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I can't remember if it were 3rd or 4th edition which had the Target Priority rule, where you had to pass a Leadership test to target other enemy units than the closest one. It felt odd and out of place and nobody ever bring it up.

Do any of you miss it? Be it for the rules sake or for the sake of it somewhat reflecting real actions on the battlefield. Or didn't the rule bring anything useful with it?

The rule was definitely there in 4th, dont remember about 3e.

It was pretty silly though. Largely it hamstrung the armies that really relied on shooting and that had kinda crappy Ld to begin with, and didnt effect the generalist armies much since they all have high Ld. It was one of the things that made IG so awful in 4th.

Chaospling wrote:
I can't remember if it were 3rd or 4th edition which had the Target Priority rule, where you had to pass a Leadership test to target other enemy units than the closest one. It felt odd and out of place and nobody ever bring it up.

Do any of you miss it? Be it for the rules sake or for the sake of it somewhat reflecting real actions on the battlefield. Or didn't the rule bring anything useful with it?

It was definitely in 4th Ed. I don't recall if it was in 3rd. (It might have been there but in a different way.)

I definitely liked it. I also liked that every SM Captain had Rites of Battle, giving everyone in the army Ld 10. It meant that if you brought a Captain, your army had excellent fire discipline, which was a nice touch.

I think it also meant that Tyranids within Synapse had perfect fire discipline from the Hive Mind. I liked that too.

Overall It was a minor rule that felt good from a fictional standpoint.

I don't remember it from 3rd. It sounds like a weird rule. But I also feel the whole rule that you can't "pick up" weapons anymore is pretty dumb too, I think that might have been another 4th edition change, because in 3rd you still were able to do it, so your special/heavy weapons lasted a lot longer. Still do not get why they changed that, their reasoning was good (i.e. that members of the squad are trained to use the weaponry)

It was a leftover rule from 2nd ed (or RT even), which back then was somehow manageable by model orientation split fire and some special rules/wargear options, so it had it's place (but Grot shield lines were annoying as hell). In 3rd+ editions it was quite misplaced, as streamlined rules do not allow easy counter to meatshielding everything important..

So to give an answer to your question - no, I don't miss it, it allways felt limiting, but you could argue, that it was realistic (as only suicidal or brainless/brainwashed individuals would forfeit their survival instincts to obey an order).

nou wrote:
So to give an answer to your question - no, I don't miss it, it allways felt limiting, but you could argue, that it was realistic (as only suicidal or brainless/brainwashed individuals would forfeit their survival instincts to obey an order).

It wasn't realistic at all because it had no concept of which unit was a bigger threat. If you have a giant "death star" unit threatening you the survival instinct is to shoot it or run away from it. The suicidal thing to do would be to ignore the death star and shoot at the single grot that happens to be standing 1" closer.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Chaospling wrote:
I can't remember if it were 3rd or 4th edition which had the Target Priority rule, where you had to pass a Leadership test to target other enemy units than the closest one. It felt odd and out of place and nobody ever bring it up.

Do any of you miss it? Be it for the rules sake or for the sake of it somewhat reflecting real actions on the battlefield. Or didn't the rule bring anything useful with it?

It was definitely in 4th Ed. I don't recall if it was in 3rd. (It might have been there but in a different way.)

I definitely liked it. I also liked that every SM Captain had Rites of Battle, giving everyone in the army Ld 10. It meant that if you brought a Captain, your army had excellent fire discipline, which was a nice touch.

I think it also meant that Tyranids within Synapse had perfect fire discipline from the Hive Mind. I liked that too.

Overall It was a minor rule that felt good from a fictional standpoint.

"It was fun and minor with armies that could largely ignore it".

Couldnt help myself sorry XD

4th edition.

In 3rd, you had to shoot at the closest enemy unit, which lead to some really silly screening tactics.

I kinda liked it, as it meant targeting was not always 100 perfect. The models don't have the same godlike perspective we do, and while you really wanted las/pls shots to go into the carnifex, the guardsmen were more distracted by the gaunt squa about to get up in their grill.

Well, they could shoot the Carnifex over the Gaunts because it was a large target.

The silly stuff was having to shoot an empty pod because it was closer than a Predator, or having to shoot the two last Gaunts out of a horde of 30 instead of the intact Warriors a half inch further away.

In 2nd edition, it was a horrible rule.

Considering what replaced it was basically Oprah giving cover saves to everyone and their grandmas, I am completely torn on whether or not it was a good idea or if the replacement is better or worse.

But it was definitely 3rd and 4th edition. I'm holding the 3rd ed Tyranid codex and in Tyranid Monstrous Creatures it makes a reference to it (specifically the "Shoot the Big Ones!" rule).

 Peregrine wrote:

nou wrote:
So to give an answer to your question - no, I don't miss it, it allways felt limiting, but you could argue, that it was realistic (as only suicidal or brainless/brainwashed individuals would forfeit their survival instincts to obey an order).

