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Hey so I am not sure if there is another thread that already talks about this, but with the introduction of more T9 into the game (Rogal Dorn Battle Tanks, Baneblade Toughness increases, etc.) does anyone think that Meltaguns and Multimeltas (along with their equivalents) will see some changes? Weapons like Multimeltas and Heavy Bolters were buffed at the start of 9th of course, but now Strength 8 weapons (especially ones that are meant to counter armor) just feel underwhelming especially with the sheer amount of T8 and now T9 on the table.

While I understand that the big T9 units may not see that much play or be rare enough that it won't truly be necessary, it does feel a bit lore inappropriate to have melta weapons wounding a bunch of vehicles on the table on 5s. These are the very weapons that are made to get through armor so I feel like they should have a new melta rule of some kind that allows them to always wound on 4s against vehicles while in half range or just count their strength as the same as the toughness of any vehicle if it is above 7 or something similar in half range (along with the increased damage perhaps). I also bring this up as a Sisters player since while we have other ways of dealing with T9 things of course, the strength 9 in the codex itself is pretty limited, and certain other factions have a similar issue (Dark Eldar come to mind, even Eldar in general though they do have certain S9+ weapons of course, along with certain other Imperial factions like Custodes who only really get S9 in their FW choices). S9 or S10 weapons are not THAT ubiquitous in the game (not every faction has a lascannon equivalent or S10 melee or something other than one shot Hunter Killers) at least not compared to S8 and it just feels wrong that the weapon type made to counter armor is going to struggle against a good portion of at least the Guard and even Votann motor pool.

I know it's not a huge deal for various reasons (with how deadly 9th has been I agree more durability is needed), but when it does come up it's going to feel really bad when almost all of a faction's main anti-tank is just wounding things on 5s and 6s. Just wanted to see people's thoughts on it, as even with the introduction of more T8 in the game lately, more T9 just feels like an entirely different beast. Interested to have a discussion about this, as I feel like it's something that has gotten somewhat missed lately.

Well that would be typical for gw.

Buff meltas
T8 vehicles suck
Buff vehicles
Buff melta
Buff vehciles


Soon we will have t30 w40 land raiders with s30 dam 5d6+10 damage multimeltas

I'm glad GW is finally going with T9, I personally though it was very foolish when they dropped Titans from high Toughness down to T8.

Why should any vehicle be Toughness 9? Why should melta and lance weapons have different strength values? Vehicles should be 2+ Sv for the most part and then some vehicles should ignore AP-1 and a tiny amount should ignore AP-1 and AP-2. Let high toughness be the domain of monsters. Now you have easy distinctions between the rules for monsters and vehicles making it easy to design weapons that are good for hunting one or the other.

 vict0988 wrote:
Why should any vehicle be Toughness 9? Why should melta and lance weapons have different strength values? Vehicles should be 2+ Sv for the most part and then some vehicles should ignore AP-1 and a tiny amount should ignore AP-1 and AP-2. Let high toughness be the domain of monsters. Now you have easy distinctions between the rules for monsters and vehicles making it easy to design weapons that are good for hunting one or the other.

Why should any gun have a harder time hurting a carnifex than a leman russ? Why can't some monsters have armour or scales as thick as a battle tanks armour? They don't need an artificial delineation in stats.

Higher strength with low AP vs lower strength with higher AP is both a little weird but you risk accidental overlaps where one gun is simply better at both due to break points. You'd also force a situation where hard countering is even more prevalent.

In response to the OP - no, melta doesn't need a buff as such, GW need to make better use of stats spread and the game would benefit from lethality being dialled back a little anyway.

I think an increase in toughness for vehicles was needed. Multimeltas were bumped to 2 shots this edition and the melta rule improved, increasing the average and max damage. I don't think they need a further increase in power.

I'd like to see more tough vehicles: land raiders, monoliths, battle wagons, knights and various super heavy vehicles could all use a bump in resilience.

 vict0988 wrote:
Why should any vehicle be Toughness 9?

