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I guess any involvement in this conversation is a bit dishonest, as I'm very much in the camp of "they got rid of AV and there was much rejoicing". I don't think 40k has ever really been stimulatory, and I think that's just confusing mechanics that were in existence for nearly 2 decades for trying to be a simulation.

But... with that said, I think any historic run down has to consider points. The issue in 5th was partly that they tuned up the rules, while vehicles were still so cheap. I.E. Rhinos were 50 points in 3rd. I think in 4th (certainly 5th) they were down to 35. Blowing up individual vehicles in 5th wasn't that hard. Although, the nature of the table meant vehicles did have an effective invul save, which I think a lot of people didn't like. The issue was that you could bring a parking lot without it really impacting the rest of your army. 6 Rhinos for instance is only about 15% of a 1500 point army.

Leafblower was obnoxious - but I don't remember killing it being the issue. It was more that if they went first, they were odds on to delete a large section of your army. Especially if it was slow and infantry based. Arguably it was better at higher points levels where you had to pile your army up into good targets for pie plates.

I never remember there being a problem with AV in 2nd and 3rd (and 4th? IIRC hull points were added in 5th?). Not saying there wasn't, but it certainly didn't seem like anyone had an issue with getting lucky/unlucky and oneshotting a Predator or Leman Russ or whatever.

hull points were 6th, and no even when people complain about 5th being a parking lot, there was plenty of AT weapons to counter balance it. it was never a problem to kill anything short of AV 14 from range. the latter being beaten by outflanking side armor or getting close with melta or assaulting it.

 aphyon wrote:
hull points were 6th, and no even when people complain about 5th being a parking lot, there was plenty of AT weapons to counter balance it. it was never a problem to kill anything short of AV 14 from range. the latter being beaten by outflanking side armor or getting close with melta or assaulting it.

One aspect was the damage tables.

In 6th-7th, they made it increasingly difficult to get 'vehicle destroyed' results (IIRC, you couldn't destroy a vehicle on a glancing hit without AP1).

This was presumably intended to balance Hull Points. However, they neglected that not all armies had Autocannons, Shuriken Cannons etc, to turn to instead. Dark Eldar, for example, had Dark Lances and . . . more Dark Lances. These were the worst of both worlds, having neither the strength or AP to consistently penetrate vehicles and get destroyed results, nor the rate of fire to efficiently strip Hull Points.


As an aside, this is another reason why Corsairs in 7th felt like 'Dark Eldar: Good Version' - because, as well as the standard Dark Lances, they could also bring Fusion Guns (for more reliable penetration at close range) and/or Shuriken Cannons and Scatter Lasers (for stripping hull points from light vehicles).

I feel this is the rub though.
As the DE player, you always felt your dark lances didn't do anything. Failed to penetrate or when you do its crew shaken and why bother etc. Opponents meanwhile remembered the first short being a hit, rolling a 5 or 6 for a pen and then another 6 for vehicle explodes on their brand new Land Raider.

 vipoid wrote:

 aphyon wrote:
hull points were 6th, and no even when people complain about 5th being a parking lot, there was plenty of AT weapons to counter balance it. it was never a problem to kill anything short of AV 14 from range. the latter being beaten by outflanking side armor or getting close with melta or assaulting it.

One aspect was the damage tables.

In 6th-7th, they made it increasingly difficult to get 'vehicle destroyed' results (IIRC, you couldn't destroy a vehicle on a glancing hit without AP1).

This was presumably intended to balance Hull Points. However, they neglected that not all armies had Autocannons, Shuriken Cannons etc, to turn to instead. Dark Eldar, for example, had Dark Lances and . . . more Dark Lances. These were the worst of both worlds, having neither the strength or AP to consistently penetrate vehicles and get destroyed results, nor the rate of fire to efficiently strip Hull Points.


As an aside, this is another reason why Corsairs in 7th felt like 'Dark Eldar: Good Version' - because, as well as the standard Dark Lances, they could also bring Fusion Guns (for more reliable penetration at close range) and/or Shuriken Cannons and Scatter Lasers (for stripping hull points from light vehicles).

I mean they could strap blasters or dark lances to nearly anything and they were one of the few armies with reasonable access to haywire early and whilst I'm not saying they were good or anything heat lances were a available as well. It's not like dark lances were the only option or hard to come across.

