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Spoletta wrote:
A lot will depend on the definition of "Partially visible" and "Fully visible". If it is defined with true LoS then yes, we don't get too far from 9th edition issues, but if they instead trace from base to base then it would be a lot cleaner.
Lower AP and easier to claim cover can fix the shooting gallery issue for many factions

Both good points, and honestly I'm hoping for a base-to-base line of sight solution with some sort of band-aid for models like the defiler. I'd rather have a good solution for 95% of the models and a dumb one for the few edge cases than something that is fiddly for everything but covers all the edge cases.

 Strg Alt wrote:

 Afrodactyl wrote:
I like the new cover system, including units with a 3+ or better not benefitting from 0AP weapons.

From a gameplay perspective it means that MEQ/TEQ don't become this unmovable brick once in cover. It means that your small arms can actually contribute in even a vaguely meaningful way.

From a fluff perspective, why is a Terminator or Marine going to care about Guardsmen plinking lasguns at him? Yes, they're going to hug cover when the melta guns and plasma guns come out but until then the overwhelming majority of small arms fire is inconsequential to them.

Wrong. It doesn´t matter if a guardsman or marine stand behind a tree. In both cases the bullet has to penetrate the tree first. So both models will benefit from it. The mental gymnastics of some people...

It's not really mental gymnastics when you consider that Marines are effectively walking tanks compared to your average Guardsman in the fluff. Why is he so scared of lasguns that he's cowering behind trees for protection? He isn't, because his armour is protecting him from basically all of the lasfire, ergo he's effectively getting no benefit from the cover against lasfire.

Ergo the new cover rule.

Cover is also about the shooter losing their shot, as the target is presumed to be moving and not static.

But this will also encourage different playstyle, and maybe even different objective placement. If my dudes aren’t going to gain much from cover, there’s some logic to “I’ll place my objectives more in the open”, in the hope you’ll either steer clear, or be easier for me to force off said objectives.

And remember, it’s not never Benefit from Cover. 3+ and better saves still get the benefit against anything AP -1 or stronger.

Of course, we’ll need to see more weapon stats to truly put that into the most accurate context.

 Afrodactyl wrote:
Marines are effectively walking tanks compared to your average Guardsman in the fluff.

Unless the main protag is a Guardsman in which case Marines get noscoped constantly. So the Marines take cover because they don't know who the main protag is. Simple as. (/s)

In pretty much every bolter porn novel I have read, when marines come under fire by regular troops, they "break into a running pace" and then start hack and slashing away at their opponents with their while also shooting them in the face or chest at point blank range.

In don't remember ever having read about a terminator taking cover. Either they walk into gunfire while shooting at the source of it, or they hide out of sight until ordnance or flanking troops take out whatever was preventing them from walking into gunfire.

But do the Marines on the table know they are in a bolter porn fic? What if they are in a Gaunt novel? Even Dreadnoughts wisely take cover when they find themselves in a Gaunt novel.

 AtoMaki wrote:
But do the Marines on the table know they are in a bolter porn fic? What if they are in a Gaunt novel? Even Dreadnoughts wisely take cover when they find themselves in a Gaunt novel.

Looking at Gaunt's rules, I'm fairly sure none of the games are in a Gaunt novel.

 Jidmah wrote:

 AtoMaki wrote:
But do the Marines on the table know they are in a bolter porn fic? What if they are in a Gaunt novel? Even Dreadnoughts wisely take cover when they find themselves in a Gaunt novel.

Looking at Gaunt's rules, I'm fairly sure none of the games are in a Gaunt novel.

Looking at the Marines' rules, I'm fairly sure none of the games are in a bolter porn either.

Your point being? Gaunt's Ghosts is like 16 novels or something, marine novels are probably in the hundreds by now.

Marines surely expect their army to work how it is described in their novels, not how it is described in a series which kind of has to make sure that a small group of regular soldiers is relevant, despite super-humans existing which are literally better at everything they do.

And I frankly don't believe that there are marines, terminators or even dreads taking cover from las, autoguns or shootas unless someone provides a quote from one of the books of exactly that happening.

Eldar with 3+ saves never take cover either!

