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A.T. wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Wasn't the most imbalanced thing in the world but GOD was it a feelsbad moment when someone lobbed a random krak missile at your super pumped up space marine chapter master and he just went "Kersplat."

Certainly helped cut down on the herohammer though.

I mean kinda. It really just meant they were deployed in super mega doomblobs and they were just as undefeatable.

Laser Lock for scatter lasers was pretty silly in 6th edition even if I did enjoy the rule

 Agamemnon2 wrote:
ID also led to kludgy stuff like bikers with T4(5), and caused huge problems to units with many wounds but low toughness, like Tyranid Warriors and Ogryns, who tended to pay dearly for their multiple wounds, yet lost them all on 2+ to tank ordnance (which also often took out entire squads with one blast marker.

One of my least fun experiences was playing nids against GKs in 5th edition. Or DE agaisnt GKs in 7th edition.

Tyranids had very few invulnerable saves across their whole army - with MCs, Tyranid Warriors and other such relying on wounds and armour saves for protection. Running that into an army of Force Weapons really wasn't fun. Especially since the nids couldn't even rely on striking first, as 5th edition Halberds granted +2I.

Dark Eldar was similarly unfun if you wanted to use Coven units - which relied on FNP for protection (again, not much use vs. Force Weapons).

A.T. wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Wasn't the most imbalanced thing in the world but GOD was it a feelsbad moment when someone lobbed a random krak missile at your super pumped up space marine chapter master and he just went "Kersplat."

Certainly helped cut down on the herohammer though.

Not really. It just killed any variety in the heroes you'd see, since people inevitably opted for only those heroes with Eternal Warrior.

 vipoid wrote:

 Agamemnon2 wrote:
ID also led to kludgy stuff like bikers with T4(5), and caused huge problems to units with many wounds but low toughness, like Tyranid Warriors and Ogryns, who tended to pay dearly for their multiple wounds, yet lost them all on 2+ to tank ordnance (which also often took out entire squads with one blast marker.

One of my least fun experiences was playing nids against GKs in 5th edition. Or DE agaisnt GKs in 7th edition.

Tyranids had very few invulnerable saves across their whole army - with MCs, Tyranid Warriors and other such relying on wounds and armour saves for protection. Running that into an army of Force Weapons really wasn't fun. Especially since the nids couldn't even rely on striking first, as 5th edition Halberds granted +2I.

Dark Eldar was similarly unfun if you wanted to use Coven units - which relied on FNP for protection (again, not much use vs. Force Weapons).

A.T. wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Wasn't the most imbalanced thing in the world but GOD was it a feelsbad moment when someone lobbed a random krak missile at your super pumped up space marine chapter master and he just went "Kersplat."

Certainly helped cut down on the herohammer though.

Not really. It just killed any variety in the heroes you'd see, since people inevitably opted for only those heroes with Eternal Warrior.

Which was a problem with how the ID mechanics worked, not EW being broken.

About Instant Death was that it effected things it shouldn't

Tyranid Warriors
Zoanthropes.
+others.

Really it's a bad rule.

ThatMG wrote:
About Instant Death was that it effected things it shouldn't

Tyranid Warriors
Zoanthropes.
+others.

Really it's a bad rule.

It really wasn't. It was a great leveller that is somewhat missing from the modern game. Have a SM character rampaging through your ranks? One well placed krak missile later and he's toast. Now, there were units that got caught in the crossfire (both of the above you mentioned we immune to it when in Synapse range so are categorically bad examples), but on the whole it was good. Did you ever experience the alpha strike of the infiltrating, daemonic speed CSM 3.5 dex Lord which could charge you turn 1 and there was literally nothing you could do about it? You would yearn for instant death with that thing going through your lines, luckily it existed back then.

Instant Death was replaced by D6 damage.

I'm going to say 4th edition unchargable skimmers.

