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If I remember correctly, back in the old days a Lasgun (S3) could wound a any Tyranid monster (T6) on 6's. But not tougher enemies (T7+).

Thats a bit restrictive for new Strength-Toughness charts, but still makes no sense (saying this as imperial guard/sisters fella) small weapons can wound a Baneblade or similar tough targets. It would be a bit weird and would require some balance changes (like Primarchs or some Tyranid monsters being now invulnerable to some small guns, or how Critical hit would interact with small guns), but I really think a x3 toughness value should give better protection vs smaller guns.

Some new Strength-Toughness chart examples:

Boltgun (Strength 4) to Imperial Guard (toughness 3) on 3's.
Boltgun (Strength 4) to Space Marine (toughness 4) on 4's.
Boltgun (Strength 4) to Terminator (toughness 5) on 5's.
Boltgun (Strength 4) to Armored Sentinel (toughness 8) on 6's.
Boltgun (Strength 4) to Baneblade (toughness 13), can't wound. Perhaps allow Critical hits to wound it, or not. Thats up for debate.

What you guys think of this? It would help reduce lethality, which I believe is needed.

I agree, but would it run into a conflict with Anti-X rules?

Nope. It just encourages skew towards what 6th/7th had.

It would completely invalidate the core mechanic of Imperial guard, as well as Cultists, and the grots, don't pox walkers hit at S2 as well? Point is, no. You shouldn't be able to damage Terminators and Tanks with grot blasters, and titans with Lasguns, but that's how it is. You'd have to make everyone a base S4 attack. And Guard are already silly enough.

I have considered house-ruling that attacks with Strength of 1/3 (or maybe 1/4 now in 10th) of the target's Toughness, you roll wounds with disadvantage, AKA re-rolling successful wound rolls so only double sixes make it.

Good idea, not aggressive enough. The game should go back to the old S vs. T table where S = T is a 4+ to wound and each step higher or lower gives +1/-1 to wound. And once you get to 7+ you can't wound at all. Lasguns/bolters/etc should do literally nothing to even the lightest vehicles.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
It would completely invalidate the core mechanic of Imperial guard

Good. It's a stupid and anti-lore mechanic that needs to be removed.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Nope. It just encourages skew towards what 6th/7th had.

I'm not sure if i agree with that statment. Not being able to wound everything on a 6 requires you take a variety of weapons to handle a variety of targets.

If anything can wound anything you can just shrug and take nothing but lasguns and it may work out for you. Hell Mordian Glory managed it.

As an example, current HH. I faced an opponent using an ultramarine list spamming tac squads and it was pretty nasty. But it was a game mode without armour values and few dreads. He could shoot anyone off the board but if he had of faced a single vehicle or more T8 than his limited heavy weapons could handle it would have been a one way battle.

kingpbjames wrote:I have considered house-ruling that attacks with Strength of 1/3 (or maybe 1/4 now in 10th) of the target's Toughness, you roll wounds with disadvantage, AKA re-rolling successful wound rolls so only double sixes make it.

The problem with that approach is that at some point you're so unlikely to do any meaningful damage that you're just wasting time by rolling. As-is, fishing for 6s doesn't feel great, but arguably still doing enough damage (on average) to bother rolling. Especially if your attacks have good AP or Damage or devastating wounds or something else along those lines.

cody.d. wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Nope. It just encourages skew towards what 6th/7th had.

I'm not sure if i agree with that statment. Not being able to wound everything on a 6 requires you take a variety of weapons to handle a variety of targets.

If anything can wound anything you can just shrug and take nothing but lasguns and it may work out for you. Hell Mordian Glory managed it.

As an example, current HH. I faced an opponent using an ultramarine list spamming tac squads and it was pretty nasty. But it was a game mode without armour values and few dreads. He could shoot anyone off the board but if he had of faced a single vehicle or more T8 than his limited heavy weapons could handle it would have been a one way battle.

I can't speak to HH, but spamming massed lasguns has rarely been an effective offensive tactic in 40k. Sure, a bunch of lasguns given infinite turns will eventually manage to kill a landraider, but they're so inefficient at that job that you really, really want to have some lascannons somewhere in your list.

