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 Hellebore wrote:
IMO you need to go back to basics and decide what each army or faction's concepts are, and then build rules around them, rather than trying to make them fit the ever decreasingly complex core rules.

I'll harp on it until the day I die, but a feature of all eldar factions was their 'speed=defence', they used being hard to hit to make them more survivable than their statline would otherwise suggest.

But if the game's only mechanism of resilience is T,W,Sv, there are no rules to use to represent that concept.

So things like daemons, is an invuln a good representation, or just the best you can use given the limitations of the system?


Starting with the what and then determining the best representation for that will create better outcomes. Either that or you push further down the abstraction route and just ignore the meanings of the stats and use them for their mechanics - ie all eldar are W2 because the first wound they lose is a 'graze' to represent their speed.

For daemons, they are not wholly corporeal, so they sometimes just don't get struck, or they don't really suffer any damage if they do. So what if they had a 'Warp save' which was applied to hits rather than wounds? Just an example of how you can find different ways to represent the concepts that might better reflect what they actually are. Another idea might be that daemons can only ever suffer 1 damage from an attack, regardless of its damage value, because they just don't interact with it the same way as a corporeal creature. Only psychic key words or daemonic keywords inflict normal damage.

It's pretty much this. ++Saves cover for a lot of missing rules. Right up until you get to the "Devastating/Mortal Wounds" stuff. Does a Daemon or a Harlequin really care what weapon is being shot/swung at them? Not really, unless it's maybe a Blast weapon in the case of the Space Elf Murder Clown Hobos. Those would ignore the Holofield, yet don't, in any edition I can think of. Or Blessed/Holy weapons in the case of Daemons.

Why? Too complex for the smoothbrains at GW to grab onto. It wouldn't really require much more than a single line in each unit's roster. "The Holofield Save may always be taken, except against weapons with the Blast characteristic." Or, "The Daemonic Invulnerable Save may always be taken, except against Blessed or Holy attacks." Then put "Blessed" or "Holy" in certain unit's weapon stats. Sisters, Gray Knights, etc.

Boom. Done. Those units now ignore DW/MW except in certain circumstances. Then, DON'T give those specific units FNP on top of everything, unless it's a super-special-secret-squirrel unit, like, say the Solitaire or something equivalent in the Daemon lists.

Why doesn't GW do this sort of thing? Because they're not smart enough to write coherent rulesets, but they are smart enough to understand if they make the rules significantly different between every edition or every other edition, you buy more models.

Complexity dies with every new edition. FFS, just look at what happened to WFB. Or 40k from RT through today. It's crazy.

That's not to say each edition is bad, or not fun, or a gak game, but, each edition is a little bit dumber.


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 alextroy wrote:
Random Charge Distances and Overwatch were a rules reaction to allowing players to premeasure distances at any time. Premeasuring allows player to guarantee a charge was possible (I am within 6" of you after I move, charge time) or impossible (I am more than your move + 6" away from you at the end of my move, you can't charge me next turn).

Here's the chain of thought.

1. You don't want to exclude people from the game based on their ability to estimate distances visually. Some people have disabilities that prevent that. Some of us just suck at it.

2. You don't want the ability to premeasure at any time to allow players to guarantee avoiding being charged.

I disagree.

Not every hobby is for every person. If you can't judge a handspan on a tabletop, you're probably not interested in miniature wargaming. If you suck at judging a simple ruler's worth of distance, you played a lot of versions of 40k instead of 7th or earlier WFB.

Having to judge how far away you were from an enemy unit before declaring a charge was literally the meat-and-bones of WFB for 7 editions. Maybe 8, I forget if you were allowed to pre-measure in 8, I played it for so short a time. AoS is 40k with WFB minis. It's dumbed-down garbage. When I want to play 40k, I'll play 40k. Otherwise, I'll play Oldhammer.

Sorry if this sounds harsh, but I'm against the complete homogenization of my wargames. I like them to be different in some meaningful way. Otherwise, what's the point?

