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So I noticed that there are formations in the new angels blade book that got me thinking about the rules for deep strike.

Specifically how deep striking CC squads are becoming sort of a minor thing now.
But this is probably the first time I've seen a deep striking CC squad that actually makes a bit of sense.

Let me explain:

New angels blade formation give units the ability to deep strike and assault on the turn of arrival but they count as having made a disordered charge.
This in a way makes a gaming sense cause of the downside of disordered vs a normal charge, where the unit does not benefit from having CC specific rules (Rage, Rampage,Furious Charge, etc.)

So it got me thinking..... why don't we have this as a normal rule?

Deep striking right now is a bit of a spot the difference when you see it in motion for two squads that are tailored for their different role. In this example shooting vs CC
Lets compare their advantages and disadvantages:

Shooting
Advantage

Battlefield Placement

Can Shoot on turn it arrives

Doesn't lose any if at all combat strength from enemy retaliation

Disadvantages

Is Completely exposed.

Can potentially not fire some of their weapons (Heavy,ordinance, .etc)

Misshaping

Close Combat
Advantage

Battlefield Placement

Doesn't lose any if at all combat strength from enemy retaliation

Disadvantages

Is Completely exposed.

Cannot Assault

Misshaping

And here lies the problem

One feels like it was tailored for a specific role of combat while the other feels like a nice form of mobility or just an outright disaster waiting to happen

This new formation 'rule' actually is probably the best compromise that could come that gives both squads the ability to act on their own roles without it being too much for either squad.
This also puts in the fact that one of those (i.e Shooting) can be mitigated again cause of a shooting rule a.k.a Relentless
The only thing i find with this setup are units tailored for run down tactics cause of sweeping advance. I know this rule will open this floodgate so i also propose this next change


Make disordered charge also have the penalty of making the squad unable to perform sweeping advance on the turn it arrives from reserve.


This way you don't have many things that have the ability to ignore this rule (i can only think of one unit that can) and units don't just get stomped instantly cause of this rule. But rather because of good dice rolling. Like it's shooting counterpart.

This would CC based monstrous creatures a thing again but wont make them too overpowered as to wipe stuff out when it comes.

Now we come to vehicles. Specifically normal vehicles vs this new rule and walkers.
Since the update to the penetration table, a monstrous creature will still have a pretty hard time taking out a vehicle target. Even with their strength because of the disordered charge rule and since smash is a one hit ability now
There would be some exceptions to this rule, but that would be few and far between.
Walkers on the other hand would start to be way more powerful cause of this. This is where the new rule for disordered comes in.


If the walker charges a squad who isn't fearless or some other stuff that stops it from getting out of combat. the 'our weapons are useless' rule is a nice way for squads to tactically escape while also exposing the walker to Shooting.
Against vehicles it's a bit more complicated cause of having power fist and all with Str 10. But then again these walkers can be used as hard hitting first assault units. Which i think would cement them in an active list.
Vehicles have quite a bit of advantages with their new rule sets and this rule probably won't change much except make CC deep striking a viable thing.
I mean shooting Deep striking is a thing so why no CC ( Just with penalties)

That's my two cents

Apologies if this comes across as gibberish. It has been a long day.

You touch upon a lot of different and fairly specific points in your post. I'm going to address the broader concept of allowing a disordered charge after a unit deepstrikes.

Considering there are multiple ways for several common units to do this now, I don't think anyone can necessarily complain that this options would be "overpowered." At least not where things like vanguard vets and assault marines are concerned.

What I would worry about is this tactic being rather non-interactive with limited opportunity for counter play. Not being able to meaningfully prevent your opponent from deepstriking well and then charging a unit to death isn't much fun to be on the receiving end of. You can sort of kind of bubble wrap or place yourself near the right terrain to mitigate it, but then you spend at least one turn just hiding and waiting for the deepstrikers to arrive so that you can start moving up the table, towards objectives, etc. assuming you have a decent target for your opponent to go after, there's a good chance he'll simply deepstrike in, shoot things as necessary, and then proceed to charge one or more units. If you're playing something like IG where you don't have a lot of good melee units, this means your opponent is basically just butchering multiple squads with no chance of retaliation. Removing sweeping advance potentially just makes the deepstrikers more likely to hide in combat for a turn while they murder your dudes.

