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So the blast rule is kinda interesting, but I almost never see it matter. So many units are either 5 or less, or are super easy to kill anyway that getting full shots is ok at best.

So I propose that Blast weapons get a minimum of 3 attacks against units with 5 or more models, or max # of attacks against units with 10+ models.

There are so many units with 5/10 model minimum unit sizes, that Blast weapons might actually be relevant.
It would also improve mediocre weapon profiles like Flakk missiles.

Thoughts?

-

It really doesn't matter when the limiting factor on most Blast weapons is the Ballistic Skill. I'd rather see guaranteed wounds on units with X+ models or something. HotE but for tank weapons. Just give everyone free wounds at this point. What good is the Battle Cannon on a LR if it's only going to hit on 1/3rd of it's attacks? Same with Tau, or Space Marines. Although Astartes get 50% HR, I'd still say blast demands at least 1 model in the unit REALLY feel it. What good is a grenade if it only barely scratches 1 model of that 5 man Intercessor squad?

 Galef wrote:
So the blast rule is kinda interesting, but I almost never see it matter. So many units are either 5 or less, or are super easy to kill anyway that getting full shots is ok at best.

So I propose that Blast weapons get a minimum of 3 attacks against units with 5 or more models, or max # of attacks against units with 10+ models.

There are so many units with 5/10 model minimum unit sizes, that Blast weapons might actually be relevant.
It would also improve mediocre weapon profiles like Flakk missiles.

Thoughts?

-

I feel like this would create a weird, gamey situation where basically every unit in the game is significantly more vulnerable to blast weapons if blast weapons are the first thing to target them. But then the vulnerability suddenly vanishes after taking a single casualty. For example, my shadowspectres have (iirc) an Assault d6 Blast profile on their guns. So if I point them at an unscathed squad of guardsmen, I'm guaranteed 30 shots with 5 models. But if I shoot a single pistol at them first, I'm suddenly only guaranteed 15 shots. If I'm aiming at a min wych squad instead of guardsmen, the number of shots goes from 5d6 min 15 to 5d6 min 5.

So if your opponent has a unit with good blast weapons, you find yourself wishing you had a way to preemptively kill off one of your own models in each squad. Which is weird, and I don't like it.

This would also punish units with min squad sizes of 10 quite a bit. I'm not sure gargoyles and ork boyz need to be taking a guaranteed 12 shots from my night spinner.

Wyldhunt wrote:

I feel like this would create a weird, gamey situation where basically every unit in the game is significantly more vulnerable to blast weapons if blast weapons are the first thing to target them. But then the vulnerability suddenly vanishes after taking a single casualty. For example, my shadowspectres have (iirc) an Assault d6 Blast profile on their guns. So if I point them at an unscathed squad of guardsmen, I'm guaranteed 30 shots with 5 models. But if I shoot a single pistol at them first, I'm suddenly only guaranteed 15 shots. If I'm aiming at a min wych squad instead of guardsmen, the number of shots goes from 5d6 min 15 to 5d6 min 5.

So if your opponent has a unit with good blast weapons, you find yourself wishing you had a way to preemptively kill off one of your own models in each squad. Which is weird, and I don't like it.

This would also punish units with min squad sizes of 10 quite a bit. I'm not sure gargoyles and ork boyz need to be taking a guaranteed 12 shots from my night spinner.

That's fair.
Although I'd argue that in a way it makes sense that once a unit loses models, they start taking less hits as they scatter. I mean, that's TECHNICALLY what happens now, just on a higher threshold of models.

I just feel like the Blast rule doesn't really impact the game unless you are playing armies that regular have 20 model blobs, so just Orks, Nids and Guard.
But against Marines, Aeldari, Necrons, Tau, etc, it almost never comes up.

