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I don't like the idea of taking damage for morale in the first place but I can live with it if I think first off, instead of removing models they should just take off wounds, wouldn't effect swarms but it would stop multi wound units from suffering as badly as they do. Secondly Losing units in swarm armies is fine but for elite armies its kinda ridiculous the amount they lose just from morale, I think if your unit is less that 10 models, they amount of damage from morale should be halved, what are peoples opinion on that?

To be honest, the damage I take from morale on small units is so minimal that I hardly notice it.
Unless under the effects of psychic powers or other abilities that reduce my Leadership, many armies of mine don't even have the capability to lose more than one model at a time to Leadership. (That's because I have five-person squads with Leadership 8, FWIW.)

I think Leadership is just fine for ten-person squads. A not-particularly-brave Guardsman squad has LD7 on the sergeant, which means that a ten-man squad would have to lose literally half their number before they have above-average odds of losing models to leadership. (If they lose four models, it's 50/50 whether they'll even lose anyone.) And if cheap infantry like that they really shouldn't be more durable against leadership without a character nearby to keep them courageous.

There are very few armies that don't have ways to mitigate morale and keep the losses to a minimum. If you're losing a ton of models from ten man squads, either you're facing a bunch of Night Lords or you're not building your army properly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
In other words, to summarize: I don't think Morale needs fixing. If anything, I think it could really be a lot more damaging than it is now, either by introducing more ways to effect it or just by reducing everyone's leadership across the board.

Some things I'd like to see:
If a unit loses more models than it killed in the Fight Phase, it takes an additional -1 to its leadership.
If a a unit is outnumbered in the Fight Phase, (More enemy models are engaged than are in the unit,) it takes an additional -1 to its leadership. Monsters and Vehicles count as 5 models for the purposes of this rule, Titanic units count as 10 models.
If a unit loses more than 25% of its models in a single phase (rounding up) it takes an additional -1 to its leadership.

"And They Shall Know No Fear" ignores the above penalties, but no longer provides a reroll.

(This also provides some small but noteworthy buffs to melee units, which is nice.)

Waaaghpower wrote:
To be honest, the damage I take from morale on small units is so minimal that I hardly notice it.
Unless under the effects of psychic powers or other abilities that reduce my Leadership, many armies of mine don't even have the capability to lose more than one model at a time to Leadership. (That's because I have five-person squads with Leadership 8, FWIW.)

I think Leadership is just fine for ten-person squads. A not-particularly-brave Guardsman squad has LD7 on the sergeant, which means that a ten-man squad would have to lose literally half their number before they have above-average odds of losing models to leadership. (If they lose four models, it's 50/50 whether they'll even lose anyone.) And if cheap infantry like that they really shouldn't be more durable against leadership without a character nearby to keep them courageous.

There are very few armies that don't have ways to mitigate morale and keep the losses to a minimum. If you're losing a ton of models from ten man squads, either you're facing a bunch of Night Lords or you're not building your army properly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
In other words, to summarize: I don't think Morale needs fixing. If anything, I think it could really be a lot more damaging than it is now, either by introducing more ways to effect it or just by reducing everyone's leadership across the board.

Some things I'd like to see:
If a unit loses more models than it killed in the Fight Phase, it takes an additional -1 to its leadership.
If a a unit is outnumbered in the Fight Phase, (More enemy models are engaged than are in the unit,) it takes an additional -1 to its leadership. Monsters and Vehicles count as 5 models for the purposes of this rule, Titanic units count as 10 models.
If a unit loses more than 25% of its models in a single phase (rounding up) it takes an additional -1 to its leadership.

"And They Shall Know No Fear" ignores the above penalties, but no longer provides a reroll.

(This also provides some small but noteworthy buffs to melee units, which is nice.)

Yeah its fine for Orks because of Mob rule, but not for other armies, also morale absolutely needs fixed for multi-wound models. I mean our mobed up rule is a god send for orks in this edition, its so strong, morale isn't a problem for orks this edition. Take Killa Kans, completely useless in squads, if you couldn't take one killa kan as a sole unit I'd never use them. Even with the re-roll for ATSKNF morale really hurts marines and CSM its even worse.

Drop morale 1 point across the board

 fraser1191 wrote:
Drop morale 1 point across the board

What do you mean, drop leadership 1 point?

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:

 fraser1191 wrote:
Drop morale 1 point across the board

What do you mean, drop leadership 1 point?

