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Going through theCSM codex and seeing how useful their icons are, it really bugs me how people rarely take them because it is so easy to snipe them out in the shooting phase. The same seems to apply with nearly every armie's standards with the exception of DA whose banners are so useful they are worth the risk (and are usually in a Land Raider) Given how important Standards are in every army, I can see two options to change this. Either:

*As with WHFB, the standard bearer cannot be removed as a casualty unless he and other characters in a unit are the only models left.

or

*The standard bearer becomes a character for most purposes and automatically passes LoS roles.

I would like GW to scrap their closest target shooting rules or at least allow other members of the unit to pick up special/heavy weapons and icons like they use to be able to.

It makes no sense for the rest of the unit to leave their icon on the floor if the bearer falls.

Can you leave your standard in the back of the unit?

I know this seems really dumb for the standard to be "leading" from the back.

 rohansoldier wrote:
I would like GW to scrap their closest target shooting rules or at least allow other members of the unit to pick up special/heavy weapons and icons like they use to be able to.

It makes no sense for the rest of the unit to leave their icon on the floor if the bearer falls.

Closest model being killed first makes the game go much quicker, and makes placement much more important. It dumbed down shooting while making movement more tactical. This was a good move - especailly when low-point multi-wounders could take random allocated wounds so easily.

Also, while you're right that it doesn't make sense that they'd leave it lying down, you have to remember this is a game, not a simulation. It is a balancing factor that they don't pick up the standard.

 Scipio Africanus wrote:

 rohansoldier wrote:
I would like GW to scrap their closest target shooting rules or at least allow other members of the unit to pick up special/heavy weapons and icons like they use to be able to.

It makes no sense for the rest of the unit to leave their icon on the floor if the bearer falls.

Closest model being killed first makes the game go much quicker, and makes placement much more important. It dumbed down shooting while making movement more tactical. This was a good move - especailly when low-point multi-wounders could take random allocated wounds so easily.

Also, while you're right that it doesn't make sense that they'd leave it lying down, you have to remember this is a game, not a simulation. It is a balancing factor that they don't pick up the standard.

Except it most certainly doesn't make the game go quicker: I have already lost count of the number of times me and my opponent argued about which model was actually closet. I have seen similar arguments from watching other people play all the time. The game basically grinds to a halt as both players take out their rulers and argue about it. I once saw a game stalled for half an hour over it, and yes, they tried to roll-off on it and they were still arguing (and these were grown men in their 30s mind you).

The more I read Fantasy's rules regarding wound allocation, the more I like them, especially wth regards to Standards and characters.

I know a guy who just models a standard onto one of his vanilla models just cuz it looks cool.

And it does. I want to do the same thing with my Orks

"closest first" honestly seems like a good rule to me, however assault dudes really need something to balance out the effect it has.

Closest first is an awful rule that leads to micro-managing every move in a game where movement already took up way too much time as it was.

Real tactical movement would put emphasis on where units are in relation to each other and terrain (which is pretty much irrelevant in this edition), not worrying about how many men you can put in front of your plasma gun guy so he doesn't get sniped by a anti-tank gun (he'll still get sniped by a mortar, though... a mortar!)

 Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:

 Scipio Africanus wrote:

 rohansoldier wrote:
I would like GW to scrap their closest target shooting rules or at least allow other members of the unit to pick up special/heavy weapons and icons like they use to be able to.

It makes no sense for the rest of the unit to leave their icon on the floor if the bearer falls.

Closest model being killed first makes the game go much quicker, and makes placement much more important. It dumbed down shooting while making movement more tactical. This was a good move - especailly when low-point multi-wounders could take random allocated wounds so easily.

Also, while you're right that it doesn't make sense that they'd leave it lying down, you have to remember this is a game, not a simulation. It is a balancing factor that they don't pick up the standard.

Except it most certainly doesn't make the game go quicker: I have already lost count of the number of times me and my opponent argued about which model was actually closet. I have seen similar arguments from watching other people play all the time. The game basically grinds to a halt as both players take out their rulers and argue about it. I once saw a game stalled for half an hour over it, and yes, they tried to roll-off on it and they were still arguing (and these were grown men in their 30s mind you).

The more I read Fantasy's rules regarding wound allocation, the more I like them, especially wth regards to Standards and characters.

Except it most certainly makes the game go faster, remember what it replaced? That mess of a rule ALWAYS slowed a game down when it cropped up, the New way will only cause and issue if your unsure which is closest and then if it's several youjust randomize, alot faster than the old "legal" cheating rule

Standard bearers should be more powerful than the rest of the army. Picking up the standard would also be nice, maybe roll a D6 and on a 6 it's picked up?

Just giving the standard bearer Look Out Sir would seem to be the easiest way to do this...

 Dannyrulx wrote:
Standard bearers should be more powerful than the rest of the army. Picking up the standard would also be nice, maybe roll a D6 and on a 6 it's picked up?

Give Standard Bearers the "Look out, Sir!" ability and then everything is settled

 Formosa wrote:
Except it most certainly makes the game go faster, remember what it replaced?

Your mistake is that you're only looking one edition back.

When you look at how much of the Proposed Rules forum is taken up by ideas on how to patch various parts of the hit allocation rules it's pretty obvious that they need to be thrown out wholesale.

my mistake isnt that im looking 1 edition back, in 3rd you could kill what you could see (riddick) and this invariably led to the closest models dieing as those were the ones shooting at you in the first place, things like heavies and specials were picked up by another model and thus could no die till the last models died if i remember correctl.

4th was pretty much the same as now but not the closest models, so sarges and heavies etc could be killed off but last again same as 3rd

5th gave us the monstrosity of wound allocation, this allowed some of the worst rules abuses i have seen in my long career in 40k, paladins, nobs etc abused the rule quite badly and even to this date (with 2++ RR etc) i still havent seen as much rage over any rule than we had with 5th and wound allocation legal cheating

6th has given us removal of the closest model and look out sir, removal of the closest means that movement matters for a change, even if this ed is all about the dakka, if you dont possition your lord properly then you deserve to lose it to my RW bikers, ah but you still get a chance to move away the save, so thats nice, also lets not forget that when this ed came about it was almost imediatly broken byyyyyyy..... Nobs and palies leapfrogging each other across the battlefield.

None of these were percfect i agree, but we now have a better system than any ed so far, with maybe the exception of 3rd, but that was not becuase of shooting rules, it was becuase of the abstract terrain rules