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Hi guys, I've thought of a pretty simple technique for making overwatch about 50% less effective overall.

This system will enable armies with good BS to fire overwatch more effectively than armies without good BS.

So the system is pretty simple. Before you shoot overwatch, at a flyer, any kind of snap shot test, you roll a D6 per shot landed. Like standard snap shots, you need to roll a 6.

Assuming you roll a 6 on any of your shots, you then proceed to roll your 6's again. This time, you need your natural BS value to succeed.

so a marine must roll a 6 then a 3+, a fire warrior a 6 and then a 4+.

As an example of the impact this will have on shooting, Tau will only hit about 8.33% of the time, while marines will hit marginally better at 11% of the time. Orks are hit a little by this rules set, forced to hit only 5.5% of the time (I haven't figured out a way to make this work for orks so their overwatch doesn't suck hard now). I'd hoped these rules would give some benefit to having a higher BS on overwatch. It actually makes everyone a marginally worse shot, but the better the shot you are, the less it hurts.

So, thoughts? anyone have a way to make this kind of mechanic work without making flyers even more impervious to weapons without the skyfire special rule?

Frankly, I don't see the value in this.

Why add this layer of complexity to something that does not need it? Why increase the gap between high BS and low BS armies?

Stupid rule is stupid.

Overwatch being Snap Shots is silly in the first place. The Snap Shot rule is basically saying "you don't aim, but you MIGHT get lucky as you squeeze the trigger and pray!"

With your addendum, you're saying "You might get lucky! And then you might aim!"

It's like American shooting. "Ready, Fire, Aim!".

I take offense to that. American shooting is ready, fire, fire, fire, oh for the love of god fire, did I kill it, maybe I should aim. Just watch any action movie.

As for the rule, I agree something should be done about the effectiveness of over watch for small model count armies. I just don't think this is it

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Stupid rule is stupid.

Overwatch being Snap Shots is silly in the first place. The Snap Shot rule is basically saying "you don't aim, but you MIGHT get lucky as you squeeze the trigger and pray!"

With your addendum, you're saying "You might get lucky! And then you might aim!"

It's like American shooting. "Ready, Fire, Aim!".

And yet they still managed to beat the British empire. We won't even consider the boer war, I suppose?

I think this rule would be useful to limit armies that h be unfairly good overwatch (tau).

If you wanted, the to hit of a 6 could be rolled after the roll to hit. It would have the same statistical impact, without hurting your precious feelings that we need to maintain reality in a game where tanks have sponsons.

I've always thought that Overwatch should be done at full BS . . . but require a successful leadership test first - to see if they hold their nerve long enough to aim and shoot.

I hope I word this correctly without it coming off as an attack against the OP but more as a tip for everyone who comes up with an idea on how to fix the game.

The KISS principle.

Keep It Simple, Stupid.

40k is a rule bloated game as it is with every second unit having their own unique special rule, any attempts to fix the game should be done by reducing the amount of rules/rolls a player must use, not increase them.

That's gona be bad for low-bs units that rely on overwatch. Like ork boyz. U see, current edition made charging so bad that i prefer to just get close and stand+shoot hoping that someone will charge me instead. Orks are really bad in mellee now and this rule is gona take away this little shooting buff that makes shootaboyz even a bit viable. I don't think that fixing one thing and breaking a ton of others is a way to go.

I don' think its a "stupid" idea. Some people are a little over the top with how vocal they are with their opinions.

I truthfully hate overwatch as tau have used marker lights to turn it into a joke. I honestly hope they either improve charge distance reliability or get rid of overwatch all together.

 Rotary wrote:
I don' think its a "stupid" idea. Some people are a little over the top with how vocal they are with their opinions.

I truthfully hate overwatch as tau have used marker lights to turn it into a joke. I honestly hope they either improve charge distance reliability or get rid of overwatch all together.

Thats a Tau related issue, Overwatch is fine, assault is the primary issue.

