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 Unit1126PLL wrote:
If you would rather have accuracy of measurement than convenience, that's fine.

A "Large Blast" weapon could hit every mini within 2.5" (or 2" or whatever) of the target model.

If that's all that's needed to mollify your concerns, that's FINE with me. It's just a template but harder to use.

Given that we haven't seen much complaining about the effects that use that model in 9th, I'd guess the dislike for templates in prior editions really came down to their prevalence and scatter.

If 'small blast' weapons remained as they are, and those radius effects only came back for ordnance and artillery (with the number of models under the template determining number of shots, so a Battle Cannon shot that misses doesn't simply vanish), it'd probably be manageable.

I agree with the point you've made before about the small blast weapons forcing players to weigh the downsides of spreading out to avoid them, but I'm not sure the juice is worth the squeeze for every last grenade or missile launcher, especially if a smaller number of actual artillery weapons could force the same consideration.

Given that we haven't seen much complaining about the effects that use that model in 9th, I'd guess the dislike for templates in prior editions really came down to their prevalence and scatter.

I'll say this is true for me. In Adeptus Titanicus and Necromunda I don't mind scatter as much since it only happens when you miss. It's still mighty annoying to resolve when you miss, but at least it doesn't happen every single time you shoot

 catbarf wrote:
...Given that we haven't seen much complaining about the effects that use that model in 9th, I'd guess the dislike for templates in prior editions really came down to their prevalence and scatter...

Basically, yes. Multiple blasts, particularly multiple barrages, particularly twin-linked multiple barrages, scattering repeatedly are horrible and long and awkward to resolve. Taking multiple Rapier batteries (four twin-linked small blasts per model) in 30k used to be almost grounds for calling someone on delay of play just for having them in their list, before they got turned into one twin-linked large blast per gun.

Rihgu wrote:

Given that we haven't seen much complaining about the effects that use that model in 9th, I'd guess the dislike for templates in prior editions really came down to their prevalence and scatter.

I'll say this is true for me. In Adeptus Titanicus and Necromunda I don't mind scatter as much since it only happens when you miss. It's still mighty annoying to resolve when you miss, but at least it doesn't happen every single time you shoot

?? My scatter dice have crosshairs on two sides. Yours didn't?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
If you would rather have accuracy of measurement than convenience, that's fine.

A "Large Blast" weapon could hit every mini within 2.5" (or 2" or whatever) of the target model.

If that's all that's needed to mollify your concerns, that's FINE with me. It's just a template but harder to use.

No, thats awful (and also nothing like a template). Assuming 2.5", If I hit a model with a 25mm base it creates a blast area with a 6" diameter. If I hit a model with a 60mm base (which is actually 65mm in diameter) it creates a blast area with a 7.5" diameter. If I hit something on a 92x120mm base, we're talking about an area roughly 8.6" x 975".

For all the gak you people gave me about my concept destroying the game because of 30 man units blanketing the entire board, this is worse. Far far worse. In my case, at least I limit the number of nearby units that can potentially be harmed, even moreso because the number of attacks generated is strictly limited by the terms of the rule. In the case of this rule, because you're hitting every model in the area, targeting a larger base nets you a larger coverage area and with it a greater number of hits and attacks generated, for absolutely no logical reason other than the fact that your weapon hit a bigger target, magically turning a hand grenade into a howitzer.

ccs wrote:

Rihgu wrote:

Given that we haven't seen much complaining about the effects that use that model in 9th, I'd guess the dislike for templates in prior editions really came down to their prevalence and scatter.

I'll say this is true for me. In Adeptus Titanicus and Necromunda I don't mind scatter as much since it only happens when you miss. It's still mighty annoying to resolve when you miss, but at least it doesn't happen every single time you shoot

?? My scatter dice have crosshairs on two sides. Yours didn't?

That's still having to scatter on 2/3rds of shots instead of 2/9ths of shots (assuming BS4/BS3+).

I'll say that a great mitigating factor of scatter was reducing it by ballistic skill, which admittedly worked better with the other BS scale.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
If you would rather have accuracy of measurement than convenience, that's fine.

A "Large Blast" weapon could hit every mini within 2.5" (or 2" or whatever) of the target model.

If that's all that's needed to mollify your concerns, that's FINE with me. It's just a template but harder to use.

