Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

There have been multiple attempts to translate stealthy units into Warhammer 40,000 table-top wise. The issue to adding subterfuge to 40K is that there is no fog of war element. Everything you can see, your opponent can see and vice versa. You know where all the enemy units are. You know what weapons they have. You know what stratagems your opponent could possibly use. You know your opponent's objectives. You often know what the enemy army list is before you even start playing! There is very little your opponent can officially hide from you. The best Games Workshop does is messing with either deployment or messing with deep strike ideas.

When it comes to invisibility or other stealthy abilities, there are multiple ways to apply it to units. In older editions, invisible units could not be shot at unless you roll six, which made them extremely hard to kill at any range. During 9th Edition, some invisible units could not be shot at if they were more than 12 inches away from the shooter. Which is pretty much Lone Operative nowadays.

I have a new, more flavorable way to represent stealthy factions or units or invisibility in general. I believe it be a perfect fit for Genestealer Cults. It is called undetectable. Here are the rules.

UNDETECTABLE
An undetectable unit is invisible to the enemy player. Enemy players cannot shoot at undetectable units, nor can they target them with Stratagems, Psychic Powers, abilities in general, charge them, or fight them. If an undetectable unit shoots or charges, it permanently loses Undetectable. If at the end of any phase, an Undetectable unit is within 18" of an enemy unit, and there is no Obscuring Terrain between them, that unit loses Undetectable.

It would still be a better fit for a video game with separate screens so that the enemy literally could not see your undetectable units on their screen. But even on a tabletop war game with a shared space, these are pretty good rules. It allows stealthy units to move around the battlefield without fear of getting shot or harmed. But once a unit decides to engage in the fight, they are committed and they lose all their stealth. Your opponent can also counteract undetectable by using fast moving units to reveal the enemies.

What do the Dakkanauts here think?

18” is a long distance. I wouldn’t make it a flat 18” as well-a Callidus, for example, is far stealthier than that.

But, that said… other than a Callidus, what would this apply to?

 JNAProductions wrote:
18” is a long distance. I wouldn’t make it a flat 18” as well-a Callidus, for example, is far stealthier than that.

But, that said… other than a Callidus, what would this apply to?

Sly Marbo and the Tau Ghostkeel perhaps?

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
18” is a long distance. I wouldn’t make it a flat 18” as well-a Callidus, for example, is far stealthier than that.

But, that said… other than a Callidus, what would this apply to?

Sly Marbo and the Tau Ghostkeel perhaps?

Sly Marbo I'll grant, that could be useful...

But a Ghostkeel has some major firepower AND Infiltrates, so it's (1) going to be spotted quickly if you do, and (2) even if you don't, you're giving up a BIG chunk of firepower to make it unaffected.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
18” is a long distance. I wouldn’t make it a flat 18” as well-a Callidus, for example, is far stealthier than that.

But, that said… other than a Callidus, what would this apply to?

Sly Marbo and the Tau Ghostkeel perhaps?

Sly Marbo I'll grant, that could be useful...

But a Ghostkeel has some major firepower AND Infiltrates, so it's (1) going to be spotted quickly if you do, and (2) even if you don't, you're giving up a BIG chunk of firepower to make it unaffected.

The Ghostkeel is unique in the fact that it's the only vehicle with Lone Operative.

But it's weapons are short range...

I like the general direction of representing stealth with some sort of range-based system. My concern with this approach is that it might be too all-or-nothing.

That is, once you're spotted, you lose all your protection. At least I assume that's how you intend it to work. You specify that undetectable is *permanently* lost if you shoot or fight, but only state that it's "lost" if the unit gets spotted within 18". So if that is how you intend for it to work, it's going to be kind of a big ask for a unit (even a single model) to remain undetected from an entire army of enemies including ones that might be deepstriking in. Which doesn't necessarily feel ideal in lore terms. Like, it goes from extreme simulationism of being behind a wall keeping the enemy from knowing you're there to suddenly the entire enemy army knows your exact location forever even if you relocate.

Also, and this is 100% a nitpick, you say that you can't fight an undetected unit, but what's the scenario where an undetected unit is within engagement range but not detected? I guess if the undetected unit charges through a wall, stays on the opposite side of the wall, and happens to have charged a Fights First enemy? But I suspect this is probably just a small oversight, and I'm being pedantic.