So how about this:
Against units with 5-10 models, Blast weapons get a min of 3 hits.
Units with 11+ get full # of hits (same as now)

So all that changed is that Blast weapons get min 3 hits against 5-model units, but otherwise nothing else changes.
5 is such a common unit starting size that this would really make a difference, while not being overly punishing to min-10 model units.
It would also mean not getting punished for wanting a 6th model in you unit, since having 5 models is the same

-

 Galef wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

I feel like this would create a weird, gamey situation where basically every unit in the game is significantly more vulnerable to blast weapons if blast weapons are the first thing to target them. But then the vulnerability suddenly vanishes after taking a single casualty. For example, my shadowspectres have (iirc) an Assault d6 Blast profile on their guns. So if I point them at an unscathed squad of guardsmen, I'm guaranteed 30 shots with 5 models. But if I shoot a single pistol at them first, I'm suddenly only guaranteed 15 shots. If I'm aiming at a min wych squad instead of guardsmen, the number of shots goes from 5d6 min 15 to 5d6 min 5.

So if your opponent has a unit with good blast weapons, you find yourself wishing you had a way to preemptively kill off one of your own models in each squad. Which is weird, and I don't like it.

This would also punish units with min squad sizes of 10 quite a bit. I'm not sure gargoyles and ork boyz need to be taking a guaranteed 12 shots from my night spinner.

That's fair.
Although I'd argue that in a way it makes sense that once a unit loses models, they start taking less hits as they scatter. I mean, that's TECHNICALLY what happens now, just on a higher threshold of models.

I just feel like the Blast rule doesn't really impact the game unless you are playing armies that regular have 20 model blobs, so just Orks, Nids and Guard.
But against Marines, Aeldari, Necrons, Tau, etc, it almost never comes up.

So how about this:
Against units with 5-10 models, Blast weapons get a min of 3 hits.
Units with 11+ get full # of hits (same as now)

So all that changed is that Blast weapons get min 3 hits against 5-model units, but otherwise nothing else changes.
5 is such a common unit starting size that this would really make a difference, while not being overly punishing to min-10 model units.
It would also mean not getting punished for wanting a 6th model in you unit, since having 5 models is the same

-

Your case is well-argued. I still don't love the idea. While it makes sense that a squad would become less susceptible to blasts after they lost some members, it just seems really wonky and gameable that the cutoff number happens to be a single casualty for (extremely common) 5-man squads. I feel like not having 5-man MSU squads be impacted by blasts in this way was a conscious decision to basically spare players the slowdown of their opponent split firing all his blast weapons on turn 1 to maximize his damage output. Plus, because 5bodies is the minimum squad size for so many units, 5 guys "feels like" a "small" squad. So in my head, it's natural to think of the basic MSU unit size as being too small to reward the blast rule, 10 man squads to be large enough to reward the blast rule a little, and 11+ squads (often not an option for 'elite' armies) to reward the blast rule a lot.

If I were to redesign the blast rule, I'm not sure I'd tie it to unit size. In the days of templates, blast weapons were only especially effective against hordes if my opponent bunched them up. But then they were still quite effective against bunched-up deepstriking marines, eldar, etc. So as long as both players were doing their best to avoid clumping their models up, the more interesting features of the blast weapons were:

* They could mitigate a bad Ballistics Skill.
* They could potentially hurt your own dudes.
* They could potentially hit something you weren't aiming it if your opponent's units were close enough together.

So rather than making blast the anti-horde rule, I think I'd make it a "mitigates bad accuracy" rule. Maybe let blasts ignore the first -1 to-hit. Or, and this is too complicated to be a good idea, let some blasts (like artillery) be delayed attacks where you place a marker on the table and, move the marker a random distance at the end of your opponent's movement phase, and then resolve an especially powerful for its cost auto-hitting attack against every unit within X" of its new position. So your opponent would generally be able to avoid a blast or two, but you'd be able to discourage movement onto objectives and have an easier time hitting slower, armies with lots of units packed together in the same area.

Basically, I think we need to step back and figure out what behavior of "blast" weapons warrants representation in the game and then figure out how to model that. Right now, the only thing blasts really model is being more effective against larger squads. Which again, mostly wasn't a thing that blast templates did unless the target had just been in combat or arrived out of deepstrike.

Fixing blast weapons is simple. Just ask yourself this: what are the attributes of the weapon they're trying to represent?