No, thats awful (and also nothing like a template). Assuming 2.5", If I hit a model with a 25mm base it creates a blast area with a 6" diameter. If I hit a model with a 60mm base (which is actually 65mm in diameter) it creates a blast area with a 7.5" diameter. If I hit something on a 92x120mm base, we're talking about an area roughly 8.6" x 975".

For all the gak you people gave me about my concept destroying the game because of 30 man units blanketing the entire board, this is worse. Far far worse. In my case, at least I limit the number of nearby units that can potentially be harmed, even moreso because the number of attacks generated is strictly limited by the terms of the rule. In the case of this rule, because you're hitting every model in the area, targeting a larger base nets you a larger coverage area and with it a greater number of hits and attacks generated, for absolutely no logical reason other than the fact that your weapon hit a bigger target, magically turning a hand grenade into a howitzer.

Sorry, the center of the model.

Though, you're exactly right, templates are way better, thanks for making that point for me. Almost got stuck believing there was an alternative

So because targeting a larger model with the idea of anything within x" of a model would actually end up favoring hitting large targets over smaller bases it's almost like....a template would be better...

For every suggestion, every single one its always a case of, "yeah but templates were a lot easier and faster."
If your trying to stop arguments with a player over what's under it, that's easy, just don't play with them, or tell them to stop making a big deal over everything, or.use the roll off in the BRB.

Templates were never and issue players were.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
So because targeting a larger model with the idea of anything within x" of a model would actually end up favoring hitting large targets over smaller bases it's almost like....a template would be better...

For every suggestion, every single one its always a case of, "yeah but templates were a lot easier and faster."
If your trying to stop arguments with a player over what's under it, that's easy, just don't play with them, or tell them to stop making a big deal over everything, or.use the roll off in the BRB.

Templates were never and issue players were.

Give it a rest dude, templates are dead and not coming back, good riddance. Your arguments are baded on logical fallacies and hold no water. You can't blame players for gakky rules. The system based on targeting units is way way faster than any template could ever be, is 100% objective in outcome with no room for subjectivity, and at no point in this discussion has "yeah but templates would be better" actually been true.

I'm just not sure how other games can handle templates if they're so bad. And if it was an issue with players arguing over whether a model is under the template or not, that's not on the rule. That is on the players. And is speed a virtue in this scenario, rather than what makes sense? At worst, I'd say it's subjective which is better, but templates do make a lot more sense to me.

Good counterargument, 10/10, love the part where you didn't just repeat yourself again with no proof or evidence.

Also loved the part where you called it 100% objective, as if templates are impossibly wonky spatial anomalies but no human has ever used a tape measure wrong or dodgily in all of known history.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Give it a rest dude, templates are dead and not coming back, good riddance. Your arguments are baded on logical fallacies and hold no water. You can't blame players for gakky rules. The system based on targeting units is way way faster than any template could ever be, is 100% objective in outcome with no room for subjectivity, and at no point in this discussion has "yeah but templates would be better" actually been true.

Playing since 3rd edition myself I sometimes get that nostalgic feeling of using templates as a way to narratively show blast weapons but I am personally glad they are gone. They just had too many limitations, hand flamers being the same size template as a Land Raider mounted heavy flamer, 1 wound limit to monstrous creatures as many pointed out, and the 3" blast being all around pretty useless.

Using a D6 random result with minimums for large squads is just all around easier and faster. Anyone saying templates are faster must be forgetting having to flip the blast marker for weapons that had multiple shots. It was difficult to be accurate with flipping the blast marker even when you were trying to be fair as possible. I have also had plenty of times where someone would roll the scatter dice too far away from the target making moving the blast marker in the correct direction very difficult.

Again, both scatter and multiple blast were much rarer in 4th than in 7th.

People forget the difference between "templates of whatever size or shape to allow blast weapons to hit multiple scrunched up units" and "GW's 7th edition incarnation of templates with no further modification"

Scatter doesn't particularly excite me either, which is why 4th is the edition I went back to (the "every blast scatters" thing was 5th)

 TheBestBucketHead wrote:
I'm just not sure how other games can handle templates if they're so bad. And if it was an issue with players arguing over whether a model is under the template or not, that's not on the rule. That is on the players. And is speed a virtue in this scenario, rather than what makes sense? At worst, I'd say it's subjective which is better, but templates do make a lot more sense to me.

