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In a squad-level game, though, it should be none of the squad or all of the squad. Because you interact with the squad.

Taking it down to an individual model level is too much granularity above a skirmish level game.

 insaniak wrote:
In a squad-level game, though, it should be none of the squad or all of the squad. Because you interact with the squad.

Taking it down to an individual model level is too much granularity above a skirmish level game.

Sure but that means every squad needs to be identically equipped as well. No sergeants, no special weapons, because individual model level is too much granularity.

 Hellebore wrote:
It was the risk of exposing 1 model exposes half the squad, but gives you half the squad to shoot with.

Rather than either none of the squad, or all of the squad.

Oh I see. But that's no different than just placing half your models out there. It's not really a *new* choice, right?

I think the problem I have with the proposal, on further thought, is it leaves the player without control over how many models are exposed. It seems like it's just none, half, or all. In a way it reduces choice.

It was specifically to prevent gaming the rules where you can snipe with one model just by placement shenanigans. Because the other solution was to make the whole squad targetable instead. It's a middle ground between the two.

 insaniak wrote:
In a squad-level game, though, it should be none of the squad or all of the squad. Because you interact with the squad.

Taking it down to an individual model level is too much granularity above a skirmish level game.

I don't think that's true. I think one of the faults of 3-7th is the inability for Heavy weapons to split fire. That's a case where the focus on full-unit action went too far. I get where the sentiment comes from, but I saw it cause a lot of grief when new players had to waste bolter shots from their Tactical Squad while their Missile Launcher shaot at a Monster or whater. You pick your detail on a case by case basis.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hellebore wrote:
It was specifically to prevent gaming the rules where you can snipe with one model just by placement shenanigans. Because the other solution was to make the whole squad targetable instead. It's a middle ground between the two.

How do you feel about my proposal of "defender's choice"?

 Insectum7 wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
In a squad-level game, though, it should be none of the squad or all of the squad. Because you interact with the squad.

Taking it down to an individual model level is too much granularity above a skirmish level game.

I don't think that's true. I think one of the faults of 3-7th is the inability for Heavy weapons to split fire. That's a case where the focus on full-unit action went too far. I get where the sentiment comes from, but I saw it cause a lot of grief when new players had to waste bolter shots from their Tactical Squad while their Missile Launcher shaot at a Monster or whater. You pick your detail on a case by case basis.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hellebore wrote:
It was specifically to prevent gaming the rules where you can snipe with one model just by placement shenanigans. Because the other solution was to make the whole squad targetable instead. It's a middle ground between the two.

How do you feel about my proposal of "defender's choice"?

Isn't the issue that you can then leave out your lascannon dude to shoot and take your casualties on your bolter dudes in cover? That's what I remember was a common practice - you only get to target one model, but I get to take the casualty so obviously not the guy left out.

 Hellebore wrote:

Sure but that means every squad needs to be identically equipped as well. No sergeants, no special weapons, because individual model level is too much granularity.

Exactly where to draw the line is going to be different for everyone. For me, I'm fine with granularity so long as it adds something worthwhile.

Allowing squad members to take upgraded weaponry to change the role or firepower level of the squad is fine for me, because it gives the player control over how their army functions on the table, and makes building the models more interesting.

Placing the wound allocation focus on which individual models can be seen slows down the shooting phase, allows for weird edge-case shenanigans from players deliberately blocking their own models' LoS in order to snipe specific enemies, and does not (IMO) add any significant value to the game in return. Sure, it makes model placement matter... but so does just allowing the squad to benefit from cover if at least some of the squad is in cover. So you're trading how much model placement matters for ease and speed of play.

 Hellebore wrote:

Isn't the issue that you can then leave out your lascannon dude to shoot and take your casualties on your bolter dudes in cover? That's what I remember was a common practice - you only get to target one model, but I get to take the casualty so obviously not the guy left out.

Fair. . . Though through the agency lens the guy out of cover dies, then a buddy picks up the weapon and carries on.