I played Dark Angels back then. A decent chunk of my army was Tornado Landspeers; 1 heavy bolter, 1 assault cannon (back when 6 to hit = auto wound, no armor save allowed).

While I never ran Fish of Fury due to not being Tau, I sure as gak did the same with my speeders. There were multiple times when they'd body-block genestealer blobs / death company / ect from charging what they wanted to, so my entire army could just blow them away.

Special shout out random charge distances as implemented in 6th edition. It was fine in previous editions when the 'random' charge distance was a side effect of charging through obstacles, which rewarded both players for good positioning. But making even super close charges unreliable is just ugh, and one of the problems with melee due to unreliability.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Instant Death was replaced by D6 damage.

And it replaced D6 (or D8, D10, D20 whatever) damage in the first place, ala 2nd edition. Where pretty much any model other than characters could only target either the closest infantry target or the closest vehicle/monster target.

I figured it was replaced by that ability that deals MWs (on a 2+
3+, etc) if you didn't slay a model with your weapon. Or just MWs in general.

Actually how about the inflation of invul saves and MW spam?

 Grimtuff wrote:

ThatMG wrote:
About Instant Death was that it effected things it shouldn't

Tyranid Warriors
Zoanthropes.
+others.

Really it's a bad rule.

It really wasn't. It was a great leveller that is somewhat missing from the modern game. Have a SM character rampaging through your ranks? One well placed krak missile later and he's toast. Now, there were units that got caught in the crossfire (both of the above you mentioned we immune to it when in Synapse range so are categorically bad examples), but on the whole it was good. Did you ever experience the alpha strike of the infiltrating, daemonic speed CSM 3.5 dex Lord which could charge you turn 1 and there was literally nothing you could do about it? You would yearn for instant death with that thing going through your lines, luckily it existed back then.

Yeah, until you had a T6 or greater character, which most of the problematic ones were, and then you didn't get any help from instant death and you had to kill them with a bajillion lascannon shots that did 1 damage...

ID like Strength D and the "Superheavy" designation was one of the stupidest mechanics of older editions because it created extreme power differentials between units that juuuuust barely got over that bar.

Kind of like what is IMO the worst mechanic of 8th: Character rule, where an extremely flimsy unit becoming a character gains a HUGE amount of durability and an extremely sturdy unit losing character designation by having exactly 10 wounds loses a HUGE amount of durability...to the point where 9 to 10 wounds makes you vastly less durable.

A T4 hq was much, MUCH, MUUUUUUUCH easier to kill than a T5 or T6 HQ for no real properly explored reason. This meant that certain fairly arbitrary character units, like say Nurgle Bike HQs, got to be 10x-20x more durable statistically than other units that pay similar points into different kinds of durability like a Storm Shield Terminator Captain.

The superheavy/strength D designation was similar. I think it was Wraithknights and Gorkanauts which were the best examples of this. A gorkanaut was something like 260-270 points, and WKs were I believe 295-ish at their hayday, and the WK was the smallest thing in the game to have Super-Heavy status and the Strength D melee weapon, while gorkas just missed out on that, being regular vehicles with a S10, good AP weapon.

It took something like 3 Gorkanauts to down a sword WK in melee, and the WK would mulch a gorkanaut per turn extremely reliably. Because if you got juuuuuust over this line, you earned a bunch of super-powerful special rules including 4+D3 chances to insta-gib any non superheavy opponent by rolling a 6.

CHARACTER keyword gamesmanship is the same way. I would much prefer a system like this (I know, clunky and not perfect but you get the idea):

"Look Out, Sir!: When your opponent wishes to target one of your CHARACTER keyword units while that CHARACTER unit is not the closest model, you may attempt to intercept that attack with a friendly model within 6". Roll 2D6. If you roll above the Wounds stat of your character, the selected friendly unit is the target of the attack instead."


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 flandarz wrote:
I figured it was replaced by that ability that deals MWs (on a 2+
3+, etc) if you didn't slay a model with your weapon. Or just MWs in general.