I'd say the old facings and AP system and penetration mechanics just don't work for the scale of 40k anymore. If they made an inbetween system with 500-1250 points, by all means, throw in all those simulationist rules and an activation system to deepen the game. Facings for everyone, not just vehicles. Suppression, crossfire and a table for shokk attack guns beaming snotlings into terminators. But 2000+ points with superheavies and Flyers and giant monsters? We don’t really need that. Apokalypse with additional special rules and a little detail on squad equipment is/ would be enough. If they got the stratagem system to work finally as a way of breaking up IGOUGO and not just as a "kill even betterer" mechanic it'd be good enough for me.

Apocalypse doesn't use IGOUGO. Epic has both an alternating activation system and crossfire mechanics. Team Yankee/FOW have varying armor values.

These concepts aren't off-limits to large-scale games. It's bad, chrome-focused, overly fiddly implementation that's unsuitable for large-scale games. As an example- figuring out 90-degree armor quadrants was always a pain, but figuring out a simple front/back by drawing a line across the front of the vehicle is not.

If you want to streamline for the current scale of 40K, it's the amount of game-critical data that is unit-specific and cannot be reasonably inferred from the models that represents a greater speed-of-play burden than effects-focused, staple wargame mechanics.

Wayniac wrote:
I never remember there being a problem with AV in 2nd and 3rd (and 4th? IIRC hull points were added in 5th?). Not saying there wasn't, but it certainly didn't seem like anyone had an issue with getting lucky/unlucky and oneshotting a Predator or Leman Russ or whatever.

I mean, what you just described was a problem. You could "get lucky" and one-shot a predator or leman russ, but you couldn't "get lucky" and one-shot a carnifex or a wraithlord.

This was presumably intended to balance Hull Points. However, they neglected that not all armies had Autocannons, Shuriken Cannons etc, to turn to instead. Dark Eldar, for example, had Dark Lances and . . . more Dark Lances. These were the worst of both worlds, having neither the strength or AP to consistently penetrate vehicles and get destroyed results, nor the rate of fire to efficiently strip Hull Points.

I'm not sure this is accurate. Dark Lances were S8 and reduced target AV to 12 - lances always had a 33% chance of scoring a penetrating hit against almost every vehicle in the game (there were a handful of exceptions that had immunity to the lance rule). Likewise heat lances (iirc) were S6 AP1 with 2d6 armor penetration and the lance rule (AV12 max) which made them pretty effective at penetrating many targets, but also gave them a good chance of destroying vehicles on a glance in the rare instance where they didn't just wreck them outright. IIRC Blasters also had a lot of game as AT weapons, and they were cheap and plentiful and a dime a dozen in every DE list. And then there was also plenty of haywire access as well.

Most factions had access to meltaguns or equivalents that gave them s8 + 2d6 armor pen in pretty sufficient quantities. What often hurt more was a lack of true long-range "reach out and touch someone" weapons with high S and low AP. Many factions basically had to rely on lascannons if they weren't spamming meltagun type weapons, which couldn't be taken in significant enough quantities and were only really reliable to AV12. Or they were like tyranids and just wrecked vehicles by throwing a bunch of S8/9/10 attacks at them in melee which auto-hit rear armor, which made them absolutely devastating against everything except a handful of vehicles like land raiders that were AV14 all around. Even most walkers topped out at AV12 front armor, so there was limited advantage to their supposed benefit of using their front armor in melee.

 catbarf wrote:
Apocalypse doesn't use IGOUGO. Epic has both an alternating activation system and crossfire mechanics. Team Yankee/FOW have varying armor values.

These concepts aren't off-limits to large-scale games. It's bad, chrome-focused, overly fiddly implementation that's unsuitable for large-scale games. As an example- figuring out 90-degree armor quadrants was always a pain, but figuring out a simple front/back by drawing a line across the front of the vehicle is not.

If you want to streamline for the current scale of 40K, it's the amount of game-critical data that is unit-specific and cannot be reasonably inferred from the models that represents a greater speed-of-play burden than effects-focused, staple wargame mechanics.

