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.

This rule makes me wonder if GW intends to continue the trend of mono weapon squads. It seems to me like lately the idea of special weapons and heavy weapons in squads is going away. Instead all squad members have special weapons. Like the hellblasters and such.

 Nerak wrote:
This rule makes me wonder if GW intends to continue the trend of mono weapon squads. It seems to me like lately the idea of special weapons and heavy weapons in squads is going away. Instead all squad members have special weapons. Like the hellblasters and such.

That's a good point. It would be a minor nerf to tacticals which ends up pushing Primaris.

It would be a big nerf to termintor armoured models and termintor armoured HQs with heavy weapons. And they already pay premium for their weapons.

I think the penalty for the MODEL moving was better.

I do think they should have kept some sort of penalty for any model, infantry or vehicle if it had a heavy weapon and moved (or if the target was advancing), though -1 to hit might not have been the best idea. It should be more difficult to tag a moving target, but perhaps the better option would have been to give attackers using Heavy weapons an extra shot if they remain still (since Heavy weapons usually have such low number of shots). Vehicles like tanks may have been allowed a half move and still get the extra shot.

So, in a manner of speaking, reward players for acting how you want to, rather than penalizing them when they don't.

It's another significant step into making SM even more competitive.

It's amazing how we started with heavy weapons disallowed to fire if they moved, improved into hit on 6s, then buffed with just a -1 to hit penalty and now they have no penalty at all.

So why even bother with the heavy/assault label then?

But also unless a lot of those MC change they wont be moving and shooting b.c they can Double shoot if they don't. Biovores also don't need to move and if they do and miss,w ell you "kinda" don't miss and it could be better for you at times to miss.

But yeah there is more heavy weapons, but still not a lot. IMO Nids has the BEST gun in the game, sadly nids have it.... the HVC, its an Assault D3 shots Str 9, -2ap 3D! For less than 20pts!!! Imagine is Eldar or Marines has that on HQ's, Fast, and Heavy slot units and a Str 8 version on Troops lol.

"Contact left, enemy armour! Jenkins move up with that melta, try to get into range! Leroy try tag it with a Krak missile"

"I would Sagre but <gestures vaguely at Jenkins>"

 Amishprn86 wrote:

But yeah there is more heavy weapons, but still not a lot. IMO Nids has the BEST gun in the game, sadly nids have it.... the HVC, its an Assault D3 shots Str 9, -2ap 3D! For less than 20pts!!! Imagine is Eldar or Marines has that on HQ's, Fast, and Heavy slot units and a Str 8 version on Troops lol.

You really think venom cannons are the best gun in the game? Odd take.
We've had those for two and a half years now, and last I looked, they still aren't breaking the game in half.
Just looking at the point cost of the gun doesn't tell the full story. You have to look at the full cost of the unit. That's where they get expensive.

Arson Fire wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

But yeah there is more heavy weapons, but still not a lot. IMO Nids has the BEST gun in the game, sadly nids have it.... the HVC, its an Assault D3 shots Str 9, -2ap 3D! For less than 20pts!!! Imagine is Eldar or Marines has that on HQ's, Fast, and Heavy slot units and a Str 8 version on Troops lol.

You really think venom cannons are the best gun in the game? Odd take.
We've had those for two and a half years now, and last I looked, they still aren't breaking the game in half.
Just looking at the point cost of the gun doesn't tell the full story. You have to look at the full cost of the unit. That's where they get expensive.

And Again the "gun" as i said, sadly its on nids and not CWE/SM, the gun it self not the army using the gun. If Wraithlords, Turrets, WS's, Falcons, and 5-6 other units could take 1-2 of them like nids oh boy lol.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

Arson Fire wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

But yeah there is more heavy weapons, but still not a lot. IMO Nids has the BEST gun in the game, sadly nids have it.... the HVC, its an Assault D3 shots Str 9, -2ap 3D! For less than 20pts!!! Imagine is Eldar or Marines has that on HQ's, Fast, and Heavy slot units and a Str 8 version on Troops lol.

You really think venom cannons are the best gun in the game? Odd take.
We've had those for two and a half years now, and last I looked, they still aren't breaking the game in half.
Just looking at the point cost of the gun doesn't tell the full story. You have to look at the full cost of the unit. That's where they get expensive.

And Again the "gun" as i said, sadly its on nids and not CWE/SM, the gun it self not the army using the gun. If Wraithlords, Turrets, WS's, Falcons, and 5-6 other units could take 1-2 of them like nids oh boy lol.

Ah right. Sure I suppose. If nids had a bunch of platforms like those that could wield multiple of them for cheap then they would indeed be powerful.
I think that's factored into the design though. They get a good gun, but they can't field a huge number of them compared to the number of lascannons/eldar lances/etc you can cram into other armies.

By that metric I'd personally look at orks to find a large collection of guns that would be broken if put into an army with a higher ballistic skill.

I more or less just mad they get that gun and its not worth a damn on them hahahaha.

Aash wrote:

 Nerak wrote:
This rule makes me wonder if GW intends to continue the trend of mono weapon squads. It seems to me like lately the idea of special weapons and heavy weapons in squads is going away. Instead all squad members have special weapons. Like the hellblasters and such.