We already have vehicles ranging in Toughness from 6-8. Why not T9 as well? Why shouldn't they be T9, or T10 if appropriate?

I guess the problem is that higher T pushes the dreaded "nil points" outcome. It's just not fun to do no damage - and if you are wounding on 5s, it will happen a lot.

For example, Hit on 3s, wound on 5s, into a 5++ means 85%(~) of shots will do nothing. Which in turn means if you fire 8 shots... there's a 27.7% chance they all do nothing. That's high enough to happen all the time. (For reference, the equivalent % with wounding on 4s is 13.3%, and just 6% if wounding on 3s).

Vehicles are too fragile - and GW probably wants to have some distinction between conventional anti-tank and the growing number of "super-guns" they've been putting in codexes. But I think upping wound counts is probably more desirable from the playerbase.

Tyel wrote:
It's just not fun to do no damage

"It's not fun to do no damage" is how we got into this mess of hyper-lethality and games ending in 1-2 turns unless you cover the entire table in LOS blocking terrain.

Slipspace wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
Why should any vehicle be Toughness 9?

We already have vehicles ranging in Toughness from 6-8. Why not T9 as well? Why shouldn't they be T9, or T10 if appropriate?

I dont get it either. We have weapons up to S20, but T only goes up to 9. All titanic units should be T9, or even more.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tyel wrote:

Vehicles are too fragile - and GW probably wants to have some distinction between conventional anti-tank and the growing number of "super-guns" they've been putting in codexes. But I think upping wound counts is probably more desirable from the playerbase.

Some units have a rule which gives +1 to saving throws against D1 weapons. I would give this rule to every vehicle and monster with T6 and higher, to discourage players to roll dozen or hundreds of dice to fish for those 5s and 6s to wound. Its annoying, takes time, and doesnt do much anyway.

 p5freak wrote:

Tyel wrote:

Vehicles are too fragile - and GW probably wants to have some distinction between conventional anti-tank and the growing number of "super-guns" they've been putting in codexes. But I think upping wound counts is probably more desirable from the playerbase.

Some units have a rule which gives +1 to saving throws against D1 weapons. I would give this rule to every vehicle and monster with T6 and higher, to discourage players to roll dozen or hundreds of dice to fish for those 5s and 6s to wound. Its annoying, takes time, and doesnt do much anyway.

Ironically that means they'd need more pointless dice rolling fishing for 5/6's you'd be making it worse as less damage goes through.

 p5freak wrote:
Some units have a rule which gives +1 to saving throws against D1 weapons. I would give this rule to every vehicle and monster with T6 and higher, to discourage players to roll dozen or hundreds of dice to fish for those 5s and 6s to wound. Its annoying, takes time, and doesnt do much anyway.

You will roll them anyway. You just make it even more pointless. Time spent=same, damage caused=less.

Aecus Decimus wrote:
"It's not fun to do no damage" is how we got into this mess of hyper-lethality and games ending in 1-2 turns unless you cover the entire table in LOS blocking terrain.

That is true, and I have certainly complained about lethality in 9th edition.
But at the danger of being Goldilocks, I feel there is something of a middle ground between these two points. GW just has to think of the probability distribution their rules are creating.
If there is a reasonable chance of complete failure - or "I table your whole army" - then, as the dice are rolled across thousands of games, they will happen a lot.

Dudeface wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
Why should any vehicle be Toughness 9? Why should melta and lance weapons have different strength values? Vehicles should be 2+ Sv for the most part and then some vehicles should ignore AP-1 and a tiny amount should ignore AP-1 and AP-2. Let high toughness be the domain of monsters. Now you have easy distinctions between the rules for monsters and vehicles making it easy to design weapons that are good for hunting one or the other.

Why should any gun have a harder time hurting a carnifex than a leman russ? Why can't some monsters have armour or scales as thick as a battle tanks armour?