Actually. Let me just interrupt my own post to speedrun how this type of thread usually goes:

* Make vehicles immune to small arms because realism.
* "Realism" in 40k is a weird concept. Also, this turns mechanized lists into skew lists which are really unfun to face because every rifle in your list basically isn't allowed to interact with big chunks of the enemy list.
* Well just throw your rifle dudes onto objectives and win on points!
* That's lame though, and also not what I signed up for when I agreed to play 40k. I want rifle dudes and tanks all shooting at each other.
* Well just take more anti-tank then!
* If there's basically a minimum amount of anti-tank you have to take to avoid having a crummy game, that feels like a problem. Plus, this results in bad list diversity, turns a bunch of non-anti-tank guns into never-takes, etc.
* And then at some point someone points out that skew lists being possible in the first place is a problem, and the conversation gets more interesting from there.

That was a bit strawman esque but fair enough. I'm more talking from a gameplay perspective, wounding anything on 6s has issues mostly with layered buffs.

A Lasgun was an example but heavybolters and Guiliiman from 8th would would be another. Or just space marines with oath of moment I guess. Do marines really need high quality anti tank if they can just try and power through targets with re-rolls alone? The new T values are great and all but some of them feel a little meaningless. T14 is cute but is there much difference between T12 or T8 in the grand scheme of things? Maybe in a handful of cases but against the majority of weapons there's little change.

Now if the stompa (as an example) was immune to Str7 weaponry and below it'd give that super high T stat a reason to exist beyond funny number high.

cody.d. wrote:
That was a bit strawman esque but fair enough. I'm more talking from a gameplay perspective, wounding anything on 6s has issues mostly with layered buffs.

A Lasgun was an example but heavybolters and Guiliiman from 8th would would be another. Or just space marines with oath of moment I guess. Do marines really need high quality anti tank if they can just try and power through targets with re-rolls alone?

Honest question: are marines efficiently chewing through tanks using just bolters? If so, then I'd argue the easier, more contained fix would be to adjust Oath of Moment.

The new T values are great and all but some of them feel a little meaningless. T14 is cute but is there much difference between T12 or T8 in the grand scheme of things?

There's definitely a difference; just not to bolters. T12 vs T8 means that something like a drukhari blaster is wounding you on a 5+ instead of a 4+, and a lascannon or bright lance is wounding you on a 4+ instead of a 3+. S12 seems to be the new go-to strength for dedicated anti-tank heavy weapons, so T12 basically gives you -1 to being wounded against anti-tank guns.

And not just anti-tank guns. Against mid-strength guns that try to chip away with volume of attacks, T12 is taking half as many wounds as a T8 target is. I'm thinking of things like eldar jetbikes with scatter lasers and shuriken cannons.

Maybe in a handful of cases but against the majority of weapons there's little change.

I'm always hesitant to give GW too much credit, but this might be intentional. You know how I mentioned above that at some point you're so unlikely to do any meaningful damage that it isn't worth rolling the dice? Well, what you're describing basically translates to there being a cap on how ineffective weapons can be. So even if lasguns are a terrible option for chewing through a land raider, they can still fish for sixes and contribute to that land raider's demise.

Basically, higher Toughness stops helping against lower strength weapons at some point, but it theoretically continues to help against higher strength weapons.

Now if the stompa (as an example) was immune to Str7 weaponry and below it'd give that super high T stat a reason to exist beyond funny number high.

Being T14 means that S7 weapons wound you half as often as they wound T8-13 targets. Drukhari heat lances, tau seeker missiles, and hunter-killers are all S14. And those lascannons and dark lances that are the main source of anti-tank for many armies are functionally at -1 to wound T14 compared to T12 targets.

So again, we're seeing that higher Toughness continue to matter against higher strength weapons but provides diminishing returns against weaker weapons. Which seems like a valid way for GW to go even if it's not my favorite.

I wouldn't mind if they simplified the wound chart a bit more. For example:
- Double Toughness remains 6+.
- Triple Toughness becomes N/A. Which means S3 into T9 would do nothing, S4 into T12 would do nothing.
- Then on the flipside double Strength remains 2+.
- Triple Strength becomes autowound. So S9 into T3 doesn't need to roll at all. You just need to hit.

So while this might make high Toughness skew worse as it was in older editions it's still nowhere near as bad as it use to be. As things like heavy bolters can still wound knights. It also removes some of the "feels bad" moments when something like a lascannon wouldn't kill a Guardsmen.