 Kagetora wrote:


It's pretty much this. ++Saves cover for a lot of missing rules. Right up until you get to the "Devastating/Mortal Wounds" stuff. Does a Daemon or a Harlequin really care what weapon is being shot/swung at them? Not really, unless it's maybe a Blast weapon in the case of the Space Elf Murder Clown Hobos. Those would ignore the Holofield, yet don't, in any edition I can think of. Or Blessed/Holy weapons in the case of Daemons.

Why? Too complex for the smoothbrains at GW to grab onto. It wouldn't really require much more than a single line in each unit's roster. "The Holofield Save may always be taken, except against weapons with the Blast characteristic." Or, "The Daemonic Invulnerable Save may always be taken, except against Blessed or Holy attacks." Then put "Blessed" or "Holy" in certain unit's weapon stats. Sisters, Gray Knights, etc.

Boom. Done. Those units now ignore DW/MW except in certain circumstances. Then, DON'T give those specific units FNP on top of everything, unless it's a super-special-secret-squirrel unit, like, say the Solitaire or something equivalent in the Daemon lists.

Why doesn't GW do this sort of thing? Because they're not smart enough to write coherent rulesets, but they are smart enough to understand if they make the rules significantly different between every edition or every other edition, you buy more models.

Complexity dies with every new edition. FFS, just look at what happened to WFB. Or 40k from RT through today. It's crazy.

That's not to say each edition is bad, or not fun, or a gak game, but, each edition is a little bit dumber.

Since your brain is apparently more wrinkly and the game and seemingly other players are too dumb for you, here's the very obvious issues with your solutions:

Typically expensive elite harelquin infantry are now incredibly survivable against say custodes whose lower volume of attacks means they cant handle them any more, but get wiped with a boring level of regularity by guardsmen with grenade launchers.

Daemons are essentially worthless against 2 armies of the game but incredibly hard to handle by the rest. This cannot be adequately balanced, as their only defensive layer being situationally removed en mass is terrible game design.

 alextroy wrote:
That leads us to today, where overwatch cost a CP and is rarely worth bothering to pay the cost. It would be more functional rules-wise if units were just better during the first round of combat because everyone is firing their guns as they charge or are charged.

I disagree. Overwatch is probably one of them most used stratagems in my games and those playing in my crusade. If a unit has a decent amount of shots and it's highly effective against a running unit past/at them, the main concern for using overwatch is whether there is a more valuable unit to overwatch or if you need that CP for another stratagem later that turn.

I have had flash gits shred my charging helbrute in overwatch and I'm regularly losing buggies to Leman Russ Demolishers overwatching them. If there is a unit with high AP, 3 damage weapons, no one will deep strike unit of terminators next to them more than once.
Of course, there is no point in using overwatch against a unit that you are not good at hurting. But at that time, you're really just wasting time by fishing for sixes.

There a lot of things you can say about overwatch as a stratagem, but being worthless is not one of them.




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 Hellebore wrote:
IMO you need to go back to basics and decide what each army or faction's concepts are, and then build rules around them, rather than trying to make them fit the ever decreasingly complex core rules.

I'll harp on it until the day I die, but a feature of all eldar factions was their 'speed=defence', they used being hard to hit to make them more survivable than their statline would otherwise suggest.

But if the game's only mechanism of resilience is T,W,Sv, there are no rules to use to represent that concept.

I think this problem is not just about core rules.

The issue with old editions was that for eldar it was not just speed equals defense but also speed equaled damage and movement and armor penetration and initiative and close combat skill. They also had powerful psykers and technology to mitigate their weaknesses.

In the end, it was an army that was pretty much good at everything, which made them dominate many editions. Fast eldar units being extremely hard to kill had a big part in that.

I firmly believe that turning craftworld eldar into glass cannons was a conscious decision by the design team, and not an oversight.

 PenitentJake wrote:
I think the thought behind overwatch is that it would be stupid to stand there with a gun and do nothing while a close combat monster charges in to tear you to pieces.

