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...Shoot twice, Move twice, Fight twice good game design?

What does dakka think?

It's okay if it's rare.

 Insectum7 wrote:
It's okay if it's rare.

This. Its super annoying how much rerolls are in the game now, it should be limited to special characters or expensive units with a targeting upgrade paid for or something

No. It is extremely poor game design. Even if rare, it skews the game too much.

And with GW, this sort of thing never stays rare


----
Any kind of reroll should be scaled back to 1 CP = 1 reroll. That would actually be functional. As is, the absurd dice rolling should just be replaced with a lookup chart, where if you X of <unit type>, it kills Y of <unit type>. It would save a lot of time rolling, re-rolling, and rolling, re-rolling, rolling and re-rolling. Potentially six batches of rolls to determine if anybody dies with maybe more rolls on top (disgustingly resilient + etc.)? Absurdly bad game design. At this point the system is deliberately set up to waste time.

No, its part of the problem with 8th, not only did we get armor modifiers, and more shooting, but we also got a lot more reliable re-rolls, amking damage to easy to get.

Also when you don't miss whats the point of even rolling? sure, 3+ with rr1's is fine, still chances to really miss and it makes it more manageable for a good buff, but 3+ with rr all dice, or 2+ with re-rolls is just silly.

Too much shooting, too much movement, too much melee combat makes the game short, which is okay, because these things can go on for hours and hours, but the main point is that it makes it unbearable when your forces are wiped from the table in one fell swoop. Grant it to special characters only.

I don't see rerolls as a problem. Elite units should rarely miss. An army like space marines or custodians it's fine if they are rerolling all their hits because they roll half the dice of a horde type list. Acting twice in a turn though...it should not exist. Heck for 1.5 years in the edition we have shinning spears literally acting 3 times in a turn (yeah...it dominated). Look at smash captains...reliably killing 500 point models in a single round...It's dumb and I have yet to meet anyone that actually enjoys that.

Nothing should move twice
Nothing should shoot twice
Nothing should fight twice
Nothing should fight when it dies

If you pay for the privilege it is fine. If it costs you say half to a third of your points on one model or a synergistic team that does it, I'd say that you are good.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Teams are better IMO. They can be disrupted.

The base mechanics are fine.

"Shooting Twice" on an Executioner or Leman Russ isn't bad at all. It's not really shooting twice, it's more like doubling the number of shots for the main gun, since it's actually locked to targeting the game unit. This isn't uncommon, Flames of War has this mechanic almost universally.

Fighting Twice is probably the worst of them, because close quarters combat is so powerful this edition. It's not just damage, it's 3-6" more forward movement, and because cqc units derive a lot of strength from being disruptive, it magnifies their capabilities well in excess of just double damage.

And even then, fighting twice doesn't have to be out of line. If it was "double the number of attacks made" [thus having the same targeting restriction that the shooting twice version does and not also granting extra movement], it would absolutely be in line and fair.

Movement Twice is much more rare than fighting twice and shooting twice, but it has more potential to go wrong than the other two.

Caveat: These arguments are moot if the games purpose is to speed up play, which currently it is. GW is trying to attract gamers more familiar, used to, and happier with faster shorter games. No judgement attached to these comments.
Now...
Think about re-rolls this way, and see if that changes any thoughts. The issue remains the d6 (and No I am NOT advocating a change there, although I see both sides of that)
Rerolls are about changing the % a unit hits at, do not simplify this.
Examples; Giving a unit that hits on 2+ reroll misses means you feel they should hit 97% (ish) rather than 83.3%. Giving a unit that is 3+ re-roll ones changes their hit % from 66% to roughly 77%. And the list goes on, people can do the math. These do make a d6 more granular. (my math is based on: rerolling 1/6 of shots to hit 2/3 more times. This may not be exact, but for this post exact wasn't needed, only the idea explained. For example 36 shots hitting at 3+, reroll 1's. Hit 24, reroll 6 hit 4 more. 28 hits of 36 is 77%)

However, I do not like it, and feel we don't need that granularity added. In truth if you need more granularity in rolls, then yes, I say change dice. I don't feel this is needed. I am happy playing a game where basic troops hit 50%, elite units hit 66%, and super elites hit 84%. This game desperatly needs more cheap units to hit on 5+. Points adjusted accordingly.

An elite marine should have a 2+ as opposed to a basic marines 3+. That 1/6 better is enough. Save the reroll changes to hit % for specific special characters who are supposed to hit more often than their counterparts.

