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You know what two systems rarely seem to make much impact in 9th edition games? Blast and Morale. Seems like mostly, morale just doesn't do much of anything because everyone fields min squads to avoid it, and that subsequently makes blast kinda pointless as well. The uncertain nature of Blast weaponry also tends to turn people off, I've found - you might roll a 1 for your shots, after all, and it doesnt work in melee. Lots of strikes against.

You konw what else hasn't been much of a thing in a bit? Grenades and auto-hitting "Flamer" type weapons.

Pinning

Against the terrifying weaponry of the 41st millennium, even the most steel-hearted warriors and emotionless cyborgs must contend with the reality that they must occasionally duck and cover to avoid certain death.


When a unit making a shooting attack targets only a single enemy unit with a shooting attack, and scores any hits with weapons in the below categories, the target unit must make a Pinning test before rolling to wound.
-Blast weapons
-Grenade weapons
-Weapons that hit automatically, e.g. flamers

To take a pinning check, roll 2d6. If the result exceeds the highest leadership characteristic in the unit, the test is failed. A unit may instead choose to automatically fail their pinning check. A unit that automatically passes morale checks also automatically passes pinning checks and may not choose to fail them. If a unit fails a pinning check that unit becomes pinned.

While pinned, a unit receives +1 to their save rolls against all shooting attacks, which is cumulative with any bonuses that they may receive from cover - including against the shooting attack that caused the pinning check originally.

In the Command phase, a player should take a rally test for each currently pinned unit in their army- roll 2d6 for each unit. If the result exceeds that unit's highest leadership characteristic, the unit remains pinned. Any unit that ignores penalties to Attrition tests also automatically passes rally tests.

Pinned units may not declare shooting attacks or charges, may not perform actions, may not make overwatch attacks or set to defend, but may fight in close combat if they begin the fight phase within engagement range of an enemy unit. They may move but only if that move results in equivalent or more models in the unit being within 1" of a piece of terrain. Pinned units continue to receive +1 to their save rolls against shooting attacks.

Units that successfully rally may act normally and are no longer pinned, but receive -1 to all hit rolls they make during that turn.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I like the concept, however, it will drive people towards MSU even more.
They can throw out more pinning shots whilst also being harder to pin themselves (since two five man squads would need to fail two checks to be fully pinned).

from my perspective, people are currently at MSU. Unless mechanics are added that actually incentivize larger units, there's currently zero reason to take larger units. If you're already at minimum, I dont see it as there being any way to further divide things up.

 Pyroalchi wrote:
Just for understanding because I keep confusing it: does +1 save mean the save gets better or worse?

better. The unit is on the ground, suppressed but gaining benefits to their defenses.

The goal of the rule is

1 - make morale feel like more of a relevant factor on the battlefield and more of a present concern that you cant just avoid in the strategic listbuilding phase, as it currently feels like it is

2 - reduce lethality by giving pinned units increased defense and decreased offense and incentivize players to prioritze targeting things to weaken them ("i'm gonna spread my fire around to try and pin multiple enemy units") rather than the current default of always attempting to destroy a maximum number of enemy models.

Wyldhunt wrote:
A thing that we've discussed in past morale/pinning threads that merits repeating here:

Most units in 40k are described as being at least mostly immune to fear. Marines are brainwashed into fearlessness. Necrons are robots. Tyranids have synapse and probably only have a sense of self-preservation because it lets them kill and eat things more efficiently. Skitaari are lobotomized and can be directly controlled by the tech priests. And then you have all the zealots, the axe murder samurai elves whose brains are full of blood lust, orks who live to fight...

Basically, more things in the game should probably be immune to panic than susceptible to it. So having a universla mechanic (morale) that mostly tests against how many dudes died next to you that turn doesn't feel like a great fit. If morale is meant to represent how freaked out you get when your friends die, then it should probably be a special rule that only applies to the handful of factions that should actually be impacted by it. If it's meant to represent the sudden spike in casualties causing your squad to become less coordinated, then morale casualties seem like a bad fit.

^The thrust of this is generally what I was going for, actually.

Think about any Impossible White Man movie with the impossibly cool calm protagonist who never ever worries about anything, your Rambos your various Johns (wick, mclane, etc) - that's essentially the headspace people like to get into when they think about their ultra-badass unshakeable unflappable 40k guys.

There's USUALLY a point in any given one of those movies where, regardless of whether or not he's AFRAID of the thing he's avoiding, the impossible white man has to dive for some cover to avoid a weapon that would just kill him if he were to stand and take it on the chiseled abs. Grenades, flamethrowers, miscellaneous explosions that he doesn't look at, etc.

In my eyes the main problems with morale currently are twofold in terms of crunch:

1 - it basically just becomes "We've had one yes, but what about SECOND casualty removal?" and it doesnt feel meaningfully distinct from just shooting guys

2 - for most armies since most units have min squad size 5 and base ld 7 or better, morale is essentially solveable in the strategic layer, before the game is even played.

maybe the mechanic I've proposed is too broad/too easily triggered, but in general I think a system that reduces the baseline level of lethality present in 9th edition and utilizes LD in such a way that it can't just be ignored for everyone but orks is fairly necessary.

 Mezmorki wrote:
This is somewhat of a separate issue, but comes up in this discussion, which is split fire.

A huge issue with current 40K IMHO is that units can freely split fire however they want, which means you're able to squeeze every amount of potential lethality out of your shooting attacks. In older editions, your shooting choices often had to consider how much fire was appropriate and where the shooting output of a unit was best directed.

In regards to pinning, the face that a six person mortar team could shoot and potentially pin 3 different enemy units is an unfortunate consequence. Units shouldn't be able to freely split fire IMHO. Or if the do, it should be limited (e.g. a unit can split fire once and shoot at two separate targets, but must pass a leadership test first).

^I'd point out here that limiting units to NOT split fire almost always caused issues with any unit configuration not equipped exclusively with one type of weapon being completely suboptimal every single edition until they added mass split fire in 8th.

If you asked me to fix the issue of split fire, I'd say that when declaring ranged attacks for a unit, the player may choose one weapon the unit is equipped with, and fire all instances of that weapon at a different target than the initial target selected.

E.g. my unit of veterans with 3 melta guns could select an infantry unit as their primary target, and select "Melta gun" as their split-firing weapon and fire that weapon at a tank.

That would fix the currently brutal situation of having a hyper-buffed 20-man squad of skitarii and going '5 are shooting this unit, 5 are shooting that unit, 3 are shooting that unit, 5 are shooting that unit, 2 are shooting that character, OK now I'm using these 3 strats and these 2 auras and this character ability, oh look, all 5 target units are wiped out!' while not sending units like the poor defiler back to the dumpster they had to live in throughout 3rd-7th edition.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
To resolve the issues with pinning as proposed, I have re-worded the trigger to the rule:

When a unit making a shooting attack targets only a single enemy unit with a shooting attack, and scores any hits with weapons in the below categories, the target unit must make a Pinning test before rolling to wound.
-Blast weapons
-Grenade weapons
-Weapons that hit automatically, e.g. flamers

So, in order to force a pinning check, the firing unit must select only 1 target unit for their shooting attacks. No guard mortar squads forcing 3 pinning checks.