Heh. Ok what about taking your half-squad idea and applying it here? The defender can choose whether to lose the outlying model, or take casualties from the rest of the squad up until half (roundding down) the total squad members. At that point the outlying trooper has to die.

That might be too complicated?

 Hellebore wrote:
Isn't the issue that you can then leave out your lascannon dude to shoot and take your casualties on your bolter dudes in cover?

The alternative is that the dudes are out in line of sight getting killed first anyway.

Depending on the area cover/intervening model rules that may or may not make a huge difference. In 5e odds were that something else was already going to be giving that squad a 4+ or 5+ so hiding 90% of a squad behind a wall was less of a favourable move.

I'm not scrolling back enough to find the post lamenting that special weapons would be the last to be taken off except for specific hits in certain editions. That's kind of the point. We're trained that if the soldier carrying the machine gun or grenade launcher, as two examples, were to get killed then someone else picks up their weapon. It's absurd to think that armies in 40K wouldn't operate under the same sort of TTPs.

 Nevelon wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
To be honest the tanky character tanking all the shots was also very silly.

Except the ones he didn’t want to take, which were Look our Sir!’d over to the mooks in the squad.

No arguments that it was also a flawed system open to abuse/manipulation.

Pretty much all the systems have issues, which is why I prefer the “the guy taking the hits just kills who he wants, if they are already wounded, that guy needs to finish soaking up wounds before moving to the next one”. It’s not perfect, but at least it’s fast. Splash in a little precision hits to taste.

Sounds like a revival of RT/2nd. Had to always shoot the closest model/unit, so people would turtle up with board-range weapons behind a Space Marine Terminator Lord (3+ save on 2D6) with a Power Field (2++ save taken only AFTER the Terminator Armor save might have failed) who just stood out front. Then drop 12" Krak Missile templates on your army from a horde of Cyclone Missile Launchers and kill anything trying to flank the Lord with Assault Cannons.

The only way I ever managed to get rid of that Lord was a suicide charge with a Swooping Hawk hero who had a Vortex grenade and literally had to land right next to him and also be under the template because the Lord would have the wargear that auto-detonated the grenade if someone tried to throw it.

It was the best of times, it was the dumbest of times...

 Kagetora wrote:
Then drop 12" Krak Missile templates on your army from a horde of Cyclone Missile Launchers . . .

6" You played it wrong if you were doing 12"

 Insectum7 wrote:
6" You played it wrong if you were doing 12"

Pulls out the 24" wide holocaust power template...

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

Isn't the issue that you can then leave out your lascannon dude to shoot and take your casualties on your bolter dudes in cover? That's what I remember was a common practice - you only get to target one model, but I get to take the casualty so obviously not the guy left out.

Fair. . . Though through the agency lens the guy out of cover dies, then a buddy picks up the weapon and carries on.

Heh. Ok what about taking your half-squad idea and applying it here? The defender can choose whether to lose the outlying model, or take casualties from the rest of the squad up until half (roundding down) the total squad members. At that point the outlying trooper has to die.

That might be too complicated?

How about this: the defender chooses the casualties but the cover save of the unit is equal to the worst save of all possible targets. But technically each save can be rolled sequentially allowing the defender to kill off models out in the open (or in inferior cover) and thereby secure a better save for the remaining models.

So in the lascannon scenario, the defender can have any model die but none of those models can claim a cover save so long as that lascannon lives. I guess the guys keep running out of cover to grab the lascannon as the last guy dies. Once the defender finally relents and removes the lascannon (who is the only guy out of cover) the subsequent wounds can now all be made with a cover save. Likewise the defender may choose to remove models from outside line-of-sight, but he if were to remove every model within line-of-sight all of the remaining models would be safe from any remaining wounds.

This would make the lascannon immune to rhino-snipes while still preventing him from claiming a cover save without being in cover.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Kagetora wrote:
Then drop 12" Krak Missile templates on your army from a horde of Cyclone Missile Launchers . . .

6" You played it wrong if you were doing 12"

1/2" radius per missile, isn't it? 12 missiles = 6" radius, 12" blast?

