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niv-mizzet wrote:
If we assume that each round is a very short amount of time, ie enough to fire one missile and reload, then overwatch makes virtually no logical sense at all.

You're making the mistake of assuming that there's any logical sense at all in GW's IGOUGO turn structure. There's no way to explain a game of 40k as anything other than an extremely abstracted representation of a battle, with turns being a convenient game mechanic rather than any specific amount of time.

They basically walked up to the see-saw of shooting and close combat and dropped a 500 lb. guy on one side.

Which is as it should be. It's a scifi game with guns and tanks, not a medieval fantasy game in space. The game should be 90% movement and shooting, with occasional assaults to clear out the last stubborn remains of a unit you've weakened with shooting.

 Peregrine wrote:


Which is as it should be. It's a scifi game with guns and tanks, not a medieval fantasy game in space. The game should be 90% movement and shooting, with occasional assaults to clear out the last stubborn remains of a unit you've weakened with shooting.

I disagree, and until I see "word of god" backing this up, you'll have a hard time making me believe it.

I also believe that melee has a definite place in the game design. If it wasn't there, or if it was downplayed to the extent that you seem to wish, the game would literally be two armies shooting from behind aegis lines at each other until one dies. If the designers ever came out and told me that that was indeed their vision, I'd switch games. (and yes that does mean I'm pretty unhappy with super-shooty 6th, but I have at least SOME faith that they know they tipped the scales a little too far there.)

niv-mizzet wrote:
I disagree, and until I see "word of god" backing this up, you'll have a hard time making me believe it.

Believe what you want. It's my opinion, but it's backed up by GW making the game more focused on shooting with every edition.

If it wasn't there, or if it was downplayed to the extent that you seem to wish, the game would literally be two armies shooting from behind aegis lines at each other until one dies.

Lol, no. You don't need whole armies full of screaming idiots with swords to have an interesting game. A shooting-only game can involve plenty of movement, the current ADL gunline metagame is mostly due to a combination of not using enough terrain, broken TLOS rules that make hiding 99.99999999999% of a model behind cover grant the same 5+ cover save as having half its body sticking out, and objective rules that encourage playing to table your opponent and maybe claim an objective later if you absolutely have to.

So after spending some time thinking about it I think I've got a solution for Overwatch that even corrects Tau rather nicely:

During your shooting phase, instead of shooting or running you may elect to have any unit elect to Overwatch instead. This allows them to hold their shooting action until the end of opposing player's movement phase, but before that player's shooting phase, at which time the Overwatching unit may make a firing attack as if they were firing during the shooting phase with all of the usual penalties and bonuses they normally have.

The reason I went with the "hold until later" option is because the snap shot option only penalizes those units who somehow kill enough models to upset the charge and it doesn't penalize Tau who can just Markerlight their way out of it. This way instead the players have to respond tactically: choosing when to hold firing for a moment in hopes of gaining a bonus against the other, and adding importance to a player's movement phase beyond "push forward 6 inches" as now there is a threat they could end up exposing themselves too.

And yes, I propose making Overwatch more effective by doing this too. But it's not adding a free shooting phase for a unit, it's moving that shooting phase to a later point which I think is pretty fair for the system we currently have.

EDIT: Removed a stipulation that on second thought made little sense with the change.

Yes, that's the most elegant solution. No fiddling about with modifiers or BS 1, just "do what you normally do but at a different time -- and if no one charges you, well, that's the risk you took (or maybe the result you were aiming at)."

The only issue with it is at it can encourage armies to just turtle and declare overwatch on everything all the time.

Good! I hadn't realized Clockwork had written it to allow that possibly, but as I wrote in the 100 Heresies thread, let's do away with separate Move and Shoot phases altogether and make all shooting occur during enemy movement:

 SisterSydney wrote:
In the early morning hours, I had a vision, like unit a dream: we don't actually need separate Movement and Shooting phases. Or separate rules for moves and charges, for that matter.

Basically, a unit can move on your turn, or it may shoot if it didn't just shoot on your previous turn or during the enemy's turn on overwatch. If a unit neither moves or shoots on your turn, it's on Overwatch during your opponent's turn and can shoot at or charge his models as they move. If a unit moves into contact with an enemy unit, it's considered a charge.