I know all of that. My post was written in a hurry so not all that clear. What I meant to say was I could see 40K going two different ways. Either a more detailed Apokalypse or a deeper 10th edition with improved stratagem mechanics and morale rules. (HH 2.0 is also interesting because of its reaction mechanics improving the stale IGOUGO but I haven't gotten around to read these rules in detail so I don’t have a qualified opinion on them).
Either way I'm fine with the reduction of the bloated vehicle rules I experienced in 6th and 7th that didn't serve a purpose but to make vehicles bad and the game slower.

chaos0xomega wrote:

I'm not sure this is accurate. Dark Lances were S8 and reduced target AV to 12 - lances always had a 33% chance of scoring a penetrating hit against almost every vehicle in the game (there were a handful of exceptions that had immunity to the lance rule).

Which sounds great until you realise that 90% of the vehicles in the game are already AV12 or lower.

And then you remember that this is objectively inferior to a Lascannon's S9 against almost every target (the Lascannon is only worse against AV14).

Moreover, 33% penetration rate is horrible for an anti-vehicle weapon that relies on penetration to be remotely effective.

In 7th, it would take 27 Dark Lance shots (1125pts of Ravagers) to average a single 'Vehicle Destroyed' result on a 65pt Chimera.

(Sorry, this is something of a bugbear for me - I hate the degree to which the Lance rule was lauded, despite being a godawful rule that seems to only have existed to justify DE's anti-vehicle weapons remaining perpetually godawful.)

 vipoid wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

I'm not sure this is accurate. Dark Lances were S8 and reduced target AV to 12 - lances always had a 33% chance of scoring a penetrating hit against almost every vehicle in the game (there were a handful of exceptions that had immunity to the lance rule).

Which sounds great until you realise that 90% of the vehicles in the game are already AV12 or lower.

And then you remember that this is objectively inferior to a Lascannon's S9 against almost every target (the Lascannon is only worse against AV14).

Moreover, 33% penetration rate is horrible for an anti-vehicle weapon that relies on penetration to be remotely effective.

In 7th, it would take 27 Dark Lance shots (1125pts of Ravagers) to average a single 'Vehicle Destroyed' result on a 65pt Chimera.

(Sorry, this is something of a bugbear for me - I hate the degree to which the Lance rule was lauded, despite being a godawful rule that seems to only have existed to justify DE's anti-vehicle weapons remaining perpetually godawful.)

But... it's not god awful? That chimera has 3 hull points, you need what, 9 shots to kill it regardless? The lascannon needs 8 hits as a minimum to kill it by comparison which is not that far removed. The lascannon has a marginally higher chance to get a penetration, but not so much higher that it totally outstrips the usefulness of the dark lance like you're saying.

Yeah, as a craftworld eldar main from 5th through end of 6th/early 7th when I basically quit (until 8th came along and fixed every problem I had with 6th/7th), I can't say I ever had an issue popping vehicles, and I don't think craftworld eldar had nearly as many tools to deal with vehicles as DE did.

In fact, I basically had the opposite problem where the only thing that could consistently beat me we horde armies that could choke out my ability to maneuver around the table and had significantly more bodies than I could reasonably hope to kill over the course of a typical game. Green Tide lists in particular were the bane of my existence.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:I'd say the old facings and AP system and penetration mechanics just don't work for the scale of 40k anymore. If they made an inbetween system with 500-1250 points, by all means, throw in all those simulationist rules and an activation system to deepen the game. Facings for everyone, not just vehicles. Suppression, crossfire and a table for shokk attack guns beaming snotlings into terminators. But 2000+ points with superheavies and Flyers and giant monsters? We don’t really need that. Apokalypse with additional special rules and a little detail on squad equipment is/ would be enough. If they got the stratagem system to work finally as a way of breaking up IGOUGO and not just as a "kill even betterer" mechanic it'd be good enough for me.

I have to call this incorrect. you are comparing 2 different rule sets. originally FW designed flyers and superheavies to be used in normal games, with opponents permission as at the time no such thing as apocalypse existed. as such superheavies while somewhat more durable, were super expensive centerpiece models you brought for the rule of cool. baneblades specifically were very easy to kill because they had no void shields. i have recently shot/assaulted them with dreadnoughts for one turn kills that strip all 3 structure points. hitting front AV 14. flyers additionally are glass cannons in the original rules most being AV 10 and immobilizing them is a destroyed result the same as an actual damage result of the same.