1) Always hits at least something. Even conscripts can't miss entirely with a frag round with a 50' casualty radius.

2) Number of hits is unpredictable. Exact shot placement, location of cover, how tightly grouped the target is, etc, all matter.

3) For each target you either hit or you don't. No multiple hits on single-model targets, you don't take more damage from an explosion just because nobody else was there.

Put it all together and you get something like this:

Blast (X): This weapon automatically hits. Each time an attack is made with this weapon it inflicts one hit for each model in the target unit, up to a maximum of X.

Small blast is Blast (d3), large blast is Blast (d6), LoW-scale weapons could be Blast (2d6) or Blast (d6+2), etc. Weapons that fire multiple separate explosive rounds would be Heavy 2, Blast (d3) or similar and would generate a separate set of automatic hits for each attack. And this entirely fixes the vanquisher cannon problem, where weapons with a high enough rate of fire to threaten elite infantry also become the best tank killers. A battle cannon can have Blast (10d6) but it's still only ever going to inflict a maximum of one hit against a vehicle and a vanquisher cannon's single shot can finally do more total damage.

I think blast should get a bonus against actual hordes, so instead of lowering the threshold I'd like to double it! Make it 11/21, instead of 6/11. Make hordes relevant againt.

Even orks, nids and guards avoid large squads now. Well, guards can't even have large squads except for conscripts, their infantries are capped at 10 dudes.

It's armies like necrons or sisters that sometimes use the 20 man blob. Ad mech maybe, I remember them fielding blobs but it's a while since I've played against them and they got several FAQs in the meanwhile.

 Blackie wrote:
I think blast should get a bonus against actual hordes, so instead of lowering the threshold I'd like to double it! Make it 11/21, instead of 6/11. Make hordes relevant againt.

Why even have the blast rule at all if you're going to make it irrelevant 99% of the time? At that point just get rid of the rules bloat.

CadianSgtBob wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
I think blast should get a bonus against actual hordes, so instead of lowering the threshold I'd like to double it! Make it 11/21, instead of 6/11. Make hordes relevant againt.

Why even have the blast rule at all if you're going to make it irrelevant 99% of the time? At that point just get rid of the rules bloat.

The goal is to make 20+ man blobs relevant again. Increasing the blast threshold is the first step. Then fix morale from hordes and job's done.

At that point 11/21 blasts would be much more relevant than current 6/11 ones.

Blasts weapons on the other hand don't need a buff. The bonus might not matter currently because there's no point of bringing large squads. Make that point and blasts will matter. Lower the treshold and the rule is applied everytime. At that point just increase the number of the weapon's shots (and/or S, AP, D) if you feel the weapon seems underwhelming.

 Blackie wrote:
The goal is to make 20+ man blobs relevant again. Increasing the blast threshold is the first step.

No, the first step is to make hordes even exist. My codex has a single horde unit which may or may not fit a particular theme or strategy (and usually doesn't). Everything else is capped at 10 or fewer models. Other armies have no units at all that can go above 10 models. Make the threshold 21 models or 51 models or 10,000 models, none if it matters if only a couple of armies even have 21+ model units.

(Not that this should actually be done, as horde units are not thematically appropriate for most armies.)

Then fix morale from hordes and job's done.

Morale is already "fixed" to the point of being barely relevant at all. Any further "fixing" and you might as well delete the mechanic entirely.

No, morale is definitely not fixed, it just has bad rules. To the point that large squads are not taken because of that. It's barely relevant because people chose to ignore the cases in which it is quite relevant, like fielding blobs of boyz, which double their casualties to morale. Multiple 10 boyz/gretchins/snaggas is the go to, instead of 20-30 man blobs, and the main reason is morale.

Not everyone plays your specific army. There are several units in the game that can field large squads. My main faction alone have 8 (IIRC) units that can field 11-30 man squads. And none of them is actually taken in larger squads than 10 man dudes.

The OP had the feeling that the blast rule doesn't come up too often, but on the other hand if it becomes too common it might just be a useless way to slow down the game. Just increase the weapon's stats at that point.