Such that their main weakness is not AP. The scales might be thick but do they have as much coverage and is the armour angled in such a way that attacks harmlessly ricochet off them?

The Black Adder wrote:
I think an increase in toughness for vehicles was needed. Multimeltas were bumped to 2 shots this edition and the melta rule improved, increasing the average and max damage. I don't think they need a further increase in power.

I'd like to see more tough vehicles: land raiders, monoliths, battle wagons, knights and various super heavy vehicles could all use a bump in resilience.

Great, that'll happen in 5 years.

Slipspace wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
Why should any vehicle be Toughness 9?

We already have vehicles ranging in Toughness from 6-8. Why not T9 as well? Why shouldn't they be T9, or T10 if appropriate?

It makes S3-5 with 0 - -2 AP relatively more effective. Meltaguns aren't overstatted right now, multi-meltas are. Multi-meltas are too good against heavy infantry as well as tanks, krak missiles and plasma cannons aren't a problem either.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

Tyel wrote:
It's just not fun to do no damage

"It's not fun to do no damage" is how we got into this mess of hyper-lethality and games ending in 1-2 turns unless you cover the entire table in LOS blocking terrain.

Every time the topic of vehicle durability comes up, I feel like the best solution is just to give vehicles a few more Wounds. Leave their Toughness low enough for anti-tank weapons to wound semi-reliably. Just make them big bags of hitpoints that you'll need high Damage weapons to chew through in a reasonable amount of time.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Aecus Decimus wrote:

Tyel wrote:
It's just not fun to do no damage

"It's not fun to do no damage" is how we got into this mess of hyper-lethality and games ending in 1-2 turns unless you cover the entire table in LOS blocking terrain.

Every time the topic of vehicle durability comes up, I feel like the best solution is just to give vehicles a few more Wounds. Leave their Toughness low enough for anti-tank weapons to wound semi-reliably. Just make them big bags of hitpoints that you'll need high Damage weapons to chew through in a reasonable amount of time.

litterally double wounds on every vehicles at that point. that way these dumb guns with ultra high damage really start feeling like theyre meant to kill tanks

IMHO at max range Meltas should be ineffective against tanks and monsters. It is in short range where they should get nasty.

Tyel wrote:

Aecus Decimus wrote:
"It's not fun to do no damage" is how we got into this mess of hyper-lethality and games ending in 1-2 turns unless you cover the entire table in LOS blocking terrain.

That is true, and I have certainly complained about lethality in 9th edition.
But at the danger of being Goldilocks, I feel there is something of a middle ground between these two points. GW just has to think of the probability distribution their rules are creating.
If there is a reasonable chance of complete failure - or "I table your whole army" - then, as the dice are rolled across thousands of games, they will happen a lot.

The key issue here is that both problems (unkillable units vs everything disappearing in a puff of smoke) involve damage, which means the solution is outside of it.

40k is an incredibly simple game in that you have full control of your dudes while they're alive, they almost always perform the same, and armies have very little interaction between killing eachother... So we should just fluff out the interaction. There are a metric ton of ways to do this.

Making moral matter again, as more than just a "die moar" mechanic, would be a good start. Re-introduce pinning and being forced to fall back as game mechanics.

A good second step is making cover more interactive than just armor saves. Standing in the open and being shot at should carry consequences such as reduced movement / combat effectiveness; your guys aren't going to shoot - or move - as well if they're in the open getting peppered. This could be even more intuitive if your dudes might make compulsory moves to cover when shot in the open, or return fire against the offending unit rather than another, more important target. Again, link this to leadership.

Finally, link performance itself to leadership. Shooting distant targets, rather than the enemy nipping at your heels, takes a willingness to follow orders and disregard immediate threats. Orks not blitzing towards the nearest enemy to get stuck in, but circling around for a softer target, requires a nob to maintain control of his mob. A squad of guardsmen holding the line, even as another nearby squad flees, requires an effective officer. Leadership should play a pivotal part in controlling your army and having it behave how you want. This would be doubly effective not only in making choices more interesting but also in differentiating different armies and playstyles. An army of Sions is less numerous than a legion of Guardsmen but it's also going to follow your orders better and make less impulsive decisions, and marines will put the Sion's discipline to shame while also making their adversary less cohesive and responsive by damaging their leadership via their shock-and-awe tactics.

