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I only just noticed that the Insane Bravery stratagem (auto-pass a morale test) is now limited to once per game in 9th edition, even though the consequences of failing a morale test are not as bad as in the previous edition.

Is this a change that a significant number of players were clamoring for? To me at least, this nerf feels wholly unnecessary for a stratagem that already costs 2 CP.

I like it actually. The few times morale actually mattered people could easily rely on insane bravery. 9th edition seems to aim on morale losses not being as heavy as before but also making morale actually come up in the game more often, seeing And they shall know no fear has been changed. I'm curious about Orks and Tyranids Codizes, will be interesting to see if they stay mostly immune to morale.

-Guardsman- wrote:
To me at least, this nerf feels wholly unnecessary for a stratagem that already costs 2 CP.

I think there's a good case to be made that it shouldn't exist at all, so the fact that it remains, once per game, if you really need it, seems a decent compromise.

In 8th morale was pretty easy to mitigate; small units and Marines never had to worry about it and hordes had various tricks to ignore it, including the Insane Bravery stratagem. In general I would say that a mechanic that is commonly circumvented- but punishing when it isn't- is bad design.

Morale is still largely ignorable for Marines and thus largely ignorable for a very large segment of the playerbase, but now armies like Guard will be failing morale tests more often without it causing the entire remainder of your squad to evaporate. It's a significant improvement IMO.

Personally I would love for tyranid synapse to be you take morale tests using the leadership of the nearest synapse creature unit and ignore all penalties to the roll.

I.E. The hive mind drives you forward and doesn't care about your individual losses but that doesn't mean the hive mind itself can't be pushed into a retreat (albeit very difficult).

Even a low chance of failure is significantly better than absolute immunity. Every time.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
The few times morale actually mattered people could easily rely on insane bravery.

Disagree on the "easily". 2 CP is a hefty price to pay. Hefty enough to ensure balance, in my opinion. I've never used this stratagem lightly.

It's like when people complain about Agents of Vect, which negates an enemy stratagem for 4 CP. "It can turn the tide of the game!" Well, duh. I'd expect nothing less from a 4 CP stratagem that still has 1/6 chance of not even working. Technically, even a 1 CP stratagem like the good ol' Command Re-Roll can turn the tide of the game, if you use it at the right time. That's the key to using stratagems: save your CPs for when you can get the most mileage out of them. Next turn, your opponent can use their own stratagems in the exact same way.

Everyone has access to Insane Bravery. Just because some armies need it more than others doesn't mean the stratagem unfairly favors them.

 catbarf wrote:
I think there's a good case to be made that it shouldn't exist at all

I think this case could have been made in 8th, but not anymore, given the much lower likelihood of a squad's remnants being bumped off an objective by a failed morale test. In the current edition, I don't see myself ever needing this stratagem unless the squad is literally down to its last guy sitting on an objective marker. That's what the stratagem is for; that's what you pay 2 CP for.

It's just baffling to me that, after nerfing morale as a mechanic, GW also saw fit to nerf a morale-resisting stratagem. They should have just picked one.

.

Not gamebreaking but it did make my pre-PA Night lords a total joke.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
Not gamebreaking but it did make my pre-PA Night lords a total joke.

They were already a joke, because anything morale related IS a joke besides only the Jackals subfaction of Scions, and even then that was kinda eh.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
Not gamebreaking but it did make my pre-PA Night lords a total joke.

They were already a joke, because anything morale related IS a joke besides only the Jackals subfaction of Scions, and even then that was kinda eh.

I mean, the only times my chapter tactic wouldve mattered, my opponent just paiid 2 cp

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
Not gamebreaking but it did make my pre-PA Night lords a total joke.

They were already a joke, because anything morale related IS a joke besides only the Jackals subfaction of Scions, and even then that was kinda eh.

I mean, the only times my chapter tactic wouldve mattered, my opponent just paiid 2 cp

Well Necrons originally paid for an army wide rule they almost never used. Consider yourself lucky your opponent spent 2CP in order to stop yours.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I like it actually. The few times morale actually mattered people could easily rely on insane bravery. 9th edition seems to aim on morale losses not being as heavy as before but also making morale actually come up in the game more often, seeing And they shall know no fear has been changed. I'm curious about Orks and Tyranids Codizes, will be interesting to see if they stay mostly immune to morale.

I never really cared, my orkz were CP hungry. I would routinely bring a triple battalion for no other reason than I required the extra CP to function competitively. The loota bomb would eat 6 or more CP a turn, double shoot, exploding 5s, reroll bad # of shots, hell add in grot shields and mob up and it was 8CP used turn 1.

I have used it recently though to great effect. Notably I used it to save the nob in my Boyz squad from running away (guaranteed failure) and then used the strat to resurrect the entire mob (Green tide) and have them bum rush the Marine intercessors who wiped me out the turn before. Was rather pleasant watching his face as the Mob of 30 he had whittled down to 1 return full force and gut his Intercessors and a squad of Hellblasters.