Well that was kind of the answer to super reliable invuln saves. but the extreme durability of T6+ characters and MCs was resolved by bringing back a Damage stat for weapons.

the_scotsman wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Instant Death was replaced by D6 damage.

And it replaced D6 (or D8, D10, D20 whatever) damage in the first place, ala 2nd edition. Where pretty much any model other than characters could only target either the closest infantry target or the closest vehicle/monster target.

Although there was a workaround for that, if you got the right mission card... You were allowed to ignore other targets in favour of a mission objective. Played a game with a mate of mine back when the original Abaddon model was first released. It was the first time he had put Abaddon on the table... I had The Assassin mission card (kill the enemy commander). Turn one, Lascannon to Abaddon's head, failed saves, rolled stupid high damage. Very expensive Cult Terminator bodyguard are left standing around the body of their (now former) boss saying 'Uh... what just happened?'

We wound up having a do-over after that game, to give Abby a chance to actually do something.



For the most part, though, the targeting rules did mean that characters could be somewhat protected from one-shotting them. Although everyone tended to run their characters with Displacer Fields or Power Fields just in case. And from 3rd onwards, Instant Death meant that invulnerable saves continued to be seen as a requirement for Independent Characters. From a practical point of view, it makes sense that characters (and vehicles) can be taken out by a single lucky shot... but from a gameplay point of view, it was always a little disappointing to lose your big bad before they had a chance to do anything. The rate of casualty removal in general is one of the things I became increasingly unhappy with over the years...

 Grimtuff wrote:

ThatMG wrote:
About Instant Death was that it effected things it shouldn't

Tyranid Warriors
Zoanthropes.
+others.

Really it's a bad rule.

...Now, there were units that got caught in the crossfire (both of the above you mentioned we immune to it when in Synapse range so are categorically bad examples)...

That depends heavily on what edition you're talking about. I think the last time synapse provided protection from Instant Death was in the 4th edition codex.
Warriors were pretty much never taken throughout 5th, 6th, and 7th, precisely because of their vulnerability to instant death. Making them excellent examples.

 Grimtuff wrote:

ThatMG wrote:
About Instant Death was that it effected things it shouldn't

Tyranid Warriors
Zoanthropes.
+others.

Really it's a bad rule.

It really wasn't. It was a great leveller that is somewhat missing from the modern game. Have a SM character rampaging through your ranks? One well placed krak missile later and he's toast.

Between krak missiles/melta, grenades, smite, and close combat weapons with flat 3 damage, characters tend to die pretty fast in enemy ranks. Except you now need to dedicate to killing it instead of relying on a single lucky hit, a much better solution in my book.

For me: Falling back. Easily the most broken mechanic I've ever seen in 40k. And most nonsensical - just waltz away from close combat at will, unchallenged, and often without penalty.

Perhaps that's biased as I'm an ork player, but as long as falling back remains unchanged, melee focused armies are more or less going to be permanently shelved in competitive scenes.

 Grimtuff wrote:

ThatMG wrote:
About Instant Death was that it effected things it shouldn't

Tyranid Warriors
Zoanthropes.
+others.

Really it's a bad rule.

It really wasn't. It was a great leveller that is somewhat missing from the modern game.

I have to disagree with this.

If anything it meant the strong characters were stronger and the weak characters were weaker (especially since many characters that were already difficult to kill also had Eternal Warrior to boot).

 Hawky wrote:

jaxor1983 wrote:
Amphibious.

Not the worst rule, but the most pointless rule.

Sadly, I think Fear may win for most pointless.

 Stormonu wrote:

 Hawky wrote:

jaxor1983 wrote:
Amphibious.

Not the worst rule, but the most pointless rule.

Sadly, I think Fear may win for most pointless.

Remember how you could actively pay for Fear on certain units or units were priced like Fear did anything? Good times!

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:

 Hawky wrote:

jaxor1983 wrote:
Amphibious.

