Two Small Changes To Character Targeting

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**JNAProductions**

Change One

You must be within 3" of a unit to be blocked by it.

Change Two

INFANTRY Characters can be blocked by any type of friendly unit.
BEAST, BIKER, or CAVALRY Characters can be blocked by any type of friendly unit except INFANTRY.
MONSTER or VEHICLE Characters can only be blocked by other friendly MONSTERS or VEHICLES.

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Both these changes can be used together, or just one or the other.

**Slayer-Fan123**

I disagree with the Biker and Calvary part. A Space Wolf Thunderwolf HQ could easily be blocked by Custodes for example.

Also if you want that Monster one how much you wanna chop off Roboute's price?

**JNAProductions**

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I disagree with the Biker and Calvary part. A Space Wolf Thunderwolf HQ could easily be blocked by Custodes for example.

Also if you want that Monster one how much you wanna chop off Roboute's price?

He can be blocked by Vehicles just fine.

And while the IDEAL for me is to add a Size stat, where you can only block for Characters up to one size larger than you, that's adding a stat to every single unit. The goal here was small, simple changes that are easy to implement.

**Slayer-Fan123**

I don't think the size stat would be terribly hard to create. We would just need to agree on everything.

**Yarium**

Not bad rules, for sure. Only thing I might change is the 3" thing. I would prefer if a Captain standing in front of a tank, but 12" behind a unit of Infantry, would still be blocked. How about?

"A Character with 9 or fewer wounds may only be targeted in the shooting phase if;
1. The Character is not within 3" of any other enemy unit. And,
2. The Character is the nearest enemy unit.

If the Character you wish to target has the Beast, Biker, or Cavalry keywords, then ignore enemy units that are Infantry for these points. If the Character you wish to target has the Monster or Vehicle keywords, then ignore enemy units that are not Monsters or Vehicles for these points."

This would mean that if Old One Eye is 3" in front of a unit, that unit can't shoot at a Tyranid Prime that's 6" behind Old One Eye. However, if the situation was reversed, the unit could ignore the Tyranid Prime to still shoot Old One Eye.

**JNAProductions**

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I don't think the size stat would be terribly hard to create. We would just need to agree on everything.

Well, there was this.

**Slayer-Fan123**

That really wouldn't be hard to implement, but with the simpler nature of the core rules we should create a smaller scale I feel.

**JNAProductions**

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
That really wouldn't be hard to implement, but with the simpler nature of the core rules we should create a smaller scale I feel.

I eagerly await your Size Stat thread, then. Be sure to link it in here.

**Slayer-Fan123**

Oh yeah that'll be later on today. I'm slacking more at work than I should be.

**Galef**

I like the Change one, but would tweak it as such:

Characters less than 10 wounds and within 3" of another unit cannot be targeted unless they are the closest enemy unit.

This means the unit they are within 3" of doesn't necessarily have to be the closest units "blocking" the Character.
So a Marine Capt can be 3" in front of a Tac Squad, but still not be targeted if any other unit is closer. Basically, the unit the Character is within 3" of doesn't have to be the unit in front of it.

Change two is a hard pass for me. Sometimes lists just don't have "like" units for your ideal HQ. Forcing there to be units of the same "size stat" would invalidate many characters by requiring other units to not only be fielding, but near the character.

-

**JNAProductions**

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Oh yeah that'll be later on today. I'm slacking more at work than I should be.

Cool. I'll be sure to offer my thoughts on it.

Some preliminary thoughts are two things:

1) You can block for Characters that are up to one size larger. So a Marine (Size 4, let's assume) can block a Terminator Captain (Size 5) or a Commisar (Size 3) but not Guilliman (Size 6).

2) There's a cut-off point where you can't block anymore. So a Questoris Class Imperial Knight (Size 10) can't be blocked by anything, not even a slightly larger Dominous Class Imperial Knight (Size 11).

Galef wrote:
I like the Change one, but would tweak it as such:

Characters less than 10 wounds and within 3" of another unit cannot be targeted unless they are the closest enemy unit.

This means the unit they are within 3" of doesn't necessarily have to be the closest units "blocking" the Character.
So a Marine Capt can be 3" in front of a Tac Squad, but still not be targeted if any other unit is closer. Basically, the unit the Character is within 3" of doesn't have to be the unit in front of it.

