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Hey folks, sorry if this has already been covered. I feel like the strength of gunlines is a little too much in the game. Some fixes seem to be getting addressed in 9th, however I’m not sure it’ll quite be enough. Imo, the range of most weapons should be reduced drastically so that the majority of your armies won’t be able to engage each other from their deployment. I feel like this would reduce the impact of alpha strike, and wound allow for greater involvement in manoeuvring your units around and across the battlefield. It would also potentially help melee units/armies quite a lot, due to having less turns being shot at, and less units being able to easily be within engagement range. It would also make it harder to focus fire and obliterate units so easily.

Overall I think it would probably be a much better rounded experience, but I’m curious what you guys think. Would like to see any suggestions and get a discussion going about it.

Also apologies if this should go in the proposed rules section, it didn’t seem necessarily like a proposed rule, but more a discussion on an element of the game.

It's fuzzy; trying to discuss whether the engagement distance is too long is a general-discussion thing, but specific proposals about what to do about it would be more of a proposed-rules thing.

I think the reason engagement distance keeps creeping up is that charge threat also keeps creeping up. In 4e it was almost impossible to charge a unit when you started outside 24" of it (even Bikes got to move 12"/charge 6" only), but with speed creep and move-again powers there are a lot of things in 8e that can charge your deployment zone starting from their deployment zone. I don't necessarily agree with GW's decision to try and make the game faster by making it easier to engage on turn one, but I think that's why they're doing it.

All long distance shooting (18+) should be taken down a notch (48 becomes 36 etc)

Anti infantry especially should be shorter range.

Most gunline players will disapprove of this message.

That really doesn't make any sense. The ranges are already stupid short.

Siegfriedfr wrote:
All shooting distance should be halved.

All gunline players will disapprove of this message.

An Inferno Pistol should be 3"?

Eldar Guardians should have 6" guns?

I don't agree with this blanket statement.

I do agree with the OP's general point, though.

First, yes... This belongs in proposed rules.

Second, the issues with alpha strike are a direct result of the igougo turn structure and one player using their entire army before the next player returns the favor. That's the root cause. If you are not addressing the root cause you are using half measures as Band-Aids to try to hide the problem.

For instance... If you shorten the distances of shooting or widen the distance between deployment so then what happens is the alpha strike moves to the second players turn, or the second game turn, or you have players hide in their deployment zones unwilling to make the first move because it give the other guy the first chance to lay into you.

You haven't fixed anything. You just moved when and how the same problem occurs.

It would seem a little silly that most troops could move faster than the bullets their guns fire.

I thought having shooting work like combat would be cool.

Standard move should be 4” and with new smaller GW proprietary table sizes make that 3” .. reduce troop weapon ranges half, and platforms and heavies by third. Vehicles and monsters ignore infantry, can target point blank everything. Blast... needs templates. Flamers... need templates, if you are not civilly sophisticated enough to civilly employ templates then you don’t belong in public let alone a gaming table. Learn how to be a decent human being.

I'd say some modifiers could help. -1 to hit when shooting more than half range and an obscured rule like in cities of Death or Kill Team.
These are only reasonable if Plasma gets hot only on natural ones of course, but I'm sure we'll see a ruling like that in 9 th.

So you think that after 40k years of almost every race developing every type of shooting weapon imaginable - from tiny little bionic eyes (Yarrick) to starship weapons & everything in-between - that the game should just ignore that ranged killing is A) the goal, B) king?

NO. 40k is a shooting based game. Get used to it.
But if you still insist on trying to stab the foe? Then learn to play well enough to pull it off instead of trying to change the rules to favor something that the game/setting isnt.

Yes, 40k Melee armies should be somewhat viable (enough to sell models), but nowhere near as effective as ranged based ones. You know, "Don't bring a knife to a gunfight"....

You want effective melee combat? I recommend Age of Sigmar.
Aot more stabbing, a lot less shooting. And the shooting is shorter range & often less effective.

I think truncating engagement ranges would be a huge help for the game and would alleviate the need for sight blocking terrain so much. Cutting down most small arms fire to 12-18" could do wonders. Cut most heavy weapons down to 32", with only artillery and mortars going further than that. You could also do it like Bolt Action where small arms fire remains mostly at 2', but give a hit penalty for shooting on the move with another penalty again for firing at a target at more than half range. I'd make assault weapons ignore the move penalty as well. Any of these would curb the lethality of alpha strikes.

 jeff white wrote:
Standard move should be 4” and with new smaller GW proprietary table sizes make that 3” .. reduce troop weapon ranges half, and platforms and heavies by third. Vehicles and monsters ignore infantry, can target point blank everything. Blast... needs templates. Flamers... need templates, if you are not civilly sophisticated enough to civilly employ templates then you don’t belong in public let alone a gaming table. Learn how to be a decent human being.

He says, in a condescending way while being ragingly intolerant of others.

Civility had nothing to do with it, it was the accuracy that was impossible. Also it forced every army with infantry to spend an extensive amount of time meticulously spacing all models exactly 2" apart. I mean, if you were good.

