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You could make it something like this:

SPECULATION/WISHLISTING NOT RUMOR



Then, tactically change a few abilities around:

Mont'ka: When your T'au commander declares Mont'ka doctrine at the beginning of your turn, friendly units within 6" may Fall Back.

Get Back In The Fight!: Select a friendly INFANTRY unit within 12". That unit may Fall Back.

probably most controversially

Rites of War/BADites of wEVIL or whatever the chaos equivalent is called: You may select 1 unit within 6" of a Space Marine captain at the beginning of the turn, that unit may Fall Back. Additionally, models within 6" may reroll hit rolls of 1 in the Fight phase.

Point being, I agree Fall Back needs to exist as a mechanic a bit more widespread than just as a strat, so why not use it to represent the superior organization and fire discipline of a group under the control of a commanding officer in a slightly better way than granting your whole gunline to-hit rerolls.

the_scotsman wrote:
You could make it something like this:

SPECULATION/WISHLISTING NOT RUMOR

Spoiler:

Fall Back 1CP: Select one of your units within Engagement Range of one or more enemy units. That unit may move up to their Move characteristic and may pass through enemy models from unit that are in engagement range with it as if they were not there. In your shooting phase, that unit counts as having moved and shoots with a -1 penalty to hit rolls unless it has the FLY keyword."

Then, tactically change a few abilities around:

Mont'ka: When your T'au commander declares Mont'ka doctrine at the beginning of your turn, friendly units within 6" may Fall Back.

Get Back In The Fight!: Select a friendly INFANTRY unit within 12". That unit may Fall Back.

probably most controversially

Rites of War/BADites of wEVIL or whatever the chaos equivalent is called: You may select 1 unit within 6" of a Space Marine captain at the beginning of the turn, that unit may Fall Back. Additionally, models within 6" may reroll hit rolls of 1 in the Fight phase.

Point being, I agree Fall Back needs to exist as a mechanic a bit more widespread than just as a strat, so why not use it to represent the superior organization and fire discipline of a group under the control of a commanding officer in a slightly better way than granting your whole gunline to-hit rerolls.

I like it, the only thing I would want to change, is I would like units Falling Back to count as having Advanced, rather than the -1 to hit. along with the implications for shhoting and charging etc that this (might) have.

changemod wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
it's tri pointing basicly surrounding your opponent so he can't retreat?

It’s surrounding one man so his entire squad can’t retreat.

Yep. And somehow in a galaxy where own guys are regularly shot here then one guy is worth so much nobody flees and leave him to death. As it is it's pretty weird you can't even shoot into melee as it is as not many in 40k who wouldn't gladly sacrifice entire squads to blow the enemy into pieces.

In 8th ed 3 pointing was needed to give assault armies life but it's still silly mechanism to exploit game. Better solution would be to fix assault so they don't need it in the first place.

But flat out no fleeing isn't much better as it risks reverse problem. Assault army does T1 assaults with pretty much near perfect chance(already possible) and then proceeds to be immune to shooting. There was time in 40k where shooty armies were totally worthless as enemy just did T1 assault and then spent rest of the game in melee safe from shooting short of very bad dice rolling somewhere.

Neither extreme is good. Assault armies should have chance to do what they are good but shooty army shouldn't auto lose the moment assault unit makes it. Especially when making T1 charge is dirt easy like in 8th ed it has been.

Aash wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
You could make it something like this:

SPECULATION/WISHLISTING NOT RUMOR

Spoiler:

Fall Back 1CP: Select one of your units within Engagement Range of one or more enemy units. That unit may move up to their Move characteristic and may pass through enemy models from unit that are in engagement range with it as if they were not there. In your shooting phase, that unit counts as having moved and shoots with a -1 penalty to hit rolls unless it has the FLY keyword."

Then, tactically change a few abilities around:

Mont'ka: When your T'au commander declares Mont'ka doctrine at the beginning of your turn, friendly units within 6" may Fall Back.