Bring back templates

 Blackie wrote:
I think blast should get a bonus against actual hordes...

Sincere but probably dumb question: why? I get that blast templates were more likely to hit some models if you put them in the middle of a mob of orkz, but proper (read: tedious) spacing meant that the number of hits didn't usually scale up with the size of the mob. When blast templates did get a lot of hits, it was generally because the target had either just been scrunched together by melee combat or because they'd just arrived from deepstrike or been shot out of a transport.

I feel like the behavior that makes blasts "special" and worthy of modeling is their ability to hurt things without landing a direct hit, and scaling hits based on unit size doesn't do that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

CadianSgtBob wrote:

Blast (X): This weapon automatically hits. Each time an attack is made with this weapon it inflicts one hit for each model in the target unit, up to a maximum of X.

Small blast is Blast (d3), large blast is Blast (d6), LoW-scale weapons could be Blast (2d6) or Blast (d6+2), etc. Weapons that fire multiple separate explosive rounds would be Heavy 2, Blast (d3) or similar and would generate a separate set of automatic hits for each attack. And this entirely fixes the vanquisher cannon problem, where weapons with a high enough rate of fire to threaten elite infantry also become the best tank killers. A battle cannon can have Blast (10d6) but it's still only ever going to inflict a maximum of one hit against a vehicle and a vanquisher cannon's single shot can finally do more total damage.

Hmm. The random number of hits feels unnecessary, but I think I'd be okay with something like this. Targets still receive the benefit of being hidden/evasive against the initial to-hit roll, but when you do hit, the general size/intensity of the blast can be reflected in how many automatic hits you get. Which means that you can have blast weapons that are still prone to missing an evasive/camouflaged target entirely rather than mitigating that evasiveness by having a large number of attacks. I guess my biggest criticism of this approach is that it's pretty much what we have now just with the chance of missing your shots transferred to an initial to-hit roll rather spread out among a lot of to-hit rolls. The order of operations changes, but you're still basically ending up with a mechanic where my evasion reduces your number of hits by X%.

Not sure how important it is to me to only let a plasma cannon hit a tank once. It doesn't seem unreasonable that the bigger/exploding(?) attack might have a greater maximum damage output against a tank than a single shot from a plasma gun. Or taken a step further, wouldn't it be weird for a plasmagun to be more effective against a tank than a plasma cannon? Caveman brain say big death ball more hurt than little death ball.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
I think blast should get a bonus against actual hordes...

Sincere but probably dumb question: why? I get that blast templates were more likely to hit some models if you put them in the middle of a mob of orkz, but proper (read: tedious) spacing meant that the number of hits didn't usually scale up with the size of the mob. When blast templates did get a lot of hits, it was generally because the target had either just been scrunched together by melee combat or because they'd just arrived from deepstrike or been shot out of a transport.

I feel like the behavior that makes blasts "special" and worthy of modeling is their ability to hurt things without landing a direct hit, and scaling hits based on unit size doesn't do that.

I feel the entire point of the blast special rule is to get a bonus against hordes. And the wording of such ability confirms that.

But that's the entire point of any special rule/ability: it is in play under specific conditions. If you want to make blast weapons more effective against the most common targets just increase their stats instead, I don't see any point in using a special rule/ability that is applied everytime. It's just tedious gameplay then and slows down the game a little bit.

I don't think that giving a bonus like getting additional shots/hits that is applied most of the times is either useful, interesting or smart; at that point just bake the bonus into the basic profile of the weapon if you feel that blast weapons need to be more effective.

So anti-Horde weapon abilities seem specifically designed to ruin the day of 2-3 VERY specific factions that are forced to take large numbers of models per unit. This is inherently a foolish design. To make it far more fair, I'd rather see Blast go away and bring back templates. Or something akin to the "Draw a line" psychic powers". GW made blast to ruin the day of Deathstar formations, which don't truly exist now in 9th. Now it's MSU. So there has to be a way to effectively harm 5 man units. I'm really liking some of the suggestions above.

