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So I finally managed to get myself a rulebook for 6 ed and as I saw a lot of RAEG over challenges.

I admit I may have missed something as I merely looked at the rule and read it to take a break from methodically reading the whole thing. However, I fail to see what sparks all the rage over it. I agree the rule is a little silly... Especially as an orks player ( my poor nobz) but it isn't what I'd expect to cause so much rage.

On a side note I am very happy that they set up the rules in a very modular fashion so if you don't like something you can discard it without breaking the rest of the mechanics. I've done home brewed rules for rpg's and mass combat in the past and you'd be amazed how difficult it can be especially if you lose focus.

Back OT what did I miss that caused all the hating? Apart from making your character not be able to participate in cc for that round what kind of punishment is there for turning down a challenge?

The worst element to me is the ability for worthless "champion" models to either stop your beatstick from fighting or waste one of his turns only killing the one insignificant model.

They should have included Fantasy's overkill mechanic where slaughtering a placeholder hits the unit with additional -'s on their leadership test. The freedom to offer up a units commander with no downside other than one casualty seems wrong to me.

It will depend on the codex, but most challenges are really one-sided especially when you're only pitting squad leaders against each other or against HQs or Monsters. Space Marine Sergents are usually lackluster in challenges. As are Ork Nobz. But Daemons that aren't Tzeentch Heralds will absolutely eviscerate in challenges and Tyranids have few that can accept challenges but the ones that can are ones that you don't want to challenge.

Then, the duel just boils down to who has the higher initiative and that model having an AP3/2 CCW.

It's also stupid because it forces everyone to have an honorable duel instead of just shooting the idiot in the back as soon as he says "let's fight". It makes some sense for, say, marines where everyone is obsessed with personal honor and dishonoring a duel would be the kind of shameful action that demands ritual suicide, but not everyone in 40k is a space marine. Plenty of armies would be happy to let the idiot with a chainsword start the duel, turn his back on the rest of the squad, and then mob him from behind for an easy kill.

The penalty for declining a challenge shouldn't exist. The rule should be that you can issue a challenge, but if it is declined the combat happens normally (or the challenger even gets reduced to WS 1 as a penalty for trying to start a duel instead of fighting intelligently). Instead of a punishment for declining there should have been a reward for succeeding in a challenge to give players an incentive to participate in "fair" fights.

Alright, thank you, I see why they're a derpy rule now...

It's that the rule is badly executed and not that the idea itself is bad per se.

Are there a lot of other rules like this in this edition?

It's not just that the rule is derpy, but it also adds more time to the game. Which, in itself, is not so bad, but when combined with all the other things that add on time in 6th, it becomes a chore.

I am almost fond of challenges as I play SW and am fond of my kilt wearing power sword weilding lone wolf who for 35pts can actually manage to do a fair bit of damage by challenging but will get mobbed and slaughtered if he just charges a powerful unit.

The issue is you need either a very good 1on1 model or crazy luck to win them. It ruins a lot of the point to bringing a boss in a unit, the boss is suppose to bring special weapons n whatnot but now hes just challenged out all the time.

Also its a stall. Its very easy for an MC character to stall one turn, staying locked in combat thus avoiding the opponent's shooting phase and then smashing the rest of the unit to free himself up in his own turn.

It wouldnt be as bad if they altered how melee combat worked involving challenges. Right now its almost entirely who went first, as the opponent doesnt even get a single swing if he has a pklaw for instance.

Yeah, anything with unwieldy is completely useless in challenges...

I guess you'd either need to have dueling characters or character-free tarpits...

For the most part (at least in my experience), they basically boil down to feeding unit commanders to HQ units. Not really the cinematic fight to the death you'd hope for.

honestly i dont think it would nearly as bad if they even did something as simple as:

"If a character was slain in a challenge before his initiative, he is still capable of delivering one attack using any special rules he normally has access to."

Not ideal and clearly you still wouldnt LIKE to be in a challenge with an unwieldy weapon, but at least it poses a risk to both sides regardless of the outcome (though still favoring the victor). Its not like a one-on-one fight between two people that actually know how to fight is going to end before the losing side lands at least one blow, whether it was effective or not.