Using the rules made for normal games as originally designed they are not a problem at all.

a couple of the guys in our oldhammer group did this game last weekend using the original warhound titan rules-



remember there were no such thing as D weapons. twin turbo laser destructors were 2 small blast templates with las cannon stats.
The thing the way they were running it was probably the best all around loadout- BS 3, 810 points, 3 structure points, 2 void shields (come back online on a 5+ at the start of every turn after they go down) plasma blast gun-5" template 12-54" S8 AP2 2d6 armor pen. vulcan mega bolter 12-36" 10 shots twin linked S6 AP4 with rending. as well as an onboard tech priest that can make repairs on a 5+- it didn't do much damage the entire game and it also lost its plasma blast gun. but what it did do was distract the space marine player who threw a ton of shots at it including from his land raider terminus ultra (designed to kill titans), instead of shooting at the guardsman that allowed the guard to win the game.

Not only was it not game breaking or overpowered it adds depth to the setting because the original design of 40K was for fun epic battles, not powergaming tournament dreams.

chaos0xomega wrote:Yeah, as a craftworld eldar main from 5th through end of 6th/early 7th when I basically quit (until 8th came along and fixed every problem I had with 6th/7th), I can't say I ever had an issue popping vehicles, and I don't think craftworld eldar had nearly as many tools to deal with vehicles as DE did.

In fact, I basically had the opposite problem where the only thing that could consistently beat me we horde armies that could choke out my ability to maneuver around the table and had significantly more bodies than I could reasonably hope to kill over the course of a typical game. Green Tide lists in particular were the bane of my existence.

Well in the lore that kind of fits for facing orks. the active eldar players in my area never had problems dealing with vehicles the doom of mymeara book from FW is also a popular craftworld or corsair list to play. as a small elite army like most otheres they tend to strugle against hordes.

They need to just put 3rd back out, warp speed swarmlord wins any CC

 vipoid wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

I'm not sure this is accurate. Dark Lances were S8 and reduced target AV to 12 - lances always had a 33% chance of scoring a penetrating hit against almost every vehicle in the game (there were a handful of exceptions that had immunity to the lance rule).

Which sounds great until you realise that 90% of the vehicles in the game are already AV12 or lower.

And then you remember that this is objectively inferior to a Lascannon's S9 against almost every target (the Lascannon is only worse against AV14).

Moreover, 33% penetration rate is horrible for an anti-vehicle weapon that relies on penetration to be remotely effective.

In 7th, it would take 27 Dark Lance shots (1125pts of Ravagers) to average a single 'Vehicle Destroyed' result on a 65pt Chimera.

(Sorry, this is something of a bugbear for me - I hate the degree to which the Lance rule was lauded, despite being a godawful rule that seems to only have existed to justify DE's anti-vehicle weapons remaining perpetually godawful.)

I have to ask how you liked Dark Lances in 3rd-4th, when the Vehicle Damage Table was more punishing for vehicles? Our DE guy was terrifying with those things, and if I recall the basic Warriors squad could get two of them in a ten man squad for like, 110 points or something?

I remember comparing that to my 5 man Lascannon Tactical squad for 90 points and feeling very outmatched for AT ability in my troops.

Stormbreed wrote:
They need to just put 3rd back out, warp speed swarmlord wins any CC

Given the swarmlord didn't exist until 5th I think you might be misremembering.

 Insectum7 wrote:
I have to ask how you liked Dark Lances in 3rd-4th, when the Vehicle Damage Table was more punishing for vehicles? Our DE guy was terrifying with those things, and if I recall the basic Warriors squad could get two of them in a ten man squad for like, 110 points or something?

I remember comparing that to my 5 man Lascannon Tactical squad for 90 points and feeling very outmatched for AT ability in my troops.

I'm afraid 3rd and 4th were before my time, at least when it comes to Dark Eldar. I only started collecting them in 5th, so I missed out on that particular era.

Dark Lances were alright in 5th from what I remember. Mainly because the vehicle damage table hadn't been written by a man with a pickaxe lodged in his skull.

Honestly, though, looking at 10th just makes me nostalgic for 5th. I'm sure if I played it again I'd find no shortage of niggles and bugbears, but it just had so much more life than 10th.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I'd say the old facings and AP system and penetration mechanics just don't work for the scale of 40k anymore. If they made an inbetween system with 500-1250 points, by all means, throw in all those simulationist rules and an activation system to deepen the game. Facings for everyone, not just vehicles. Suppression, crossfire and a table for shokk attack guns beaming snotlings into terminators.