Not going to lie...blast weapons are the reason I miss templates/scatter. Despite the potential to completely whiff it always felt amazing to get a direct hit or even scatter off onto an unintended target which could be hilarious...or blast your own dudes to kingdom come XD

But having them just do potentially max shots on larger squads feels fitting enough. Just stinks that, as this thread has pointed out, it rarely seems to apply at all due to MSU armies field now and hoards being far and few between. Especially with the game seeming to almost discourage hoards overall this edition with squad size changes and smaller board states.

Easy solution is to go back to 10 man squads minimum for troop units. This will hurt the Imperials, and force them to burn CP combat patrolling them.

Although this would entirely break Custodes.

There is nothing wrong with the Blast rule. The problem is the rest of the rules, especially the rules for purchasing units, gives more incentives to go MSU than to go full-sized squads. If you change the other rules to encourage bigger units, Blast weapons will become more effective without any change to the rule at all.

And if you are curious what the offending rules are:

Squad leaders costing the same points as squad members

Models in a unit not getting cheaper as the unit gets larger

Morale being detrimental to larger units than smaller ones

Actions tying up the entire unit whether there are 2 models or 20

Actions not caring if the unit has 1 model or 30

 alextroy wrote:
There is nothing wrong with the Blast rule. The problem is the rest of the rules, especially the rules for purchasing units, gives more incentives to go MSU than to go full-sized squads. If you change the other rules to encourage bigger units, Blast weapons will become more effective without any change to the rule at all.

And if you are curious what the offending rules are:

Squad leaders costing the same points as squad members

Models in a unit not getting cheaper as the unit gets larger

Morale being detrimental to larger units than smaller ones

Actions tying up the entire unit whether there are 2 models or 20

Actions not caring if the unit has 1 model or 30

You make good points here.
I'm particularly interested in your idea to make models cost less as you buy more. That's a very cool idea, especially for units that can go above 10

you guys are missing the point of blast weapons entirely.

Blast rules were created and then buffed to almost exclusively target hordes. This was done by GW as a way of banning hordes without outright banning hordes. (Morale, CC rules etc also helped)

GW Does not want hordes, hence horde armies got nerfed hard in that game play style. Buffs were taken away, rules were changed etc.

So going back to the question of how to buff Blast weapons. You don't need to. They aren't designed to hurt Marines, or elite infantry and buffing them to better inflict wounds against those Marine/elite units will have a significantly worse impact on Horde armies already bringing MSU since those units tend not to have the durability of elite units.

SemperMortis wrote:
you guys are missing the point of blast weapons entirely.

Blast rules were created and then buffed to almost exclusively target hordes. This was done by GW as a way of banning hordes without outright banning hordes. (Morale, CC rules etc also helped)

GW Does not want hordes, hence horde armies got nerfed hard in that game play style. Buffs were taken away, rules were changed etc.

So going back to the question of how to buff Blast weapons. You don't need to. They aren't designed to hurt Marines, or elite infantry and buffing them to better inflict wounds against those Marine/elite units will have a significantly worse impact on Horde armies already bringing MSU since those units tend not to have the durability of elite units.

See, and I feel like this makes a pretty good case for going back and redesigning the blast rule to do something other than hurting hordes. I'm just not sure what that something would be other than mitigating cover or to-hit penalties. Right now, the biggest impact of the blast rule is probably just that monsters/vehicles can't use blast weapons against units they're locked in melee with.

 Galef wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
There is nothing wrong with the Blast rule. The problem is the rest of the rules, especially the rules for purchasing units, gives more incentives to go MSU than to go full-sized squads. If you change the other rules to encourage bigger units, Blast weapons will become more effective without any change to the rule at all.

And if you are curious what the offending rules are:

Squad leaders costing the same points as squad members

Models in a unit not getting cheaper as the unit gets larger

Morale being detrimental to larger units than smaller ones

Actions tying up the entire unit whether there are 2 models or 20

Actions not caring if the unit has 1 model or 30

You make good points here.
I'm particularly interested in your idea to make models cost less as you buy more. That's a very cool idea, especially for units that can go above 10

At the most basic, it is just a matter of setting a base unit cost for the minimum size that is higher than the cost of adding additional models to the unit.