Compare to things like shooting which, despite generally being much better than most assault options, still allows you to hide behind cover while advancing, jink, etc.


I'd probably be fine with your suggestion. I'm just wary of any rule that can boil down to, "Oh, you wanted to bring devastators? Well, they won't be doing anything other than snapshooting and bleeding this game."

In a way some of your points do make sense.

However there are rules currently that sort of counter play this in a way. Overwatch being a big contender for this counter play strategy.

Interception weapons could also be in circulation as a bit of a buffer for these.

But current games are either boiling down to sheer attrition numbers or super 'deathstar' strategies. Not to mention SHW being a common thing now with knights and such

In a way i have to agree that there would be scenario's where these would apply. but a solid composition of units would mitigate this problem and with the close combat dillema you could potentially use it to the advantage of your army.

Providing of course you don't have all fearless units

You're talking about taking some rules that help to make some armies actually work sort-of competitively and give them to everyone? There's a reason DS assault was taken away from the game - it invalidates gunline armies. IG and Tau are next to useless when you drop combat troops right on their heads. They have no opportunity to try to destroy your assault troops before they arrive - you get to assault with impunity. Overnight you go from a shooting meta to a CC meta where guns are useless.

The new rules are nice for specific factions to have only. BA and other assault armies are gimped hard in the current game because shooting is so strong. The opportunity cost of assaulting is too high for assault based armies. Hence the extra movement buffs the Berserkers got in Traitors Hate - you need every way you can to get into combat. But shooting or even balanced armies shouldn't have that extra advantage. Yes it's way worse to DS assault units than shooting units. So don't do it. Move up the flanks with your jump movement, LoS your enemy. Use tactics to get into combat instead of an auto-win button.

It's true that SM will probably get this across the board in the next 12 months (because they have to have all the toy, all of them, all of the time) but certainly Raven Guard should be updated to include these formations. They're have arguably better jump infantry than the BA, they should get this too.

The issues of game meta are entirely down to how poorly the game is designed. In fact it isn't. 40k began life as Herohammer with some cool units tacked on for novelty and variety (Rogue Trader, 1st ed). It slowly grew to become a troops based game with basic units being the bread-and-butter game winners (advent of the Force Org chart and gradual character nerfs). The game was continually getting streamlined to where it was about rank accompanied by support units with specialised roles and rules. Then all of a sudden out of nowhere the game was hit with super-heavies, flyers, gigantic creatures, D-weapons, knights, psychic powers etc etc. The game has tried to adjust and adapt to the new environment but it hasn't been able to do so yet. Too many paradigm shifting inclusions have been thrown at the game in only a couple additions of rules (some of which were simple corrections of feth-ups rather than true new editions). The game cannot cope, hence the Deathstars, Monsterhammer, return of Herohammer, flyer-spam etc etc.

The game rules need a rewrite to solve the issues of the current meta. Throwing in a few bonus rules (like faction wide DS assault) will only compound the problem. Gunlines will disappear in favour of yet more MC's, super-heavies and flyers. Throwing in more intercept to buff the gunline will make it even worse as now flyers aren't worth taking and DSing shooting units isn't worth it.

The solution is to rewrite the rules and to rewrite the codexes to account for D weaponry being a part of the game now, to account for flyers being a norm now, to harmonise psychic powers alongside Decurion and Formation rules. The game as it stands is a mess of rules thrown at it and the result is a Frankenstein ruleset. Lots of things are broken, many don't work. The game simply needs balancing with a clear goal in mind- Decurions are now the way to play the game, every faction can interact equally with the psychic phase, every faction has flyers and rules that interact with flyers, every faction has a choice of super-heavies and access to D-weaponry easily. Units that are grossely under-costed are costed correctly, units that are grossely over-costed are costed correctly, units that only taken with certain load-outs or in specific circumstances are either buffed to be more viable outside of that or have that included as part of their base kit, units which fail to function correctly are reworked to make them viable etc etc.

It's easy enough to do, GW just has to sit down and get to work doing it. It'll take a while but the game really needs it.

I would totally agree with a re work of the current rulesets

Unfortunately... that ain't gonna happen anytime soon

And the sad thing is... when 8th edition comes rolling out the door there is probably gonna be some more unnecessary stuff that is gonna be added in and the meta (and community) is gonna be all haywire.

