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Hi there, folks.

One day, I realized that close combat in WH40k is pretty boring. There is no any freedom for decision and tactics - you are just throwing dices and removing died models.

So, I decided to rewrite close combat rules to something more similar to GURPS at least in my NKT project.

I don't think it can be used in normal-sized game, because there will be too much rolls.

P.S. Sorry for bad English, of course.

Maybe look at the older rules / Skirmish rules - esp Necromunda:

you rolled a D6 and added to your WS - highest won
Swords gave you a Parry - which meant you could get you opponent to re-roll etc.

The present system is good for large scale battle IMO

Yeah, I think so too.

This system is supposed to be used in Kill-Team.

I decided to replace current to hit table with a fixed roll like in shooting and separated dodge test, which suffers penalties if enemy's WS is higher than your.
Also, I added some other attack types - all-out attacks (which is stronger, but prevents you from dodging), all-out defence (no attacks, but increased chance to dodge) and shooting (yeah, why do you need to strike foe with meltagun's butt if you can just burn him to ashpile?)

The main problem with melee IMO, aside from the obvious one of GW just making the guns stronger and stronger, is that no matter how high your WS is you hit on 3 and get hit on 5 - so a Bloodthirster will wiff 1/3 of its attacks against guardsmen.

Thats rather stupid if you ask me

 Dakkamite wrote:
The main problem with melee IMO, aside from the obvious one of GW just making the guns stronger and stronger, is that no matter how high your WS is you hit on 3 and get hit on 5 - so a Bloodthirster will wiff 1/3 of its attacks against guardsmen.

Thats rather stupid if you ask me

Guardsmen parrying Ghazghkull's PK with their lasguns is perfectly fluffy!

Clearly your narrative was not forged sufficiently.

Strength should also have an effect on parrying if you are going to have it as a mechanic. It's true that parrying is about redirecting force, not stopping it, but being punched by a Dreadnought is like being run over by a car. You don't parry a car running over you, no matter your skill.

As nice as it would be to have more decision making ability with close combat, anything that adds complexity (to an already complex phase of a complex game) is going to slow the game down a bit. Personally, I'd like to see more things like the dire avengers' defensive tactics where you can choose to brace and punch back a little harder, or keep your guns up to get an overwatch bonus.

Rather than making it something complex that adds steps to the resolution, just make it more of an abstract, "How does the sarge tell everyone to handle this?" type thing.

+1 to the above - simple is good, 40k is already needlessly complex so lets not add to it.

Just a basic framework we could build on if you guys like it;

Overwhelming Power: Any unit that is stronger than what is needed to wound a target on a 2+ will recieve a +1 on its to hit rolls. Any unit that is tougher than what is needed to be wounded on a 6+ by an enemy attack will impose a -1 to hit for that attack.

It can be hard to write rules like this because of GW's love of mixing various stats in the same unit, but I think that will work.

Combat Drills
Not every combat is the same, sometimes the objective is to inflict as much damage as possible, and sometimes you just want to stall the enemy. Whenever a combat is fought between two or more units, each unit (beginning with the defenders units) with at least one attached character (including Sergeants etc) may declare a "drill". Overwatch may not be fired without the appropriate drill.

~Tear them Apart!: The unit recieves +1 to-hit, but opponents hit them on a +1 as well.
~Strike them Down!: Reduce enemy armour saves by 1, but reduce your WS by 2. Use their normal save when comparing to AP values.
~Brace Yourselves!: The unit imposes a -1 to-wound on enemy attacks, but their own attacks suffer a -1 to wound the opponent
~Stand and Fire!: The unit can fire overwatch as the enemy charges [Defender Only]
~Reckless Charge!: Add +2 to charge distance, but opponent attacks (including overwatch) recieve a +1 to hit. [Attacker Only]

Yeah, that's sort of what I had in mind, dakkamite. Of course, even changes like those have their problems. >.<

Anything that ups lethality will generally favor units with higher initiative, for instance. Already hard to kill deathstars will still tear things up easily, but they'll also inflict a -1 on enemy to-wound rolls.

Its pretty much impossible to make melee rules that are meaningful in the context of the invincible melee deathstars imo

 Dakkamite wrote:
Its pretty much impossible to make melee rules that are meaningful in the context of the invincible melee deathstars imo

Fair. But even things like bikers and nurgle marines become considerably more of a challenge with a -1 to wound.

Bikers and Cav really shouldn't be able to brace anyway, and even if they can its just another example of bikers being illogically good at everything in the 41st millennia

Didn't realize Nurgle Marines were so much of a powerhouse...

It's not that nurgle marines are especially nasty in general, but bracing would make it so that anything strength 4 or less would wound them on 6s. So a minimum squad of them can tarpit most units pretty reliably for multiple turns.

