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I for one am against it. I think that narratively speaking, Marneus Calgar should not be able to kill an entire swarm of Scarabs with a powerfist. Especially not a Razorwing flock. That goes for all high strength attacks. Blasts and Templates do twice the wounds, and that makes sense. Yet somehow instead of extending that double wounds rule to replace Instant Death for high strength shots, they actually let things like a single lascannon beam destroy an entire swarm of Nurglings. This is a poor reflection of how a swarm would actually function in battle, and should be fixed. ...Right?

In fact, for those of you who don't agree with me.. Let me sweeten the deal!

A lascannon shot wouldn't kill an entire swarm of Nurglings, but a flamer certainly could. And yet a flamer is only relegated to double wounds. So how about in exchange for immunity to ID from single high strength shots, have blasts and templates cause instant death to swarms instead! I am aware this is a significant change and would impact the value of swarms in a major way, and is more likely than not a nerf. I'm just saying that if we lowered the points cost of swarms even further, it would reflect the units more realistically.

Agreed completely. This is one of the first things I include in any 40k fix list.

Swarms are ID by blasts and templates regardless of Strength, but immune to ID fro many other source.

Templates shouldn't do instant death, but I agree, doubling them out shouldn't cause instant death.

Of course, they should stack, so a template that doubles out a swarm should deal four wounds for every failed save.

What about heavy weapons teams?

Nobody likes them.

Just kidding.

What do you mean?

I voted for instant death blast templates...i feel like such small organisms being hit equally with any kind of weapon should kill it instantly....flamers and blasts should be incredibly effective at killing these while heavy weapons...ie lascannons should be the least...only causing one wound.

Totally agree with the first option and always have.
Lets look at this example: a single round of a serpent shooting SHOULD NOT easily kill 40 scarabs (10 scarab bases) aka 150pts. Yet with 6 st6 and d6+1 st7, many of these twinlinked shots, it most certainly has a decent chance. How can a maximum of 13 shots kill 40 scarabs???
I think that rather than increase templates and blasts to ID, what you should do is reduce attacks by 1 per wound lost to a minimum of 1 per base. It is far more fluffy and makes swarms far more playable.

Well if you think about it, if you position your swarms well the ID blasts/templates aren't that bad considering a small blast and most templates can't cover more than a couple bases, so you'd still in a way be out swarming them. The only exception there would be the large blasts, which would just annihilate the entire unit immediately... Maybe that is too much, but it does sound more realistic. Perhaps blasts/templates could do triple wounds instead of instant death. That'd at least save the ones that were covered somehow...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I've got it! When a swarm gets struck by blasts/templates, let's have them take a hit for every wound of the bases caught! They'll still most likely die, but not guaranteed like before, which is probably as realistic as it could be!

That does sound a smart idea.

I'd vote for ID works as normal, but only on blasts/templates.

edit: clarifying, I mean, double-toughness ID, but this is ignored unless it's a blast/template. For instance, a battlecannon will splat swarms, but a flamer or lascannon wouldn't.

 spiralingcadaver wrote:
I'd vote for ID works as normal, but only on blasts/templates.

edit: clarifying, I mean, double-toughness ID, but this is ignored unless it's a blast/template. For instance, a battlecannon will splat swarms, but a flamer or lascannon wouldn't.

That sounds reasonable.

So here's how my house rule currently reads:

"High Strength wounds without causing Instant Death, and blasts/templates force a hit for every wound on the affected bases. If the blast/template strength is double the swarm's toughness, it causes Instant Death instead."