Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I remember armor facings being semi-relevant in my games of 3rd-5th, but if I'm honest, it was not all that often. Many vehicles had identical front and side armor values, and pretty much all light vehicles were 10/10/10 open-topped. The heaviest vehicles like Land Raiders and Monoliths were 14/14/14.

In practice, the only vehicles for which I recall it being a consideration were IG, SM, and SOB tanks and Ork battlewagons.

Against these vehicles, more often it made a difference not in shooting but in close combat, because in a few editions, you always hit the rear armor in CC. This could easily be replicated today by imposing a penalty of -1 Toughness for non-walker vehicles being struck in close combat or something. If you really wanted to replicate the tactical shooting aspects of armor facings, you could also give a small number of vehicles yet more special rules like, "this vehicle's Toughness becomes 9 against shooting attacks originating from the following directions [and add a little graphic on the datacard]"

Apple fox wrote:
They probably could have gone with just a rear facing and rear and sides for super heavy.
Even if not used for armour, you could do something with rear facings that give a bit more thought.
But would not be much if the game itself doesn’t use it.

You could even have 3facings on things like eldar tanks. But I think only super heavy with weapons that are effected would really need sides.

Going down the rabbit hole a bit, if I wanted to redesign the old facing system to matter, I'd go with front 180 degrees from the front of the model is the front arc, everything else is the rear arc, like Flames of War and it's KT-equivalent TANKS [at a high angle of incidence, a side hit will bounce anyway]. At this point, it still doesn't matter since it can point it's hull whichever direction it wants to at the end of the move and shoot in whatever direction it wants to with its turret, so restricting turning by having movement costs to turn [ie: takes half your movement to turn] and move in reverse.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Apple fox wrote:
They probably could have gone with just a rear facing and rear and sides for super heavy.
Even if not used for armour, you could do something with rear facings that give a bit more thought.
But would not be much if the game itself doesn’t use it.

You could even have 3facings on things like eldar tanks. But I think only super heavy with weapons that are effected would really need sides.

Going down the rabbit hole a bit, if I wanted to redesign the old facing system to matter, I'd go with front 180 degrees from the front of the model is the front arc, everything else is the rear arc, like Flames of War and it's KT-equivalent TANKS [at a high angle of incidence, a side hit will bounce anyway]. At this point, it still doesn't matter since it can point it's hull whichever direction it wants to at the end of the move and shoot in whatever direction it wants to with its turret, so restricting turning by having movement costs to turn [ie: takes half your movement to turn] and move in reverse.

Having or have no turret itself could be interesting, as well as rules so tanks are unable to turn if they are unable to in terrain. Or blocked by other models.
Being that a lot of tanks have support weapons as well on the hull.
Even a lot of the monsters I think could be interesting under a system like this, attacking from a monsters blind spot should be interesting as well.

Apple fox wrote:


Having or have no turret itself could be interesting, as well as rules so tanks are unable to turn if they are unable to in terrain. Or blocked by other models.
Being that a lot of tanks have support weapons as well on the hull.
Even a lot of the monsters I think could be interesting under a system like this, attacking from a monsters blind spot should be interesting as well.

There's no real reason for monstrous creatures to obey different rules than tanks, they're basically the same thing just differently fluffed, and the whole riptide thing back in 6th exposed that. Any given damage effect can be extrapolated to work on a monstrous creature.

Anyway, an idealized vehicle system probably belongs in a different thread.

Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

Well if infantry and bikes etc had multibases or movement trays they could easaly have unit facings. This would be pretty cool I think. It would look similar like it did in epic. Imagine basing 10 guardsmen together traversing some craters and barbed wire. Really going ham on those environmental effects...

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

RT and 2E had facings for everything, but were playing with much smaller forces, armies that resembled more what we see at 750-1000pts today in most cases. Facings make a lot more sense at that scale.

Pointed Stick wrote:
I remember armor facings being semi-relevant in my games of 3rd-5th, but if I'm honest, it was not all that often. Many vehicles had identical front and side armor values, and pretty much all light vehicles were 10/10/10 open-topped. The heaviest vehicles like Land Raiders and Monoliths were 14/14/14.

