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Proposed house rules, streamlined, in accordance with the cut-down nature of the edition, to make this game more tactical.

1) New terrain keyword that can be applied to any piece of terrain: Difficult: Each inch of movement (rounded up) through difficult terrain counts as 2" of movement for units without Fly.

Reason: bring back the idea that some terrain types slows movement down. Allow shooty players the ability to deploy in places that may actually be harder to get to.
Examples: Changing elevation on hills, swamps, loose sand.


2) Cover for obscured models. If you cannot see 50% of a model (or unit), it gets +1 to its saves. If you cannot see 25% of a model (or unit), it gets +2 to its save.

Reason: Make deploying a tank hull-down behind a hill, or a dreadnought advancing with a rock for cover mean something. Note, also, intervening models will provide cover this way. This also helps large infantry units that can't easily completely occupy terrain pieces.


3) Limit to cover: No model's saves can be better than a 3+ due to cover bonuses, after all modifiers are applied (AP and cover).

Reason: If you're wearing ceramite plate armour, hiding behind a bush shouldn't make you a terminator. But, hiding behind a bush should help negate the denial of your armor from a plasma gun (the shooter may not hit you well).


4) No shooting through your own units. Note - shooting over the top of your own units is acceptable - hills, larger models, etc.

Reason: Sometimes what you can't do makes a game as interesting as what you can do. This forces people to think about positioning, and reduces the gameyness of "bubble wrapping" units. Realism rational - pretty much the same as why you can't shoot units within 1" of your own models - you might hit your own guys.


5) Models with airborne are considered 12" further away for purposes of targeting with shooting attacks. Models with supersonic are considered 12" further away for purposes of assaults.

Reason: This is largely about preventing small-arms fire (including flamers) from shooting down airplanes. And really fast airplanes shouldn't be getting charged too easily.

1) I don't mind either way, really. It looks like a fine rule to add if you want

2) do you mean if you can only see 25% or less, -2? If I cannot see 25%, that means I can see 75%.

3) so effectively cover wouldn't help Marines if they are getting shot at by bolters, but would if they were getting shot at by lascannons? That doesn't make much sense.

4) I say let us decide. But on a 1-2 to hit, our interveneing units take it in the back.

5) this one makes complete sense to me.

 Redbeard wrote:
3) Limit to cover: No model's saves can be better than a 3+ due to cover bonuses, after all modifiers are applied (AP and cover).

Reason: If you're wearing ceramite plate armour, hiding behind a bush shouldn't make you a terminator. But, hiding behind a bush should help negate the denial of your armor from a plasma gun (the shooter may not hit you well).

While I appreciate the idea behind this, I don't think it really works; as Gordon Shumway points out it'd mean you get protection against a Lascannon but not regular arms, which seems weird; it would also limit the benefit of having cover apply to vehicles, as a lot of common vehicles have 3+, and it's not like the kind of cover that can obscure a tank is going to be just some wispy bushes.

I think the better solution to this case would be to add two new keywords "Obscured" and "Soft Cover". Being at least 50% hidden by Soft Cover such as bushes etc. makes you Obscured (instead of giving a saving throw bonus), so too would using abilities like Smoke Launchers, instead of their normal effect. When shooting at an Obscured unit you suffer a -1 to-Hit penalty. This prevents soft cover and smoke from stacking, as both make you harder to see, while in both cases you receive no saving throw bonus as the cover isn't physical, only visual. If GW had done it this way it would have left the door open for units to ignore the Obscured keyword.

To give an example, the changes would look something like:

"Bushes cause any unit with a majority of it models at least 50% hidden to become Obscured, instead of granting a saving throw bonus. Ranged attacks again an Obscured target suffer a -1 to-Hit penalty."
"Once per battle, instead of shooting any weapons in the Shooting phase, this model can use its Smoke Launchers. Until your next Shooting phase the model is Obscured. Ranged attacks against an Obscured target suffer a -1 to-Hit penalty."

No, you're exactly right, most cover shouldn't help marines, or vehicles, against small arms fire.

A marine is walking around in armour that's as tough as most tank armor. Cover did nothing to help marines in earlier editions, because it was rare to find a 2+ cover save. As a result, unless they were facing high numbers of AP3 weapons, marines played dynamically and were free to move about the battlefield using their armour instead of relying on cover.

Likewise, vehicles didn't benefit from cover from small arms fire, because small arms fire usually couldn't wound them.

Instead, in 8th ed, when Marines get a +1 save from cover, they're given an incentive to become a static force, rather than a dynamic one, as hugging cover boosts their save to 2+. This also makes sense for the way that marines are portrayed in the stories - they know to trust their armour against small arms - cover is only of value when being targeted by things like lascannons or plasma guns.

I tried to stay away from hit-roll modifiers, as it seems that this isn't the direction that they wanted to go with cover. You could certainly treat all cover that way, and it would probably be a better game, but then you're adding more complexities. You could also get hit-roll modifiers for size of target, for distance, for how fast it moved last turn... (Really, who is going to miss a land raider that wasn't moving when standing right next to it?) But that's an entirely different game at that point.

1) To be clear, this kind of already happens. Vertical movement isn't free, so you move more slowly over hills.

I'm not saying don't do these things, but I do want to point out the ways that these changes would significantly affect the balance of the game. You almost certainly need to consider changing point values for some things if you're using rules like this.

The first bunch of these changes amount to huge buffs to shooty multi-wound things. (1) makes it harder for stuff to get to you. With (2), the main reason you want this is to be able to do something like deploy a tank hull-down. Similarly, blocky vehicles often have an easier time obscuring enemy lines of sight to their friends. Rule (3) really drives this home because it's multi-wound 3+ saves that are mostly worried about getting shot with weapons with decent AP. Vehicles and monsters are also tall and tend to be able to shoot over their screeners with (4).

I can't tell if (5) is intended to also force flyers to get closer to their targets. If so, then this seems like mostly a wash since they have to be much closer to do anything, and also breaks some of their guns. If not, this is an absolutely massive buff to flyers, many of which are already extremely strong. For example, the Hemlock Wraithfighter is very durable and packs a huge amount of firepower. Its main weakness is that its guns are 16" and it has to expose itself to lots of even small arms fire to do anything.

I think you were right the first time that you want to steer clear of to-hit penalties. These obviously impact different units very differently and so are just obviously a huge problem from a game balance perspective. BS2+ doesn't care very much and BS5+ loses half its firepower.

Would you mind pasting your cover and terrain suggestions to the thread I started in general discussion asking so that I can collate similar suggestions and work out a poll to sort out a few dakka approved house rule sets on this issue?
Which by the way I maybe should have posted here in rules proposals... If you can move it maybe that would be good?

I can't move it, but feel free to cut&paste as you want.

Just make cover as the RAW. Keep it the same and simple.

BUT
Add some 2nd edition flavor.

IF any unit is obscured by 50% (whether in cover or not) they get a -1 modifier to hit.

Example: An infantry unit is in the woods and then a tank is in the field behind the woods. You can shoot at them both with -1 to hit because of Obscurement. But the troops can duck behind some trees to make their saves better. The tank is out in the open and has no where to hide so it gets nothing for a save than its own armor.