Facings for everyone seems a bit much. The games that do that are much smaller scale skirmish affairs like Infinity. I think someone around here as done a total conversion of 40k to Infinity...

I think scale has always been a problem for 40k. We maneuver squads around, but we have to be careful about individual model placement. It was worse when pie plates were a thing because the model placement really mattered. In some editions model placement would affect how casualties are taken. The assault move rules have always been a mess. I think it's the models that are the root cause of this problem. If 40k was a board game that came with carboard chits for units, there wouldn't be this need to account for each model and make it special. 40k could pick a scale and stick with it.

Bolt Action is essentially oldhammer in WWII and seems to fit what you suggest. It retains the AV system and damage table and seems like a hybrid of 4th/5th edition while having 2nd edition army sizes. There are no monstrous creatures so there's no complaints about how the AV system is unfair. But it has few vehicles in standard lists, usually just one or two. There is a Tank War supplement that lets you use more tanks, but I don't have any experience with it.

But 2000+ points with superheavies and Flyers and giant monsters? We don’t really need that. Apokalypse with additional special rules and a little detail on squad equipment is/ would be enough. If they got the stratagem system to work finally as a way of breaking up IGOUGO and not just as a "kill even betterer" mechanic it'd be good enough for me.

I'd argue that moreso than the AV system, flyers and superheavies were bad for 40k. I think GW figured out sometime in 4th or early 5th that players would pay more for bigger kits because of the illusion of value that came with those kits. Nevermind that the plastic was just as cheap. So we got flyers, the baby carrier, trygon, wraithknight, riptide and storm surge et al. We also started seeing more artsy kits that were cool looking but basically impractical for tabletop play. The winged tyrant is entirely too large, for example. Anybody wanna try playing with the new Flugrim model? We've got all these oversized models and the board is now smaller making things even more cluttered.

Because of this discussion I have started to suspect that the debacle of flyers in 6th was a result of the hull point system. I think they probably playtested the new kits as skimmers, as they had been in 5th and found them to be very fragile. So they created the flyer mechanics to make them more survivable and thus desirable. I always hated them and felt they were totally inappropriate at this scale. It didn't help that I had to add an imperial bastion with a quad gun manned by a crack shot fire dragon exarch to be able to shoot them down. So thematic.

Flyer rules existed as far back as 3rd via FW the 6th edition tweaked their movement a bit but also made them way to durable. a combination of the movement rules from 6th with the original FW flyer rules actually puts them right were they need to be.

Aphyon, put spoiler tags on that image, dude. It completely screws up the readability of the thread.

I love facing, but its very hard on games with large units. It's also really hard to implement in a satisfying way and not just something that punishes players for not dragging the game out micromanaging.

Infinity is the only game where it REALLY works and that mostly has to do with the terrain density and ability to make the choice of taking the short route or spending more resources to take a safer path.

 Arschbombe wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I'd say the old facings and AP system and penetration mechanics just don't work for the scale of 40k anymore. If they made an inbetween system with 500-1250 points, by all means, throw in all those simulationist rules and an activation system to deepen the game. Facings for everyone, not just vehicles. Suppression, crossfire and a table for shokk attack guns beaming snotlings into terminators.

Facings for everyone seems a bit much. The games that do that are much smaller scale skirmish affairs like Infinity. I think someone around here as done a total conversion of 40k to Infinity...

I think the early versions of Epic used a facing mechanic even on it's little tank models. IIrc it was just bisecting the model through the middle to give a front and back, and then applying a -1 save reduction to the rear. Lots of models on the table too.

I think facing could work fine on MCs as well as Vehicles, it just needs to be quick and easy. Front/Back or Quad templates. Infantry definitely don't need it, but a crossfire mechanic would be great.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Arschbombe wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I'd say the old facings and AP system and penetration mechanics just don't work for the scale of 40k anymore. If they made an inbetween system with 500-1250 points, by all means, throw in all those simulationist rules and an activation system to deepen the game. Facings for everyone, not just vehicles. Suppression, crossfire and a table for shokk attack guns beaming snotlings into terminators.

Facings for everyone seems a bit much. The games that do that are much smaller scale skirmish affairs like Infinity. I think someone around here as done a total conversion of 40k to Infinity...

I think the early versions of Epic used a facing mechanic even on it's little tank models. IIrc it was just bisecting the model through the middle to give a front and back, and then applying a -1 save reduction to the rear. Lots of models on the table too.

