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 Hellebore wrote:

Breton wrote:

I think they were saying "Waah! Marines." without giving it any thought at all: to which I provided the thought required. Allowing the Nightlords, Dark Angels, Bela'Kor, Howling Banshees, Incubi, Deathleapers to play the Battle Shock "phase" doesn't inherently punish Guard, Orks, Little Bugs and so on. They have so many units they're naturally resistant to the Battleshock game because of the rule of three plus the nature of limited gimmick application no matter the gimmick. 1 Unit of Grots is more susceptible to Battle Shock from 1 Unit of Reivers, but that's not X Points vs X Points.

Your off the top of your head example explicitly put guard at the bottom of a list of negative effects and marines at the top.

Hive Mind is Nids not Marines. You should probably know this sort of basic fact before commenting more.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JNAProductions wrote:

Breton wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Breton, you say it only happens to one unit at a time.
Have you faced an army that actually tries battleshocking things as best they can? Because it’s gonna hit a lot more than one unit at a time.

How does an army - limited by the rule of three if not even more strict limits like Epic Heroes and 1 Stratagem useage per turn - use all those gimmicks on more than a unit or two at a time?

You do realize that there's a decent chunk of units that can inflict Battleshock (or at least tests) via shooting, charging, in an AoE, as a targeted ability...

Moreover, if you want a Battleshock build to be viable, you would absolutely have to be able to Shock a good chunk of units. Not everyone has a single 500 point unit to Battleshock.

You do realize that most units by default - without a gimmick - will pass their battleshock roll at least half the time? Even Cultists have a LD of 7+ which is the 50% roll?


You do realize all those units that can battleshock other units just by shooting or fighting and so on don't have a gimmick to take advantage even if they DO battle shock someone?

Breton wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

Breton wrote:

I think they were saying "Waah! Marines." without giving it any thought at all: to which I provided the thought required. Allowing the Nightlords, Dark Angels, Bela'Kor, Howling Banshees, Incubi, Deathleapers to play the Battle Shock "phase" doesn't inherently punish Guard, Orks, Little Bugs and so on. They have so many units they're naturally resistant to the Battleshock game because of the rule of three plus the nature of limited gimmick application no matter the gimmick. 1 Unit of Grots is more susceptible to Battle Shock from 1 Unit of Reivers, but that's not X Points vs X Points.

Your off the top of your head example explicitly put guard at the bottom of a list of negative effects and marines at the top.

Hive Mind is Nids not Marines. You should probably know this sort of basic fact before commenting more.

Ok, so on your scale marines are not at or near the top? You're going to make the elite faction that feels no fear get stacked with a bunch of negative effects? Because if so great and I'll rescind my comment.

Pretending that's not going to be in there as a got you is not arguing in good faith. That's like proposing a new shooting system where you want grots with bad BS and custodes with good BS, but claiming this says nothing about the quality of marine BS. Unless you are proposing a substantial retconn of the posterchild faction arbitrarily to avoid this conclusion, all you are doing is dancing around your words to avoid admitting something that's patently obvious.



For those discussing psychological warfare ala DE and Nightlords vs the generic battlefield cohesion concept around battleshock, perhaps this is where the utility of strategems actually comes in. IE those armies that do inflict unique forms of disruption can use strategems for enemy battleshock tests.

You can maintain the generic battleshock rules and for the unique expressions of how this might be enacted, a strategem is applied when an enemy unit fails a battleshock test to add an additional factor the effects. This means that you don't have all armies running from DE regardless of psychology, but that specific instances can have that effect on one unit. Unnatural fear severing nids from the hive mind temporarily, or scrambling circuits in necrons, or misfiring synapses in marine heads causing them to flee in confusion.

You get the flavour and can build detachments around battleshock as a specific weapon.

Breton wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

Breton wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Breton, you say it only happens to one unit at a time.
Have you faced an army that actually tries battleshocking things as best they can? Because it’s gonna hit a lot more than one unit at a time.

How does an army - limited by the rule of three if not even more strict limits like Epic Heroes and 1 Stratagem useage per turn - use all those gimmicks on more than a unit or two at a time?

You do realize that there's a decent chunk of units that can inflict Battleshock (or at least tests) via shooting, charging, in an AoE, as a targeted ability...

Moreover, if you want a Battleshock build to be viable, you would absolutely have to be able to Shock a good chunk of units. Not everyone has a single 500 point unit to Battleshock.

You do realize that most units by default - without a gimmick - will pass their battleshock roll at least half the time? Even Cultists have a LD of 7+ which is the 50% roll?


You do realize all those units that can battleshock other units just by shooting or fighting and so on don't have a gimmick to take advantage even if they DO battle shock someone?

If you can force a test on four units per turn with a -1 penalty, you'd expect to see Leadership 6+ MEQ having more than fifty fifty odds of failing at least two.

The Sloppity Bilepiper forces a morale test in a 6" zone at the start of every single Fight Phase. Catching four units with one is very possible. And it's not an Epic Hero, so you can have three of them.

Moreoever, if you want Battleshock-focused archetypes to be usable, they're going to HAVE to have tools to shock multiple units.

Tyel wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
I think one of the challenges around Battleshock is that its much fluffier for scary things to do scary things than it is for them to bookkeep status effects. Night Lords aren't scary because they're got a slightly higher than normal number of skulls on their models. They're scary because they appear in your face and shred you to decorative ribbons. I think when you mix it in with some defensive effects it can add to the overall vibe, but its very easy to try and make psychological effects the focus, when it really needs to be a secondary effect.

The problem is always "one faction's scary is another players "wouldn't happen".