Get Back In The Fight!: Select a friendly INFANTRY unit within 12". That unit may Fall Back.

probably most controversially

Rites of War/BADites of wEVIL or whatever the chaos equivalent is called: You may select 1 unit within 6" of a Space Marine captain at the beginning of the turn, that unit may Fall Back. Additionally, models within 6" may reroll hit rolls of 1 in the Fight phase.

Point being, I agree Fall Back needs to exist as a mechanic a bit more widespread than just as a strat, so why not use it to represent the superior organization and fire discipline of a group under the control of a commanding officer in a slightly better way than granting your whole gunline to-hit rerolls.

I like it, the only thing I would want to change, is I would like units Falling Back to count as having Advanced, rather than the -1 to hit. along with the implications for shhoting and charging etc that this (might) have.

You could. I guess personally I think if Fall Back becomes more of an active ability you want the unit falling back to be able to do something. The "bad feel use" of current fall back is just abusing little cheapo chaff lines in front of all your important gak. I'd honestly prefer it not be that much of a negative to fall back and shoot back in to encourage people to use higher quality infantry who it would make more sense to be able to fall back and shoot after.

I'm just praying that GW haven't gone as all in on this as it's sounding and made this another edition of CC or loose.
If Fallback become a strategum and hence only viable for 1 unit deathstars will be a thing and Psychic phase will be the only vague counter.

8th made assualt week unless you gamed the rules exploits now it's seeming like they have swung for the fences with the buff bat and shot us into go first & charge = won.

I think its too soon to say whether melee will be OP in 9th ed or not. We still haven't got all the rules yet regarding melee. Shooting did need to be taken down a notch from 8th ed. So, let's see how it goes.

I think Melee gets OP when you can create deathstars that basically don't die. And this goes back to my opinion that 2++ invul shouldn't really exist in this game. When it gets impossible to kill a deathstar, and said deathstar can then roll up the table and kill everything in its path, that's when there will be calls that melee is OP.

I personally think 3++ invul is borderline already. When a person is lucky, you truly can't do anything short of using psychic mortal wounds to get through.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
"Quick men! We need to advance backwards. These blasted Xenos are besting us!"
"But Commissar, sir, there are three Orks surrounding Corporal Jenkins. He can't get out."
"Come on humie! We'z got'cha lad 'ere. 'Ez goin' no where!"
"But it's just Jenkins, the rest of us can simply advance backwards to this ridge."
"I'm sorry Commissar, but because of Jenkins the rest of us have to stay here."
"But... that doesn't make any sense."
"War neva duz, humie."
"Don't get philosophical with me, Ork scum!"
"It neva changez, neevah."
"I said stop that."
"Give us our squadmate back so we can retrea... uhh... advance backwards."
"Sod off. 'Es ourz now. You want 'im, yer gunna 'af ta fight da rest ov us!"
"Very well lads. Remove your bayonets and then reafix them for a glorious charge!"
"Commissar, sir you're not part of our unit, technically."
"Oh... good point. Well I'm leaving them. Good luck with the Orks!"

Yeah. Tri-pointing is taking a single guy hostage and everyone else has to stay to try and rescue him.

We can all construct varying narrative constructs to make things sound sensible / not sensible.

The concept of being "locked in combat" is meant to capture that the swirl of the melee means an intermingling of forces that is not easy to separate out. Sometimes in battle, forces will become encircled and in effect it is not physically possible for the force to disengage.

In prior editions, it was NEVER possible to disengage (aside from special Hit and Run rules which only appeared on specific models).
In 8th edition, they added a mechanism to disengage at will, but tried to capture reasonable circumstances where this should be impossible. The fact that it is not always possible to disengage in-game cleanly due to gamesmanship by an opponent is merely an abstraction of a narrative argument along the lines of encirclement/entrapment/etc. in-narrative.