Not the worst rule, but the most pointless rule.

Sadly, I think Fear may win for most pointless.

Remember how you could actively pay for Fear on certain units or units were priced like Fear did anything? Good times!

Remember when you were glad the Amphibious rule existed on your Chimera? Yeah, me neither.

 Stormonu wrote:

 Hawky wrote:

jaxor1983 wrote:
Amphibious.

Not the worst rule, but the most pointless rule.

Sadly, I think Fear may win for most pointless.

There was exactly one army Fear was useful against, and that was Orks. Mob Rule Applyed to Morale and Pinning tests.... but not fear tests. So while everyone else was immune, had high leadership, or just didn't care about their WS being dropped, Orks got hosed over by Fear.

 Luke_Prowler wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:

 Hawky wrote:

jaxor1983 wrote:
Amphibious.

Not the worst rule, but the most pointless rule.

Sadly, I think Fear may win for most pointless.

There was exactly one army Fear was useful against, and that was Orks. Mob Rule Applyed to Morale and Pinning tests.... but not fear tests. So while everyone else was immune, had high leadership, or just didn't care about their WS being dropped, Orks got hosed over by Fear.

To be fair 7th Mob Rule was a horrible rule and served to punish Ork units for having low morale and low armor. It especially crippled the Ork specialist units that had 6+ armor, low numbers, low morale, and higher PPM. That whole Ork dex was made by somebody who really didn't want Orks to be anything other than an NPC punching bag for the heroes to beat up on.

Fear was ok against Guard, Eldar, and CSMs of all things. What was truly useless was Soulfire as it not only caused next to no impact on the game, it required actual book keeping and dice rolls to resolve for little to no effect. At least rules like Amphibious Chimeras and A Grots Life had no real gameplay impact but also didn't demand any attention.

Fear did nothing to those items as all of them besides CSM died too easily for Fear to even come in, and CSM was always run as MSU so they died terribly easily too.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Instant Death was replaced by D6 damage.

It's worth noting that FnP couldn't be taken if you were subject to instant death (of course you can't feel the wound, it's not attached to you any more!), so D6 damage isn't as good as instant death.

Also D6 damage vs a 3-4 wound model is not as effective as the guarantee of instant-death.

Obviously, as all-or-nothing deaths were not good for the game, neither for vehicles, nor for characters. When your D6 damage fails to kill the character, you can still finish it off with bolters or a grenade.

I also assure you that a Thundercoil harpoon is very much instant death to any character it hits.

The just implemented a scale between "can one-shot a comissar" and "can one-shot the swarm lord".

 some bloke wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Instant Death was replaced by D6 damage.

It's worth noting that FnP couldn't be taken if you were subject to instant death (of course you can't feel the wound, it's not attached to you any more!), so D6 damage isn't as good as instant death.

Also D6 damage vs a 3-4 wound model is not as effective as the guarantee of instant-death.

It isn't as effective but it is 100% more fair as it give value to having extra wounds. With the old double toughness instant death rules T4 with 10 wounds was not really a great value compared to T5 with 3 wounds. It would take 9 S4 hits (not including any save) to remove the 3 T5 wounds, and 20 S4 hits to do the 10 wounds. But The T5 guy could eat 3.6 S8 hits, where the T 4 model only takes 1.2. In a world with D6 wounds for a Krak missile the T5 model would likely take 1-2 hits to kill, but the T 4 model with 10 wounds would likely take 4 hits. So you are getting value for the wounds you are paying for.


The D6 (etc) rules allow for durability to represented in a variety of ways. Instead of really requiring T5+ or Eternal warrior. ( I'm honestly not a huge fan of random damage I would prefer larger numbers of fixed damage values topping out at around 4 damage but that is another discussion, and largely the same reason instant death was not a great mechanic D6 damage has the same issue that it devalues high wounds to an extent just not as badly)

 insaniak wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Instant Death was replaced by D6 damage.

