Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Wound allocation is one of the most important parts of the game, and it seems like GW fiddles with it every edition, usually making sweeping changes of it that completely change how you play. I can remember back to 5th edition's rules very clearly, but beyond that it's very hazy. Anyone care to detail how wound allocation rules have changed over the years? Oh and any opinions on which worked best?

Before it was you got to pick, so you could allocate to regular guys first and then pick your special/heavy/leader last. It worked that way in 2nd and 3rd as best as I can recall, no idea about 4th and RT.

I liked it better than this crap now, because in most cases the special/heavy is the only good part of the squad, so if you lose them early the squad is rendered useless. Plus it made sense that someone would pick up the special weapon.

Yeah, in 5th it was "allocate a wound to whoever you want, but everyone has to be given at least one before they can take a second wound - then roll". I liked that system the most I think, but it was very abusable with multi-wound models.

 Andilus Greatsword wrote:
Yeah, in 5th it was "allocate a wound to whoever you want, but everyone has to be given at least one before they can take a second wound - then roll". I liked that system the most I think, but it was very abusable with multi-wound models.

I think it might have been the same in 3rd then. 6th was the one that started this "closest model" junk.

3rd was owner allocates IIRC. So the sarge/heavy alway died last.

At some point, there was a rule where if you took more wounds then models, everyone had to save.

5th had the allocate to differently geared guys, with no doubling up until everyone had one.

6th was closest, 7th the same.

2nd was closest.

Having missed 5th and 6th, it's a shock to go back. I thought that the owner choosing dead models was one of the best changes from 2nd to 3rd.

7th has some rules that might balance out changing it back, like being able to move with some of the squad and still firing heavy weapons if that model didn't move.

4TH ED (p. 26):

When a unit suffers wounding hits, each will affect a different model - you cannot claim that all the hits strike a single model.

The owning player can choose to remove any model from the unit, providing they are within the line of fire and range of the attacker's weaponry. He can even remove models at the rear of the unit if he wishes - it can be imagined that these troops were slain as they advanced and that the rest of the unit continued moving forwards.

Under normal circumstances, powerful weapons will be picked up by other members of the unit and it will be difficult to identify leaders (to a Tyranid, all humans look the same), so it is perfectly fair for a player to avoid taking casualties on (for example) heavy weapons or squad leaders if he doesn't wish to...

[explains old torrent, and other special circumstances]

(p. 76)

It's sometimes possible for some units to have models with different Armour Saves, and in these cases the normal casualty removal and Armour Save rules are modified slightly. The attacking player rolls hits and wounds for whichever unit he is attacking with as normal. However, when the player makes his Armour Saves, he must follow this procedure:

1.) Count up the number of models that have each type of armour. Only count models that could potentially be casualties.

2.) Determine which armour type is in the majority...

3.) Apply the wounding hits to the majority armour type first.

4.) If there are still more wounding hits to allocate, you can apply them to any remaining models. It is up to the owning player to decide who will save against which weapon. The only constraint is that the majority armour type must make saves before anyone else does.

5.) Incoming hits form 'sets', with a single set being all the wounds caused by the shooting of a single enemy unit, or by enemy models attacking the unit in close combat at a single initiative step. For each 'se4t' of wounds, every model must be allocated one wound before any of them can be allocated a second wound, all models must receive a second wound before any can take a third, and so on. Unsaved wounding hits must the applied against models with the same armour type that was used for the save. If a unit receives more wounds than it has models, then the wounds 'wrap around' and affect the majority type again.

 cfoley wrote:
2nd was closest..

2nd ed was closest unit for choosing a target. Casualty removal was owner's choice, though, except in close combat, which was resolved one model at a time.

Honestly I don't understand why they removed casualty removal as owner's choice. It seems like it was done deliberately to screw over special/heavy weapons.

WayneTheGame wrote:
Honestly I don't understand why they removed casualty removal as owner's choice. It seems like it was done deliberately to screw over special/heavy weapons.