Modern 40k isn't anything approaching a wargame because it eschews the core systems which emulate war, making it basically a hyper-expensive (and terribly balanced) RTS. Introducing numerous ways for armies to interact with eachother - beyond simply killing - would allow a re-balancing of lethality while also making the game more than a glorified spreadsheet of how efficiently units kill eachother. Heavy Bolters and auto-cannons don't need to compete because one's for doing modest damage while the other is for doing light damage and suppressing. It also encourages all sorts of interaction with cover and line of sight, meaning that out-flanking your enemy (or even getting behind them) is a strategy which serves a freaking purpose.

Lots of nitpicks incoming.

 morganfreeman wrote:


Making moral matter again, as more than just a "die moar" mechanic, would be a good start. Re-introduce pinning and being forced to fall back as game mechanics.

A good second step is making cover more interactive than just armor saves. Standing in the open and being shot at should carry consequences such as reduced movement / combat effectiveness; your guys aren't going to shoot - or move - as well if they're in the open getting peppered. This could be even more intuitive if your dudes might make compulsory moves to cover when shot in the open, or return fire against the offending unit rather than another, more important target. Again, link this to leadership.

I agree with a lot of this in spirit, but the devil is in the details. The Proposed Rules forum is full of suggestions for how to do each of these things, and those suggestions generally have plenty of problems of their own. I'd also point out here that many units or even factions in 40k basically want to run towards the enemy and charge, so making it too punishing to stand out in the open can end up making those units non-options. I dimly recall this being one of the main reasons ork boyz back in the day never walked anywhere, instead always being fielded in transports.

Finally, link performance itself to leadership. Shooting distant targets, rather than the enemy nipping at your heels, takes a willingness to follow orders and disregard immediate threats. Orks not blitzing towards the nearest enemy to get stuck in, but circling around for a softer target, requires a nob to maintain control of his mob. A squad of guardsmen holding the line, even as another nearby squad flees, requires an effective officer. Leadership should play a pivotal part in controlling your army and having it behave how you want. This would be doubly effective not only in making choices more interesting but also in differentiating different armies and playstyles. An army of Sions is less numerous than a legion of Guardsmen but it's also going to follow your orders better and make less impulsive decisions, and marines will put the Sion's discipline to shame while also making their adversary less cohesive and responsive by damaging their leadership via their shock-and-awe tactics.

Fun in the abstract, but how do you make it fun on the tabletop? In the past, things like this have been handled by a leadership test where failure of the test meant the unit didn't follow your orders. Which is the opposite of creating interesting decisions.

I think they can easily fix the power creep, and that is done by making the damage a sliding scale. So your melta fired at point blank range into that T9 Land Raider? You already get +2 base damage, but because you are less than it's toughness, you subtract the difference from the overall damage, and vice versa, to a minimum of 1 dam. Anything less than half the toughness does zero. Anything more than twice the Toughness does MAX damage on a hit. Donzo.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

I agree with a lot of this in spirit, but the devil is in the details. The Proposed Rules forum is full of suggestions for how to do each of these things, and those suggestions generally have plenty of problems of their own. I'd also point out here that many units or even factions in 40k basically want to run towards the enemy and charge, so making it too punishing to stand out in the open can end up making those units non-options. I dimly recall this being one of the main reasons ork boyz back in the day never walked anywhere, instead always being fielded in transports.

The suggestion forum doesn't matter because it's a bunch of people throwing white noise around and you'll never get a consensus. Publishing it as the actual rules bypasses that steps and makes it what everyone has to participate in. This is GW we're talking about, so it's not like it'd be Broodwar levels of balance, but it would be hard to not get it reasonably 'right' at a baseline... And then thoroughly cock it up by giving 75% of the armies ways to ignore the mechanics.

