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What if flamers applied leadership modifiers to represent how freaking scary it is to have your squad bathed in flames and watching them scream as they burn to death... it would make them so much more effective against hordes as they tend to suffer from poor leadership anyways. A GEQ hit by a flamer would take 3.5 hits on average and 2/3 of those hits wounds, and 1/3 of those hits save. If a single flamer attack on average causes approximately a drop of 1 ld, then combined with the rest of the squad and what they are shooting it should hurt come the morale phase. This will also leave elite units like MEQ’s relatively unaffected by the flamer as they’ll basically ignore it. Also I bet armies using ld debuff shenanigans would love the cheap debuff. Would the flamer still be crappy? Would it have its uses? Would it become an auto include in some lists? Also, how would you apply that debuff if it was a good idea? A flat 1 ld if a wound is unsaved? Or if it wounds? “If any wounds are unsaved from this weapon, the unit has a -1 ld modifier until the next player round.” For example. Except worded in more official language. FAQed as a single flamer only causes up to a single negative ld modifier since I already know that question is coming... and at that point I don’t know how I would implement multiple flamers or multiple squads using flamers.

Could easily use something akin to the language that already exists in the rules for that Tempestus Regiment.

"Models slain by weapons with this rule count as 2 models slain for the purposes of morale." or something like that.

macluvin wrote:
What if flamers applied leadership modifiers to represent how freaking scary it is to have your squad bathed in flames and watching them scream as they burn to death... it would make them so much more effective against hordes as they tend to suffer from poor leadership anyways. A GEQ hit by a flamer would take 3.5 hits on average and 2/3 of those hits wounds, and 1/3 of those hits save. If a single flamer attack on average causes approximately a drop of 1 ld, then combined with the rest of the squad and what they are shooting it should hurt come the morale phase. This will also leave elite units like MEQ’s relatively unaffected by the flamer as they’ll basically ignore it. Also I bet armies using ld debuff shenanigans would love the cheap debuff. Would the flamer still be crappy? Would it have its uses? Would it become an auto include in some lists? Also, how would you apply that debuff if it was a good idea? A flat 1 ld if a wound is unsaved? Or if it wounds? “If any wounds are unsaved from this weapon, the unit has a -1 ld modifier until the next player round.” For example. Except worded in more official language. FAQed as a single flamer only causes up to a single negative ld modifier since I already know that question is coming... and at that point I don’t know how I would implement multiple flamers or multiple squads using flamers.

Morale kind of works like mortal wounds, there is no save and it deals an amount of "mortal wounds" equal to the wounds characteristic of the unit. Does inflicting mortal wounds sound like a good way to counter hordes or elite units? According to a video I saw on Youtube flamer tanks were effective in the second world war and a big part of that was morale, so it'd certainly be fluffy for flamers to impact morale. The question is whether it gets you where you want to go in terms of making flamers an anti-horde tool.

Intercessors, Genestealers, Ork Boyz, Necron Immortals, Grey Knight Paladins, Infantry Squads. Genestealers are immune most of the time, unless Orks lose a huge chunk of models they're immune and if they're not immune they're usually losing 6-10 models, so adding 1 doesn't make a big difference, Intercessors are usually almost immune to morale, but if you kill 4/5 in a squad the Sergeamt will have a 1/4 chance of dying instead of a 1/9 chance. Infantry Squads are affected, but with them you're so often getting overkill on morale that the +1 doesn't matter, with Paladins and Immortals you'd see some actual effect and each model that flees is a solid chunk of pts. IMO the morale rules are broken, although morale in melee in melee was an absolute horrorshow for Necrons in previous editions so it's not all bad.

Is your suggestion something like: "Each model destroyed by an attack made by this weapon is treated as 2 destroyed models in the following Morale phase."? That could work and would probably get you where you want to go, a flat -1 to hit to any unit hit by one or more flamers as I assumed you suggested at first would be a very bad idea for the reasons I listed above. It stacking endlessly would not be a problem IMO, if you're causing 10 casualties with flamers I don't think it's a problem if it counts as 20 casualties. There are a half-dozen or less flamer units that are already effective, those would have to be rebalanced, but I think the regular flamer and the Ork burna are bad enough that this buff wouldn't even be enough to make it worth taking outside casual games. Flamers are just terribly designed IMO, they should be R12" RFd3 so that they'd be useful out of deepstrike and against units that are charging from deepstrike or just 8,1" away. I think flamers also need some kind of anti-horde function, previously I'd say bonus hits against units for every 5 models or if the unit has 10+ models, but counting casualties twice for morale could be cool. Each casualty a unit suffers effectively lowers the Leadership of the unit by 1, so the effect is the same, reducing Leadership would be clunkier IMO.