It depended what army you played, but for example Guard and Tau facings were very relevant. I found difference for Hammerheads AV13 front and AV12 side often very signifant as with front armour you were often 50% less likely to get penetrating hits. When Hull point system was introduced in 6th edition, facings became slightly less important as massed S7/8 shooting and stripping off HP's was preferred way to deal with vehicles. And then Riptides and Wraithknights and other nonsense monsters pretty much made vehicles irrelevant but that is another story.

One issue with 40k as a game is that all the maneuvering is very linear. 95% of the time you either move forward, or backward. Vehicle facings added at least small motivation for lateral maneuvering.
Somebody said that all those 'complications' like AV values, vehicle facings etc. added nothing but that is incorrect - they added flavour. Flavour is why I played 40k. I want to see stuff blow up, turrets fly and terrified men flee. 8th edition is so abstracted and clean that it no longer feels like watching a battle unfold. It feels like a game, and tactically very weak game which has all weird artificial stuff like command points glued on to add more choices for the player.

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

I think a good place to stop would be 'anything that comes in a unit'. Simply because I don't envy trying to do facing for an entire unit of models.

Or, more accurately, I don't envy trying to do whatever rules GW would write for the facing of an entire unit.

You could just draw an imaginary rectangle around a unit and go from there.

We’ve already been through that silliness in previous editions. Usually 90 degree field of vision to a model’s front was the 2nd ed/Necromunda default. Which for the more TFG folk requires defining what the front of the model is. it’s obvious to most As the way the model is facing or looking, but hey. These being the same people who complained some models couldn’t shoot because LOS was stated as being drawn from the model’s eyes and the model has a helmet on so you can’t see its eyes therefore no Space Marines with hats on can ever fire a gun. Or the “Terminatora don’t have Terminator armour listed so don’t have it”. Boggles the mind, but there you go. Those people exist to poke holes in logic and common sense and would require a full Datafax of diagrams for every possible build of every model. You’d never be able to codify infantry model facings to their satisfaction. Not worrying and having 360 fire is far preferable as a designer as you literally don’t need to worry about codifying any of this or stifling modelling creativity by mandating set model poses.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
We’ve already been through that silliness in previous editions. Usually 90 degree field of vision to a model’s front was the 2nd ed/Necromunda default. Which for the more TFG folk requires defining what the front of the model is. it’s obvious to most As the way the model is facing or looking, but hey. These being the same people who complained some models couldn’t shoot because LOS was stated as being drawn from the model’s eyes and the model has a helmet on so you can’t see its eyes therefore no Space Marines with hats on can ever fire a gun. Or the “Terminatora don’t have Terminator armour listed so don’t have it”. Boggles the mind, but there you go. Those people exist to poke holes in logic and common sense and would require a full Datafax of diagrams for every possible build of every model. You’d never be able to codify infantry model facings to their satisfaction. Not worrying and having 360 fire is far preferable as a designer as you literally don’t need to worry about codifying any of this or stifling modelling creativity by mandating set model poses.

Those "TFGs" are right though. It is helpful to clearly define terms.

Blastaar wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
We’ve already been through that silliness in previous editions. Usually 90 degree field of vision to a model’s front was the 2nd ed/Necromunda default. Which for the more TFG folk requires defining what the front of the model is. it’s obvious to most As the way the model is facing or looking, but hey. These being the same people who complained some models couldn’t shoot because LOS was stated as being drawn from the model’s eyes and the model has a helmet on so you can’t see its eyes therefore no Space Marines with hats on can ever fire a gun. Or the “Terminatora don’t have Terminator armour listed so don’t have it”. Boggles the mind, but there you go. Those people exist to poke holes in logic and common sense and would require a full Datafax of diagrams for every possible build of every model. You’d never be able to codify infantry model facings to their satisfaction. Not worrying and having 360 fire is far preferable as a designer as you literally don’t need to worry about codifying any of this or stifling modelling creativity by mandating set model poses.

Those "TFGs" are right though. It is helpful to clearly define terms.

