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Hi all,

While I'm a big fan of 8th edition, I'd personally like to have some rules options which promote a bit more tactical play in terms of movement and positioning.

I was wondering about testing a house rule based on the Crossfire rule from Epic 40k. For those who may not know, this means that if you make a ranged attack where you can draw a line through the target unit to another of your own units within a certain distance (suggest 24") your opponent gets a -1 to their saving throws.

In keeping with 8th's streamlined rules, it seems fairly straightforward but would add an incentive to try to outmanoeuvre your opponent in a firefight.

Any thoughts on problems this could cause? One that springs to mind is whether it would make deep striking units even more valuable?

Cheers

It's a fun idea, but I don't think it'd make a good general rule, as it'd make shooting even more powerful than it already is (it's close combat where 8th really needs fixing), having it impact saves in general may also be a bit much.

However, it might make sense as a stratagem, maybe at 2cp, something along the lines of "During the shooting phase, select one enemy unit, and two friendly units that are on opposite sides of the chosen enemy, and haven't yet fired this turn. Both friendly units must fire upon the selected enemy, but the enemy receives no save bonuses from cover against their attacks."

This would be useful as a means of eliminating a cover bonus, which I think reflects a crossfire well, since against targets in the open the benefit of crossfire is the added weight of fire which we already have.

That would singlehandidly kill melee armies, which allready suffer massively, so no.
Bad idea, very bad idea.

Not Online!!! wrote:
That would singlehandidly kill melee armies, which allready suffer massively, so no.
Bad idea, very bad idea.

It certainly would. One of the most pressing problems here is that the concept of 'melee armies' in a 41st millennium that is absolutely armed to the teeth with all kinds of firepower is ridiculous as it is. Of course, it works, because this is science fiction. However when things get a bit more visceral on the table top, you'll struggle to apply modern-day firing strategies to fantasy sword and shield combat because naturally it would be total one-sided murder.

Besides, I believe Cadia already have a stratagem that operates on a similar principle ? Overlapping Fields of Fire ?

Overlapping Fields of Fire simply says "subsequent units" get the the hit bonus, regardless or positioning.

Crossfire required actually flanking your foe in the first place.

 sphynx wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
That would singlehandidly kill melee armies, which allready suffer massively, so no.
Bad idea, very bad idea.

It certainly would. One of the most pressing problems here is that the concept of 'melee armies' in a 41st millennium that is absolutely armed to the teeth with all kinds of firepower is ridiculous as it is. Of course, it works, because this is science fiction. However when things get a bit more visceral on the table top, you'll struggle to apply modern-day firing strategies to fantasy sword and shield combat because naturally it would be total one-sided murder.

Shooting and assault being in a binary is pretty ridiculous, and monolithic melee armies are not real. This idea for crossfire rules can make melee in 40k work, not ruin it. When there are units that deep in the enemy that they can crossfire, that's when melee makes sense, that's when its a powerful tool to be a 400 lb Nob with a power klaw, or a mass of boyz.

The Black Templars were this amazing army on the cover of the third edition boxed game and out of the dozens of Templars carrying bolters and laying down fire, there are about three or four marines with swords or axes. Orks were a brutal, raucous depiction of a conventional army, and also they had bs3. The "melee armies" like Templars and Orks became close combat all the time because of a series of rules distortions, they were never really on one side of some kind of choice between shooting or close combat.

Third edition for some reason made shooting with bolters or shootas terrible, just a single short ranged attack if you moved, whereas close combat gave you three or four attacks from 20" away, counting moving with a transport, disembarking and charging, or even further since you could then kill a unit and sweeping advance another 2d6" directly into combat in that very same turn. So people decided that close combat and shooting were two completely separate things and that you should shoot as little as possible and always charge if you had any cc ability at all.

Then armies got characterized as supposedly cc oriented because Andy Chambers, great though he is, decided all the armies had to have obviously and superficially different profiles and weapons, so orks went down to bs2, which by itself can still be used to make a shooting army but when seriously compounded by their terrible rapid fire shoota rules, created this concept of a cc army that couldn't really shoot. Then this was solidified very explicitly for marines when a studio member's personal fan fiction version of a black templars army, that happened to have custom rules tailored for the very cc biased rules in third edition, was published in the Armageddon supplement as an official army. So they went from an army of templar knights who use guns because that's how to fight a space war, and whose officers have swords to defend themselves in personal combat and to execute enemy personalities, to a caricature army.

Obviously there are armies that are really good at melee and use melee a lot. The benefit of melee is essentially to be the same kind of army as any other, a shooting army, but that can make the enemy look like chumps for faltering in their shooting game.

This is exactly the kind of situation where the rule from OP justifies and necessitates close combat abilities, because armies will try, by way of jet packs, teleportation jet packs, air craft, skimmer tanks, outflankers, and so forth, to encircle enemies and get them in cross fire. The response for that should be to severely punish the enemy for getting close, and to interrupt their ability to use strong shooting weapons. We have close combat in this game, but it’s a solution looking for a problem without things like crossfire rules.

Pelican, I agree that there should be a balance between shooting and melee.

But, two things:

1) Every army needs both shooting and melee then. Daemons, for instance, lack major shooting outside of Tzeentch, and I shouldn't have to break my allegiance just to get shooting.

2) What you posted isn't really related to the rule proposed here. You have a few words to the effect "This would benefit melee!" without anything supporting that.

Crossfire has to be a normal part of the game specifically because of that illusion about shooting and close combat being separate.

Right now there are these simple ratios for shooting and melee armies. Do you have enough raw strength and number of guns with range to shoot them all dead before they get to you, or can you get there with enough strength left to kill them in cc, and both of these armies have to balance that with being able to reach objectives.

Crossfire being a much better way to kill enemies makes shooting armies have to encircle the enemy and that means more reasons to charge.

Thanks for the responses all.

Fair point about the balance with melee, but I think pelican is right; this could be made as a risk/reward mechanic. Reduce the range at which you can draw the crossfire line to 12" for example and you have shooty armies choosing to put units in threat range of melee troops for the potential payoff of deadlier fire.
Also, rather than a -1 to saves, it could be a "re-roll wound rolls of 1" type rule instead perhaps?

Yes, exactly, everything should be used to make this a more intense game for all armies, instead of inching one side up and then the other to try to get balance. You could combine this with other rules that make crossfires the most practical way to kill enemies. For example, extend all gun ranges by 6" but make shooting anyone who's in cover and over half range away much harder, e.g. +2 cover save instead of +1, or -1 to hit. That would mean you can still have a very useful unit that shoots from far away, but to make it really work it needs the assistance of a crossfire unit that erases those cover benefits.

in this little 6' x 4' sand box we play in, it is really hard to get a crossfire without getting really close, if not to the unit you're trying to crossfire, then likely to another enemy unit that can charge you.

so here we have a way to make long distance shooting very effective, and also make close combat units very useful because they can be used to disrupt that buff, and then punish units that are trying to get close, but the shooting team also benefits from close combat units to counter that.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Pelican, I agree that there should be a balance between shooting and melee.

But, two things:

1) Every army needs both shooting and melee then. Daemons, for instance, lack major shooting outside of Tzeentch, and I shouldn't have to break my allegiance just to get shooting.

2) What you posted isn't really related to the rule proposed here. You have a few words to the effect "This would benefit melee!" without anything supporting that.

I feel like your point 1 is truly relevant to the issue at hand with melee in 8th.
Up until 7th, melee-centric army gave up shooting in order to get in better position to charge in form of "run". This folding in of the mechanism into movement phase, then disallowing advanced units to charge has hurt melee armies more than any other changes in the game.