Clearly, 40k is not a "total simulation game" - but I think in any discussion of overwatch, it's important to come back to the thing it represents before settling on a mechanic.

If it's more simulation, overwatch doesn't make sense on a timing sense because the turns simulate passage in time (with each turn absatracting unknowns and uncertainties somewhat), though maybe if they sacrifice their shooting phase for it (and you have to declare which unit you will overwatch when you do it).

 alextroy wrote:
Random Charge Distances and Overwatch were a rules reaction to allowing players to premeasure distances at any time. Premeasuring allows player to guarantee a charge was possible (I am within 6" of you after I move, charge time) or impossible (I am more than your move + 6" away from you at the end of my move, you can't charge me next turn).

Here's the chain of thought.

1. You don't want to exclude people from the game based on their ability to estimate distances visually. Some people have disabilities that prevent that. Some of us just suck at it.

2. You don't want the ability to premeasure at any time to allow players to guarantee avoiding being charged.

3. So you instead add ambiguity to charges by randomizing the distance. They settled on 2d6 being the Charge range, probably because of the bell curve of distance it gives and the simplicity of the roll.

4. Now there needs to be a downside to allowing units to charge unto 12 inches, so they resurrected the name overwatch and gave your opponent an opportunity to avoid a charge. Back in 6th, casualties were taken from the closed models to the firing unit, so charges could be pushed out of range by an effective round of Overwatch.

Now this became a total time sink as unit after unit fired overwatch at units attacking them. Then GW had the brilliant idea to allow Tau units to fire overwatch for their neighbors, making it that much worst!

That leads us to today, where overwatch cost a CP and is rarely worth bothering to pay the cost. It would be more functional rules-wise if units were just better during the first round of combat because everyone is firing their guns as they charge or are charged.

For random charges, maybe they should do the sane thing and put charging back into the movement phase and use something like M+2K1 (2D6, keep one), then giving charged targets reactions.

 Hellebore wrote:
IMO you need to go back to basics and decide what each army or faction's concepts are, and then build rules around them, rather than trying to make them fit the ever decreasingly complex core rules.

I'll harp on it until the day I die, but a feature of all eldar factions was their 'speed=defence', they used being hard to hit to make them more survivable than their statline would otherwise suggest.

But if the game's only mechanism of resilience is T,W,Sv, there are no rules to use to represent that concept.

So things like daemons, is an invuln a good representation, or just the best you can use given the limitations of the system?


Starting with the what and then determining the best representation for that will create better outcomes. Either that or you push further down the abstraction route and just ignore the meanings of the stats and use them for their mechanics - ie all eldar are W2 because the first wound they lose is a 'graze' to represent their speed.

For daemons, they are not wholly corporeal, so they sometimes just don't get struck, or they don't really suffer any damage if they do. So what if they had a 'Warp save' which was applied to hits rather than wounds? Just an example of how you can find different ways to represent the concepts that might better reflect what they actually are. Another idea might be that daemons can only ever suffer 1 damage from an attack, regardless of its damage value, because they just don't interact with it the same way as a corporeal creature. Only psychic key words or daemonic keywords inflict normal damage.

Easy solution: Re-introduce the Initiative stat, and make it the stat BS compares against (like how S compares with Toughness).

Gotta love all those "Just introduce a mechanic with massive problems from the past. That will solve everything!" posts without any further elaboration

 Jidmah wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
That leads us to today, where overwatch cost a CP and is rarely worth bothering to pay the cost. It would be more functional rules-wise if units were just better during the first round of combat because everyone is firing their guns as they charge or are charged.

I disagree. Overwatch is probably one of them most used stratagems in my games and those playing in my crusade. If a unit is a decent amount of shots and it's highly effective against a unit past them, the main concern for using overwatch is whether there is a more valuable unit to overwatch or if you need that CP for another stratagem later that turn.

I have had flash gits shred my charging helbrute in overwatch and I'm regularly losing buggies to Leman Russ Demolishers overwatching them. If there is a unit with high AP, 3 damage weapons, no one will deep strike unit of terminators next to them more than once.
Of course, there is no point in using overwatch against a unit that you are not good at hurting. But at that time, you're really just wasting time by fishing for sixes.

