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I'm not sure if anyone has brought this up before, I'm quite new to the forum, but this was a rule I was hoping that they would institute in 6th edition.

I'm coming at this from a space marine (blood angels) players perspective, but I'm sure a lot of it holds true for other codexes. Take tactical squads, they're supposed to be the awesome space marines that have been around for a pretty long time, they've lived through a few battles and they've been around the block. They're supposed to know about all forms of weaponry and be able to use them, hence being able to take a special weapon and a heavy weapon in the squad. Now, one would assume that in a combat situation a when the guy carrying the missile launcher or the melta gun was shot down, another marine would recognize the importance of the special weapon, drop his bolter and pick up the melta gun, missile launcher or what have you. I propose that there should be a rule where, in order to represent this on the game, you can take a wound on a the model nearest to the special weapon guy instead of on the special weapon model to represent the other marine trading his bolter to pick the special weapon back up.

They actually used to do something similar to that in 5th with wound allocation. Players used to be able to hide special weapons such as meltaguns and powerklaws in large squads by abusing wound allocation. It was fluffed away in the exact manner you describe, but judging by the fact that they changed wound allocation to closest first, furthest last, the authors of 6th thought that the current method of allocation was problematic.

In theory it could have been easily solved by doing what they have now, but swapping the next along "basic armed" soldier with the special weapon guy. Wouldnt be perfect in all cases, but OP has a point.

RegalPhantom wrote:They actually used to do something similar to that in 5th with wound allocation. Players used to be able to hide special weapons such as meltaguns and powerklaws in large squads by abusing wound allocation. It was fluffed away in the exact manner you describe, but judging by the fact that they changed wound allocation to closest first, furthest last, the authors of 6th thought that the current method of allocation was problematic.

I'm a little familiar with the way it worked in 5th cause I played a few games, but even then, if you put one wound on your special weapon guy and he was especially unlucky he would die and no more special weapon.

The problem with this is that your special weapons are not always on identically statted models, in a lot of non-marine codecies especially. Can you imagine eldar becoming exarchs when their leaders die, or tyranid warriors passing off claws and tentacles to their squadmates?


While it works for Marines, I think the best thing to do with it is keep them in the back, and if they die, assume the weapon has a failsafe, or was detonated - it presents a lot less headaches for players without the advantages of armies with surplus special weapons to toss around.