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How do?

So starting to get to grips with 40k again, and greatly enjoying Battleshock as a mechanic. I find it preferable to the old 'all or nothing, unless your a Marine' Ld. Chipping away at units until they start to add to the attrition just appeals more.

But how best to bend that to your own preference? I know some armies have ways round it entirely, or at least ways to mitigate. I'm also aware that hefty Battleshock can, potentially, leave some of your own units high and dry outside of combat at inopportune times.

And what I'm looking for are ideas and suggestions on how to best exploit it in the name of victory!

On paper it's good, in practice it hardly matters.
Many units have a small size and good LD, and need to loose like 4 out of 5 guys and roll a 6 for morale to matter.
Big units that matter are usually immune to it, or have ways to seriously mitigate it.
It was supposed to be the main counter to hordes in 8th ed. (which are mecanically pretty good usually), but they gave total immunity and almost complete immunity to the main horde armies from the get-go.

I think AoS approach in that regard is better. While it's the same basic rule, many units get bonuses for having large unit sizes (in the form of extra attacks or bonus to rolls). Bigger units are stronger, but gain a weakness in the form of battleshock tests. It's actually pretty common to see blobs of 30 models in AoS (ok, many have ways to mitigate morale loss, but less so than in 40K).
In 40K it's the opposite usually. Splitting a big unit into smaller ones make it more durable and generates more CPs, so it's a no-brainer.

fresus wrote:
On paper it's good, in practice it hardly matters.
Many units have a small size and good LD, and need to loose like 4 out of 5 guys and roll a 6 for morale to matter.
Big units that matter are usually immune to it, or have ways to seriously mitigate it.
It was supposed to be the main counter to hordes in 8th ed. (which are mecanically pretty good usually), but they gave total immunity and almost complete immunity to the main horde armies from the get-go.

I think AoS approach in that regard is better. While it's the same basic rule, many units get bonuses for having large unit sizes (in the form of extra attacks or bonus to rolls). Bigger units are stronger, but gain a weakness in the form of battleshock tests. It's actually pretty common to see blobs of 30 models in AoS (ok, many have ways to mitigate morale loss, but less so than in 40K).
In 40K it's the opposite usually. Splitting a big unit into smaller ones make it more durable and generates more CPs, so it's a no-brainer.

This on part 1.

Honestly 40k moral needs a complete over haul.

LD really doesn't play much of a part in 40k as there are so many ways to mitigate that.

Fearless bubble around nids, Ork numbers, MSU, and so on. Hell, even if you do get to proc Battleshock the abundance of CP in the game will most likely negate that on a valuable unit.

AoS just tends to do morale much better than 40k.

Sometimes it can turn the whole table around at the most unexpected moment. A couple months ago, I had a 1000pts game using Necron. After my Destroyers destroys the MVP unit in enemy army in 1st turn, they got focused by entire opponent army as expected, but my opponent failed to kill all 6 of them, "only" 5 dead. Comes into morale, I rolled a for the destroyers! gak, use a CP reroll, and result in a . That lost me the game as my only AT is now gone.

I agree that wile it doesn't often come up a savvy player can make it work for them. I play tyranids and often have no worries about moral but when things come to crunch time and I have few remaining units all it takes is somone to realise 2 of my 3 units that are covering farflung objectives (esp rippers) are not in synapse and one kill means I need to roll a 5 or under or the unit is gone. There have been times I have broken a space marine line late game by killing 8 out of 10 marines and with no CP left the remainder just buggs out after a pair of bad rolls leaveing a critica objective in my control. I like that it's not common and you kinda need to work for it.

If you want to try to take account into it _concentrate fire on one unit_. Don't split fire too much and expect battle shock. However do switch if you kill enough odds say rest die to morale.

Orks meanwhile can benefit from splitting. you have 2 mobs of 30 nearby. Rather than blow up 30 from one unit(easy) try to aim for 15 dead from both unit. This way both will be taking morale casualties=more dead models. Flipside is 2 less than half strength unit vs 1 big unit to deal with. However total # of boyz is less and no +1 attack.

If he has lots of grots spread fire among units. You need to kill 4 models and you are quaranteed d6 more dead(d3 if there's runtherd around). If somebody has 6 grot units(not that uncommon to get 3 battallions) then that's 10d6/10d3 dead grots to morale...2 or 3 units worth dying to morale.

With codex orks have began to disintegrate more easily in morale. It's the marines against whom you don't cause often morale due to small units, high enough LD and ATKSNF. Kill 3? Gee. Need to roll 6 with him having reroll to kill 1. Kill 5? Unit is already dead.

I'm occasionally surprised by the people continuing to pour fire onto a pair of CSMs that will fail their morale test at the end of the turn.

 Nurglitch wrote:
I'm occasionally surprised by the people continuing to pour fire onto a pair of CSMs that will fail their morale test at the end of the turn.

They are scared of you using the strategem to autopass

(well vs orks that is valid fear least them boyz come back in full strenght).

More to that point though when you pick up unit to shoot with consider odds and split fire if need be to ensure you don't overkill if you can let morale to finish them up. Of course sometimes you NEED that unit dead for sure overkill or not but sometimes just give yourself good odds of finishing unit and split excess firepower elsewhere.

I think that whilst battle shock can be heavily mitigated that only helps vs "normal" armies. There are several armies out there which can really lower the moral of the enemy, I think Night Lords can reduce morale by up -5 through various combos.

Basically, if you want to make battle shock work, you need to build an army around it. Otherwise Battle shock will just result in 1-2 models running here and their, but no big swings.