I kind of like the idea of a slightly toned down version of this that gets applied to a wider variety of units. Imagine if some terrain got the "soft cover" keyword (or something more catchy) that makes it so that units wholly within soft cover can't be targeted outside of 18". And then we change the Stealth rule to shrink that range by 6". Maybe even go crazy and create an action that can be performed while within terrain that reduces it by another 6" or grants the Stealthy keyword to units that don't have it.

The intended result being that you end up with a mechanic that encourages the use of cover, grants "greater" protection against ranged attacks without adding more to-hit mods or rerolls to the mix, has counterplay in the form of positioning, and could potentially open up other interesting mechanics like spotter units, spotlights, auspex scans, etc. And because it doesn't make the unit that has it completely uninteractive, you can safely give the mechanic to a bunch of units in a given army instead of just to a handful of hyper-stealthy types.

I always liked the blips/decoy system for hidden units to add some fog of war to the game.

Don’t deploy the unit, but a marker and a couple of extras. Move them as normal. When one gets within detect range, flip it over. One of the marker is the real unit. Deploy it as normal, remove the extra blips, and continue play.

Can't you just deepstrike a unit within 9 inches, reveal them and shoot them in the next phase?

In Warmachine shots against a Stealthy model from farther than 6" automatically miss. There's no bookkeeping involved, whether the unit has "lost" Stealth earlier in the battle or not. Simple and effective.

Didn't the old DE Mandrakes have a special rule where you deployed 3 models, moved them around the table and later revealed which unit was the real unit and deployed the rest of the models in that unit?

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Didn't the old DE Mandrakes have a special rule where you deployed 3 models, moved them around the table and later revealed which unit was the real unit and deployed the rest of the models in that unit?

It’s been used a few times in GW’s past.

Cyel wrote:
In Warmachine shots against a Stealthy model from farther than 6" automatically miss. There's no bookkeeping involved, whether the unit has "lost" Stealth earlier in the battle or not. Simple and effective.

Does Warmachine not do premeasuring or something?

Itxi wrote:
Can't you just deepstrike a unit within 9 inches, reveal them and shoot them in the next phase?

You certainly could, there's a lot of counterplay against the ability. But I didn't want to make it too strong since this was intended to be an army-wide rule. It's numbers could use tweaking after actual playtesting however.

One way to buff it is that instead of undetectable being permantly lost on reveal, it is only lost for the rest of the battle round. That would make Undetectable very strong during round 1 (due to enemy armies being far away from each other) and on round 5 (due to few units remaining on the battlefield) but generally crappy on rounds 2-4 due to close contact. Undetectable is also good against Indirect Fire artillery, early-game stratagems, and long-range snipers.

 Calbear wrote:

Itxi wrote:
Can't you just deepstrike a unit within 9 inches, reveal them and shoot them in the next phase?

You certainly could, there's a lot of counterplay against the ability. But I didn't want to make it too strong since this was intended to be an army-wide rule. It's numbers could use tweaking after actual playtesting however.

One way to buff it is that instead of undetectable being permantly lost on reveal, it is only lost for the rest of the battle round. That would make Undetectable very strong during round 1 (due to enemy armies being far away from each other) and on round 5 (due to few units remaining on the battlefield) but generally crappy on rounds 2-4 due to close contact. Undetectable is also good against Indirect Fire artillery, early-game stratagems, and long-range snipers.

Army-wide rule for who?

Because, as someone who can get what's effectively Lone Operative 18" on a large chunk of my army (Plague Legion Enhancement for a Nurgle Monster) it's... Really strong. And the Enhancement only stops shooting, not other forms of interaction. And it's on an army that has virtually no shooting past 12", so I'm heavily encouraged to get to the midboard immediately.

Yeah. I think the obvious problem to watch out for here is that you don't want to make an army impossible to whittle down before it's too close to counter.

There are definitely some armies in 40k whose whole "thing" is basically that they win if enough of their force is still alive by the time they start making charge rolls. Not that you'd do this, but imagine if you made this an army-wide rule for something like World Eaters.

My harlies can get 18" lone op or 12" lone op on a big part of their force, but I think the longest ranged gun harlequins have is 24". So if the clowns are in range to hurt you, you're in range to hurt them. Plus they're an expensive T3 army, so that helps.