So morale could be a way to make them sort of work is what I am hearing. And there exists a precedent rule that would make the transition smooth. I would like to see a flamer be effective at squishing tyranid swarms as well, or at least roast enough buggies to be effective. My original flat -1 ld modifier was more designed to be a slight tweak; there have been many incidences where major changes have had unintended rules interactions or simply overshot the desired power change to making severely overpowered things useless or vice versa. I definitely understand your point and conclude that maybe the more extreme ld shenanigans would be better, especially considering that flamers have no reliable delivery method. I really would like flamers to be decent since they are such a brutal and nasty weapon. I do also concurs that flamers definitely need something, but I fear that between the d6 system and the way numbers for charges and deep strike works, that flamers simply cant be afforded what they need in this system. I hesitate to say make the range of flamers 10 inches or even deep strike 8 inches rather than 9 so they can hit out of deepstrike, but I feel that would all create problems of their own. Extra hits against blobs and swarms would be another idea to consider and I don’t really understand why they haven’t tried to bake that into the cost. Alternate alternatively, raising the points cost of all platforms and making the game overall less lethal per point value could also bring the flamer where it ought to be, but that would require basically an entire edition makeover. I concur generally with all of your opinions.

Having flamers impact morale wouldn't be a bad idea. The -1 Ld or even the "flamer wounds count for double" approaches would both be a modest improvement that certainly wouldn't make flamers OP.

However, I question where this would really accomplish what you're going for. If you want flamers to be scorching tyranids, for instance, then morale debuffs won't help much given that synapse makes them basically immune to morale. I also question how scary flamers actually are in the context of 40k battles. Like, irl flamethrowers are terrifying, sure. But light up some marines that don't really care about their good looks or some tzeentch daemons that are literally made of fire or drukhari that stopped lighting people on fire when it got boring? Might not be quite as impressive as we'd first think.

A few random flamer buff ideas (probably best to NOT apply all of these):
* Make them 12" so they can help out against all charges and in auspex scan situations. Flamers aren't that killy at the moment. Also makes deepstriking flamers more appealing (I'd argue without being OP).

* Get rid of overwatch outside of appropriate exceptions. Flamers are one of those exceptions.

* Give them more shots when shooting at larger units. So a 1d6 shot flamer might become 1d+3 shots against squads of more than 5 and 1d6+6 shots against squads of more than 15. This means that flamers would specifically get better against hordes without also getting better against more elite targets. Your opponent's inbound wave of tyranids would be genuinely worried about where your flamers are.

And before someone mentions double hand flamer GSC, maybe just limit the number of handflamers they can take?

 vict0988 wrote:

Morale kind of works like mortal wounds, there is no save and it deals an amount of "mortal wounds" equal to the wounds characteristic of the unit. Does inflicting mortal wounds sound like a good way to counter hordes or elite units? According to a video I saw on Youtube flamer tanks were effective in the second world war and a big part of that was morale, so it'd certainly be fluffy for flamers to impact morale. The question is whether it gets you where you want to go in terms of making flamers an anti-horde tool.

That's a very reliable source. I attribute everything I know to youtube videos.

That said, yes, flamethrower tanks and flamethrower infantry were common through world war two and through Vietnam. A flamethrower is like a firehose that shoots a stream of burning fuel that sticks to things and continues burning, not a cone of flames as depicted in Dawn of War, other video games, or as Elon Musks propane blowtorch would make you think [Also, flamethrowers are legal and unregulated in 48 states and legal but with permit in the remaining 2]. And stopping, dropping, and rolling doesn't work on Napalm, it'll happily go on burning until it kills you in one of a couple of ways, the most probable of which is your flesh is burned off.

Flamethrowers were very effective against many things. Burning fuel would drip through engine grates and unsealed hulls of armored vehicles and light them ablaze. Fire goes into a bunker and sucks out all the air, in addition to getting burning stuff stuck to everybody inside of it and burning them alive and cooking off ammo and destroying emplaced weapons. Flamethrowers could clear foliage to expose enemy hiding places, as well as flush them out of them.

Flame tanks are even scarier than flamethrower infantry. Infantry with flamethrowers can be targeted and shot down before they get too close. If you put it on a tank... well it's faster and it's bulletproof. And it's a tank. And often, and tank's flame gun is bigger than an infantryman's and shoots more fire further.



Interestingly enough, I have an old Immolator box, and it shows the vehicle firing burning fuel streams that actually look like that which a flamethrower shoots unlike the cone of already-burnt flames that is shown in Dawn of War.

All amazing insight... whatever flamers are never gaining in the official rules, though, because we can cry for them to be updated into something semi useful until the cows come home but it ain’t happening, I think it should be limited to a single special rule to KISS and avoid excessive rules bloat. It should also be kept to a minimum to only give it a single attribute and not making it do several things, as I tend to believe that if it takes longer than 3 sentences to define a widespread rule it typicallly should not be a thing. This is the most civilized a conversation I have seen in this section though. Kudos to you!

 iGuy91 wrote:
Could easily use something akin to the language that already exists in the rules for that Tempestus Regiment.

"Models slain by weapons with this rule count as 2 models slain for the purposes of morale." or something like that.

You just reminded me of a funny battle I had recently where I used 2 Flamer Command Squads and dropped them right between 2 mobs of 30 Shoota Boyz using the Precision Drop stratagem - with the Psian Jackals (that doctrine you mentioned).

Absolutely hilarious. Opponent lost 42 Boyz to basically a suicide squad... which survived(!) and actually managed to hop back aboard the Valkyrie the following turn! So I got to repeat the performance later on against another mob...