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I have always felt that strength D melee weapons are seriously underwhelming, especially vs. infantry. You are wield massive weapons that are probally 3-4 times the size of a space marine, yet when you swing said weapon towards a unit of them you only hit 1.
You swing 26 feet of death towards a squad of (super)humans, and you only hit one of them? I call bs.

What I propose is a special rule for Str D melee weapons that allows them to have the wounds caused by the D-table to hit the unit, rather than the model. It'd make so much more sense, consistently slamming 1-3 people to the ground instead of 1 and when you're REALLY lucky, you take a big swing and you hit 7-12 (although I would agree that may need to be toned down, 1+D6 wounds for example).

I know most super-heavies don't suffer from this problem because most super-heavies that go in CC have the stomp-table which provides a means to deal with tarpitting. However, I recently bought a Lord of Skulls and I must say I'm not very content with it. If a squad of 8-10 models gets into close combat with it, it'll be stuck there for atleast 3 turns. This change would turn it from 'Hardly worth it points' to 'A slaughtering machine'.

yes I know this'd leave the Lord of Skulls with a potential of 10 attacks (12 on the charge) and every one of those attacks would have a chance of helping 2-12 models to there grave, but isn't that EXACTLY what a giant war engine which costs nearly 1.000 points (with upgrades) should be able to do in melee combat?

And what about Stomp attacks? The way I always saw it, Stomp attacks were the big, sweeping strikes and the Destroyer hits were the 'Imma smash this one guy' attacks.
Giving a Destroyer weapon the ability to cause multiple wounds (Which cause Instant Death to T5 or lower) is a bit OP.

Waaaghpower wrote:
And what about Stomp attacks? The way I always saw it, Stomp attacks were the big, sweeping strikes and the Destroyer hits were the 'Imma smash this one guy' attacks.
Giving a Destroyer weapon the ability to cause multiple wounds (Which cause Instant Death to T5 or lower) is a bit OP.

If not for the "cheap" Knights, and Stompas, there is no other melee D-strength under 500 pts, and even for 350 pts knight you more than deserve killing 4-6 terminators per turn, rather than just 1-2, whule they strip you off your HPs with their S8 attacks

Well, from a mechanical perspective, it's your fault if you let your knight etc. get bogged down by grunts.

I think it's fair and doesn't need a fix: not everything should be a solution to any problem. D weapons wreck big things, that doesn't mean they're effective against small things. On the other side, a mega bolter isn't equally effective hunting vehicles as it is taking down infantry.

Yeah I know it might be strong for imperial knights considering they are only 370 points. Then again, a troop of Devastators/Havocs could take down a knight in 2 turns.
It's not because one unit can't take on something that it suddenly becomes OP. I'm pretty sure a Helbrute can't take a squad of Terminators in close combat while I'm also pretty sure that a Helbrute can shoot/smash a squad of Tau fire warriors.
It doesn't mean a Helbrute is OP (far from it actually, although I have my hopes up for the new dataslate), it just means that a Helbrute would be a good unit to fight Tau fire warriors.

So a 200 points 5-man squad of terminators can't take on a 370 points lord of war in close combat? I'm not so sure about that. Give them TH + SS and you get a 5-man squad for 225 that can pose a threat to a knight in melee combat. They might not destroy it 100% of the time, but I'm pretty sure they're going to cause some damage to it.

How about taking the Large Blast Template and place it with the center hole in base contact withe the D-melee weapon model. Any model that falls under the template (not including the attacking model) is a target of the attack.

That should be a decent compromise to allow you to sweep several models with one strike of its mighty weapon.

I think you are missing the point behind the d weapon.

It isn't designed as an infantry killer. Imagine trying to hit a group of ants with a baseball bat. You aren't going to hit often, but when you do, whatever you hit is going to go splat.

The D3 stomp is for killing infantry.

 rryannn wrote:
I think you are missing the point behind the d weapon.

It isn't designed as an infantry killer. Imagine trying to hit a group of ants with a baseball bat. You aren't going to hit often, but when you do, whatever you hit is going to go splat.

The D3 stomp is for killing infantry.

Except that the lord of skulls doesn't have that, making it very vulnerable to gak like a 5-man squad charging it. I feel that this one thing turns it from a very good unit into a crap unit. And if you're going to pay close to 1.000 points for one model, it better not be held up half the game by 10 Kroot.
Maybe they should just give the LOS a 'cleave' special rule making his cleaver chop through multiple models as described by Stormonu. I feel like that is a very nice solution that is not massively overpowered and still leaves for some counterplay (spreading your guys out).

And I think your example is really bad. If I slam a baseball bat in a group of ants, chances are I will hit and kill multiple ants since my baseball bat is large enough to cover an area which more often than not will be occupied by more than 1 ant.

The Lord of Skulls really should be able to just roll over people. Those are some huge tracks!

EDIT: Also, I'm pretty sure it's impossible for the Imperial Knight to physically hit an infantry-sized model with its chainsword.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
The Lord of Skulls really should be able to just roll over people. Those are some huge tracks!

EDIT: Also, I'm pretty sure it's impossible for the Imperial Knight to physically hit an infantry-sized model with its chainsword.

It's treaded - is it not considered a tank that can do tank shock? (Don't have the rules handy)

I'm not sure, but I'm judging by people's comments in this thread. I would have thought it would have an equivalent of Stomp attacks, but it seems not to.

Going through the Escalation book, I just noticed that the Heldrakes in the artwork have tails, as they always should have.

Superheavy vehicles can do a special "Thunderblitz" move, which replaces Tank Shock and Ram. on a 2-5, the unit suffers d6 Strength 6 AP4 hits, but on a 6, it suffers 2d6 Strength 10 AP2 hits. I don't really remember the rules for Tank Shocking because I never use it, but I don't know how that interacts with it using its attacks. It has the "Tracked Behemoth" special rule, which prevents it from using Stomp but permits it to use Thunderblitz, even though it's a Walker.

Which is a big problem and evidently make things like chaos cultists the best counter for it, and that quite frankly is bs.

 Mezmerro wrote:

Waaaghpower wrote:
And what about Stomp attacks? The way I always saw it, Stomp attacks were the big, sweeping strikes and the Destroyer hits were the 'Imma smash this one guy' attacks.
Giving a Destroyer weapon the ability to cause multiple wounds (Which cause Instant Death to T5 or lower) is a bit OP.

If not for the "cheap" Knights, and Stompas, there is no other melee D-strength under 500 pts, and even for 350 pts knight you more than deserve killing 4-6 terminators per turn, rather than just 1-2, whule they strip you off your HPs with their S8 attacks

except the Lord of skulls and the knight both have a speed of 12 inches. a squad of termies should have trouble getting into close combat in the first place. and both have an AP 2 blast weapon option, something which if I was fighting a lot of termies I know I'd be equiping em with

The Gorestorm Cannon it comes stock with is Str8 AP3 Hellstorm. I don't really know how you're managing to have trouble with Chaos Cultists when you've got that. It also has Fear, which is a decent counter to Cultists specifically, unless they're made Fearless. It's also going to win combat every time, so there'll be running.

While I agree that thematically it doesn't make a lot of sense (either does it getting locked in combat), it really isn't an efficacy issue for the Lord of Skulls. Also, all the other rules for Tank Shock apply when you do a Thunderblitz, it's just that they also take damage.