Oh sorry, yes I'd drop leadership 1 point across the board.

Except for low model count armies like custodes, Harlequins, and knights(though I don't know why they need leadership) where it doesn't matter anyway.

Some leadership abilities would need to be tweaked like ATSKNF. But also putting more thought into it this idea may be awful. But it would make chaplains and similar units more attractive

 fraser1191 wrote:

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:

 fraser1191 wrote:
Drop morale 1 point across the board

What do you mean, drop leadership 1 point?

Oh sorry, yes I'd drop leadership 1 point across the board.

Except for low model count armies like custodes, Harlequins, and knights(though I don't know why they need leadership) where it doesn't matter anyway.

Some leadership abilities would need to be tweaked like ATSKNF. But also putting more thought into it this idea may be awful. But it would make chaplains and similar units more attractive

How would that solve the morale problem though. It would make them more likely to suffer from morale which the damage is already so extreme as it is.

I'd follow the Warmachine route and cut it. GW clearly doesn't like morale as a concept and they keep putting it in the rules alongside a long, long list of ways to just ignore it; I really don't know what it adds.

If you wanted to make morale interesting drop the idea of it inflicting casualties and put in some kind of Pinned state in which units halve their Move and take -1 to hit with all attacks, and then failing a Morale test might go from "Ooooh, I lost two more Guardsmen, how terrifying" to "Well, crap, now that squad's locked down for the turn".


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 Delvarus Centurion wrote:
I don't like the idea of taking damage for morale in the first place but I can live with it if I think first off, instead of removing models they should just take off wounds, wouldn't effect swarms but it would stop multi wound units from suffering as badly as they do. Secondly Losing units in swarm armies is fine but for elite armies its kinda ridiculous the amount they lose just from morale, I think if your unit is less that 10 models, they amount of damage from morale should be halved, what are peoples opinion on that?

A unit of five Space Marines with Ld 8 has to take exactly three or four casualties in the space of one turn to have any chance of taking casualties from morale; then they either have to roll a 6 and reroll into a 6 (1/36, 2.78%) to lose a model or a 5+ and then another 5+ (1/9, 11.11%) to lose any models. Elite armies don't lose anything to morale in the vast majority of games I've ever played; usually either the squad's wiped or they don't take enough casualties.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I'd follow the Warmachine route and cut it. GW clearly doesn't like morale as a concept and they keep putting it in the rules alongside a long, long list of ways to just ignore it; I really don't know what it adds.

If you wanted to make morale interesting drop the idea of it inflicting casualties and put in some kind of Pinned state in which units halve their Move and take -1 to hit with all attacks, and then failing a Morale test might go from "Ooooh, I lost two more Guardsmen, how terrifying" to "Well, crap, now that squad's locked down for the turn".


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:
I don't like the idea of taking damage for morale in the first place but I can live with it if I think first off, instead of removing models they should just take off wounds, wouldn't effect swarms but it would stop multi wound units from suffering as badly as they do. Secondly Losing units in swarm armies is fine but for elite armies its kinda ridiculous the amount they lose just from morale, I think if your unit is less that 10 models, they amount of damage from morale should be halved, what are peoples opinion on that?

A unit of five Space Marines with Ld 8 has to take exactly three or four casualties in the space of one turn to have any chance of taking casualties from morale; then they either have to roll a 6 and reroll into a 6 (1/36, 2.78%) to lose a model or a 5+ and then another 5+ (1/9, 11.11%) to lose any models. Elite armies don't lose anything to morale in the vast majority of games I've ever played; usually either the squad's wiped or they don't take enough casualties.

Totally agree, I think the game exists to be fun and losing your models to morale it not fun. Plus realistically morale or losing units to morale doesn't actually happen that often, rarely in fact; there is more likely, the army is going to retreat rather than a unit here and there, a unit might retreat from a position and re-join the rest of the forces. Plus its the 40k universe, when human soldiers in todays armies can keep their gak better than super human warriors designed to make war, is laughable, even guard, they are used to fighting against all kinds of monstrosities. I think if they are keeping morale they should go back to the old fall back morale, but instead of having to roll to re-group you just fall back until you are 8 inches away from a friendly unit or if the unit falls back into cover and then it re-groups

Nah, CSM armies my mariners lose models to moral all the time and not that uncommon to lose a unit because of it. I may exaggerated the loyalist losing models to morale a bit, but it definitely effects my CSM's.