Squads which are labelled as "assault" could be used via delivery options (deep strike, transports, outflank) or simply more resistant to getting pinned down and forced to cover when shot in the open. Or they could not be, which can be balanced via giving "melee" armies access to cost-effective suppression weapons so that they can cover their advance to come to grips. You can also have interlocking basic / special rules; imagine a melee oriented CSM army where you have cultists screening for marines making it so that the marines cannot be shot / are significantly more resilient to being shot, and subsequently giving the marines the ability to charge the enemy "through" the cultists, but in turn dealing additional damage to the cultists as they barrel through and / or suffering a malus to their charge effectiveness / range as a result.

Obviously these are quick and dirty solutions with no actual numbers of math input, but I'm also not a multi million dollar company. Bottom line is there are a ton of ways to balance this stuff (even thematically) in the same way that there are plenty of ways to make the came more interactively interesting.

Fun in the abstract, but how do you make it fun on the tabletop? In the past, things like this have been handled by a leadership test where failure of the test meant the unit didn't follow your orders. Which is the opposite of creating interesting decisions.

The problem with previous implementations of this is that they've been half-assed and ignored by a majority of the game. Refer to 7th edition and Fear, where a majority of armies were straight up "fearless" or Orcs in previous editions of WHFB, where they were the only army that would ever not be able to control some of their units.

If I recall correctly, Epic used to have a pretty similar system to this. I don't remember the exact stats or details, but it basically worked along these lines: Each unit had a "command" score or some such. When you picked a unit to do something you rolled a d6 and, if you rolled equal to or over the command score, you could do whatever you wanted with the unit (move, charge, shoot, dig in, ect). If you rolled under the score then you could only have the unit dig in (increase saves by +1 / some kind of damage reduction, I don't quite remember) or shoot.

Different armies would have different scores and they'd interact with them differently. So Orks had a score of 5, but if you were having them charge then they didn't have to roll. And if you did roll and failed, they would either move forwards or charge the next enemy unit. Marines had a command score of 3, but the first unit you selected each turn would automatically pass without the need to roll and do exactly as you wanted.

I am, again, not a million dollar company, but this is a pretty decent skeleton on which to build. Armies can be balanced with their leadership and likelihood to "follow orders" kept in mind, and then also be given fluffy (and useful) means via which to play with the mechanics. So where Orks may be rowdy and hard to control unless they're charging, IG officers might be able to "lend" their leadership to a single unit within X inches each turn. Meaning that your general guardsmen are going to be semi unreliable, but having a good command structure will allow you to utilize your important units much more reliably; letting the army function effectively and fluffily while also giving your opponent engaging ways to interact with your army other than just blowing half of it off the table in turn 1. An extremely important factor of this kind of rules system is that it makes deathstars very dangerous, as your enemy will generally be able to layer enough debuffs on one 'super unit' that it's reasonably unlikely to work, which makes it a bad idea to put all of your eggs in one basket. There are also ways to discourage swinging overly hard in the direction of MSU via checks forced from friendly units being wiped out / breaking, leadership buffs due to more bodies, ect.

I hate to put it this way, but the way to handle this stuff is to implement the rules and the fix issues via balancing points costs, stats, and rules. I'm not trying to be gakky or disrespectful in saying this; it's just the truth.

40k cannot be an actual wargame since wargames are meant to realistically model a conflict but 40k takes place in a fictional universe. 40k will always have to be a miniature strategy game, even if it borrows some concepts from wargames. The scale of 40k as opposed to Kill Team and Apocalypse also neccesitates abstraction, whether you view some models as representing a larger force or whatever is up to you, but most games don't make sense as representing the entirety of an engagement.

When player agency is removed, then you're just badly emulating an AI. I'd much rather the game gives me incentives to withdraw or engage directly but nonetheless leave the actual decision up to me.

So how do you make Orks charge the nearest enemy when they don't have a Nob?