And as OP said utterly breaks orkz.

Fix assault, its the problem everything else is the symptom.

Bishop F Gantry wrote:

 Rotary wrote:
I don' think its a "stupid" idea. Some people are a little over the top with how vocal they are with their opinions.

I truthfully hate overwatch as tau have used marker lights to turn it into a joke. I honestly hope they either improve charge distance reliability or get rid of overwatch all together.

Thats a Tau related issue, Overwatch is fine, assault is the primary issue.

And as OP said utterly breaks orkz.

Fix assault, its the problem everything else is the symptom.

This actually. We need more and more easily accessible ways to deny overwatch, for example HoW could cancel it out, as the target is way to fast to be effectively shoot at or give Noisemarines the option to buy a dirge caster on a single model (you could even give them to all squads).

 Shadox wrote:

We need more and more easily accessible ways to deny overwatch, for example HoW could cancel it out, as the target is way to fast to be effectively shoot at or give Noisemarines the option to buy a dirge caster on a single model (you could even give them to all squads).

I actually really like this idea, but I don't feel like HOW is the right rule for the job - it's about hitting with such force that your opponent is hurt by your pile in, not necessarily being fast. (As an example, Tyranid Carnifexes just rely on being so hard to hurt as they get close.)
I was tempted to say fleet should do this, but fleet is arguably too easy to get one's hands on (seeing as all non-troop, vehicle or HQ daemon choice gets it and they already wreck despite overwatch) - hell, even tau can ignore overwatch if that's the case.
I do like the idea, though. It should be available to the likes of Howling Banshees and Warp Spiders (they're just the two that spring to mind, if you remember the DOWII trailer)

And to the guy who called out for KISS, this kind of rule actually exists in WH Fantasy to deal with ballistic skill modifiers, it's actually even simpler than those rules are.

I've allready proposed this. Assault grenades might prohibit overwatch like they do in real life. When you want to assault a trench or a building - you get close for the grenade throw (8' tabletop) than throw a nade - that forces the enemy to hide for long enough to you to run at him without being shot. That might be ruining overwatch on the whole, but probably if u're within 8' and charge and you got assault nades = no overwatch?

Another thing that might help assault armies alot is: when firing overwatch, the asumption that models can see through other models in their own unit doesn't work. The enemy is just closing in so you wouldn't shoot fearing u'll hit your own squad member.

 koooaei wrote:
I've allready proposed this. Assault grenades might prohibit overwatch like they do in real life. When you want to assault a trench or a building - you get close for the grenade throw (8' tabletop) than throw a nade - that forces the enemy to hide for long enough to you to run at him without being shot. That might be ruining overwatch on the whole, but probably if u're within 8' and charge and you got assault nades = no overwatch?

Another thing that might help assault armies alot is: when firing overwatch, the asumption that models can see through other models in their own unit doesn't work. The enemy is just closing in so you wouldn't shoot fearing u'll hit your own squad member.

I can see using assault grenades over a new USR, but it kind-of hurts for armies that don't have access to grenades at all, like nids and daemons. Maybe if you pin your target, they can't fire at you on overwatch because they're busy being, y'know, pinned. To make the mistake of providing a real-world example, when you're being shot at with an automatic weapon (in paintball for example) you don't stick your head up and you most certainly don't even think of shooting back. You're too busy burying your head in the sand.

A unit that goes to ground should not get to Overwatch, I agree.

Assault Grenades should be Barrage to represent their ability to be tossed over barriers. This would also give them Pinning, perhaps forcing a unit to go to ground and making their overwatch impossible.

Now for something to make Pinning a reliable mechanic (-1 to LD for each additional unsaved wound with the Pinning rule?).

I would like to see Pinning and Morale checks for the units receiving the overwatch though.

Jefffar wrote:
A unit that goes to ground should not get to Overwatch, I agree.

