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With the Drukhari and Harlequin codex now out, with super-fast, cheap transports, a really annoying occurrence I've seen in my own games and in battle reports is that, once these units have disembarked their passengers, they can be used to effectively take non-Fly vehicles (Predators, Leman Russes, etc), simply by charging them. This seems really lame and unrealistic, and I've seen several games end where the losing player still had a solid chunk of their points left on the board, but they would be unable to do anything for the rest of the game simply by being tied up by 6W transports.

I know the response is that you have to "bubble-wrap" your tanks, but honestly this is virtually impossible when these things have 20"+ movement, especially if you want to ever be able to move your own army (imagine that!)

So I propose that vehicles should not be able to be tied up in combat (IE. all vehicles can Fall Back and still shoot), or at the very least, that they cannot be tied up only by other vehicles.

What do people think?

Your experiences here are more indicative overall with a problem concerning FLY than a problem concerning tying up vehicles in close combat. FLY is quite simply too strong this edition, Flying tanks are able to simply leave combat and shoot as though nothing happened, whereas their land-bound brethren are forced to give up their shooting when they leave combat. This is aggravated by the generally higher speed of FLY units and vehicles and the ability to simply move over intervening screening units, requiring much more careful counter play with chaff to protect.

In my opinion this issue can be fixed by removing the ability of flying units to shoot after falling back. This allows you to counterplay Fliers the same way you can counterplay ground based tanks. If Jump Pack Assault Marines or a Daemon Prince with Wings assault a Valkyrie, then it cannot shoot when it falls back. This makes counter playing Grav Tanks with charges as effective as counter playing ground based tanks with charges. Flying units have enough advantages without losing the main disadvantage of falling back on top of everything. If you get tied up in melee you should be punished in some way. If your super fast flier got caught in melee, its okay if the player is punished for letting his flier get caught.

The solution should be to take away flier's exception to the rules not add the exception to all vehicles. Vehicle Assaults are the 8th edition equivalent to Rams and Tank Shocks. Its not precise, its unlikely to cause damage, but it will disrupt the target and cause them to lose focus and need to regroup before they can shoot.

Players have a choice. A Dread with a twin Las Cannon and a Fist is not something that a Venom equivalent will want to attempt to lock down, as the Dread can easily crush it in close combat. A Predator on the other hand is a more points efficient las cannon platform, but lacks the close combat versatility that a Dread has. Its not a perfect analogy but it makes sense to a degree. If you want to take the Predator for the superior ranged fire power, you need to consider how to stop or destroy fast moving units from locking it down. Or bailing it out of combat when it gets tied up.

Lets just say no opponent yet has decided to prevent my Defiler or Sonic Dreads from shooting by charging in a tank!

 akaean wrote:
Your experiences here are more indicative overall with a problem concerning FLY than a problem concerning tying up vehicles in close combat. FLY is quite simply too strong this edition, Flying tanks are able to simply leave combat and shoot as though nothing happened, whereas their land-bound brethren are forced to give up their shooting when they leave combat. This is aggravated by the generally higher speed of FLY units and vehicles and the ability to simply move over intervening screening units, requiring much more careful counter play with chaff to protect.

In my opinion this issue can be fixed by removing the ability of flying units to shoot after falling back. This allows you to counterplay Fliers the same way you can counterplay ground based tanks. If Jump Pack Assault Marines or a Daemon Prince with Wings assault a Valkyrie, then it cannot shoot when it falls back. This makes counter playing Grav Tanks with charges as effective as counter playing ground based tanks with charges. Flying units have enough advantages without losing the main disadvantage of falling back on top of everything. If you get tied up in melee you should be punished in some way. If your super fast flier got caught in melee, its okay if the player is punished for letting his flier get caught.

The solution should be to take away flier's exception to the rules not add the exception to all vehicles. Vehicle Assaults are the 8th edition equivalent to Rams and Tank Shocks. Its not precise, its unlikely to cause damage, but it will disrupt the target and cause them to lose focus and need to regroup before they can shoot.

Players have a choice. A Dread with a twin Las Cannon and a Fist is not something that a Venom equivalent will want to attempt to lock down, as the Dread can easily crush it in close combat. A Predator on the other hand is a more points efficient las cannon platform, but lacks the close combat versatility that a Dread has. Its not a perfect analogy but it makes sense to a degree. If you want to take the Predator for the superior ranged fire power, you need to consider how to stop or destroy fast moving units from locking it down. Or bailing it out of combat when it gets tied up.

Lets just say no opponent yet has decided to prevent my Defiler or Sonic Dreads from shooting by charging in a tank!

??

Your solution to players' ability to use a 100pt model to take a 400pt model out of the game without needing to roll a die is to allow it to be done to more things?

Alternately: Your argument would be reasonable in a world where move-again psychic powers didn't let Shining Spears/Skyweavers/Heldrakes charge the back of your opponent's deployment zone top of turn one because cheap-unit melee lockdown would be something that took effort to pull off and could be played against, but as-is it is so easy to render a given tank irrelevant that non-Walker ground vehicles played as anything other than a static platform buried behind a wall of bodies are dying out (Predators exist at all because of Marine castle builds and Guard allies).

 AnomanderRake wrote:

???

Your solution to players' ability to use a 100pt model to take a 400pt model out of the game without needing to roll a die is to allow it to be done to more things?