So instead of running/turboboosting/moving flat out in your Shooting phase, you would just move two turns in a row.

The new cool option this allows is on any given turn, some of your units can fire and some can move (or charge), in any order.

In more detail:

Spoiler:

On your turn, each of your units can move or shoot.

BUT a unit may not shoot if it shot during your previous turn or your opponent's previous turn.

If a unit moves so that any of its models is within 1" of an enemy model, it has charged that unit. Resolve this close combat at the end of the turn.

If a unit neither moves or shoots, it is on Overwatch during your opponent's turn and may fire Snap Shots at an enemy unit that moves into its weapons range or charge (move into contact with) an enemy unit that moves into its movement range. A unit on Overwatch may only shoot (or charge) at one enemy unit during your opponent's turn.

If a unit moved during your previous turn, it may only fire Heavy weapons as Snap Shots, and it not fire Salvo or Ordnance weapons.

If a unit fired any weapon EXCEPT pistols or assault weapons during your previous turn or your opponent's most recent turn, it may not charge (move into contact with) an enemy unit on your turn or during your opponent's turn on Overwatch.

A unit with the Battle Focus special rule (i.e. most Eldar) may move and shoot in the same turn -- but, like other units, it still may not shoot if it shot in your previous turn or your opponent's most recent turn.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
And a more refined version of the same basic idea:

 SisterSydney wrote:
Folks have actually convinced me that alternating sides unit by unit is too much. But after tossing out several half-baked ideas and having them baked by some constructive criticism, I think I have a way to make the game much more interactive without alternating by unit.

In essence, my movement phase is your shooting phase. When my units move, you can shoot at them. When my move's over, any of your units that haven't yet fired can shoot any of my units, whether they moved or stayed put. Heavy units can't shoot at full BS if they moved in the preceding phase, and units can't charge (move into contact with an enemy unit) if they fired anything but assault weapons in the preceding phase.

The tricky bit I'm still wrestling with is exactly how much shots at each unit and when to allow them. Options for y'all to consider:

Spoiler:

Who gets to shoot:
1) Only one of my units gets to shoot at each of your units during its move. (At the end of the turn I can have all my units that haven't shot yet fire at a single target if I want).
2) All of my units in LOS can shoot at a single unit during its move. (But my units still only get one shot per turn).

When you shoot:
A) You only shoot at a unit at the beginning of the move and at the end -- which means units can dash across open ground and get under cover without being mowed down on the way, which makes movement relatively more powerful and shooting less.
B) You can shoot at a unit at any point during its movement, as long as you have LOS. This makes crossing open ground under enemy fire nearly as deadly as in real life, which makes movement much trickier and probably discourages moving at all in a lot of cases.... probably not a recipe for an exciting game.

I think combination 2B (everybody can shoot at any point during the move) is way too powerful and would cripple movement, while combination 1A (one unit can shoot at the beginning or end of your move) is pretty weak. So I'm mostly looking at 1B (one unit can shoot, but at any point) and 2A (multiple units can shoot, but only at the beginning or end of the move).

You could also finesse this with Initiative roll-offs to see whether I got to shoot you before you got back under cover, but that really complicates the system... and hurts backwards compatibility with existing Codexes because Initiative suddenly becomes much more important to points value.

The rumor creeping around in the rumor thread stated something like.

To shoot, overwatch you have to pass an initiative test. You make shooting attacks for overwatch at half your ballistic skill.

What do you think of it?

Tau have incredibly low I itiati e, right along with Necrons. tau of course get massed opportunities to shoot to offset.

I think the whole 'hitting on sixes' thing reflects the panicked situation, the misses being misfires and such. the fact that there's a psychic power that makes you level headed and thus fire at full BS reflects this thinking too.

overwatch is incredibly easy to ignore. go back to a time without it and you'll find that a shooting army gets charged and dies, the end. now blunt instruments have to be a bit more kunnin' to get a safe charge off, you can't just throw yourself headlong at a firing line and expect to walk away unscathed.

if you're having problems with overwatchers, just get a walker - most people can. deff dread charges, you're now engaged in combat and can't overwatch, here comes the rest in safety. charge the carnifexes before the gaunts, hits on 6 wounds on 6 3+ save is unlikely to do anything.