Shooting twice etc. I think Inquisitor Lord Katherine has summed my feelings up. (I would have shortened that name some, but don't mess with the inquisition, man)

Edited for poor typing skills while trying to do 3 things. Ah, the wonderful multi-task or die generation was indoctrinated into....

People would moan about this, but it would speed the game up immensely and well, bring in other tactics to the game to counter characters.

All re-rolls become Plus/Minus 1 depending on the ability.

SM Captains and lieutenants give +1BS and +1 wound respectively.

Chapter masters give plus +2BS.

For morale, it's minus -1 to the roll.

I'd implement this across the board, and ensure all codexes have 1 and only 1 character that allows a re-roll aura in conjunction with the above buffs.

No unit outside of Captains, Lords, Farseers, Tyrants, etc. should approach a 2+ in a normal game setting. Adding re-rolls to this and you may as well remove dice from the game. You've eliminated almost all "chance" from your game mechanic. Leave that crap to Primarchs and proper hero models.

The game, in general, could be far better if far more things were worse than they are now.

PS: I should add that I despise re-rolls as a game mechanic anyway...so it's disheartening to see it becomes 50% of the current game.

 Elbows wrote:
No unit outside of Captains, Lords, Farseers, Tyrants, etc. should approach a 2+ in a normal game setting. Adding re-rolls to this and you may as well remove dice from the game. You've eliminated almost all "chance" from your game mechanic. Leave that crap to Primarchs and proper hero models.

The game, in general, could be far better if far more things were worse than they are now.

PS: I should add that I despise re-rolls as a game mechanic anyway...so it's disheartening to see it becomes 50% of the current game.

Absolutely agree. The baseline was probably set too high in the first place. When so many units have WS/BS3+ as standard you don't really have too many options for how you represent better troops than that. Recalibrating to make more units worse would simultaneously give the game a bit of breathing room and also reduce the lethality to something approaching sensible. I hate the fact that I can pretty much guarantee how many wounds my opponent will cause against my units when they're playing certain armies because the volume of dice and re-rolls is so high that it's not uncommon for people to throw enough dice in one attack for averages to even out over the course of a single attack (not entirely of course, but close enough).

GW seem to want a game where failure simply doesn't happen. Instead, we just get varying degrees of success. So we don't fail to hit and wound but our opponent may well succeed in their attempt to save - because so many units now have Invulnerable saves too.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:


Fighting Twice is probably the worst of them, because close quarters combat is so powerful this edition. It's not just damage, it's 3-6" more forward movement, and because cqc units derive a lot of strength from being disruptive, it magnifies their capabilities well in excess of just double damage.
.

Right, which is why we've gone from gunline meta to gunline meta in the last six to nine months?

If CQC is so powerful in 8th, how is it possible we have seen almost nobody using any melee units over the last few meta cycles?

I understand there have been metas where armies with one melee unit backed up by a gunline have been powerful (The tzaangor blob thing, shining spears ynnari, letterbomb etc) but 8th is very very clearly a shooting edition overall.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:


Fighting Twice is probably the worst of them, because close quarters combat is so powerful this edition. It's not just damage, it's 3-6" more forward movement, and because cqc units derive a lot of strength from being disruptive, it magnifies their capabilities well in excess of just double damage.
.

Right, which is why we've gone from gunline meta to gunline meta in the last six to nine months?

If CQC is so powerful in 8th, how is it possible we have seen almost nobody using any melee units over the last few meta cycles?

I understand there have been metas where armies with one melee unit backed up by a gunline have been powerful (The tzaangor blob thing, shining spears ynnari, letterbomb etc) but 8th is very very clearly a shooting edition overall.

I honestly, as a CSM player, the one dex with both double fighting options, laughing my backside off.

I'd eliminate all kind of re-roll, they're annoying and they make the game too slow. I'd just replace the source of re-rolls with a +1 (to hit, to wound, better save, morale, to charge, etc...) instead. Natural rolls of 1s should ALWAYS fail. The "action" twice mechanics is also an issue and I'd love it to be removed entirely.

Generally speaking I hate how easy is now to kill 60+ infantries or 3+ vehicles in a single turn of shooting. I wish the game was designed in a way that the most effective shooting oriented armies were capable of killing a couple of trukks and/or 20ish infantries in a full turn of shooting, nothing more.

Invulns should be rare and/or pricey to get and deep strike available only for a couple of units per army. That would make vehicles more appealing and more efficient with a reduction of the firepower thanks to no re-rolls and the disappearance of the shooting twice nonsense.

A good game design would give us an edition in which armies still have at least 50-60% of their forces on the table at top of turn 3.

As someone that uses fight twice every game, its not more powerful, it makes melee usable. If i couldn't fight twice with many of these units i wouldn't even take them.

