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Under the current rules, I find the idea of a single krak missile killing an entire base of little rippers or nurglings to be quite ridiculous. With the rise of mass str 6 & 7 shooting in 6th edition, the average toughness of swarms (3) allows them to be insta-deathed very easily, to the point where most armies will no longer field them. (Also alongside the fact that they are no longer scoring ofc).

To counter this I propose the following addition to swarm rules: Swarms take double wounds from blast or flame template attacks. However, only attacks of this kind may cause instant death to swarms.

In this way, attacks such as artillery or high strength flamers would be able to remove entire bases of swarms as they do now, however units with single high strength shots would no longer wipe out a whole swarm, simply because they vapourised one of the hundered of little critters running at them.

Any thoughts?

I knew what you'd say as soon as I saw the title, because I'd been thinking the same thing.

Actually, it's better than my idea.

I'd also love them to be denial but thats a whole different story.

Thanks, I also agree with making them denial units.

Actually I wouldn't mind seeing a similar rule to this on multi-wound models which consist of more than 1 man (IG weapons teams for example).
It fits the fluff (1 guy gets hit by a plasma shot....so they both die?), as well as, imo, improving gameplay. It would give give some protection to IG weapon squads vs Wave Serpent shield spam for example, instead of getting wiped in one turn.

Yeah, I completely agree. If they can be insta killed so easily by so many things then why even have swarms? It's proving to be more effort than its worth to protect swarms now and that sucks!

That rule you said? Yes. Do that. And the Denial thing? Do that too. I would like my friend to start playing scarabs reasonably again.

Agree and disagree.

Swarms should be immune to all forms of ID except templates, blasts, wall of death, and vehicle explosions which should always ID swarms regardless of toughness.

FAQ a couple of exceptions like an ork deffrolla.

 schadenfreude wrote:
Agree and disagree.

Swarms should be immune to all forms of ID except templates, blasts, wall of death, and vehicle explosions which should always ID swarms regardless of toughness.

FAQ a couple of exceptions like an ork deffrolla.

I get where you are coming from for fluff reasons, but I feel this would still leave them overly vulnerable. 2 wounds per hit with a blast or template already punishes them enough.
Having vehicle blasts and other area of effect attacks dealing 2 wounds sounds like a decent idea though.

I agree with the no ID from non-blast/templates rule, then I could actually field scarabs again.

 Big Blind Bill wrote:

 schadenfreude wrote:
Agree and disagree.

Swarms should be immune to all forms of ID except templates, blasts, wall of death, and vehicle explosions which should always ID swarms regardless of toughness.

FAQ a couple of exceptions like an ork deffrolla.

I get where you are coming from for fluff reasons, but I feel this would still leave them overly vulnerable. 2 wounds per hit with a blast or template already punishes them enough.
Having vehicle blasts and other area of effect attacks dealing 2 wounds sounds like a decent idea though.

They would gain more general resilience than what they would lose.

Swarms need to be ID by flamers I would actually go a step further with your idea and change all their stat lines to be t2, w4, and can't have more attacks than wounds. That way frag grenades and vehicle explosions don't id them, but flamers do.

I like it!

I think the base idea here of just making them not IK by nonblast/template weapons would go a long way to making it possible to at least consider bring swarms to the table.

I intensely dislike the idea of limiting their attacks to the number of wounds they have. While I understand your reasoning, by that reasoning the swarm should also get +1 attack per Wound when charging.

I was thinking a rule that made nonswarm models in base to base contact with a swarm model take a -1 penalty to their WS would kind of represent the swarm crawling all over the model and the swarm being somewhat difficult to hit due to their small size.