’ERE WE GO: You can re-roll charge rolls made for units with this ability against the closest visible enemy unit. If this unit includes a model with "Nob" in the name this unit can re-roll charge rolls. (you get the idea even if the wording needs work)

Give the Nob an actual price (a model with extra attacks and wounds is worth more pts) and people can choose whether they want a more or less rowdy army.

How do you make units fall back? By making the alternative unprofitable. When a unit fails its morale test make it broken instead of having it suffer casualties. Broken units can inflict less damage on the enemy and cannot wrap and trap units, perform actions or control objectives, now your unit has less reason to engage the enemy and more reason to seek cover.

People talk a lot of gak about how just removing models due to morale in 8th/9th is dumb and models need to fall back, but as a Necrons player that's all I remember about Morale in earlier editions, failing morale and the entire unit being wiped.

 morganfreeman wrote:

The suggestion forum doesn't matter because it's a bunch of people throwing white noise around and you'll never get a consensus. Publishing it as the actual rules bypasses that steps and makes it what everyone has to participate in.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Sure, making rules official will get most people to go along with them, but that doesn't mean those rules will be an improvement or free of their own problems. My point wasn't that the Proposed Rules forum lacks consensus; my point was that it has shown a lot of bad ways to implement the ideas you're pitching. In other words, being able to pin the enemy down or make them fall back or whatever sounds cool on paper, but the trick is to implement it in a way that isn't just miserable for squishy and/or melee armies.

Squads which are labelled as "assault" could be used via delivery options (deep strike, transports, outflank) or simply more resistant to getting pinned down and forced to cover when shot in the open. Or they could not be, which can be balanced via giving "melee" armies access to cost-effective suppression weapons so that they can cover their advance to come to grips. You can also have interlocking basic / special rules; imagine a melee oriented CSM army where you have cultists screening for marines making it so that the marines cannot be shot / are significantly more resilient to being shot, and subsequently giving the marines the ability to charge the enemy "through" the cultists, but in turn dealing additional damage to the cultists as they barrel through and / or suffering a malus to their charge effectiveness / range as a result.

Obviously these are quick and dirty solutions with no actual numbers of math input, but I'm also not a multi million dollar company. Bottom line is there are a ton of ways to balance this stuff (even thematically) in the same way that there are plenty of ways to make the came more interactively interesting.

All of that sounds potentially cool, but we should also recognize the we're already looking at ways to let units work around the problems your initial suggestions would likely introduce. Again, I like the general direction you're going. But the devil is in the details. While improved gameplay is something worth experimenting for, we should also probably acknowledge that GW attempting to go in this direction would likely result in a whole lot of fresh problems.

If I recall correctly, Epic used to have a pretty similar system to this. I don't remember the exact stats or details, but it basically worked along these lines: Each unit had a "command" score or some such. When you picked a unit to do something you rolled a d6 and, if you rolled equal to or over the command score, you could do whatever you wanted with the unit (move, charge, shoot, dig in, ect). If you rolled under the score then you could only have the unit dig in (increase saves by +1 / some kind of damage reduction, I don't quite remember) or shoot.

Different armies would have different scores and they'd interact with them differently. So Orks had a score of 5, but if you were having them charge then they didn't have to roll. And if you did roll and failed, they would either move forwards or charge the next enemy unit. Marines had a command score of 3, but the first unit you selected each turn would automatically pass without the need to roll and do exactly as you wanted.

See, that doesn't necessarily sound like an improvement to me. What you're describing sounds like adding a bunch of chances to have my interesting decisions removed by the dice and get screwed over as a result. Plus, you're introducing a new layer of easy-to-mess-up mechanics that would probably have some winners and losers. Again, not saying it's impossible to do well, but I'm seeing red flags already.

I hate to put it this way, but the way to handle this stuff is to implement the rules and the fix issues via balancing points costs, stats, and rules. I'm not trying to be gakky or disrespectful in saying this; it's just the truth.