Would love to have that single S9 Ap2 pklaw attack after some SM HQ challenged me out actually land and paste his ass in response lol
Or atleast cause 1 wound against an MC rather than just tarpit it and hope it lasts more than 2 rounds of combat.

how are the rules set up in a "modular fashion' where you can "discard" portions of the rules? Does that mean I can ignore the morale rules?

 laginess wrote:
Yeah, anything with unwieldy is completely useless in challenges...
I guess you'd either need to have dueling characters or character-free tarpits...

If you think that is bad you should wait till you have 200 point HQ's without EW and only T4 against Ork Nobz =/
Unwieldy? You WILL get hit by a Power Klaw and you WILL die.
Not unwieldy? Better hope you can get enough wounds to kill it or else you die.

Nah, because the Nob only has 4 attacks on the charge and hits on 4s unless youre some melee monster, in which case i'd be surprised if you didnt kill him lol.

Be surprised how many times my nob somehow survived the wave of attacks that his t-shirt doesnt stop and wiff all of my pklaw hits or roll 1s to wound >.< - dont think ive ever pasted any HQ unless it was from my own HQs. Mind you i can count on my hands how many times thats happened, and ive played orks well over 40 times since 6ed (referring to actually getting to swing my pklaw in a challenge if it wasnt a warboss using it, not the failing my dice)

Kangodo wrote:
If you think that is bad you should wait till you have 200 point HQ's without EW and only T4 against Ork Nobz =/

Unfortunately, there aren't enough 200pts T4 HQs without EW out there to justify spending 50pts on a Nob... Especially since most of these characters will kill the Nob before he ever gets a chance to strike.

I think the worst part of challenges is that almost every Monstrous Creature can challenge and get challenged. It should have been limited to infantry models. It wouldn't really *fix* them, but it would stop the current non-sense of people feeding weak sergeants to a Bloodthirster 5 times in a row *cough* IG *cough* or the same Bloodthirster permanently neutralizing the Power Fist / Klaw toting sergeant by challenging him round after round.

As far as the modularity of the rules If you and your opponent agree that challenges are stupid there isn't many rules that rely on challenges to work so house ruling it works.

Also in all technicality you could remove morale but that would be a much larger part of the game.

 laginess wrote:
As far as the modularity of the rules If you and your opponent agree that challenges are stupid there isn't many rules that rely on challenges to work so house ruling it works.

Also in all technicality you could remove morale but that would be a much larger part of the game.

please cite to us where the BRB makes the statement about the rules being modular and one can ignore certain sections. I think if you make a good case, I can start playing with coin flips, because the dice are an inconvenience to me.

Well the part about mysterious terrain seems to be , because no one is using that rule and it is technicly in the rulebook.

Makumba wrote:
Well the part about mysterious terrain seems to be , because no one is using that rule and it is technicly in the rulebook.

Not a core mechanic to the game. Try again.

 Peregrine wrote:
It's also stupid because it forces everyone to have an honorable duel instead of just shooting the idiot in the back as soon as he says "let's fight". It makes some sense for, say, marines where everyone is obsessed with personal honor and dishonoring a duel would be the kind of shameful action that demands ritual suicide, but not everyone in 40k is a space marine. Plenty of armies would be happy to let the idiot with a chainsword start the duel, turn his back on the rest of the squad, and then mob him from behind for an easy kill.

Not really. Only Tau and maybe tyranids. Nearly every other army would do that
Dark Eldar: I cant let them think a boot scoof scares me
Eldar: I can best a Monkey
Chaos: BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GO
you catch my drift?

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:

please cite to us where the BRB makes the statement about the rules being modular and one can ignore certain sections. I think if you make a good case, I can start playing with coin flips, because the dice are an inconvenience to me.

Page 8: The Spirit of the game

I'm not stating something in the rules I'm stating an observation of how the rules behave.

To put it another way, the ways the rules are written it lends itself well to house rules with your friends. I say this because I don't think of 40k as having enough polish to be a competitive game as it is too complex to have enough depth.

But this is my opinion and if you insist on your own then that is your own prerogative. I personally play this game because of it's silly ott nature and relatively shallow gameplay.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
A good example of this kind of thing is if you and your opponent simply choose not to use vehicles or flyers. It doesn't modify the rules in any way and yet it radically changes the pay of the game.

In the same way you and your opponent can simply choose not to issue challenges and suddenly those rules have no bearing on that game.

 Zed wrote:
For the most part (at least in my experience), they basically boil down to feeding unit commanders to HQ units. Not really the cinematic fight to the death you'd hope for.