Moreoever, the phenomenon you describe is a feature of turn structure--all these events, including the tri-pointing, are actually transpiring simultaneously in a continuum. Pulling it out of that in pieces and saying "it doesn't make sense because turn structures don't make sense for real life" doesn't get you very far.

I don't play a melee army, I do play competitively, and I've never had a problem with tri-pointing as a game mechanic.

the_scotsman wrote:

Aash wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
You could make it something like this:

SPECULATION/WISHLISTING NOT RUMOR

Spoiler:

Fall Back 1CP: Select one of your units within Engagement Range of one or more enemy units. That unit may move up to their Move characteristic and may pass through enemy models from unit that are in engagement range with it as if they were not there. In your shooting phase, that unit counts as having moved and shoots with a -1 penalty to hit rolls unless it has the FLY keyword."

Then, tactically change a few abilities around:

Mont'ka: When your T'au commander declares Mont'ka doctrine at the beginning of your turn, friendly units within 6" may Fall Back.

Get Back In The Fight!: Select a friendly INFANTRY unit within 12". That unit may Fall Back.

probably most controversially

Rites of War/BADites of wEVIL or whatever the chaos equivalent is called: You may select 1 unit within 6" of a Space Marine captain at the beginning of the turn, that unit may Fall Back. Additionally, models within 6" may reroll hit rolls of 1 in the Fight phase.

Point being, I agree Fall Back needs to exist as a mechanic a bit more widespread than just as a strat, so why not use it to represent the superior organization and fire discipline of a group under the control of a commanding officer in a slightly better way than granting your whole gunline to-hit rerolls.

I like it, the only thing I would want to change, is I would like units Falling Back to count as having Advanced, rather than the -1 to hit. along with the implications for shhoting and charging etc that this (might) have.

You could. I guess personally I think if Fall Back becomes more of an active ability you want the unit falling back to be able to do something. The "bad feel use" of current fall back is just abusing little cheapo chaff lines in front of all your important gak. I'd honestly prefer it not be that much of a negative to fall back and shoot back in to encourage people to use higher quality infantry who it would make more sense to be able to fall back and shoot after.

I see what you mean, I was thinking that a unit that falls back shouldn't be able to charge the same turn, adn that shooting with heavy weapons doesn't really seem right to me. Falling Back being treated as Advancing would still allow Assalut weapons to fire. I'd go so far as allowing the falling back unit to Actually advance (roll the d6 and add it to the movement) so that falling back isn't treated "like Advance" but that the only way to fall back is to "advance" away from the combat. It makes sense to me that the unit fleeing from CC would be running.

Ice_can wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Niiai wrote:

Eldenfirefly wrote:

 Leth wrote:
I hope tri-pointing is gone just from a gamey perspective. Never felt good doing it.

It resulted in melee twisting itself into ridiculous knots as well. Picture a bunch of orcs charging down a unit of guardmen. Maybe the whole squad could have made it into close combat. But instead, said massive orcs would touch with just one model and fight with that one model, do zero kills, let the guardsmen swing back with all their attacks, and then consolidate, hence tri pointing and preventing said squad from falling back. It was a valid tactic because you didn't want to get shot up in the opponent's turn. But narratively this is literally what happened based on the above.

Big squad of orcs charge down ten guardsmen. Orcs go :" wahhhhhhhh !!!!"

Then, orcs inexplicably make the charge, but halt just outside of melee range. "Wahhhhh!!!!! screeches to a halt, and only one orc swings".

The rest of the orcs, stand there like idiots, buff out their chests and taunt the guardsmen "Just swing at us! give us your best shot!"

Guardsmen pile in, swing their attacks, and take out a few orcs.

Now, the orcs consolidate into battle and tri point the guardsmen. They then kill them in the opponent phase.