So this raises the question of what effect does rend have? A Hotshot lasgun hits on a 6, and automatically forces my Custodian to roll a Invul Save.

How about SX weapons don't get Rend or AP against T3X targets?

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So this raises the question of what effect does rend have? A Hotshot lasgun hits on a 6, and automatically forces my Custodian to roll a Invul Save.

How about SX weapons don't get Rend or AP against T3X targets?

Sorry. What are do you mean by "rend" in this context? GW has used the word in a lot of different ways over the years, and I don't believe the term exists in 10th edition at the moment.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So this raises the question of what effect does rend have? A Hotshot lasgun hits on a 6, and automatically forces my Custodian to roll a Invul Save.

How about SX weapons don't get Rend or AP against T3X targets?

Sorry. What are do you mean by "rend" in this context? GW has used the word in a lot of different ways over the years, and I don't believe the term exists in 10th edition at the moment.

Think he just means AP. It's called Rend in AoS.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So this raises the question of what effect does rend have? A Hotshot lasgun hits on a 6, and automatically forces my Custodian to roll a Invul Save.

How about SX weapons don't get Rend or AP against T3X targets?

Sorry. What are do you mean by "rend" in this context? GW has used the word in a lot of different ways over the years, and I don't believe the term exists in 10th edition at the moment.

Think he just means AP. It's called Rend in AoS.

Ah. In that case, I don't think I see much value in adding such a rule. To my knowledge (happy to be proven wrong), the game doesn't currently have an issue with hotshot lasguns or inferno bolters efficiently chewing their way through land raiders due to AP. So taking away the AP that distinguishes an inferno bolter from a normal bolter seems like a feelsbad change that isn't necessary. If anything, you'd be making skew more problematic and limiting expensive guns' ability to impact the game, both of which seem to be bad things to me.

Do scions get lethal hits or something that's making their hotshots overperform against tanks? If so, that seems like more of a lethal hits problem.

No thank you

I'm not saying Hellguns are suddenly tearing up the meta, but Oath of the moment is doing silly things with AP, Rough riders do silly things with sheer volume of attacks, but no one is saying nerf Rough rider lances.

Point is, AP should matter. More than it does, but not to invalidate TX can ignore wounds Sx. I mean, AP has to account for something, someday.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
It would completely invalidate the core mechanic of Imperial guard...

Thank the Emperor. That rule is awful.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Honest question: are marines efficiently chewing through tanks using just bolters?

I don't think it matters whether they are doing so efficiently or inefficiently. I don't think they should be doing it at all.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Honest question: are marines efficiently chewing through tanks using just bolters?

I don't think it matters whether they are doing so efficiently or inefficiently. I don't think they should be doing it at all.

Plenty of reasonable people agree with you. I just prefer that all units be able to hurt each other to avoid especially feels-bad matchups resulting from skew lists. Quoting myself from above:

* Make vehicles immune to small arms because realism.
* "Realism" in 40k is a weird concept. Also, this turns mechanized lists into skew lists which are really unfun to face because every rifle in your list basically isn't allowed to interact with big chunks of the enemy list.
* Well just throw your rifle dudes onto objectives and win on points!
* That's lame though, and also not what I signed up for when I agreed to play 40k. I want rifle dudes and tanks all shooting at each other.
* Well just take more anti-tank then!
* If there's basically a minimum amount of anti-tank you have to take to avoid having a crummy game, that feels like a problem. Plus, this results in bad list diversity, turns a bunch of non-anti-tank guns into never-takes, etc.
* And then at some point someone points out that skew lists being possible in the first place is a problem, and the conversation gets more interesting from there.
[/quote

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Quoting myself from above:

I think the root of the issue here is whether you see 40k as primarily a simulation of "real" war in the setting where realism is the priority or as a war-themed game where balance is the priority. If you see it as a simulation then it's perfectly reasonable for there to be a minimum number of anti-tank guns in a setting where tanks are common. If you see it as a game then maybe balance concerns take priority and you need list archetypes like pure infantry with basic rifles to be viable.

(And of course there's the relevant question of whether skew lists should be possible but you've made your opinions of the old mandatory troops system clear.)

