All good questions! In detail:
Wyldhunt wrote:Thanks for all the time and effort! Some scattered thoughts after a first reading:
* It looks like a unit engaged with 1 unit can use models not within 1" of the enemy to engage additional enemy units? Sort of like daisy chaining to charge and tie up an enemy unit while already in combat?
Yes. Entering melee is less restrictive under these rules, with the ability to use guns in melee compensating somewhat.
* Do models with flight treat difficult terrain as dangerous if they move over said terrain, or only if they begin/end on it?
The first one. The intent is for "models with flight" to represent models that need to dodge around/through gaps in terrain rather than
GW's infinite-vertical-move-distance abstraction.
* Is horizontal movement for models with flight calculated in a straight horizontal line through intervening models/terrain, or do you have to 'arc" over models and terrain?
The need to 'arc' over things always felt like a level of detail that makes the game harder to play without making it more interesting. Models with Fly measure the shortest distance from start point to end point at the moment, have added a clarification to that effect.
* Feels a little weird that moving across a patch of three craters (-2 each for a total of -6) is a bigger movement penalty than moving across a single -3 difficult terrain patch. Maybe difficult terrain should just use the highest movement penalty involved in the overall move? Otherwise, having multiple pieces of terrain near each other becomes surprisingly penalizing despite representing the same general patch of ground.
True. Have changed it accordingly.
* Monsters, who usually have higher toughness than other units and used to have the Move Through Cover USR, seem to get hurt by dangerous terrain more than other units. Intentional?
I'm second-guessing how I've applied this now. The idea was to make wound count a sort of 'model weight' system whereby one 10-wound vehicle is going to be hit about as much by terrain as 10 1-wound models, possibly with the ability to apply some kind of dangerous-terrain-mitigation effect, but now I'm thinking about how dozer blades in 7e/30k pretend to be optional and are really mandatory, going to go back and rethink the whole thing.
* Line of Sight. As I read it, it seems like having a single model in one unit see a single model in the enemy unit gives the entire attacking unit line of sight to all models in the target unit even if there are walls hiding all but those two models?
Line of sight is a lot more abstracted in this system than it is in 8e to try and speed up play. Consider also that area terrain may be defined as blocking to a given height regardless of where the walls are, so you may find a situation where under these rules only one model can see one model but if you were using 8e true line of sight the entire two units could see each other, so it's partially an escape clause for how big your blocking terrain could potentially be.
* Big models slain become "obstructions." I didn't see the terrain rules for "obstructions," but I may have missed them.
Terrain statlines are examples and not intended to be comprehensive. I've added a quick terrain entry for the wrecked-model obstruction in that section of the rules for now.
* Looks like lasguns wound wraithguard on 5+ and bolters do the same against knights? Curious about the decision making process there, but probably fine with the right point and statline adjustments.
That's supposed to be the 8e to-wound table as a stopgap; thanks for spotting the typo. I've got a lot of math left to do on the actual statlines, and if anything in the attack resolution mechanics changes that's probably it.
* You've reintroduced vehicle armor facings, but you haven't really spelled out how to determine where those arcs are on weird or asymmetrical vehicles. Where are my side arcs on a wave serpent, a gliath, and a wonky kitbashed battlewagon?
In theory you mark or define clearly for your opponent which way is 'forwards' (you'll need to for movement) and armour facings/fire arcs are defined relative to that. I put in the ability to resolve unclear edge cases by resolving attacks partially against one face and partially against another in an effort to reduce the time spent worrying about which face you should hit, but I have yet to test it so I don't know if it'd work.
* One of the critical damage results for vehicles lowers their toughness. This doesn't result in resolving attacks within a unit one at a time because you clarified that all attacks made by a unit happen "simultaneously," but it will result in a lot of awkward flinging of shots here and there as you try to give another unit a +1 to wound against the vehicle on the cusp of dying. Maybe move critical damage rolls to the end of the round?
Maybe. I'm not expecting people to be deliberately fishing for a structural collapse due to the rarity of it happening. Will think about it.
* Shooting seems to be a 'fight" action, but the fight action seems to imply that only engaged units can use it?
In the Combat phase unengaged units "Fire" to attack with ranged weapons only, and engaged units "Fight" to attack with melee weapons and some small arms. Pistols, grenades, and small arms are usable in 'melee' in order to allow me to do away with the need to track Overwatch separately, to provide a meaningful advantage to taking guns on melee units while smooshing melee and shooting into one phase, and to allow me to give the Tau something to do in "melee".
* Kind of concerned about the way lumping shooting and melee offense in together will impact certain units, but that can probably be addressed with point changes, special rules, etc.