I think they did that so we could say :
"this is a squad of ten space marines, with a powerfist sergent and a meltagun"
instead of:
"this is a powerfist sergent and a meltagun, with 8 ablative wounds"

This was made so the heavy/special was something to protect, not something granted...

But it didn't change the fact that everyone was taking the squad for the special/heavy, and not for more bolter shots...

IMHO, the 3rd edition was quite good, and could have stayed if the special/heavy were costed properly, or were reduces in efficency (Except the heavy bolter, poor old heavy bolter...)

Dark Phoenix wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:
Honestly I don't understand why they removed casualty removal as owner's choice. It seems like it was done deliberately to screw over special/heavy weapons.

I think they did that so we could say :
"this is a squad of ten space marines, with a powerfist sergent and a meltagun"
instead of:
"this is a powerfist sergent and a meltagun, with 8 ablative wounds"

But they already accomplished that with the old torrent of fire rule.

The idea that the special weapon just gets left on the ground because the guy carrying it happened to be the closest guy to the shooter, and nobody else stopped to pick it up on the way past, is just too absurd for words.

But it didn't change the fact that everyone was taking the squad for the special/heavy, and not for more bolter shots...

And they still are. Just now they have the special/heavy at the back of the squad instead of up front.

Dark Phoenix wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:
Honestly I don't understand why they removed casualty removal as owner's choice. It seems like it was done deliberately to screw over special/heavy weapons.

I think they did that so we could say :
"this is a squad of ten space marines, with a powerfist sergent and a meltagun"
instead of:
"this is a powerfist sergent and a meltagun, with 8 ablative wounds"

This was made so the heavy/special was something to protect, not something granted...

But it didn't change the fact that everyone was taking the squad for the special/heavy, and not for more bolter shots...

IMHO, the 3rd edition was quite good, and could have stayed if the special/heavy were costed properly, or were reduces in efficency (Except the heavy bolter, poor old heavy bolter...)

IMO this was a side effect of 3rd edition going to a system such that your basic weapons got less meaningful and the more powerful weapons with low AP/high strength like power weapons/fists, plasma, melta, etc got more meaningful. 2nd edition certainly had a focus on uber powerful models, but within a given unit I felt there was less emphasis on "1 dude who is important with 9 dudes to absorb wounds". Maybe that's just my thinking though, honestly haven't really thought about it much.

I like the current rules better than "owner chooses". Death of the closest is much more dynamic and cinematic. Besides, it's more tactical. Even though it screws my horde of boyz pretty hard making them slower and much more vulnerable. But it's more enjoyable to play like this rather than hear: "Hey-hey! I got 10 pallies with all different gear and now you can't just kill anyone unless you do 10 wounds in the first place!".

At leastfire angle matters now. Good thing they removed focused fire in 7-th. It was over the top.

 insaniak wrote:

Dark Phoenix wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:
Honestly I don't understand why they removed casualty removal as owner's choice. It seems like it was done deliberately to screw over special/heavy weapons.

I think they did that so we could say :
"this is a squad of ten space marines, with a powerfist sergent and a meltagun"
instead of:
"this is a powerfist sergent and a meltagun, with 8 ablative wounds"

But they already accomplished that with the old torrent of fire rule.

The idea that the special weapon just gets left on the ground because the guy carrying it happened to be the closest guy to the shooter, and nobody else stopped to pick it up on the way past, is just too absurd for words.

But it didn't change the fact that everyone was taking the squad for the special/heavy, and not for more bolter shots...

And they still are. Just now they have the special/heavy at the back of the squad instead of up front.

I absolutely agree. That change was one of the first things I noticed when I tried out 6th and the idea that my flamer guy should be hiding at the back was absurd.

Ultimately I think it comes down to skirmish vs large battle scale and 40ks lack of commitment to either. In a skirmish game sniping the guy carrying the special weapon is a good, legitimate tactic. In a mass battle any single unit should be just that, a single unit. In a mass battle game, like one that is played on a 6x4 table with 50+ models per side, artillery, fliers and giant tanks, infantry squads (or even platoons) should act together as a single unit where the individual models are wound counters.

