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Small blast weapons generally receive one wide criticism: how small blasts work. How much of a problem is it, really? And how can it be fixed?

It's been a problem since 3rd ed.

Simple. Allow them to target open ground. Now we don't need to fix rate of every single weapon.

A fragmentation missile blast would be bigger than a small blast anyway. Unless you are using the worst warhead ever. Air units should have things like daisycutters, not small blasts as well.

Still, small blasts are part of the game. The issue is that, as they currently are, they don't quite work as well as people want them to. So how can that be improved? Individual weapons can be given Large Blast or Heavy 2 profiles or whatever, but that's just a patch that doesn't solve the issues with the core game mechanic of how small blasts function.

One reasonable suggestion I've seen is to remove the "centre hole over base" restriction (is that what you meant, Slayer-Fan123?), but I don't know how much that'd help.

Place Blast or Large Blast markers over target unit, covering as many models from the target unit as possible.

Roll to hit as normal, if successfully rolled To Hit, resolve a number of wounds equal to the number of models under the Blast marker.

If To Hit roll failed, roll a D6 and Scatter Dice, moving the Blast marker D6 inches in the direction indicated by the Scatter Dice (re-roll Direct Hit results). Resolve any Wounds inflicted.

Mega and Apocalyptic Blast markers scatter 2D6.

Fixes blast markers quite nicely IMO.

Make 'em bigger. The small blast can easily be negated by spreading out, and by that point you may as well just have a high ROF weapon to replace it.

Allowing them to be snapshot at BS1 would make them more feasible for most infantry platforms that use them, since now you can at least relocate and fire on the move. I'm not sure if they should be allowed to overwatch but either way that alongside the change of being able to target open ground makes them decent.

Imatera has the right idea. Though with the reliability added I would suggest adding that on a hit for the scatter roll your opponent gets to choose the direction scattered allowing some fun misfire results.

Reduce squad coherency distance.

I agree that removing the centre over a model works.
If you can target the ground between 4 models they suddenly become alot better.
Granted that spacing still hurts it, but it becomes alot more effective.

As it stands a direct plasma cannon hit on anything with a 40mm base hits 1 model.
Target between bases and suddenly your hitting 2-3.

That's my thoughts anyway.

measuring max coherency from the center of the base for non monsters / vehicles is a great fix to compensate the recent scale shift.

 oldzoggy wrote:
measuring max coherency from the center of the base for non monsters / vehicles is a great fix to compensate the recent scale shift.

Sounds good in theory, but models on 50mm round bases (or larger) won't be able to stay in coherency at all (1 inch is just greater than 25mm) and means things on the new oval bases GW is using for bikes and cavalry will have to deploy either in a straight line or a weird zig-zag to stay in coherency.

Make templates a dice roll after you roll for a hit using one shot with the regular BS stat.

Small blast, if a hit, then d6 wound rolls.
Large blast, if a hit, then 2d6 wound rolls.
Flamer (within 6" of a target unit) rolls 6d6 with 4+ equaling hits, roll wounds for all hits.

If a blast misses, then your opponent gets to pick a unit within 6" of the target and roll the number of wounds, as above---as though it hit. Otherwise, no effect.

Replacing the template argument phase with these or a similar dice roll mechanism will still save much time and ill will.

Just let you target any spot on the board within range with it. Simplest solution that doesn't require more work than a changed line or two.

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:

 oldzoggy wrote:
measuring max coherency from the center of the base for non monsters / vehicles is a great fix to compensate the recent scale shift.

Sounds good in theory, but models on 50mm round bases (or larger) won't be able to stay in coherency at all (1 inch is just greater than 25mm) and means things on the new oval bases GW is using for bikes and cavalry will have to deploy either in a straight line or a weird zig-zag to stay in coherency.

I don't really see the issue here really. 2" = 5.08 cm 50mm bases will have a radius of 2,50 cm so you can keep 50 mm based things in coherency with no problems at all. The unit will just be really compact but that is a good thing. It counters the up scaling of 40k and keeps the small blast viable. In the rare cases of bigger bases (mainly thunderwulf cav) you could just rule that they always have to touch bases. I honestly believe that this would be a good thing for the game.

Except they won't be, they'll be 8mm out of coherency even when base to base.