Clearly defining terms sadly sits on the thin grey line right next to TFG trying to poke holes into every interaction. Some of the "faults" with the rules that get reported are some serious levels stupid. I recall someone trying to argue that the rulebook never defines how to roll dice which apparently opens up a string of issues - "RAW can you actually roll dice?"

 vipoid wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

I think a good place to stop would be 'anything that comes in a unit'. Simply because I don't envy trying to do facing for an entire unit of models.

Or, more accurately, I don't envy trying to do whatever rules GW would write for the facing of an entire unit.

I just naturally do it with my 40k, its sorta so easy even when playing horde armys if your aware that it should not be a issue. But i think 40k is too simple to utilize it at the infantry level anyway. It would probably end up as a +1 to hit or something like that at best, and shudder to think how that could just add so much time onto a very long and laggy feeling game.
Also isnt there some vehicle that are in units, Its been a while since i used some.

All those detailed rules people lament going away come down to the scale of the game.
For many editions 40k has been very confused as to what scale of game it wants to be. A small scale skirmish game with a few squads, a leader, and maybe a tank. Or a big company scaled game with 10+ tanks and over 100 infantry models.

With a small scaled game, it's easy to give more highly detailed rules to your models. Armor facings on tanks, along with an assortment of various damage states that can be applied to them (shaken, stunned, broken weapons, etc), weapon arcs, etc. All that stuff is fine when you don't have all that many models, and indeed most of it originated in earlier editions where there simply were fewer models in the average game.
When you scale the size of the game up however, a lot of that stuff just starts to get in the way, and you end up taking an hour to resolve your turn.

With 8th edition, GW stopped waffling so much about what sort of game they wanted it to be, and came down on the side of a company scaled game with more appropriately abstract rules.
It's still a bit confused however. See stuff like upgrading your guardsman squad sergeant from a las pistol to a bolt pistol. That's the sort of thing that's just irrelevant detail in the current scale of the game. It's fine for kill team, but in 40k it just doesn't matter.


However I agree that those sorts of rules should still have a place. In coming down on one side of the debate, GW has left a hole on the other side. I don't think such rules should come back to regular 40k, but adding a new game sized in-between kill team and 40k in scale would be the right place for it.
However if you want to have the same massive armies we've got in current 40k, and also have highly detailed rules for everything, then I have a bit less sympathy.

Arson Fire wrote:
All those detailed rules people lament going away come down to the scale of the game.
For many editions 40k has been very confused as to what scale of game it wants to be. A small scale skirmish game with a few squads, a leader, and maybe a tank. Or a big company scaled game with 10+ tanks and over 100 infantry models.

With a small scaled game, it's easy to give more highly detailed rules to your models. Armor facings on tanks, along with an assortment of various damage states that can be applied to them (shaken, stunned, broken weapons, etc), weapon arcs, etc. All that stuff is fine when you don't have all that many models, and indeed most of it originated in earlier editions where there simply were fewer models in the average game.
When you scale the size of the game up however, a lot of that stuff just starts to get in the way, and you end up taking an hour to resolve your turn.

With 8th edition, GW stopped waffling so much about what sort of game they wanted it to be, and came down on the side of a company scaled game with more appropriately abstract rules.
It's still a bit confused however. See stuff like upgrading your guardsman squad sergeant from a las pistol to a bolt pistol. That's the sort of thing that's just irrelevant detail in the current scale of the game. It's fine for kill team, but in 40k it just doesn't matter.


However I agree that those sorts of rules should still have a place. In coming down on one side of the debate, GW has left a hole on the other side. I don't think such rules should come back to regular 40k, but adding a new game sized in-between kill team and 40k in scale would be the right place for it.
However if you want to have the same massive armies we've got in current 40k, and also have highly detailed rules for everything, then I have a bit less sympathy.

Why i agree, i do not think GW really worked out what scale they want the game to play at. They just wanted simple, but have clearly not keep to that idea at all. To much money to be made.
But even with the scale 40k is played at i still think it could have all that detail if GW Where to step up and write good rules for it.
WHen it comes down to it, 40k still only has a limited amount of elements on the table at once. With even the most horde armys having a small amount, mostly just in larger groups. But each indvidual one being relatively simple. In many cases if you take out the list of buffs being thrown around, a lot of units on there own amount to a number of dice. With little special going on themselves.