 Lance845 wrote:
Personally I would love for tyranid synapse to be you take morale tests using the leadership of the nearest synapse creature unit and ignore all penalties to the roll.

I.E. The hive mind drives you forward and doesn't care about your individual losses but that doesn't mean the hive mind itself can't be pushed into a retreat (albeit very difficult).

Even a low chance of failure is significantly better than absolute immunity. Every time.

That’d be pretty awful. There’d be absolutely no reason to take big units of gants at that point and that’s one of the best bits about playing nids.

C4790M wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Personally I would love for tyranid synapse to be you take morale tests using the leadership of the nearest synapse creature unit and ignore all penalties to the roll.

I.E. The hive mind drives you forward and doesn't care about your individual losses but that doesn't mean the hive mind itself can't be pushed into a retreat (albeit very difficult).

Even a low chance of failure is significantly better than absolute immunity. Every time.

That’d be pretty awful. There’d be absolutely no reason to take big units of gants at that point and that’s one of the best bits about playing nids.

Complete immunity to core mechanics of the game is a problem on all levels of any game. If morale is going to be a mechanic in the game then everyone should be some kind of influenced by it. Also, it means Nids would also make the test at LD 10 with no penalties from casualties. It's as good as you can get while not being completely immune.

Ld 10 ignoring penalties IS immunity.

You can’t roll above 6 on a d6, and 6 is less than 10.

 Lance845 wrote:
Complete immunity to core mechanics of the game is a problem on all levels of any game. If morale is going to be a mechanic in the game then everyone should be some kind of influenced by it. Also, it means Nids would also make the test at LD 10 with no penalties from casualties. It's as good as you can get while not being completely immune.

That's nonsense, you can easily build systems where the only distinction between factions is which core rule each of them ignores. Few games distil the problem down to this level but many games work on the basis of the specific overriding the general which means that every specific rule essential breaks a core mechanic.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Ld 10 ignoring penalties IS immunity.

You can’t roll above 6 on a d6, and 6 is less than 10.

I am perhaps remembering 8ths morale then. Either way. It should be designed in such a way to not equal immunity.

Making it once a game is a good change. Probably it shouldn't exist at all.

 Lance845 wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Ld 10 ignoring penalties IS immunity.

You can’t roll above 6 on a d6, and 6 is less than 10.

I am perhaps remembering 8ths morale then. Either way. It should be designed in such a way to not equal immunity.

Nope. 8th worked much the same-if you have Ld 10 and ignore penalties, you would never take penalties or casualties from morale.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Ld 10 ignoring penalties IS immunity.

You can’t roll above 6 on a d6, and 6 is less than 10.

I think this comes down to how "penalties" are being defined here.

Going by the mini-rulebook for 9th, page 45 defines the Morale test mechanism as roll a d6, add the number of casualties inflicted on the unit during a turn, and compare it to the highest Ld value in the unit, with a natural 1 on the die being an auto-pass.

There aren't any penalties involved in that mechanism, but against a Ld of 10 you'd need to cause a minimum of 5 models to be destroyed to have a chance of Combat Attrition kicking in, with 9 being the "sweet spot" - the only way the Morale test can be passed at that stage is a natural 1, which would've worked if you'd caused 19 kills.

I don't think it's going to prove useful more than once per battle anyway.

Basically nobody cares about morale. MSU armies have squads that are small enough such that when there's a possibility of failing morale, the squad is also combat-ineffective [and even then, they only fail on like a 6], and horde armies essentially all have ways of circumventing it though Mob Rule, Synapse, or being both MSU and a horde in the case of Guard.

Particularly since only one guy flees on a failed test, and then remainder only run 1/3 of the time, you would basically only use this stratagem if your squad has been shot down to 1 and that guy is completely critical to victory. Which could happen, but isn't going to be happening every turn.

It's not or wasn't game breaking, though it is among the many reasons morale is so lackluster.

While it's "ok" being there, the game would be (and would have been) better if the strat was gone IMO.

My ork boddy with multiple units of 30 boys used it quite well.

If you did not kill all of them they would have one model left. Pop stratagem and then greentide on 30 boys and charge me with a very good chance of making the charge.

Now it cab be used qhen you try to shoot something of objectives. Gretchskins come to mind.

I never used more than once per game anyway. It's very useful for some armies but only limited to a few scenarios and 2 CPs is an expensive tax, especially after from 3 till the end of the game, when that stratagem is more likely to be applied and most of the available CPs are likely to be already spent.

It could be a clutch Strat with the way the new missions work, so once per game stops you being able to score with your last man all the time. Brings *some* meaning to Morale!

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I don't think it's going to prove useful more than once per battle anyway.

Basically nobody cares about morale. MSU armies have squads that are small enough such that when there's a possibility of failing morale, the squad is also combat-ineffective [and even then, they only fail on like a 6], and horde armies essentially all have ways of circumventing it though Mob Rule, Synapse, or being both MSU and a horde in the case of Guard.