I would say that you shouldn't be able to benefit from counter-assault if you fire overwatch (too much to do in a short space of time) nor should you be allowed to fire bolters in overwatch then suddenly fight with a bolt pistol and close combat weapon for extra attacks.

I'd almost say there's an argument for wounds caused in overwatch to count for the combat res, but there are too many things that would become too powerful (war walkers for example). seems to make sense that you yell charge, run through bullets, fight the fight and then realise how many people are left, as opposed to charge, get shot, do a quick head count while the opponent gets their better close combat weapons out and then fight.

I charged an ork trukker army into a tau firing line and won before, quite reliably. massed overwatch with 5+ cover from a KFF only, and still took minimal losses. I'd imagine a marine equivalent army would do even better as far as survivability is concerned, you'd attack first and have good saves in the combat too.

 Peregrine wrote:

niv-mizzet wrote:
I disagree, and until I see "word of god" backing this up, you'll have a hard time making me believe it.

Believe what you want. It's my opinion, but it's backed up by GW making the game more focused on shooting with every edition.

Remember that roughly half the units in the game are melee-focused.

 Capamaru wrote:
The rumor creeping around in the rumor thread stated something like.

To shoot, overwatch you have to pass an initiative test. You make shooting attacks for overwatch at half your ballistic skill.

What do you think of it?

It'd be great to get more use out of Initiative besides "who hits whom first," but as units are currently statted and priced, that'd make Eldar even more terrifying than they already are, nerf Necrons & Orks even harder... Only place where it'd be good for balance would be Tau, who need a little nerf love right now.

 Capamaru wrote:
The rumor creeping around in the rumor thread stated something like.

To shoot, overwatch you have to pass an initiative test. You make shooting attacks for overwatch at half your ballistic skill.

What do you think of it?

no.

leave it to Dakka to over-complicate a simple mechanic and try to simplify a comllex mechanic and complain both ways.

 SisterSydney wrote:
Good! I hadn't realized Clockwork had written it to allow that possibly, but as I wrote in the 100 Heresies thread, let's do away with separate Move and Shoot phases altogether and make all shooting occur during enemy movement:
*snip*

Basically 40k using a Unit Activation system like Infinity then?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Capamaru wrote:
The rumor creeping around in the rumor thread stated something like.

To shoot, overwatch you have to pass an initiative test. You make shooting attacks for overwatch at half your ballistic skill.

What do you think of it?

I think it's a good solution and might be better than the one I had.

I have heard the same rumor with full BS though as well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 some bloke wrote:
I think the whole 'hitting on sixes' thing reflects the panicked situation, the misses being misfires and such. the fact that there's a psychic power that makes you level headed and thus fire at full BS reflects this thinking too.

And then there are Markerlights which laugh at this idea. It may have been the intent but that went out the window with the Tau codex.

 some bloke wrote:
overwatch is incredibly easy to ignore. go back to a time without it and you'll find that a shooting army gets charged and dies, the end. now blunt instruments have to be a bit more kunnin' to get a safe charge off, you can't just throw yourself headlong at a firing line and expect to walk away unscathed.

No it's not. If it was so easy to ignore we'd still see assault heavy armies, something that was missing from the game since the edition started.

 some bloke wrote:
if you're having problems with overwatchers, just get a walker - most people can. deff dread charges, you're now engaged in combat and can't overwatch, here comes the rest in safety. charge the carnifexes before the gaunts, hits on 6 wounds on 6 3+ save is unlikely to do anything.

And for everyone who can't? Or have to sacrifice heavy support slots for a walker that can die a lot easier?

 some bloke wrote:
I would say that you shouldn't be able to benefit from counter-assault if you fire overwatch (too much to do in a short space of time) nor should you be allowed to fire bolters in overwatch then suddenly fight with a bolt pistol and close combat weapon for extra attacks.

And interesting idea, but it only really hurts a couple of armies (CSM mostly).

 some bloke wrote:
I'd almost say there's an argument for wounds caused in overwatch to count for the combat res, but there are too many things that would become too powerful (war walkers for example). seems to make sense that you yell charge, run through bullets, fight the fight and then realise how many people are left, as opposed to charge, get shot, do a quick head count while the opponent gets their better close combat weapons out and then fight.