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:
...Totally agree, I think the game exists to be fun and losing your models to morale it not fun. Plus realistically morale or losing units to morale doesn't actually happen that often, rarely in fact; there is more likely, the army is going to retreat rather than a unit here and there, a unit might retreat from a position and re-join the rest of the forces. Plus its the 40k universe, when human soldiers in todays armies can keep their gak better than super human warriors designed to make war, is laughable, even guard, they are used to fighting against all kinds of monstrosities. I think if they are keeping morale they should go back to the old fall back morale, but instead of having to roll to re-group you just fall back until you are 8 inches away from a friendly unit or if the unit falls back into cover and then it re-groups...

From a realism standpoint it's a question of scale; an army tends to retreat having taken fairly limited casualties, but at the sort of platoon-company level 40k exists at whoever's directly engaged may take horrendous casualties all the time. I'm trying to work out a search term that'll let me get some kind of broader numbers but one action that's stuck in my head is Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, where almost 9,000 of about 12,000 men taking part in the Confederate assault were killed, wounded, or captured in the space of about an hour, which represents 30-40% of the casualties taken by the entire Confederate army over the course of a three-day battle.

When we're talking linear warfare games like WHFB or Black Powder where a "battalion" of ~500 soldiers is represented by 24 models having entire formations back off or run away makes plenty of sense, but in 40k it just feels like a small-scale implementation of a large-scale mechanic the same way Deep Strike does. Even in larger scales a "realistic" morale mechanic is probably more like how the damage mechanics in KoW/Black Powder work where a unit is removed from play when everyone runs away rather than when everyone dies.

(Further research has turned up the fact that "ridiculously heavy casualties" for an entire army in a single large field battle of the 19th-20th centuries doesn't get much higher than 30%, but those presumably aren't spread out evenly across units, as indicated by the 75% casualties for the units taking part in Pickett's Charge or the utter disintegration of Napoleon's Young Guard at Waterloo (have found reference to 80% casualties). It is certainly true that "large field battles of the 19th-20th centuries" aren't necessarily a good model for 40k and its melee units/strange giant monsters/super-death-artillery/giant war robots, but I don't have better figures against which to judge "realism" here.)

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:
...Totally agree, I think the game exists to be fun and losing your models to morale it not fun. Plus realistically morale or losing units to morale doesn't actually happen that often, rarely in fact; there is more likely, the army is going to retreat rather than a unit here and there, a unit might retreat from a position and re-join the rest of the forces. Plus its the 40k universe, when human soldiers in todays armies can keep their gak better than super human warriors designed to make war, is laughable, even guard, they are used to fighting against all kinds of monstrosities. I think if they are keeping morale they should go back to the old fall back morale, but instead of having to roll to re-group you just fall back until you are 8 inches away from a friendly unit or if the unit falls back into cover and then it re-groups...

From a realism standpoint it's a question of scale; an army tends to retreat having taken fairly limited casualties, but at the sort of platoon-company level 40k exists at whoever's directly engaged may take horrendous casualties all the time. I'm trying to work out a search term that'll let me get some kind of broader numbers but one action that's stuck in my head is Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, where almost 9,000 of about 12,000 men taking part in the Confederate assault were killed, wounded, or captured in the space of about an hour, which represents 30-40% of the casualties taken by the entire Confederate army over the course of a three-day battle.

When we're talking linear warfare games like WHFB or Black Powder where a "battalion" of ~500 soldiers is represented by 24 models having entire formations back off or run away makes plenty of sense, but in 40k it just feels like a small-scale implementation of a large-scale mechanic the same way Deep Strike does. Even in larger scales a "realistic" morale mechanic is probably more like how the damage mechanics in KoW/Black Powder work where a unit is removed from play when everyone runs away rather than when everyone dies.

(Further research has turned up the fact that "ridiculously heavy casualties" for an entire army in a single large field battle of the 19th-20th centuries doesn't get much higher than 30%, but those presumably aren't spread out evenly across units, as indicated by the 75% casualties for the units taking part in Pickett's Charge or the utter disintegration of Napoleon's Young Guard at Waterloo (have found reference to 80% casualties). It is certainly true that "large field battles of the 19th-20th centuries" aren't necessarily a good model for 40k and its melee units/strange giant monsters/super-death-artillery/giant war robots, but I don't have better figures against which to judge "realism" here.)

