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Hey guys,

I really enjoy 40K and started playing about a year ago or so ago. To preface, yes, I play an assault oriented army (Blood Angels) and I have read many times on this forum how hard of a time assault armies have on the table right now in 7th. My opponent plays really shooty armies, and this past weekend after having my brave craze marines shot off the table for about the 24th time, we've decided to try the solution suggested in the subject to see how it works.

My question is, what do you guys think? Would making this change make assault armies stupidly broken? I actually think it would go a long way towards helping make assaulting a viable option again. From a fluff standpoint, it makes sense... whenever a unit get inserted by aircraft or via a a "drop pod" equivalent, they can immediately get into the fight. It makes no sense for them to show up and just stand there for a turn eating a full round of shooting, as these kinds of deployments are meant to catch the enemy off guard.

Gameplay wise, I think it would be fine as it forces the opponent to more carefully position where they place their prized ranged units. I'm not a tourney player, but 40k just seems really formulaic at the moment... bring tons of guns and just point and click doesn't make for the most fun game (on either side). I'll report back how it goes, but curious to see what other people thought too.

This just seems like a very hamfisted fix to me.

I suspect you might find this okay in the short term, within the confines of your gaming group, but I don't really see this being a good long-term fix.

It certainly addresses one outstanding problem for assault in the current shooting-dominated meta, namely delivery. But there are a lot of other issues (which many smarter people than me can explain) that really prevent any one house-rule from being an all-encompassing fix. It's a lot like trying to put a band-aid on a severed limb - it might stop some bleeding, but you're really going to need some serious measures to call it "fixed."

Hate to say it, but at least the direction is finally in reverse. Play your BA as Raven Guard with the new Kauyon rules and formations they have they are enjoyably drop and chop!

With jump packs that is. Altogether a lot of fun, and very rewarding for me, having stuck with my Raven Guard through every twist and turn since 98!

Yeah, I know this solution doesn't fix everything but we felt it was the simplest thing to try and tweak, without spending a ton of time tweaking multiple parts of the game. My biggest issue has been delivery anyway... it just doesn't seem realistic that assault units who show up via special insertion (which are basically paid upgrades) still have to sit there and get shot to pieces.

What would you guys suggest in place/in addition to my suggestion? I don't have nearly as much experience as a lot of people on this forum, so I'm genuinely interested to hear other people's thoughts.

What I would suggest is in every situation where assault is currently disallowed (Deep Strike, Outflanking, disembarking from a non-assault transport, etc), you allow charges, but with only 1D6 charge range. Further, these count as disorganized charges (so no charge bonus). This softens the blow a little, plus expanding it to other types of delivery mechanisms might give your non-marine opponent some more neat options too.

The real fix is to rewrite the game from the ground up incorporating an alternating activation mechanic, which helps avoid overwhelming alpha/beta strike issues.

Indeed, the biggest issue with Drop-and-Chop on the same turn, is that your opponent can't react to it. Remember, he's paying points for shooty dudes, and you're completely neutralizing those points with no means for your opponent to react, if you drop and assault the same turn.

It may make little sense that your guys stand around getting shot, but it makes no less sense than a Platoon of Guardsman not going full-auto, drilling the doors of a Drop Pod until the hatches blow, and you then paste those marines while they're still in their seatbelts.

While hand to hand may play some role in modern military practice... when was the last time you saw someone take a sword to a gun-fight? We're needing to work with the context of the fluff, and then make rules that keep it a reasonably fair game.

Well, hypothetically we'd play a game that isn't designed by morons trying to sell plastic crack, but you know what they say about addiction. So we keep playing 40k.

Another option: you can drop and charge, but if you do, your opponent can overwatch at full BS. You still eat all the fire of that heavy weapons team you want to charge, but you don't also have to soak up fire from those three Leman Russes sitting behind them and the Wyvern behind that first.

To allow a whole army to assault first turn is a terrible idea balance wise, since opponent has no chance to react.

It would be more viable if very limited amount of your force could assault on turn one, but that would be a very small number, like one unit, perhaps even two. But I doubt this is a good idea overall.

 greatbigtree wrote:
Indeed, the biggest issue with Drop-and-Chop on the same turn, is that your opponent can't react to it. Remember, he's paying points for shooty dudes, and you're completely neutralizing those points with no means for your opponent to react, if you drop and assault the same turn.

As opposed to someone Deep Striking in something shooty and obliterating my unit? How is that any different?

Because if you survive being shot, you're not locked in combat. That's the major reason. You could drop in assault units and lock down a hard-to-kill unit, even if you have no real chance of killing it.

flodihn wrote:
To allow a whole army to assault first turn is a terrible idea balance wise, since opponent has no chance to react.

It would be more viable if very limited amount of your force could assault on turn one, but that would be a very small number, like one unit, perhaps even two. But I doubt this is a good idea overall.

To be fair, we haven't changed the rules regarding when units in reserve (flyers, etc.) can come on the table... so there would only be one/two, maybe three drop pods coming in that first turn if someone elected to go that route. Plus, scatter and random charge distance is still a thing. So even if you come in and can charge, it's no guarantee that you will actually get there. I think that there are enough other considerations that's it's worth giving assault units the opportunity to chop and drop, and there are ways to deploy defensively to make your high priority units harder to get at (surrounding with cheap unit, etc.)

I am still of the opinion that it's not that overpowered, and would help open up assault as a more viable option than it is currently. I could be wrong though.

 CalgarsPimpHand wrote:
What I would suggest is in every situation where assault is currently disallowed (Deep Strike, Outflanking, disembarking from a non-assault transport, etc), you allow charges, but with only 1D6 charge range. Further, these count as disorganized charges (so no charge bonus). This softens the blow a little, plus expanding it to other types of delivery mechanisms might give your non-marine opponent some more neat options too.