But barely sentient Necron Warriors do...

 Jidmah wrote:

Marines surely expect their army to work how it is described in their novels

That would require a complete rework of the entire Marine range. Starting with how easily they die to lasguns and other small arms (at least compared to the novel descriptions). And many other things too. There is a post about this idea a few pages back.

 Jidmah wrote:
And I frankly don't believe that there are marines, terminators or even dreads taking cover from las, autoguns or shootas unless someone provides a quote from one of the books of exactly that happening.

Hey, they still do in the game if the las/autogun/shoota is slightly above them. I guess the High Ground memes are too much even for the Marines and they must take cover against them or something. And that's funny because Plunging Fire is supposed to represent a denial of cover, but against Marines it provides the benefit of cover. How ironic .

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Eldar with 3+ saves never take cover either!

I don't really remember any aspect warrior taking cover - either it's surgical strikes which allow no return fire or they dodge around like mad using acrobatics, jump generators or their wings.
40k really is lacking a dodge mechanic for these kind of units.

To fair, I haven't read that many novels with proper eldar battles in them (5-6 max), and in many they suffered from the NPC xenos faction syndrome.

Ironically, a faction that is constantly portrayed as cowardly hiding in terrain and giving the protagonists trouble is orks, despite them not really benefitting from cover a whole lot on the tabletop. Maybe an army-wide 5+ armor save changes that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AtoMaki wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

Marines surely expect their army to work how it is described in their novels

That would require a complete rework of the entire Marine range. Starting with how easily they die to lasguns and other small arms (at least compared to the novel descriptions). And many other things too. There is a post about this idea a few pages back.

True, but to me it felt like marines with armor of contempt came really close to how marines are portrayed in most novels. With AoC essentially being applied to every weapon in the game now, it's close enough.
Having a marine die from an autopistol when you shoot him 18 times at point blank range without any chance to miss might be easy from a game perspective, but from a lore perspective it's not. In comparison, it takes 3 shots to kill a guardsman with an autopistol.

 Jidmah wrote:
Hey, they still do in the game if the las/autogun/shoota is slightly above them. I guess the High Ground memes are too much even for the Marines and they must take cover against them or something. And that's funny because Plunging Fire is supposed to represent a denial of cover, but against Marines it provides the benefit of cover. How ironic .

Taking abstract rules too literally will always lead to funny interaction, cue calculating a genestealers speed based on eldar planes being "supersonic". I don't remember the details, but essentially every genestealer would cause a sonic boom when advancing and then catch fire from the friction of the atmosphere moving past it that fast.

6" also isn't "slightly above them", in almost all cases this will be a model shooting from the second floor (counting European style) to the ground floor. Just walk outside and see how far up that is.

Lastly, I feel like this rule is completely unnecessary (too granular for the scale 40k is now at), but they most likely wanted to reward units for being high up in a ruin - currently, for most units it never makes sense to climb ruins anymore, because it takes too long to get up and/or down.

In the game Marines are presumably going to still get into cover because hosing them down with Plasma/Melta (and equivalents) is still going to be the main way their units actually die in the shooting phase.

Not because you've somehow targeted them 180 BS4+ lasgun shots.

6" is 2 floors. Gothic architecture floors.

That's what? 10 Meters?

Spoletta wrote:
6" is 2 floors. Gothic architecture floors.

That's what? 10 Meters?

Assuming that there is a floor at exactly 6", which is not that common. 3" floors make it difficult to place models in ruins, so even most scratch built terrain has more.
Otherwise it sounds about right, as Gothic architecture in general tends to have extra high ceilings, google says 3-4.5m is the average so 9 - 15m from ground floor to second floor.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Eldar with 3+ saves never take cover either!

I don't really remember any aspect warrior taking cover - either it's surgical strikes which allow no return fire or they dodge around like mad using acrobatics, jump generators or their wings.
40k really is lacking a dodge mechanic for these kind of units.

.

I recall one where Stirking Scorpions (IIRC) were in cover behind a wall then an Immolator rolled up and incinerated them

 Jidmah wrote:

Having a marine die from an autopistol when you shoot him 18 times at point blank range without any chance to miss might be easy from a game perspective, but from a lore perspective it's not.