There a lot of things you can say about overwatch as a stratagem, but being worthless is not one of them.

Agreed Jidmah- not to mention blast weapons which don't need to roll to hit, unit abilities or strats that augment overwatch, miracle dice for specials, and weapons that force break trests working out of turn, overwatch is pretty sweet.

 Jidmah wrote:

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 Hellebore wrote:
IMO you need to go back to basics and decide what each army or faction's concepts are, and then build rules around them, rather than trying to make them fit the ever decreasingly complex core rules.

I'll harp on it until the day I die, but a feature of all eldar factions was their 'speed=defence', they used being hard to hit to make them more survivable than their statline would otherwise suggest.

But if the game's only mechanism of resilience is T,W,Sv, there are no rules to use to represent that concept.

I think this problem is not just about core rules.

The issue with old editions was that for eldar it was not just speed equals defense but also speed equaled damage and movement and armor penetration and initiative and close combat skill. They also had powerful psykers and technology to mitigate their weaknesses.

In the end, it was an army that was pretty much good at everything, which made them dominate many editions. Fast eldar units being extremely hard to kill had a big part in that.

I firmly believe that turning craftworld eldar into glass cannons was a conscious decision by the design team, and not an oversight.

And again, agreed. Because Hellebore doesn't like strats and unit rules, they forget about the speed as defense options they offer to many units, as well as core rules like stealth or lone operative, and even some of the new battle focus special moves. Many of these things feel speedier and are less problematic than a "fix by statline" approach. Yes, always getting to hit first and being harder to hit do represent speed, but they don't feel as fast as reactive moves.

Amen. Chasing Eldar around the board with DG for four turns without ever getting into rapid fire range feels way more speedy than indestructible wave serpents and windriders tanking whole mobs of orks without any damage ever did.

 alextroy wrote:
Here's the chain of thought.

1. You don't want to exclude people from the game based on their ability to estimate distances visually. Some people have disabilities that prevent that. Some of us just suck at it.

2. You don't want the ability to premeasure at any time to allow players to guarantee avoiding being charged.

'No premeasuring' can die in the same fire as Guess range weapons; I'm here to play a wargame, not exploit the use of 12" terrain tiles or skills that have nothing to do with my generalship. But why is allowing players to guarantee avoiding being charged a problem? We allow players to guarantee avoiding being shot (fixed ranges), and we allow players to guarantee getting out of LOS (fixed movement). Having an opponent sit 12.1" away so you can't charge them isn't any different from the enemy sitting 16.1" away so they can shoot you but your meltaguns won't reach.

Overwatch as a balancing mechanism for random charge ranges, to discourage going for every 12" charge, doesn't even work evenly. If I'm looking at a unit with no credible shooting, I'm still going to try for that hail mary roll. If you wanted to discourage that behavior, having a failed charge cause some detriment to the charger would be the better way to go.

Or just fold charging into movement and be done with it, rather than treating it as separate bonus movement. Works pretty well in OPR's Grimdark Future- move 6" and shoot, move 12" and don't shoot, or move 12" as a charge into melee.

 catbarf wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
Here's the chain of thought.

1. You don't want to exclude people from the game based on their ability to estimate distances visually. Some people have disabilities that prevent that. Some of us just suck at it.

2. You don't want the ability to premeasure at any time to allow players to guarantee avoiding being charged.

'No premeasuring' can die in the same fire as Guess range weapons; I'm here to play a wargame, not exploit the use of 12" terrain tiles or skills that have nothing to do with my generalship. But why is allowing players to guarantee avoiding being charged a problem? We allow players to guarantee avoiding being shot (fixed ranges), and we allow players to guarantee getting out of LOS (fixed movement). Having an opponent sit 12.1" away so you can't charge them isn't any different from the enemy sitting 16.1" away so they can shoot you but your meltaguns won't reach.

