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.

 Hellebore wrote:
Hmm, two rank fighting for infantry specifically, but not for anything else?

Would you see them using their normal weapons? I can see a halberd being used over the top of the front rank, or someone stabbing past them with a sword.

I have difficulty imagining a great axe or hammer being effective from the second rank though. Very hard to strike with effectively.

It would be the great weapon units that would be the biggest challenge with 2 ranks fighting. They charge and do 10 s5 attacks which would decimate enemy infantry.





Or would you see the supporting rank using a hand weapon attack?

So how is it different than a multiple attack infantry unit? You have Witch Elves doing 15 attacks on the charge but nobody is calling for mechanisms to deal with it. That's even WORSE as they tend to be fully ranked with command which means you're even from the start. Several armies have units like that, yet it all comes down to a unit that is SUPPOSED to be powerful on the battlefield.


I really can't wrap my head around this. I've seen far too many cavalry charges fail to win combat to think there's a problem.

You could see two ranks of infantry fighting as a the warriors just making a little space for their fellows to attacks. Cavalry and monstrous infantry can't make such adjustments because they're too bulky and unmaneuverable. It wouldn't exactly be a flavour killer.

When it comes to unwieldy weapons, we can give them a pass really. It's warhammer fantasy battle, we can suspend our disbelief a little when it comes to the minutia of martial arts.

Supporting attacks was never an infantry only rule, it did however help them a lot, combined with step up. Given outside our fun “I like the model” lists and dwarves, people aren’t taking them. This is exactly how it was back in 6th Ed. You could just about get away with chaos warriors, but they weren’t an optimal choice.

I think someone at design wanted to turn things back to 5th/6th Ed, and they forgot just how badly infantry do outside beer and pretzels games. They went way ott in fixing magic, I prefer the 2d6 pull of magic. You could easily put the current spells into that system. The main issue with 8th magic was certain spells just needed removing, the system was fine (maybe changing MR).

They’ve gone way too far with dragons. Like with a chaos lord, he starts with +1 wound over any other editions, and then the dragons add +6. Dragons would have been dice at +4 wounds max. It’s a bit much much, if cannons still did d6 wounds, then fine.

I do prefer how and units give ground now, it’s a cool feature.

Killing blow changes are interesting, I didn’t even realise it worked on everything aside a monster (this is now amazing). It’s a shame they got rid of HKB for the monster killer rule. It does make sense, it would make KB redundant.

I can’t stand the whole linehammer supporting attacks, it just looks awful.

itsonlyme wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
I understand the potential issue, I just think that there are other ways to solve it that don't undo half the other rules around ranked combat.

It's kind of a half way between 40k 'everyone fights ' and wfb front rank only.

No one has a problem with an entire unit being wiped before it can fight back in 40k.

If you did a 'whole unit strikes then the opponent's whole unit strikes ' you'd still see the cav winning. Which to me says the rule is unbalanced. One of the consequences of striking on initiative is that you die before you get to strike.

Fantasy isnt 40k, which is much more of a skirmish game, so with 40k, you don’t have large units moving forward in blocks, they tend to be in lose formations. It’s also just daft, that in such formations people don’t just step towards. The way they changed it, is even more silly, the entire front rank may make a single attack, no matter how many wide? The old supporting attack rule just makes more sense.

I charge, you die was always the worst part of early editions,the effects of that are being seeing repeated in the tow. This is why brets dominated 6th Ed as well, this is mainly why wives gained asf, because it was the only way to make their infantry work.

40k easily has units of 20 models moving around charging. WFB used 20 models as a relatively standard regiment size.

Your argument for stepping forward also applies to the attacker - so your defender steps forward and kils some attackers, why can't the attacker then step forward and attack with people who fill the gaps made there too? It's even more ridiculous when you look at it from an initiative perspective - the defender is the slower figher, and yet they somehow have the time and speed to step forward and fill gaps, while the faster attacker can't step forward and fill gaps that were made?

