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Last time I checked, getting shot by any weapon in the real world in the right location causes instant death.

I have never wanted to eliminate the double toughness rule. I've also never been able to see the fuss over it. Most of the anger I see seems to come from Marine players... newer marine players. Apparently they don't remember or weren't playing when all Grey Knights were Strength 6 and could cause instant death on Eldar HQs, Guard HQs, and a ton of other very common units.

So people try to make the argument that a lump of metal so heavy that it's difficult for a genetically enhanced super solder to even lift (hence the initiative 1) couldn't flat out crush the rib cage of one of his peers? I hate to involve realism in Warhammer but give me a break.

I've never been one to "hide" powerfists. Quite the opposite. Literally every sergeant and squad leader in my marine army has one. They're all represented properly save for one which has a Thunderhammer (not legal under the current rules but I've yet to find an opponent that wasn't fine with it counting as one). But here's the thing.... if you're HQ manages to get killed by a squad leader's power fist then you're doing something wrong. Why didn't they have a squad with them to soak wounds? Why didn't the character in question kill enough things so has to hinder counter attack?

I agree with some of the above posters. If you're upset about your prized HQ getting beaten to death by squad leaders then stop letting it happen. Give them bodyguards or something. That's what things like Command Squads and Chosen exist for. And once you do that don't just throw them away. Because I promise that your opponent will be more than willing to feed you Conscript Platoons or Scarab Swarms for six turns.

Dust wrote:
I've never been one to "hide" powerfists. Quite the opposite. Literally every sergeant and squad leader in my marine army has one. They're all represented properly save for one which has a Thunderhammer (not legal under the current rules but I've yet to find an opponent that wasn't fine with it counting as one). But here's the thing.... if you're HQ manages to get killed by a squad leader's power fist then you're doing something wrong. Why didn't they have a squad with them to soak wounds? Why didn't the character in question kill enough things so has to hinder counter attack?

That's the entire point: You can't. Any IC in the game that doesn't have access to a retinue is going to eat that fist and may or may not proceed to die in a suitably messy fashion. "Stop letting it happen" isn't a valid rebuttal because it's nigh impossible to keep a choppy character safe from power fists.

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Dust wrote:

That's the entire point: You can't. Any IC in the game that doesn't have access to a retinue is going to eat that fist and may or may not proceed to die in a suitably messy fashion. "Stop letting it happen" isn't a valid rebuttal because it's nigh impossible to keep a choppy character safe from power fists.

The "doesn't have a retinue" bit really doesn't work because every codex has some unit that clearly makes a good back-up to their HQs. And nine times out of ten whatever's in that unit is going to be jacked up to hell and back. I don't know about the rest of the players out there but if I had the chance to kill three Paladins over killing Draigo I would. It might be fewer points but that's three models down in a squad that has a habit of not dieing ever and running amok through multiple squads. The same can be applied to Necrons (single lord vs a couple Pariahs), Marines (chapter master vs. honor guard/ terminators/ Vanguard/ Chosen), Orks (Warboss vs Nobz) and the choice is usually an easy one. When faced with the option of killing ONE model or putting a serious dent in a squad that I know will ruin my day I will almost always go with the second option.

And I've yet to see a "choppy" character that could go it alone and deal with tanks, infantry, transports, and walkers without any sort of back up. But isn't that a central tenant of game balance? Last I checked this was supposed to be a table top strategy game, not Dragon Ball Z with miniatures. ICs aren't supposed to be able to flat out win games on their own.

The units you are referring to are usually good enough at killing stuff in CC that adding an HQ to them is just overkill. What you're saying is that if you want to have a melee HQ you either put him/her in a unit where it doesn't make any sense to put it or it's "your own fault" that you lost your HQ to a PF. Not to mention the cost of said units in the first place.

Just give all HQ units EW. That way no battle cannon prematurely ends the life of Captain Calamity of the Ultramarines 2nd. It also means that my 120 point captain is at least useful as opposed to just buying Lysander for the 40th time.

So a Tyranid Prime can take a Demolisher shell head on? Can a DE take a Melta shot? Can Mortrex survive a Lance Strike? A Space marine a Lascanno?


No, No, No, No. EW was inventerd for newbies army list based on Calgar, Lysander, Logan and others, and so they wouldn't think that a demolisher shell will mean doom.

Deadshot wrote:.....newbies army list based on Calgar, Lysander, Logan and others, and so they wouldn't think that a demolisher shell will mean doom.

Come now, just because Calgar has EW doesn't make any army that has him a newbie one. GoW is annoying as heck to fight against in CC. Kick my butt? Oh well, Calgar says stay put. But that is besides the point.

When I field Calgar, he automatically draws tons of attention, it's natural. I've tried running him with an Honour Guard Squad, but they cost way too many points for only a few bodies. And, since Calgar only has a 4++, I strongly dislike the idea of a single Lascannon having a 50% (after hitting/wounding) of knocking him dead in one shot. EW has saved him so many times that I can't even recall how many - its now just a second nature that he doesn't come off immediately after taking one wound.

As to keeping him alive (or any IC for that matter), Calgar's main use is to take out the 10 man tac squads that are designed for shooting. I know darn well as he runs in there that there is a PF on the sarge, but that doesn't bother me. Calgar can take on Avatars, he should be able to eat a PF or four before going down. EW is, under the rules we have now, needed.

That said, if the rules somehow change to remove the EW, I still better be able to run Calgar into a lowly tac sqaud without fear. The day I can't do that...I don't even know.

No, no, I don't mean Calgar is automatic newbie material, I just find it is normally newbies that take him, because in Vallina Codex, he is "the man".