Now... army wide fight twice with Blood rose SOB was REALLY fun, i just wish i didn't go 2nd and played ONLY Hammer and Anvil for all 3 of my games..... its really fun to see Tau on the table edge 60" away b.c they know you are melee.... At least i did the most damage to him out of everyone lol (that includes 2 DE and 2 CWE players).

So even with a 3CP stratagem to let my AOF to fight twice work on 3-6 units on units that are made for melee (Canonses with Relic blade, lots of Power Axes on superiors and 25-30 SOB with +1 atk/str) i was able to almost melee down a knight in another game.

Even after all that, even with Wyches or Genestealers able to double melee. The amount of work it takes just to get to melee and set up the ability to even double attack is SO fething hard compare to just pointing and shooting twice that its not even funny.

Also fight twice stratagems are 3CP where shoot twice ones are 1 or 2 CP.. seriously...

Also fight twice stratagems are 3CP where shoot twice ones are 1 or 2 CP.. seriously...

This, is especially eregious when you play CSM.

Not only do you not get certain buffs because you are khorne but you also pay way more CP to the same thing AND have a lot more issues with getting in range for melee comparable to shooting.

If we remove this, I would like my Custodes to please cost half what they currently do.

I do agree that it needs to be more rare though. As in, it should be a 1CP stratagem that you can pop on a single unit per turn. Done.

A simple base rule set is okay, if that is what you want. The current issue in 40k is that the base rules are really simple, but they're supposed to cover a huge variety of units. This results in ridiclous rules bloat as you have to keep adding more and more special rules so that there is any variety, which is how you end up with scenarios like you describe in the op. The simplification with the largest impact on the game is how GW refuses to use dice other than d6, which means that you need a whole host of rerolls which end up making the game slow. I wonder though if a big reason GW doesn't fix the rulesset is that they're afraid of a player backlash.

I don't think reroll are bad at all. There probably are too many of them in the game, yes.

Would think be better:
Everything that is a passive reroll all dice (i.e. no test required) becomes reroll 1's
Everything that is currently reroll 1's becomes +1 to hit instead

That's less rerolls in general and the only abilities that grant full rerolls are limited by needing Psychic tests or only affect a single unit
The passive reroll 1's become +1 to hit, which interacts well with -1 to hit auras and does nothing for BS2+ unless there are minuses to hit as well

-

the_scotsman wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:


Fighting Twice is probably the worst of them, because close quarters combat is so powerful this edition. It's not just damage, it's 3-6" more forward movement, and because cqc units derive a lot of strength from being disruptive, it magnifies their capabilities well in excess of just double damage.
.

Right, which is why we've gone from gunline meta to gunline meta in the last six to nine months?

If CQC is so powerful in 8th, how is it possible we have seen almost nobody using any melee units over the last few meta cycles?

I understand there have been metas where armies with one melee unit backed up by a gunline have been powerful (The tzaangor blob thing, shining spears ynnari, letterbomb etc) but 8th is very very clearly a shooting edition overall.

Are we playing the same game? The one where close quarters combat is conducted in 3 steps: 3" pile in, fight, 3" consolidate, and most units that start their turn with any enemy models within 1" of any of their models can only sit tight and wait to fight or fall back and do nothing else for the turn?

Melee units have a far greater ability to control the position of the enemy, drive them off of objectives and hold them yourself, as well as neutralize units very cost-efficiently without having to destroy them.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:


Fighting Twice is probably the worst of them, because close quarters combat is so powerful this edition. It's not just damage, it's 3-6" more forward movement, and because cqc units derive a lot of strength from being disruptive, it magnifies their capabilities well in excess of just double damage.
.

Right, which is why we've gone from gunline meta to gunline meta in the last six to nine months?

If CQC is so powerful in 8th, how is it possible we have seen almost nobody using any melee units over the last few meta cycles?

I understand there have been metas where armies with one melee unit backed up by a gunline have been powerful (The tzaangor blob thing, shining spears ynnari, letterbomb etc) but 8th is very very clearly a shooting edition overall.

Are we playing the same game? The one where close quarters combat is conducted in 3 steps: 3" pile in, fight, 3" consolidate, and most units that start their turn with any enemy models within 1" of any of their models can only sit tight and wait to fight or fall back and do nothing else for the turn?

Melee units have a far greater ability to control the position of the enemy, drive them off of objectives and hold them yourself, as well as neutralize units very cost-efficiently without having to destroy them.

I disagree. IH and their Leviathan shenanigans have proven the meta is now in shooting. Custodes only viable options are FW ranged tank units. Tyranids are dead. Ork melee bombs are going away. Spacewolves are completely dead since jump street.