I think facing could work fine on MCs as well as Vehicles, it just needs to be quick and easy. Front/Back or Quad templates. Infantry definitely don't need it, but a crossfire mechanic would be great.

There are games out there which put an emphasize on leader models from which you draw LOS etc (Mantics Firefight I think?). You could probably use them to determine facings on infantry.
Probably wouldn't really serve a purpose if you had crossfire and suppression already

Crossfire to Infantry or Vehicles? Or both?

Infantry I'd look for a Crossfire where you can draw lines between opposition forces through a squad, because I don't want to worry about the facing of individual forces, I just want to know that they're being engaged from multiple directions.

For vehicles and Monsters I'm more inclined to go with something that uses the actual rotation of the model because

A: It's a bigger model to start with
B: I don't want to be able to enable Crossfire on a vehicle using units that can't hurt it in the first place.
C: I allows for more oblique opportunities to gain a flanking bonus. Like you might have flanked it's position, but because you don't have a squad or unit is the right spot opposite, you couldn't take advantage of it.

When thinking about these mechanics I think a range limit to Crossfire could be important too, as units should be in "engagement range" is some form or another. But I wouldn't want a flanking maneuver against a vehicle to be range limited, and AT weapons often have much higher ranges.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Probably wouldn't really serve a purpose if you had crossfire and suppression already

This, pretty much, and those are better mechanics for this scale of play. You only model individual facings when individual facing is what matters.

In a small-scale skirmish wargame, like Kill Team or Infinity, tracking facing and flanking at the level of individuals makes sense. In a larger-scale wargame, tracking facing of individual vehicles with varying armor protection and relatively slow reaction times makes sense.

At a squad level, though, what we care about is the disposition of the squad. A scale-appropriate abstraction is to assume that the squad will array itself to best make use of cover, so what matters is when fire is coming from multiple directions and the squad can't adequately defend itself. Crossfire mechanics are more elegant than constantly modeling facing, and avoid some annoying edge cases, like how discrete turns allow you to simply walk around a unit and shoot it in the back.

I think armor facings for vehicles are still appropriate for 40K, just not with the clunky implementation of working out 90-degree quadrants. Even 6mm to 15mm wargames still frequently model armor facing, they just use simple abstractions like drawing a line across the front of a vehicle to determine front armor vs flank armor.

A 28mm wargame having tanks scoot sideways up the board while shooting from their exhaust stacks is demonstrating a serious crisis of scale.

I think you could determine crossfire fairly simply for a game of 40k scale. For example, you could define the minimum angle needed between two firing units, let's say 90 degrees, and simply have a cone-shaped template with that angle at the tip you can place on the table, if necessary use laser pointers to extend it the sides if it is marginal, and a lot of the time I would imaginei t would be obvious without needing the template.

 Baragash wrote:
I think you could determine crossfire fairly simply for a game of 40k scale. For example, you could define the minimum angle needed between two firing units, let's say 90 degrees, and simply have a cone-shaped template with that angle at the tip you can place on the table, if necessary use laser pointers to extend it the sides if it is marginal, and a lot of the time I would imaginei t would be obvious without needing the template.

Would you need 90 degrees or just do the "If you can draw a line through the taget unit between two of your units."?

I really don't get the arguments about facings because deciding what facing is being shot at is extremely trivial when you are playing a game which requires a tape measure. If your opponent is being a dumbass, it ain't hard to literally draw a physical line from the model shooting to the armor facing. Even better if you carry around a laser pointer keychain or the like.

Yeah, but the issue is more that it adds a lot of time to a game that already takes quite a lot of hours to play. Plus with the size of the table and models and the requirements for terrain; a lot of the time you're not going to have room to position tanks easily into a good angle for firing realistically.


In games where I see facings being important it tends to be skirmish games with very few models; or naval games where to be honest the board is often much much more open; but also the models are often much thinner (because they are ships) so there's more scope to actually have them turn to show a broadside and so forth.

For 40K it could easily become a situation where certain tanks are heavily superior to others. A lot of those big chunky Imperial tanks might even end up really poor choices compared to a lot of sleeker Xenos.

At the same time a lot of Xenos tanks and such don't have side guns.



In the end I think it can be a cool mechanic, but its not a good one to have in a modern 2K points 40K game. It slows things down; encourages less terrain use and could be a nightmare for some factions over others.