The reason step up is problematic is that it interferes with the other rules of combat. If you redesigned combat entirely around step up then sure. But all they did was say everyone strikes at initiative, except the slower defender who gets to fight with more people.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Just Tony wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Hmm, two rank fighting for infantry specifically, but not for anything else?

Would you see them using their normal weapons? I can see a halberd being used over the top of the front rank, or someone stabbing past them with a sword.

I have difficulty imagining a great axe or hammer being effective from the second rank though. Very hard to strike with effectively.

It would be the great weapon units that would be the biggest challenge with 2 ranks fighting. They charge and do 10 s5 attacks which would decimate enemy infantry.





Or would you see the supporting rank using a hand weapon attack?

So how is it different than a multiple attack infantry unit? You have Witch Elves doing 15 attacks on the charge but nobody is calling for mechanisms to deal with it. That's even WORSE as they tend to be fully ranked with command which means you're even from the start. Several armies have units like that, yet it all comes down to a unit that is SUPPOSED to be powerful on the battlefield.


I really can't wrap my head around this. I've seen far too many cavalry charges fail to win combat to think there's a problem.

Um, in this scenario witch elves would be doing 30 attacks, albeit at s3 so yeah they could potentially be a problem as well. not sure your point?

I'm not averse to supporting rank attacks. Just trying to look at it from different angles.

I just don't see where cav needs nerved or infantry needs buffed against cav exclusively.

 Just Tony wrote:
I just don't see where cav needs nerved or infantry needs buffed against cav exclusively.

Ok, that's a valid position. I've seen a few comments that are similar in other places on the net, where it's more list construction and unit composition that people use as a balancing factor - creating small cheap shielding units to foil attempted cavalry charges.

That's not easy for armies that have expensive basic troops, but it's a non rules based means of dealing with them.

 Hellebore wrote:

itsonlyme wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
I understand the potential issue, I just think that there are other ways to solve it that don't undo half the other rules around ranked combat.

It's kind of a half way between 40k 'everyone fights ' and wfb front rank only.

No one has a problem with an entire unit being wiped before it can fight back in 40k.

If you did a 'whole unit strikes then the opponent's whole unit strikes ' you'd still see the cav winning. Which to me says the rule is unbalanced. One of the consequences of striking on initiative is that you die before you get to strike.

Fantasy isnt 40k, which is much more of a skirmish game, so with 40k, you don’t have large units moving forward in blocks, they tend to be in lose formations. It’s also just daft, that in such formations people don’t just step towards. The way they changed it, is even more silly, the entire front rank may make a single attack, no matter how many wide? The old supporting attack rule just makes more sense.

I charge, you die was always the worst part of early editions,the effects of that are being seeing repeated in the tow. This is why brets dominated 6th Ed as well, this is mainly why wives gained asf, because it was the only way to make their infantry work.

40k easily has units of 20 models moving around charging. WFB used 20 models as a relatively standard regiment size.

Your argument for stepping forward also applies to the attacker - so your defender steps forward and kils some attackers, why can't the attacker then step forward and attack with people who fill the gaps made there too? It's even more ridiculous when you look at it from an initiative perspective - the defender is the slower figher, and yet they somehow have the time and speed to step forward and fill gaps, while the faster attacker can't step forward and fill gaps that were made?

The reason step up is problematic is that it interferes with the other rules of combat. If you redesigned combat entirely around step up then sure. But all they did was say everyone strikes at initiative, except the slower defender who gets to fight with more people.

Step up interferes with nothing, all that happens, as it’s a rule that existed in 8th was when you made your elite unit charge in, wipe out out the front rank, it involved some risk to your unit. Going back to I charge, you die, I chase, rinse repeat is the most boring aspect of warhammer. I’m yet to see you offer an alternative either really, it seems more your just opposed to anything from 8th Ed.enf of the day. As it stands, infantry has been made fairly irrelevant in warhammer since this rule was removed. If you’re failing to see cavalry to win combat, then heat, 5 empire knights are going to struggle, add I a lord or something hard hitting, your fine.