It makes the movement phase a tiny bit more tactical while single-handedly neutering horde armies. And sergeants. And really everything except for squads that are only comprised of uber-models.

That's not a very good trade, in my book. I'd much rather a cascading series of different kinds of strong lists than everybody flocking to MC spam because it's the only way you can avoid the wound allocation system.

I kinda don't get it.. I know it's just a game and expecting realism isn't the smartest thing to do, but 6th/7th version is the most 'natural' iteration. I mean.. when you shoot at a crowd(lol), you're going to hit the nearest people so 'peeling' a unit off is quite logical.

Now if we wanted even more logic, then it would be the shooting player picking who to wound with allocating as many hits as he wants on any model he wants AND THEN the targeted unit would be making something akin to look out sir tests to prevent them from being killed. Because what properly trained unit wouldn't try to kill the specialist/sergeant in the enemy squad, right?

And saying that it's ridiculous that flamer has to hide is.. derp, ridiculous! What, do you expect the guy to run in the front row and have everyone but him killed? Now you have to move more tactically - you have to make sure that the grunts shield the special weapon before it can do it's job. Sounds logical to me as the guy with deadly, terrifying flamethrower would be the first thing I would personally be shooting on the battlefield.

So yeah, the change, while making it harder than just running face-first guns a-blazin' and picking off all the ablative wounds with impunity is actually more realistic reasonable and.. faster than any other system that could be implemented.

See.. I can see what you mean about moving being 'tactical' but it's not really a good kind of tactical. Yes it makes you think, but there are so many more choices you should be worrying about, what order you place each man in each squad isn't one of those things.

Having a marine sergeant, who in the fluff should always be leading from the front, standing in the back or middle of a unit because you as a player don't want him removed first is, ironically, very un-narrative-y.

The "ablative wounds" was always explained as somebody else picking up the weapon, which was *more* realistic than "Oh, Brother Julius died. Better leave that plasma gun there". I find it somewhat funny that most other games still have that rule, but 40k is the only one that got rid of it despite it making less sense. Even Bolt Action which is modern day combat lets you pick the special weapon and leader guys last (unless he gets sniped).

I've played since 2nd and the issue I have with the current wound allocation are:

1) Forces sergeants to lead from the rear.
2) Apparently no one knows how to pick up a fallen comrades weapon if they die.
3) Benefits generic units with no unit options more than units with lots of unit options. A unit of Firewarriors may have 1 special model in 12, while a unit of SM will have 3. Firewarriors see no impact based on which model fails its armor save, while SM can see the unit effectiveness drop substantially.

Barfolomew wrote:
I've played since 2nd and the issue I have with the current wound allocation are:

1) Forces sergeants to lead from the rear.
2) Apparently no one knows how to pick up a fallen comrades weapon if they die.
3) Benefits generic units with no unit options more than units with lots of unit options. A unit of Firewarriors may have 1 special model in 12, while a unit of SM will have 3. Firewarriors see no impact based on which model fails its armor save, while SM can see the unit effectiveness drop substantially.

Precisely this. As I mentioned previous editions justified the "ablative wounds" concept as troopers being trained to pick up the special/heavy weapons in the event that the guy holding them fell. Which made sense. I can only imagine they changed it to add some notion of tactics to moving, but IMO failed at the attempt because it just makes you put your valuable guys behind the regular mooks; not much tactics involved there and allows for creative measuring or positioning to avoid putting the special guys in the line of fire.

Trouble is it is all or nothing. Either you have the entirely unrealistic concept that the weapon is always useless (current model) or that the mini RPG that just hit the poor guardsman somehow didnt damage the weapon at all.

Neither is particularly realistic

From a gameplay perspective, I much prefer the 6th edition "closest model" rules - it massively streamlines wound allocation, while still giving the defending player the ability to protect models through placement (bubble wrapping).