There is no single competitive advantage to using melee focused troops, over shootier troops.

In the words of a great prophet:

"...how am I gonna stop some big mean Mother Hubbard from tearing me a structurally superfluous new behind? The answer: use a gun. And if that don't work? Use more gun."

– The Engineer

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Are we playing the same game? The one where close quarters combat is conducted in 3 steps: 3" pile in, fight, 3" consolidate, and most units that start their turn with any enemy models within 1" of any of their models can only sit tight and wait to fight or fall back and do nothing else for the turn?

Melee units have a far greater ability to control the position of the enemy, drive them off of objectives and hold them yourself, as well as neutralize units very cost-efficiently without having to destroy them.

the pile-in + consolidate can easily be palyed around by a smart opponent. More and more models can fall back and shoot, meaning that melee units whose only job is to tie down tanks to prevent shooting (like howling banshees) can't even do their job properly. Melee units theoretically have the greater ability to control the position of the enemy, but in practice they either : get shot off the board instantly, get ignored because they wont have an impact (howling banshees), get screened so even if they do land, their effectiveness will be negated. The only units that are worth playing in melee are units that are either tough to kill, hit hard enough to make all the hoops you have to go through to reach melee worth it, have melee but also have good shooting. So things like Grotesques, Smash captains, Sydonian dragoons, assault centurions and abberants.

Melee does exist in the game, but its rarely the first strategy of competitive lists.

And lets not forget how much melee gets shafted in the base 8th edition rules AND with most new releases. Being unable to charge a filled second floor of a ruin, Repulsors giving a minus to charge, the prevalence of flying units, the lack of "attack of opportunity" for falling back, the threat range of most guns, chapter masters rerolls in overwatch and the prevalence of "ignore line of sight" shooting so even trying to hide your melee units while they advance the board isnt possible.

melee sucks in 8 (for the most part).

Proposed rule: you can use your opponents' stratagem at +1 CP.
Example: you are playing against T'au Bork'an so you can use any stratagem that they can use at plus one CP. The ones in the rulebook that are available to anyone would be unchanged in price.

 carldooley wrote:
Proposed rule: you can use your opponents' stratagem at +1 CP.
Example: you are playing against T'au Bork'an so you can use any stratagem that they can use at plus one CP. The ones in the rulebook that are available to anyone would be unchanged in price.

to achieve what, exactly? most stratagems are keyworded anyway so even if you wanted to use them, you wouldnt be able to.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I disagree. IH and their Leviathan shenanigans have proven the meta is now in shooting. Custodes only viable options are FW ranged tank units. Tyranids are dead. Ork melee bombs are going away. Spacewolves are completely dead since jump street.

There is no single competitive advantage to using melee focused troops, over shootier troops.

In the words of a great prophet:

"...how am I gonna stop some big mean Mother Hubbard from tearing me a structurally superfluous new behind? The answer: use a gun. And if that don't work? Use more gun." – The Engineer

I disagree disrespectfully. There are multiple competitive advantages to using close quarters combat units in your army.

Also, how does IH Leviathans prove that melee is dead and shooting is the only way? Those things are virtually impossible to match in a gunnery duel with even 2k points of shooting versus one of them and a few CP, I handle it by three-cornering it with fast and/or cheap infantry and letting it's efforts to un-stuck itself prove futile until I've wrecked the other stuff, and then come over and deal with it once the other things I want to deal with are neutralized.

VladimirHerzog wrote:
the pile-in + consolidate can easily be palyed around by a smart opponent. More and more models can fall back and shoot, meaning that melee units whose only job is to tie down tanks to prevent shooting (like howling banshees) can't even do their job properly. Melee units theoretically have the greater ability to control the position of the enemy, but in practice they either : get shot off the board instantly, get ignored because they wont have an impact (howling banshees), get screened so even if they do land, their effectiveness will be negated. The only units that are worth playing in melee are units that are either tough to kill, hit hard enough to make all the hoops you have to go through to reach melee worth it, have melee but also have good shooting. So things like Grotesques, Smash captains, Sydonian dragoons, assault centurions and abberants.

Melee does exist in the game, but its rarely the first strategy of competitive lists.

And lets not forget how much melee gets shafted in the base 8th edition rules AND with most new releases. Being unable to charge a filled second floor of a ruin, Repulsors giving a minus to charge, the prevalence of flying units, the lack of "attack of opportunity" for falling back, the threat range of most guns, chapter masters rerolls in overwatch and the prevalence of "ignore line of sight" shooting so even trying to hide your melee units while they advance the board isnt possible.

melee sucks in 8 (for the most part).