I mean, its a good game play... but narratively, it was so stupid? I mean, look at the above. Why would the orcs do something like that in an actual battle field? lol It would make zero sense.... lol

So just to be shure, your interpetation of the battle through an abstract game system is that it is an litteral represrntation as well? So all units stand around and move one at a time, waiting their turn? Sounds rather stiff.

I remember this computergame where the pendulum swinged in the other direction, for realisemn. In that game you have to manually fuel all your tanks and put bullits on your units because they could runn out of it. Realistic yes. Was it fun to play? For maiby. But having the stratagem 'ekstra genades' for one CP works well enough for me as an abstract interpetation instead of having to pre arm units with ekstra grenades beforehand. I want my games fun, not realistic.

Tripointing is neither realistic nor fun, so it fails at being an abstraction for ease of gameplay, and as a simulation of warfare.

Micromanaging your models so that they encircle one model isn't tactical or deep. Its just tedious, especially for your opponent who has to wait for you to finish moving everything into position just to lock down one unit.

Tactical would be positioning a squad behind an enemy squad, so that if they retreat they run into the squad you placed there.
That was something you could do in earlier editions.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 stonehorse wrote:
Melee in 8th edition was utterly ridiculous. So my big Trygon that towers over all infantry, is unable to assault said infantry if they happen to be over 2" off the ground.

Yeah, that is some dumb crap right there.

Yeah, that's being changed in 9th ed. Monsters can now attack things on a higher elevation, iirc.
Fallback should really be a stratagem, especially when there's a lot of units that can just ignore the "penalty".

The issue with making it a strategum is that leads to the issue of turn one charge and GG.

Try keeping Kraken Genesteelers out of your units turn 1.
Heck marines new outriders 14m 6 advance and charge 7 puts them 27 inches across the bored turn 1 with 19 attacks.

I'm sure there is other examples I'm.missing but if they can make it into combat with 2 units the game is over, and don't give me that counter charge nonsence and that doesn't help armies without viable CC units. Also how many Counter chargers do you expect to be able to kill maxed Genstellers and also 12 T5 3+ Sv wounds in a single round of CC after heroic intervention? As killing in your turn will do nothing as your just going to be sucking up the turn 2 second wave rush.

That's assuming that they don't change Kraken to be less ridiculous.
I'm pretty sure GW saw the memes about Sonic the Genestealer. They might have gotten rid of the 30" threat range. And they should, because its stupid.

Kraken is hardly only thing...and isn't even hardest to avoid. Try marines who start 9" from your dz and then averages threat range over 20" with fly. Good luck preventing that from charging! So if it can lock you to melee at will bye bye shooty armies.

Too bad removing those easy t1 charges isn't easy since they are so numerous

sieGermans wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
"Quick men! We need to advance backwards. These blasted Xenos are besting us!"
"But Commissar, sir, there are three Orks surrounding Corporal Jenkins. He can't get out."
"Come on humie! We'z got'cha lad 'ere. 'Ez goin' no where!"
"But it's just Jenkins, the rest of us can simply advance backwards to this ridge."
"I'm sorry Commissar, but because of Jenkins the rest of us have to stay here."
"But... that doesn't make any sense."
"War neva duz, humie."
"Don't get philosophical with me, Ork scum!"
"It neva changez, neevah."
"I said stop that."
"Give us our squadmate back so we can retrea... uhh... advance backwards."
"Sod off. 'Es ourz now. You want 'im, yer gunna 'af ta fight da rest ov us!"
"Very well lads. Remove your bayonets and then reafix them for a glorious charge!"
"Commissar, sir you're not part of our unit, technically."
"Oh... good point. Well I'm leaving them. Good luck with the Orks!"

Yeah. Tri-pointing is taking a single guy hostage and everyone else has to stay to try and rescue him.

We can all construct varying narrative constructs to make things sound sensible / not sensible.

The concept of being "locked in combat" is meant to capture that the swirl of the melee means an intermingling of forces that is not easy to separate out. Sometimes in battle, forces will become encircled and in effect it is not physically possible for the force to disengage.