Yeah you can't really get facts on this but having to role for morale every-time a model dies is in the extreme when it comes to realism.

The basic question is:
What is the morale system even supposed to achieve?

It seems like it is supposed to create drawbacks for taking large squads.
But there are barely any advantages to taking large squads apart from the number of models being affected by stratagems, psychic powers and a few buffs (which is a problem in itself, like how 40 cultists can double tap with +1 to wound rolls for 3 cp with lots of rerolls from Abbadon).
The number of drawbacks from taking large units is actually a lot higher even without morale. Getting cover and shot allocation are the main things to mention here. If you have 40 models in one unit vs 4x10 models, it is hard to distribute the shots from the 40 man unit without wasting damage, while the 4 10-model units can just keep shooting, if the 40-model unit is dead after the 3rd 10-model unit has been resolved, you don't waste shots. On the other hand, if you are unlucky, you don't kill the unit on the objective that you wanted to get rid of.

If I was just considering this question, I'd think dropping morale would be the best thing to do.


Another question to consider: What should "leadership" and "morale" represent in the game.

In 8th edition of WHFB, leadership was used to determine whether a unit was able to reform their formation or march faster and as such was crucial for maneuvering and defending against being circled. Since 40k doesn't use blocks of models, this can't be transferred from WHFB easily.
The problem was that high leadership was more or less mandatory and you had play your army accordingly. There was no strategical element.

So what could leadership mean in 40k? Normally, the HQs should be the ones commanding an army. Most HQ units lead their troops by buffing them. Another game mechanic that represents commands are the stratagems.
Think about conscripts. They only profit from orders on a roll of 4+. This is justified by the bad discipline of the conscripts, they just didn't receive proper training.

Coming from that, I think there should be a discipline stat for non-character models and a leadership stat for character models. As for the interaction between discipline and leadership, if a unit wants to profit from a buff by an HQ units, it has to be given an order. Maybe make discipline range between 1 and 6 and if a unit wants to use a buff, roll a D6, if the roll is larger than your discipline, you don't get the buff.

Leadership could be used as a way to limit stratagem use. Wanna use a stratagem? An HQ has to issue an order. The range for that could depend on the leadership value.

Trollbert wrote:
The basic question is:
What is the morale system even supposed to achieve?

It seems like it is supposed to create drawbacks for taking large squads.
But there are barely any advantages to taking large squads apart from the number of models being affected by stratagems, psychic powers and a few buffs (which is a problem in itself, like how 40 cultists can double tap with +1 to wound rolls for 3 cp with lots of rerolls from Abbadon).
The number of drawbacks from taking large units is actually a lot higher even without morale. Getting cover and shot allocation are the main things to mention here. If you have 40 models in one unit vs 4x10 models, it is hard to distribute the shots from the 40 man unit without wasting damage, while the 4 10-model units can just keep shooting, if the 40-model unit is dead after the 3rd 10-model unit has been resolved, you don't waste shots. On the other hand, if you are unlucky, you don't kill the unit on the objective that you wanted to get rid of.

If I was just considering this question, I'd think dropping morale would be the best thing to do.


Another question to consider: What should "leadership" and "morale" represent in the game.

In 8th edition of WHFB, leadership was used to determine whether a unit was able to reform their formation or march faster and as such was crucial for maneuvering and defending against being circled. Since 40k doesn't use blocks of models, this can't be transferred from WHFB easily.
The problem was that high leadership was more or less mandatory and you had play your army accordingly. There was no strategical element.

So what could leadership mean in 40k? Normally, the HQs should be the ones commanding an army. Most HQ units lead their troops by buffing them. Another game mechanic that represents commands are the stratagems.
Think about conscripts. They only profit from orders on a roll of 4+. This is justified by the bad discipline of the conscripts, they just didn't receive proper training.

Coming from that, I think there should be a discipline stat for non-character models and a leadership stat for character models. As for the interaction between discipline and leadership, if a unit wants to profit from a buff by an HQ units, it has to be given an order. Maybe make discipline range between 1 and 6 and if a unit wants to use a buff, roll a D6, if the roll is larger than your discipline, you don't get the buff.

Leadership could be used as a way to limit stratagem use. Wanna use a stratagem? An HQ has to issue an order. The range for that could depend on the leadership value.

Yeah, you could basically have morale stopping you from benefiting from auras and buffs from HQ's. So if you fail a test you can't benefit from buffs, that would encapsulate the whole morale dynamic, while not ruining parts of the game.