That's a good point. It would be a minor nerf to tacticals which ends up pushing Primaris.

And, as usual, hits csm as well.

Personally I'm okay with this. It's only a -1 to hit. Not like in a previous edition where if anyone in the unit moved no heavy weapons could fire at all.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

Aash wrote:

 Nerak wrote:
This rule makes me wonder if GW intends to continue the trend of mono weapon squads. It seems to me like lately the idea of special weapons and heavy weapons in squads is going away. Instead all squad members have special weapons. Like the hellblasters and such.

That's a good point. It would be a minor nerf to tacticals which ends up pushing Primaris.

And, as usual, hits csm as well.

I hadn't thought of that. So tacticals and csm are iconic units that have the majority of models per unit without heavy weapons and one or two with special/heavy weapons.

Are there any other common/iconic units that will suffer from this? Or do most units these days come with the same loadout for all the models in the unit?

 Elbows wrote:
What's wrong with being harsh? If anything, in this kind of situation, a conga-line is actually a logical thing. It would represent a heavy weapon providing covering fire while someone does sneak out and grab the objective - assuming we ignore the silliness of walking around a table to stand on a token as a "wargame objective".

Note: this is only necessitated because of squad coherency which is a necessary evil. Back in 2nd edition Imperial Guard squads could detach their heavy weapon for precisely this reason; providing covering fire while the squad maneuvers, etc. 40K isn't much of a wargame, but rules changes like this are making it even less so.

Personally, I welcome anything that makes conga-lines go away.

Aash wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

Aash wrote:

 Nerak wrote:
This rule makes me wonder if GW intends to continue the trend of mono weapon squads. It seems to me like lately the idea of special weapons and heavy weapons in squads is going away. Instead all squad members have special weapons. Like the hellblasters and such.

That's a good point. It would be a minor nerf to tacticals which ends up pushing Primaris.

And, as usual, hits csm as well.

I hadn't thought of that. So tacticals and csm are iconic units that have the majority of models per unit without heavy weapons and one or two with special/heavy weapons.

Are there any other common/iconic units that will suffer from this? Or do most units these days come with the same loadout for all the models in the unit?

Terminators, guardsmen, and cultists come immediately to mind.

Do none of you even remember pre-8th edition?

3rd-5th: heavy weapons could not even fire if the unit moved.

6th & 7th: had the -1 to hit if the unit moved.

8th was the first edition in 20 years where heavy weapons went to model-based movement issues, but it also screwed up with vehicles.

Vehicles and heavies also had a different relationship with movement:

3rd-4th was set movement amounts and a number of weapons(heavy or other) allowed to even fire.

At some point str 6, and then str 5 and below weapons were always able to fire.

8th penalized all vehicle movement and Heavy weapons, this was not good. Not even half the armies/vehicles that are supposed to be mobile fire support had any sort of mitigating rules to deal with the penalties.

In short: the infantry model held to the unit's movement is a step back, but at least you can still fire at a penalty, and at least it still cleans up some issues. It would be nice if some specific units got thier move-and-fire abilities back(the USR formerly known as Relentless).

 Blackie wrote:
It's another significant step into making SM even more competitive.

It's amazing how we started with heavy weapons disallowed to fire if they moved, improved into hit on 6s, then buffed with just a -1 to hit penalty and now they have no penalty at all.

So why even bother with the heavy/assault label then?

Its gone back forth thorugh different editions.

To be fair its not just Marines, Sisters got Retibutors ignoring Heavy Weapon penalties if they move in their 8th /8.5 Codex.

I would love there to have been a proper 40K Index style update book for all armies rather than dozens of faq pdf pages to print out....again

Fundamentally, model level bookkeeping with up to 200 models on a table is pretty bad game design. “This squad did this, this squad did that” is way easier for both players to track through the turn.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

Aash wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

Aash wrote:

 Nerak wrote:
This rule makes me wonder if GW intends to continue the trend of mono weapon squads. It seems to me like lately the idea of special weapons and heavy weapons in squads is going away. Instead all squad members have special weapons. Like the hellblasters and such.

That's a good point. It would be a minor nerf to tacticals which ends up pushing Primaris.

And, as usual, hits csm as well.

I hadn't thought of that. So tacticals and csm are iconic units that have the majority of models per unit without heavy weapons and one or two with special/heavy weapons.

Are there any other common/iconic units that will suffer from this? Or do most units these days come with the same loadout for all the models in the unit?

Terminators, guardsmen, and cultists come immediately to mind.

I'll be honest, I had not even looked at my Terminator's Data Sheet throughout all of 8th; while they lost mitigation for move and shoot heavy, the other named units should not have such mitigation.

Guardsmen are either a single model with heavy in a unit without, or a unit full of heavies. I don't often move my units with heavies to begin with(set them up on/near home objectives, move to objective first turn, sit and fire rest of game)

Cultists: why are you even taking the stubber? and even if you are for an autogun/back field objective holder... see guardsmen.