Lots of other games have removed, restricted, or limited them, and many other games don't include them at all, its not just 40k. In any game that does use templates, the same issues exist and result in many of the same problems they did in 40k. Bolt Action is the only game that I know of which made a conscious decision to add templates into the game after the fact.

Good counterargument, 10/10, love the part where you didn't just repeat yourself again with no proof or evidence.

I've written more words in this thread than anyone else, at this point theres not much I could say that wouldn't be repeating myself, and no sense continuing to provide proof or evidence when I have already provided it and its been roundly ignored. If you want proof/evidence, go back to my previous posts and find it for yourself.

As it stands, its actually kinda sorta totally "your side" thats actually just repeating themselves. Look through how many posts backspacehacker has made that in their totality amount to "templates are faster and better, every discussion about this ends up having someone say we should just bring them back, so thats proof we should do it". Wheres the proof? Wheres the evidence?

Your side of the argument has yet to actually demonstrate or evidence how it would ever be possible for placing a template to actually be more objective, accurate, or faster than the sheer simplicity of rolling a die and reading the result. The mere act of placing the template alone often took longer than the entire attack resolution sequence for the current die-based methodology does now, as players would often typically place it and move it around to try to determine what the "optimal" placement was by counting up the number of models underneath in multiple permutations before committing to a singleplacement - and then and only then would they actually even bother to start picking up dice.

Also loved the part where you called it 100% objective, as if templates are impossibly wonky spatial anomalies but no human has ever used a tape measure wrong or dodgily in all of known history.

A die roll is a die roll, if the die comes up a 4 there is no debate whether or not thats actually a 3 or a 5. That is objective.

With a template, there are many scenarios in which you cannot precisely determine whether a model is actually within the area of a template or not. Either because hands are shaking, the template is drifting, the viewing angle, terrain, other models, etc. make it difficult to see, etc. At this point, you and/or your opponent rely on judgement calls to determine whether or not something is hit. That is subjective. "Rolla 4+ if you can't figure it out" doesn't change that, thats simply using RNG to attempt to resolve the subjectivity in the face of an inability to render an accurate judgement.

Playing since 3rd edition myself I sometimes get that nostalgic feeling of using templates as a way to narratively show blast weapons but I am personally glad they are gone. They just had too many limitations, hand flamers being the same size template as a Land Raider mounted heavy flamer, 1 wound limit to monstrous creatures as many pointed out, and the 3" blast being all around pretty useless.

Wait, hold on - lemme channel the response of the pro-template crowd to resolve this complaint...

"ADD MORE TEMPLATES IN MORE SIZES AND SHAPES ADD AN ADDITIONAL HALF-PAGE OF RULES ABOUT WHAT TO DO IF THE TEMPLATE HITS A MONSTROUS CREATURE OR A VEHICLE SPECIFICALLY!!!!"

Anyone saying templates are faster must be forgetting having to flip the blast marker for weapons that had multiple shots. It was difficult to be accurate with flipping the blast marker even when you were trying to be fair as possible.

God, that was the worst. The proper solution that would have made more sense (IMO) would have been to simply put a second template in contact with the first one in order to get a slightly more accurate placement (or make like one of those apocalyptic barrage style templates but with 3" templates instead of 5". Why they expected players to be able to "flip" a template in 3-dimensions and land it in the correct spot, I will never know. For me, personally it was a huge source of feelsbadman because I don't think I ever encountered a single player who actually flipped the template properly (I myself never played an army that used weapons in which I would be required to do it myself), to the extent that you could actually visibly see that they were flipping it around an axis that ran through the area of the template rather than tangential to its edge like you were supposed to in order to avoid overlapping the original placement. I definitely also encountered players who would intentionally flip it incorrectly in order to score more hits, including a few who would try to flip it more or less in-place and hope their opponent wouldn't notice (its surprising how many didn't - you would think people would figure out that if the template was flipped correctly it would be impossible for literally every model that was hit the first time to be hit the second time around, but that skirted under the radar a lot).

Of course, some would say that the rule was perfect as-is and its the players fault if they couldn't flip it properly.

Again, both scatter and multiple blast were much rarer in 4th than in 7th.