Assault Grenades should be Barrage to represent their ability to be tossed over barriers. This would also give them Pinning, perhaps forcing a unit to go to ground and making their overwatch impossible.

Now for something to make Pinning a reliable mechanic (-1 to LD for each additional unsaved wound with the Pinning rule?).

I would like to see Pinning and Morale checks for the units receiving the overwatch though.

Stop drawing my thread off topic!

Pinning is actually fairly useful. The problem is, nobody every makes use of it. Every time I blow up a serpent I tell my opponent to "Take your (his/her) pinning check please". Every time I'm told it won't make a difference, until that one time 5 dire avengers go to ground, roll to wound my crushers while there's one crusher on one wound that'll be the first to shoot and they roll no sixes. Every time I wound with a pulse carbine, every time with a sniper, a barrage weapon. People actually don't know what pinning does because the internet has ingrained it in them that it's not an important enough tool to care about.

But, you're right. It would be downright nasty if pinning weapons did -1 to LD (for the purposes of that test) for every wound caused by a weapon with the pinning weapon in that squad.

I thought Pinned units couldn't snapshot already. Huh.

Yeah, I like the idea of Pinning denying Overwatch. Makes perfect sense to me. Making Assault Grenades force a Pinning test on someone you're assaulting makes sense too - much more sense than the initiative penalty system that just benefits Unwieldy units.

Why do you want to nerf Overwatch? I think the it needs to go the other way and needs more love. At least allow vehicles to overwatch with normal weapons.

I don't think overwatch needs nerfing, but I do like the idea of a more realistic way of representing grenades.

Furyou Miko wrote:I don't think overwatch needs nerfing, but I do like the idea of a more realistic way of representing grenades.

Boredflak1066 wrote:Why do you want to nerf Overwatch? I think the it needs to go the other way and needs more love. At least allow vehicles to overwatch with normal weapons.

Overwatch gives your opponent an extra round of shooting against you. Sure, it's not that bad when you're talking about marines who get about 3 hits and then they're done, but we're talking about tau, who can easily get a full turn's shooting at your puny assault squad because everything can open up on them. That's what's wrong with overwatch.

 Scipio Africanus wrote:

Furyou Miko wrote:I don't think overwatch needs nerfing, but I do like the idea of a more realistic way of representing grenades.

Boredflak1066 wrote:Why do you want to nerf Overwatch? I think the it needs to go the other way and needs more love. At least allow vehicles to overwatch with normal weapons.

Overwatch gives your opponent an extra round of shooting against you. Sure, it's not that bad when you're talking about marines who get about 3 hits and then they're done, but we're talking about tau, who can easily get a full turn's shooting at your puny assault squad because everything can open up on them. That's what's wrong with overwatch.

I understand now. But this isn't a problem with Overwatch, it's about a Tau ability that is too strong. I think that needs to be fixed and not Overwatch.

Let overwatch turn into suppressive fire, if wounds caused by overwatch is greater than ld, unit is suppressed.
remove overwatch from vehicles.

I guess my primary question would be "why does overwatch need to be nerfed?"

I mean, unless you've got a ton of flame template weapons, overwatch's effect is usually minimal.

 Rotary wrote:
I don' think its a "stupid" idea. Some people are a little over the top with how vocal they are with their opinions.

I truthfully hate overwatch as tau have used marker lights to turn it into a joke. I honestly hope they either improve charge distance reliability or get rid of overwatch all together.

It is difficult for tau to get markerlights during overwatch. markerlight tokens remain until they are used or until the end of the current phase, whichever comes first.