Tactical squads are not "suffering" either; you finally had a reason in the last few editions to take Multi-meltas on infantry(3rd-5th, you shouldn't have bothered other than to create a 13" radius zone of "no" to vehicles, but said zone was stationary all game), now you are either combat squadding the heavy into a stationary point or shooting like a guardsman with it on the move. spreading the unit out for the sake of avoiding a minor penalty is not good tactics(and was often going to cause coherency issues with your close-ranged special/melee guy being on the other end of your congaline to your heavy weapon, he was either going to have to move anyway, or your closer-to-enemy elements were going to have to move back).

MaxT wrote:
Fundamentally, model level bookkeeping with up to 200 models on a table is pretty bad game design. “This squad did this, this squad did that” is way easier for both players to track through the turn.

Agreed.

 Kommissar Kel wrote:
Do none of you even remember pre-8th edition?

3rd-5th: heavy weapons could not even fire if the unit moved.

6th & 7th: had the -1 to hit if the unit moved.

-1 to hit penalty for heavy weapons is an 8th edition thing. It used to be hit on 6s regardless of the BS value in those editions.

It wasn't a big deal that penalty in 8th edition as tanks with heavy weapons are tipycally BS3+ so they hit on 4s if they move. Razorbacks with twin ass cannons or twin lascannons always did good for with my SW, even if they were considered sub optimal choices in a sub optimal army. But that's a misconception, those tanks are actually good even with the -1 to hit thing if they move, and SW aren't bad at all: both are simply outperformed by other units/chapters.

 JohnnyHell wrote:

MaxT wrote:
Fundamentally, model level bookkeeping with up to 200 models on a table is pretty bad game design. “This squad did this, this squad did that” is way easier for both players to track through the turn.

Agreed.

You'd have a point if the game weren't IGOUGO and it wasn't already easy to remember those things to begin with. Comparing that situation to bookkeeping is stupidly misleading.

Forget it. I'm not arguing with people who think that "But it's an abstraction!!!" constitutes a valid counter-argument for bad rules design.

Somebody mentioned changes to auras and I am willing to bet we'll see wholly within auras like they have in AoS. AoS 1.0 had 40k auras and it meant there were silly congalines all over the map. Nowadays they've changed it to wholly within and you now actually have to think about how you move your units while reaping benefits from heroes. Imo a much better system and not as silly.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Forget it. I'm not arguing with people who think that "But it's an abstraction!!!" constitutes a valid counter-argument for bad rules design.

You like that? It's one of my favorites.

 Blackie wrote:

 Kommissar Kel wrote:
Do none of you even remember pre-8th edition?

3rd-5th: heavy weapons could not even fire if the unit moved.

6th & 7th: had the -1 to hit if the unit moved.

-1 to hit penalty for heavy weapons is an 8th edition thing. It used to be hit on 6s regardless of the BS value in those editions.

It wasn't a big deal that penalty in 8th edition as tanks with heavy weapons are tipycally BS3+ so they hit on 4s if they move. Razorbacks with twin ass cannons or twin lascannons always did good for with my SW, even if they were considered sub optimal choices in a sub optimal army. But that's a misconception, those tanks are actually good even with the -1 to hit thing if they move, and SW aren't bad at all: both are simply outperformed by other units/chapters.

I knew there was a portion I was missing.

so it was 6th with S6 and less weapons full fire, and 7th with s5 and less right? trying to remember the specifics across 6 editions, and what was where without searching up the old rules is hard.

and while move-and-fire at -1 with heavies isn't that bad on it's own, it does cause issue with BS4+ and 5+ armies, especially when their vehicles/Monsters are supposed to be mobile fire support. If you get dropped to hitting less than half shots whil moving, you are not mobile fire support(guard, Taj, Admech, Nids and stealer cults, DEldar, CEldar, and Orks to some degree, basically most armies).

Martel732 wrote:
I've got dozens of heavy weapon marines. This is fine in my book. A vehicle mounted autocannon should have an advantage over a dude slinging one.

I wonder if the point values between the two will differ as a result.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:

MaxT wrote:
Fundamentally, model level bookkeeping with up to 200 models on a table is pretty bad game design. “This squad did this, this squad did that” is way easier for both players to track through the turn.

Agreed.

You'd have a point if the game weren't IGOUGO and it wasn't already easy to remember those things to begin with. Comparing that situation to bookkeeping is stupidly misleading.

Easy to remember... for you

MaxT isn't comparing the situation to bookkeeping. The posters you quote are talking about the process of 'bookkeeping' as in 'keeping track of your models and what's going on'.

I don't understand why some people are upset by this change. The VAST majority of INFANTRY units either don't have access to Heavy weapons, are mostly Heavy weapons (Devs/Havocs) or have the OPTION to just not take that 1 Heavy.

So this affects....Tac Marines really. So either don't move your bolter Marines or don't take the Heavy in the first place.

Regardless of whether you agree that this will streamline the game or not, it absolutely WILL make games faster.
Because you won't have players taking time to precisely conga line their units to maximize weapon ranges.
This will also encourage army building will units that have more similar models. Whether you like that or not (I'm on the fence myself as I like units with diverse models) you cannot deny that it will make for quicker, easier to learn games

-