Agreed entirely.

Though I'd add, too, that since random charge distances were introduced, we've also seen a lot of abilities, powers, stratagems etc. that allow for additional movement in one form or other.

Thus, depending on what army you're against, it can be quite tricky to place a unit just out of charge distance without still leaving it open to charges if the right power/ stratagem/whatever is used.

How would you define a fixed charge distance?

Move characteristic? 6"? 8"?

 Tyran wrote:
How would you define a fixed charge distance?

Move characteristic? 6"? 8"?

Charging used to be just double your movement, or fixed 6" or 12" regardless of movement, depending on edition.

 Daba wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
How would you define a fixed charge distance?

Move characteristic? 6"? 8"?

Charging used to be just double your movement, or fixed 6" or 12" regardless of movement, depending on edition.

I prefer double movement, because I always thought it was kinda dumb when a drug fueld sprint-master 9000 Dark Eldar could blaze across the tabletop like the Flash high on methamphetamine, but couldn't move more than 6" when it came to entering close combat.

 Quixote wrote:

 Daba wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
How would you define a fixed charge distance?

Move characteristic? 6"? 8"?

Charging used to be just double your movement, or fixed 6" or 12" regardless of movement, depending on edition.

I prefer double movement, because I always thought it was kinda dumb when a drug fueld sprint-master 9000 Dark Eldar could blaze across the tabletop like the Flash high on methamphetamine, but couldn't move more than 6" when it came to entering close combat.

When was it double? I'm sure it was either 6" and movement was 6" (even for said druggies), or moved to 6" move and 2d6 charge in 6th/7th. My brain only goes as far back as 3rd though.

 Daba wrote:
Easy solution: Re-introduce the Initiative stat, and make it the stat BS compares against (like how S compares with Toughness).

While I'd be happy to see Initiative come back to determine combat order, I'd rather see an Evasion stat to compare BS to - high I should not always equal high E, and vice versa.


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Dudeface wrote:
When was it double? I'm sure it was either 6" and movement was 6" (even for said druggies), or moved to 6" move and 2d6 charge in 6th/7th. My brain only goes as far back as 3rd though.

I'd need to find books to confirm, but I believe it was in RT & 2nd edition.

Of course, at that point the baseline infantry speed was 4"...

In terms of Charge distance, any thoughts on models having extra distance at the cost of not shooting?

e.g. normal charge move = a unit's movement value (M).

If the unit didn't shoot, it can instead Charge 1.5x M (or maybe 2x M?).

 vipoid wrote:
In terms of Charge distance, any thoughts on models having extra distance at the cost of not shooting?

e.g. normal charge move = a unit's movement value (M).

If the unit didn't shoot, it can instead Charge 1.5x M (or maybe 2x M?).

I feel that might be too much on today's economy. A zerker doesn't give a rats ass about his bolt pistol but an assured 30" charge with jugger lord in the unit? Sure.

How about a stratagem that allows a unit to fall back when charged instead of shooting overwatch... that might be fun.

 Dysartes wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
When was it double? I'm sure it was either 6" and movement was 6" (even for said druggies), or moved to 6" move and 2d6 charge in 6th/7th. My brain only goes as far back as 3rd though.

I'd need to find books to confirm, but I believe it was in RT & 2nd edition.

Of course, at that point the baseline infantry speed was 4"...

Yah, 2nd ed it was double. But the game framework was different too. You didn't move, shoot, and then move again to assault. You declared a charge in your movement phase, foregoing shooting, and moved double your movement characteristic to launch forward into base contact before moving on to the shooting phase. Humans/Marines/Orks had a move of 4, most Eldar 5, and most Tyranids 6!

3rd ed ironically allowed *everyone to assault as fast as a 2nd ed Nid, because *everyone got a move of 6, and then a subsequent Assault move of 6.

*Typical baseline units.


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 Quixote wrote:
How about a stratagem that allows a unit to fall back when charged instead of shooting overwatch... that might be fun.

"Run awaaaay!"