In prior editions, it was NEVER possible to disengage (aside from special Hit and Run rules which only appeared on specific models).
In 8th edition, they added a mechanism to disengage at will, but tried to capture reasonable circumstances where this should be impossible. The fact that it is not always possible to disengage in-game cleanly due to gamesmanship by an opponent is merely an abstraction of a narrative argument along the lines of encirclement/entrapment/etc. in-narrative.

Moreoever, the phenomenon you describe is a feature of turn structure--all these events, including the tri-pointing, are actually transpiring simultaneously in a continuum. Pulling it out of that in pieces and saying "it doesn't make sense because turn structures don't make sense for real life" doesn't get you very far.

I don't play a melee army, I do play competitively, and I've never had a problem with tri-pointing as a game mechanic.

Leeeeeeeeroooooooooy Jenkins !

tneva82 wrote:
Kraken is hardly only thing...and isn't even hardest to avoid. Try marines who start 9" from your dz and then averages threat range over 20" with fly. Good luck preventing that from charging! So if it can lock you to melee at will bye bye shooty armies.

Too bad removing those easy t1 charges isn't easy since they are so numerous

It's called chaff, invest in some.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:


Move falling back to the end of the shooting phase. You want to avoid getting hacked apart? Fine, run but you're not getting rewarded with a full shooting phase. Requiring some counter assault elements makes the game more dynamic and reduces the no brainer shooting skew currently without downsides.

This is a really interesting suggestion.

It doesn't make sense because the opponent would just keep the unit there for road blocking purposes. If the unit doesn't die on their turn, the melee unit will be less useful.

Or just add a bullet point to the shooting phase, declaring units engaged earlier in that turn as invalid targets for shooting. Done.

Dudeface wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Kraken is hardly only thing...and isn't even hardest to avoid. Try marines who start 9" from your dz and then averages threat range over 20" with fly. Good luck preventing that from charging! So if it can lock you to melee at will bye bye shooty armies.

Too bad removing those easy t1 charges isn't easy since they are so numerous

It's called chaff, invest in some.

And when chaff is just used to melee lock so you can't be shot? Remove option to fall back and that chaff just prevents you from shooting assault unit.

Chaff works now. Remove fall back and chaff is weakness for shooty army.

We have had that in previous edition. T1 charge, be in melee, canjt be shot, finish on opponent turn, repeat. Shooty army never stood a chance...

No wonder then was no shooty armies used. Enemy got any unit into your line and it was game over. And t1 charges existed

tneva82 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Kraken is hardly only thing...and isn't even hardest to avoid. Try marines who start 9" from your dz and then averages threat range over 20" with fly. Good luck preventing that from charging! So if it can lock you to melee at will bye bye shooty armies.

Too bad removing those easy t1 charges isn't easy since they are so numerous

It's called chaff, invest in some.

And when chaff is just used to melee lock so you can't be shot? Remove option to fall back and that chaff just prevents you from shooting assault unit.

Chaff works now. Remove fall back and chaff is weakness for shooty army.

Good job that nobody has removed fallback as far as we know, likewise if a unit is a melee threat in any way it will easily kill 10 cultists or w/e by accident.

 addnid wrote:

sieGermans wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
"Quick men! We need to advance backwards. These blasted Xenos are besting us!"
"But Commissar, sir, there are three Orks surrounding Corporal Jenkins. He can't get out."
"Come on humie! We'z got'cha lad 'ere. 'Ez goin' no where!"
"But it's just Jenkins, the rest of us can simply advance backwards to this ridge."
"I'm sorry Commissar, but because of Jenkins the rest of us have to stay here."
"But... that doesn't make any sense."
"War neva duz, humie."
"Don't get philosophical with me, Ork scum!"
"It neva changez, neevah."
"I said stop that."
"Give us our squadmate back so we can retrea... uhh... advance backwards."
"Sod off. 'Es ourz now. You want 'im, yer gunna 'af ta fight da rest ov us!"
"Very well lads. Remove your bayonets and then reafix them for a glorious charge!"
"Commissar, sir you're not part of our unit, technically."
"Oh... good point. Well I'm leaving them. Good luck with the Orks!"

