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I have been noticing that morale this edition either is way too powerful or heavily mitigated to nearly Nothing, on account of special rules. I thought that maybe morale could be closer to pinning, in that failed morale tests could result in negative modifiers to hit. I also think that making it easier to fail morale tests would allow morale to influence the game and give more tactical depth in target choice. I am aware that something like that might hit armies like night lords pretty hard, who are relying on negative leadership modifiers to wipe more models off the board. What do you think? How would you fix morale and leadership?

the problem with morale is that units either have:

a) an ability that mitigates or minimizes losses (orks,daemons,IG)

b) unit size is too small for morale to ever be a factor (SM,Custodes,GK,any special elite units)

Morale is actually probably the most interesting mechanic in a long time. Long forgotten are the days where everyone ran with fearless units.

As a gameplay mechanic, morale is more of a niche than a solid mechanic to work with. And I'm fine with it just being a niche, basically means that it'll mostly be used in clutch scenario's that make or break close games.

And that..... brings exitement

I only have one unit where it's an issue and that's tzaangors. The problem with it as well is because it's so debilitating im actually splitting the squad or 30. I end up loosing more to moral then I do to fire.

Wait-Daemons have morale mitigation worth a damn? That's news to me.

I feel like morale should open up tactical depth though. There are armies built to manipulate morale and these armies are situational at best (poor night lords). I just think morale needs to do stuff more often, but shouldn’t be able to win games with it alone. You have to build an army with the purpose of getting wiped in the morale phase this edition in order for it to really change a game.

I seem to recall that when 8th was being teased, GW said that morale was being reworked because in prior editions it was mostly irrelevant. At the time, I was really hoping that each faction would have it's own unique, flavorful reaction/penalty for failing morale, sadly, I think what GW came up with isn't very flavorful (I just isn't immersion for me having ancient, undead robots or superhuman power amored warriors fleeing for their lives. Also, I don't think it meets thier mark of being very relevant to the game-- most units are immune including: characters, vehicles, monsters, MSU, as well as the miriad of units with mitigation abilities. I think if GW really wants a flavorful morale mechanic that is relevant to most units, but also simple to implement, they would have mechanic whereby each unit that fails, is "pinned" (or some similar key word). Where "pinned" is something unique to each army.

macluvin wrote:
I have been noticing that morale this edition either is way too powerful or heavily mitigated to nearly Nothing, on account of special rules. I thought that maybe morale could be closer to pinning, in that failed morale tests could result in negative modifiers to hit. I also think that making it easier to fail morale tests would allow morale to influence the game and give more tactical depth in target choice. I am aware that something like that might hit armies like night lords pretty hard, who are relying on negative leadership modifiers to wipe more models off the board. What do you think? How would you fix morale and leadership?

Outside of a huge blob units, Morale is rarely an issue - and when it is the unit is usually wiped to the last few models anyway so as good as dead.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Wait-Daemons have morale mitigation worth a damn? That's news to me.

Have an Icon in the unit, pray to roll a 1 to revive D6 models

I think Morale should be fixed by giving a bonus to bigger units. If you have more than 10 models, you get an extra attack, +1 to hit, or something. Otherwise, buying full-sized units could give a point reduction like in AoS.
If you also reduce the ways people have to mitigate morale losses, you can have a risk vs reward thing: big units are stronger, but die more easily to focused fire.

I'm not a fan of how Morale works now, but I don't think it should go back to how it was in 7th. I think with a couple of armies it's easy to just remove a whole squad when you take enough casualties as there'll be no way you can pass Morale. My Skitarii for example are vulnerable to that, Whereas Marines have a blanker "Reroll all failed morale checks", Guard used to have Commissars to help with it, all AdMec get are a couple of pretty poor upgrades that are rather situational.

I'd like to see one simple modification to Morale:

A blanket rule of "A roll of 1 always passes a Morale check regardless of the result".

I think really mob units need some sort of buff in numbers similar to the orks, because right now its a massive draw back to field a blob of 30 anything since you just need to widdel down, normally 7 guys, and then they are loosing D6 minimum on the role.

in 7th the way moral worked was fine, what was not fine was how easy it was to ignore it. But the idea of a unit breaking and falling back was a completely fine mechanic, and then needing to regroup the next turn or in some cases get sweeping advanced.

I like the idea of giving a unit a base cost in addition to model costs so that larger units have better points/model. This would make morale more relevant and reduce MSU spam. It doesn't need to be a lot so that if someone rather have smaller units they can go for it but add like a 10 point cost to bring a unit in addition to the models cost would help make morale relevant again.

 Valkyrie wrote:

Spoiler:

I'm not a fan of how Morale works now, but I don't think it should go back to how it was in 7th. I think with a couple of armies it's easy to just remove a whole squad when you take enough casualties as there'll be no way you can pass Morale. My Skitarii for example are vulnerable to that, Whereas Marines have a blanker "Reroll all failed morale checks", Guard used to have Commissars to help with it, all AdMec get are a couple of pretty poor upgrades that are rather situational.

I'd like to see one simple modification to Morale:

A blanket rule of "A roll of 1 always passes a Morale check regardless of the result".

 Backspacehacker wrote:
I think really mob units need some sort of buff in numbers similar to the orks, because right now its a massive draw back to field a blob of 30 anything since you just need to widdel down, normally 7 guys, and then they are loosing D6 minimum on the role.

in 7th the way moral worked was fine, what was not fine was how easy it was to ignore it. But the idea of a unit breaking and falling back was a completely fine mechanic, and then needing to regroup the next turn or in some cases get sweeping advanced.

I miss sweeping advance & hit and run so much...

What if CP's worked as a roll modifiers... and stratagems were actually activated by rolling off against your Ld characteristic? You can spend you CP to improve that roll by how many CP's you expend to "cast" the stratagem...

macluvin wrote:
I feel like morale should open up tactical depth though. There are armies built to manipulate morale and these armies are situational at best (poor night lords). I just think morale needs to do stuff more often, but shouldn’t be able to win games with it alone. You have to build an army with the purpose of getting wiped in the morale phase this edition in order for it to really change a game.

At the basic level, morale should just work more often, on small units especially. You could say that anytime a unit gets destroyed it counts as three casualties for nearby friendly units when they take battleshock. If a tank goes up in flames, then the tactical squad next to it should be effected. That would increase the number of times that battleshock even does something.

I'd like to get crazy, I'd like morale to have a big effect. Movement and shooting should be buffed or shut down by morale effects.

First, in the movement phase, infantry units don't move, at all. Then in the shooting phase, every time the active player chooses a unit to shoot, the other player can choose any number of infantry units to shoot back, but only with bolters, lasguns, any weapon that is s5 or less and isn't heavy. The active player can also use only those weapons, and you resolve all the shooting before removing any models, so both sides get to shoot before taking casualties. Then all the involved units take battleshock tests. Instead of losing models, the side that passes its battleshock test by more points gets to make either super shots with its other weapons, which will do extra damage and have precision shot effects, or they can do a move, because they won the firefight. Units that didn't take any of this overwatch fire obviously can both move and fire with more freedom.

High Ld troops should be more effective troops.