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Currently in 8th edition 40k surrounding your enemy doesn't exactly do much.

Just an initial idea here ,so please bear with me on this roughness of it. What if a unit that is forced to take a moral test can not physically move at least 6 inches in any direction (normal movement rules) it will count a moral test as auto-failed with dice roll of 12?

Boxing your opponent in will make sense again, and encourage movements and having tactics. It's also not an auto-death sentence for the surrounded unit unless it's a tiny squad.

 cuda1179 wrote:
Currently in 8th edition 40k surrounding your enemy doesn't exactly do much.

Just an initial idea here ,so please bear with me on this roughness of it. What if a unit that is forced to take a moral test can not physically move at least 6 inches in any direction (normal movement rules) it will count a moral test as auto-failed with dice roll of 12?

Boxing your opponent in will make sense again, and encourage movements and having tactics. It's also not an auto-death sentence for the surrounded unit unless it's a tiny squad.

Surround one model in a unit with three enemy models, so that model can’t move. Or do that for two different models in the unit, so that unit coherency limits how far the rest of the models in the unit can move.

Now explain how you’re going to define “can not physically move at least 6 inches”.

perhaps something like:

The surrounded unit can't move uniformly in the same general direction without moving into/over enemy models, impassible terrain, or other inaccessible areas (unless allowed to do so by their normal movement rules)

Define "uniformly in the same general direction".

 cuda1179 wrote:
perhaps something like:

The surrounded unit can't move uniformly in the same general direction without moving into/over enemy models, impassible terrain, or other inaccessible areas (unless allowed to do so by their normal movement rules)

Wouldn't the innate advantage of putting your opponent into that position be that you're basically preventing them from falling back?

Tying it to morale seems a bit weird. My understanding is that flanking/surrounding an enemy is generally useful because it forces them to try and defend on multiple sides at once. Or, y'know, results in them dying if they fail to do so. It's not so much that a space marine or a guardsman or a fire warrior is freaking out about there being enemies behind him; it's that he can't watch his back when he's busy fighting the enemy in front of him. So being resistant to "flanking damage" because you're fearless, mindless, in synapse, etc. doesn't seem to represent the fluff.

You could probably abstract the concept with a return to rules that deal with the number of models on each side. Have some rule that kicks in if a unit is outnumbered by at least 2:1 in the fight phase or something. Though you'd have to reintroduce the concept of what "a combat" is to determine how many bodies are involved on each side.

I'm not sure I'm sold on the concept in general though. Part of me likes the idea of rewarding flanking, but is 40k really the game for that? The physical size of units can vary dramatically between armies, so something like orks or 'nids will generally have an easier time wrapping around the enemy to surround them than something like Blood Angels. And currently, combat is more about making contact with the enemy (and trying to triangle some dudes) than about structured line fighting. In a game where assault often means launching one or two key melee units into close combat while the rest of your army shoots at a distance, having a subsystem for flanking maneuvers seems kind of niche.

 cuda1179 wrote:
Currently in 8th edition 40k surrounding your enemy doesn't exactly do much.

Just an initial idea here ,so please bear with me on this roughness of it. What if a unit that is forced to take a moral test can not physically move at least 6 inches in any direction (normal movement rules) it will count a moral test as auto-failed with dice roll of 12?

Boxing your opponent in will make sense again, and encourage movements and having tactics. It's also not an auto-death sentence for the surrounded unit unless it's a tiny squad.

So I lose 4 Lychguard and have another Lychguard model caught in a prisoner situation, I roll 12, add 4, subtract leadership of 10 and lose another 6 Lychguard instead of losing 0? Hmmm, no. I don't like any part of this idea. It is punishing elite melee units that don't need to be punished universally. The elite melee units that are OP also shouldn't be punished by being fleeing when just one of their friends is destroyed. Being outnumbered only mattered in previous editions if you were losing, so you'd at the very least have to introduce that as part of the rule. As others have mentioned surrounding opponents is a vital part of playing a melee army, try watching some battle reports from some of the more skilled players I'm sure it'll come up a bunch.

Wyldhunt wrote:
Wouldn't the innate advantage of putting your opponent into that position be that you're basically preventing them from falling back?

This is what it is for my GSC. That said there was a moment of absolute joy in my heart thinking of a knight getting mobbed by 20 strong neophyte squad and going poof in the moral phase.

I think this is where falling back should make a comeback.

lost combat and failed morale? take wounds and fall back. Can't fall back? Take double wounds.

this would be a really simple system, and would work with how people play CC as well.