You’re analogy to 40k is fairly weak,this is one of those things I’d just accept defeat on and adds no weight to the argument at all, ones a rank and file game, the other is as skirmish game, they are very different.

itsonlyme wrote:

Step up interferes with nothing, all that happens, as it’s a rule that existed in 8th was when you made your elite unit charge in, wipe out out the front rank, it involved some risk to your unit. Going back to I charge, you die, I chase, rinse repeat is the most boring aspect of warhammer. I’m yet to see you offer an alternative either really, it seems more your just opposed to anything from 8th Ed.enf of the day. As it stands, infantry has been made fairly irrelevant in warhammer since this rule was removed. If you’re failing to see cavalry to win combat, then heat, 5 empire knights are going to struggle, add I a lord or something hard hitting, your fine.

You’re analogy to 40k is fairly weak,this is one of those things I’d just accept defeat on and adds no weight to the argument at all, ones a rank and file game, the other is as skirmish game, they are very different.

What I've said that you've ignored is that: having rules that help make the game less one sided in specific instances isn't bad and that IF the rules had been written around the concept of step up rather than simply bolting it on then that would be fine.

But it was bolted on to a completely different combat mechanic.

No one has to offer a solution to something in order to say that another solution is bad.

Step up is A solution, it's not the only possible one and it's a poor solution. You seem to think that it's the only possible way to change combat and that any attack against it is an attack against changing combat. Which it's not. A poor rule is a poor rule. It can still be modified without requiring that specific rule.


As for 40k, if you go back to what I originally said maybe you'd understand what I was saying. Step up is a weird rule that sits between ranked combat and full unit on unit attack rules. Ranked combat using initiative follows the same logic as unit on unit fighting - except only the first rank of both sides fight. Unit on unit is ALL the models on one side fight, then all the models on the other side fight.

The solution that step up was trying to create was giving regiments that lost their fighting rank the opportunity to fight.

But in doing so it:

removed the incentive that charging gives which makes armies that already have low initiative even less interested in charging - knowing that you will always strike at max power regardless of whether you charge or not fundamentally changes how you approach the game.

Made initiative relatively pointless. The reward for high initiative was that your attacks tactically affected your opponent's return attacks, which folds back into why striking first on the charge was highly important. Dwarfs were already annoying as gunlines, but step up told them they should NEVER charge because they will get no advantage in doing so and the effort of manoeuvring their slow units to do it was way to much effort when they could stack handguns and start blasting.

With step up initiative could be removed entirely and both sides just roll their attacks simultaneously, because that's what's effectively happening. 2 5 wide units will always attack with 5 models in every round except when there's only 4 left. If one of your stats is only relevant when your unit has lost 80% of its models, then it needs to be completely rebuilt.

Step up removes the value of the initiative stat in a game that was designed and balanced around that stat being extremely important and points costs being balanced with that in mind. They did no rebalancing of the armies when making initiative pointless. Points costs barely changed between 7th and 8th.


So as has been said several times, just because a solution existed to a perceived problem doesn't mean it's the only solution or that it's even a good one. And the knock on effects it has are far too profound for it to ever stay in the game. ToW knows this which is why they didn't retain it, despite all the positivity towards it from you and others. Because it's a fundamentally bad rule in the design space that WFB was built in. They would need to rewrite the game and rebalance the rules around the initiative stat not mattering and charging being pointless before even considering the step up mechanic.

End the day you have two options, option one;

Leave things as they are, large parts of the books aren’t playable and the game stays as cavalry, msu hammer. You’re basically playing 6th Ed with a few tweaks (and the magic system is terrible).

Option 2; you change supporting attacks so it’s models on b2b in the second rank (currently, a line favours gulines). The importance of charging switches to weapon bonuses and getting into position, rather than essentially dictating the combat.

One options involves people having more models to use, the other is a repeat of the 6th/7th meta.

I don't agree that ToW knows this at all, i think it was more geared towards players from 6th which stopped playing, than those who kept on playing. 8th was very flawed, its probably my least favorite edition, but it had cool things like cult chaos units, a magic system that didn't reward spaming wizards (just certain spells needed removing), random charges (which are better in ToW), and infantry not being completely. It's still got to move away from herohammer a bit more, but thats easy enough tweak with lowering wounds on certain things.