It wasn't realistic at all because it had no concept of which unit was a bigger threat. If you have a giant "death star" unit threatening you the survival instinct is to shoot it or run away from it. The suicidal thing to do would be to ignore the death star and shoot at the single grot that happens to be standing 1" closer.

In 2nd ed, the rule gave you a choice of targeting either an infantry unit or a vechicle or a Tyranid large creature. Also, special and heavy weapons could shoot at different target and you could position models in the squad to cover different firing arcs (as they mattered back then), and heroes and special characters could fire at any target. So there was some logic behind the idea, diferentiating target classes and shooters dependability. Of course it had it's unrealistic and exploitable consequences (Orcs had no large/small creature distinction as Tyranids did), but in 2nd ed, it was at least a coherent mechanic with some usable workarounds/tactics to it. It basically just made different things important tactics-wise. 3rd ed dropped all logic behind it and left only the core concept, which combined with totally murderous assault phase and transport rules made a lot of shooting in 3rd ed unusable.

And there were no (modern style) deathstars or gargantuans back then, so no problem there really, you could always target a Carnifex... And as I said earlier - in 3rd (and 4th) ed it was a bad, leftover rule, which was deservedly dropped later on and I don't see a place for it in modern 40K.

2nd edition was far more complex but the whole set of rules around it were more coherent as a total package and there was surprisingly less confusion around them. People, though, who love 3rd and its derivatives probably really disliked 2nd. It had a lot more complexity to it (allowed by the smaller model count).

It was 4th, where you could also consolidate into a new combat if you wanted to. The balance was pushed too hard towards assault, and then they swung it back it went too far the other way as well.

I'm not 100% on the cover system we have now, but I like it better than how things were catagorised by size back then. Still think stuff like ignoring weapons and wings for LoS shouldn't be a thing, just have them as snap shots instead. And make no one able to modify snap shots because doing that without doing this is just a buff Tau don't need.

I always thought it was a great rule. However lots of people played it wrong and as such didn't like it. I could never figure how it always seecmed to get messed up. And it wasn't that it was being read wrong the same way. I saw dozens of different interpretations that were easily cleared up with just a more careful reading.

I liked it because I played Nids and got to explain to opponents that they needed target priority with my big bugs. They could shoot my bigger ones without needing a Ld test. It added a bit of fluff to every game.

2nd and 3rd edition you couldn't shoot past one unit at another, which as Peregrine and Byte says was a big problem - so much so that the 3rd edition Tyranids codex got given "Shoot the Big Ones!" to allow you to ignore it.

4th edition (and battlefleet gothic) had a slightly better version of the rule; a leadership check allowed you to ignore it (and tank crews, not having a leadership value, also ignored it).

This meant that your better units have more 'battlefield sense' - guard conscripts would panic and fire at the closest target, but your chaos lord and terminator chosen would calmly ignore the scouts and unload combi-weapon fire into the command squad.

I didn't mind it, to be honest.

The 'picking up weapons'..... to be honest, I just find the current wound allocation a faff. No, it doesn't take that much longer but given the simplifications the game has accepted (like flat to hit rolls regardless of whether the target is a grot or a baneblade) it seems wierd that I have to figure out who is closest to each firer and remove casualties in a specific order. It's just not needed.

If the owning player assigned wounds as they saw fit, it would be faster - and precision shots would matter a lot more, rather than the wierd situation we have at the moment where the best "sniper" weapon in the game is an earthshaker cannon. Plus it would encourage heroes to actually lead from the front, which is appropriate to what's supposed to be a sword-and-sorcery universe with added miniguns.

locarno24 wrote:
2nd and 3rd edition you couldn't shoot past one unit at another, which as Peregrine and Byte says was a big problem - so much so that the 3rd edition Tyranids codex got given "Shoot the Big Ones!" to allow you to ignore it.

4th edition (and battlefleet gothic) had a slightly better version of the rule; a leadership check allowed you to ignore it (and tank crews, not having a leadership value, also ignored it).

This meant that your better units have more 'battlefield sense' - guard conscripts would panic and fire at the closest target, but your chaos lord and terminator chosen would calmly ignore the scouts and unload combi-weapon fire into the command squad.

I didn't mind it, to be honest.

The 'picking up weapons'..... to be honest, I just find the current wound allocation a faff. No, it doesn't take that much longer but given the simplifications the game has accepted (like flat to hit rolls regardless of whether the target is a grot or a baneblade) it seems wierd that I have to figure out who is closest to each firer and remove casualties in a specific order. It's just not needed.

If the owning player assigned wounds as they saw fit, it would be faster - and precision shots would matter a lot more, rather than the wierd situation we have at the moment where the best "sniper" weapon in the game is an earthshaker cannon. Plus it would encourage heroes to actually lead from the front, which is appropriate to what's supposed to be a sword-and-sorcery universe with added miniguns.

It slows down the game not just in the wound allocation phase, but in the movement one. And it exist in an edition with precision shots.
This is one of the best example showing the complete lack of vision from the designer's part.