It does have some cinematic issues, since all your brave leaders cower in the rear of the unit, rather than leading from the vanguard.

I still think the 6th/7th edition 'closest first' is just another symptom of GW's lazy Rules are hard attitude.

Rather than figure out an elegant way to allow the occasional sniping of important models, while still, overall maintaining a 'owner picks' system of removal, GW lies down on the job and says "Just resolve them on the closest models'.

I do think that the 'owner picks' system had problems-real problems. Large units were implausibly hard to stop, since the owner would take all of the casualties from the rear ranks. That certainly isn't realistic at all, but perhaps when you combine it with morale checks I can accept it (the unit that makes a check continues to advance into the oncoming fire, and the unit that fails falls back). The 'pure' owner chooses systems also let you maintain special weapons and sarges with utter implausibility. While it's certainly possible that someone else could pick up the lascannon, it is also possible that shooting a marine with a meltagun might actually damage his weapon, too. It's also ridiculous that the ork nob could dance around the fight with his klaw until all his boyz were dead.

Neither system ("closest" or "owner's choice') is really ideal in a pure form, but I think GW set the balance wrong with the current system. There should be some way to preserve specialists other than the 'Look Out, Sir" roll for characters. While obviously, the enemy would like to shoot the flamer first, I don't see how they can automatically home all their bullets in on him if he's a step closer than the other 9 guys, but he's otherwise shielded if Bob and Ned are a little closer.


Just an added thought. The 'closest model' system also leads to finicky, game-lengthening (but entirely understandable) careful positioning of models. You want your 'specialist models' close, but not too close to the action, and you might need to move them around so that they aren't the closest one to several units. Argh! People need to do it, so they don't get hosed by a side unit sniping the sarge, but it just slows down the game even more!

 Klerych wrote:
I kinda don't get it.. I know it's just a game and expecting realism isn't the smartest thing to do, but 6th/7th version is the most 'natural' iteration. I mean.. when you shoot at a crowd(lol), you're going to hit the nearest people so 'peeling' a unit off is quite logical.

Now if we wanted even more logic, then it would be the shooting player picking who to wound with allocating as many hits as he wants on any model he wants AND THEN the targeted unit would be making something akin to look out sir tests to prevent them from being killed. Because what properly trained unit wouldn't try to kill the specialist/sergeant in the enemy squad, right?

And saying that it's ridiculous that flamer has to hide is.. derp, ridiculous! What, do you expect the guy to run in the front row and have everyone but him killed? Now you have to move more tactically - you have to make sure that the grunts shield the special weapon before it can do it's job. Sounds logical to me as the guy with deadly, terrifying flamethrower would be the first thing I would personally be shooting on the battlefield.

So yeah, the change, while making it harder than just running face-first guns a-blazin' and picking off all the ablative wounds with impunity is actually more realistic reasonable and.. faster than any other system that could be implemented.

Ok, to start off, applying wounds one by one from the front is not faster than any other system that could be implemented. It's actually incredibly slow and ponderous as soon as any issues arise with different armor saves, or god forbid, look out sir. The fastest system yet implemented in an edition of 40k was probably in 3rd edition, roll against majority save, owner chooses who dies. I would also argue this was a better system than the 6th-7th system, for two reasons.

One, your main point in favor of applying wounds closest first is realism. I would argue this is not actually that realistic in the first place. Shooting at a mass of enemy infantry, you're not necessarily going to aim at the closest guy when they're all roughly the same distance apart. You might also be firing something like a machine gun, where the dispersion in a burst is intended to hit multiple targets at longer range, and thus not necessarily the one guy you aimed at, but also several guys further past him on either side. Or if you're aiming into a mob of orks/what have you, you might not be aiming at anyone in particular at all - just firing towards the middle of the group and counting on it to hit someone, even if they're at the back. Not to mention unit members in theory being able to pick up each others' weapons, which makes sense, is "cinematic", and which the 6th-7th system ignores entirely. Everyone in the unit dying in order of mathematically closest distance to the nearest model in the firing unit is not much more realistic than any other system, even if it feels more "cinematic" in some ways (and less so in others).