I'm glad I sat on the bench for 7th, because scatter and multiple blast seemed to already be excessively common in 4th, 5th, and 6th. Any of my regular opponents in each of those editions would typically have multiple such weapons in their lists.

Imagine thinking and getting so upset by the objective fact that template were eaiser and faster then writing a wall of text about it.

Hold template over target unit
"Hey 4 are under here agree?"
"Yeah" "idk this one looks out roll off for it?"
"Ok 4 hits"

Best representation of a blast, and was never an issue in the rules. Just because crappy player argue over it does not make it a abad rule.

No matter how you slice it, template were absolutely the best representation of a blast effect in the game. It worked exactly as a blast should, things within the blast area were automatically hit. Did not matter if it was just that unit, multiple units, vehicles, what ever, if it was under it, it kit it.

Now if you wanna talk about scattering, strength of damage under the template, effects of a direct hit, sure that's totally up for debate and over how points where be effected if scatter was removed. But as far as determining who and or what gets hit, template were always the best.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Eldarsif wrote:
Ah, template discussions.

Damn those things sucked. Good riddance. Game has been better for it.

No it hasn't. #Bringbacktemplates2022!

You have your opinion and I have mine. I enjoy rolling dice and interacting with my enemy more than measuring out formation lengths between models just to minimize template fallout which I still remember in excruciating pain. On the flipside I admit I enjoy playing a game rather than engaging in some hardcore reality simulation that I personally find tedious. It's one of the two reasons I don't intend to play something like Flames of War. I do, however, acknowledge that a sub-section of people love that so to each their own.

What would be interesting to see is the overlap between people who like Templates and who enjoy rank and file gameplay. Now that is a poll that I'd be interested in.

#Donotbringbacktemplates!

Now if you wanna talk about scattering, strength of damage under the template, effects of a direct hit, sure that's totally up for debate and over how points where be effected if scatter was removed.

Scatter made a subjective system worse. I agree that templates would be marginally better if scatter would die a permanent horrible death and never be seen in any GW product ever again. I will, however, accept templates if Craftworlds get proper D-weapons again. Now those things were fun to get people out of the hobby.

Like if we had templates, no scatter, save for barage weapons at a full d6, then increased the point value of all models/weapons that have a blast, hell yeah sign me up.

But hit determining with templates was the best representation of a blast or flamers.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Imagine thinking and getting so upset by the objective fact that template were eaiser and faster then writing a wall of text about it.

Hey Unit, what was that about people repeating themselves without proof or evidence?

Hold template over target unit
"Hey 4 are under here agree?"
"Yeah" "idk this one looks out roll off for it?"
"Ok 4 hits"

Which is a lot slower than "I rolled 4 attacks, 3 of them hit" - or in the case of flame weapons, "I rolled 4 attacks, they hit automatically".

Too bad for you.

Best representation of a blast, and was never an issue in the rules. Just because crappy player argue over it does not make it a abad rule.

No matter how you slice it, template were absolutely the best representation of a blast effect in the game. It worked exactly as a blast should, things within the blast area were automatically hit. Did not matter if it was just that unit, multiple units, vehicles, what ever, if it was under it, it kit it.

Now if you wanna talk about scattering, strength of damage under the template, effects of a direct hit, sure that's totally up for debate and over how points where be effected if scatter was removed. But as far as determining who and or what gets hit, template were always the best.

Seriously Unit, the repetition.

And the "evidence" - hoo boy. Its great to say "never an issue with the rules" for the umpteenth time, even though we've had more than half the posters in the thread say that they had too many arguments and issues result from them - including a professional game designer. Through and through, its a problem with the rules no matter how much you want to deny it. The rules create room for error, therefore its a problem with the rules when that room for error hinders gameplay.

Also they do *not* work "exactly as a blast should", only an idealized representation of how people *think* they should work. As I stated previously, in real life blast weapons have a non-constant area of effect and generally speaking that area of effect is more of an irregular elliptical shape rather than a circular one. The idea that they will have a consistent and constant area of effect is pure fiction. If they worked "exactly as a blast should", each and every time they would have a different area and a different shape. If you wanted a system that worked "exactly as a blast should" then in reality every time you fired one you would pick a point on the table, scatter it some distance and direction, then roll a scatter die again to determine the direction of the blasts major axis and a number of dice (based on the size of the weapon) to determine the length of the major axis centered on the point to which the blast scattered on the table, then roll another number of dice to determine the length of the minor axis cenetered on the same point. From that you would then create an elliptical shape under which any model contained would be hit a randomized number of times, with the number of hits and probability of hitting/wounded decreasing the further away from the centerpoint of the two axes the model is located.