Change two is a hard pass for me. Sometimes lists just don't have "like" units for your ideal HQ. Forcing there to be units of the same "size stat" would invalidate many characters

-

Do you have example lists?

The ONLY thing I can think of, off-hand, is a CSM list with no vehicles but including Daemon Princes.

**Galef**

I just remember an older edition of Warhammer Fantasy that used similar guidelines and it basically killed some Cav Characters in armies that had sub-par Cav units. Large infantry blocks was the name of the game, but Characters on mounts where nice (and thematic). But because there was no other Cav nearby, it became a liability to take Cav Characters

A personal example for me, would be my preCA2018 Eldar. Every HQ is a Skyrunner, because it's been that way for me since 4E.
But with WRs being super nerfed, I didn't field any. So my squishy Eldar characters could easily get targets amongst my Infantry and Flyer (that would not be with 3" of the Characters).
I do have Fire Prisms, but having to make sure I'm within 3" of them at all times really seems taxing. Especially since Farseers, Warlock and Autarchs want to get a bit closed for Powers/melee, but Prisms want to stay about 60" away from enemy units.
And with WRs being palyable again, I'll be adding some now, so this change might not affect me too much

It just makes it too .... complicated isn't the right word, but it adds that much more that can go wrong and leave your character exposed. Not everyones' characters are as beefy as Guilliman.

But I do like the idea that is a Character is outside 3" from any other unit, they are fair game to target. Because that makes sense

-

**some bloke**

I agree with the OP's ideas, especially that cavalry and bikes can't be blocked by infantry.

The root "reality" which is trying to be conveyed with the character targeting rules is that if a large group of people are running at you, it's hard to shoot one of them specifically, and easy to shoot any of them.

If you are confronted with a group of dudes and a dude riding a giant wolf, the guy on a giant wolf is actually going to be quite easy to pick out in a crowd.

As for the latter suggestions of a size statistic, I think that sounds great. I would like to see it integrated to the system, to allow for things like tankbusta bomms / meltabombs etc only working on models of size 5+, cover having different effects on different sizes, and units sticking out from a crowd if they're bigger than them (by 2 sizes, I think the one to make work is that a runtherd can't be picked out from grots, even though he is bigger than them).

I would love to see this in 9th edition.

**Valkyrie**

I came up with something a while back which seemed a reasonable idea for Character targeting, was something like:

"A Character may only be targeted in the Shooting Phase if one of the following conditions are met
- It is the closest visible enemy unit to the shooting unit
- It has a wounds characteristic of more than 10
- There are no enemy units within (X)" of the Character (although as to what X would be I'm unsure)"

**some bloke**

I can't help but feel that the character should have a unit within x" with the same unit type as himself.

The reason for the difficulty in targeting the character is not because the unit he is near is providing a human shield, it's because he is "hidden" among other people - like "where's Wally", but on the battlefield. if you have 11 guys in power armour running at you, and you're shooting at them, it'll be hard to work out which one is the most important guy.

However, if you have a guy riding a wolf stood next to a tank, it's pretty easy to distinguish between the tank and the guy. Same story if the wolf-rider is stood amongst a unit of regular guys.

I propose:

A character may not be selected as a target if it is within 3" of a non-character unit with the same unit type as the character.

I want less "a giant warboss is running screaming at your battleline, you want to shoot it, but wait! there's a lone gretchin picking his nose in the bushes off to your left! how can you shoot the warboss now?".

if your characters want to be protected from being shot, they had better stop standing in the open. if they didn't want to stick out like a giant riding a massive wolf, then perhaps they should have walked, or brought some of their wolf buddies with them.

**Camjo**

Toughness is almost appropriate as a size statistic. Maybe characters can hide with T - 1 toughness units and up

**niv-mizzet**

I think my most preferred form of the “inspirational leader” mechanic currently in the game would be a return to independent characters joining units, with restrictions in place to stop the possibility of ludicrous combos. Perhaps like ONE character per unit may apply their leadership abilities, and some junk to make sure you can’t hit 5 characters and their unit with one psychic buff or stratagem.