I would add the following rule:

Infantry that gets charged fights with +1 extra rank.

So charging into spear infantry is 3 ranks fighting. Killed models do not strike back but it's a lot of models.

Its certainly a start, GW went though all these changes in 7th ed with making elite infantry better (better armour and/or more attacks). Supporting attacks being the second rank makes more sense than being 100 wide and everyone can attack.

How about instead we have every model in the unit attacks? Even if they died.

itsonlyme wrote:End the day you have two options, option one;

Leave things as they are, large parts of the books aren’t playable and the game stays as cavalry, msu hammer. You’re basically playing 6th Ed with a few tweaks (and the magic system is terrible).

Option 2; you change supporting attacks so it’s models on b2b in the second rank (currently, a line favours gulines). The importance of charging switches to weapon bonuses and getting into position, rather than essentially dictating the combat.

One options involves people having more models to use, the other is a repeat of the 6th/7th meta.

I don't agree that ToW knows this at all, i think it was more geared towards players from 6th which stopped playing, than those who kept on playing. 8th was very flawed, its probably my least favorite edition, but it had cool things like cult chaos units, a magic system that didn't reward spaming wizards (just certain spells needed removing), random charges (which are better in ToW), and infantry not being completely. It's still got to move away from herohammer a bit more, but thats easy enough tweak with lowering wounds on certain things.

I think you've expanded from the original conversation a bit - I'd not seen anyone claim that large parts of 6th were unplayable. The main issue was cav vs infantry. Magic was IMO fixed by 7ths constraining of dice to the caster. I personally think that cav are bit too optimised, not that they're overpowered. Two units of 5 is often more useful than one unit of 10, but infantry rely on their ranks more so msu doesn't usually work (excepting empire detachments which require a special rule to be useful).

Supporting attacks are definitely a solution, but it might tip infantry over, as it's doubling the output, rather than tweaking it. As Tony has shown, the maths for MSU 5 cav vs equal infantry is relatively close. The problem is they have speed and agility that enable to them to act usually in the most favourable circumstances, while infantry are less good at that.

I'm thinking something relatively minor that makes Infantry effective without tipping the scale too far. The game was played for 6 years with the paradigm as it was and people used force comp, baiting etc to reduce cav effectiveness. doubling infantry output is likely going to over balance the game in the other direction unless you're going to redo the entire game. My goal is to use 6th as is with the smallest tweaks.

One thing that I've noticed is that ToW encourages wider regiments, while 6th kept them in tight little squares. ToW at least looks more like real battles with wide frontages clashing. The 4-6 design made the armies look more like napoleonic squares moving around. So a solution whose goal is a tweak rather than a big change, and also encourages wide fighting ranks rather than lots of little squares is the following:

Determining who can fight
The number of troops that are actually fighting each other is somewhat abstracted, especially so when dealing with larger warriors like monstrous infantry or cavalry. As such to determine the number of models that may make attacks use the following process:

Each model in BtB with a model in the opposing unit's fighting rank may make attacks.
If the opposing unit's fighting rank is made up of models with a US higher than 1, count up the fighting rank's total US and use that as the number of models in your fighting rank that can fight.

ie cavalry with a FR of 5, allows up to 10 models in the opposing FR to strike. Monstrous infantry with a FR of 3 can be struck by up to 9 models in the opposing FR.

This is deliberately a minor change that gives infantry a small boost of attacks, without defanging cavalry. It shifts the conversation to weighing up getting static rank bonus, or widening the frontage to use attacks to gain combat bonus. For cheap units like goblins, they would likely do both. But the outcome is that if you have 10 wide units, they will strike with 2 more attacks than normal. It's not doubling the attack out put, it's tweaking it to make MSU cav less of a sure thing. RB is still if you have 4 models, so static bonuses on wider regiments are going to stay around for longer, but there's now an advantage to having wider regiments.

Just Tony wrote:How about instead we have every model in the unit attacks? Even if they died.

You've given your thoughts that 6th doesn't need to change and is fine as is. Do you really need to be unconstructive now?

