Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Crablezworth wrote:
I think you approach it from one of two ways, either make it so non skyfire weapons can only target flyers at half range

Wow I like that one!! I am going to keep that in mind for a future draft of proposed changes for LI.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Crablezworth wrote:

leopard wrote:
a lot needs time to shake out, however the ability to say go "Every tank is a Vanquisher!" with zero limit or cost penalty (well other than for every four or five units of eight you need a 100 point baneblade) is likely to get silly

They go up to 10 lol, it's that silly, i think 10 vanqs is like 395pts, probably scariest unit in the game

For 395 you can field > 25 SM missile launchers...or > 2 TH gunships,... so, far from the scariest detachment in the game...

its all down to local play styles, the Vanquishers are very good at creating a kill zone in front of them, pretty much the same way the SM heavy support guys can, just at slightly longer range but with fewer shots

and either can bring down thunderhawks fishing for sixes, assuming they get to fire first

suspect more terrain density is a good bet

So how are people finding the general weapon specialisations? As in Light, Light AT and Anti-Tank?

On paper, I like the concept. And Armageddonouttahere’s AT/AP profiles likewise tickled my fancy. It prevents any one weapon being overly handy. But I’m yet to play (though the rate I’m now painting at, that may change by the end of the month).

Are you finding basic Infantry armed solely with Light weapons have little do besides Objective Camp?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So how are people finding the general weapon specialisations? As in Light, Light AT and Anti-Tank?

On paper, I like the concept. And Armageddonouttahere’s AT/AP profiles likewise tickled my fancy. It prevents any one weapon being overly handy. But I’m yet to play (though the rate I’m now painting at, that may change by the end of the month).

Are you finding basic Infantry armed solely with Light weapons have little do besides Objective Camp?

It's not ideal, someone a few months back had down a home made extra stat column that just didvided the ap effect between tanks and inf like -2/0 and that just seemed farm more common sense than creating a special rule/usr. Like you read anti-tank and think it's a good thing only to realize it just limits vs infantry.

Infantry are great but the game's meta is currently mostly infantry and tanks with a sprinkling of other stuff. Infantry being able to hurt anything is difficult to ignore, that said, with only one side having ground transports it's a bit off right now. I've got a couple arvus for my solar aux but that's not saying much getting a whole bases of infantry somewhere. Mostly it's objective camping/structure occupying.

well not found too much of a problem here

"light" is in effect anti infantry, fair enough, stuff with high rates of fire condensed into a small number of dice, should be good for dealing with clusters of infantry who have found themselves glued to the same bit of pavement

"anti tank" is heavier stuff that could really make one infantry bod wish they had phoned in sick but is less likely to stop the group functioning

"light anti tank" is somewhere between the two, can hurt armour but needs to be lucky

its a simple enough system, its essentially taking the 1st edition idea of weapons having two profiles, one v light and one v armoured and trying to update it

personally they would have been better to actually go with three profiles, with some weapons only having one or two of them

thus you could go back to the idea that a las-cannon may hit a tank on a 3+ (or whatever) but needs a 6 to hurt infantry, that lucky shot that takes out a few of them somehow, ammo explosion or whatever

could also have a profile v fliers and one v super heavies so you can have anti tank stuff thats not very good v Titans, flak stuff thats rubbish against armoured ground targets but pretty good v infantry and light transports


and in effect the role of infantry feels about right, the walking dead basically have a few roles:

- assaulting other soon to be walking dead in terrain to clear them out
- moving up to occupy terrain, say after vehicles have advanced

oh and Marine heavy weapon teams with the job of nuking anything in range

leopard wrote:
well not found too much of a problem here

"light" is in effect anti infantry, fair enough, stuff with high rates of fire condensed into a small number of dice, should be good for dealing with clusters of infantry who have found themselves glued to the same bit of pavement

"anti tank" is heavier stuff that could really make one infantry bod wish they had phoned in sick but is less likely to stop the group functioning

"light anti tank" is somewhere between the two, can hurt armour but needs to be lucky

its a simple enough system, its essentially taking the 1st edition idea of weapons having two profiles, one v light and one v armoured and trying to update it

personally they would have been better to actually go with three profiles, with some weapons only having one or two of them

thus you could go back to the idea that a las-cannon may hit a tank on a 3+ (or whatever) but needs a 6 to hurt infantry, that lucky shot that takes out a few of them somehow, ammo explosion or whatever

could also have a profile v fliers and one v super heavies so you can have anti tank stuff thats not very good v Titans, flak stuff thats rubbish against armoured ground targets but pretty good v infantry and light transports


and in effect the role of infantry feels about right, the walking dead basically have a few roles:

- assaulting other soon to be walking dead in terrain to clear them out
- moving up to occupy terrain, say after vehicles have advanced

oh and Marine heavy weapon teams with the job of nuking anything in range

The honest truth I've experienced so far is just about anything with light AT is "good enough" sadly, as nice and needed as ap is on SOME targets, honestly just getting hits is all that's required for a lot of targets sadly. The 6's always hitting and planes for example. If a target is 4+ or worse as nice as it is to have ap, volume of fire will do just fine more or less. Look at the humble havoc launcher for 2pts, not only light at but point defense as well and fairly decent range, esp when combined with a rhinos very healthy movement stat.


I'm already thinking of special rules that might be needed. Rend is so damn critical because of how big and involved combat is, I feel like if ap of cc stuff is only going to be relevant to structures, there's need to be something similar to rend but perhaps not has good. Like an extra d3 instead of d6. When you look at certain units, like the contemptors, its just weird that they don't have rend but like ogryns do, i've heard similar complaints about marine models having all these power weapons but no rend. Could see more upgrades akin to how rhinos upgrade to havoc launchers or melta, like a terminator unit can add 1-2 caf for x points or the lighter verseion of rend i mentioned with d3. If it's costed sorta 1-5pts per base it might be a nice way to round out lists that don't quite hit even numbers of points.

On that note too, I'd love very general upgrades for bolter marines or tercio dudes to let them become engineers, like pay a point and they can now remove certain small terrain features like tank traps, small barricades or something. Or when cyclops come out if they don't have the ability to remove/attack more than structures you could pay points to allow them to explode and remove obstacles.

I should note I’ve so far noticed a handful of weapons with none of those three Keywords. Sadly I can’t recall which they were off the top of my head.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I should note I’ve so far noticed a handful of weapons with none of those three Keywords. Sadly I can’t recall which they were off the top of my head.

Titan gatling guns(think couple other titan weapons too), baneblade cannon, conversion beams, leman russ battlecannon, omega plasma cannon out of memory,

As those keywords all negative you need to look at generalist weapons as a rule of thumb.

quite, it can actually be a bonus to have a weapon with no attached keywords as you now have usually a decent general purpose gun

which can be and often is outclassed in any specific role by an alternative

in theory the Leman Russ's generic battle cannon should be a good weapon, and if you face a good mix of infantry & armour would be, however when facing a lot more vehicles the Vanquisher wipes the floor with it

leopard wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Well the obvious would be only flak weapons can shoot aircraft, ala Epic :A.

it would make a lot of sense to bring in something like this, based, loosely on Flames of War..

Skyfire: may fire at Flier units without penalty
Flier: may only be fired upon by weapons with Skyfire, are by the target of the Fliers who may only hit on a natural six - when a Flier nominates its target, if the target has not yet activated to shoot, it may fire in self defence, hitting on a natural six only, and do so prior to the Flier attacking

point, flak units work as intended, other units only fire at aircraft that are actually attacking them as presumably they have better things to do

Other alternatives hark back to WW1/2, where if enough lead flies wildly into the air, aircraft attack runs are aborted. Something akin to suppression, or 'kills' from non flak weapons simply stopping the plane attacking for a round and perhaps making it head for a table edge.

an actual suppression mechanic generally wouldn't be bad, perhaps starts to get a bit more complex and need longer games with GW seem opposed to

for aircraft it could work pretty well, and perhaps have as an offset to making them harder to hit with some weapons, make it possible to see them off without killing them

leopard wrote:
an actual suppression mechanic generally wouldn't be bad, perhaps starts to get a bit more complex and need longer games with GW seem opposed to

for aircraft it could work pretty well, and perhaps have as an offset to making them harder to hit with some weapons, make it possible to see them off without killing them

Quake is odd in that it should help suppress by at least slowing enemy advance but I'm pretty sure they wrote it for an earlier build of the rules that had first fire shooting in the movement phase like titanicus, because half of quake doesn't really anything. If you can hit a unit that hasn't shot yet, great, that unit shoots at -1, so a bit of a suppression, but might possibly help a unit by slowing down their fallback for failing morale.

yup, Quake reads like it should last until the following turn, not the end of the current one, when most of what it impacts has already happened

suppression and the idea of "go to ground" at a cost of your order is a good one

leopard wrote:
yup, Quake reads like it should last until the following turn, not the end of the current one, when most of what it impacts has already happened

suppression and the idea of "go to ground" at a cost of your order is a good one

I always loved go to ground, it was a brilliant mechanic. A way of sorta giving the pinning usr in a round about way to just about any volume of fire enough to scare infantry. In reality that's what makes infantry difficult to deal with is they can hug so much terrain and unlike a tank it can be difficult to confirm the effect one's fire is having on the target if they're so concealed/obscured/well camouflaged. We as the players get such a birds eye view and objective knowledge of efficacy that like boots on the ground might not.


