Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Well, I have a strong urge to whine now. Whoever came up with the crappy rules for focus firing should be given a medal.

I am sure that rule bothers everyone at some level and as such it's going to be around forever, because it's like cool yeah hey.

I still fail to grasp why my opponent can focus fire models in my unit with AP4 shots because they stand in the open with their 2+ saves, just because they happen to have a biker in the front who can oh my god jink!

This edition has other less than stellar rules concerning cover (lookey lookey it's a wraithknight with its toe touching area terrain), so I guess that's just one more logical addition.

Whine over, thanks.

Actually I would like to give that person a medal. That is one of the better rules they added. It does two very very good things to this game.
1) Remove cover abuses and wound allocation shenanigans. How does having one guy in cover in the front of your squad make the squad as a whole be able to tank lascannon shots on a 2+ cover save? This would be a straight up abuse of the rules to break immersion. With focus fire it goes away.

2) Makes the movement phase actually important and the game more tactical. You can focus fire to improve your odds to take out important stuff.

How does a biker running around in the front of a unit of special weapons and being the only one to be shot at make any sense?

Why are you even talking about AP and the armour save of the units involved? To be clear they have nothing to do with focus fire.

He's talking about attaching a biker HQ to a normal unit.

If your opponent wants to shoot at the unit and not allow him to take any of the hits, he can declare focus fire on the models without a cover save and then the biker can't tank any hits because he has a jink save. So all those AP4 shots get through to his dudes instead of getting soaked on the tank in the front.

Dudes who aren't in cover tend to draw fire, which is considered a grievous social faux pas, as it tends to annoy those around them.

The dude on the bike, who is not being shot at, can jink all he likes... he's just getting out of the way of the dudes who are shooting at the dudes who aren't in cover. Rather helpful, that.

I love the Focus Fire rule. As a Salamander, it has turned many of my shooting phases into total unit wipes.

"Okay, bolters fire at the orks out in the open. Flamer, kill the orks in the trees."

Since flamers ignore cover, their wounds can still be allocated to models in cover, even when you choose to Focus Fire.

So in short, your gaming of the rules got caught and you paid for it. But because you are flawless (clearly) it is GW's fault that your tactic didn't work and in no way says your gaming of the cover system is a flawed tactic that should be refined or changed.

ansacs wrote:Remove cover abuses

Well, yes and no. The way I think about it is more that, along with by-model cover and by-model movement-based shooting restrictions a fundamental change to the game.

Up until 6th edition, 40k was sort of like fantasy. You had a bunch of models in that unit, and the unit was upgraded with a meltagun and a lascannon, or a chaos icon, or an assault cannon, or whatever. It was much more that you had a single unit with certain killing-power capabilities that had a number of wounds equal to the number of models in the squad. In a way, you could think of a 20-man guard blob being a T3 W20 A20 monstrous creature that could fire a meltagun twice per shooting phase.

In this paradigm, the old rules made perfect sense. Half the unit being in cover gave the unit a cover save just like half a tank being behind cover gave the tank a cover save, while any part of a unit moving changed its shooting profile, just like any part of a tank moving changed its shooting profile, etc.

What they did with the loss of by-unit cover, and by-unit movement restrictions on shooting, and the introduction of focus fire, and the new wound allocation system was to fundamentally break apart the old way they thought about units. Nowadays, units mean little more than coherency restrictions. Nowadays, which MODEL gets shot, not which UNIT gets shot is what's important.

Neither way is strictly better or worse, of course, but I feel like this change in design philosophy wound up having much bigger changes on the game itself than was intended.

Back in the day, you had ablative wounds, which meant that adding more models to a unit gave it better durability (especially for its killing power back when you had "hidden" weapons). Now, adding more models to a unit does virtually nothing to improve a squad's killing power, outside of what small arms can provide. This made horde armies basically unplayable once you switch from strength being determined as how strong the unit is to how strong the individual models are, because together, hordes were strong, but now split apart, the glaring weakness of their individual members is writ large. The same is true even for non-hordes, of course, but really hurts ANY unit that is made up of weak and strong models.

Units made up only of strong models, like vehicles and monstrous creatures, and certain elite units like CSM terminators and sternguard, went completely unaffected by the changes from units to models, as they really only ever had 1-5 models or so of equal quality in the first place. Everything else, though, was made much, much less relevant. Once again, neither way is strictly better, but it just depends on what kind of game you want. Do you want a game where a few ultra-powerful models slug it out with a spiraling arms race of whose army has the most ultra-powerful single models, or do you want a game where quality has the chance to be trumped by quantity? If you want the former, then 6th ed is a breath of fresh air. If you want the latter, then you don't have much choice but to shelve your horde armies and pick up a terminator army or wait until 7th comes out and possibly reverses this.

 curran12 wrote:
So in short, your gaming of the rules got caught and you paid for it. But because you are flawless (clearly) it is GW's fault that your tactic didn't work and in no way says your gaming of the cover system is a flawed tactic that should be refined or changed.