I'm just trying to point out "Where does it end?"


It's why we got to where we got to both in 8th WFB and in the later editions of 40K.

SU-152 wrote:
I would add the following rule:

Infantry that gets charged fights with +1 extra rank.

So charging into spear infantry is 3 ranks fighting. Killed models do not strike back but it's a lot of models.

To balance this I would have to make it a charge reaction you would need to test Ld to perform, otherwise It's a big advantage to be charged, given that there's 0 chance that the charger is going to have enough attacks to prevent strike backs. Charging becomes a big risk rather than a tactical advantage.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Just Tony wrote:
I'm just trying to point out "Where does it end?"

It's why we got to where we got to both in 8th WFB and in the later editions of 40K.

You're using a false dichotomy fallacy. There are more than the two options of 'no changes' and 'all changes forever'.... GW's business reasons for releasing new editions that look different enough to justify selling you new stuff, are entirely separate from improving rules for the sake of the rules.

Solve a problem without causing more, is all you need to focus on. ie the 7th ed magic dice rule, self contained, no knock on effects, simple effective at tweaking a potential issue. You don't need to then redesign all of magic as well.

So I have thought. Instead of step-up, why not allow the winner of a combat to perform an additional round of attacks if the loser passes their moral test? Maybe limiting it to 1 attack/model, or limit the number of models which can attack to your margin of victory.

Probably would want to pair this with a buff to static combat res (such as making rank bonus a +2/rank, or allowing the outnumber bonus to increase the greater your number), but I think it could be a good place to start.

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:
So I have thought. Instead of step-up, why not allow the winner of a combat to perform an additional round of attacks if the loser passes their moral test? Maybe limiting it to 1 attack/model, or limit the number of models which can attack to your margin of victory.

Probably would want to pair this with a buff to static combat res (such as making rank bonus a +2/rank, or allowing the outnumber bonus to increase the greater your number), but I think it could be a good place to start.

If I understand you, you're looking to make infantry win more often (as they will often have more ranks and get bigger bonuses), and so get to attack more? Making them more likely to win combat is pretty good already though. Once cav have charged, if they don't win they lose their lances making the combat more challenging.

The outnumber one is something I've thought about.

You could go:

+1 outnumber
+2 outnumber 2:1
+3 outnumber 3:1

so if you have max +3 rank, you'd also have max +3 outnumber.

It makes it harder for MSU 5 man cav to be effective in frontal charges, which is good. They would have to rely on flank charging which makes sense.

 Hellebore wrote:

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:
So I have thought. Instead of step-up, why not allow the winner of a combat to perform an additional round of attacks if the loser passes their moral test? Maybe limiting it to 1 attack/model, or limit the number of models which can attack to your margin of victory.

Probably would want to pair this with a buff to static combat res (such as making rank bonus a +2/rank, or allowing the outnumber bonus to increase the greater your number), but I think it could be a good place to start.

If I understand you, you're looking to make infantry win more often (as they will often have more ranks and get bigger bonuses), and so get to attack more? Making them more likely to win combat is pretty good already though. Once cav have charged, if they don't win they lose their lances making the combat more challenging.

The outnumber one is something I've thought about.

You could go:

+1 outnumber
+2 outnumber 2:1
+3 outnumber 3:1

so if you have max +3 rank, you'd also have max +3 outnumber.

It makes it harder for MSU 5 man cav to be effective in frontal charges, which is good. They would have to rely on flank charging which makes sense.

Yeah, one of 6/7's big flaws is the ability of a 5-man Cavalry Unit to rip apart Infantry units in frontal attacks.

Historically, you charge hit first, kill a rank, and are sitting on 5 kills and a banner for a +6. I only get to attack back with my champion, and maybe get a kill if I am lucky. I have a Banner, Numbers, and Three ranks, for +5. If my champion doesn't kill anyone, I lose, and, unless I am playing dwarves or lizardmen, probably run.

My alternative plays out similarly, with the Cavalry scoring six points. But now my combat res is 1 for banner, 6 for ranks, and lets say 2 for numbers, for a total of 9, plus my champions attacks. I win, and you probably run. My proposal with the attacks is to let my infantry do something other than static res in the event you pass your LD.