I don't really see that as much of a problem myself

If a unit has trouble wounding Plague Marines (etc) it probably doesn't want to be in combat anyway, and if the rather slow Plague Marines managed to get into CC with it I'd call that good strategy by the Chaos player.

Maybe I'm missing something?

Oh I would love to see more CC in 40k. But as much as we are talking about CC in itself, how about looking at the shooting? Is it, based on each phases' method of interaction, leaning to one or the other?

In essence is shooting in need to be toned back a bit to make CC inviting?

Just trying to look at the discussion from another angle ^_^.

Its no secret that shooting is OTT, the problem lies in trying to convince everyone that their gun should have less shots and weaker ones

Outside of a few problematic guns, I actually find shooting to be about where it should be for most armies. The issue is that bringing shooting to bare is easy. Getting into assault is hard.

By the time you get to assault a shooty army, it's already gotten at least one or two turns of shooting at you. If you want to reach the enemy faster, you have to disembark from your vehicle, sit around after outflanking/deepstriking, and then let them shoot at you again. Then you get to try a charge that can potentially fail from 2" away, and the enemy gets to overwatch you to add just a bit more damage to the mix. If you do get unlucky and fail some important charges, your opponent gets more shots at you.

Now that said, assault armies that actually reach shooty army lines intact usually do pretty alright. Enemy guns are silenced while they're tied up in combat, and things not in combat can't shoot at things that are. The problem is that the current edition has this weird emphasis on letting the enemy shoot you before you can assault him even if you take steps to mitigate that shooting.

Let units assault after disembarking from a vehicle that hasn't moved that turn as per fifth edition, and you make it much easier to field many assault options. Maybe let outflankers and normal reserves units assault the turn they arrive (you counter this by simply controlling the center of the board and not hugging the board edge).

tldr: Shooting is mostly fine. Assault is mostly fine. Getting assault units into combat with shooty units is the problem.

By the time you get to assault a shooty army, it's already gotten at least one or two turns of shooting at you. If you want to reach the enemy faster, you have to disembark from your vehicle, sit around after outflanking/deepstriking, and then let them shoot at you again. Then you get to try a charge that can potentially fail from 2" away, and the enemy gets to overwatch you to add just a bit more damage to the mix. If you do get unlucky and fail some important charges, your opponent gets more shots at you.

You forgot the part where after assaulting and winning against their gakky bubble wrap unit, you stop 1" away from the next unit and get shot up some more.

Maybe let outflankers and normal reserves units assault the turn they arrive

If you can shoot, you should be able to assault too. Min melta squad DS behind a tank and kill it, or next to a blob and kill it is not ok if my stormboyz cannot land next to a unit and assault it.

My only issue with outflank etc assaults is that there are some rather fast units like bikes that you kind of can't escape by just hugging the center.

Reserves Assault + something like "full BS overwatch against a unit assaulting from reserves" could be a good middle ground.

After that a fix for slow assault units like deff dreads (seriously, what *is* the point here?) and a cost adjustment between melee and gun options and we should be golden

 Dakkamite wrote:
The main problem with melee IMO, aside from the obvious one of GW just making the guns stronger and stronger, is that no matter how high your WS is you hit on 3 and get hit on 5 - so a Bloodthirster will wiff 1/3 of its attacks against guardsmen.

Thats rather stupid if you ask me

A friend of mine who plays Chaos is frequently frustrated by the same thing with his Bloodthirster. Something with WS10 should really be hitting on a 2+ I reckon. I know WS helps in defending attacks back, but still, more should hit in the first place. Saying that, his Kharn the Betrayer can hit on a 2+ due to his special rules so there is a unit in the game that can hit on a 2+

I personally don't think the combat system in the game is too bad. No need for a complete overhaul, but just a few minor tweaks (like to hit rolls for the highest WS you can get). When you start adding more variables in there, it just gets too complicated.

Just 2 things would make things more interesting.

1) A unit that made a successful sweeping advance can only be snapshotted until the end of game turn. They are slaughtering the enemy forces.

2) Run to 2d6.

The second one in particular would close a bit the gap between bikes and infantry. What needs help is the 6" move infantry.

Other things that would be nice:

3) Shots fired while below 12" range are always precision shots. This way you can shoot before assaulting without fear of increasing the assault distance.

4) If firing overwatch you resolve attacks at I 1.

I would like a return to being able to sweeping advance into a second unit. Make it dependent on how much overkill you got.

Like you only get to charge d6 but add the difference by which you won combat (up to 6). And no overwatch on those as you were just killing friendlies mere seconds ago. It would help with CC and it would promote bigger units in order to get that nice bonus.