Yeah. Tri-pointing is taking a single guy hostage and everyone else has to stay to try and rescue him.

We can all construct varying narrative constructs to make things sound sensible / not sensible.

The concept of being "locked in combat" is meant to capture that the swirl of the melee means an intermingling of forces that is not easy to separate out. Sometimes in battle, forces will become encircled and in effect it is not physically possible for the force to disengage.

In prior editions, it was NEVER possible to disengage (aside from special Hit and Run rules which only appeared on specific models).
In 8th edition, they added a mechanism to disengage at will, but tried to capture reasonable circumstances where this should be impossible. The fact that it is not always possible to disengage in-game cleanly due to gamesmanship by an opponent is merely an abstraction of a narrative argument along the lines of encirclement/entrapment/etc. in-narrative.

Moreoever, the phenomenon you describe is a feature of turn structure--all these events, including the tri-pointing, are actually transpiring simultaneously in a continuum. Pulling it out of that in pieces and saying "it doesn't make sense because turn structures don't make sense for real life" doesn't get you very far.

I don't play a melee army, I do play competitively, and I've never had a problem with tri-pointing as a game mechanic.

Leeeeeeeeroooooooooy Jenkins !

Haha! Yea!

Dudeface wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Kraken is hardly only thing...and isn't even hardest to avoid. Try marines who start 9" from your dz and then averages threat range over 20" with fly. Good luck preventing that from charging! So if it can lock you to melee at will bye bye shooty armies.

Too bad removing those easy t1 charges isn't easy since they are so numerous

It's called chaff, invest in some.

And when chaff is just used to melee lock so you can't be shot? Remove option to fall back and that chaff just prevents you from shooting assault unit.

Chaff works now. Remove fall back and chaff is weakness for shooty army.

Good job that nobody has removed fallback as far as we know, likewise if a unit is a melee threat in any way it will easily kill 10 cultists or w/e by accident.

Somebody has not been reading what i even replied...when topic is fall back going to stratagem you tag 2 units and 1 is in combat.

Oh and kill 10 cultists...easy. unless you delibrately leave most of your unit out of combat range. No matter what 2 marines aren't killing 10. If you know basic math you know how many you can safely put to combat and leave rest out. Elementary school kid can do it. So can you.

Look. I get it. You are new to 40k so only know 8th ed. But i have played all editions bar rogue trader. I have seen what no fall back and easy t1 charge does. T1 charge, make sure only 1-2 models attack, be safe from shooting, finish on enemy turn. Rinse and repeat. Shooty army stood even less of a chance than 8th ed melee.

Both extremes are bad.

tneva82 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Kraken is hardly only thing...and isn't even hardest to avoid. Try marines who start 9" from your dz and then averages threat range over 20" with fly. Good luck preventing that from charging! So if it can lock you to melee at will bye bye shooty armies.

Too bad removing those easy t1 charges isn't easy since they are so numerous

It's called chaff, invest in some.

And when chaff is just used to melee lock so you can't be shot? Remove option to fall back and that chaff just prevents you from shooting assault unit.

Chaff works now. Remove fall back and chaff is weakness for shooty army.

Good job that nobody has removed fallback as far as we know, likewise if a unit is a melee threat in any way it will easily kill 10 cultists or w/e by accident.

Somebody has not been reading what i even replied...when topic is fall back going to stratagem you tag 2 units and 1 is in combat.

Oh and kill 10 cultists...easy. unless you delibrately leave most of your unit out of combat range. No matter what 2 marines aren't killing 10. If you know basic math you know how many you can safely put to combat and leave rest out. Elementary school kid can do it. So can you.