I'm pretty sure it's lack of being included in combat res is because of the potential mess that it a high ROF model/unit could cause.

 some bloke wrote:
I charged an ork trukker army into a tau firing line and won before, quite reliably. massed overwatch with 5+ cover from a KFF only, and still took minimal losses. I'd imagine a marine equivalent army would do even better as far as survivability is concerned, you'd attack first and have good saves in the combat too.

Orks can charge the turn they get out of their vehicles. The only vehicle that Marines can do that with is the Land Speeder Storm. Also you got pretty lucky all things considered.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 viewfinder wrote:

 Capamaru wrote:
The rumor creeping around in the rumor thread stated something like.

To shoot, overwatch you have to pass an initiative test. You make shooting attacks for overwatch at half your ballistic skill.

What do you think of it?

no.

leave it to Dakka to over-complicate a simple mechanic and try to simplify a comllex mechanic and complain both ways.

It's a rumor, not something Dakka made, and if you hate Dakka so much why are you here? Isn't there more productive uses of your time than trolling people for disagreeing with your apparent idea that GW/40k is "perfect"?

because this thread proposed nothing but butthurt over two armies you haven't succeeded against, so you want to change the rules. changing the rules won't make up for the fact that your strategy sucks.

Overwatch is fine as it is too be honest.
Make it less effective and its close to being pointless.

Make it any more effective and it really crushes CC orientated armies.


Changing it now would screw one army or another.
To be honest, i think its pretty good as it is.
Has the power to reduce numbers slightly but not wreck a unit trying to charge them.

If you want evil, have a look at stand and shoot rules for fantasy.

 Jackal wrote:
Overwatch is fine as it is too be honest.
Make it less effective and its close to being pointless.

Make it any more effective and it really crushes CC orientated armies.


Changing it now would screw one army or another.
To be honest, i think its pretty good as it is.
Has the power to reduce numbers slightly but not wreck a unit trying to charge them.

If you want evil, have a look at stand and shoot rules for fantasy.

be careful , they don't like people who agree with the rules in here...

Hey viewfinder, you do appear somewhat cynical today.

What's the matter?

Is overwatch really that much of a factor that it needs additional nerfing?

Aside from a small handful of Tau shennanigans, or units full of template weapons, Overwatch largely does very little, so I'm wondering why it's felt a nerf is needed, especially as for stuff like IG or Tau, you're gonna slaughter them if you get anything stuck in anyway.

Jefffar wrote:
I think that Overwatch should be like Interceptor, no shooting next turn. I also think it should require a Ld check to pull it off (oh hey, Tau and Guard have crappy Ld, who knew). I'd ditch the Wall if Flame for using template weapons normally. Finally, I think it should be full BS but unit counts as having moved even if they stayed still to represent the difficulty in getting the weapons in position in time.

I think that would be a pretty useless rule since a unit that is getting successfully charged will likely not be shooting next turn anyways. Also, the full BS shooting would probably be way overpowered (even with the ld check).

I fully agree with ClockworkZion about improving the charge from 2d6 to 6+1d6 inches.

 viewfinder wrote:
because this thread proposed nothing but butthurt over two armies you haven't succeeded against, so you want to change the rules. changing the rules won't make up for the fact that your strategy sucks.

I don't play assault heavy armies (at least not at the moment anyways). It was just something that came about because I remember all the complaints about Overwatch and just had an idea.

Now you're not actually contributing to the actual topic and are apparently here to troll because your blood sugar is low so please go away and stay away. Thank you.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Is overwatch really that much of a factor that it needs additional nerfing?

Aside from a small handful of Tau shennanigans, or units full of template weapons, Overwatch largely does very little, so I'm wondering why it's felt a nerf is needed, especially as for stuff like IG or Tau, you're gonna slaughter them if you get anything stuck in anyway.

Honestly it's less the power of overwatch that bothers me (as mentioned like three times in this thread now), it's the fact that we're giving a unit a free shooting phase to make it possible to avoid the assault phase. There is no reason to not Overwatch. It's not a tactical decision, there is no consideration, people just do it and get an out of turn shooting attack at no extra cost.