No disrespect detected. I also hope that I'm not coming across as a jerk.

The issue I think is that a lot of players hate "losing control of their models". I think there was some old interview with GW sometime between late 5th and early 7th where they said this was the biggest complaint they were receiving from players.

Hence why almost every faction became (or got options to be effectively) morale immune, and the system just got scrapped entirely for "you lose some more models" in 8th.

I mean I have a mostly goblin army in WHFB. Between terrible LD, animosity, stupidity, fanatics, misfires and miscasts there's huge scope for the army to go "nah, not going to do that today". From an angle of "let's roll some dice and see what narrative is forged" it's fun and produced some crazy results. But I knew what I was getting into - and leaned into that. If every army was like that, I think many would get quite frustrated.

Tyel wrote:
The issue I think is that a lot of players hate "losing control of their models". I think there was some old interview with GW sometime between late 5th and early 7th where they said this was the biggest complaint they were receiving from players.

Hence why almost every faction became (or got options to be effectively) morale immune, and the system just got scrapped entirely for "you lose some more models" in 8th.

Which I find quite assuming in the context of models being removed from the table as the ultimate lost of control of them and current 40k's lethality.

I've played a fair number of miniatures war games with okay morale systems, and my troops seem to lean more toward the craven and cowardly, failing morale a little more than most. However, I'd rather them still be on the table than off, given what I said above. A pinned, suppressed, falling back, disordered, etc. unit usually has the chance to get back into the fight. They might even still be useful even out of my control if positioned well or their actions are predictable outside of player control (such as always hunkers down, always shoots nearest, always charges nearest enemy, etc.). A removed unit does nothing and will do nothing the rest of the game.

***

I really like morale or other 'loss of control' mechanics if done well. A war game isn't a war game without them, as the lost of control and fog of war are some of the biggest challenges a field commander face. I think these mechanics can work fantastically if a player can somewhat predict they'll kick in. Such as, moving a unit up to some cover but has several enemy units able to keep their heads down and pin them in place because fighting back or leaving is going to result in casualties. Unless the opponent ignores them, then that unit is in a prime position to do the same to enemy units. Suddenly, the game has the chance to be a little more than just trading units. Unlike current 40k.

Morale or other 'loss of control' mechanics don't have to rules that reduce player agency overall, either. Even if a particular unit's control is lost to the player. Good 'loss of control' mechanics both allow units to potentially come back under a player's control (sometimes by exhausting resources), have strategies and/or units (i.e. Command and Control) to reduce the lost of control in the first place and even when units are outside a players' control still may be useful to them.

In the context of 40k, most of the time the lost of control is already lost due to the lethality with no chance of regaining it (outside summoning, healing, etc.). More robust morale/control-loss mechanics would at least give a chance back to the players.

^^^^Well said Saturmorn. I'd much rather have a unit Pinned or Falling Back, with a chance for them to Rally and get back in the fight, than having them just "disappear". The latter is far more of a "loss of control".

And, speaking as someone who plays an army that relies on "morale shenanigans", it's vastly more fun to try to force an opponent's units into being Pinned or Falling Back, and try to capitalize on that, than to just say "Ha ha, my guys are within 12" of that unit, subtract 1 from your attrition rolls".

There is a massive difference between the 3rd-7th morale system of occasional fall backs and pinning, and a system that Saturmorn is talking about.

40k always have been about killing, even falling back and pinning existed as way to reduce lethality but never replace it, after all you likely still needed to finish off that pinned or falling back unit eventually, assuming the falling back unit didn't run out of the board or was wiped out by a sweeping advance.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
^^^^Well said Saturmorn. I'd much rather have a unit Pinned or Falling Back, with a chance for them to Rally and get back in the fight, than having them just "disappear". The latter is far more of a "loss of control".