ETA: NM. I just looked it up in the Wargear book. You're right, it was diameter. Still, 6" diameter S8 -6 save D10 wounds. Still ridiculous. I guess it felt like a personal pan pizza getting dropped on my units.

I remember the Baneblade in Apocalypse had a 10" diameter template. We always called that one the pizza.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

Isn't the issue that you can then leave out your lascannon dude to shoot and take your casualties on your bolter dudes in cover? That's what I remember was a common practice - you only get to target one model, but I get to take the casualty so obviously not the guy left out.

Fair. . . Though through the agency lens the guy out of cover dies, then a buddy picks up the weapon and carries on.

Heh. Ok what about taking your half-squad idea and applying it here? The defender can choose whether to lose the outlying model, or take casualties from the rest of the squad up until half (roundding down) the total squad members. At that point the outlying trooper has to die.

That might be too complicated?

How about this: the defender chooses the casualties but the cover save of the unit is equal to the worst save of all possible targets. But technically each save can be rolled sequentially allowing the defender to kill off models out in the open (or in inferior cover) and thereby secure a better save for the remaining models.

So in the lascannon scenario, the defender can have any model die but none of those models can claim a cover save so long as that lascannon lives. I guess the guys keep running out of cover to grab the lascannon as the last guy dies. Once the defender finally relents and removes the lascannon (who is the only guy out of cover) the subsequent wounds can now all be made with a cover save. Likewise the defender may choose to remove models from outside line-of-sight, but he if were to remove every model within line-of-sight all of the remaining models would be safe from any remaining wounds.

This would make the lascannon immune to rhino-snipes while still preventing him from claiming a cover save without being in cover.

Ooh, that's nice! I"m trying to think if it could be gamed somehow, but nothing really jumps out at me. Simple and effective.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kagetora wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Kagetora wrote:
Then drop 12" Krak Missile templates on your army from a horde of Cyclone Missile Launchers . . .

6" You played it wrong if you were doing 12"

1/2" radius per missile, isn't it? 12 missiles = 6" radius, 12" blast?

ETA: NM. I just looked it up in the Wargear book. You're right, it was diameter. Still, 6" diameter S8 -6 save D10 wounds. Still ridiculous. I guess it felt like a personal pan pizza getting dropped on my units.

Yeah I thought it was 12" for a game or two, and then felt pretty sheepish wben I reread "diameter".

I think every other template is expressed in radius, which is why it throws you.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

A.T. wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
6" You played it wrong if you were doing 12"

Pulls out the 24" wide holocaust power template...

Ok I don't know that one. Is that from 1st ed Grey Knights? I seem to recall Holocaust in 2nd being the 3" radius template.

I'm imagining a full squad of level 4 psykers pulling something like that.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Ok I don't know that one. Is that from 1st ed Grey Knights? I seem to recall Holocaust in 2nd being the 3" radius template.

The daemonhunters (3e) holocaust was a large template.

In 2e it inflicted an automatic S4 (-1 save) hit on every single living model within 12" of the psyker... so technically a little more than 24" across depending on what base you had.

And then it just kept going, inflicting more hits and wounds on the psyker themselves round after round - twice per turn as it happened in both psychic phases - until you passed an Ld test to stop it or it was nullified.

Inquisition power so 80pts with a jump pack. Kind of a reverse swooping hawk/vortex combo that would do nothing to characters but wipe out a whole flank of infantry.

 Kagetora wrote:


Sounds like a revival of RT/2nd. Had to always shoot the closest model/unit, so people would turtle up with board-range weapons behind a Space Marine Terminator Lord (3+ save on 2D6) with a Power Field (2++ save taken only AFTER the Terminator Armor save might have failed)

Yeah, but that's not what the rules actually said. HITS flowed from front to back, so yes, you could put tough hombres in front to be the first ones hit, but if enough firepower was dumped on the squad, everyone was getting a piece of it.

Speaking of the Cyclone, I recall a game where a player decided to put his terminators against a wall so they would be out of the Cyclone's LOS, but then thoughtfully left one peering around the corner. Pie plate blast coming in 3...2...