Second, realism is not necessarily a good goal anyway (I mean how many things in the 40k rules are realistic at all). We could keep track of how many rounds each model has fired, so they can skip shooting for a turn when they need to reload. That would be realistic, it would increase tactical complexity, and in very small skirmish games could be a good mechanic. But it's really not necessary in 40k - it would be a huge waste of time for no gain in game play, because it's totally out of scale with the rest of the game. Carefully maneuvering each model in every squad on the board to be sure certain weapons don't die first falls in the same category. It's out of place in a company size battle where you could have hundreds of models on either side. You shouldn't be focusing on the exact placement of models within a unit, you should be concerned with larger tactical maneuvers. It slows the game down, both when you're moving models, and when you're trying to roll wounds. And in the case of 40k, even if you think it's better or more realistic to remove the closest models, the decisions it forces you to make end up hurting the setting (I guess my sergeant/specialist should cower at the back, etc).

Closet-first wound allocation is an abstraction itself, so if you're going to be abstract, why not fit your abstraction to the scale and needs of the game?

Okay, I wholeheartedly disagree.

First of all I don't think it's really -that- hard to figure out how to protect the specialist on the unit's way over to the destination where he's going to use it. That's how it happened in pretty much every war.

Let me remind you the second sentence of my post:

I know it's just a game and expecting realism isn't the smartest thing to do

See - I'm not saying that we should go for 100% realism, just that the 7th ed version is much more realistic than the unit losing the rearmost dudes(or those the owner deems least necessary from, say, both sides of the unit) after being shot with a gatling cannon in the front. It's just very simple yet still pretty realistic/plausible idea.

Also I would love you to address the other points I made.
1 - it's a very simple, much more realistic(while still totally reasonable and intuitive) rule than the previous ones.

2 - if you advocate for even more realism(even though I only said that peeling off an unit is more realistic, never saying that I want 100% realism) as it's not always the first guys we hit when shooting at a squad.. sure, then let's make it random allocation and see how long it takes to go through a single shooting phase.

3 - I know it hurts the slowed "sergeant up front!" cinematic idea, but, hey, you can still do it with "look out, sir!" in 7th and it'll be much more plausible than the most important(and most desired as a kill) person in the squad running through a wall of bullets that kills literally everyone but him. There's a limit to cinematic feel where it transforms into slowed invincible anime character logic. Funnily enough that actually encourages the leader to act reasonably. Just let me remind you of the battle scene of the movie Glory.

Now I understand the "what about picking up the gun" argument and I think that it should've been possible, but not automatically. Forcing the 'new' bearer to fire snapshots on first turn it picks it up would be okay as he's in a hurry and has to adjust to it after wielding his regular gun, but that'd be unnecessary complication. For convenience's sake I'd rather see it being damaged beyond any use once the owner gets torn apart by enemy fire. See the flamer guy? Maybe the shot that killed him went through the fuel pipe, breaking the weapon? Or that plasma rifle got hit in it's heated core, killing the owner and breaking down? Sure, not likely to happen all the time, but plausible and streamlines a lot.

While mixed armour is a somewhat valid argument, it doesn't happen -that- often and those few odd cases can be done without a tonne of whining on how this particular wound allocation rule made it oh so much more annoying. Especially when it's kinda obvious what's going to be the meat shield(like scouts in Crusader Squad) anyway.

P.s. - given the fact that 40k is a lot like WWI in that advancing units stand in the open, seeing a horde of enemy soldiers running towards you nets you most kills from the first ranks as you squeeze your Maxim Gun's trigger to not let them get any closer.

P.s.2 - sure, someone can bring the "but maybe the guy takes his place!" argument, but 7th's version doesn't prevent you from doing that.. just.. you have to do it on your next turn. In your movement phase. That argument makes sense in WFB, though, where all the men in regiments are squeezed together base to base and the one behind the killed dude is pushed forward by the guy behind him to take his place in the front rank.