I think if Battleshock is going to exist, it has to be about a unit becoming combat ineffective for whatever reason. Maybe they are recovering from their wounds, or feel they can't go on, or are crawling from the battlefield. Rather than being scared.

I know the fluff is that Night Lords are scary - but "in game" its kind of stupid because 90% of factions probably shouldn't care. Should someone like DE for instance (also often running around in skins and skulls" be scared or just say "game see's game?"
Its arguably easier to imagine that Night Lords are just really good/motivated to go after the combat ineffective. You are trying to rescue/patchup the wounded, or reorganise? That's when they stick the knife in.

You could make units have to give ground 6" or something - but in 40k holding an objective is generally the difference between a good turn and a bad turn - and usually winning or losing. So we are sort of back to "this has to be rare because its game deciding" - which I don't think is a good place to be with almost any rule.

I agree with a lot of this, but I do want to suggest that it's not unreasonable to interpret Night Lords as being good at identifying when they're facing something they can't literally "scare" and to then switch tactics to pushing different psychological/tactical buttons.

There's a scene in the Night Lords omnibus (that also appears in a different story from the Salamanders' perspectives) where some Night Lord raptors ambush said Salamanders. They don't really try to spook them the way they might some unaugmented humans, but they do prepare an ambush from hiding and (iirc) try to lure the Salamanders out of position, go after the isolated loyalists, etc. My point being that even if a faction like the NL can't make the enemy pee their pants, they probably still have a knack for baiting enemies out of position, identifying isolated/vulnerable targets, put some enemies on alert so that they're overly cautious as they move to support alllies that are being hit by the real attack, etc. And I think all of that ties in nicely to the idea of battleshock representing disruption even if it doesn't represent actual fear.

Although side note: I also think it's cool to give "fear armies" access to rules that encourage generally spooky/horror movie behavior without necessarily tying it into battleshock specifically. Ex: Giving NL bonuses if they attack enemy units that aren't within X" of another enemy unit; giving the impression that you're especially good at picking off isolated targets. The grotmas detachment for CSM also does a decent job of this by giving them bonuses if they go after targets that are below half strength, which you could reasonably interpret as either the enemy being a bit shaken up by their losses or as the Night Lords being good at identifying gaps in the enemy formation due to their losses.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

If you can force a test on four units per turn with a -1 penalty, you'd expect to see Leadership 6+ MEQ having more than fifty fifty odds of failing at least two.

Nitpick: Unless my math is off, it would be slightly less than 50% odds because 7 is the most likely result on 2d6. But I knew what you meant.

You have a just over 40% chance of failure on any given 7+ test on 2d6.

If you roll four tests, you have about a 55% chance of at least two failures.

 Hellebore wrote:
Ok, so on your scale marines are not at or near the top? You're going to make the elite faction that feels no fear get stacked with a bunch of negative effects? Because if so great and I'll rescind my comment.

Personally I'd love for resistance to morale effects to be Space Marines' defining characteristic. It would be good training wheels for the newbie faction, and give them some identity besides 'everything you can do I can do better' bland elite-ness. Epic does it well.

Of course this would also require that subfactions and abilities built around morale effects are implemented in such a way that they don't become completely worthless against the most common army in the game.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

catbarf wrote:
Given modern 40K's focus on objectives, I think it'd be interesting if morale could force short fall-back moves. Not units panicking and routing off the table until rallied, just being driven back from an untenable position by fire. That provides a tangible gameplay consequence, without neutering the unit entirely or solely affecting their ability to produce damage.

I like the general concept, but I worry that it might be hard to implement. Forcing a squad of dark reapers or devastators to back up doesn't really impact them at all unless it also forces them to move out of line of sight of whatever they wanted to shoot at.

More importantly it does nothing to protect the unit retreating unless they move out of line of sight. In fact, it makes it easier to shoot them to death than if they had kept charging forward into melee. Since 40k has no modifiers for range and a bolter can shoot across half the table there's almost never a situation where moving backwards helps you avoid shooting unless you happen to have cover directly behind you. (And if you had cover to the side of you the morale rules just prevented you from going there, and instead compelled you run back and forth in the enemy's firing lane.)

Playing orks in 4e was very frustrating because you spent the whole game taking fire from a gunline, then the turn before you were safely engaged you would flub a morale check and have your unit run backwards through the open field getting shot in the back. At that point I'd rather a failed morale check just insta-wipe the squad and save me the trouble.

 Hellebore wrote:

Breton wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

Breton wrote:

I think they were saying "Waah! Marines." without giving it any thought at all: to which I provided the thought required. Allowing the Nightlords, Dark Angels, Bela'Kor, Howling Banshees, Incubi, Deathleapers to play the Battle Shock "phase" doesn't inherently punish Guard, Orks, Little Bugs and so on. They have so many units they're naturally resistant to the Battleshock game because of the rule of three plus the nature of limited gimmick application no matter the gimmick. 1 Unit of Grots is more susceptible to Battle Shock from 1 Unit of Reivers, but that's not X Points vs X Points.

Your off the top of your head example explicitly put guard at the bottom of a list of negative effects and marines at the top.

Hive Mind is Nids not Marines. You should probably know this sort of basic fact before commenting more.

Ok, so on your scale marines are not at or near the top? You're going to make the elite faction that feels no fear get stacked with a bunch of negative effects? Because if so great and I'll rescind my comment.

Pretending that's not going to be in there as a got you is not arguing in good faith.

Didn't you JUST lie about me putting Marines at the top?

different categories for the units from the bottom of "Cultists" to the top of "Hive Mind"

when not only did I not mention Marines, but I literally directly and explicitly said Hive Mind was at the top? Tell me more about arguing in bad faith.