I've not played any of the newer stuff, but I think that if you read through the 2nd ed. rules carefully (which not everyone did - even the Battle Bible got things badly wrong), it works fairly well and if you streamline certain aspects (individual jump pack scatter, persistent weapons), you can raise the amount of models on the tabletop while keeping playing time reasonable. My melee rules, for example, save a ton of time, reducing each combat to a single (modified) opposed roll.

 aphyon wrote:
Lets just get straight to the elephant in the room with 5th ed wound allocation.

Group of nob bikers 10 in number all T6 (for being on a bike) with 2 wounds, all have 1 different piece of war gear. apply 10 wound, 1 to each model. fail 8, assign 8 wounds to separate models. nothing actually dies.

Nob Bikers were T5 SV4+ with the bikes. 45 points per model base. Then you wanted to make one a Painboy for FNP with an orderly for FNP re-rolls (+35). Taking the Painboy let you take cybork bodies (5++) for 5ppm. So you could be at 535 points before any differentiating wargear like bosspoles, ammo runts etc.

Building one in Army Builder just now I got 668 points for the squad.

20 T5 wounds at 4+/4+ cover/5++
3 sluggas
3 TL shootas
2 shoota/skorcha kombis
1 shoota/rokkitL Kombi
5 Big Choppas
2 Powerklaws
Bosspole
Waagh Banner (+1 WS - hit marines on 3+, marines hit back 4+)

They were the big bad of the meta for a short while. I don't remember what pushed them out. I only faced them once at a tournament (I lost). Grey Knight terminators had much more staying power after their release.

The problem with Nob Bikers wasn't the core wound allocation rules. It was *drumroll* the Nob Bikers.

They should have been their own unit, rather than an upgrade option for basic Nobs.
They shouldn't have been able to take a Painboy.
'Eavy Armour should have been for the whole unit, not individual models.
Bosspoles shouldn't have had special rules
Models on bikes shouldn't be able to use most two-handed weapons.
Ammo Runts probably should have been unit upgrades rather than individual models.
Taking a Warboss shouldn't have made them Troops choices.

I do remember GK being the more problematic of the units that could exploit the rule, but there were only a handful of units that could even do it. Nob Bikers was one of the others.

My friend’s SoB army at the time was wonderfully counter meta. While melta was generally out of fashion, it was one of the only AV tools they had in the army, so he spammed it. So while generally the bottom of the barrel on a power ranking scale, the ability to spam strength 8 shots with good AP was a hard counter to the wound allocation trick. Also good for killing LRs, which were more resistant to the “spam autocannons/plasma and just strip HPs” AV philosophy of the day.

Bad in most match ups, but it was hilarious to watch GK players just get stuffed by a bottom tier army.

 Arschbombe wrote:
They were the big bad of the meta for a short while. I don't remember what pushed them out. I only faced them once at a tournament (I lost). Grey Knight terminators had much more staying power after their release.

Not pushed out I think, just eclipsed by whatever codex-creeping competition the writers had going on.

Cruddace was one and done with his pet faction and phoned in the rest, Ward seemed to be trying to repeat his WHFB success, Phil Kelly went full 'daemons of chaos' with the Wolves but to his credit reigned it back with the DE. And the rest were 4e books that GW were very hesitant to update.


In an edition of compulsory scoring troops the Orks did have some of the best choices around though, and not just the bikers.

A.T. wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Ok I don't know that one. Is that from 1st ed Grey Knights? I seem to recall Holocaust in 2nd being the 3" radius template.

The daemonhunters (3e) holocaust was a large template.

In 2e it inflicted an automatic S4 (-1 save) hit on every single living model within 12" of the psyker... so technically a little more than 24" across depending on what base you had.

And then it just kept going, inflicting more hits and wounds on the psyker themselves round after round - twice per turn as it happened in both psychic phases - until you passed an Ld test to stop it or it was nullified.

Inquisition power so 80pts with a jump pack. Kind of a reverse swooping hawk/vortex combo that would do nothing to characters but wipe out a whole flank of infantry.

