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I was wondering, what does everyone think about the unit coherensy being changed from 2 inches to 1? I got out a random twenty-man unit of boyz, and it seemed to make the small blast heaps better, the flamer template a little better, and the large blast marginally better. Would it be an improvement? A game-breaker? It feels like it would give blast templates a buff they could use, especially small blasts. But I doubt it'd be worth throwing the game out of wack either. Can anyone come up with some other things it helps/hurts besides templates?

Hurts: Multiassault (for you), area denial, firing from cover, disembarking, independent characters.

Helps: Not much. If your opponent isn't playing blobs, then the benefits of Blasts and Templates is already marginalized, and you're just losing out on things that could stop his advance.

loota boy wrote:I was wondering, what does everyone think about the unit coherensy being changed from 2 inches to 1? I got out a random twenty-man unit of boyz, and it seemed to make the small blast heaps better, the flamer template a little better, and the large blast marginally better. Would it be an improvement? A game-breaker? It feels like it would give blast templates a buff they could use, especially small blasts. But I doubt it'd be worth throwing the game out of wack either. Can anyone come up with some other things it helps/hurts besides templates?

First off, for gods sake it is coherency.

Secondly, squads don't like being packed in that close. large models would be a pain and it would become too much like fantasy.

I think 2" is the perfect distance. a good player knows tactical spacing for his models with 2". All that is thrown out the window with 1".

chrisrawr wrote:Hurts: Multiassault (for you), area denial, firing from cover, disembarking, independent characters.

Helps: Not much. If your opponent isn't playing blobs, then the benefits of Blasts and Templates is already marginalized, and you're just losing out on things that could stop his advance.

^this

I like it. It's frustrating firing blast templates at a 30-strong horde and only ever hit 3 of the models (with 50% cover save, obviously).

Joey wrote:I like it. It's frustrating firing blast templates at a 30-strong horde and only ever hit 3 of the models (with 50% cover save, obviously).

It's like fixing a leak by renovating your house. The problem is in the blasts themselves - the 40K crunch crew doesn't look at every codex for scope, or hell, sometimes they don't even look at the rulebook for scope. If small blasts were decently priced throughout the dexes, and if the rules let you place blasts wherever the balls you wanted (provided you're touching the most models possible), a lot of issues would be resolved. As it is, increasing the potency of /all blasts/ will lead to some GREAT situations with my bastion breachers...

Who's under the impression that blasts are weak?

Coherency and blasts currently are not balanced. The simple reason is that a fully bunched up cluster of infantry bases gets 19 under the hole at max. On the other hand, if you spread out, you get 1 model under the hole.

From 19 to 1 is a pretty unreasonable spread. On one hand, 19 hits with a weapon is obnoxious. On the other hand, 1 hit with an expensive weapon that is more likely to miss for most armies that a direct fire version is a waste.

I think that a few changes to make blast weapons consistant would be fine.

First, you can make blasts deal a number of hits to any units they touch with the hole in the center, or 1 hit to the unit if they are simply touched by the template part. This way, regardless of spacing a blast will provide consistant hits, meaning they can be priced effectively.

Second, you could tie the damage blasts deal with the kind of formation the unit is in. Something like the old guard book did with 'close orders' I believe, where the unit gains a benefit for being in base contact with each other. If a unit is adopting this formation instead of a loose formation, they take more hits from blast weapons in exchange for a tangible benefit. Currently, there is no benefit to being closer than 2 inches and no penalty when spending extra time making sure that every model is exactly 2 inches away. I feel this is a problem.

DevianID wrote: On the other hand, 1 hit with an expensive weapon that is more likely to miss for most armies that a direct fire version is a waste.

Until you get to BS 5+, blast weapons are no less accurate than direct fire weapons.

Until you get to BS 5+, blast weapons are no less accurate than direct fire weapons.

Incorrect.

Assume BS 4. Normally a BS 4 weapon has a 66% chance of hitting.

A blast weapon always hits 33% of the time. 66% of the time, it will scatter. With a 2, 3, or 4 inch scatter, you will still hit. If you are targeting something large, like a land raider (best case senario), then a 5, 6, and sometimes the 7 rolled for scatter, when adjusted for BS4, will still hit. Thus, 56% of the time (7 or less on 2d6) you will hit a very large target (best case senario).

58% hit x 66% scatter + 33% scatter hit = ~.70;
Or as I said, the best case senario. This is slightly better than rolling to hit. Now, if you consider that rolling a 7 even on a land raider will not always result in a hit depending on which direction you scatter, and anything smaller than a land raider is almost certianly a miss at that point, a more realistic figure for vehicles would be rolling a 6 or better. This becomes:
42% hit x 66% scatter + 33% scatter hit = .60;
Now you are looking at 60% chance to hit, which is worse than just attacking normally. As the size of your target decreases, this figure will also decrease.

The best example of this at work is to consider the Heavy Psycannon. A regular psycannon is 4 shots, while the heavy psycannon is only 1 shot. You lost 3 shots, versus anything other than a land raider sized vee you lost accuracy as well, and you pay a premium for the blast.

Another example is the tyranid venom cannon. It went from 2 or 3 shots to 1 shot with a small blast--a poor trade.

I think against certain armies it would be game breaking as spreading out is one of the few ways to beat certain armies tactics such as imp guard whose extreme abundance of blast weaponry is already pushing the limit of how much dakka a squad can take.

I don't think it would be that great. It would be too restrictive for the occasions when people carefully set up their models.

Also, it's always fun to spread your models full distance against a kiddie with bad sportsmanship and blast templates and watch him whine about the fact that he thinks should definitely be hitting more models than he is.