The real fix is to rewrite the game from the ground up incorporating an alternating activation mechanic, which helps avoid overwhelming alpha/beta strike issues.

I totally like this idea.

And it has nothing to do with the fact that I have a First Company Strike Force consisting of nothing but Vanguard Marines(who ignore Disorganized Charge penalties!). Nothing to do with that I swear!

I really like the d6 charge range and disordered charge variant as well as the chance for any reserve unit not just marines

Scion of Sanguinius wrote:

flodihn wrote:
To allow a whole army to assault first turn is a terrible idea balance wise, since opponent has no chance to react.

It would be more viable if very limited amount of your force could assault on turn one, but that would be a very small number, like one unit, perhaps even two. But I doubt this is a good idea overall.

To be fair, we haven't changed the rules regarding when units in reserve (flyers, etc.) can come on the table... so there would only be one/two, maybe three drop pods coming in that first turn if someone elected to go that route.

Except for all the units that can arrive by deep strike, which I think there are plentiful of, like assault space marines, land speeders, terminators and probably a bunch of other units from different codices.
Also the issue is not on what turn they arrive, the issue is that they can get directly into assault the turn they arrive without allowing the opponent to react.

Plus, scatter and random charge distance is still a thing. So even if you come in and can charge, it's no guarantee that you will actually get there. I think that there are enough other considerations that's it's worth giving assault units the opportunity to chop and drop, and there are ways to deploy defensively to make your high priority units harder to get at (surrounding with cheap unit, etc.)

I am still of the opinion that it's not that overpowered, and would help open up assault as a more viable option than it is currently. I could be wrong though.

I am sure if you play test it, you will find it overpowered. Once in a time there were no such restrictions and assault armies were vastly overpowered, thus it was changed. I think if you do a poll, you will find a majority of people does not want units to be able to assault from deep-strike.

That said, I agree with that you that assault armies are underpowered, but your change would make them vastly overpowered again (as history has proved).

What I have found is that Games Workshop, when they decide to nerf or boost something, they rarely do it with cation, but either makes something way too powerful or too useless.
Just as an example is the nerf of the librarians physic hood that once had a range of 24", which was way too powerful so they nerfed it down to 6", which makes it rather useless, a more balanced nerf would have changed the range to 12", and if it was still deemed to powerful they could nerfed it again down to 9".

One balanced change they could do to assault armies, is to change the charge distance from 2D6 to 6+1D6, it would be a great start to addressing the issue.

flodihn wrote:

I am sure if you play test it, you will find it overpowered. Once in a time there were no such restrictions and assault armies were vastly overpowered, thus it was changed.

When was this?

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

flodihn wrote:

I am sure if you play test it, you will find it overpowered. Once in a time there were no such restrictions and assault armies were vastly overpowered, thus it was changed.

When was this?

Really long time ago, before I started to play, I only heard people mention it. I don't think it was assaulting directly out from drop pods, but allowing assault on the first turn.

flodihn wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

flodihn wrote:

I am sure if you play test it, you will find it overpowered. Once in a time there were no such restrictions and assault armies were vastly overpowered, thus it was changed.

When was this?

Really long time ago, before I started to play, I only heard people mention it. I don't think it was assaulting directly out from drop pods, but allowing assault on the first turn.

...so it's anecdotal?

More anecdotes, here, but it's my understanding that the OP-ness of first turn assault/drop pod assault was the combination of a few factors:

1) Assault out of drop pods, deep strike or outflank
2) Assault on the first turn
3) Consolidate from one assault into another and keep on killing
4) No overwatch or anything like it
5) Power weapons ignore all armor, so anyone with a power weapon could massacre anyone who didn't have an invuln.

All this meant that an assault-centric army could deploy first, go first, drop in, assault and either kill or tarpit all of the shooting army's best units, and the shooter could do absolutely nothing about it. Then the assault units could finish up, roll on into another fight, and basically keep on massacring the shooting army uncontested. Now, most Space Marines or the like could eventually put something scary in their way, but other armies (Tau, Necrons) were just skunked.

That's what was OP. I think you'd need pretty much *all* of the first three to bring the old demon back. Even consolidating into assault wouldn't be that bad, provided you can't immediately start swinging. (I'd also argue that the unit you're consolidating into should also be able to Overwatch, probably at BS2, unless they're already locked in combat, but that's another point.)

Obviously, we have the opposite problem now - shooting rules the roost. The Rule of Realism says maybe it should - after all, it does in RL - but the Rule of Cool says heck no, I want my Orks with their Big Choppas and Marines with chainswords and sneaky beasts that tear apart Terminators with their bare claws!

I miss when genestealers were relevant....

There are two main things I think of that you could do this:

1) Invent "Drop Pod Assault Ramps" which you can pay to upgrade your Drop Pods. Make them cost something like 20 points. Turns the Drop Pod into an Assault Vehicle and allows units to Assault from Reserve.

2) Allow assaults out of Drop Pods with the "Disordered Charge" special rule. Personally I would NOT implement the "1D6" assault range that was mentioned. You would run into problems when assaulting through Difficult Terrain. Basically your opponent could pretty easily deploy his troops in such a way to keep terrain in between them and where your Drop Pods would be forced to land. Then you're rolling 1D6 for Assault, but subtracting 2. Unless you are able to deploy 1" away from him, that's pretty much a 1/3 chance of failing the Assault immediately.

If you're worried about the assault distance being too overpowered, a better solution would probably be to borrow the Difficult Terrain rules from 6th Edition. Roll 3D6 for assault distance and discard the highest die result.