Look. I get it. You are new to 40k so only know 8th ed. But i have played all editions bar rogue trader. I have seen what no fall back and easy t1 charge does. T1 charge, make sure only 1-2 models attack, be safe from shooting, finish on enemy turn. Rinse and repeat. Shooty army stood even less of a chance than 8th ed melee.

Both extremes are bad.

You can reply without coming off as a condescending jerk you know? I've been playing since 3rd and I'm familiar what the game looks like without fallback. You need more than 1-2 marines in melee or you risk the chaff unit killing the 1-2 marines holding them there and then walking backwards.

Even if you manage to get half a unit in an pin them without over-killing, nothing stops your opponent move and prepare themselves to receive the chargers. Sounds like a design that would encourage more transports and fast moving mobile units for rapid redeployment.

But please continue screaming into the void over someones proposed suggestion to alter fallback.

 puma713 wrote:
So, we know that there are 7 core strategems now. If we assume the original ones don't change, then we have:

Old

1. Reroll a die.
2. Interrupt combat order.
3. Auto-pass morale.

New:

4. Cut Them Down
5. Fire Overwatch
6. ??
7. ??


I could see one of them being a Fall Back strategem. I know that we think it isn't because they've referenced Falling Back more than once, but we can hope. I think we've also heard that one of them could be Falling Back through models. Of course, the original 3 are subject to change as well.

I dont know if we can assume the original 3 will still be in play. They just changed overwatch (which is a great idea and a needed thing).

They may change the original 3 as well. I can see reroll 1 dice becoming once per game, same with moral.

If someone wants to waste CP for a reroll that's on them, so making it only once per game would be literally stupid.

Is there any word on what today's topic is?

sieGermans wrote:
We can all construct varying narrative constructs to make things sound sensible / not sensible.

Yeah but I make dumb rules fun.

sieGermans wrote:
The concept of being "locked in combat" is meant to capture that the swirl of the melee means an intermingling of forces that is not easy to separate out. Sometimes in battle, forces will become encircled and in effect it is not physically possible for the force to disengage.

With all the politeness I can muster: Yeah. No gak. I understand what it is representing, and I also understand that it's all happening simultaneously - one side doesn't freeze whilst the other takes its actions - but none of that changes that tri-pointing is a very gamey way of showing someone as being "locked in combat".

sieGermans wrote:
In prior editions, it was NEVER possible to disengage (aside from special Hit and Run rules which only appeared on specific models).

In 8th edition, they added a mechanism to disengage at will, but tried to capture reasonable circumstances where this should be impossible. The fact that it is not always possible to disengage in-game cleanly due to gamesmanship by an opponent is merely an abstraction of a narrative argument along the lines of encirclement/entrapment/etc. in-narrative.

There are a couple of things here:

1. I've been playing since 2nd Ed. I know that things could very rarely run away from combat. Being stuck on combat sucked.
2. GW, as usual, swung the pendulum too hard in the opposite direction for 8th. Instead of some sort of nuanced middle ground, they just made it that you can casually waltz out of combat whenever you feel like with the meagre penalty of not being able to shoot (unless you're flying, in which case, do whatever you want).

This allowed shooting armies to gain yet another advantage over melee armies. Melee armies now have to get across the table, make a random charge, sustain overwatch and return attacks, and then the enemy just get to walk away whilst the rest of the army blasts your assault unit to pieces. Like I said, GW swung that pendulum and they gave it all they had.

sieGermans wrote:
I've never had a problem with tri-pointing as a game mechanic.

But here's the kicker: It's not a game mechanic. It's a byproduct of the way falling back works. There is no way on God's green Earth that GW intended tri-pointing to be a thing. It's just the way their rules ended up working.