This, really. Feed the enemy slaughterhouse HQ a sergeant so your other guys get to live a bit longer. Ofc that HQ probably runs with a killy squad anyway so it makes little to no difference...

All it really does is force you to sacrifice characters in a (usually) totally one-sided "challenge" - Bruce Lee vs a McDojo white belt. Irritates my CSM mate no end as he always has to challenge, no matter if the squad sarge has a chance or not.

On the subject of challenges, for chaos everyone must challenge - The sorcerer hiding behind his rubric marines all of a sudden feels brave and leaps to the front to fight, rather than shouting "Forwards, my hooded legions"
Theres no opportunity for a scheming bad guy.

Its also laughably easy to circumvent - just challenge with your champions and your squad and horribly nasty hq can go at the other squad fine. Unless you're using the aforementioned sorc for the 1k sons - then you ARE the champion and must challenge

And the deamon prince doesn't have the champions of chaos rule (IIRC), which makes no sense. The biggest champion of chaos doesn't have to obey the rule..:/

 laginess wrote:

A good example of this kind of thing is if you and your opponent simply choose not to use vehicles or flyers. It doesn't modify the rules in any way and yet it radically changes the pay of the game.

In the same way you and your opponent can simply choose not to issue challenges and suddenly those rules have no bearing on that game.

Those sections do not affect any other unit or rule.
Challenges are not enforced, unless for something like Chaos champions (?), who must challenge.
vehicles are just units, and are you are not forced to take them, the same with fliers.

But, choosing to omit HQ choices from your list, that's breaking the standard rules. As is something like ignoring difficult terrain rolls, or rending.

Some rules are easy to drop. Mysterious Objectives is often ignored at our club.
House-ruling that hedges now provide 3+ cover saves, or ignoring night-fighting, they'll just change the game in minor ways.

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:

 laginess wrote:
As far as the modularity of the rules If you and your opponent agree that challenges are stupid there isn't many rules that rely on challenges to work so house ruling it works.

Also in all technicality you could remove morale but that would be a much larger part of the game.

please cite to us where the BRB makes the statement about the rules being modular and one can ignore certain sections. I think if you make a good case, I can start playing with coin flips, because the dice are an inconvenience to me.

If you agree this with your opponent, then great. As long as both players know what the rules of a particular game, then you can fiddle, house rule or flat out ignore anything in the rulebook you want to. It won't work for pick up games because each side will be working to different rules, but aong friends, go wild.

 laginess wrote:
As far as the modularity of the rules If you and your opponent agree that challenges are stupid there isn't many rules that rely on challenges to work so house ruling it works.

Also in all technicality you could remove morale but that would be a much larger part of the game.

I know that just about all CSM units need challenges (ever win a challenge and roll a 66? Its a beautiful sight)

Challenges need to be improved somewhat, their best benefit to me (as a CSM player) is too tie up the enemy sargent with my champion so that my Lord can hack his way through half the squad.

If you had some moral issues for losing a challenge, then maybe they' be better. But otherwise the only thing they are good for is for rolling on the Chaos Boon table.

 A GumyBear wrote:

 laginess wrote:
As far as the modularity of the rules If you and your opponent agree that challenges are stupid there isn't many rules that rely on challenges to work so house ruling it works.

Also in all technicality you could remove morale but that would be a much larger part of the game.

I know that just about all CSM units need challenges (ever win a challenge and roll a 66? Its a beautiful sight)

Not when its your HQ that did it lol

My friend fielded a near-200pt Nurglelord and i fed him a random Nob from a boyz group turn 2 - he turned into a ~100pt 5++ save only prince lol. He was not happy rofl.

 Vineheart01 wrote:

 A GumyBear wrote:

 laginess wrote:
As far as the modularity of the rules If you and your opponent agree that challenges are stupid there isn't many rules that rely on challenges to work so house ruling it works.

Also in all technicality you could remove morale but that would be a much larger part of the game.

I know that just about all CSM units need challenges (ever win a challenge and roll a 66? Its a beautiful sight)

Not when its your HQ that did it lol

My friend fielded a near-200pt Nurglelord and i fed him a random Nob from a boyz group turn 2 - he turned into a ~100pt 5++ save only prince lol. He was not happy rofl.

It happened to me with a cultist vs a guardsmen