I'm not really sure how to fix quake, it sorta ties into the fixing first fire in a way. I still feel like easiest fix for first fire is actually fixing advance so you can't overwatch on advance without point defense, and can only overwatch on first fire. I don't hate the like RTS simplicity of basically every unit type moving and shooting at full effect but it does really really leave short stuff like first fire, especially for units where lower weapon ranges can often be ameliorated somewhat with the detachments movement stat.

Had my first game, went for 1000 Pts ended up being Sons of Horus vs Blood Angels. Certainly enjoyed it, teleporting terminators, rhino rushes and air assaults. Just what I wanted!

Did find my list had way more activations than I expected, transport units having their own activations added ones I hadn’t really expected.

Also struggled to find an explanation for dedicated transport, is it just a transport unit that doesn’t count as one of your choices?

Other than that infantry in buildings were rock hard and the small amount of actual tanks I had got shot up pretty quickly.

Positive experience and looking forward to my next game.

Sonsoftherock wrote:

Also struggled to find an explanation for dedicated transport, is it just a transport unit that doesn’t count as one of your choices?
.

Don't count as one of your choice, can be larger than 8 formation(though not sure do you need 9+ transports in one detachment...Guess regular land raiders if they can be taken as dedicated in future? 9 land raider, 8 terminators and commander). Don't count for morale, can only carry the unit it was bought for so no other detachments can ever hop into it.

Also you can literally buy as many as you need of those. Regular transport slot rhino's you would be limited to 2 detachments of 8 as maximum while you can if you want fit 31 rhino's to single demi company as dedicated if you really, really, really want.

Not counting morale two edged sword. Otoh 8 rhino as non-dedicated would increase break point by 4. OTOH dying there would go toward BP 8 and they are high priority target even if they don't count for morale

(there's also rule debate do dedicated transport kills count for breaking which would be big weakness for dedicated transport)

rulebook wrote:
Dedicated Transports are ignored for the purposes of calculating Break Point.

That's the phrase that causes debate. Argument being break point is calculated pre-game. Nothing in rule says to ignore them also for calculating casualties formation has taken...

Thanks for the quick answer and the insight into rules!

I enjoyed it but I don’t think alternating activations in each phase of the game works when you have the number of units you’re expected to work with. It took us six hours to get through 1 and a bit turns. Your whole movement phase should only take a few minutes, not a few minutes for every single units move activation. It encourages overthinking and dithering. I also didn’t understand why they put even more rules on such as orders and secondary obejectives when there’s already a lot to consider.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
I enjoyed it but I don’t think alternating activations in each phase of the game works when you have the number of units you’re expected to work with. It took us six hours to get through 1 and a bit turns. Your whole movement phase should only take a few minutes, not a few minutes for every single units move activation. It encourages overthinking and dithering. I also didn’t understand why they put even more rules on such as orders and secondary obejectives when there’s already a lot to consider.

Alternating activations isn't great, yeah. The secondary objectives are a bridge too far for the most part agreed.

I too share the concern that overthinking may grind some games to a less than ideal pace. This a point I will always make in favor of turn based over alternating activation, you can really see where the lag time is coming from if one player's turn is taking 3-4 times longer than the opponent's. This is also exasperated by unlimited pre measuring. I'm concerned about players bringing flyers in taking forever to consider their move/activation. It's also a very very permissive army construction, and that does concern me as points go up.

I'd still say give it another try, its easy to over think orders but 90% of the time its like advance or charge, maybe march and almost never first fire.

Tried out lancers and holy smoke they annihilate infantry in melee. Normal knights etc damage they can cause is limited due to amount you can fight with.

Lancer? That reach does wonders.

2 waded in and took out 11/16 stands.

Albeit point wise ended up in bad trade but could have halted of course after wound or two.

But did keep infantry away from objective for 2 turns.