So, how disheartening is it when you're in your first game, black reach, a new battle force and Calgy are lined up to kick butt, and... your opponent steals the intiative. He procedes to plant an Orbital Bombardment into him and his Guard. rolls his 5 dice, 2, 2, 2, 2,, that is 4 dead Honour Guard there, followed by a 2. Calgar rolls his 50/50 svae, and rolls a 3. Calgar is dead. Now this 12 yr old kid, or new guy that has never played before in his life, is so disheartened that he plays poorly, or, if he is really biatchy, takes his stuff and storms off.


Now, there are sometimes when Clagar is good, i myself use him from time to time, and he is great, but he wouldn't be half as good without EW, niether would Lysander or DP, or Avatars, or Abbaddon, if they got 1 shotted or Force Weaponed.

Deadshot wrote:No, no, I don't mean Calgar is automatic newbie material, I just find it is normally newbies that take him, because in Vallina Codex, he is "the man".

So, how disheartening is it when you're in your first game, black reach, a new battle force and Calgy are lined up to kick butt, and... your opponent steals the intiative. He procedes to plant an Orbital Bombardment into him and his Guard. rolls his 5 dice, 2, 2, 2, 2,, that is 4 dead Honour Guard there, followed by a 2. Calgar rolls his 50/50 svae, and rolls a 3. Calgar is dead. Now this 12 yr old kid, or new guy that has never played before in his life, is so disheartened that he plays poorly, or, if he is really biatchy, takes his stuff and storms off.


Now, there are sometimes when Clagar is good, i myself use him from time to time, and he is great, but he wouldn't be half as good without EW, niether would Lysander or DP, or Avatars, or Abbaddon, if they got 1 shotted or Force Weaponed.

I agree 100%. That's more or less what I was driving at, but I used a tac squad as the dead-dealing blow rather than an OB.

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

That's the entire point: You can't. Any IC in the game that doesn't have access to a retinue is going to eat that fist and may or may not proceed to die in a suitably messy fashion. "Stop letting it happen" isn't a valid rebuttal because it's nigh impossible to keep a choppy character safe from power fists.

That's kinda the point of hidden powerfists and ID. It's there to keep characters from being thrown willy-nilly into anything without fear. Also, if a man or even superman sized dude gets hit by an anti-tank rocket, heavy siege shell, or fusion cannon, then yeah, it makes total sense that they just get zapped outright and blown to itty bitty pieces.

Vaktathi wrote:

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

That's the entire point: You can't. Any IC in the game that doesn't have access to a retinue is going to eat that fist and may or may not proceed to die in a suitably messy fashion. "Stop letting it happen" isn't a valid rebuttal because it's nigh impossible to keep a choppy character safe from power fists.

That's kinda the point of hidden powerfists and ID. It's there to keep characters from being thrown willy-nilly into anything without fear. Also, if a man or even superman sized dude gets hit by an anti-tank rocket, heavy siege shell, or fusion cannon, then yeah, it makes total sense that they just get zapped outright and blown to itty bitty pieces.

I've thought about this a lot while reading the 3 pages of this thread and all in all, the only thing I think is wrong is that IC's can't allocate attacks to people while the enemy can choose to ignore his backup completely. If either IC's could allocate attacks to specific enemies or not be picked out by Squad Leaders I'd say the problem would be a non issue. Not both though, that'd be too far the other way.

Just my humble opinion.

Or as an alternative I just thought, seeing as the problem is mainly Marine based, maybe allow Champions (of both Honour Guard and Command Squad flavours) to take wounds for the Captain.

Or make Characters able to issue challenges in the same way you could in fantasy (when I last played not sure about the newest rule set) i.e. you accept if you can or the IC/Squad Leader who could accept doesn't get to attack. I'd love that one.

Actually I think ID is yet another example of GWs ridiculous "streamlining". Here is a quick intro on how to streamline like GW (apologies in advance for excessive sarcasm).

1. Take something from older games that worked perfectly fine.
2. Purge said thing with fire in the name of simplification.
3. Realise that thing had an important function in the game.
4. Add in a whole mess of USRs and exceptions to replace the missing function. Thus making the game more complicated than it was in the begining.

/rant


In this case the thing they removed was the weapon 'Damage' value. All weapons in 40k used to have a damage value which was a number (frequently a random number) which indicated how many wounds the weapon inflicted. For example a Heavy bolter did D4, an Autocannon did D6, An Assault cannon (which was much more awesome back then) did D10. A Lascannon did 2D6 and a Multimelta did 2D12.

The system used more values and required a collection of funky dice, but I think it was more consistent than the new system, because the same damage value applied to every shot. It didn't shift from target to target, where now a weapon will alway kill one IC outright, but only ever inflict a single wound on another IC because he has +1 toughness.

The other nice thing about it was that a model with multiple wounds and low toughness could still survive a Lascannon hit if he was lucky. But an unlucky MC could still die to well placed heavy bolter fire.

I don't think anything much was gained by removing weapon damage. Calculating ID seems to be a different but in fairness equally complicated (and in my opinion, more contrived) way of doing pretty much the same thing.

Vaktathi wrote:

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

That's the entire point: You can't. Any IC in the game that doesn't have access to a retinue is going to eat that fist and may or may not proceed to die in a suitably messy fashion. "Stop letting it happen" isn't a valid rebuttal because it's nigh impossible to keep a choppy character safe from power fists.

That's kinda the point of hidden powerfists and ID. It's there to keep characters from being thrown willy-nilly into anything without fear. Also, if a man or even superman sized dude gets hit by an anti-tank rocket, heavy siege shell, or fusion cannon, then yeah, it makes total sense that they just get zapped outright and blown to itty bitty pieces.

You'll note that most things with EW came out during this edition, an edition in which there's no way to get to hidden PFs without smashing through the entire squad. As such, it would seem to me that GW doesn't like power fists finishing off SCs just like that. Make from this what you will.