I fail to see how close quarters combat gets "shafted" at all in the base 8e rules. I don't see how most of the things you mentioned make melee weak so much as not an answer to everything and not to be mass melee.

I agree that big dumb "MELEE!" isn't the first strategy of any list, because it should never ******* be. However, the actual mechanics of close quarter combat are incredibly powerful this edition and the effective use of close combat units has won me many games [and their ineffective use has lost me some]. I would say I've had more games decided by the close combat phases than the shooting phases this edition, both competitive and casually. Close Quarters units are a very valuable supporting asset to a list.

I unfortunately don't have paid access to the full index of tournament lists, but the lists that I've faced locally usually dedicate some element to skirmishing, and pure gunline lists tend to lose badly due to their inability to occupy the center of the board.

I'm not really sure where I am on shafted or not shafted for assault units.

Assault units in 8th (and arguably forever) are very swingey. I think there is also this design position of "light assault" which is objectively bad (assault marines etc). Being luck dependent means they are not very very good for tournaments - and so for Dakka's "trash or OP" scale tend towards the former.

But I feel things like for example "GSC are bad" is a false... claim. The problem with assault based GSC is that they are not very dynamic. There is an illusion in the choices you can make - really it largely comes down to charge rolls, and not completely fluffing your attacks. A fluffed shooting phase often involves lots of moments of failure - a fluffed charge phase is often down to just six-eight dice going cold.

Which results in games that are completely one-sided, as you either roll high on that charge, connect and murder various things, then tag others, trapping them in place. Your opponent is rendered powerless, and its just 60 minutes of chewing them up.
Or you roll low, fail the charge, eat overwatch for your pains, followed by psychic/more shooting/counter charge, and your entirely army can quickly just melt away. So you end up essentially tabled having killed maybe 600 points worth of the opponent.

Which happens less frequently with mostly shooting armies. You may roll a lot of 1s in the first turn - but then nothing but 6s in the second which pulls you back into the game. For assault armies the consequence of a botched second turn is usually game defining.

Overall, the reroll mechanic has become so overused it slows the game down dramatically.

Tyel wrote:
I'm not really sure where I am on shafted or not shafted for assault units.

Assault units in 8th (and arguably forever) are very swingey. I think there is also this design position of "light assault" which is objectively bad (assault marines etc). Being luck dependent means they are not very very good for tournaments - and so for Dakka's "trash or OP" scale tend towards the former.

But I feel things like for example "GSC are bad" is a false... claim. The problem with assault based GSC is that they are not very dynamic. There is an illusion in the choices you can make - really it largely comes down to charge rolls, and not completely fluffing your attacks. A fluffed shooting phase often involves lots of moments of failure - a fluffed charge phase is often down to just six-eight dice going cold.

Which results in games that are completely one-sided, as you either roll high on that charge, connect and murder various things, then tag others, trapping them in place. Your opponent is rendered powerless, and its just 60 minutes of chewing them up.
Or you roll low, fail the charge, eat overwatch for your pains, followed by psychic/more shooting/counter charge, and your entirely army can quickly just melt away. So you end up essentially tabled having killed maybe 600 points worth of the opponent.

Which happens less frequently with mostly shooting armies. You may roll a lot of 1s in the first turn - but then nothing but 6s in the second which pulls you back into the game. For assault armies the consequence of a botched second turn is usually game defining.

100% agree

Rolling below average in a shooting phase can be made up in later shooting phases. Rolling below average in your turn 2 charges and there isnt even a point in continuing the game most of the time. And even if you roll well for charges the opponent can often counter that by murdering you in the OW by rolling well. Which isnt that hard with all the 4+/5+ OW with rerolls available surpassing an unbuffed normal shooting phase.

And some armies can just spend 300 points on 50-100 screening models you need to chew through before your 200pts melee unit can get to hit something worth more than 7pts s model.

Melee is super powerful when you can get there against the right target but the cost of getting there compared to just standing still and shoot each turn isnt usually worth it.

By the time my 250pt vanguard veteran unit can kill a screened 350 pt knight in melee that knight have probably had 2+ full shooting phases and I have spent a few scout squads/intercessors to clear the way and then put in 3-5cp to kill the knight with the VV with thunderhammers. Probably only 3-4 TH guys left at the end standing in the open after the kill just waiting for a 40pt guard squad to finish them off with some rf las guns.

A few dreads or 2 repulsors could have done the same more reliably and safer for the same investment. Can just ignore the screens and kill the knight turn 1 before it can even shoot instead of spending 2-3 turns killing chaff