THAT is exactly how a blast would work.

OR, you can just work within the actual abstraction and assumptions that underly the games actual mechanical design, which is that model scale and ground scale are two separate concepts and that models within each unit are already disperse over a wider area in order to mitigate the effects of explosive weaponry regardless of how they are actually placed on the table - as is SOP in the real world - and likewise units do the same - again, as is SOP in the real world. As such, the existing system abstracts that entire process into a single simple dice roll and thus PERFECTLY ENCAPSULATES EXACTLY how a blast actually DOES work, no need for templates, scatter dice, or anything else.

The only reason to modify it, is because some people take umbrage with the second clause, that is that units will disperse enough between eachother to mitigate blast effects, which is where the modified rules I proposed come in, which somehow *still* do a better job at perfectly encapsulating the reality of blast weapons within dice rolls than any template or scatter die could.

 Eldarsif wrote:

What would be interesting to see is the overlap between people who like Templates and who enjoy rank and file gameplay. Now that is a poll that I'd be interested in.

The venn diagram is a circle.

#Donotbringbacktemplates!

Amen.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

But hit determining with templates was the best representation of a blast or flamers.

UNIT, THE REPETITION.

Can scream it all you want in as many caps as you want. Template hit determination was the best.

Oh no, you have to roll to wound a few other units not just one. Oh. My. God. In a game where we push around models for 2+ hours we have to roll against this unit....and this other unit in this super unlikely situation that only happens so rarely ahhhh the horror!

C'mon man
Template were fine I'm sorry you had crappy people that made it an issue but template dof rhir determination was the way to go.

There is no good argument over not using template because every argument against it voild down to "well people argue over it or it's confusing" no it's not, you just have crappy players or they did not read the rules.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Can scream it all you want in as many caps as you want. Template hit determination was the best.

Oh no, you have to roll to wound a few other units not just one. Oh. My. God. In a game where we push around models for 2+ hours we have to roll against this unit....and this other unit in this super unlikely situation that only happens so rarely ahhhh the horror!

C'mon man
Template were fine I'm sorry you had crappy people that made it an issue but template dof rhir determination was the way to go.

There is no good argument over not using template because every argument against it voild down to "well people argue over it or it's confusing" no it's not, you just have crappy players or they did not read the rules.

Unit, do you see it? THE REPETITION.

Uhhhh who care? It's a game where we roll 100s of dice In. A single game?
Oh no, my blast template hit 3 units! Ok here is a roll for this one, this one and this one.

You are making an issue out of something that literally no one had an issue with.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
You are complaing about repetition In a game where you can spam the same weapon, and roll for the same things over and over, and your hang up on them is "oh no! Every once and a while my timolate might clip 2 units that are standing to close together!"

C'mon man your complaing about scinarios that either never happen or happen once In a blue moon and are completely avoidable I'd you don't group up, you know the thing that blasts are meant to punish you for doing?

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Can scream it all you want in as many caps as you want. Template hit determination was the best.

Oh no, you have to roll to wound a few other units not just one. Oh. My. God. In a game where we push around models for 2+ hours we have to roll against this unit....and this other unit in this super unlikely situation that only happens so rarely ahhhh the horror!

C'mon man
Template were fine I'm sorry you had crappy people that made it an issue but template dof rhir determination was the way to go.

There is no good argument over not using template because every argument against it voild down to "well people argue over it or it's confusing" no it's not, you just have crappy players or they did not read the rules.

Make no mention of present arguments over whether the tip of a horn sticking off the buttcrack of a Tyranid warrior is sufficiently visible to constitute LoS!

Honestly, there are so many situations in 40K that come down to interpretation and *not being a dick* - and that's part of the appeal of playing a miniatures based tactical wargame. People demanding perfect precision on rulings and having rules that are not open to any interpretation are playing the wrong sort of game, IMHO. 40K works best with some fluidity and grey area, because it allows the rules to be more coherent and direct from a simulation and intuitiveness standpoint. 40K is increasingly becoming more abstracted as these gray areas get shaved away.