And it replaced D6 (or D8, D10, D20 whatever) damage in the first place, ala 2nd edition. Where pretty much any model other than characters could only target either the closest infantry target or the closest vehicle/monster target.

Although there was a workaround for that, if you got the right mission card... You were allowed to ignore other targets in favour of a mission objective. Played a game with a mate of mine back when the original Abaddon model was first released. It was the first time he had put Abaddon on the table... I had The Assassin mission card (kill the enemy commander). Turn one, Lascannon to Abaddon's head, failed saves, rolled stupid high damage. Very expensive Cult Terminator bodyguard are left standing around the body of their (now former) boss saying 'Uh... what just happened?'

We wound up having a do-over after that game, to give Abby a chance to actually do something.




For the most part, though, the targeting rules did mean that characters could be somewhat protected from one-shotting them. Although everyone tended to run their characters with Displacer Fields or Power Fields just in case. And from 3rd onwards, Instant Death meant that invulnerable saves continued to be seen as a requirement for Independent Characters. From a practical point of view, it makes sense that characters (and vehicles) can be taken out by a single lucky shot... but from a gameplay point of view, it was always a little disappointing to lose your big bad before they had a chance to do anything. The rate of casualty removal in general is one of the things I became increasingly unhappy with over the years...

I mean, this is the big feels-bad with 2nd edition in general. Yeah, it was cool that every vehicle had its own super indepth damage table, but for every game where crazy zany stuff happened like guns blowing off, the vehicle moving out of control, etc, there was a game where the vehicle just bit the dust turn 1 to a random shot.

Lascannon penned, rolled a 6 on the table, your land raider explodes killing everyone instantly and taking out a chunk of your troops too, just like that.

Units previously furnished with AV values should have had some sort of AP modifier stat instead of inflating Wound value the way they did.

 Grimtuff wrote:

ThatMG wrote:
About Instant Death was that it effected things it shouldn't

Tyranid Warriors
Zoanthropes.
+others.

Really it's a bad rule.

It really wasn't. It was a great leveller that is somewhat missing from the modern game. Have a SM character rampaging through your ranks? One well placed krak missile later and he's toast. Now, there were units that got caught in the crossfire (both of the above you mentioned we immune to it when in Synapse range so are categorically bad examples), but on the whole it was good. Did you ever experience the alpha strike of the infiltrating, daemonic speed CSM 3.5 dex Lord which could charge you turn 1 and there was literally nothing you could do about it? You would yearn for instant death with that thing going through your lines, luckily it existed back then.

Completely disagree with you, 1 battle cannon shot would literally kill full units of Tyranid Warriors that costed as much as the tank did, how is that good for the game? You know what happened? NO ONE PLAYED WITH WARRIORS, as a nid player in 5th, everyone, even no nid players would tell all other new nid players "See that box of warriors, Dont buy them"

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

ThatMG wrote:
About Instant Death was that it effected things it shouldn't

Tyranid Warriors
Zoanthropes.
+others.

Really it's a bad rule.

It really wasn't. It was a great leveller that is somewhat missing from the modern game. Have a SM character rampaging through your ranks? One well placed krak missile later and he's toast. Now, there were units that got caught in the crossfire (both of the above you mentioned we immune to it when in Synapse range so are categorically bad examples), but on the whole it was good. Did you ever experience the alpha strike of the infiltrating, daemonic speed CSM 3.5 dex Lord which could charge you turn 1 and there was literally nothing you could do about it? You would yearn for instant death with that thing going through your lines, luckily it existed back then.

Completely disagree with you, 1 battle cannon shot would literally kill full units of Tyranid Warriors that costed as much as the tank did, how is that good for the game? You know what happened? NO ONE PLAYED WITH WARRIORS, as a nid player in 5th, everyone, even no nid players would tell all other new nid players "See that box of warriors, Dont buy them"

Which is a shame because Tyranid warriors are actually a great kit.