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Semper wrote:
I miss the concept but not the execution of initiative; but not enough that i'd advocate it's return.

I do think there should be some more dynamic 'reaction' or 'preparation' options other than, shoot at charging units and only ever hit on a 6+.

What I would want to see a return of is the WS v WS chart in some guise. I actually felt like that had a bit of a purpose. It could be streamlined a little though to appease people - is your WS higher than your opponents? Hit on 3+, is your WS the same as your opponent? Hit on 4+. Is your WS more than double your opponents? Hit on 2+. Is your WS less than half your opponents WS? Hit on 5+ (kind of what it was actually). I'm not a big fan of the idea that a new space marine can hit a 10,000 year old chaos lord on a 3+ in a 1v1 fight.

Charge reactions would be nice. The option to retreat from a charge like WHFB would be nice. Can any units counter-charge? Or is counter charging effectively jist "strike first of charged" deal? The game needs more options for tactical movement.

Nope, either your army was faster, or it was slower. Never really much of a difference.

Or you were space marine vs space marine.

Semper wrote:I miss the concept but not the execution of initiative; but not enough that i'd advocate it's return.

I do think there should be some more dynamic 'reaction' or 'preparation' options other than, shoot at charging units and only ever hit on a 6+.

What I would want to see a return of is the WS v WS chart in some guise. I actually felt like that had a bit of a purpose. It could be streamlined a little though to appease people - is your WS higher than your opponents? Hit on 3+, is your WS the same as your opponent? Hit on 4+. Is your WS more than double your opponents? Hit on 2+. Is your WS less than half your opponents WS? Hit on 5+ (kind of what it was actually). I'm not a big fan of the idea that a new space marine can hit a 10,000 year old chaos lord on a 3+ in a 1v1 fight.

Semper wrote:I miss the concept but not the execution of initiative; but not enough that i'd advocate it's return.

I do think there should be some more dynamic 'reaction' or 'preparation' options other than, shoot at charging units and only ever hit on a 6+.

What I would want to see a return of is the WS v WS chart in some guise. I actually felt like that had a bit of a purpose. It could be streamlined a little though to appease people - is your WS higher than your opponents? Hit on 3+, is your WS the same as your opponent? Hit on 4+. Is your WS more than double your opponents? Hit on 2+. Is your WS less than half your opponents WS? Hit on 5+ (kind of what it was actually). I'm not a big fan of the idea that a new space marine can hit a 10,000 year old chaos lord on a 3+ in a 1v1 fight.

Great suggestion and very much agree with everything you said

While we're on the topic of initiative, I'll throw this out there - melee combat should have always been both sides swinging at the same time.

However, you could add an exemption, being "if a unit's Initiative value is double that of its opponent, it may swing first", and then simply add +1 to a units Initiative if they charged that round.

I've always absolutely abhorred the "I charge in...kill all of your dudes who don't bother to defend themselves at all...and then I move on". Far too obnoxious.

However with a change like I listed above you'd have a handful of instances where that would occur and rightly so. A gretchin might not get to swing at the same time as a Primarch, and it could make certain Eldar and Tyranid style units special for that very reason.

Even if you went back to charging simply adding an attack, Initiative would still have a roll, but in a normal combat no one would be standing there with their dick in their hand while being hacked to pieces unless the advantage was extremely strong. (this would also make abilities/spells/buffs which determine fighting order more significant).

As a tyranid player, initiative was all about having a really high stat on paper, but never getting to use it because your faction lacked assault grenades.
Every time you charged, your opponent would be standing in a crater, because why wouldn't they. Meaning your I6 genestealers every single time would trip on a rock, go down to I1, and get hacked to pieces before they could swing. Initiative meant nothing without assault grenades.

I don't miss it one bit.

Bharring wrote:

ERJAK wrote:
[...]
People like to toss around accusations that a lot of different stuff makes the game 'untactical', well initiative is the least tactical mechanic possible. My number bigger than yours? Remove model.

I disagree. With proper balance, I should be factoring in that my Tac Marines will swing first when deciding how much firepower to put into the Ork Boyz squad that's going to make contact next turn vs the squad behind it. It *can* be very tactical. Although that would have required better balancing.

