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What do you think of overwatch casualties being resolved at initiative 10 instead of before any blows are struck?

It helps win combat but doesn't prevent combat? thats fine.

I think overwatch should be in the shooting phase and it shouldn't be against an attack, it should be against the nearest enemy.

But you asked about initiative ten. It sounds like it would be easier than it is now.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
What do you think of overwatch casualties being resolved at initiative 10 instead of before any blows are struck?

Don't a bunch of Eldar get to overwatch at BS2? So what you want is a I10 broadside at opposing armies. 10 dire avengers would get 20 shots hitting about 7 times and killing 4 of my orks. SO before you even get your next attack Im already -4. 10 CC attacks (Assuming no Exarch) 5 hits and 2-3 more dead orks. So that means a unit of garbage CC infantry just inflicted 7 kills on my Ork warband. Depending on how big that squad is it very well might just kill me off completely. SO ....no

This would break CC even more then it already is because now shooty armies get a bigger advantage in CC then before. Isn't shooting my mobs off the table for 2 - 3 turns enough?

 Ghazkuul wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
What do you think of overwatch casualties being resolved at initiative 10 instead of before any blows are struck?

Don't a bunch of Eldar get to overwatch at BS2? So what you want is a I10 broadside at opposing armies. 10 dire avengers would get 20 shots hitting about 7 times and killing 4 of my orks. SO before you even get your next attack Im already -4. 10 CC attacks (Assuming no Exarch) 5 hits and 2-3 more dead orks. So that means a unit of garbage CC infantry just inflicted 7 kills on my Ork warband. Depending on how big that squad is it very well might just kill me off completely. SO ....no

This would break CC even more then it already is because now shooty armies get a bigger advantage in CC then before. Isn't shooting my mobs off the table for 2 - 3 turns enough?

I'm not sure what your concern here is. Avengers are going to get a chance to shoot you with overwatch regardless of whether it happens at initiative 10 or before the charge. Are you worried about overwatch wounds contributing to deciding who won combat? If so, that's a valid complaint and is easily resolved by saying, "overwatch wounds don't count towards combat resolution." The rule will generally help melee armies like orks because it helps prevent situations where you fail a charge due to losing bodies to overwatch.

@Lythrandire: My buddies and I discussed this very rule suggestion recently. The overall tone was accepting, but many people felt like it was a bandaid on the underlying issue. I assume you came up with this rule change to avoid situations where overwatch prevents charges. If that's the case, a suggested rule I've seen is to let the assaulting player choose between the normal 2d6" assault or an automatic 6" assault. Chosen after overwatch is resolved, of course. The automatic 6" prevents those unpleasant moments where you fail a 3" charge, but the option to assault 2d6" gives you a chance to assault farther than normal and will statistically let you charge farther than 6" more often than not.

If I had my way, you would add base speed to a d6 to see charge range. Let the bullets fly how they will, but my Ork bikers will be charging 12+d6"!

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
If I had my way, you would add base speed to a d6 to see charge range. Let the bullets fly how they will, but my Ork bikers will be charging 12+d6"!

So a reliable waagh charge range of about 20.5" (6" + 3.5" run + 6" + ~5" random charge with 'ere we go) for an ork boy?

12" + 12" +~5" charge for a bike with 'ere we go = 29" reliable charge for bikes

12" + 3.5" run + 12" +~5" = 32.5" charge for storm boyz.

So in other words, assuming dawn of war deployment, you'd be able to reliably charge across pretty much the entire board turn one with storm boyz on turn 1, and an entire ork army should easily be in close combat by turn 2. A turn 2 assault with bikes is pretty easy already, but now we're talking the entire ork army. It gets even easier with truks.

That feels a bit much to me.

Also, that would mean that swooping hawks would be able to move 18" + 18" +~5" = 41" reliably on a given turn.

Marines would only be covering 6" + 6" +3.5" = 15.5" though, which is pretty close to what they can do now, so that would probably be fine for most units.

I'm not sure that's terribly bad. The one case where you can be charged from more than halfway across the table - Swooping Hawks - is not terribly dangerous, since they mostly don't want to charge anything except vehicles, and they're kind of a marginal unit anyway.