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:


I think the root of the issue here is whether you see 40k as primarily a simulation of "real" war in the setting where realism is the priority or as a war-themed game where balance is the priority. If you see it as a simulation then it's perfectly reasonable for there to be a minimum number of anti-tank guns in a setting where tanks are common. If you see it as a game then maybe balance concerns take priority and you need list archetypes like pure infantry with basic rifles to be viable.

Yeah, that's pretty fair. Given that the setting is already assuming that swordfights are an important part of the game, I'm inclined to err on the side of armor-piercing rocket guns being able to (slowly) kill their way through tanks. It's just a more interesting/exciting time than walking up to a table and seeing that your low-strength guns/melee units won't be able to interact with the enemy parking lot.

(And of course there's the relevant question of whether skew lists should be possible but you've made your opinions of the old mandatory troops system clear.)

Yeah. I think a better solution to my issues would be some sort of system to mitigate impact of skew lists/bad matchups in general. But then that gets into whether or not an armored company or Iyanden ghost army should be a playable list, and it's a whole thing. Would probably be a fun discussion to have though.

Just a quick note: the mandatory troops system didn't really stop skew lists from being a thing. Having to toss a few guardsmen into a couple of chimeras didn't prevent people from filling up their force org charts and CADs with vehicles. I don't like mandatory troops because reasons, but that's a mostly-unrelated issue to my grouchy dislike of skew lists.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I'm not saying Hellguns are suddenly tearing up the meta, but Oath of the moment is doing silly things with AP, Rough riders do silly things with sheer volume of attacks, but no one is saying nerf Rough rider lances.

Point is, AP should matter. More than it does, but not to invalidate TX can ignore wounds Sx. I mean, AP has to account for something, someday.

In 9th, with the old 8th edition Guard codex and the last dataslate before the Guard codex I ran a pure Scion army. No special weapons, just 180 scions and 3 command squads. Hotshot spam proved to be quite effective.

Now though, it's far more balanced.

Jarms48 wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I'm not saying Hellguns are suddenly tearing up the meta, but Oath of the moment is doing silly things with AP, Rough riders do silly things with sheer volume of attacks, but no one is saying nerf Rough rider lances.

Point is, AP should matter. More than it does, but not to invalidate TX can ignore wounds Sx. I mean, AP has to account for something, someday.

In 9th, with the old 8th edition Guard codex and the last dataslate before the Guard codex I ran a pure Scion army. No special weapons, just 180 scions and 3 command squads. Hotshot spam proved to be quite effective.

Now though, it's far more balanced.

Wasn't that also around the time where "No codex = anything goes" madness of 9th kicked off, and Scions cost nearly the same as guard, so yeah, 180 Air dropping guard squads with +1 BS and AP2 Hellguns was far better. But yeah, 9th was a dumpster fire from launch, much in the same way every edition since 7th has been.

Jarms48 wrote:
I wouldn't mind if they simplified the wound chart a bit more. For example:
- Double Toughness remains 6+.
- Triple Toughness becomes N/A. Which means S3 into T9 would do nothing, S4 into T12 would do nothing.
- Then on the flipside double Strength remains 2+.
- Triple Strength becomes autowound. So S9 into T3 doesn't need to roll at all. You just need to hit.

So while this might make high Toughness skew worse as it was in older editions it's still nowhere near as bad as it use to be. As things like heavy bolters can still wound knights. It also removes some of the "feels bad" moments when something like a lascannon wouldn't kill a Guardsmen.

What if we compromise and only roll half the wounds, leaving the other half to either auto-wound or auto-fail.

We also need a catchy name for this house rule. How about Disparate Wounds since it's about a large difference in Strength vs Toughness. Trying to find a better word that describes both cases... Polarized Wounds? Exceptional Wounds?

And for the description: "A force so powerful it easily overwhelms light defenses, or an armour so impenetrable that small weapons merely glance off of it. When the Strength of an attack is triple the target's Toughness, half of the wounds succeed automatically. If the Strength is one-third of the target's Toughness, half of the wounds fail automatically. "

 kingpbjames wrote:
What if we compromise and only roll half the wounds, leaving the other half to either auto-wound or auto-fail.

Seems overly complicated. You're adding an extra pool of dice rolls and a halving rule to the process.

If people generally agree that low strength attacks being able to hurt high toughness models isn't breaking the game, then at this point it's just a matter of whether your gaming group is bothered enough by lasguns contributing against land raiders to house rule that they can't.