Ahh, that's awesome. I don't remember that at all. I think I was always fishing for Vortex assuming the S4 wasn't going to be useful enough against my usual opponents.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Kagetora wrote:


Sounds like a revival of RT/2nd. Had to always shoot the closest model/unit, so people would turtle up with board-range weapons behind a Space Marine Terminator Lord (3+ save on 2D6) with a Power Field (2++ save taken only AFTER the Terminator Armor save might have failed)

Yeah, but that's not what the rules actually said. HITS flowed from front to back, so yes, you could put tough hombres in front to be the first ones hit, but if enough firepower was dumped on the squad, everyone was getting a piece of it.

Yes Hits did. That's why the Space Marine Lord wasn't part of a squad. Just standing out there a foot or more in front of everything else, tanking all the hits until the player somehow got stupidly unlucky on a save or two. By then, your army was mostly gone. Behind him was another character in Termie Armor with the next best field save stacked on top of it.

RT/2nd Edition was dumb. Fun on occasion, but mostly dumb. What I'm describing is just scratching the surface.

30 years go by, and even then I don't miss it.

 Kagetora wrote:
Yes Hits did. That's why the Space Marine Lord wasn't part of a squad. Just standing out there a foot or more in front of everything else, tanking all the hits until the player somehow got stupidly unlucky on a save or two. By then, your army was mostly gone. Behind him was another character in Termie Armor with the next best field save stacked on top of it.

RT/2nd Edition was dumb. Fun on occasion, but mostly dumb. What I'm describing is just scratching the surface.

30 years go by, and even then I don't miss it.

I'm struggling to imagine a board where a single model can block every fire lane. It was perfectly legal to turn a squad to limit their arc of fire to avoid something you don't want to shoot, and equally legal to target different classes of targets. You are not required to shoot an individual model if a tank is behind it.

A turret, for example, can point in any direction, and must only choose closest/easiest within that fire arc. I'm not seeing how what you describe could actually happen.

A non-trivial amount of problems with 2nd were due to people not understanding or employing the rules correctly. This sounds like one of them.

Move over rhino-sniping, we now have "just turn your head to the side" sniping.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
Move over rhino-sniping, we now have "just turn your head to the side" sniping.

Yup, that was a thing. I myself did a lot of "between the blind grenades sniping" in those days.

Commissar's right though. There were pretty easy ways to circumvent the tanky Chaos Lord situation.

For anyone interested, I recently discovered that one of the managers of the Spain branch of GW made a 3rd edition squat army list, I suppose by no means official, but an interesting triviality of history that seems worth being aware of. One interesting thing is that it says Squats hate orks, but doesn't describe how that manifests in the game's rules, also for some reason squats have Strength 4 lasguns because their lasers are stronger

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Kagetora wrote:
Yes Hits did. That's why the Space Marine Lord wasn't part of a squad. Just standing out there a foot or more in front of everything else, tanking all the hits until the player somehow got stupidly unlucky on a save or two. By then, your army was mostly gone. Behind him was another character in Termie Armor with the next best field save stacked on top of it.

RT/2nd Edition was dumb. Fun on occasion, but mostly dumb. What I'm describing is just scratching the surface.

30 years go by, and even then I don't miss it.

I'm struggling to imagine a board where a single model can block every fire lane. It was perfectly legal to turn a squad to limit their arc of fire to avoid something you don't want to shoot, and equally legal to target different classes of targets. You are not required to shoot an individual model if a tank is behind it.

A turret, for example, can point in any direction, and must only choose closest/easiest within that fire arc. I'm not seeing how what you describe could actually happen.

A non-trivial amount of problems with 2nd were due to people not understanding or employing the rules correctly. This sounds like one of them.

Bear in mind two things...

This was nearly 30 years ago, and all I remember for 100% sure is the bitter taste that some of that crap left.

Also, I was new to the game (although I'd been playing WFB and Battletech previously), so I may not have been the best player standing at a 40k tabletop.

I'll also point out that being able to turn a model so they can see 1-degree past an enemy model to something behind it isn't really a strong argument for the rules being good...just even more stupid.