I'd drop leadership 1-2 points across the board, and then change leadership from "models run away" to the following.

In a turn in which a squad has lost models, roll a d6, adding the number of casualties to the dice roll. Should this number exceed the unit's leadership, this unit, if they elect to move, may not shoot or charge this turn. If they forgo movement, or are unable to move, their BS and WS characteristics are considered to be 6+.

This represents loss of unit cohesion, units being overrun in melee, or pinned down at range...but allows models to still be used in a limited manner, and makes it more of a concern for more armies. Battle Shocked units can still perform their functions in a limited manner.

Since it only lasts a round, it also keeps bookkeeping low, and is very simple to remember rules wise.

Say a Guard Squad with a Sergeant is now LD 6
They take 3 losses
Roll a d6, get a 3 or less, nothing happens, they hold.
On a 4+, they can move, OR shoot/fight at WS/BS 6+.

Other leadership based rules will require adjustment accordingly.

 iGuy91 wrote:
I'd drop leadership 1-2 points across the board, and then change leadership from "models run away" to the following.

In a turn in which a squad has lost models, roll a d6, adding the number of casualties to the dice roll. Should this number exceed the unit's leadership, this unit, if they elect to move, may not shoot or charge this turn. If they forgo movement, or are unable to move, their BS and WS characteristics are considered to be 6+.

This represents loss of unit cohesion, units being overrun in melee, or pinned down at range...but allows models to still be used in a limited manner, and makes it more of a concern for more armies. Battle Shocked units can still perform their functions in a limited manner.

Since it only lasts a round, it also keeps bookkeeping low, and is very simple to remember rules wise.

Say a Guard Squad with a Sergeant is now LD 6
They take 3 losses
Roll a d6, get a 3 or less, nothing happens, they hold.
On a 4+, they can move, OR shoot/fight at WS/BS 6+.

Other leadership based rules will require adjustment accordingly.

That seems way, way too punishing for certain armies, and especially for very large squads, which as Trollbert points out already are struggling to begin with.

Compare the current system to your proposed system with... Say, a unit of thirty Cultists being used as a screen. I kill four of those cultists.
Under current rules, the Chaos player would then lose between 0 and 4 cultists. Next turn, their damage output and screening ability would be down by between 0% and 13%, give or take.
Under your rules, the Cultists would either not be able to move, making them completely useless as a screen, or they would have their damage output reduced by 66%. Either way, the squad goes from a slightly damaged but still useful unit, to a mostly useless blob that will not be able to do anything.
It also gets worse if we consider something like Ork Boyz. Let's say 15 Boyz with Choppas die out of 30 (I'm assuming you wouldn't change Mob Rule) - You can either lose between 1-6 orks, or have the squad do literally nothing next turn because they're an assault squad, and without the ability to move and get into assault range they can't hurt anything, or with only hitting on 6s they can't hurt anything.
A shooting stuck in close combat will still need to fall back, and thus be unable to shoot effectively.


In summary, your idea is way too punishing. I'd be on board for a more mild penalty, though: Say, moving at half speed or taking a -1 to WS and BS.

How are large squads suffering?

Most horde units in the game have ways of mitigating morale as an issue, and everyone can make an important squad completely immune to morale with 2 command points.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
How are large squads suffering?

Most horde units in the game have ways of mitigating morale as an issue, and everyone can make an important squad completely immune to morale with 2 command points.

Large squads, in theory, under the current rules, are more likely to suffer from morale due to the way that morale works. Most units have a minimum number of casualties that they have to take before morale even becomes an option - Units with good leadership usually don't have to worry about morale at all until they've lost three models, and even then it's rare and unlikely that they'll lose anyone. Meanwhile, once you've taken a number of casualties equal to your leadership, you hit the point where you're guaranteed to lose models unless you are willing to spend two Command Points, which is a lot.

A five-woman Sister of Battle squad can never lose more than one model to morale, because by the time morale starts kicking in, the whole squad is already dead. That's a worst-case scenario of losing 20% of the unit to morale, and under ideal circumstances that's still only with a roll of 5 or 6.

A thirty-man Cultist squad, meanwhile, can easily get past the point where it's taking automatic casualties and then some. Even with a Dark Apostle nearby, a cultist squad taking a moderate amount of damage (say, losing 15 models) is guaranteed to lose 20% of its unit to morale and can easily lose twice that much - If the Cultist squad loses more models, the numbers get even worse. (With an Apostle nearby, the worst-case scenario for Cultists is losing 13 models - More than a third of the squad - and that's not an unlikely result, unlike the Sisters losing one model above.)