Space Marine Intercessors are 20 points each for units of 5-10 models. Change that to 120 points for the unit of Intercessors (5) + 16 points per additional Intercessor. A unit of 10 Intercessors is still 200 points, but two units of 5 Intercessors is 240 points. I don't know if that is the correct premium you should pay for a second Intercessor Sergeant and the utility that comes from being 2 units, but there should be some cost.

To get even further off topic, my ideal world would wrap in some unit upgrades into the base unit cost to encourage lore-based units rather than the hyper-efficient units we see in competitive play these days.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Easy solution is to go back to 10 man squads minimum for troop units. This will hurt the Imperials, and force them to burn CP combat patrolling them.

Although this would entirely break Custodes.

Easier solution, what comes in the box is the min squad. Something like marines, drukhari or sisters would jump to min squads of 10, other more elite stuff that come in kits of 3-5 dudes would remain as they are.

Problem is... those armies have transports that can only carry 6 dudes. That's why they were designed with 5 man squads in mind and it's not really smart to change that. Making additional bodies cost less is a great idea instead.

 alextroy wrote:

 Galef wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
There is nothing wrong with the Blast rule. The problem is the rest of the rules, especially the rules for purchasing units, gives more incentives to go MSU than to go full-sized squads. If you change the other rules to encourage bigger units, Blast weapons will become more effective without any change to the rule at all.

And if you are curious what the offending rules are:

Squad leaders costing the same points as squad members

Models in a unit not getting cheaper as the unit gets larger

Morale being detrimental to larger units than smaller ones

Actions tying up the entire unit whether there are 2 models or 20

Actions not caring if the unit has 1 model or 30

You make good points here.
I'm particularly interested in your idea to make models cost less as you buy more. That's a very cool idea, especially for units that can go above 10

At the most basic, it is just a matter of setting a base unit cost for the minimum size that is higher than the cost of adding additional models to the unit.

Space Marine Intercessors are 20 points each for units of 5-10 models. Change that to 120 points for the unit of Intercessors (5) + 16 points per additional Intercessor. A unit of 10 Intercessors is still 200 points, but two units of 5 Intercessors is 240 points. I don't know if that is the correct premium you should pay for a second Intercessor Sergeant and the utility that comes from being 2 units, but there should be some cost.

To get even further off topic, my ideal world would wrap in some unit upgrades into the base unit cost to encourage lore-based units rather than the hyper-efficient units we see in competitive play these days.

New edition of Horus Heresy does this, the base squad is a higher premium cost than adding more models for most units. So taking one unit of 10 Veteran Tactical Marines only costs you 205 points, but to take two units of 5 with the extra sergeant costs you 230 points total. I've always thought an MSU tax was brilliant. In pretty much every edition of 40K it's been shown that MSU is generally more efficient, GW has finally seemed to catch the hint with HH, hopefully they take that lesson to 40K proper in maybe 10th edition.

It shouldn’t be rolling for shots. It should just get some auto hits.

Frag missile. Roll d6. That’s how many auto hits you get. Blast rules should be more like you get up to 6 hits. Can only get 1 hit per model in the unit. As long as you don’t roll a 1. You score some auto hits.

CadianSgtBob wrote:

Blast (X): This weapon automatically hits. Each time an attack is made with this weapon it inflicts one hit for each model in the target unit, up to a maximum of X.
...

Wyldhunt wrote:
Hmm. The random number of hits feels unnecessary, but I think I'd be okay with something like this. Targets still receive the benefit of being hidden/evasive against the initial to-hit roll, but when you do hit, the general size/intensity of the blast can be reflected in how many automatic hits you get. Which means that you can have blast weapons that are still prone to missing an evasive/camouflaged target entirely rather than mitigating that evasiveness by having a large number of attacks. I guess my biggest criticism of this approach is that it's pretty much what we have now just with the chance of missing your shots transferred to an initial to-hit roll rather spread out among a lot of to-hit rolls. The order of operations changes, but you're still basically ending up with a mechanic where my evasion reduces your number of hits by X%.
...

warpedpig wrote:It shouldn’t be rolling for shots. It should just get some auto hits.