Also, only two armies get to run and charge, as far as I'm aware: Orks and Harlequins. Orks can do it once, sometimes more, while Harlequins can only do it in certain formations or detachments. I wouldn't mind Orks that can potentially get a turn 1 charge off: it would add some strategy back in, I think. A tradeoff: do I put my dangerous shooters on the table, hoping to mow down the wave of Boyz before they get here, or do I keep them in reserve, hoping that most of the Boyz will already be stuck in by the time they arrive, so they won't get glued down? In particular, armies that either have little melee skill (Tau, Guard) or those who concentrate their melee skill in specific units ({Dark} Eldar, Sisters) will have to think hard about that one.

Dark Angels admittedly kinda screw it up - Supporting Fire at 24" at BS4 without first needing to hit with snap-firing Markerlights? Ow. (Add to that the fact that DA guys aren't nearly as weaksauce in combat as Tau). But I think that might otherwise be one of the boosts that assault-heavy armies need. They don't really need to be better at killing once they get into melee - melee is usually quite effective, if you last long enough to get there - they need to be better at actually getting there. Assaulting out of deep strike would be one way, faster movement and longer charges might be another.

One catch, though, is that this could really make different deployment maps favor different armies, more than is already the case. It'd be really easy to hide from even 32" charges in Hammer and Anvil or Vanguard Strike - but on the flipside, Storm Boyz would serve to force people to hide in just that way... I kinda like the strategic implications, as I said.

Currently, shooty armies have an edge over assaulty ones because you can start leveraging all your firepower turn 1. Assault armies are essentially forced to let the enemy have the advantage for the first turn or two. Overwatch is the icing on the cake, but it usually doesn't actually make that big a difference.

Being able to get off a turn 1 assault pretty easily with many units and a turn 2 assault with essentially your entire army certainly buffs assault armies, but it also pretty much negates all shooty armies. Once you get into melee, you're probably not going to spend a single turn not in melee for the rest of the game, especially with the proposed charge rules. You might have to worry about killing off a unit too quickly denying yourself the chance to hide in melee, but even then, you're still coming out ahead compared to how things are now because you've reduced the enemy army by at least 1 unit.

Basically what I'm getting at is that the assault army is going to be tearing apart every units reliably every turn starting on turn 1 while the shooting stuff gets maybe a single turn to bring most of its guns to bare. Once things are in melee, the shooty army will only get to do anything if an assault unit killed its way out of combat. Otherwise, the shooty players choices are:

A.) Sit back and wait for the enemy to come finish you off.
B.) Assault the assaulty army with your fire warriors.

Regarding deploying further back/reserving things to avoid being tabled turns 1 or 2, doing that essentially hands the table over to your opponent. The assault army isn't going to stop advancing while you're hiding. When your reserved units walk on, they'll be lining up right in front of enemy assault units who will have put themselves in cover to endure the one turn of shooting you get against some of them. Your only hope of retaking any territory is to deepstrike/outflank stuff, but then you're isolating yourself, and it's not like the assault army can't turn around and assault you at midfield reliably.

Not a fan. Again, it won't make a huge difference for most units (marines only gain about 3" to their assault threat range), but armies that can leverage it (orks) will, and it will silence pretty much all enemy guns on turn 2ish. I'd rather not put a tau or IG army on the table if I knew I was going to be shooting the first turn, and then asking my opponent which squads to remove for the rest of the game.

I do agree that assault units generally need better delivery systems, but I think that's better done by removing some of the emphasis on letting the enemy shoot you up before you get to assault. So for instance:

*Assault from outflank. Easily countered by controlling the center of the board.

*Assault after disembarking from a vehicle that hasn't moved (ala 5th edition). Rhinos aren't seen a lot these days, and this is part of that. It also lets you field howling banshees without shenanigans, makes packless assault marines a bit more feasible, etc. Is countered by the fact that you're putting your vehicle and the squad inside on your opponent's doorstep.

I'm less of a fan of assaulting out of deepstrike because it's fairly easy to pull off, and there's really no counter to it unless you load up on interceptor blast weapons. Picture daemon armies that are allowed to do that. Sure, plenty of them will scatter too far away to meaningfully charge, but plenty of units will be able to get an assault off right away. dangerous terrain might kill one or two daemons here and there, but not nearly as many as letting you get a turn of shooting in would. The daemons potentially just took out a lot of your units, and the only retalliation you got was overwatch (meh) and your return punches. And your return punches probably aren't amazing.

my solitaire loves the idea because if you get lucky and kill him with overwatch, he'll still get to attack

Wyldhunt wrote:
Currently, shooty armies have an edge over assaulty ones because you can start leveraging all your firepower turn 1. Assault armies are essentially forced to let the enemy have the advantage for the first turn or two. Overwatch is the icing on the cake, but it usually doesn't actually make that big a difference.

