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Standard boltgun ammunition fires an explosive round that can penetrate most barriers it encounters. (except tree branches)
The mighty lascannon can punch a whole through an Imperial Knight and is feared throughout the galaxy (unless you're hiding behind a collapsed wall)

I love 40k and have fond memories from playing for many years. While I may do a healthy dose of complaining about cheesy lists, I love the support and creativity the game has these days. So many cool ideas that just keep coming!
The one thing that makes me sad is how the mighty weapons that used to make me quiver are now a laughing stock.

I propose a simple change;

What if Cover was more like it was in fantasy? I


any normal cover that gives a 5+ would simply work out to a -1 to hit.
any normal cover that gives a 4+ would be a -2 to hit.

ie. a space marine firing a bolter would normally hit on a 3 shooting at dark eldar in cover. the dark eldar would then get the 5+ cover save.

I propose that the space marine firing would need a 4 to hit but if he hit (and wounded) there would be no additional role.

i think we can all agree that the lascannon would punch through the brick wall. the trouble is that if it punches through 3 feet above the xenos skimmer, there hasn't been a hit.

you may argue (and the math may support) that leaving the BS the same and simply rolling a cover save may end up working out about the same. i would answer with the following;
a rhino is bunkered down behind a collapsed building.
a venom comes hunting with an archon with a blast pistol. normally BS5 would hit on a 2. in this case, the archon is BS7. those extra 2 points of ballistic skill would be nulled by the -2 reduction due to the cover save of the rhino.
as such, the archon is still hitting on a 2+. his keen eye and quick reflexes allow him to direct a shot through a crevace tagging the rhino.

with no cover save we'd see the results!

lastly.. template weapons.
while I don't play knights.. it frustrates me that the mighty battle cannon is such a joke. if i'm worried about getting hit by it, I'll hide in cover and take my chances.
Let's say I'm hiding in a ruin.. it would just mean that when he scatters, he has to add+2. If he rolls a direct hit, I'm screwed. if it scatters then the ruin may help save my but.

I would think a battle cannon hitting a ruined building would bring the whole thing down on top of whoever is in there. cover or not, still seems like you'd be dead.

Anyways, this was an idea I was thinking. while I doubt I'll ever play like that for fun, it seemed like such an easy way to do things in WFB and it always made more sense. the cover should represent the difficulty of actually hitting your target; not the chance that a treebranch gets in the way of an artillery shell and saves the day.

thoughts?

It's been covered many times. I would prefer cover as a to hit mod over a save because a: less dice rolling steps, and b: everyone would benefit equally, instead of some units like canoptek wraiths or daemons pretty much never getting any benefit from cover, while tons more only benefit if their armor would be ignored.

The only issues are things like: the squad is half-in and half-out of cover. You fire a big mess o shots like a squadron of ig punisher cannons into them. What is the hit roll needed?

niv-mizzet wrote:
It's been covered many times. I would prefer cover as a to hit mod over a save because a: less dice rolling steps, and b: everyone would benefit equally, instead of some units like canoptek wraiths or daemons pretty much never getting any benefit from cover, while tons more only benefit if their armor would be ignored.

The only issues are things like: the squad is half-in and half-out of cover. You fire a big mess o shots like a squadron of ig punisher cannons into them. What is the hit roll needed?

This. Plus, having prevalent penalties to BS potentially nerfs shooting into oblivion. Especially if things like stealth and shrouded make those penalties even wrose. It's a good idea that would only really work if you remade half the system.

niv-mizzet wrote:


The only issues are things like: the squad is half-in and half-out of cover. You fire a big mess o shots like a squadron of ig punisher cannons into them. What is the hit roll needed?

If greater than or equal to 50% of the model(s) is in/behind said cover that would grant them X modifier, than grant them X modifier. If less than 50% is in/behind cover that would grant X modifer, then instead the modifier is reduced one step to a minimum of no modifier granted (for a +1 modifier, for example).

Keep it simple really, I figure.

You do realize cover is not an armour save.

It's basically one squad saying hey we are taking shots from some guys behind that building...
Shoot ... Miss
Dang they are on the other section of that building.

This is why templates and ignore cover weapons work it's like the ig wyvern it doesn't aim it shoots sharpnel all over the place.
A lascannon is a prescision shot a bolter is still a prescision shot. That's why cover works. However a hit modifier is basically the same effect but it involves the type of math which the game tends to stay away from.

Assuming you were able to stack all modifiers such as a shrouded and stealth unit in a ruin that had been buffed by a techmarine that also had a straight up +1 bonus to cover you would be looking at a - 7 to hit on your roll. Given you'd probably have to cap at 6's to hit, orks become an excellent shooting army in the game as they already revolve around being terrible at shooting by balancing it with lots shots. Elite shooting armies that pay points for bs are worse that orks when it comes playing in a cover strewn map.

Well you also have to consider that certain armies rely on Cover to survive at all. If anything I wouldn't mind that kind of change in regards to my bikers since they already get the coversave without having to be in cover so if anything it wouldn't be a big deal, but for IG and Orks your gimping our infantry who rely on that 5+ CS to do anything in regards to minimizing casualties.

Also, I know its called a cover save, but you also have to factor in that it is "Concealing" your unit.

I like the OPs idea - I know it's been proposed several times here and there.

As far as Orks go (I'm an Ork player) just make them reroll any successful hits to confirm the hit (on a 2+/3+ or something) to take their low BS into consideration. The mathhammer guys can figure it out

I see this suggestion a lot, but it's always seemed to me that the problem with cover is not the fact that its a separate save instead of a BS modifier, and more that its applied so unequally.

With 6th and 7th editions introducing jink, this has only made the distinction of a "cover save" even less sensible and caused problems with other rules, such as ignores cover.

We already have FnP in the game as a stacked save, so GW's point of "only one save" seems rather silly, especially since its so prevalent. Just let models choose 2 of their available saves, make getting cover saves higher than a 5+ (and especially higher than a 4+) much harder to get, and just be done with it. This also has the added benefit of allowing players whose models would normally only get a cover save (gaunts, guardsmen, etc) to participate in their model's damage process, rather than simply removing models like they would under a BS modifier for cover.

Meanwhile, make jink a BS modifier, as this is where it actually makes sense. That turbo-boosting jetbike is hard to hit because by the time you've aimed at it, it's already gone, not because that big blob of empty space obscured it. This could cause issues with extremely fast moving units also moving into cover, making them both near impossible to hit, and getting a bonus save to boot, but the game already has legal rerollable 2++ saves in it, so i'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

To make it realistic I think cover should give obscurement benefits and/or physical protection. I would like to see a more interactive system for armor saves, then cover can make your armor save better, but the AP of the weapon can reduce it. So something like AV 4+ becomes AV2+ if behind cover that grants a +2 bonus to AV. Then an AP3 weapon would reduce the save from 2+ to 5+. This is the physical protection cover would give in some cases.

Some things such as tall grass would not give any real physcial protection, but would obscure the target so should penalize the to hit roll. The size of the penalty would vary based on how much they obscure the target.

Of course doing it this way would require a significant overhaul of the system and make things a bit more complexx so isn't really viable outside a houserule setting. Too bad as it feels the most realistic to me.

I do like the idea of to hit rolls based on cover rather than a save. Though often I'd settle for decent amounts and sizes of terrain on the table. So much of what sucks about the game is the set up we see at most events, even casual games. We don't need to skirmish on open fields to kill the enemy, we can bomb them from orbit for that. Start there and then we can really see what needs fixing.