Nurglitch wrote:
Remove all casualties at the end of the game turn. There.

Feth melee armies, right?

Who cares if they get blown off the table turn one, before they can charge!

It's also not great for armies that can't take as much of a punch and normally rely on working angles and focusing down enemies before they can retaliate to trade well.

Nah, it works in Apocalypse.

Interesting. How does that work out for a glass cannon like drukhari? Normally, I have to play cagey and try to kill off the biggest threats before they can shoot back to avoid losing trades. Seems like they'd be guaranteed to do some damage but also guaranteed to take at least as much damage in return resulting in a net loss for the transport-dependent army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Weird Shower thought:

1. Re-format the entire game around D10s. Adds a much less punishing return if the RNG is dialed up.

2. Make overwatch style "Reaction" attacks that can be "triggered" when entering 24" on the first turn, at full BS. You can't move in the preceeding turn, and you "prepare ambush" or something. Any unit that enters 24" gets a full BS salvo from that unit. It really enforces the "Don't just charage across the board turn 1" style of play.

It was before my time, but apparently that's more or less how overwatch used to work. The ancients say it resulted in both players bunkering up and overwatching with their whole armies and waiting for the other guy to lose his nerve and wander out into the open. Maybe the 24" range cap would address that? Although that weirdly might just increase lethality rather than reducing it as it means the first player, unable to spot targets due to obscuring terrain, could just hold his shots until after his opponent's movement phase.

Star Wars Legion has an 'overwatch' mechanic.
Essentially, you can spend your action to overwatch instead of moving or shooting on your turn. Overwatch lets you shoot after an enemy completes an action in LoS. It's limited to range 2 (standard range is 3) and you lose the overwatch if you get shot at.
It's not powerful and isn't often used due to those limitations, which is good as it stops the game bogging into an overwatch standoff.

A lot of good discussion, thanks guys!

Obviously the ideal situation would be a fix to lethality and/or certain game mechanics overall. But that is a much bigger issue, this is about slapping some tape on what we have in the meantime.

I could see a staggered deployment option working, though my concern would be armies not having reduced offense because they only reserve units which would not have been in effective range anyways. But anyways, something where the first-turn player gets reinforcements round 2 while the second-turn player gets them round 1 could be interesting?

Going from the other angle, rather than an offensive debuff giving a defensive buff to the player that goes second would probably be the better approach as someone mentioned. The problem being the simple cover option is not particularly effective. But what if it was an invul? Units that don't have an invul get a 6++ while units that do improve it by one (to a max of 3++ as normal). It could be a stratagem or a default for the second player.

Wyldhunt wrote:

Interesting. How does that work out for a glass cannon like drukhari? Normally, I have to play cagey and try to kill off the biggest threats before they can shoot back to avoid losing trades. Seems like they'd be guaranteed to do some damage but also guaranteed to take at least as much damage in return resulting in a net loss for the transport-dependent army.

Like they always do: they can't trade like-for-like, so they need to use their mobility to concentrate their forces so the balance of pain is in their favour. They run a deficit in a stand-up fight.

I think more 1 CP stratagems that tripple that damage of 20 man units are a great way to reduce alpha strike.

I agree with Fezzik on this one. Counting as being in light cover doesn't feel all that helpful in today's environment between the things that have good enough AP to mitigate it, things that ignore light cover completely, and the fact that being in light cover never really did much for some armeis (harlequins, daemons, to a lesser extent orkz) to begin with.

Could be a simple +1 to your save until the first time a unit moves. Any units in cover would then benefit from both light cover and prepared positions.

Maybe there could be other pre-game defensive stratagems, like reinforce location. To give a terrain piece dense cover that doesn't have it already. Erect barricades, lets you set up to 6 inches of barricades across your deployment zone.

The point is, there should be more methods of using CP to minimise the disadvantage of a first strike.

If you're looking for a super simple band-aid house rule here's an old schooled one we've tried.

Fog of War - The player who goes first may only target the nearest enemy model. Units with a 'sniper' esque ability can still target as normal.

Tones down the alpha strike to the poor soul that is nearest to the enemy and not obscured.

That's pretty dam brilliant actually. Do you use it as 'nearest visible enemy model' or allow people to block units shooting by putting the forward-most unit out of LoS?

Thanks! We do closest visible, that way the defender needs to be wise about where they place units and gives the attacker a chance to circumvent whatever meat shield is closest. If you try it out let me know how it works for you.

We started doing this in 7th edition that way D-Weapons weren't annihilating units in the backrow. It was also fluffy for Wraithguard (terrible range not-withstanding) who are meant to have a hard time focusing without a Spiritseer.

Doesn't this kinda shift the meta towards Sniper Units? I mean, I like the premise of the idea, but there are still like 60 or so individual units off the top of my head with the Sniper rule. There is also the thematic realism to understand. 1" in game is about 5 feet, so 24" is about 120 feet. Not that far to "see" the enemy.

Distances in game have no relation to real world measurements. Everything is abstracted for gameplay.

I also don't think giving snipers a boost is much of a concern, most snipers are pretty bad at the moment. They struggle to put sufficient damage on single characters to justify their own existence, let alone trying to inflict significant damage on entire units.

Play on a bigger table. Start further away from eachother. Have a turn of moving into positions and closing into combat range before the fighting actually starts.

Agreed with Kiro, sniper-type units aren't very strong at the moment.

The clause about letting sniper types still target whoever they want was a fluffy addition we like to use, but you can certainly remove it and still keep the basic Fog of War rule if that's your groups preference.

 The Red Hobbit wrote:
Thanks! We do closest visible, that way the defender needs to be wise about where they place units and gives the attacker a chance to circumvent whatever meat shield is closest. If you try it out let me know how it works for you.

We started doing this in 7th edition that way D-Weapons weren't annihilating units in the backrow. It was also fluffy for Wraithguard (terrible range not-withstanding) who are meant to have a hard time focusing without a Spiritseer.

Why not just bring back the old target priority and leadership tests to not shoot the closest unit then? Makes leadership a bit more of a relevant stat.

Good idea! You can certainly add in the Leadership check if that works for your group.

For us that rule is only a 1st turn Fog of War meant to represent the chaos of first contact with the enemy and not yet knowing the size, activity, location, etc. On the 2nd turn we reasoned enough reports have come in over the vox for the army's C3 cell to properly set up priority targets.