Sure, you could make it so base to base counts too, but now you are heavily penalising large non MC/Vehicle models against weapons that should be more effective against smaller models.

In all honesty a better fix would just be decreasing Coherency range to 1". People complain more about it being hard to hit more than 2 models with a small blast if people are spreading their models out rather than not being able to hit 3-4 TWC or Centurions with a single small blast.

The 1" coherency would be too restrictive IMO, and what you have to remember by reducing coherency to make small blasts better, you are also making large blasts better as well, meaning you are no closer to making small blasts as worthwhile.

Sorry, I meant that 1" coherency would be better than measuring coherency from the centre of bases. Should have made that more clear.

I can't help feel that all this talk about coherancy is a red herring, I find the biggst problem for small blasts is that it's far too easy for them to completely scatter off and hit nothing unless your up to something like BS7 and it's why I never take them unless it's en mass. When you're hitting nothing but open ground, who cares what the spacing between models is?

Basically, the problem is that high ROF weapons are overall more accurate and damaging than small blasts are. If it were up to me I would get rid of the small blast, because high ROF weapons take up that slot better than small blasts would.

 Imateria wrote:
I can't help feel that all this talk about coherancy is a red herring, I find the biggst problem for small blasts is that it's far too easy for them to completely scatter off and hit nothing unless your up to something like BS7 and it's why I never take them unless it's en mass. When you're hitting nothing but open ground, who cares what the spacing between models is?

It isn't a red herring at all, my idea just needed a bit of a refinement.

The first question we have to ask ourselves is why is the small blast worse than it used to be. It isn't that it is able to scatter off. That hasn't changed at all in the last edtion.
What has changed is the base size of stuff. 25 -> 32, cav on 60mm round bases etc. The scale of the game just went up for most armies but the small blast remained the same.
So the best thing to do is to compensate the up scaling while trying not to affect armies that did not scale up.

The regular base size of things was 25mm this is approx 1" now lets make the new max coherency 3" measured from the centre.
This will not affect 25 mm based things but will force the same amount of hits for 32mm based things.
The biggest base size at the moment for non monsters non vehicles is 60mm.
3" = 7.62 cm making them able to stay in coherency with the new rule and preventing those new models from scaling up the game / effectively shrinking down the board and the blast templates..






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 WarbossDakka wrote:
Basically, the problem is that high ROF weapons are overall more accurate and damaging than small blasts are. If it were up to me I would get rid of the small blast, because high ROF weapons take up that slot better than small blasts would.

The abundance of high rate of fire weapons is an other issue, that needs to be fixed. But this is separate discussion from why the small blast is less effective than it used to be.


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 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
Sorry, I meant that 1" coherency would be better than measuring coherency from the centre of bases. Should have made that more clear.

This isn't ideal because it will hurt non scaled up armies a lot. Nerfing all traditional horde armies even more.

I use a variant of what Imateria is proposing (which is much more in line how blast weapons worked in 2nd ed than how they work in 7th) - roll to hit as normal and only scatter (without any distance reduction, full 2d6) if the original to hit roll misses. I also use a "scatter hit" as a hit, not an arrow. This way small blast weapons may not have increased wound-per-shot, but they have greatly increased accuracy. And large blast weapons become trully devastating this way.

@Oldzoggy - The problem with your logic that small blasts are only now bad because base sizes have gotten larger is false for two reasons. One is that only 2 armies have gotten increased base sizes (SMs and Necrons) so small blasts would still be good against all the armies that still use small bases (which small blasts aren't). And the second one being that you are summing small blasts only suddenly got bad in 7ed with the changes to base sizes which is wrong because small blasts have sucked for a LONG time, not just recently and as such were bad before base sizes got larger.

Not only that but how do you expect people to measure from the center of the model accurately when their is a model and scenery in the way?

No love for reducing coherency... how about just making the small blast bigger? Blast templates have changed sizes before!

Alternatively, change the placement rule so that any part of the template has to cover the targeted model, not just centre the centre?

 Imateria wrote:
I can't help feel that all this talk about coherancy is a red herring, I find the biggst problem for small blasts is that it's far too easy for them to completely scatter off and hit nothing unless your up to something like BS7 and it's why I never take them unless it's en mass. When you're hitting nothing but open ground, who cares what the spacing between models is?

