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Hey guys,

I've been trying a few things and meddling with changing rules slightly and making additions, and I thought that taking and being able to Deep Strike Terminator Assault Squads needs to be a little bit more viable. So, I came up with the following Special Rule for Terminator Assault Squads.

Masters of Close Combat
If the unit arrives by Deep Strike, they may attempt to make an assault on the same turn they arrive by Deep Strike, but the unit receives a –2” Modifier to the Charge Distance in addition to any other modifiers to Charge Distance (e.g. The Multiplier from Difficult Terrain). Additionally, if they choose to charge on the same turn they arrive by Deep Strike, the –2” Modifier becomes a –4” Modifier if any model in the unit is within 4” of the target.

I figured this could be an exclusive rule for Terminator Assault Squads that allowed them to be a viable Deep Strike choice, but also disallow them to go balls deep and wreak face. I also contemplated forcing the Squad to fight the ensuing assault phase at Initiative 1 regardless of their weaponry, or allow their target to Overwatch (if they can indeed Overwatch) at BS2 instead of BS1, but with the modifiers to charge distance in the rule already, I wasn't sure if they were necessary.

Thoughts?

Cheers Guys

I'm afraid I don't particularly like it. Smallish charge penalties, increased overwatch, and initiative modifiers (that won't make a difference for the more popular variant of assault termies) all just yell, "This probably shouldn't be allowed, but what if I throw in some downsides?" to me.

I'm not necessarily opposed to assaulting out of deepstrike (though I think it should be a rare ability in the extreme), but here are a few things to consider:

* Terminators are the guys that can assault out of deepstrike? Really, man? Not assault marines, storm boyz, or even dark eldar hellions? It just seems very odd to me that a bunch of guys wrapped in tanks could be throwing themselves through the warp, popping out the other side, and assaulting afterwards while their much quicker enemies struggle to pull off the same thing. This is mostly a fluff thing. ^_^;

* Aren't there already a few formations that let terminators do this?

I'm all for bugging termies, but this doesn't seem like the way to do it to me.

If they land within 4'' then why not let them charge, you've already got lucky once why ask it twice of them? on average your 7''-4 is only 3. Gonna fail.

An ideal scenario is this:
Spend over 200 points for a terminator squad
Roll a 3+ on turn 2 for reserves
Deepstrike without mishaping
make a successful charge

those are a LOT of things that need to go right on a very costly unit.

-2 might even be a bit too much, they still wouldn't see a ton of play in competitive events.

Wyldhunt wrote:
I'm afraid I don't particularly like it. Smallish charge penalties, increased overwatch, and initiative modifiers (that won't make a difference for the more popular variant of assault termies) all just yell, "This probably shouldn't be allowed, but what if I throw in some downsides?" to me.

Well as far as my thought processes took me, it was either "Chuck in some things to make it more difficult to assault out of Deep Strike", allow them to do it as a result of being part of a formation, or both.

Wyldhunt wrote:
I'm not necessarily opposed to assaulting out of deepstrike (though I think it should be a rare ability in the extreme), but here are a few things to consider:

* Terminators are the guys that can assault out of deepstrike? Really, man? Not assault marines, storm boyz, or even dark eldar hellions? It just seems very odd to me that a bunch of guys wrapped in tanks could be throwing themselves through the warp, popping out the other side, and assaulting afterwards while their much quicker enemies struggle to pull off the same thing. This is mostly a fluff thing. ^_^;

* Aren't there already a few formations that let terminators do this?

I'm all for bugging termies, but this doesn't seem like the way to do it to me.

It's not that I'm necessarily discriminating against any of the others, but at the moment I'm considering a rule for Terminators (which in all fairness could be applied to the others, but I don't really have any knowledge of units outside the Space Marines Codex). That being said, I'd be all for introducing this rule (or a similar rule for Assault Marine Squads and Vanguard Veteran Squads because, as you said, it would be a lot easier for them to do assault out of Deep Strike (fluff-wise).

As for formations which allow you to do this, there are none that I'm away of, but the vast majority of formations outside of the Space Marine Codex are formations I don't really not anything about. So, in answer to your question: There could be.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Aijec wrote:
If they land within 4'' then why not let them charge, you've already got lucky once why ask it twice of them? on average your 7''-4 is only 3. Gonna fail.

An ideal scenario is this:
Spend over 200 points for a terminator squad
Roll a 3+ on turn 2 for reserves
Deepstrike without mishaping
make a successful charge

those are a LOT of things that need to go right on a very costly unit.

-2 might even be a bit too much, they still wouldn't see a ton of play in competitive events.

Fair enough, but I feel like there must be something that stops someone from Deep Striking right next to someone and then getting a guaranteed charge (essentially). But you do raise a valid point. Are you suggesting they should just be able to Charge on the turn they Deep Strike with no other penalties?

The thing I see happening is assault terminators dropping down near a teleport homer and then just murdering the snot out of a target of choice without much chance for retaliation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you can take teleport homers on bikes or scouts, right? So it should'nt be all that tough to get pretty near to a target of choice. Especially if you're facing something like orks with lots of targets trying to close the gap against you.

I don't know. I don't mean to be negative. I always like seeing people put forward ideas they're passionate about! Between the fluff not quite matching up with the proposed rules and the fact that getting assaulted without a chance of retaliating isn't much fun (think skyhammer), this just doesn't quite work in my brain. Either the termies come in and make their charge and basically delete a juicy target of your choice without your opponent being to do much about it, or else they fail to get that charge off, possibly mishap, and generally feel annoyed that your risky play didn't pan out.

If the idea is to increase their viability as deepstrikers, maybe say that shooting attacks are resolved against them at -1BS on the turn they arrive from reserves or something? The idea being that it's hard to train a shot on a guy that wasn't there a second ago. Of course, if you just want to make terminators in general be worth their points, it might be a good idea to look over the numerous threads suggesting terminator fixes I've seen. My personal favorites:

*A simple points reduction
or
*Give them two wounds (not terribly complicated on a low model count squad)
or
*Let them roll their invuls on top of their armor saves, basically treating any invul they have as a ward save/FNP rather than an alternate save.

Not to derail your thread.