From a purely gameplay perspective I do prefer the 'i choose you to die' way

I can't get on with the closest guy takes the hit because I refuse to have my sergeant leading from the back. If only there was a system that allowed the player receiving the wounds to choose which models die but add a touch of randomness to it so there is a chance the sarge could die. Maybe a dice role to determine which rules are used. Maybe I will try this when we all play next

The way we play is the owning player may choose the casualties, but if the attacker rolls a 6 to Wound, he has the option of trying to allocate that wound to a specific model in LOS. Any 6's successfully re-rolled to Hit will target a specific model, but if any re-rolls that miss lose the wound completely.

This gives the attacker a choice to focus on a target but with some risk of missing it entirely.

Klerych wrote:First of all I don't think it's really -that- hard to figure out how to protect the specialist

No, it's not difficult to figure out. The problem is that the one way to do it is really bad.

I scarcely ever got to shoot special weapons in 6th edition when I wasn't deepstriking them in. This is because they all have such a short range that in order to fire them at all, they needed to be at the front of the squad, but if they were at the front of the squad, they'd never get to fire them at all, because they'd be killed by wound allocation.

A particularly egregious example of this is flamers. Flamers have a very short range, which means you absolutely need to have them at the front of the squad to have any chance of using them, but if you put them there, then they're just killed instantly, because they're likely the closest model. And then, if you put them in the back of the squad, they're not only not going to get to shoot because of their range, but they're also not going to get to shoot (at least effectively) because they've got a bunch of other models in the way, and you can't put the template in such a way where it touches anyone else in the squad. You've created a weapon, and then, with one rule, made it so that you can't actually use them.

Realism aside (it's pretty easy to justify why either system is reasonably realistic), it's a worse game mechanic.

 Ailaros wrote:

Klerych wrote:First of all I don't think it's really -that- hard to figure out how to protect the specialist

No, it's not difficult to figure out. The problem is that the one way to do it is really bad.

I scarcely ever got to shoot special weapons in 6th edition when I wasn't deepstriking them in. This is because they all have such a short range that in order to fire them at all, they needed to be at the front of the squad, but if they were at the front of the squad, they'd never get to fire them at all, because they'd be killed by wound allocation.

A particularly egregious example of this is flamers. Flamers have a very short range, which means you absolutely need to have them at the front of the squad to have any chance of using them, but if you put them there, then they're just killed instantly, because they're likely the closest model. And then, if you put them in the back of the squad, they're not only not going to get to shoot because of their range, but they're also not going to get to shoot (at least effectively) because they've got a bunch of other models in the way, and you can't put the template in such a way where it touches anyone else in the squad. You've created a weapon, and then, with one rule, made it so that you can't actually use them.

Realism aside (it's pretty easy to justify why either system is reasonably realistic), it's a worse game mechanic.

I don't know, haven't heard a single person ever having such problem to be honest. Even with flamers. It's just less of an auto success, but it can be done. You can move your flamer guys into the front ranks for maximum template goodness, it just takes some smart movement, again, trying to protect the specialist. To me it takes away from the unreasonable steamroller "just march forward" while conveniently picking off the rear/side guys idea and I'm all up for that change. I don't mind that it affects my units too, given the fact that I play vet IG and SM too, so all the 'problems' apply to me too. I just find it more positively challenging, I guess.

Johnson & The Juice Crew wrote:
From a purely gameplay perspective I do prefer the 'i choose you to die' way

I can't get on with the closest guy takes the hit because I refuse to have my sergeant leading from the back. If only there was a system that allowed the player receiving the wounds to choose which models die but add a touch of randomness to it so there is a chance the sarge could die. Maybe a dice role to determine which rules are used. Maybe I will try this when we all play next

Bolt Action does this: On a "wound" roll if you roll a 6, you get to re-roll, if that roll is ALSO a six then the attacker can pick who dies; it's to represent an exceptional shot taking out the sergeant or special weapons guy.