This means during your assault phase the tau cannot have any markerlight hits on your units from any previous phase. The only way the unit(s) you are assaulting can generate a markerlight hit on your unit is if they are firing a networked markerlight along with the overwatch units normal firing.

other units supporting fire could potentially generate markerlight hits, but unless they are networked markerlights they cannot benefit from their units own normal markerlight hits.

 loki old fart wrote:
Let overwatch turn into suppressive fire, if wounds caused by overwatch is greater than ld, unit is suppressed.
remove overwatch from vehicles.

non-walker vehicles cannot fire overwatch unless they have a special rule or special piece of wargear that allows it.

that said the rules for overwatch in the main rulebook states their is no time to aim and the unit takes wild shots, so BS should not matter.

 Scipio Africanus wrote:
Overwatch gives your opponent an extra round of shooting against you.

No it doesn't, because it isn't done at full BS. You get a round of BS 1 shooting, with no blast/template weapons, which means you're lucky if you kill anything at all. Really, the only value it has is psychological: people are irrationally terrified of it, so maybe they'll be more reluctant to assault even when they clearly should.

Sure, it's not that bad when you're talking about marines who get about 3 hits and then they're done, but we're talking about tau, who can easily get a full turn's shooting at your puny assault squad because everything can open up on them.

So try assaulting with more than one unit at a time? This situation only happens if you charge with a single squad so that the Tau player can use supporting fire with blobs of marker drones and then shoot their whole army at full BS. If you assault with multiple units like you're supposed to then it doesn't work anymore because supporting fire still limits you to firing overwatch once. The Tau player will have a choice between stacking everything onto a single unit and probably crippling them while ignoring the rest of your assaulting units, or firing separately at each unit with normal overwatch and losing the "whole army" thing. Either way you're going to get most of your models into combat.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Scipio Africanus wrote:
Overwatch gives your opponent an extra round of shooting against you.

No it doesn't, because it isn't done at full BS. You get a round of BS 1 shooting, with no blast/template weapons, which means you're lucky if you kill anything at all. Really, the only value it has is psychological: people are irrationally terrified of it, so maybe they'll be more reluctant to assault even when they clearly should.

Sure, it's not that bad when you're talking about marines who get about 3 hits and then they're done, but we're talking about tau, who can easily get a full turn's shooting at your puny assault squad because everything can open up on them.

So try assaulting with more than one unit at a time? This situation only happens if you charge with a single squad so that the Tau player can use supporting fire with blobs of marker drones and then shoot their whole army at full BS. If you assault with multiple units like you're supposed to then it doesn't work anymore because supporting fire still limits you to firing overwatch once. The Tau player will have a choice between stacking everything onto a single unit and probably crippling them while ignoring the rest of your assaulting units, or firing separately at each unit with normal overwatch and losing the "whole army" thing. Either way you're going to get most of your models into combat.

I do assault multiple units. It's just a good majority of armies only have a small number of units capable of assault and you're not always in the best situation to assault with another unit.

I know how to play overwatch. That doesn't mean that it's fun removing 5 marines becausethe tau player shot one of his markerlight units at it and then two of his other units at full BS, then proceeded to kill me with the rest of his shooting. You play guard, I know that, peregrine, so you always have an abundance of throw-away units. How does this work for more elite armies that still need to assault?

 Scipio Africanus wrote:
It's just a good majority of armies only have a small number of units capable of assault and you're not always in the best situation to assault with another unit.

Then take a shooting army if you don't want to commit to assault. Tau are specifically designed to punish "battleforce" style armies that take a little of everything, so if your assault element is limited to a unit or two then you're not going to get very far. But that's not a problem with Tau, it's a problem with you taking a terrible list. If your assault list isn't putting your entire army (minus whatever objective campers you have sitting in your deployment zone) into charge range on turn 2 and starting to kill stuff then you haven't committed properly.

That doesn't mean that it's fun removing 5 marines becausethe tau player shot one of his markerlight units at it and then two of his other units at full BS, then proceeded to kill me with the rest of his shooting.

Wow, a full five marines? That's what, 100 points worth? What happened to the other 500-1000 points of marines that you declared a charge with that turn? Shouldn't they be doing something?

You play guard, I know that, peregrine, so you always have an abundance of throw-away units. How does this work for more elite armies that still need to assault?