Now, there are a lot of exceptions. Tyranids can ignore morale, Poxwalkers can too, Ork Boyz don't technically ignore it but generally have high enough leadership that they can usually pretend it doesn't exist until lategame. But in general, barring unit or army-specific special rules, hordes are more likely to suffer from leadership than small squads.

its fine as is, mostly, sure there a few corner cases but even with minimal list building consideration its barely an issue, plus swarms are usually swimming in CP so the auto-pass strat can be used as required

losing models to morale is only a thing that should happen with certain units abilities (psy powers, death jester, etc).

Morale Loss should always be some sort of SQUAD BROKEN effect, just make it easier to manage than in prior editions where you had to do all these sweep test, have rules for where models go when they run away, etc.

Squad Broken: Check for morale in the same way you currently do, if you fail, the unit cannot shoot, advance, charge, be selected to fight in close combat, or fall back. Broken models do not count as models for the purpose of determining whether a player holds an objective.

ATSKNF: Broken adeptus astartes models may still shoot and fight at a -1 to hit penalty, and may still fall back.

Synapse: As now, ignore the effects of morale.

And They Shall Banana No Fear: Custodes suffer only a -1 to hit in melee and shooting, but may otherwise act normally while Broken and still count as models for contesting objectives.

What about us Necrons?
Undying legions of terminators shouldn't have leadership issues.

Make units retreat a certrain distance away from the closest enemy model whenever they fail a morale test. That would actually make sense for once.

Retreating out of a melee would grant your opponent an additional opportunity to attack in CC. Scaring units away from objectives could become a viable tactic and open up niches for otherwise underwhelming units such as Primaris Reivers and Banshees.

 BertBert wrote:
Make units retreat a certrain distance away from the closest enemy model whenever they fail a morale test. That would actually make sense for once.

Retreating out of a melee would grant your opponent an additional opportunity to attack in CC. Scaring units away from objectives could become a viable tactic and open up niches for otherwise underwhelming units such as Primaris Reivers and Banshees.

So similar to 3rd/4th where a unit that failed a Leadership test would fall back towards the board edge?

 Blndmage wrote:

 BertBert wrote:
Make units retreat a certrain distance away from the closest enemy model whenever they fail a morale test. That would actually make sense for once.

Retreating out of a melee would grant your opponent an additional opportunity to attack in CC. Scaring units away from objectives could become a viable tactic and open up niches for otherwise underwhelming units such as Primaris Reivers and Banshees.

So similar to 3rd/4th where a unit that failed a Leadership test would fall back towards the board edge?

I wasn't around back then, but yeah, that sounds like a good idea to me, because it's intuitive. The game would have to be designed with that in mind, of course.

 BertBert wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:

 BertBert wrote:
Make units retreat a certrain distance away from the closest enemy model whenever they fail a morale test. That would actually make sense for once.

Retreating out of a melee would grant your opponent an additional opportunity to attack in CC. Scaring units away from objectives could become a viable tactic and open up niches for otherwise underwhelming units such as Primaris Reivers and Banshees.

So similar to 3rd/4th where a unit that failed a Leadership test would fall back towards the board edge?

I wasn't around back then, but yeah, that sounds like a good idea to me, because it's intuitive. The game would have to be designed with that in mind, of course.

If I remember right, if you failed a leadership test, the unit would be forced to retreat d6" towards your nearest board edge. Each turn you could make a new leadership check to see if they snap out of it. But! You couldn't make that test if there was an enemy model near by, so you'd get single models, or weak unit herding broken units off table.

 Blndmage wrote:


If I remember right, if you failed a leadership test, the unit would be forced to retreat d6" towards your nearest board edge. Each turn you could make a new leadership check to see if they snap out of it. But! You couldn't make that test if there was an enemy model near by, so you'd get single models, or weak unit herding broken units off table.

So it was similar to how WHFB handled it? Maybe that's a bit too harsh. Running away 2D6 inches for one turn would probably be enough. After that the unit would behave normally again, otherwise it might be too easy to abuse this mechanic.

 BertBert wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:


If I remember right, if you failed a leadership test, the unit would be forced to retreat d6" towards your nearest board edge. Each turn you could make a new leadership check to see if they snap out of it. But! You couldn't make that test if there was an enemy model near by, so you'd get single models, or weak unit herding broken units off table.