CQC was atrocious in previous editions, being essentially just an excel spreadsheet that A. Hated you and B. Took 45 minutes to compile.

While I agree with this statement, I still miss it. It had a lot of upsides - like elite units "winning combat" even without killing many doods.

You forgot the disagreeing part. The situation you described is exactly the same WITHOUT initiative except it doesn't work in reverse because the Orkz would just die. In fact, no aspect of what you described benefits at all from intiative.

Seriously, what about that is different with and without initiative, other than the marine player getring free kills with no effort or tactics on his part?

I don't call that an upside at all. I call that 'my army doesn't have ATSKNF so combat fething sucks'. Being able to put A Character into a unit of 10 lychgaurd or w/e, getting lucky on your saves, and then kill the hole unit because you landed one wound was asinine.

Sim-Life wrote:

Semper wrote:
I miss the concept but not the execution of initiative; but not enough that i'd advocate it's return.

I do think there should be some more dynamic 'reaction' or 'preparation' options other than, shoot at charging units and only ever hit on a 6+.

What I would want to see a return of is the WS v WS chart in some guise. I actually felt like that had a bit of a purpose. It could be streamlined a little though to appease people - is your WS higher than your opponents? Hit on 3+, is your WS the same as your opponent? Hit on 4+. Is your WS more than double your opponents? Hit on 2+. Is your WS less than half your opponents WS? Hit on 5+ (kind of what it was actually). I'm not a big fan of the idea that a new space marine can hit a 10,000 year old chaos lord on a 3+ in a 1v1 fight.

Charge reactions would be nice. The option to retreat from a charge like WHFB would be nice. Can any units counter-charge? Or is counter charging effectively jist "strike first of charged" deal? The game needs more options for tactical movement.

Nitro Zeus wrote:

Great suggestion and very much agree with everything you said

Thanks.

There could well be a system linking initiative to reactions. It starts eroding the 'stream line' of the rules a little but maybe there's some sort of mechanism that if your initiative is higher than the enemy's you can react to their actions to mitigate the situation (not prevent it entirely), doing one of several things in a given scenario...

If charged, you could...
- Fire overwatch
- Attempt a retreat
- Heroically intervene if a unit nearby (yes, put this here rather than automatic ability)
- Spring a pre-laid trap
- Charge back and possibly break the combat chain? (:O)

If shot at, you could...
- Go to ground
- Move vehicle to 'hull down' or rotate facing
- Move to the nearest cover within x inches
- Raise a shield/activate a mitigating defence
- Overwatch back? (:O)
- Look out sir!

Then, rather than characters being unable to be shot at because of 'arbitrary rule', they just have high initiative so can react better when attacked (and will obviously have better mitigating actions). All these Chapter tactics etc could then be opened up a bit.

I don't know though, i'm not a rule master and I havn' sat down too much and thought about it so someone could be far more creative than me.

I think I would agree, initiative as used was not really that great. And playing army’s that did not have grenades, and only some rules to mitigate that rarely. It was not really that useful.
But currently I do not really think it’s much better.

Reaction systems would be much better, and more movement as a whole would encourage a more interesting phase I feel.

Semper wrote:

There could well be a system linking initiative to reactions. It starts eroding the 'stream line' of the rules a little but maybe there's some sort of mechanism that if your initiative is higher than the enemy's you can react to their actions to mitigate the situation (not prevent it entirely), doing one of several things in a given scenario...

If charged, you could...
- Fire overwatch
- Attempt a retreat
- Heroically intervene if a unit nearby (yes, put this here rather than automatic ability)
- Spring a pre-laid trap
- Charge back and possibly break the combat chain? (:O)

The thing is, it's already way to hard to get into combat compared to shooting. You have to move across the board where you like have to leave cover and LOS blocking areas, clear out intervening models and move within ~7" for good chance of a successful charge and then still have a chance to fail that charge and just get gunned down from the safety of cover next turn for all your trouble. Allowing such a wide array of reactions to assaults might as well be stream-lined into removing close combat from the game. If anything, getting out of assault is too easy right now.

And yes, there are a bunch of units and mechanics which skip most of the trouble, but compared to those which just sit at 24"+ and fire away at whatever they are few and far between.