Particularly since only one guy flees on a failed test, and then remainder only run 1/3 of the time, you would basically only use this stratagem if your squad has been shot down to 1 and that guy is completely critical to victory. Which could happen, but isn't going to be happening every turn.

Daemons say hello. Strong incentives to use big combat blobs, extremely weak morale mitigation.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Complete immunity to core mechanics of the game is a problem on all levels of any game. If morale is going to be a mechanic in the game then everyone should be some kind of influenced by it. Also, it means Nids would also make the test at LD 10 with no penalties from casualties. It's as good as you can get while not being completely immune.

That's nonsense, you can easily build systems where the only distinction between factions is which core rule each of them ignores. Few games distil the problem down to this level but many games work on the basis of the specific overriding the general which means that every specific rule essential breaks a core mechanic.

I think the specific problem with morale in 40k is that about half the player base runs a variant of space marines, who literally have a rule called "and they shall know no fear". You then have tyranids, hivemind creatures who don't care about their own lives whatsoever as long as they're in synapse. Necrons, immortal killing machines who are fearless. Custodes, genetically engineered to a level that makes a marine look like a guardsman, and have no fear. Chaos, absolutely insane marines who didn't have fear before and definitely don't have fear now. And then you have armies that are said to be fearless, like admech skitarii, who are supposed to be mind linked to the net with a near fanatical loyalty, yet have the same LD as guardsmen.

When it comes down to it, if you went by fluff, the only armies that should be testing morale on a regular basis are IG, Tau, Orks for smaller units, chaos cultists, and fringe units like techpriests or inquisitors. Therefore morale is a tricky thing to nail. The vast majority of the codexes in the game ignore it outright, many of the rest mostly ignore it. At the end of the day it only really affects a few horde factions, who mostly get abilities to ignore morale, because morale actually hurts them. So you either make it so dangerous that it actively cripples the few armies that use it, or you tone it down so playing one of those codexes isn't a major handicap only for it to be pretty much useless.

Simply put I don't envy trying to make morale interesting yet not just cripple the 3 or 4 armies that actually interact with it on a regular basis. At least marines can run now, which I always figured was them trying to protect relics or haul away wounded, but morale still feels like kind of a pointless stat for most armies. At least it's better than say 5th, where failing morale was vicious towards armies like IG but actively helped marines in most situations because they could fall back and not get swept. Heck BT even got free movement out of failed LD tests.

Yeah. I've said it before, I'll say it again-Morale either needs to be changed to be impactful for EVERYONE, or made a specific rule for especially cowardly units. (Cowardly for 40k-a Guardsmen is sure as hell braver than I!)

OR instead of tying the entire Leadership stat to "morale and nothing else", you could instead have it represent actual leadership.

Orks may not have "fear" but they absolutely struggle with Command and Control. Tyranids may not rout or flee, but you can disrupt the Hive Mind's local network. Marines may have excellent individual initiative and feel no personal fear, but you can still interrupt their connection to fire support and their perception of the wider battlefield that a C2 structure offers...

Unfortunately, we're too concerned with whether our cavalry analogues are on wolves or bikes to worry about such inane nonsense as command and control in wartime!

It could be a clutch Strat with the way the new missions work, so once per game stops you being able to score with your last man all the time. Brings *some* meaning to Morale!

This. I mean, they promised that "morale would matter more" in 9th, but so far, they've somehow managed to make it matter LESS, while also making it way more time consuming. It may be my least favorite thing about 9th. So, if we can skip it once a game - that's fine by me.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
Not gamebreaking but it did make my pre-PA Night lords a total joke.

They were already a joke, because anything morale related IS a joke besides only the Jackals subfaction of Scions, and even then that was kinda eh.

I mean, the only times my chapter tactic wouldve mattered, my opponent just paiid 2 cp

Well Necrons originally paid for an army wide rule they almost never used. Consider yourself lucky your opponent spent 2CP in order to stop yours.

How is that relevant to a post specifically talking about morale?
And how is "but butbut, this army had it worse!!" even an argument to justify someone's complaint?

The Newman wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I don't think it's going to prove useful more than once per battle anyway.

Basically nobody cares about morale. MSU armies have squads that are small enough such that when there's a possibility of failing morale, the squad is also combat-ineffective [and even then, they only fail on like a 6], and horde armies essentially all have ways of circumventing it though Mob Rule, Synapse, or being both MSU and a horde in the case of Guard.

Particularly since only one guy flees on a failed test, and then remainder only run 1/3 of the time, you would basically only use this stratagem if your squad has been shot down to 1 and that guy is completely critical to victory. Which could happen, but isn't going to be happening every turn.

Daemons say hello. Strong incentives to use big combat blobs, extremely weak morale mitigation.

Daemons and Necrons were really the only morale vulnerable armies in 8th, and now morale is just ignorance, so like nobody really cares.

Unless you have 1 guy left of your squad and they're going to obsec the point, you dont really need insane bravery anymore, and i don't think one guy on the point as the deciding factor is going to be that frequent.