This also relly on them not bumping it up again and throwing in more and more. >.<

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

What would facings on infantry achieve? I don't see any point unless you want to give fire arcs to everyone.

pm713 wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

What would facings on infantry achieve? I don't see any point unless you want to give fire arcs to everyone.

It makes some sense for heavy weapons needing to redeploy to fire in a new facing. Also maybe a flanking attack could pin or scare infantry?

Gitdakka wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

What would facings on infantry achieve? I don't see any point unless you want to give fire arcs to everyone.

It makes some sense for heavy weapons needing to redeploy to fire in a new facing. Also maybe a flanking attack could pin or scare infantry?

It feels a bit like making up more mechanics to justify infantry facing to be honest.

pm713 wrote:

Gitdakka wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

What would facings on infantry achieve? I don't see any point unless you want to give fire arcs to everyone.

It makes some sense for heavy weapons needing to redeploy to fire in a new facing. Also maybe a flanking attack could pin or scare infantry?

It feels a bit like making up more mechanics to justify infantry facing to be honest.

Actually, it would go well with overwatch.
Don't want to get shot by overwatch? Charge the flank.

Arson Fire wrote:
With 8th edition, GW stopped waffling so much about what sort of game they wanted it to be, and came down on the side of a company scaled game with more appropriately abstract rules.
It's still a bit confused however. See stuff like upgrading your guardsman squad sergeant from a las pistol to a bolt pistol. That's the sort of thing that's just irrelevant detail in the current scale of the game. It's fine for kill team, but in 40k it just doesn't matter.

Apocalypse has dipped its toes into this. Like Meganobz just all have "Meganobz weapons" instead of individually having options for powerklaws vs killsaws vs kustom shoota vs kombi shoootas. I rather like this since it leaves you free to model them however you like for aesthetic effect.

This is a slightly annoying problem in 40K right now. If you play Power Level games, Meganobz are worth the exact same PL cost if they all have stock kustom shootas vs if they have kombi-skorchas, which are humongously better. So in the "friendly Power Level game," you're incentivized to cheese the rules by giving them max upgrades since it's the same PL cost. However in matched play with points costs, You're (appropriately) charged for taking max upgrades. Each way to play pulls you in a different direction. And of course having individual models get their own upgrades and shooting/cc profiles increases the bookkeeping and slows down play.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

pm713 wrote:

Gitdakka wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

What would facings on infantry achieve? I don't see any point unless you want to give fire arcs to everyone.

It makes some sense for heavy weapons needing to redeploy to fire in a new facing. Also maybe a flanking attack could pin or scare infantry?

It feels a bit like making up more mechanics to justify infantry facing to be honest.

Actually, it would go well with overwatch.
Don't want to get shot by overwatch? Charge the flank.

But why not turn? I can see a tank not being able to turn and face a charger but not a person. The only way that would make sense to me is if you literally can't see the charger at all but that's easy to avoid.

It would work for something small like Kill Team though.

pm713 wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

pm713 wrote:

Gitdakka wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

What would facings on infantry achieve? I don't see any point unless you want to give fire arcs to everyone.

It makes some sense for heavy weapons needing to redeploy to fire in a new facing. Also maybe a flanking attack could pin or scare infantry?

It feels a bit like making up more mechanics to justify infantry facing to be honest.

Actually, it would go well with overwatch.
Don't want to get shot by overwatch? Charge the flank.

But why not turn? I can see a tank not being able to turn and face a charger but not a person. The only way that would make sense to me is if you literally can't see the charger at all but that's easy to avoid.

It would work for something small like Kill Team though.

On the contrary, a 360 degree arc of vision would make one sense for kill team, imo.
A single person can respond quite quickly to a threat. A whole bunch of people? Not so much. A lot of them will be busy focusing on another threat. Sure, one individual might notice, and respond accordingly, but the other 9 or so soldiers? Probably not so much. The initiative stat should have been retained for overwatch and falling back, really.

pm713 wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

What would facings on infantry achieve? I don't see any point unless you want to give fire arcs to everyone.