Note that in even matches between infantry, you are probably going to only be talking a 1pt difference (+2 for an extra rank as opposed to +1), unless someone is running an MSU list.

From what I've seen of this discussion around the place, people want to actively participate in winning the combat and infantry are terrible at it.

Hence why people liked step up, because at least you got to attack.

I can understand this feeling, as winning passively with bonuses is relatively underwhelming. So I can see your idea working, but not necessarily being satisfying for players.




Another option is to provide more charge reactions that you need to test Ld to succeed at.

Like

Form square - enemy -1 to hit when charging
brace - supporting attacks from your second rank
counter charge - both sides count as charging (and strike simultaneously)


etc.

you can differentiate elite infantry from normal infantry by allowing elites charge reactions that normal infantry don't have, like counter charge.

Making minor changes to 6th is one thing, but if you make bigger ones like these they need a balancing factor that means it's not a certainty, or the points balance etc is thrown out of whack.


Of course, there should probably be multiple charge types as well, not just reactions, so the dance of combat is more dynamic.

ie

feint - pull enemy out of position, don't get strike first, but opponent is -1 to hit?
charge - as normal
Overrun - both sides strike simultaneously, but the charger ends up on the other side of the target and no combat res is determined.

 Hellebore wrote:

itsonlyme wrote:End the day you have two options, option one;

Leave things as they are, large parts of the books aren’t playable and the game stays as cavalry, msu hammer. You’re basically playing 6th Ed with a few tweaks (and the magic system is terrible).

Option 2; you change supporting attacks so it’s models on b2b in the second rank (currently, a line favours gulines). The importance of charging switches to weapon bonuses and getting into position, rather than essentially dictating the combat.

One options involves people having more models to use, the other is a repeat of the 6th/7th meta.

I don't agree that ToW knows this at all, i think it was more geared towards players from 6th which stopped playing, than those who kept on playing. 8th was very flawed, its probably my least favorite edition, but it had cool things like cult chaos units, a magic system that didn't reward spaming wizards (just certain spells needed removing), random charges (which are better in ToW), and infantry not being completely. It's still got to move away from herohammer a bit more, but thats easy enough tweak with lowering wounds on certain things.

I think you've expanded from the original conversation a bit - I'd not seen anyone claim that large parts of 6th were unplayable. The main issue was cav vs infantry. Magic was IMO fixed by 7ths constraining of dice to the caster. I personally think that cav are bit too optimised, not that they're overpowered. Two units of 5 is often more useful than one unit of 10, but infantry rely on their ranks more so msu doesn't usually work (excepting empire detachments which require a special rule to be useful).

Supporting attacks are definitely a solution, but it might tip infantry over, as it's doubling the output, rather than tweaking it. As Tony has shown, the maths for MSU 5 cav vs equal infantry is relatively close. The problem is they have speed and agility that enable to them to act usually in the most favourable circumstances, while infantry are less good at that.

I'm thinking something relatively minor that makes Infantry effective without tipping the scale too far. The game was played for 6 years with the paradigm as it was and people used force comp, baiting etc to reduce cav effectiveness. doubling infantry output is likely going to over balance the game in the other direction unless you're going to redo the entire game. My goal is to use 6th as is with the smallest tweaks.

One thing that I've noticed is that ToW encourages wider regiments, while 6th kept them in tight little squares. ToW at least looks more like real battles with wide frontages clashing. The 4-6 design made the armies look more like napoleonic squares moving around. So a solution whose goal is a tweak rather than a big change, and also encourages wide fighting ranks rather than lots of little squares is the following:

Determining who can fight
The number of troops that are actually fighting each other is somewhat abstracted, especially so when dealing with larger warriors like monstrous infantry or cavalry. As such to determine the number of models that may make attacks use the following process:

Each model in BtB with a model in the opposing unit's fighting rank may make attacks.
If the opposing unit's fighting rank is made up of models with a US higher than 1, count up the fighting rank's total US and use that as the number of models in your fighting rank that can fight.

ie cavalry with a FR of 5, allows up to 10 models in the opposing FR to strike. Monstrous infantry with a FR of 3 can be struck by up to 9 models in the opposing FR.