Frag missile. Roll d6. That’s how many auto hits you get. Blast rules should be more like you get up to 6 hits. Can only get 1 hit per model in the unit. As long as you don’t roll a 1. You score some auto hits.

I would like to see what you're all getting at turned into a rule, but I have an alternative:

All blast weapons are -1 to hit but you get +1 to hit for each model in the target unit.
So targeting a single model unit is -1, but a 5-man unit would let even an orkboy hit on 2's.

(EDIT: cut out a bad idea I had)

 kingpbjames wrote:

CadianSgtBob wrote:

Blast (X): This weapon automatically hits. Each time an attack is made with this weapon it inflicts one hit for each model in the target unit, up to a maximum of X.
...

Wyldhunt wrote:
Hmm. The random number of hits feels unnecessary, but I think I'd be okay with something like this. Targets still receive the benefit of being hidden/evasive against the initial to-hit roll, but when you do hit, the general size/intensity of the blast can be reflected in how many automatic hits you get. Which means that you can have blast weapons that are still prone to missing an evasive/camouflaged target entirely rather than mitigating that evasiveness by having a large number of attacks. I guess my biggest criticism of this approach is that it's pretty much what we have now just with the chance of missing your shots transferred to an initial to-hit roll rather spread out among a lot of to-hit rolls. The order of operations changes, but you're still basically ending up with a mechanic where my evasion reduces your number of hits by X%.
...

warpedpig wrote:It shouldn’t be rolling for shots. It should just get some auto hits.

Frag missile. Roll d6. That’s how many auto hits you get. Blast rules should be more like you get up to 6 hits. Can only get 1 hit per model in the unit. As long as you don’t roll a 1. You score some auto hits.

I would like to see what you're all getting at turned into a rule, but I have an alternative:

All blast weapons are -1 to hit but you get +1 to hit for each model in the target unit.

Or even better, you get +1 to hit for every wound in the target unit, since wounds are basically indicative of size/stature. (Except for the Cadre Fireblade who I proxy as a humanoid drone)

So, when shooting at a singular W1 model, you hit normally, but anything else you get +1 to-hit?

That seems like slightly more hassle than just giving a +1 to-hit and calling it a day.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 kingpbjames wrote:
--
All blast weapons are -1 to hit but you get +1 to hit for each model in the target unit.

(edit)

So, when shooting at a singular W1 model, you hit normally, but anything else you get +1 to-hit?

That seems like slightly more hassle than just giving a +1 to-hit and calling it a day.

No I meant you get +1 to-hit for each model in the unit, up to hitting on 2's. (edit, sorry)
Unless you play 9th and cap modifying BS at +/-1.
That way it's very easy to hit a full squad but harder to hit a lone infantry model, since blast weapons would start at -1 to-hit.

 kingpbjames wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 kingpbjames wrote:
--
All blast weapons are -1 to hit but you get +1 to hit for each model in the target unit.

(edit)

So, when shooting at a singular W1 model, you hit normally, but anything else you get +1 to-hit?

That seems like slightly more hassle than just giving a +1 to-hit and calling it a day.

No I meant you get +1 to-hit for each model in the unit, up to hitting on 6's. Unless you play 9th and cap modifying BS at +/-1.
That way it's very easy to hit a full squad but harder to hit a lone infantry model, since blast weapons would start at -1 to-hit.

Wait. A +1 to-hit makes you hit on a LOWER number, not a higher number.

And how often do you fire at a singular W1 model?

 JNAProductions wrote:

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And how often do you fire at a singular W1 model?

I realized that wounds to estimate size doesn't always work so I removed that bit. Would be better to use keywords like vehicles, monsters, etc.

And sorry, I mistyped earlier. I meant to write that blast weapons should be easy to aim at a group of infantry but more difficult to hit a single small target. I think modifying BS all the way to hitting a large target on 2's can be balanced with the "1 wound max per model," but actually we don't allocate wounds to more than one model in a unit now...