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I get that falling back is to easy and generally without risk. I like the idea put forward that you roll a d6 and compare move values to see if a fall back can be performed. But taking out falling back or giving the unit that models fell back from 2d6 movement is lunacy. It goes too far. Instead of binging things to a more balanced middle ground. It completely invalidates any form of tank army.

Not falling back was absolutely brutal in 3rd edition. Cc reigned supreme. But even in those days tanks could at least fall back and cc armies had to work to get across the board. Now it's so incredibly easy to get Multiple turn one charges it's hilarious. The game has changed and pure 3rd edition no fall back would be too much.

There is one other alternative I can think of. I would remove fall back and replace it with the following rule for each race.

Space marines: can fall back as now, but shooting at the unit you fell back from is at -1 from all sources and charges against it are at -2" (represents units scrambling out of combat so are in the way)

Eldar/harli: same as SM but no -2" charge (eldar are more agile)

Imperial guard: infantry cannot fall back, tanks can see SM. Infantry Units in combat make a leadership roll, on a pass when Friendly's shoot into combat they only take hits on natural one's, if they fail then natural 1s and 2s hit Friendlies in combat. Same -1 in shooting applies.

Orks: shoot into combat 1's hit Friendlies no -1 to hit (they don't care about hitting friendlies)

Chaos SM: can choose to follow SM or give up the -1 to hit but risk 1s hitting the friendly unit that fled

Admech: vehicles can fall back but -2 rather than -1 for shooting at the unit the vehicle fell back from (don't dare hit the sacred machine). Infantry see chaos space marines (represents that the augmented are better at escaping than un-agumented humans and that the overlords care little for the lives of their drones.

Nids: see in synapse normal bs but hit Friendly's on ones, out of synaps then hit Friendly's on 1s and 2s. No negative to hit.

Daemons: fall back as normal (they don't shoot much anyways and they are fast and can use warp shenanigans)


Etc...

I know it's a bit more to remember but I think it adds some fun flavor to each army and overall helps to protect cc units from getting wiped out once they get to combat. Almost all races that I wrote here have at least a -1 to hit the unit they fell back from or are shooting into (in the case of guard)

skchsan wrote:Simple and elegant mechanic, but still falls under 'only prevents the problem some of the times' category and has some jarring issues given that cases of double LD would most likely not show up under normal circumstances (which may be justifiable). But I really like the simplicity of it.

I would add a clause "if there are multiple LD values, use the highest".

I realize it's no perfect solution to the flawed cc / fallback system, but making fallback non-automatic might be a step in the right direction at least. You are also correct in that double ld won't happen very often. Heavy modification of ld from multiple abilities might happen though - in which case the rule still works.

Using the highest ld when in cc with multiple enemy units is a nice idea to keep it simple - will add that.

Kcalehc wrote:I like it, though it makes for an odd fluff interaction: my IG infantry are more likely able to fall back when a Commissar is nearby as they can use his leadership... which is not at all how I see that going! But rules wise it looks like it would work quite elegantly.

Well a Commissar keeps up morale and order. Under his command, an orderly disengagement from cc to regroup seems viable. As I see it, headless retreat is handled in the morale phase, which the Commissar still tries to prevent. Aside from fluff, this would make a Commissar more useful again, after the nerf to "Summary execution".

Aash wrote:I’d be interested to hear how this plays when you try it.

Out of curiosity, will you be applying and leadership modifiers based on the outcome of the preceding fight phase?

I assume you mean ld modifiers based on lost models in the preceding fight phase, correct? I won't apply those, because they already have been handled in the preceding morale phase.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 skchsan wrote:

Aash wrote:
I’d be interested to hear how this plays when you try it.

Out of curiosity, will you be applying and leadership modifiers based on the outcome of the preceding fight phase?

I think it should be devoid of any calculations outside of ability based (i.e. subtract X from leadership, use this model's Ld, etc) to maintain its simplicity.

I'm inclined to go the other way. While I agree with your above post that this isn't an ideal solution, if we were to go with something like this, it would be fitting for leadership debuffs to impact the ability to fall back. So something like Night Lords would be good at preventing the enemy from falling back in an orderly fashion (instead encouraging them to run away via morale casualties or lash out in a panic).

Right. The 'ability based' was referring to just that. Modifiers based on the result of the combat in the prior phase can get messy and clunky real fast.