This is deliberately a minor change that gives infantry a small boost of attacks, without defanging cavalry. It shifts the conversation to weighing up getting static rank bonus, or widening the frontage to use attacks to gain combat bonus. For cheap units like goblins, they would likely do both. But the outcome is that if you have 10 wide units, they will strike with 2 more attacks than normal. It's not doubling the attack out put, it's tweaking it to make MSU cav less of a sure thing. RB is still if you have 4 models, so static bonuses on wider regiments are going to stay around for longer, but there's now an advantage to having wider regiments.

6th was pprobably the most balanced of the issues, I believe most believe 6th ed books, 7th ed rukes is the bettter combination. As for supporting attacks, this isn't an infantry only rule, nor is step up. You really don't need to make as many changes as you think, personally I would probably good like this as my base for a game

If I'm honest the ToW is a fairly good base, rather than 6th. It really only neeeds tweaking, combat with infantry, magic being its own face and having a limiter on it seems the most logical, and this could be fixed as an expansion tbh. Then its just addressing dragon lords (which I think is just making themn generate less wounds.

You can have a system based on unit strength, but this ultimatly won't change as much as makes formations less important, can achieve a similar effect with simply allowing the second rank to fight. The problem always was more focused around elite infantry, this is why chaos warriors ended up having chaos armour and an extra attack like in 4th/5th ed. This is why Elves ended up with ASF, because under this system, elite infantry are just bad. I played with a warrior infantry army throughout 6th, it was fun, but you knew just have knights was the road of victory.

All I can say was gw went all the differemt ways to make infantry usuable, and even when you had horde units of elite warriors, all stubborn, light cav and msu was still very popular. thing is, being M4 is a massive issue for them, they aren't picking fights, and they need to be able to take a charge. Take horde and stubborn out of the equation and they are pretty meh. Chosen knights, blood knights, monsters, these will all run through them. Strictly speak you could make all cavalry +1" and MC+2 to offset supporting attacks a bit.

ToW looks pretty good, it's just got too many rules for me. They've piled so many in there, they needed someone looking at them and prioritising them, rather than seemingly just adding every idea they had.

Also, linehammer is a weird direction to take the game... although that could be fixed by saying that a unit can only use the entire fighting rank if it's at least 2 ranks deep, if it's just 1, then it would be btb only.

Regarding linehammer, as obscene as it is, it's the only way to make infantry "work" in a competitive environment. In TOW, infantry is exceptionally bad compared to every other type of unit. Nerfing infantry in an attempt to make linehammer go away is completely backwards. Big blocks of infantry are possibly the weakest they've ever been - far more so than they were in 6th. This is in large part due to the rules for combat resolution being changed. Rank bonuses capping out at +2, the removal of the outnumber bonus, etc. Think about it. The special rules that add to your combat resolution (close order, horde) and your BSB's combat res bonus stacking with the unit standard's bonus aren't enough to compensate for these changes. For these reasons, and many more (Don't get me started on the new rules for magic... They suck! People complained about power dice and wizard stacking being OP in 6th, but just look at the state of magic now. Everyone gets a level 4 and magic is way stronger and much more consistent, but it still doesn't win you games by itself.) TOW should not be what you look to for inspiration.

Part of the challenge is modelling the relationship between troops relatively accurately.

ie, cavalry absolutely walked all over infantry when they charged, which was usually the only time they fought because they had the ability to control their application more effectively than slow moving infantry.


While still making infantry useful and interesting.


Another idea would be turning detachments into a standard rule. Part of the issue for infantry is their inability to apply fighting capability to their opponent that easily.

But rather than give them wide frontage to fight with, just give them detachments that sit beside and can counter charge etc. It's like having a wide line, you've just split them into multiple units.

MSU cav are intimidated by 20 wide lines of troops, but then the game looks really weird in order to deal with them.