It was an accident, so acting like it's some sort of intended part of the assault rules and a balancing factor and/or representing the unpredictable swirl of melee doesn't ring true.

Aash wrote:
Is there any word on what today's topic is?

Alternative Necron paint schemes. Great

Aash wrote:
Is there any word on what today's topic is?

Alternate painting schemes for the new Necrons.

The hype train has no brakes... and apparently no engine either.

Azuza001 wrote:

 puma713 wrote:
So, we know that there are 7 core strategems now. If we assume the original ones don't change, then we have:

Old

1. Reroll a die.
2. Interrupt combat order.
3. Auto-pass morale.

New:

4. Cut Them Down
5. Fire Overwatch
6. ??
7. ??


I could see one of them being a Fall Back strategem. I know that we think it isn't because they've referenced Falling Back more than once, but we can hope. I think we've also heard that one of them could be Falling Back through models. Of course, the original 3 are subject to change as well.

I dont know if we can assume the original 3 will still be in play. They just changed overwatch (which is a great idea and a needed thing).

They may change the original 3 as well. I can see reroll 1 dice becoming once per game, same with moral.

Stu said we'd still be able to rerolls dice, and I could see combat interrupts still being a thing, it's the morale one I'd question.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Aash wrote:
Is there any word on what today's topic is?

Alternate painting schemes for the new Necrons.

The hype train has no brakes... and apparently no engine either.

Be still, my heart.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Aash wrote:
Is there any word on what today's topic is?

Alternate painting schemes for the new Necrons.

The hype train has no brakes... and apparently no engine either.

We all know that Novokh is the best paint scheme for Necrons...

Tri-pointing as a mechanic and 8th edition fallback are both things I want gone from 9th edition.
However, we have to realize a couple of things....Board size and Turn 1 charges, both a reality of 9th edition. If melee armies are able to lock up shooty armies in the first turn with no mechanic to get those troops out of combat, there are going to be problems. Fallback has to be allowed, but as a caveat it should absolutely not be automatic (and Ld is the right way to handle this...there is a difference between falling back and a rout, and it would be nice that Ld actually mattered in 9th, unlike 8th), and it should not go unpunished (well, we know there is cut them down, but that mechanic seems flawed already being decided on number of models rather than threat. One way to make it less dumb would be to count the number of wounds the attacking models have for the dice to be rolled, so a knight would roll 24 dice fishing for 6s).

Anyway, I'm curious to see what the changes are to fallback....it will have huge implications.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
On the flipside tripointing might be gone because we'll ve seeing a change to falling back that makes it less automatic.

This is one of those things I'm eagerly waiting to know more on.

It's kind of make or break for me on this thing.

They've fixed one of the biggest problems with vehicles, they're adding an expandable and adaptable system to terrain (even if their verbiage is a bit confusing at times). The table sizes thing is slowed, but then again they're just doing that to sell the mats they make so it's really not that big a deal (please folks - stop pretending its for any other reason!). Neither is the "move one guy now HW is at -1" thing. That's annoying, and reeks of their inability to be consistent with rules design, but again, not a huge deal. The new missions concept sounds interesting, and like the terrain stuff, is easily adaptable. Army structure changes sound good, and I like any idea that divorces CP generation from army construction. Flyers? Whatever. I've never used one. If I ever do then great. The changes to reserves sound positive (I'd love to be able to walk my Genestealers on from the table edge of my swarm markers get removed on the (now smaller) table).

So it really it comes down to Falling Back, if they've made any changes to how shooting works (ie. S5 vs T8/9 should = NO! & 'see the tip of a spike = everything can fire at you' bull gak) and what, if anything, they've done with morale. They're the main 4 to me.

I'm with H.B.M.C. on this - all of the other changes are sounding pretty good, but how they handle 'Fall Back' and attempting to escape from CC is close to a 'make or break' thing for 40K 9th...

Looks like they did call it the Szarkean Dynasty... Wish they could have come up with something better.