Let me be more clear then.

In the open after moving an inch the centurions are suddenly easier to target because the CM could get a 4++ jink save. Why would he jink, he got the armor and the shield? I can normally choose which save to take, now suddenly with FF rules I cannot do that. He is there for a reason to take hits. It does not make any sense.

Now on the other hand if I had a unit of similar models where half of them are in cover my opponent should be able to target the ones in the open.

The rule has good intentions, but it is not thought through.

Well, if you really want to fix it, you should have him 3" in front of the squad instead of 2", so he's a separate unit. That way, he provides them a 5+ cover save, so the focus fire trick doesn't work.

Of course, then he can still just target the centurions, so... that's why the captain tanking in front doesn't work and is a stupid idea in the first place. You can't block all the incoming shots with your Shield Eternal, it would have to be the size of a rhino side armour plate for that.

Effectively, think of it like this: THe captain is providing a cover save for the rest of the squad. So by focus firing, they're avoiding the cover.

Oh yes, that makes sense. Now I see the brilliancy of having a buffmander with the tools tanking shots for the Centurions or a Riptide, because suddenly now it works! Really??

The Focus Fire rules are fine.
The rule allowing you to stick an IC tank in front of the unit to eat a whole turn's worth of shooting, 1 roll at a time in order to protect the other members is not.
Especially if the unit itself is also quite durable.
I miss the 4th ed would allocation rules

 Ailaros wrote:
Neither way is strictly better or worse, of course, ...

Well, yes and no. For me, it depends on what the game is trying to be.

5th edition was a big push towards 40K being a unit-based game that could easily scale up into bigger and bigger battles. 6th edition took one giant step backwards into individual-model-based rules (accompanied by individual dice rolls - seriously, who thought taking 30 LOS rolls one-at-a-time was a good idea?), which artificially limits the size of the game by just making it too tedious to play at larger points limits.

40k has crap rules

In other news, water is wet, sky is blue. More at 10

Wow reading this doesn't even make 40k sound fun at all. Who thought that removing models from the front was a good idea at all? Doesn't that totally ruin the point for taking special and heavy weapons in a squad if they can't be removed last?

Naw wrote:
Oh yes, that makes sense. Now I see the brilliancy of having a buffmander with the tools tanking shots for the Centurions or a Riptide, because suddenly now it works! Really??

Oh no! Woe is you! Your codex works properly and makes some sense! Whatever will you do?!

Just because the Tau commander can break sanity doesn't mean the core rules need changing.

WayneTheGame wrote:
Wow reading this doesn't even make 40k sound fun at all. Who thought that removing models from the front was a good idea at all? Doesn't that totally ruin the point for taking special and heavy weapons in a squad if they can't be removed last?

As I said before in this thread, 4th ed had the best wound allocation rules; they were quick, simple, and not as prone to abuse.
Yeah, sure, it was hard to kill sergeants and special weapons. But as you paid the points for them, they better not die just because they were slightly closer to the enemy. Besides, the precision shot rules would balance that out anyway.

 Furyou Miko wrote:

Naw wrote:
Oh yes, that makes sense. Now I see the brilliancy of having a buffmander with the tools tanking shots for the Centurions or a Riptide, because suddenly now it works! Really??

Oh no! Woe is you! Your codex works properly and makes some sense! Whatever will you do?!

Just because the Tau commander can break sanity doesn't mean the core rules need changing.

Sorry to say it, but I can and will utilize allies and buffmander to work around this issue. Then I can have my tooled up CM tanking for a biker squad because suddenly there it makes sense. Stupid rules are stupid.

Well, personally I struggle to believe that you're really pouring nearly 300 points into a model who only exists to protect a 200 point biker squad, but... eh.

WayneTheGame wrote:
Wow reading this doesn't even make 40k sound fun at all. Who thought that removing models from the front was a good idea at all? Doesn't that totally ruin the point for taking special and heavy weapons in a squad if they can't be removed last?

Its trivially easy to protect what you want in the new rules, you just have to actually pay attention where you place models. Furthermore multi wound models are still able to be ridiculously resilient unless they are completely wounded down. It is not as user friendly as 5th and earlier however it is far from a bad rule.

Naw wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:

Naw wrote:
Oh yes, that makes sense. Now I see the brilliancy of having a buffmander with the tools tanking shots for the Centurions or a Riptide, because suddenly now it works! Really??

Oh no! Woe is you! Your codex works properly and makes some sense! Whatever will you do?!

Just because the Tau commander can break sanity doesn't mean the core rules need changing.

Sorry to say it, but I can and will utilize allies and buffmander to work around this issue. Then I can have my tooled up CM tanking for a biker squad because suddenly there it makes sense. Stupid rules are stupid.