It seems to me that any changes that further nerf the already limited effectiveness of low strength guns vs tanks risks making those weapons so ineffective vs tanks that they're no longer worth rolling for. At which point, just tell your opponent that you're more bothered by lasguns hurting land raiders than by the potential for parking lots to make small arms irrelevant. If they agree, you can just house rule which small arms aren't allowed to hurt which tanks.

@Wyldhunt, it's not an extra pool of dice rolls, I'd only need to roll for half the wounds I usually would. The other half auto-pass or fail.

I get what you're saying though about how it makes rolling for lasguns against landraiders a waste of time, but I'd say it's more of a deterrence for lasguns and insurance for the landraider.
Not to mention on the flip side, if you've got a lascannon with only some guardsmen in target range, you're at least guaranteed some wounds if you land the hit.

Ah. Gotcha. I misunderstood what you were suggesting. FWIW, I'm all for attacks with sufficiently high strength auto-wounding. Rolling a 1 to wound a marine with a lascannon feels bad as the attacker, and as the defender, I don't have any particular fluff tidbit that feels like it's being represented by the unlucky roll.

On the other hand, I'm not shooting S12 guns at T4 models very often either.

What if they reversed the Anti-X weapons and made it negative instead of positive? That way It removes the possability of ever rolling a 6.

Too complicated?

Just made it impossible to ever roll 6s or whatever we are calling 6s these days. Critical hits? Make it impossible for a autopistol to critical hit a warlord titan. Like, forget strength v toughness, just flat out make "This weapon cannot wound a TX+ unit, under any circumstances."

Okay, idle thoughts.

A weapon of Strength X cannot wound a model of Toughness 3X. But, when you select a target, you can halve the number of identical attacks (rounding down) to increase Strength by 1.

So, a S3 Lasgun cannot wound a T9 Rhino.
But if you have 10 Guardsmen in Rapid Fire shooting that Rhino, you can take their 20 shots, cut it in half to 10, and make them S4, letting them wound on 6s.
If instead they're up against a T12 Land Raider, they'd have to cut their number of shots to a fourth of the original amount, for 5 shots at S5.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:What if they reversed the Anti-X weapons and made it negative instead of positive? That way It removes the possability of ever rolling a 6.

Too complicated?

Just made it impossible to ever roll 6s or whatever we are calling 6s these days. Critical hits? Make it impossible for a autopistol to critical hit a warlord titan. Like, forget strength v toughness, just flat out make "This weapon cannot wound a TX+ unit, under any circumstances."

To my knowledge, there aren't any T15+ models, and there are probably few enough S2 attacks floating around for those to be an issue. Which means you're basically just looking to ban S3 attacks from hurting T10+ targets and maybe looking to prevent S4 attacks from hurting T12+ targets. That being the case, it's probably easier just to add a sentence or two to to the to-wound rules that basically boil down to, "Weapons with a Strength of 3 automatically fail to wound targets with a Toughness of 9," or something like that. Though the wording might need to be cleaned up to let haywire weapons work against land raiders or what have you.

JNAProductions wrote:Okay, idle thoughts.

A weapon of Strength X cannot wound a model of Toughness 3X. But, when you select a target, you can halve the number of identical attacks (rounding down) to increase Strength by 1.

So, a S3 Lasgun cannot wound a T9 Rhino.
But if you have 10 Guardsmen in Rapid Fire shooting that Rhino, you can take their 20 shots, cut it in half to 10, and make them S4, letting them wound on 6s.
If instead they're up against a T12 Land Raider, they'd have to cut their number of shots to a fourth of the original amount, for 5 shots at S5.

As I understand it, no one is taking issue with the specific effectiveness of small arms versus high T targets. Rather, some people would prefer that high T targets be immune to low S attacks on the principle of the thing. That being the case, your proposal wouldn't address their issue as it still allows lasguns to hurt landraiders, even if only a little.

And on the flipside of that, if you make the chances of a lasgun hurting a land raider too low, it becomes even more of a feels-bad rule than just not allowing them to try in the first place. Because the "smart" move is to roll the mountains of dice and fail a ton of times just on the off-chance that you manage to scrape off an extra wound. The lasgun player is essentially punished both for rolling the dice (because it takes a ton of time to likely no significant result), and they're also punished if they don't roll the dice (because they're giving up that smidgeon of extra damage/slim hope of significant damage.)