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Okay, so how good/bad would a rection fire mechanic be in your opinion? The genreal idea being that your unit could reaction fire at a unit moving into their LOS or firing at them with a round of fire at -1 or -2 BS, even snapshooting if you really want, but in turn must give up it's shooting in the next round. Alternatively, five up shooting only if it's a heavy weapons, rapid fire, Assault, and all of the other ones can still shoot next turn as normal. Could this be implementable, or do you feel it would complicate the game to much and give some armies to much advantage? Just fishing for opinions and what you think a reaction fire rule, if any, would be best suited for 40k?

This gets tossed around from time to time and everyone always wants to reinvent the wheel with this type of stuff. The best way to do it is taking existing elements and reworking them into the mechanic you want them to be. Here is what I would do, and had done before I went and rewrote the game myself anyway:

"Overwatch" confers a -2 BS modifier, to a minimum of 1.

A unit must declare in its own shooting phase that it is going to overwatch next turn. If it does this, it cannot shoot this phase.

Cognis or anything that modifies overwatch is changed to "May shoot in the same phase it declares overwatch"

And then this is modular. You can add elements to this as you please, pretty much, as long as you convert anything that would contradict it too. I always thought everyone deserves counter attack, so in lieu of shooting, you can prepare a counter attack (it just needs a different name). Then models with the Counter Attack USR (space wolves/ Khorne marines) get an additional attack when preparing a counter attack.

Simple, modular and everyone does everything on their own turn so you aren't stepping on each other's toes on your opponent's turn.

Not a huge fan of it for 40k. In something like Infinity where you have a smaller number of models to work with or even Zone Mortalis where it's easy to figure out if something comes into line of sight, it's easier to resolve. In a regular game of 40k, you'd be talking about:

* Keeping track of which units prepared to "reactionary fire"
* Measuring ranges to see how many of which units moved within range of how many of the reactionary unit's models.
* The above, but in potentially every phase of the game.
* Mixed ranges on weapons (the missile launcher guy will get a chance to reactionary fire pretty much every time someone moves).
* Pausing, if only for a half second each time, to ask if your opponent wants to use his reactionary fire.

And then on top of all that, your opponent can easily take advantage of your reactionary fire by moving such that only a single model in your unit can shoot or such that only a single model in his unit can be killed, and then you basically just wasted that unit's chance at shooting.

It's a cool mechanic that works better in games other than 40k. Also, this would technically give a small boost to shooting armies, which is hardly necessary.

I prefer to use a more interactive game turn.
Like alternating or interleaved phases.

Overwatch was a thing in RT and 2nd. It was a smaller game there but it made sense...basically you forego shooting in your turn to shoot in your opponent's turn. It's not all that complicated - place an Overwatch token next to the unit, and remove it after it resolves the Overwatch.

It's really no more complicated than Interceptor, with the exception that Interceptor can be fired without declaring Overwatch.


It'd be a nice counter to things like Skyhammer.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
Overwatch was a thing in RT and 2nd. It was a smaller game there but it made sense...basically you forego shooting in your turn to shoot in your opponent's turn. It's not all that complicated - place an Overwatch token next to the unit, and remove it after it resolves the Overwatch.

It's really no more complicated than Interceptor, with the exception that Interceptor can be fired without declaring Overwatch.


It'd be a nice counter to things like Skyhammer.

You raise good points, but I'm not convinced. ^_^;

2nd edition was very complicated, so saying old-school "overwatch" worked in the past doesn't necessarily make me want to see it return any more than I want to see vehicle turning angles return.

I may be overestimating the level of complication it would add to the game, but it doesn't seem especially necessary either. Countering skyhammer is nice, but skyhammer seems like a rude thing to bring to a friendly game (which is probably the only place you'd use homebrew rules), so I'm not sure how useful it would really be. And again, skyhammer aside, there are already a lot of little advantages in place that shooting has over assaulting. This would just unbalance the scales a bit more.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
Overwatch was a thing in RT and 2nd. It was a smaller game there but it made sense...basically you forego shooting in your turn to shoot in your opponent's turn. It's not all that complicated - place an Overwatch token next to the unit, and remove it after it resolves the Overwatch.

It's really no more complicated than Interceptor, with the exception that Interceptor can be fired without declaring Overwatch.


It'd be a nice counter to things like Skyhammer.

You raise good points, but I'm not convinced. ^_^;

2nd edition was very complicated, so saying old-school "overwatch" worked in the past doesn't necessarily make me want to see it return any more than I want to see vehicle turning angles return.

I may be overestimating the level of complication it would add to the game, but it doesn't seem especially necessary either. Countering skyhammer is nice, but skyhammer seems like a rude thing to bring to a friendly game (which is probably the only place you'd use homebrew rules), so I'm not sure how useful it would really be. And again, skyhammer aside, there are already a lot of little advantages in place that shooting has over assaulting. This would just unbalance the scales a bit more.

Well if overwatch was a little more powerful, but optional and presented a decision to be made, its less advantageous. Right now, one of the advantages shooting has over assault is that you can shoot in your own phase and your opponent's assault phase. replacing overwatch with a reaction fire mechanic works because it injects a little strategy into the game and arguably would level the shooting vs assault debate

It promotes "stand and shoot" style of gameplay, which they've been trying to get rid of for 15 years now.

Basically at least one entire side's game play for their turn in 2nd edition was "my army goes on overwatch, your turn."

I think having to declare something is the problem with that. Any time there is a token system or change of status like proposed-old overwatch or gone to ground / pinning, I think you should wonder whether that is the part of the game you want to use tokens for compared to all the other things you could.

Can the mechanics of XCom be used for reaction shots?