I would agree that giving this to all armies would be a way bit of a stretch in terms of meta and balance. I just feel that this rule that had been implemented in BA is probably the most compromising of all the DS assaulting rules Ive seen and even reserve rolls in general (looking at you TWC).


And in responce to the current state of the game. The rules became stupid when imperial knights and gargants came in force.

(On a completely different note. Do you think there should be an intepretor of the rules, a sort of 'judiciary' community that can both inform and interpret rules that are being produced?)

Demantiae wrote:
It's true that SM will probably get this across the board in the next 12 months (because they have to have all the toy, all of them, all of the time) but certainly Raven Guard should be updated to include these formations. They're have arguably better jump infantry than the BA, they should get this too.

Mind you I haven't looked into Angel's Blade formations yet. But what do they have on the RG's ability to deep strike 30 vanguard vets who can assault off the jump, use their packs for assault range and HOW shenanigans, with DS scatter shenanigans all on turn one guaranteed?

Well they dont have vanguard vets that can DS and assault. Rather it is either termies or Dante's honour guard

One is the first company termies that can either shoot twice or assault but count as Disordered

and Dante's one is a i pick a turn(from turn 2 onward) and a flood of Sanguine guard with dante(or Sanguinor) say hi and assault (again disordered)

There is still none that can do the RG's crazy super mob of vets on first turn... but turn two might get a little interesting

Chaos got the same thing called "Raptor Talon". It's 1 Chaos Lord, 3-5 Units of Raptors and/or Warp Talons. They can assault when they DS but suffer a disorganized charge. This can be alleviated with Mark of Khorne if you're worried about losing the +1 attack. It seems like the formation would be really, really good against Tau if you can make it through the Interceptor fire.

Along the same lines are the Terminator Annihilation Force, which would complement this very well. It's 1 Chaos Lord or Sorcerer and 3-5 Units of Terminators. At the beginning of the game, before deployment, you choose an enemy unit. The turn you DS you get a shooting phase as soon as they arrive from DS. Since Interceptor happens at the end of the Movement Phase, you can actually have your Terminators take out whatever your opponent has that would otherwise intercept the Raptor Talon formation.

It seems as though there might be an agreement that a disordered DS assault would be better than just giving out a flat assault DS

I for one would actually find this a good thing. And sure, the meta would go all haywire with the new tactics and what not.

But most meta build's at the moment are mostly mass shooting or fast moving assault units or even both (looking at you eldar cheese bikes)

The fact that close combat DS could actually be a thing is actually quite refreshing in this meta of people hiding behind cover and taking pot shots at each other

I agree with the disordered charge from DS. I think peoples major problem with assault is the ability to completely wipe a unit out with sweeping advances.

I would propose in addition to this, to help mitigate sweeping advances, that they should work like this.

You make all the same rolls for sweeping advances, 1d6 + initiative. The difference is the unit that lost the combat suffers a number of wounds that cannot be mitigated by any means equal to the difference.

So the winner of the combat rolls sweeping advance and gets a 8 the looser totals 6 the looser suffers 2 additional wounds as it falls back. Maybe that wipes the unit, maybe not. But it's a lot better then the whole unit just crumpling to pieces.

That.... is acutally a good idea

It would still also give the intensive to get those high initiative single units and it kinda does make sense in a way

Crazy thought, but what if, as a basic rule, in addition to the Disordered Charge, the Charge range is either halved, 2D3 or 1D6 in the turn after a Deep Strike?

This puts a serious question as to just how close you can expect to Deep Strike and Charge without being able to Mishap.

 Charistoph wrote:
Crazy thought, but what if, as a basic rule, in addition to the Disordered Charge, the Charge range is either halved, 2D3 or 1D6 in the turn after a Deep Strike?

This puts a serious question as to just how close you can expect to Deep Strike and Charge without being able to Mishap.

This cripples the point of deep striking and letting the charge. No point in attempting to deep strike and charge if your not going to reach the enemy anyway.

 Lance845 wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:
Crazy thought, but what if, as a basic rule, in addition to the Disordered Charge, the Charge range is either halved, 2D3 or 1D6 in the turn after a Deep Strike?

This puts a serious question as to just how close you can expect to Deep Strike and Charge without being able to Mishap.

This cripples the point of deep striking and letting the charge. No point in attempting to deep strike and charge if your not going to reach the enemy anyway.