Being able to get off a turn 1 assault pretty easily with many units and a turn 2 assault with essentially your entire army certainly buffs assault armies, but it also pretty much negates all shooty armies. Once you get into melee, you're probably not going to spend a single turn not in melee for the rest of the game, especially with the proposed charge rules. You might have to worry about killing off a unit too quickly denying yourself the chance to hide in melee, but even then, you're still coming out ahead compared to how things are now because you've reduced the enemy army by at least 1 unit.

Basically what I'm getting at is that the assault army is going to be tearing apart every units reliably every turn starting on turn 1 while the shooting stuff gets maybe a single turn to bring most of its guns to bare. Once things are in melee, the shooty army will only get to do anything if an assault unit killed its way out of combat. Otherwise, the shooty players choices are:

A.) Sit back and wait for the enemy to come finish you off.
B.) Assault the assaulty army with your fire warriors.

Regarding deploying further back/reserving things to avoid being tabled turns 1 or 2, doing that essentially hands the table over to your opponent. The assault army isn't going to stop advancing while you're hiding. When your reserved units walk on, they'll be lining up right in front of enemy assault units who will have put themselves in cover to endure the one turn of shooting you get against some of them. Your only hope of retaking any territory is to deepstrike/outflank stuff, but then you're isolating yourself, and it's not like the assault army can't turn around and assault you at midfield reliably.

Not a fan. Again, it won't make a huge difference for most units (marines only gain about 3" to their assault threat range), but armies that can leverage it (orks) will, and it will silence pretty much all enemy guns on turn 2ish. I'd rather not put a tau or IG army on the table if I knew I was going to be shooting the first turn, and then asking my opponent which squads to remove for the rest of the game.

That's a good point that I hadn't thought of - the armies that can do this sort of thing effectively can do it with almost all of the units they'd care to bring. Maybe with much wider availability of Hit & Run - but then we'd be right back where we are now, with shooting armies running the show.

I do agree that assault units generally need better delivery systems, but I think that's better done by removing some of the emphasis on letting the enemy shoot you up before you get to assault. So for instance:

*Assault from outflank. Easily countered by controlling the center of the board.

*Assault after disembarking from a vehicle that hasn't moved (ala 5th edition). Rhinos aren't seen a lot these days, and this is part of that. It also lets you field howling banshees without shenanigans, makes packless assault marines a bit more feasible, etc. Is countered by the fact that you're putting your vehicle and the squad inside on your opponent's doorstep.

I'm less of a fan of assaulting out of deepstrike because it's fairly easy to pull off, and there's really no counter to it unless you load up on interceptor blast weapons. Picture daemon armies that are allowed to do that. Sure, plenty of them will scatter too far away to meaningfully charge, but plenty of units will be able to get an assault off right away. dangerous terrain might kill one or two daemons here and there, but not nearly as many as letting you get a turn of shooting in would. The daemons potentially just took out a lot of your units, and the only retalliation you got was overwatch (meh) and your return punches. And your return punches probably aren't amazing.

A thought here, is that if you assault out of deep strike, you go last. That might not matter - Vanguard Veterans won't be losing too many dudes to Pathfinders getting to swing first, and they'll still mulch the little mooks - or it might make all the difference. (For example, Daemonettes will probably get sliced and diced by Tyranid Warriors if they don't get to chop the Warriors up first.)

But I do like the first two suggestions rather a lot - as it stands, Outflank doesn't get used all that often, especially when Deep Strike is available. Being able to charge after a walk-on or Outflank would make it a more attractive option. The vehicle assault fix is good in general, I think. It certainly makes units like Howling Banshees and Sisters Repentia a lot less awkward to use. As it stands, wanting to use either one effectively pretty much requires allies, but that raises all sorts of weird questions, and attracts all the folks that hate the whole idea of allies with a vengeance.

Oops, with jump units you would still only get to use their ability once per turn! If you use it in the assault phase you'd get an extra d6 movement. Sorry folks

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
Oops, with jump units you would still only get to use their ability once per turn! If you use it in the assault phase you'd get an extra d6 movement. Sorry folks

Ork jump troops can use it in both phases. Just D6 each one and on 1s they die.

 Ghazkuul wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
Oops, with jump units you would still only get to use their ability once per turn! If you use it in the assault phase you'd get an extra d6 movement. Sorry folks

Ork jump troops can use it in both phases. Just D6 each one and on 1s they die.

Bikes would still have pretty crazy reliably assault ranges too.