You mean trying to game the rules and failing to do so?

Funnily enough the thread turned quite soon to personal attacks, but I did not expect anything else. I just think the rule as it is now makes little sense.

My beef is, as I've written, that a tank can be ignored just because he has a better jink save. OTOH if he used IH chapter tactics suddenly there would be less of an issue.

I work around this stupidity by having a buffmander instead, the CM can and will split away from the bikers to harass whatever he likes. Of course he can start with the Cents and benefit from Presciense for the Orbital.

Just felt I needed to rant about a rule I consider to be very stupid/broken.

You're saying it's stupid that a tank can be circumvented, but we're telling you that the idea of a tank is stupid in the first place.

Edit: Although, thinking about it, that's what the French Parliament told DeGaulle, and look where that got them. Blitzkrieged right up their Maginot.

insaniak wrote:5th edition was a big push towards 40K being a unit-based game that could easily scale up into bigger and bigger battles. 6th edition took one giant step backwards into individual-model-based rules (accompanied by individual dice rolls - seriously, who thought taking 30 LOS rolls one-at-a-time was a good idea?), which artificially limits the size of the game by just making it too tedious to play at larger points limits.

And I suppose that's where a lot of the strangeness of 6th ed comes in. 40k started as sort of a role-playing game (a small party of buffed-up heroes/villains with character stats and special rules and magic items) and then changed into a company-level tactics game. Either of those are fine, but trying to shoehorn the old RPG motif back into a broader tactics game doesn't really make sense.

And it's strange too, because even at its height in 5th edition, you could still play skirmish-level games with only minimal alteration to the rules. The two were already blended nicely.

As droll as this sounds, I almost wonder if it isn't Mat Ward's fault. I mean, you look at his codices during 5th edition, and you see a strong bias towards having a handful of super-powered ultra-units and then everything else is added in almost as an afterthought. Perhaps he just sees 40k as a gauntlet legends or a dynasty warriors, or something. The GK player shows up with his superheroes, and it's the job of the CSM player to provide the incompetent mooks for the hero to righteously slaughter.

And if that's his wish, then it's certainly come true. When your army is a revenant titan and... I don't know what else, but it doesn't matter because I have a revenant titan, and everything weaker is just going to disappear, well, that sounds congruous with said vision.

As mentioned, if you want that, then you've got it. I personally cared much more for the previous version where you had options other than herohammer.

I think what bothers me the most is I played 5th edition Fantasy, where the term "Herohammer" was coined or at least came to common parlance. I hated it. There was nothing fun about having a lord on a dragon and two small units of actual troops that hid in a wood somewhere while the huge unit of cavalry/lord on dragon/Level 4 wizard almost single-handedly destroyed the enemy because nothing could stand against them except for another huge unit of cavalry/lord on dragon/Level 4 wizard. 2nd edition 40k didn't really have that, and I recall even Level 4 psykers couldn't single-handedly mulch the enemy (although Wolf Guard Terminators came close with the Assault Cannon+Cyclone Missile Launcher combo), you actually had to use your units.

Now, WHFB seems to have focused more on troops/units, and 40k has gone closer to Herohammer where most units are useless and you want as little as possible or just take them to get gun transports (e.g. Waveserpents, Night Scythes), and then load up on the big bad killer units that do all the actual work.

That doesn't seem fun at all to me, it seems like a boring "Whoever rolls the most wins" scenario or, worse, means that you shouldn't even bothering playing against certain armies because there's basically no way you'd win. I can't remember where I saw it but someone was talking about Tau+Eldar and said something jokingly like you could just roll X many dice and determine the percentage of enemy units you would kill before they assaulted you and destroyed you and determine who would win the game without actually playing the game.

This is getting quite far from my original post, but I agree with the previous poster.

Unfortunately the rules are what they are. There are good elements but also some very bad elements. Also the power level of the individual codexes (I just don't like 'codii') is all over the place.

GW put a lot of emphasis on cover saves and then they screw it up many times over. This rule, ally system (BB), flight, cover in general etc. I rather liked the 5th...

Naw wrote:
I just don't like 'codii'

That's because it's 'codices'.

I sure have missed out on a lot of silly rules since I last played the game. Makes me glad I focus on the background and models than actually playing games with them.

Nope, in GW speak it is "codexes"

GW can come up with whatever crazy name it wants. The plural of codex in GW's world can be Shamawa'rakkahla'than. People can make up their own words and give them meanings, or give meanings to their own words all they want.

But the point of language is that we all agree on certain rules - certain meanings match certain words. GW failing to agree means its speaking a different language, but that doesn't mean that over in the world of English, the plural of codex is something other than codices.

Just like index-indices, vertex-vertices, apex-apices, or carnifex-carnifices.

Hehe, Carnifaeces...

/minion

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Hehe, Carnifaeces...

/minion

Oh good, so I wasn't the only one thinking that.