It would be interesting to see a 40K variant that does what Battletech does - allowing you to either play it on a precise hex grid where there is very little interpretation, or play it as a freeform miniature game. In this case, the control jockeys can all play the hex-based version and I'll know right away what sorts of gamer's I'm dealing with.

So that's my earlier point the thing about the spear tip of the model?
That's not an issue with the rules, that's a problem with the player themselves. Like the people that would argue about that kidna stuff? Guess what happened when templates were removed, they just found new things to argue over in the game that were not template. The big one being deep striking and and assaulting, until it was clarified the same people that argued over template also argued about the technically of needing a 10 to actually make it into pass contact if you deep stike.

What if you did this for templates:

Place the template down, with the center over the unit that is your primary target. Then, roll to hit, one shot for each model under the template. So, if you have one unit with 15 guys super scrunched up, you'd roll 15 shots against them. If you have five units-two Troops of 10 men each, a Bodyguard unit of 3, and two solo Characters-muddled together, and you targeted the Bodyguard squad, you'd roll three shots against them, one shot against each Character, and then 1-10 against the Troops, depending on how many models are physically near that location.

You can still argue over it, but removing scatter means it's much, much easier to come to an agreement. And I won't go so far as to say "Arguments over templates are caused universally by bad players," but I will say that playing with good folk will minimize those arguments. And it's not like you can't argue over other things-look at the talk on Bomb Squigs in the Orks Tactics Thread.

See I look at the template to hit and the scatter as two separate issues when it comes to it.

I would say that if you removed scatter, then yeah anything under the template gets to generate the number of hits


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And yes I agree with you on rules arguments, having badly worded rules does not help. But when a rule is very clear cut like templates were, at that point the only people arguing are "that guy" kinda people who will either say that the separ tip totally counts as being hit or that the guy that clearly is clipping into it is not hit, or refuses to do roll offs to determine the result

 Backspacehacker wrote:
See I look at the template to hit and the scatter as two separate issues when it comes to it.

I would say that if you removed scatter, then yeah anything under the template gets to generate the number of hits

In the case of barrage weapons or multiple template shots, you can further speed it up by just placing the template once and then doubling/trippling/etc/ the numbers of models hit. That also speeds it up.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Good counterargument, 10/10, love the part where you didn't just repeat yourself again with no proof or evidence.

Also loved the part where you called it 100% objective, as if templates are impossibly wonky spatial anomalies but no human has ever used a tape measure wrong or dodgily in all of known history.

I just put him back on ignore when he started adding personal insults to his usual condescending jackassery. I don't think the argument is going anywhere.

But yeah somehow other games have managed to make templates work. Or just artillery mechanics that don't need essays to browbeat you into accepting their modeling flaws as reasonable abstractions.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
I would say that if you removed scatter, then yeah anything under the template gets to generate the number of hits

There's also a partway implementation, where you place the template wherever you want to determine eligible targets, then still roll to hit for each one. So if there are twelve models under the template, you get twelve shots.

That provides a measure of randomness in line with the current system and still allows for Ballistic Skill to matter. You're basically just replacing the current Blast/random shots mechanic with a physical template to determine number of shots.

Getting rid of scatter would, in my experience, get rid of most of the arguments over templates. You'll still have disputes over whether a model is really under the template, but in a game where you're constantly measuring for range and movement it's not like that never happens to begin with.

Also would be ok with that

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Again, both scatter and multiple blast were much rarer in 4th than in 7th.

This. And that's another reason why blasts/templates won't be re-introduced in the game. In all my 3rd-5th lists I didn't have a single blast weapon and just a few templates from flamers/burnas.

But today weapons' fire way more shots than they used to fire in older editions, so we'd have tons and tons of blasts and templates to resolve each single game. To the point that they'd really slow down the game by a significant margin, not to mention that controversies would be very frequent.

They are a relic of the past, for a good reason. In a game like Necromunda, with 7-10 models per faction on the board and maybe no more than a couple of dudes with blast/template weapons they still work very well: they are rare enough to avoid slowing down the game significantly and since they can hit no more than one maybe two targets, due to the very small army sizes, they don't lead to controversies.