Primarily addressed by the ability to use your guns and your melee weapons while in melee. While I'm sitting here thinking about superheavies I added an alternate combat phase action where things stuck in with models 2 or more sizes smaller than they are (ex. a Knight engaged with infantry) can act as if they're doing both a Fire and Fight action.
* "Reinforce" lets you basically plop down anywhere in your own deployment zone? That could be suprisingly powerful in any mission with a larger-than-usual deployment area. I expected to see something about being within Movement inches of a certain board or something.
It also allows more flexibility in how you define deployment zones (what if someone's deployment zone doesn't have a table edge attached to it?), and I find that
40k is usually more consistent about how far apart deployment zones are than how far apart the back edges are. Bringing on reserves from your back edge in Hammer and Anvil as a melee army just sucks.
* Overheat probably ought to be reworded as, "at the weapon's strength." As-is, a hypothetical 6 shot overheat weapon could miss twice and hit its owner 12 times.
Added "hit
once".
* Should there be an option to not activate (basically idle) in the combat phase to avoid losing stealth? As-is, having a smaller army than my opponent could make it very difficult for my stealthy objective campers to avoid losing stealth before they get shot at. Or did I overlook something?
The option does exist.
* No embarking after running?
Correct.
* As I read it, it seems like you can disembark from any vehicle on the table; not just from the one you embarked on?
Each transport has its own off-table zone that models embark into, added a bit of clarification.
* Do units have to be entirely within 3" of an embarkation point? If so, it makes it surprisingly hard to embark on a wave serpent (single hatch with transport capacity of 12). If not, you can potentially embark units daisy chained halfway across the table.
Nope, just 'within'. I knocked the coherency distance down to 1" to minimize daisy-chaining, and it also provides a justification for not allowing you to run and embark if you're getting 'free movement' from daisy-chaining.
* So a battle wagon full of power klaws and a raider full of incubi can both make all their passengers melee attacks while being untargetable inside their transports?
Crap. The text relating to attacking into transports was in the first draft of this, need to add it back. Good catch.
* Would a model with multiple guns (centurion, wraith lord) need the Crew(x) rule to fire all their weapons? The kellermorph?
Think of it like the rules governing how many weapons a vehicle or monster could fire in 7e, except written down on your datasheet instead of buried in the type information. Something like the Kellermorph is more likely to have one weapon entitled "brace of pistols" the way Corsairs do just to speed things up.
* Is a "commander" any unit with Command(x), or a specific model?
Any unit with Command (x).
* So if I'm casting a power and my opponent is denying it, I want to roll low?
Typo. Thanks for the catch.
* Are warp charges shareable or usable only by the psyker that generates them?
Not shareable most of the time, have added clarification there.
* Seems weird to me that utility powers which were sometiems formerly automatic (warlock buffs, shadowseer's veil of tears, etc.) are now harder to cast and easier to shut down than attack powers. Is Terrify really so much stronger than Smite that it needs these downsides? Dropping these disparities would simplify your psychic rules somewhat.
Psychic powers are currently a placeholder and subject to being fiddled with. The difference between "utility" and "attack" powers stems from how witchfires in 7e had to be cast like a psychic power and then you still had to make a hit roll (usually with no rerolls), while blessings/maledictions just worked once you cast them. I'm not settled on how I want to handle it, will go back and look at what powers I need to write again.
Overall, it looks neat, and I can see a solid game resulting from these rules. For me personally, however, I don't see a lot of features that make me see this as a huge improvement over 8th. The added complexity of firing arcs, tracking of vehicle damage to determine if a critical damage roll is needed, and large number of floating to-hit modifiers don't really look like my thing on paper. I do like the move to alternating activations and the general concept of various unit "states" though. Maybe seeing some specific faction rules will help me see how it's all meant to work together. I imagine that many armies would generally ignore/not impose a lot of the floating modifiers.
The point here is to make the game more interesting with just the core rules instead of making the core rules as simple as possible and then piling hundreds of extra stratagems, relics, faction rules, warlord traits, etc. on top in an effort to make a bland game more interesting after the fact. And I really don't want to take a leaf out of
GW's book and put rules in my game only to then give everyone easy means of ignoring them (3e-7e morale vs.
ATSKNF, for instance). All of the penalties and restrictions I've put into the rules are there because I expect people to take them/need to play around them, not because I want to show off how cool everyone is by letting them ignore all the restrictions.
Thank you for your feedback; I'll go back over the dangerous terrain and psychic rules some tonight and see about getting an army list or two posted tomorrow.