Otherwise CC isn't that bad. There is overwatch to consider and hammer of wrath, different AP and toughness values, tanks s infantry. The strategy is more pre deployment I guess but that's fine with me. Once you hit the table shooting isn't really that different either.

Being able to hit on twos would be great. They could do it the same way it works in defense. So that you need more than double to be able to hit on 2+. Very few models would be able to pull that off (rightfully imo). After all it is much easier to get re-rolls than it is for shooting.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Spoletta wrote:
Just 2 things would make things more interesting.

1) A unit that made a successful sweeping advance can only be snapshotted until the end of game turn. They are slaughtering the enemy forces.

2) Run to 2d6.

The second one in particular would close a bit the gap between bikes and infantry. What needs help is the 6" move infantry.

Other things that would be nice:

3) Shots fired while below 12" range are always precision shots. This way you can shoot before assaulting without fear of increasing the assault distance.

4) If firing overwatch you resolve attacks at I 1.

4 I can agree with, nice idea, but 3 would make (d)eldar and sister brutally effective. Half their stuff is meant to be used at that range.
I also think infantry are fine with a d6 run, but I'd like a return to being able to assault if you stand still with a transport.

With your proposal to be able to sweep into a second unit, would they be able to fight immediately, and if so, would they be able to sweep and annihilate multiple units per assault phase?

I suppose it would be enough to count them as having assaulted in the next combat phase, that being the opponent's. So things like rage would trigger again in that phase. I'd say that would fit the Berzerkers quite well for one.

Like you only get to charge d6 but add the difference by which you won combat (up to 6).

The problem here is that Orks and other horde melee will never get more than d6, as they rarely actually "win" the combat. If anything its these big stampeding melee units that should have the most overrun

The second one in particular would close a bit the gap between bikes and infantry. What needs help is the 6" move infantry.

Bikes also need a kick in the teeth. They're better than everyone at everything

That's not what I'm experiencing. They either completely overun the opposing unit or die. A bit less so now that power klaws got indirectly nerfed but still.
Besides how else would you win combat? Either you overrun them or win combat by enough to force a moral check that they loose and you sweep, in this case causing them to advance into another potentially.

Which I suppose could be extended to completely wiping out the other squad too, since you don't get to sweep in that case.

30 Orks charge 10 marines. Space Marines kill 11+ Orks. Orks kill 10 space marines. Orks destroyed the enemy but did not "win" combat in terms of resolution. Advance d6 + nothing.

That's very very different from my experience. Marines only have 11 attacks when charged since they only have 1 attack each, so I don't see how they would kill 11 orks. In my experience it's like maybe 5 and then they get steamrolled by some 40+ dice. Often killing them outright, and even the challenge might kill the nob +1 at worst. Not to mention all the MSU spam they will have now because of the new formations and combat squadding.

They even managed to fully kill a 3+ save daemon prince in one turn with pistol shooting and hammer of wrath attacks. Not saying they weren't lucky, but ork boyz horde charges are the bane of my existance XD

If they somehow make it to a unit alive, that unit is so so dead. They even have like a 85+% killrate of landraiders, screw tank bustas lol. But maybe that guy is secretly actually gork or possibly mork I dunno.

I think your missing the point. Orks can kill an enemy unit, but they will not beat half-decent troops in combat resolution even if they wipe them out to a man.

That means that under your suggested mechanic they'd very rarely get the movement bonus, which is the inverse of how a rule like that should be working.

That's what I was trying to say. In my example it would have been 5, maybe 6 to 10 so they would have gotten +4 to +5 inches. And that with quite the regularity, against msu the would take maybe 1-2 wound, so the resolution would still end with about 4 inches bonus.

At least that's how it is here. It would work quite well. If that's uncommon elsewhere, then you could always add a flat bonus for wiping the other unit out the hard way, something like +2.

The brb rules at least stipulates that if the enemy unit is wiped the other unit won the combat no matter how many wounds were made by the wiped out unit. But still I can see how this situation still seems laughable if 30 Orks charge 10 Marines killing 9 Marines and losing 11 Orks and end up losing the phase. I'm sure 19 Orks aren't scared of a single space marine and shouldn't be in threat of being swept by a lone Marine.
Some things I'd like to see to improve CC is to drop a lot of the restrictions preventing units from charging.

In the specific variant mentioned above, you could possibly patch the "won by annihilation, lost by wound count" problem by giving a unit that annihilated its opposition an automatic bonus 6" of charge distance, so there's a real incentive to smash through that lone surviving Broadside, say, before sweeping the Fire Warriors out of existence.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, related - another option: If you destroy (either by removing all models as casualties or by causing it to run off the table) a unit in the shooting phase, you may charge any other unit within range. Superheavy walkers and gargantuan creatures must still charge a unit that they shot, unless all units that they shot were annihilated.