Just seeking a balance. Those who run gunlines view the ability to Charge after Deep Striking to be overpowered, but those armies who excel at this feel they are being punished by not being able to Charge at all.

Disordered Charges can be unpleasant, but not enough to justify the bonus of being out of the line of fire a successful Charge can bring. Most units that can Deep Strike and be effective in Melee tend to already have tools to make them effective outside of the Charge and the Charge bonus is relatively minor in consideration of that. It is mostly the ability to be active in damage while being unable to be shot that caused the Charge denial to occur in the first place.

 Charistoph wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:
Crazy thought, but what if, as a basic rule, in addition to the Disordered Charge, the Charge range is either halved, 2D3 or 1D6 in the turn after a Deep Strike?

This puts a serious question as to just how close you can expect to Deep Strike and Charge without being able to Mishap.

This cripples the point of deep striking and letting the charge. No point in attempting to deep strike and charge if your not going to reach the enemy anyway.

Just seeking a balance. Those who run gunlines view the ability to Charge after Deep Striking to be overpowered, but those armies who excel at this feel they are being punished by not being able to Charge at all.

Disordered Charges can be unpleasant, but not enough to justify the bonus of being out of the line of fire a successful Charge can bring. Most units that can Deep Strike and be effective in Melee tend to already have tools to make them effective outside of the Charge and the Charge bonus is relatively minor in consideration of that. It is mostly the ability to be active in damage while being unable to be shot that caused the Charge denial to occur in the first place.

Well I have often felt that you should be able to fire into a melee. To hit rolls of 1 should hit your unit instead of theirs though and everyone gets a 4+ cover save for being in the thick of things.

It's about developing good counter play. By limiting charge range you cripple the ability to charge. By allowing people to shoot into melee, melee no longer acts as some kind of invulnerable shield.

Charistoph wrote:

Lance845 wrote:

Charistoph wrote:
Crazy thought, but what if, as a basic rule, in addition to the Disordered Charge, the Charge range is either halved, 2D3 or 1D6 in the turn after a Deep Strike?

This puts a serious question as to just how close you can expect to Deep Strike and Charge without being able to Mishap.


This cripples the point of deep striking and letting the charge. No point in attempting to deep strike and charge if your not going to reach the enemy anyway.


Just seeking a balance. Those who run gunlines view the ability to Charge after Deep Striking to be overpowered, but those armies who excel at this feel they are being punished by not being able to Charge at all.

Disordered Charges can be unpleasant, but not enough to justify the bonus of being out of the line of fire a successful Charge can bring. Most units that can Deep Strike and be effective in Melee tend to already have tools to make them effective outside of the Charge and the Charge bonus is relatively minor in consideration of that. It is mostly the ability to be active in damage while being unable to be shot that caused the Charge denial to occur in the first place.



Well I have often felt that you should be able to fire into a melee. To hit rolls of 1 should hit your unit instead of theirs though and everyone gets a 4+ cover save for being in the thick of things.

What about making it snapshots only?... that way templates cant just suddenly rain hell over a combat and still makes it a pretty viable thing (with the also exception of making a 1 hit a firendly)

mchammadad wrote:

Charistoph wrote:

Lance845 wrote:


Well I have often felt that you should be able to fire into a melee. To hit rolls of 1 should hit your unit instead of theirs though and everyone gets a 4+ cover save for being in the thick of things.

What about making it snapshots only?... that way templates cant just suddenly rain hell over a combat and still makes it a pretty viable thing (with the also exception of making a 1 hit a firendly)

If you want to drop templates over your own units you should feel free to do so.

How to make this better, if you have a unit that deep strikes and all its weapons are melee, they can charge out of deep strike, but gain no charge bonuses of any kind, no rage no furious charge, no bonus attack.

Boom fixed

you just described disordered charge.


And also... this thread was about the fact that there is a DS assault formation that can charge but is disordered. This thread was about implementing that across the board but changing the Disordered charge rule so people can't sweeping advance a unit when it arrives. The other parts were addon's to this original idea

No i agree, it should be implamented across the board, there is no reason to not charge outta deep strike.

 Lance845 wrote:



Well I have often felt that you should be able to fire into a melee. To hit rolls of 1 should hit your unit instead of theirs though and everyone gets a 4+ cover save for being in the thick of things.