Then, rather than characters being unable to be shot at because of 'arbitrary rule', they just have high initiative so can react better when attacked (and will obviously have better mitigating actions). All these Chapter tactics etc could then be opened up a bit.

Yeah, no thank you. This would inevitably lead to a warboss having less initiative than a space marine captain, which means charging one is just suicide again - despite the fluff having warbosses crushing captains just as often as the other way around.

I don't know though, i'm not a rule master and I havn' sat down too much and thought about it so someone could be far more creative than me.

In general, I think having a set of reactions to both combat and shooting would be decent. Right now combat has overwatch, falling back, counter-attack stratagem, heroic intervention and multiple "always fight first" abilities which make picking the right order for fighting a headache. Plus codex-specific stratagems, like the custodes counter-charging, fighting twice, or dead combatants getting back up to fight one last time. I think combat has plenty tactical options to react with - the bigger issue is that many armies simply don't want to field their combat specialists because they are terrible compared to their shooting options.

Shooting has... body guards and defensive stratagems for single units in some codices?

Not really bothered about initiative. I would like weapons skill to return though.

I'd love to see the shooting phase resolved like the fight phase.

I didn't like it at all and don't miss it.
That being said I do believe a unit should get a bonus when in cover and being charged, even if it's just -1 to hit.

I don't miss initiative and wouldn't want to see it return if it were used the same as in previous editions, but i'd be interested in it returning if were to be used to introduce some new mechanics - reactions or similar as mentioned above. What I wouldn't want to see is a return to a system were some armies/units were auto-win with their high initiative.

I would prefer a comparative WS system too, not necessarily the old WS table, I'd be happy with the current S/T system for WS - equal WS 4+, WS is greater 3+ WS is double 2+ WS is less 5+ and WS is half 6+ a 6 always hits and a 1always fails.

I'd also like to see Ld used for more than just a morale check.

To mitigate being wiped out before you can strike in combat, I'd be open to resolving damage/removing slain models at the end of the phase after all combats have been fought.

Not sure if all these ideas would be compatible with each other, but its the direction I'd like to see melee move.

Yep, I miss the old WS BS and I Stats, the current system is just so boring

I think the biggest issue with the change to standard WS/BS (besides being a bit silly on the WS side) is that they completely shot themselves in the foot with a game which re-introduced modifiers.

The reason we used to have larger WS/BS numbers (up to 10) was originally because of modifiers in RT/2nd edition. They then opted to remove that option....while also re-introducing modifiers, something that was a completely bizarre choice. This essentially forced GW to find alternate ways of making 2+ better than 2+ and we ended up with the rather hamfisted auras, and buffs.

2nd edition, let's assume you have a unit and it's firing at an enemy unit with -2 to hit penalty:

Imperial Guardsman (BS 3/ 4+): Requires a 6+ to hit.
Space Marine Veteran (BS 5/2+): Requires a 4+ to hit.
Space Marine Captain (BS 7/2+) : Requires a 2+ to hit.

In 8th edition, even the Space Marine Captain, a multi-hundred year old veteran of a hundred wars would also simply hit on a 4+, rather than having such a high BS that he more or less was immune to modifiers until they stacked into -3/-4 realm. While slightly clunky with a simple table you needed to know (which was actually quite easy, it was also the numbers adding up to 7) it allowed a heap more options. If we changed back to that, it would make 8th far better because super heros, characters, Primarchs etc...wouldn't be impacted and would be significantly different to normal units.

At the same time, I 100% agree they could have brought the WS option up to the current S/T comparison table to make it much easier/simpler/faster to do. The advantage of the old WS/BS system was simply that you had far more range between units. You were still technically limited to a D6 dice but it didn't matter because the 1-10 (and they could do more now, if needed...which is unlikely) gave you a vast gulf between units, much more so than the arbitrary baseline rolling mechanic.

 Huron black heart wrote:
I didn't like it at all and don't miss it.
That being said I do believe a unit should get a bonus when in cover and being charged, even if it's just -1 to hit.

Well they kinda do. It just depends on the type of terrain they're taking cover in.
Craters and woods make a charging unit subtract 2 from their charge distance if they charge through them. Some other terrain types such as battlescapes have different penalties for charging through them.