And, speaking as someone who plays an army that relies on "morale shenanigans", it's vastly more fun to try to force an opponent's units into being Pinned or Falling Back, and try to capitalize on that, than to just say "Ha ha, my guys are within 12" of that unit, subtract 1 from your attrition rolls".

yeah, obviously we're biased since we play NL but god damn does it suck that touching morale does pretty much nothing.

"So i give your dudes 2 LD and -1 to attrition rolls"
"Ok, i'm fearless, so in my command phase bla bla bla."

such a turn off.

 Tyran wrote:
There is a massive difference between the 3rd-7th morale system of occasional fall backs and pinning, and a system that Saturmorn is talking about.

40k always have been about killing, even falling back and pinning existed as way to reduce lethality but never replace it, after all you likely still needed to finish off that pinned or falling back unit eventually, assuming the falling back unit didn't run out of the board or was wiped out by a sweeping advance.

Doesn't sound like it's "massively different". What Saturmorn is describing sounds a lot like the "tweaked" version of the 3rd-7th morale rules used in HH 2.0. The major "tweak" being that there's far less Fearless, ATSKNF, and similar things.

And I don't have to kill the Pinned/Falling Back unit if putting it in that state removes it's ability to score for a turn, or to get in position for whatever purpose my opponent had intended for it. Of course, the latter example is far more effective when you aren't playing on a board the size of a postage stamp.


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 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
^^^^Well said Saturmorn. I'd much rather have a unit Pinned or Falling Back, with a chance for them to Rally and get back in the fight, than having them just "disappear". The latter is far more of a "loss of control".

And, speaking as someone who plays an army that relies on "morale shenanigans", it's vastly more fun to try to force an opponent's units into being Pinned or Falling Back, and try to capitalize on that, than to just say "Ha ha, my guys are within 12" of that unit, subtract 1 from your attrition rolls".

yeah, obviously we're biased since we play NL but god damn does it suck that touching morale does pretty much nothing.

"So i give your dudes 2 LD and -1 to attrition rolls"
"Ok, i'm fearless, so in my command phase bla bla bla."

such a turn off.

Yeah, definitely. Enough to turn some of us off of 9th ed 40k entirely.

From collector card games to mobas to RTS to TT games, literally everything has ways to interact with your enemy in non-damaging means and control their units - primarily by removing (or mitigating) your enemy's ability to control their dudes / cards / units / hero / ect. Without that the only way to engage is damage. And when the only way to engage is damage you run into the barriers of not being able to do enough, or everything dying to a stiff breeze, without any real point in between. A system which has only one way to interaction cannot ever be balanced. There needs to be methods in place to compensate.

I understand that people don't like losing control of their units.... But it's really not an argument. At the end of the day people don't like losing any of their models. Or losing games. Or losing anything in general. You can't build a cohesive rules set out of only things people like, because no one steps into a game hoping against hope they'll lose. Yet that has to be present in some form for a game to work. As Saturmon said, it's better (both thematically and in terms of how useful they are) to have your guys pinned / falling back for a turn than removed from the table cuz they're all dead.

Whenever this subject comes up I see people wringing their hands about how "some people won't like it because they'll have less control over their dudes / sometimes won't control a unit / will have to approach list building different." And while that's totally true, you know what else people don't like?

Consistently removing up a quarter (or more) of their army in the first turn of the game. A situation which I hear everyone complain about, on forums and IRL, in relation to the current hobby. A problem so universally recognized that GW had to implement an official terrain setup to curb it.

There will doubtlessly be people who aren't hot on a system where moral matters. People dislike change and someone always hates the new thing even if it's on principle. But given the last decade of 40k has been a much maligned dumpster fire of swinging between unkillable death-stars and shot-off-the-board-turn-one, I'd say it's worth it to try something new.

This is where the "suggested rules are pointless, just publish" argument comes in.

Without these kind of changes, 40k will continue to be a joke of a system which only maintains its market position via pure inertia. I know that's sufficient for GW themselves, because they're in it for the money, but we as gamers should still strive for it to be a system with more than a tea-spoon of depth and actual decisions to make other than how efficiently our units trade.