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Just a thought I would like to share. I'm not expecting this to be anything grand or the like, but kinda like an optional rule. Might make the game last a bit longer though, so some people might not enjoy that.

When fighting in the Assault Phase, if two or more models are fighting each other in the same Initiative then after the To Hit rolls are made, the player(s) can choose to cancel out a enemy successful To Hit roll(s) by sacrificing your own successful To Hit roll(s) of equal worth, so that it's like blocking. If any To Hit rolls of 1 or 2 happen they still miss and cannot be used for Blocking purposes either. Any player can choose to "Block" regardless of turn. Also, lower Initiative models cannot "Block" against higher Initiative models.

///Example: Space Marine Sergeant is fighting two Chaos Marines in close combat. The Sergeant rolls 4 and 5 on the To Hit rolls. The Chaos Marines rolls 4 and 4 on the To Hit rolls. The Chaos Player decides to "Block" the Sergeant's To Hit roll of 4 with his own To Hit roll of 4. (Narrative-wise, a Chaos Space Marine blocked a blow from the Sergeant's Chainsword with his Bolter before his head was decapitated.) So now all that remains for the To Hit rolls is the Sergeant's roll of 5 and the Chaos Marine's roll of 4.

At this point, the Chaos Player wants to "Block" the Sergeant's To Hit roll of 5 but cannot, as the Chaos Player did not roll a 5 or higher. So the Sergeant's roll goes through and follows the regular process of the To Wound roll and such. (Narrative-wise, the Sergeant's first blow was blocked by the Chaos Marine's Bolter, but before the Chaos Marine could recover from the blow the Sergeant struck more skillfully and eviscerated the Chaos Marine's neck.)///

If the two or more models fighting each other possess the same Initiative but not the same Weapon Skill, then use these modifiers if you wish to Block.


///Example: Guardsman Deadmanwalking is fighting Ork Nob Gutrippasmashysmash in close combat. The Guardsman rolls a To Hit roll of 4 while the Ork Nob rolls To Hit rolls of 4, 1, and 2, resulting in one hit and two misses for the Nob. While ordinarily the Guardsman can choose to block with his To Hit roll of 4 against the Ork Nob's To Hit roll of 4, the Nob's Weapon Skill is one point higher then the Guardsman's Weapon Skill so using the chart above, the Guardsman needs a To Hit roll of 5 or more to "Block" the Ork Nob's attack. (Narrative-wise, the Guardsman raises his lasgun to block the Ork Nob's Choppa, but the Ork Nob's attack is so ferocious that even though the Guardsman tried to block the attack the Nob just batted aside the lasgun away, almost knocking the weapon away from the Guardsman) The Guardsman fails to "Block" and the rest of the fight carries on as normal, both Guardsman and Nob roll their To Would rolls and such.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the galaxy, a Tau Fire Warrior is fighting a Ork Boy in close combat. The Fire Warrior hits the Ork Boy with a To Hit roll of a 5 while the Ork Boy hits back with To Hit rolls of 3 and 2. The Ork Player decides to "Block" the Tau Fire Warrior's To Hit roll with his 3 since the Ork Boy's Weapon Skill is two points higher then the Fire Warrior's Weapon Skill. While with the modifiers will decrease the "Block" To Hit roll of a 2, a roll of a 1 or a 2 is still a miss in close combat and thus cannot be used to "Block."///

If a player wishes to, they can hold on to any amount of To Hit rolls they made and use them to "Block" against attacks from lower Initiative foes. However, if the player wishes to hold onto these rolls then they cannot use those rolls to attack.