It's about developing good counter play. By limiting charge range you cripple the ability to charge. By allowing people to shoot into melee, melee no longer acts as some kind of invulnerable shield.

This. Or if have to re roll misses against your own unit. Not being able to fire into melee is a horrible rule.

Speaking as a Tau player, I'd like a more liberal attitude towards allowing charges from transports, off the deep strike and similar.

I just say make them disorders charges.

Now I think that a disordered charge should lose a bit more than the charge bonus, but that would be the flip side of attacking when you aren't really ready to.

So to summarize the ideas here.

1) Any unit that arrives from delivery systems that would normally restrict them from charging on the turn they arrive (infiltrate, outflank, deepstrike, disembarking) can now charge, but it's a disordered charge and they loose all bonuses in the doing of it. To expand, any special rule that would allow a unit to charge now allows them to charge normally with all special rules and bonuses intact (assault vehicles, formations rules, Genestealer cult's Cult Ambush roll of 6).

2) Sweeping advances are rolled as normal, but instead of eliminating the loosing unit it suffers a number of wounds, that cannot be mitigated by any means, equal to the difference if the winner of the combat has the higher result. This means no saves, no FNP, no reanimation protocols.

3) You can shoot at units locked in combat but any to hit roll of 1 hits friendly models starting with the closest. These rolls of 1 are not misses that can be rerolled since they did hit.

If I am correct the general consensus is that this "fixes" the many problems with the general assault rules and makes melee both viable and not exploitable in the game.

1) Wouldn't be a completely bad thing, especially if disordered charges got an added penality (like drop to initiative 1 or your enemy gets to overwatch at full BS).

2) Orks, nids and Guard would love this. But really, the big advantage of assault is its finality. If you break, you're done. Taking that away does not fix assault in a shooting dominated edition.

3) This change only really helps if you institute the change above. To me there is something unsportsmanlike about targeting an assault with your own troops in it. Yeah I can see some of the armies doing it, but ultimately this is a (supposedly) friendly game.

More of less

And yes... i find that number 3 is just a little scetchy cause of the fact that templates woudn't care.... so you basically have mob squads with heavy guns in the back that solve all your problems

Jefffar wrote:
1) Wouldn't be a completely bad thing, especially if disordered charges got an added penality (like drop to initiative 1 or your enemy gets to overwatch at full BS).

2) Orks, nids and Guard would love this. But really, the big advantage of assault is its finality. If you break, you're done. Taking that away does not fix assault in a shooting dominated edition.

3) This change only really helps if you institute the change above. To me there is something unsportsmanlike about targeting an assault with your own troops in it. Yeah I can see some of the armies doing it, but ultimately this is a (supposedly) friendly game.

2) Nids always, guards and orks sometimes, have a method to never have to take the test anyway. Nids are fearless, guard can BLAM!, orks can mob (i think?) but potentially dealing 1 wound to eliminate 30 wounds of models is broken by any standard.

mchammadad wrote:
More of less

And yes... i find that number 3 is just a little scetchy cause of the fact that templates woudn't care.... so you basically have mob squads with heavy guns in the back that solve all your problems

Just ban templates from firing into melee. Not really a big deal.

It's all a house rule anyway, but just curious. Why would it be any worse to drop a flame template or a large blast over a melee that would be auto hitting every model under it, friend or foe?

Making it a snap shot to fire at units locked in melee with friendly units (presumably trying not to hit your own guys) would be an I treating compromise if you must shoot into melee.

t's all a house rule anyway, but just curious. Why would it be any worse to drop a flame template or a large blast over a melee that would be auto hitting every model under it, friend or foe?

Cause most units that are in close combat or close combat oriented have poor armour saves.

A single flamethrower could utterly DECIMATE an entire mob of orks or guards or nids or anything with an armour save worst than 5+ (4+ if they have a Heavy flamer, so that makes nearly all melee specialist units)

A template would be worst cause of the fact an ignore armour shot (which is pretty easy to get nowadays) would wreck that entire combat

Making it a snap shot to fire at units locked in melee with friendly units (presumably trying not to hit your own guys) would be an I treating compromise if you must shoot into melee.

this would be a fair compomise but would probably add that a 1 hit's a friendly so as to not make it a "well i tried and nothing happened" scenario