Slipspace wrote:
That seems like a stretch. It's entirely plausible that people are simply misremembering a rule form over 20 years ago, and they were playing it correctly at the time. All they're left with now is the emotional response to the situation, rather than the finer details. That pretty much describes me. Overwatch in 2nd edition was a terrible mechanic for the most part, because of how it bogged the game down and led to so much analysis paralysis. It was the obvious default choice in almost every situation where a shooting unit couldn't see a good target, especially if it had heavy weapons.
I think you're right that people misremembered stuff, and that's what came to light. Again, the only reason I created the
40k page on my site was because these were things
people actually brought up. I didn't do it for my health or the joy of smashing straw men, people legitimately got stuff wrong. I love 2nd ed., but the rulebook had some serious issues with highlighting key provisions.
And the "analysis paralysis" is an interesting phenomenon. Among the set I ran with, it didn't exist. I don't know if it was because so many of them were prior military and just assumed "reaction fire" was a thing or we were bloody-minded fools, but I did play against people who froze up and they were pretty easy to dispatch for that reason.
I will hazard that they did not like the rule. A lot of people don't like their troops getting picked off during their own turn. It's unnerving. To counter it, you need to not only figure out your move, but execute it in the proper order. It definitely increases the degree of tactical difficulty.