So it was similar to how WHFB handled it? Maybe that's a bit too harsh. Running away 2D6 inches for one turn would probably be enough. After that the unit would behave normally again, otherwise it might be too easy to abuse this mechanic.

It's worth noting that, while it was a lot more harsh, Leadership was also much more forgiving because the penalties were few and far between, and most armies had a point or two more in Leadership. (LD10 was incredibly common instead of being the rare commodity it was today.) You rarely took negatives, and you didn't take leadership from shooting losses unless you lost a significant number of casualties. (It was 25% or 33% or something, I can't remember.)

EDIT: They ditched this mechanic because it was incredibly time consuming and involved a lot of bookkeeping. While I miss some of the grittiness and mechanical nature of old editions, I have to admit that 8th edition is much faster and easier to play for ditching mechanics like this.

GW in theory have two choices, they have chosen the third..

the first is simply to remove the morale mechanic they have, saves the ink writing rules to allow half the game factions to ignore it for all the good it does.

the second is to put a proper morale system in, while Bolt Action isn't ideal something like that, where units gradually become less effective as they are suppressed by enemy fire/casualties. With a way to recover (this is where BA sucks)

GW went for the battleshock system which in effect is ignored by small units where casualties should matter and cripples larger ones that should be better able to accept casualties.

Personally put in a "pin" system ala Bolt Action, but create a way to spend a turn inactive and clear all pins (to avoid the BA issue where a unit is pinned a bit, then utterly ignored), and have a threshold for the number of hits to cause a pin (say 50% of current unit size, so a unit of 20 orks needs 10 hits (regardless of if they wound) to put a pin on - otherwise with split fire everyhting is pinned turn one

 Blndmage wrote:
What about us Necrons?
Undying legions of terminators shouldn't have leadership issues.

They got rid of that, Berzerkers shouldn't have to deal with morale either. If we suffer morale so are you.


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leopard wrote:
GW in theory have two choices, they have chosen the third..

the first is simply to remove the morale mechanic they have, saves the ink writing rules to allow half the game factions to ignore it for all the good it does.

the second is to put a proper morale system in, while Bolt Action isn't ideal something like that, where units gradually become less effective as they are suppressed by enemy fire/casualties. With a way to recover (this is where BA sucks)

GW went for the battleshock system which in effect is ignored by small units where casualties should matter and cripples larger ones that should be better able to accept casualties.

Personally put in a "pin" system ala Bolt Action, but create a way to spend a turn inactive and clear all pins (to avoid the BA issue where a unit is pinned a bit, then utterly ignored), and have a threshold for the number of hits to cause a pin (say 50% of current unit size, so a unit of 20 orks needs 10 hits (regardless of if they wound) to put a pin on - otherwise with split fire everyhting is pinned turn one

They simply wanted to shorten the game but didn't think 2 minutes on how to do that properly. I;d rather they just made weapons stats better on average to shorten the game rather than the cluster feth that morale is.

I mean even allowing to take saving throws against morale losses would make morale so much better this edition. You could just say that they summoned the courage to stop running and turn around and keep fighting from the saved roll.

 Blndmage wrote:
What about us Necrons?
Undying legions of terminators shouldn't have leadership issues.

Well, sadly rules can't work that way. You can't have armies that debuff LD and armies that completely ignore LD.

Everyone has to suffer from morale, lore be damned. No exceptions.



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 BertBert wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:


If I remember right, if you failed a leadership test, the unit would be forced to retreat d6" towards your nearest board edge. Each turn you could make a new leadership check to see if they snap out of it. But! You couldn't make that test if there was an enemy model near by, so you'd get single models, or weak unit herding broken units off table.

So it was similar to how WHFB handled it? Maybe that's a bit too harsh. Running away 2D6 inches for one turn would probably be enough. After that the unit would behave normally again, otherwise it might be too easy to abuse this mechanic.

Nah, don't make it random. Make it the units M" or something. A bike is going to run away faster than a footslogging guy. We need less randomness, not more.

 Sir Heckington wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
What about us Necrons?
Undying legions of terminators shouldn't have leadership issues.

Well, sadly rules can't work that way. You can't have armies that debuff LD and armies that completely ignore LD.

Everyone has to suffer from morale, lore be damned. No exceptions.