Chess clocks would end that practice though.

Martel732 wrote:
Chess clocks would end that practice though.

Yeah. Let's have everyone require chess clocks to play so we can avoid trying to intelligently position your models to reduce risk of templates. That's a good idea and the game would be better all around.

Might be better than infinitely packed blobs in a game with zero aoe attacks.

When people complain about IGOUGO this is what I actually think the problem is. IGOUGO is a problem because just about every army can bring 100% of their guns to bear in the first turn so of course you're going to get to wipe out a huge swath of their army and take an unbeatable advantage going forward.

Of course just dropping ranges across the board is over simplifying it because you could also just reduce damage in general, increase durability, make better terrain and/or deployment rules, special defensive bonus for going second. the best solution would be some amount of all of these not just cutting ranges and calling it a day

 Lance845 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Chess clocks would end that practice though.

Yeah. Let's have everyone require chess clocks to play so we can avoid trying to intelligently position your models to reduce risk of templates. That's a good idea and the game would be better all around.

Sarcasm? Because I like this if it is sarcasm...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 CrownAxe wrote:
When people complain about IGOUGO this is what I actually think the problem is. IGOUGO is a problem because just about every army can bring 100% of their guns to bear in the first turn so of course you're going to get to wipe out a huge swath of their army and take an unbeatable advantage going forward.

Of course just dropping ranges across the board is over simplifying it because you could also just reduce damage in general, increase durability, make better terrain and/or deployment rules, special defensive bonus for going second. the best solution would be some amount of all of these not just cutting ranges and calling it a day

And larger tables shorter moves and ranges...

NooOOoo. It's not sarcasm. That was a totally legitimate thing that I think would make the game better.

Martel732 wrote:
Chess clocks would end that practice though.

You mean those chess clocks that you skip your dc fnp rolls for? No thanks. Keep that garbage in your own games. That's not my idea of a good time.

Turns out I can't do that sadly. There is almost no point to rolling 6+++ for a one wound model, though.

In principle I am in favor of time limits on phases... chess clocks are perhaps a bit excessive.

Some tourneys enforce them.

 jeff white wrote:
In principle I am in favor of time limits on phases... chess clocks are perhaps a bit excessive.

Or heart me out, we could lower the scope of the game by kicking out super heavies or making chaff into swarms.

That way it would also get faster.
But no money for gw to be Made that way

More terrain with better terrain rules solve the OPs problems.

Martel732 wrote:
Turns out I can't do that sadly. There is almost no point to rolling 6+++ for a one wound model, though.

Except when it actually saves some of them, so they can continue holding up a unit, force it to forgo shooting by falling back, eat up shooting, maybe kill some more models, etc, etc. The cover saves stealth gave my Night Lords while in open ground in 7th didn't do a lot either, but sometimes they helped, so I always took them.

 Tiberius501 wrote:
Hey folks, sorry if this has already been covered. I feel like the strength of gunlines is a little too much in the game. Some fixes seem to be getting addressed in 9th, however I’m not sure it’ll quite be enough. Imo, the range of most weapons should be reduced drastically so that the majority of your armies won’t be able to engage each other from their deployment. I feel like this would reduce the impact of alpha strike, and wound allow for greater involvement in manoeuvring your units around and across the battlefield. It would also potentially help melee units/armies quite a lot, due to having less turns being shot at, and less units being able to easily be within engagement range. It would also make it harder to focus fire and obliterate units so easily.

Overall I think it would probably be a much better rounded experience, but I’m curious what you guys think. Would like to see any suggestions and get a discussion going about it.

Also apologies if this should go in the proposed rules section, it didn’t seem necessarily like a proposed rule, but more a discussion on an element of the game.

Well. I hope you reduce assault distances seeing t1 assaults regardless where you deploy are quite normal

And gw(and in particular itc) is going opposite direction

Adding the extra 6" range to the new basic Primaris guns (on top of the extra penetration) was pretty unnecessary. It increased the kill zone area around the marine by 56%, and that was before further buffs like Bolter Drill or Doctrines.

In this particular case, the engagement range is indeed too much.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Turns out I can't do that sadly. There is almost no point to rolling 6+++ for a one wound model, though.

Except when it actually saves some of them, so they can continue holding up a unit, force it to forgo shooting by falling back, eat up shooting, maybe kill some more models, etc, etc. The cover saves stealth gave my Night Lords while in open ground in 7th didn't do a lot either, but sometimes they helped, so I always took them.

I need that time to set up and execute tripoints, though.

Martel732 wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Turns out I can't do that sadly. There is almost no point to rolling 6+++ for a one wound model, though.

Except when it actually saves some of them, so they can continue holding up a unit, force it to forgo shooting by falling back, eat up shooting, maybe kill some more models, etc, etc. The cover saves stealth gave my Night Lords while in open ground in 7th didn't do a lot either, but sometimes they helped, so I always took them.

I need that time to set up and execute tripoints, though.

It wouldn't be a problem if you got rid of that clock.