I mean, that's the whole point. If the perspectives are so misaligned anyway, then why bother? Marines will still hug cover (just not against lasguns) and lasguns will still fare poorly against them so what this rule actually does is to make lasguns a little better versus MEQ because they essentially get -1 AP if the Marine is in cover. If this is bolter porn then it must be BDSM.

 Jidmah wrote:

6" also isn't "slightly above them", in almost all cases this will be a model shooting from the second floor (counting European style) to the ground floor. Just walk outside and see how far up that is.

I know, that's why I'm wondering why it improves the Marines' cover effectiveness. On its own, the rule would be fine, but with the "no 2+ cover vs AP0" rule it means that firing at Marines in cover with lasguns is less effective from an elevated position than from the ground floor. It just feels extremely counter-productive. So what if Marines get a 2+ cover against my mighty lasguns? Will it trigger an IRL nuclear war from the angry AM players working at NORAD? Or what?

 AtoMaki wrote:
lasguns will still fare poorly against them so what this rule actually does is to make lasguns a little better versus MEQ because they essentially get -1 AP if the Marine is in cover.

So what if Marines get a 2+ cover against my mighty lasguns? Will it trigger an IRL nuclear war from the angry AM players working at NORAD? Or what?

Here's storm bolters vs marines not in cover - this comes to about 20 points in damage done ( current points ) :


And this is the same with marines getting a cover bonus - predictably half the damage so 10 points worth:


And here's SB vs guard in cover - this comes to 29 points of damage:


So what you're effectively saying is that it's OK for marines to take 1/3 the damage of guard as long as it doesn't hurt anyone's sensibilities? Maybe we should just increase the AP on guns to make it fair. Wait...

 Daedalus81 wrote:

So what you're effectively saying is that it's OK for marines to take 1/3 the damage of guard as long as it doesn't hurt anyone's sensibilities?

Yes? They are supposed to be really friggin' tough, very much unlike GEQ, so, like, who cares? Or to better say, who would expect anything different and why? Am I supposed to believe that there are people who try to weed Marines out of cover with peashooters and think it should work? And GW made a separate rule to make these people feel less dumb?

 AtoMaki wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

Having a marine die from an autopistol when you shoot him 18 times at point blank range without any chance to miss might be easy from a game perspective, but from a lore perspective it's not.

I mean, that's the whole point. If the perspectives are so misaligned anyway, then why bother?

Why bother? From a lore perspective, there is no reason. From a gaming perspective, +1 to armor saves is not a linear increase in survivability, and that causes problems:
Marine cover takes one wound from those 18 shots, a 50% reduction in damage. Meanwhile an ork takes 5 damage instead of 6, a reduction of 16.66%. It's pretty much the reverse of the dense cover situation, where dense cover would provide a 50% reduction of damage from ork shooting, while it only provided a 25% reduction from marine shooting. Multiply those effects and a tactical marine with dense and light cover takes only take a fourth of the damage from ork shootas, while the orks (with 6+ armor) still take more than half from bolters.
Bringing the minimum effect and the maximum effect of cover closer to each other makes it more fair and more balanceable for both sides.

Marines will still hug cover (just not against lasguns) and lasguns will still fare poorly against them so what this rule actually does is to make lasguns a little better versus MEQ because they essentially get -1 AP if the Marine is in cover.

Correct.

On its own, the rule would be fine, but with the "no 2+ cover vs AP0" rule it means that firing at Marines in cover with lasguns is less effective from an elevated position than from the ground floor. It just feels extremely counter-productive. So what if Marines get a 2+ cover against my mighty lasguns? Will it trigger an IRL nuclear war from the angry AM players working at NORAD? Or what?

See above for the math reason. There are quite a few weapons with AP0 which aren't lasguns and I suspect the numbers will be massively increased with AP going down across the board and doctrines disappearing. I expect most anti-infantry weaponry to drop to AP0 like we have seen with the assault cannon, and 2+ armor in cover would just make those completely worthless to fire at marines.

In the end, the rule does nothing but cap armor at 3+. The "vs AP0" is just a weird way to word that, but it gets the job done and leaves no room for edge cases or rules lawering. Everything else you read into it is just in your head.