You make sure you get everything to assault simultaneously on turn 2, and if that doesn't work you bring meatshield units to lead the charge and tie up overwatch fire so the important stuff gets into combat untouched. And, most importantly, you get over the idea that "elite" means "your units aren't expendable". Elite armies take losses. Take your models off the table and kill them with whatever is left. If you assume the game is over because you lost some terminators or whatever then you're never going to win.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Scipio Africanus wrote:
It's just a good majority of armies only have a small number of units capable of assault and you're not always in the best situation to assault with another unit.

Then take a shooting army if you don't want to commit to assault. Tau are specifically designed to punish "battleforce" style armies that take a little of everything, so if your assault element is limited to a unit or two then you're not going to get very far. But that's not a problem with Tau, it's a problem with you taking a terrible list. If your assault list isn't putting your entire army (minus whatever objective campers you have sitting in your deployment zone) into charge range on turn 2 and starting to kill stuff then you haven't committed properly.

That doesn't mean that it's fun removing 5 marines becausethe tau player shot one of his markerlight units at it and then two of his other units at full BS, then proceeded to kill me with the rest of his shooting.

Wow, a full five marines? That's what, 100 points worth? What happened to the other 500-1000 points of marines that you declared a charge with that turn? Shouldn't they be doing something?

You play guard, I know that, peregrine, so you always have an abundance of throw-away units. How does this work for more elite armies that still need to assault?

You make sure you get everything to assault simultaneously on turn 2, and if that doesn't work you bring meatshield units to lead the charge and tie up overwatch fire so the important stuff gets into combat untouched. And, most importantly, you get over the idea that "elite" means "your units aren't expendable". Elite armies take losses. Take your models off the table and kill them with whatever is left. If you assume the game is over because you lost some terminators or whatever then you're never going to win.

You have a habit of being condescending. I think you need to work on that, it won't get you anywhere.

Tau are designed to hurt an all-comers list, is what you're saying? So they're designed to either force people further down the ranged path, or so far down the assault path that they have little or no way to deal with anything that isn't assaultable (Flyers). For what it's worth,I do run an assault oriented list. In that Daemons list, I run a pack of Flesh hounds as a soak unit, but since my assault army is built around one unit (a deathstar with a mostly constant 3++, no less), Tau still hurt. I can't run two units of 5 instead of 1 of ten because that's easy first blood. I can't fit any more into my min/maxed minimum troops maximum assault army.

Now did I ever suggest that a terminator is a game-changer? I mean it might be if it were contesting turn 5/6, but terminators are a markedly poor unit for getting just about anything done. Outside the DA and maybe the SW codex, terminators are very narrow in terms of options and often very easy to kill with small arms fire. I don't assume the game is over because I lost some terminators. I assume the game is over when I lose 4 or 5 T4 3W units in my 3++ squad because everything in my opponents army could overwatch at me with no real restrictions.

Getting back to the point, Soak squads are such an obvious tactic, and it would take a terrible opponent not to wise up to them very quickly. Even if I Can charge that unit into the real problem - say a 14marker/commander team, or whatever, I can only charge at most, two or three other units as well on a good day. I still have to weather the rest of the storm because no one is stupid enough to throw all their shooting at 30 S5AP- attacks when there's another 64 S6AP3 and 19 S5AP- attacks coming their way from another direction. Who wouldn't sacrifice their markerlight team so that they could break the entire attacking backbone of their opponent's army because they got to shoot everything at it during their opponent's shooting phase? Okay, I lie in a slight way. They only hit me with about 33% of their shooting at BS3 down to 1 given the differences in ballistic skills, but that's still a third of an entire army (sans the units who's overwatch was sacrificed in a soak unit) that I potentially have to deal with.