///Example: Chaos Aspiring Champion is fighting a Black Templar Initiate with a Power Axe. The Aspiring Champion rolls a 5 and a . As the Initiate does not roll To Hit rolls yet, the Aspiring Champion can decide if he wants to press his attack with his rolls or to keep the them to defend against the Power Axe threat. (Narrative-wise, the Aspiring Champion is bracing himself by taking a more defensive stance, waiting for an opening to take advantage of to slay his opponent.) The Aspiring Champion decides to hold onto the rolls and hopes that the Initiate doesn't roll higher then what he has. The Initiate rolls To Hit rolls of 5 and 3. The To Hit roll of 3 misses while the To Hit roll of 5 hits. Thankfully, the Aspiring Champion was prepared for this situation and uses his kept dice earlier and "Blocks" the To Hit roll of 5 with his own. However, the To Hit roll of 4 the Aspiring Champion had kept is wasted and is gone after the phase is done.///

Seems like it could be alright if it were more streamlined, or the game was smaller scale. As is in 40k that would increase the already saturated combat process to unacceptable levels for me.

Something like: if you are fighting an enemy unit whose initiative is the same or lower than yours, you may choose to fight defensively. (Say if your intent is to hold them in combat.) In this case, roll your to hit as normal. Every attack that hit is placed in a pool. As the same initiative and lower enemy attacks hit, discard a die from your pool to negate each one until all attacks have been made or your pool runs out. Any further dice in the block pool become successful hits on the enemy at initiative step 1. Any further hits after the block pool is emptied are successful hits for the enemy. (Proceed to roll to wound and carry on as normal.)

It does require an extra bit of rules knowledge, but in game you would just roll like normal with no extra steps. (In fact, it could skip the wounds and/or saves step of rolling, most likely shortening the combat for that particular encounter.)

So if you were going to do it, I'd try something more like that. Simplify and shorten at all possible times.

For balancing though, that would certainly make big units of chaff AWESOME in combat. ( as long as their initiative doesn't suck.) That's a whole 'nother can of worms.

So would this seem more appropriate in games such as Kill Team and the like?

This would be fine in Kill Team, yeah. In standard 40k it'd drag things out a lot longer.

That said, it would make almost all (Chaos) Space Marine, Eldar and Slaanesh Daemon stuff much better at hanging on in combat, and provide a further disadvantage to very powerful but Unwieldy weapons.

This sounds really similar to the way the Infinity game combat mechanics work. I'm no expert in it yet (just learning) but basically you roll D20's and can cancel out another models action by beating their score. Your equivalent of WS/BS play into your D20 rolls and modify them accordingly.

It works great when you have 5 models on the table, but it would quickly become a cumbersome nightmare with any sizable 40K game. However Kill Team would be really fun to try it with.

It would definitely be cool within challenges, I also think it would work great for higher initiative models against lower initiative but more powerful enemies.

I'd just make it that any character can choose before any attacks are made to sacrifice 'x' amount of attacks as defensive blocks. Defensive blocks are initiated by the player combining the characters WS and I value and rolling 2 D6. Scores under the combined value are treated as successful blocks, a double 6 will always fail.

Instant death attacks are capable of being blocked, but require the character to complete the block on 3 D6. This does not apply to attacks that gain the instant death rule via rolling a 6 to wound (as these are impossible to pre-emp).

Succesful defensive blocks reduce the opposing characters attacks by one. Characters effected by blocks can never have their attacks lowered to zero (so they always get at least one attack per turn).

It would make some characters amazing tarpits, defensive fighters holding up the opposing brute long enough for their men to finish off the enemies army or until support can arrive.

This would get trolly after a while.

I charge my vanilla, captain into a blob of Tau. They can no longer shoot at anything because they cant kill him because he is blocking all of their attacks in CC

That's their problem, should have dealt with him before he got the charge off.

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
This would get trolly after a while.

I charge my vanilla, captain into a blob of Tau. They can no longer shoot at anything because they cant kill him because he is blocking all of their attacks in CC

Honestly, that's mostly how it works already, except that maybe the Fire Warriors can get thunderingly lucky after a while. Though it sounds like they'd still be able to, if there's enough of them. (Or, if the Captain has a Power Sword and Artificer Armor, he just chops the Fire Warriors into little chunks and continues on his merry way...)