I agree. The number of models covered by a small blast is more a case of "how valuable is a hit", not "how reliable is a hit". This is my concern with removing the centre hole restriction; yes, it should increase the number of models touched by a blast and thus make blasts more effective, but it doesn't solve the problem of hitting the unit in the first place. Increasing the value of a hit skews the averages higher, but is it enough?

 oldzoggy wrote:

 Imateria wrote:
I can't help feel that all this talk about coherancy is a red herring, I find the biggst problem for small blasts is that it's far too easy for them to completely scatter off and hit nothing unless your up to something like BS7 and it's why I never take them unless it's en mass. When you're hitting nothing but open ground, who cares what the spacing between models is?

It isn't a red herring at all, my idea just needed a bit of a refinement.

The first question we have to ask ourselves is why is the small blast worse than it used to be. It isn't that it is able to scatter off. That hasn't changed at all in the last edtion.
What has changed is the base size of stuff. 25 -> 32, cav on 60mm round bases etc. The scale of the game just went up for most armies but the small blast remained the same.
So the best thing to do is to compensate the up scaling while trying not to affect armies that did not scale up.

The regular base size of things was 25mm this is approx 1" now lets make the new max coherency 3" measured from the centre.
This will not affect 25 mm based things but will force the same amount of hits for 32mm based things.
The biggest base size at the moment for non monsters non vehicles is 60mm.
3" = 7.62 cm making them able to stay in coherency with the new rule and preventing those new models from scaling up the game / effectively shrinking down the board and the blast templates..

I haven't played under older additions so I can't say what it used to be like, I just know it's poor right now.
And I disagree, the rather large chance to scatter off a target completely is by far the biggest drawback of a Small Blast for me, no hits being obviously worse than 1 hit every single time.



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 Frozen Ocean wrote:

 Imateria wrote:
I can't help feel that all this talk about coherancy is a red herring, I find the biggst problem for small blasts is that it's far too easy for them to completely scatter off and hit nothing unless your up to something like BS7 and it's why I never take them unless it's en mass. When you're hitting nothing but open ground, who cares what the spacing between models is?

I agree. The number of models covered by a small blast is more a case of "how valuable is a hit", not "how reliable is a hit". This is my concern with removing the centre hole restriction; yes, it should increase the number of models touched by a blast and thus make blasts more effective, but it doesn't solve the problem of hitting the unit in the first place. Increasing the value of a hit skews the averages higher, but is it enough?

Oh yes, thats why I proposed both having "place the marker anywhere on the target unit" as well as "roll to hit to see if you need to roll to scatter first". Both together should bring the Small Blast back up to being a useful tool in the armoury, or at least prevent weapons from being gimped by the Small Blast rules.

I should also point out that I removed the scatter reduction via BS, a 6" scatter can still potentially completely miss the target, so Blast weapons don't become auto hits.

 CrownAxe wrote:
. One is that only 2 armies have gotten increased base sizes (SMs and Necrons)

I disagree on this one. Just look at the actual base size in armies in the 5th edition and armies now.
Larger than 25 mm used to be an exception for the really big stuff and most of those big bases where no lager than termi or dread bases.
Most good new units have huge base sizes compared to the usual 25 mm bases and a lot of models have been re-based to significant larger bases. Take the bloodthirster for example that base increase is huge.
The scale of the game has slowly scaled up in the last few editions while the blast has remained the same size this devalues it greatly on top of the other issues such as snap shooting, multi wound models and high rate of fire proliferation.

Ah, sorry, Imateria. I was referring more to the ongoing trend of discussion (about coherency, base size, etc), not to you or your ideas specifically. On that front, I'm rather torn. It makes a lot of sense, but I really don't like Blasts and Large Blasts using different mechanics to resolve their hits.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
Ah, sorry, Imateria. I was referring more to the ongoing trend of discussion (about coherency, base size, etc), not to you or your ideas specifically. On that front, I'm rather torn. It makes a lot of sense, but I really don't like Blasts and Large Blasts using different mechanics to resolve their hits.

Blast and Large Blasts would have the same mechanics, I'd only move to 2D6 scatter with the 7 and 10" Blast markers since those two wouldn't care about a single D6 scatter.