It's just missing something that makes it feel like the choice has any real agency and that bothers me from a design standpoint. Choices should have meaning, they should (in theory) have fairly balanced potential consequences, but Overwatch doesn't. And that's why I was poking at it a little.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

flodihn wrote:
I fully agree with ClockworkZion about improving the charge from 2d6 to 6+1d6 inches.

I'm glad some good has come out of this thing at least.

Too bad it's paired with regular accusations of all manner of things that are unfounded and untrue.

 viewfinder wrote:


be careful , they don't like people who agree with the rules in here...

Yeah, it's weird how people discuss changes to the original rules in the section of the forum devoted to discussing changes to the original rules...

Edited by insaniak. Please see Dakka's Rule #1.

 Imperator_Class wrote:
Edited by insaniak. Please see Dakka's Rule #1..

did you read the inanely complicated "cure" for overwatch? and how it is basically a nerf to two, maybe three, armies? and again, a house rule is a poor solution to poor tactics.

 viewfinder wrote:
did you read the inanely complicated "cure" for overwatch?

Halving your WS and I on the turn you overwatch is 'insanely complicated'...?

Would you also call 'Microwave on High for 3 minutes' an 'insanely complicated' way of cooking soup?

...and how it is basically a nerf to two, maybe three, armies?

Yes, that's more or less the point of it.

and again, a house rule is a poor solution to poor tactics.

Yes, we get it. You don't think that a change is necessary. However, again, you are in a section of the forum devoted to discussing changes to the rules. If you don't agree with this one, that's fine. You made your point, time to move on and leave the discussion to those who actually do want to discuss it.

I once drop podded my 2 dreads in front of a shooty tyranid army, hoping to cause some trouble, not surprisingly both dreads and drop pods got directly shot up without affecting the enemy much at all.

Next time I played, I landed by drop pods near the flank of the enemy army, taking cover/terrain into consideration, they did actually pretty well (for dreadnoughts) and I won that game.

When assault with an army, strategy is the most important, secondary is having decent assault units.

I think the solution to making assault armies more viable is not changing any of the existing rules, GW just need to boost the weaker assault units and if a player applies decent tactics, they should do OK.

Honestly I don't find overwatch overpowered, but there should be ways of denying it.

Like, if a squad is pinned, it shouldn't be able to get up and fire at a charging enemy. It's just stupid.

Make assault grenades deny overwatch if you throw them. So if you throw a nade instead of shooting and it hits the charged unit, they can't overwatch. Assault grenades are actually invented for this. Shrapnel pins the enemy so that they can't fire at you when you advance. And hey, now even orkses have a real reason to buy nades!

 koooaei wrote:
Make assault grenades deny overwatch if you throw them. So if you throw a nade instead of shooting and it hits the charged unit, they can't overwatch. Assault grenades are actually invented for this. Shrapnel pins the enemy so that they can't fire at you when you advance. And hey, now even orkses have a real reason to buy nades!

If I remember my old rulebooks correctly, assault grenades used to prevent you from being slowed by cover because of this(in a "here's the reason why this works" sort of manner"). They were keeping the enemy's head down so you could rush them more effectively.

So really then, Assault Grenades should deny Overwatch, not change how soon you swing when you run through terrain to assault.

 koooaei wrote:
Make assault grenades deny overwatch if you throw them. So if you throw a nade instead of shooting and it hits the charged unit, they can't overwatch. Assault grenades are actually invented for this. Shrapnel pins the enemy so that they can't fire at you when you advance. And hey, now even orkses have a real reason to buy nades!

I think this seems like a really good way to deal with it! It's simple, effective, makes sense with the way the things work and makes close-combat based units more effective at charging than non close-combat based units.

That said, there are a few little impositions that I'd stipulate (that's the long word quota filled for the day)

I'd only make the grenades do this if you're charging less than 8" - It's the distance you can throw a grenade, so if you attempt to break cover on a longer charge then it's reasonable to assume you'll get shot up before you even get a chance to therow the grenade.

I'd also make assault grenades do what they used to, when they made sense - reduce the charged unit to I1 as well, rather than increasing your ability to negotiate difficult terrain... - no, stop being stupid, it's a grenade not a stepladder, it doesn't make climbing over an aegis any easier. that way both sides attack simultaneously, so a defensive unit in cover will sill have a small chance even if they can't fire overwatch. sounds like fairness to me!