I would love it if everything had firing arcs. Then movement and positioning become more relevant. Much of the fun of playing mini games for me is when I get to move my toys around the table. Arcs may also help to make vehicles more interesting while remaining balanced.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 NurglesR0T wrote:

Blastaar wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
We’ve already been through that silliness in previous editions. Usually 90 degree field of vision to a model’s front was the 2nd ed/Necromunda default. Which for the more TFG folk requires defining what the front of the model is. it’s obvious to most As the way the model is facing or looking, but hey. These being the same people who complained some models couldn’t shoot because LOS was stated as being drawn from the model’s eyes and the model has a helmet on so you can’t see its eyes therefore no Space Marines with hats on can ever fire a gun. Or the “Terminatora don’t have Terminator armour listed so don’t have it”. Boggles the mind, but there you go. Those people exist to poke holes in logic and common sense and would require a full Datafax of diagrams for every possible build of every model. You’d never be able to codify infantry model facings to their satisfaction. Not worrying and having 360 fire is far preferable as a designer as you literally don’t need to worry about codifying any of this or stifling modelling creativity by mandating set model poses.

Those "TFGs" are right though. It is helpful to clearly define terms.

Clearly defining terms sadly sits on the thin grey line right next to TFG trying to poke holes into every interaction. Some of the "faults" with the rules that get reported are some serious levels stupid. I recall someone trying to argue that the rulebook never defines how to roll dice which apparently opens up a string of issues - "RAW can you actually roll dice?"

Being clear is just that, being clear to avoid any misunderstanding, and is actually a good preventative measure [i]against[i] "TFG" behavior. Write and ironclad ruleset, at least to the level of Magic: The Gathering, and it becomes much more difficult for people to make stupid arguments.

I was on the RAW side of the 7th DW formation allowing Land Raiders to DS, because the text simply said that units in that formation arrived via DS. (This is how Magic's rules work, by the way- a card does exactly what it says it does) That was not GW's intent, and I knew that, but those are the rules they wrote for us to play with. Eventually, they FAQ'd it. If the codex had been written by a technical writer, properly proofread and play tested, this would have been avoided. Playing according to the written rules is not "TFG" behavior. It is using the single framework provided, that all players can agree on does what it says it does. Intent arguments are just that- arguments that arise when player's attempt to fix poorly written rules themselves.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

pm713 wrote:

Gitdakka wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

What would facings on infantry achieve? I don't see any point unless you want to give fire arcs to everyone.

It makes some sense for heavy weapons needing to redeploy to fire in a new facing. Also maybe a flanking attack could pin or scare infantry?

It feels a bit like making up more mechanics to justify infantry facing to be honest.

Actually, it would go well with overwatch.
Don't want to get shot by overwatch? Charge the flank.

As stated here, that’s certainly one thing. If you have an enemy in front of you and behind you do you, which enemy do you face? Do you point your guys all in one direction and pour fir into one squad and Hope you don’t get charged from behind or do you split your squad’s facing to handle a possible charge from both sides.

Mechanically, you could give units attacking the rear of an enemy a +1 bonus to Wound rolls, indicating shots the enemy never sees coming.

In the end, it just makes positioning a lot more important - do you charge straight into the enemy’s guns or try to maneuver around them to hit from an unexpected angle?

Klickor wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
Are people really bad at reading their dice or something? Even rolling like 90 dice picking out misses takes about 5-10 seconds tops for most people in our group.

Or is this one of these non-issues Dakka likes to act are mountains when they're really just molehills?

You have to count your dice so you have the right amount for each throw and with a large number of dice it can take some time. The more dice the more time it takes to pick up and read to not make a mistake.

If you have to roll 10 dice and remove 5 from the pile it might take 4s if include finding and counting the 10dice. If we have 20 it might take 10s and with 40 the whole process is closer to half a minute. The sheer amount of dice just gets unwieldy.

I can throw 97 dice and remove the 1s and 2s in the blink of an eye. I cant count 97 dice and out put them in my hand in a few seconds though.

Sometimes I just remove models/units like scouts if they have less than a 20% chance of surviving just to skip the rolling of dice from 20 guardsmen. Not worth my time just to see if Im very lucky.