Spoletta wrote:
6" is 2 floors. Gothic architecture floors.

That's what? 10 Meters?

A little less, around nine.

Assuming a 1:60 scale, each inch is slightly more than 1.5 meters.

 AtoMaki wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

So what you're effectively saying is that it's OK for marines to take 1/3 the damage of guard as long as it doesn't hurt anyone's sensibilities?

Yes? They are supposed to be really friggin' tough, very much unlike GEQ, so, like, who cares? Or to better say, who would expect anything different and why? Am I supposed to believe that there are people who try to weed Marines out of cover with peashooters and think it should work? And GW made a separate rule to make these people feel less dumb?

You do realize that marines STILL take less damage under either condition, right?

 AtoMaki wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

So what you're effectively saying is that it's OK for marines to take 1/3 the damage of guard as long as it doesn't hurt anyone's sensibilities?

Yes? They are supposed to be really friggin' tough, very much unlike GEQ, so, like, who cares? Or to better say, who would expect anything different and why? Am I supposed to believe that there are people who try to weed Marines out of cover with peashooters and think it should work? And GW made a separate rule to make these people feel less dumb?

GW clearly disagrees with you. And I wouldn't exactly call "heavy, large-calibre machine gun" (codex description of a big shoota) a "peashooter".

 Jidmah wrote:
I expect most anti-infantry weaponry to drop to AP0 like we have seen with the assault cannon

Well, the Bolt Rifle jumped to AP -1, so there you go.

 Jidmah wrote:
GW clearly disagrees with you.

Not necessarily. GW putting on the kid gloves might be legit too, and objectively, I can't disagree with that one.

The Bolt Rifle has always been AP -1. That's been its biggest selling point.

It used to have 30" Range, so it actually has been slightly nerfed in 10th compared to before.

Of course, it has also been buffed with Assault (now with no Hit penalty) and the new Heavy (Bonus to hit when stationary).

 AtoMaki wrote:
Well, the Bolt Rifle jumped to AP -1, so there you go.

It was always AP1 and it lost 6" ( that's what she said? )

 AtoMaki wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
I expect most anti-infantry weaponry to drop to AP0 like we have seen with the assault cannon

Well, the Bolt Rifle jumped to AP -1, so there you go.

Bolt rifles have been AP 1. The oldmarine boltgun wasn't, and neither was the assault version for primaris, but rifles were.

That poor horse...

 Jidmah wrote:
Marines surely expect their army to work how it is described in their novels, not how it is described in a series which kind of has to make sure that a small group of regular soldiers is relevant, despite super-humans existing which are literally better at everything they do.

Once upon a time there was a list called Movie Marines that did exactly that. Your entire army was 5-10 models, the entries were movie archetypes like 'the sarge' and 'the dude', you could buy stunt doubles to take damage for you, it supercharged all your weapons so basic bolters could blow open tanks, and even had a note saying that if your opponent's fielding the same guns they still use the normal stats, because you're the protagonist and they're not. Somewhere along the line the playerbase forgot that this was a tongue-in-cheek satire, and more than once I've seen Marine fans wistfully pine for 'lore-accurate' rules like Movie Marines.

It always strikes me as odd when people suggest that Guard-centric novels are full of protagonist bias and shouldn't be taken as lore-accurate, but [insert bolter porn novel here] is Real Lore™ and if Marines on the tabletop don't feel like the Marines in Marine-centric fiction, it's bad. There's always going to be a disconnect between action shlock power fantasy and a competitive game where both players have a comparable shot at winning and both players expect to be treated as equals, rather than protagonists vs NPCs.

So tl;dr why are we talking about what anyone does in the novels? The tabletop came first and should be a fun and fair experience in its own right, regardless of what the writers do with it after the fact.

 AtoMaki wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
I expect most anti-infantry weaponry to drop to AP0 like we have seen with the assault cannon

Well, the Bolt Rifle jumped to AP -1, so there you go.

It's AP-1 already, so it didn't jump anywhere. If anything it dropped in AP because doctrines are gone. You are also missing the point.