Instead, 3 units 6 wide, with the two sides being more reactive does a similar thing while retaining the ranking and layout the game should be depicting.

 LorantheWise wrote:
Regarding linehammer, as obscene as it is, it's the only way to make infantry "work" in a competitive environment. In TOW, infantry is exceptionally bad compared to every other type of unit. Nerfing infantry in an attempt to make linehammer go away is completely backwards. Big blocks of infantry are possibly the weakest they've ever been - far more so than they were in 6th. This is in large part due to the rules for combat resolution being changed. Rank bonuses capping out at +2, the removal of the outnumber bonus, etc. Think about it. The special rules that add to your combat resolution (close order, horde) and your BSB's combat res bonus stacking with the unit standard's bonus aren't enough to compensate for these changes. For these reasons, and many more (Don't get me started on the new rules for magic... They suck! People complained about power dice and wizard stacking being OP in 6th, but just look at the state of magic now. Everyone gets a level 4 and magic is way stronger and much more consistent, but it still doesn't win you games by itself.) TOW should not be what you look to for inspiration.

Old world isn’t that different from old world, the two things you pointed out are what would change. Making infantry more like in 8th Ed (minus horde) dies solve far more problems than it causes. As I said, we saw how they tried fixing infantry from 6th to 8th. I’m not not sure block infantry is worse than 6th, it’s fairly similar in power, much like it was 4th, 5th and 7th. The only difference is things like dragons are more akin to 4/5th Ed’s hero hammer.

I can’t stand the AoS style magic, like I said, I’d go with winds of magic like in 8th Ed (which is inspired by the card decks of older editions). Other than that, I don’t havd any issues. Fix infantry, change magic and make proper mono-god chaos, I’m all good.

 Hellebore wrote:
ToW looks pretty good, it's just got too many rules for me. They've piled so many in there, they needed someone looking at them and prioritising them, rather than seemingly just adding every idea they had.

Also, linehammer is a weird direction to take the game... although that could be fixed by saying that a unit can only use the entire fighting rank if it's at least 2 ranks deep, if it's just 1, then it would be btb only.

The 2 ranks deep thing is kind of reminiscent of parts of 8th that I didn't appreciate (which encourage unit bloating in some cases).

I think going back to just B2B would be fine, and I don't know why they changed it, though ironically it is one of the few things that actually help infantry a little if they choose to do it (otherwise it doesn't make that much difference in most games).

I can only point in the direction of WarhammerCE - posted a lot about it in the respective thread - check it out if you're interested.

https://armycreator.de/index.php#downloads
If you follow the link, you will find the rules as well as an army roster creation tool.

Infantry is working great here.

I'd just like to use the existing 6th with its relatively balanced army lists and officialness with as few changes as possible.


One of the things I don't mind in ToW is the way they've changed the shape of regiments, making fighting ranks and bonuses happen in wider regiments.

something that was always weird about every version before ToW was how square the regiments looked, because that's the maximised rank bonus to unit size they offered.

When real battles happened with wide frontages to prevent enemies from flanking you.

Maybe abstracting the fighting rank to be able to strike with all its models is weird, but it certainly encouraged the changing of regiment shapes.

I’ve gotta say, linehammer is just terrible. If you’re going to do that, you may as well just let every model attack and be done with it.

itsonlyme wrote:
I’ve gotta say, linehammer is just terrible. If you’re going to do that, you may as well just let every model attack and be done with it.

Agree, least favorite part of the rules for me. Just keep it simple, with B2B for who is eligible to fight. Basing becomes a bit more important then.

Damon.

Lars Porsenna wrote:

itsonlyme wrote:
I’ve gotta say, linehammer is just terrible. If you’re going to do that, you may as well just let every model attack and be done with it.

Agree, least favorite part of the rules for me. Just keep it simple, with B2B for who is eligible to fight. Basing becomes a bit more important then.

Damon.

It just looks daft everything being in a long line, b2b is fine for sure, I still think supporting in the second rank makes perfect sense. I suspect however, that it will several editions until they fix infantry. I think it’s very likely I play more army projects in the long run (depending on the availability).