Good thing you're never picking up 97 dice and rolling them. Batches of 20. Proper play would be to lift your models if you know your two models won't survive scores of attacks.

 vipoid wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

I think a good place to stop would be 'anything that comes in a unit'. Simply because I don't envy trying to do facing for an entire unit of models.

Or, more accurately, I don't envy trying to do whatever rules GW would write for the facing of an entire unit.

Do what MEDGe does. First, all kits after the release of this hypothetical edition come with bases (that have them) with notches indicating front and rear arcs. Second, for units of more than one model, facing is determined by the direction the squad leader is facing.

For tanks it is trickier. Front and rear on them are easy, for firing arcs my first thought is using templates of varying degrees. Fiddly, yes, but IMO worth it for the gameplay.

Blastaar wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
We’ve already been through that silliness in previous editions. Usually 90 degree field of vision to a model’s front was the 2nd ed/Necromunda default. Which for the more TFG folk requires defining what the front of the model is. it’s obvious to most As the way the model is facing or looking, but hey. These being the same people who complained some models couldn’t shoot because LOS was stated as being drawn from the model’s eyes and the model has a helmet on so you can’t see its eyes therefore no Space Marines with hats on can ever fire a gun. Or the “Terminatora don’t have Terminator armour listed so don’t have it”. Boggles the mind, but there you go. Those people exist to poke holes in logic and common sense and would require a full Datafax of diagrams for every possible build of every model. You’d never be able to codify infantry model facings to their satisfaction. Not worrying and having 360 fire is far preferable as a designer as you literally don’t need to worry about codifying any of this or stifling modelling creativity by mandating set model poses.

Those "TFGs" are right though. It is helpful to clearly define terms.

So you didn’t actually read to the end of my post...

pm713 wrote:

Gitdakka wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

What would facings on infantry achieve? I don't see any point unless you want to give fire arcs to everyone.

It makes some sense for heavy weapons needing to redeploy to fire in a new facing. Also maybe a flanking attack could pin or scare infantry?

It feels a bit like making up more mechanics to justify infantry facing to be honest.

Flanking is a core mechanic in other wargames, particularly historicals, and real life. It's how you dig infantry out of cover and inflict irrecoverable morale damage. It's what makes maneuver relevant.

Actually, 40K used to have crossfire rules IIRC- was it a morale penalty?

 JohnnyHell wrote:

Blastaar wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
We’ve already been through that silliness in previous editions. Usually 90 degree field of vision to a model’s front was the 2nd ed/Necromunda default. Which for the more TFG folk requires defining what the front of the model is. it’s obvious to most As the way the model is facing or looking, but hey. These being the same people who complained some models couldn’t shoot because LOS was stated as being drawn from the model’s eyes and the model has a helmet on so you can’t see its eyes therefore no Space Marines with hats on can ever fire a gun. Or the “Terminatora don’t have Terminator armour listed so don’t have it”. Boggles the mind, but there you go. Those people exist to poke holes in logic and common sense and would require a full Datafax of diagrams for every possible build of every model. You’d never be able to codify infantry model facings to their satisfaction. Not worrying and having 360 fire is far preferable as a designer as you literally don’t need to worry about codifying any of this or stifling modelling creativity by mandating set model poses.

Those "TFGs" are right though. It is helpful to clearly define terms.

So you didn’t actually read to the end of my post...

I did, I just focused on the complaint of the TFG abusing rules. Yes, there are people who will deliberately twist or misunderstand things such as the "front" of a model which seems obvious to most, but sometimes people do genuinely get confused about these things. Maybe a mini is posed in such a way that the direction in which it is looking is noticeably different from the angle of its body, and the direction it is pointing its weapon. Mistakes happen, and this kind of clarity is mostly to avoid honest confusion, not protect players from "those people." The LOS argument actually makes a certain kind of sense. LOS was drawn from the model's eyes, and it is perfectly reasonable that players followed that in good faith, not to exploit GW's poor rules to their advantage. What is "obvious" to one person, is less so to another.

360 fire makes great sense for skirmish games, but for unit games, that comes at the cost of depth, and i would certainly prefer the "difficulty" of utilizing arcs of fire for the tactical gameplay.