Alternately: Your argument would be reasonable in a world where move-again psychic powers didn't let Shining Spears/Skyweavers/Heldrakes charge the back of your opponent's deployment zone top of turn one because cheap-unit melee lockdown would be something that took effort to pull off and could be played against, but as-is it is so easy to render a given tank irrelevant that non-Walker ground vehicles played as anything other than a static platform buried behind a wall of bodies are dying out (Predators exist at all because of Marine castle builds and Guard allies).

Absolutely!
Assault in general is on the weaker side when compared to the pure power of gunlines, because with the way fallback works a single unit may be prevented from shooting, but the rest of the army is often able to retaliate and light up the assaulter. Gunlines are very powerful. Being able to prevent multiple units from shooting if they are engaged in close combat is one of the ways CC armies attempt to stay alive.

You can make the same argument on an infantry scale as well. Do you think I should not be allowed to use a 106 point Autarch with the Shimmer Plume and Lightning Relfexes to lock down a 400 point squad of Terminators with Power Fists to prevent them from shooting or charging other targets? Do you think I should not be allowed to charge a 195 point squad of Obliterators to tie them up with a 40 point squad of cultists? And is that really so different from charging a 74 point Rhino into a 300+ point double butcher cannon leviathan Dread to keep it from shooting for a turn or two?

Using cheaper models that can't effectively damage more expensive models to prevent them doing certain key things is a part of the strategy that makes melee viable in the game. The problem, as I pointed out above, is that these elements of counter play are only relevant for ground based units. Flying units get a free pass for no reason. For instance a Vyper can disrupt your Predator, but your Rhino isn't doing anything to disrupt their Falcon. I'm saying this should be fixed, and the Eldar player should be punished when a Rhino charges his Falcon, just as imperial players are punished when a Venom or Vyper charges their land based tanks.

As to shining spears, thats an interplay with the psychic phase... plus only one quicken per turn, and hopefully you can isolate and destroy them if they overextended to make that charge.

I accept that shooting is stronger than assault this edition, I simply don't think that making a larger set of units not usable is the solution. Approaching problems from the "ban/render unplayable (this unit that offends me!)" is simple and kind of fun in the short term but it's hard to convince other players to play with and it tends to produce a game that's similarly skewed, just from another direction.

We could instead attempt to consider some kind of compromise mechanism by which leaving combat with a unit isn't a panacea that lets your gunline unload on it with impunity (-1 to hit in the Shooting phase with/against any unit that was within 1" of an enemy model at the start of the turn?), or bring in bits and pieces of the Steel Behemoth rule to let vehicles shoot at units they're locked in combat with using defensively-mounted weapons (sponsons, pintle mounts, things that can rotate freely/easily and hit things up close to the hull, but not large turret or hull-mounted guns) so vehicles are harder to perma-lock with obnoxiously inexpensive units, but handing out a giant global nerfbat to a long list of units that don't need the nerf isn't going to solve this problem or make assault armies any better.

I absolutely think that fly units should suffer shooting inability from falling back like all other units. Fly has enough advantages as is, and units like wave serpents and ravagers need this weakness. Currently the only way to deal with them is to kill them. Options for disabling them with assult units just makes the game more interesting in my oppinion.

I've been thinking about this for a long time. As an Ultramarine player, it sucks to see armies shooting when retiring while you have a -1, plus your tanks are limited. For me there are two solutions: one is to benefit the enemy unit that charged, giving it a -1 to hit or something; second is to penalise the retiring unit. For example if you retire, you must roll a D6 for each model in the unit: every 6 is a mortal wound on the unit (not model).
There are many solutions possible, this are just some examples. In any case, I think the Fly units and going first vs second are two major problems in this edition atm

I think Fkying units shouldn't get the bonus when falling back from other Flying units.

How about all vehicles can shoot after falling back with a -1 to hit. (Or even a -2?)

I think id be okay with all vehicles bring able to fall back and shoot normally. Moving already makes most vehicle weapons take a -1 for being heavy, so that's punishment enough. Plus most vehicles without fly can still be locked in place by assault units blocking their movement. Flying vehicles would have the advantage of being able to get around these blocking units, and that's all the advantage they need.

I also think they should bring tank shock back in some form. 1D3 mortal wounds on a 4+ or something if a tank charges you would be fun.

#maketanksgreatagain

I'm not sure about models with Fly in general but drukhari transports are not overpowered at all. They're still paper things and not that cheap. Nerfing them is a bad idea as they're far from being game breaking.

The solution about this Fly madness is very simple, just price correctly every unit in the game. Venoms and raiders are already ok, maybe venoms are even too expensive.

To me it's less about any specific unit and more about the arbitrary-ness of the fly keyword allowing units to fall back and still shoot.

There really isn't any reason to have it do that. Fly already asked you to ignore terrain, usually comes with a movement distance increase, and you can move through enemy models like they weren't there. It doesn't really need any other bonuses.

It doesn't actually make any sense that a land raider would stop shooting almost no matter what was assaulting it. So whether or not it's a "all vehicles can do this" or "specific large vehicles can do this" or "tanks and flying vehicles can do this", I don't think it should be tied directly to the fly rule.

jcd386 wrote:
To me it's less about any specific unit and more about the arbitrary-ness of the fly keyword allowing units to fall back and still shoot.

There really isn't any reason to have it do that. Fly already asked you to ignore terrain, usually comes with a movement distance increase, and you can move through enemy models like they weren't there. It doesn't really need any other bonuses.

It doesn't actually make any sense that a land raider would stop shooting almost no matter what was assaulting it. So whether or not it's a "all vehicles can do this" or "specific large vehicles can do this" or "tanks and flying vehicles can do this", I don't think it should be tied directly to the fly rule.

Yup. Nothing more to add. Change this now GW