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The game has been slowly stripped away until it's built around the mechanics that favour marine armies - toughness, wounds and saves.

Initiative was a means for light fast fragile units to stand out, but with that gone it's simply downgraded those and given it to everyone.



One additional rule in melee would help.


Strike simultaneously
When this unit is attacked in melee, its return attacks are resolved simultaneously with the attackers. This can result in both sides being destroyed.


Thus you how 3 initiative levels:

Strike first (special rule or active unit)
Strike 'last' (any unit that's the target of an active unit)
Strike simultaneously


Without adding initiative back into the game, it's a small way to have some units appear more dangerous from their return attacks.

That's just a worse fight on death isn't it? Marines had awesome Initiative, it being removed has hurt them more than Orks and Necrons.

 vict0988 wrote:
That's just a worse fight on death isn't it? Marines had awesome Initiative, it being removed has hurt them more than Orks and Necrons.

It hurt nids and Eldar far more than marines. It was the only thing they had to protect themselves from melee, while marines had armour saves and wounds as well.

I pitched something sort of similar a while back. I didn't frame it as initiative but as especially competent melee units not going down without a fight.

Basically, "elite" melee units (melee aspect warriors, vanguard vets, nobz, etc.) would have a "Stabby" keyword. Then your extremely rare talents (succubae, phoenix lords, Lucius, basically anything that would have been WS6+ back in the day) would be "Extra Stabby."

* When a Stabby model is killed in melee (except by an Extra Stabby model), it fights on death.

* When an Extra Stabby model is killed in melee, it fights on death.

My goal was to make it so things like harlequins and genestealers and nobz got a chance to do some damage if you engage them in melee. Just because you charged the harlies with momentum doesn't mean that they'll stand there letting you stab them. If your squad gets within reach of the murder clowns, you should probably expect some casualties of your own.

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That said, if your goal is more to provide high-init armies with some speed-as-defense, then a return to the WS chart might be the easiest way to do that. You can give things that used to be high init slightly better WS thus making them harder to hit. I guess you could also just do a flat to-hit penalty, but the current rules not allowing stacking to-hit mods makes things weird.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
That said, if your goal is more to provide high-init armies with some speed-as-defense, then a return to the WS chart might be the easiest way to do that. You can give things that used to be high init slightly better WS thus making them harder to hit. I guess you could also just do a flat to-hit penalty, but the current rules not allowing stacking to-hit mods makes things weird.

Could reduce WS. But since power fists are now WS 4+ instead of 3+ -1 I don't see why you need stacking? Do you want some units to be -2 to hit in melee? I think that's excessive, -1 is enough and something I've advocated for in specific circumstances, I think giving it to entire factions is a bad idea.

Oops. Brainfart. Totally forgot that WS was on the weapon profile now.