There's a reason I'm calling out Overwatch as unreasonable. Yes, it does relate to specifically tau who have far more overwatch than is reasonable. But you've given a major point for why this change is necessary. Overwatch stops players from taking lists that they might want to take, and making it just a little weaker, especially if that's just for tau, will mean that people have more options than they once did. Army lists that should really be quite reasonable are just awful or terrible because of overwatch, and that's not fair or fun for anyone.

Elite means that losses hurt, not that they can't be expended. Marines simply don't have the bodies, or so be it the speed necessary to get into assault. There's one codex who's capable of competent assaults, and there's one codex that's potentially capable of it, but that doesn't mean that every assault army should have to come from those two books.

 Scipio Africanus wrote:
Tau are designed to hurt an all-comers list, is what you're saying?

No, I'm saying they hurt battleforce lists. You know, the kind of list that has one shooting unit, one assault unit, one objective camping unit, one transport and one tank. A list that has just a bunch of random units with no coherent plan and no way to overwhelm an opponent in any area of the game. Tau supporting fire is incredibly harsh to these lists because they don't have enough assault units to threaten multiple simultaneous charges and offer more targets than supporting fire can deal with. So the Tau player gets to focus everything on a single unit and wipe it out, and then move on to the next thing.

And Tau aren't the only army that does this. Battleforce lists suck in general, the Tau codex is just straightforward enough that it's very difficult to build a truly bad list that is on the same level as a battleforce list.

but since my assault army is built around one unit (a deathstar with a mostly constant 3++, no less)

Well there's your problem. Death stars aren't supposed to be an auto-win against everything they face, and you just encountered one of their bad matchups. You'll encounter similar problems against armies like MSU IG, which will just feed your death star a 50 point meatshield squad every turn until the game ends, or flyer spam lists that will drop scoring units all over the table at the end of the game when there isn't enough time for your death star to reach all of them. Try bringing multiple reasonable (but still powerful enough to slaughter shooting units) units instead of putting all your eggs in one basket.

I assume the game is over when I lose 4 or 5 T4 3W units in my 3++ squad because everything in my opponents army could overwatch at me with no real restrictions.

It sounds like you're obsessed with ridiculous worst-case scenarios where the Tau player has their entire army bunched up within 6" of the thing you're charging, along with an infinite supply of markerlights. In this case you should be having fun since everything is perfectly arranged for multi-charges and your opponent's entire army will be locked in combat as soon as your assault units arrive.

Getting back to the point, Soak squads are such an obvious tactic, and it would take a terrible opponent not to wise up to them very quickly.

The point is that it doesn't matter if you wise up to them. If you overwatch against the meatshield you wasted your overwatch and the real threat kills you. If you don't overwatch against the meatshield your only hope is that they fail the charge, since if they make it into combat you're locked in combat, lose your overwatch entirely, and the real threat kills you.

Yes, it does relate to specifically tau who have far more overwatch than is reasonable.

And this is the problem. You're looking only at the perfect situation for Tau overwatch and using it as justification for a new rule that applies to every army. Why should my IG have half their overwatch fire removed just because you can't handle Tau?

Overwatch stops players from taking lists that they might want to take, and making it just a little weaker, especially if that's just for tau, will mean that people have more options than they once did. Army lists that should really be quite reasonable are just awful or terrible because of overwatch, and that's not fair or fun for anyone.

So what? Every rule keeps people from taking lists that they might want to take. I can't take my fluffy IG armored company because tanks can't score objectives. I can't take my fluffy Elysian drop troops because I auto-lose if I put my whole army in reserve. Etc.

Also, I disagree with the claim that the army lists that are ruled out by overwatch are good lists. Tau overwatch might be a problem for some mediocre assault armies, but the only lists that lose to overwatch in general are bad lists that weren't going to win anyway.

Marines simply don't have the bodies, or so be it the speed necessary to get into assault.

But these problems have absolutely nothing to do with overwatch.

To be honest, overwatch looks like an extra not-needed buff to shooting in 6 ed