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Not sure if I get your point, Isn't that just -1 to hit with extra steps?

My idea would be more like that a unit like ork lootas or shootaboyz would get BS5+/5+ (shooting phase/overwatch) because they were shooting in that direction anyways, irrespective of an opponent showing up.

Units like guardsmen or tau strikes who are all about holding the line might have something like 4+/4+ while interceptors and other fast elements would have 3+/6+ because they aren't exactly waiting for opponent to come to them. All-rounder units like custodes guardians or intercessors would be a 2+/4 or 3+/4+.

You could even do some funky gak like giving snipers 5+/3+ because they will always be waiting for a target to enter their sight rather than move towards it.

Weapons notoriously bad at overwatch like an earthshaker cannon could have a 6+ or even 7+ for overwatch, while a stubber or voltkite weapon would lose no BS at all.

Not sure it's worth the extra complexity though.

 Jidmah wrote:
Not sure if I get your point, Isn't that just -1 to hit with extra steps?

The math is pretty different. The reduction in firepower would go 50% | 33% | 50% | 40% instead of 50% | 33% | 25% | 20% as with -1. It's still a little favorable towards BS 4+ but some of that would be evened out by not allowing orders/judgement/markerlights/etc to raise the reduced BS.

It's a different concept than what you're proposing though, with both BS scores being variable. There would be no reason to print it separately on the datasheet.

Ah, I see. Yes, reducing overwatch by roughly the same percentage for everyone would tackle the issue.

Not really sure how to fix it but moving vehicles and other non infantry needs adjusting. The number of players I've encountered doing this incorrectly is much higher than any other rule in the game.

Maybe step by step photos of a vehicle moving around a ruin would help.

Can you clarify what you mean, Sarigar?

 Dysartes wrote:
Can you clarify what you mean, Sarigar?

A bit difficult to write.

Bendable tape measure. For example, a monster on a round 80mm base behind a wall in area terrain (model cannot move through the wall). Person places the tape measure by the base closest the corner of the wall and bends tape measure 90 degress around the wall to measure distance. This ignores the base also being required to clear the wall gaining additional movement.

Honestly, the paying for pivots change was one of the dumbest things they've done with the rules this edition. And, I like 10th on the whole.

 RaptorusRex wrote:
Honestly, the paying for pivots change was one of the dumbest things they've done with the rules this edition. And, I like 10th on the whole.

I mean it is a legitimate problem in some cases without an elegant solution, unless you have better?

Sarigar wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
Can you clarify what you mean, Sarigar?

A bit difficult to write.

Bendable tape measure. For example, a monster on a round 80mm base behind a wall in area terrain (model cannot move through the wall). Person places the tape measure by the base closest the corner of the wall and bends tape measure 90 degress around the wall to measure distance. This ignores the base also being required to clear the wall gaining additional movement.

Yes, people do that. That's what steppers are for, I started using them in Warmachine and never looked back. In Kill Team they serve me well too.

It's worth remembering too, that a round base touching another or a piece of terrain first needs to move sideways (perpendicular to the base's radius to the contact point). Otherwise you will have the back sides of the base "phase" through terrain.

Particularly important when a game requires you to move in 1" increments. Then the first full inch needs to be taken sideways.

At least it works better than the "measure furthest point rule" which was either played incorrectly or not at all by the vast majority of players.

It feels very wrong, but I'd rather "pay" two inches of movement to drive in whatever way I want than to guess which overhanging part of a battlewagon moved further.

I'd immediately drop the whole thing for a better solution though.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Cyel wrote:
Yes, people do that. That's what steppers are for, I started using them in Warmachine and never looked back. In Kill Team they serve me well too.

It's worth remembering too, that a round base touching another or a piece of terrain first needs to move sideways (perpendicular to the base's radius to the contact point). Otherwise you will have the back sides of the base "phase" through terrain.

Particularly important when a game requires you to move in 1" increments. Then the first full inch needs to be taken sideways.

I've never heard of steppers, so I googled them. That does seem like an interesting solution. The speed freeks game came with similar movement aids, so it's not a new concept to GW either.

How would you tackle large oval bases with these though? Would you need a stepper for each bases size? How about vehicles without bases? Defilers?

 Jidmah wrote:
At least it works better than the "measure furthest point rule" which was either played incorrectly or not at all by the vast majority of players.

It feels very wrong, but I'd rather "pay" two inches of movement to drive in whatever way I want than to guess which overhanging part of a battlewagon moved further.

I'd immediately drop the whole thing for a better solution though.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Cyel wrote:
Yes, people do that. That's what steppers are for, I started using them in Warmachine and never looked back. In Kill Team they serve me well too.

It's worth remembering too, that a round base touching another or a piece of terrain first needs to move sideways (perpendicular to the base's radius to the contact point). Otherwise you will have the back sides of the base "phase" through terrain.

Particularly important when a game requires you to move in 1" increments. Then the first full inch needs to be taken sideways.

I've never heard of steppers, so I googled them. That does seem like an interesting solution. The speed freeks game came with similar movement aids, so it's not a new concept to GW either.

How would you tackle large oval bases with these though? Would you need a stepper for each bases size? How about vehicles without bases? Defilers?

I've never seen steppers before. I looked it up as well. I can see how useful that is for Kill Team as I've seen the bendable tape measure in that game.

Base shape and size makes it a challenge in 40K as many of the smaller round bases can move through ruin walls. But I do like the steppers as a concept.

But, this is the one thing in 10th I really hope gets attention in 11th.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that if you need 6's to hit (through -1 to Hit rules, -1 BS or Overwatch) you shouldn't be able to "crit" at all. No Lethal Hits, No Sustained X, etc...

You are being penalized; why should you get the full benefits of all the special rules all of the time?

Now if that means that armies with lower BS, like Orks, need an army rule stating something like: 'Ork Player Shooting Phase BS can't be worse than 5+' or 'BS can't be reduced to less than 5+, with the exception of Overwatch' so be it.

I tend to feel that anything that has you throwing a bunch of dice to fish for 6s needs a pretty good justification for expending that much time for that little result. Overwatch in particular ought to either be reasonably effective (and subject to appropriate constraints), or shouldn't exist.

The post-5th Ed implementation of a bonus round of shooting because someone dared to charge you (or now, moved in your vicinity) always struck me as a kludge for IGOUGO sequencing issues. Ironically, I think that turning it into a stratagem was actually a decent way to reduce the amount of worthless rolling by reserving it for when it's actually relevant enough to be worth burning a CP, but again, it feels like using stratagems as a tacked-on solution to a limitation of the core structure.

 catbarf wrote:
I tend to feel that anything that has you throwing a bunch of dice to fish for 6s needs a pretty good justification for expending that much time for that little result. Overwatch in particular ought to either be reasonably effective (and subject to appropriate constraints), or shouldn't exist.

This has been one of my big frustrations post 5th edition.

Overwatch
Snapshot
6+ Invulnerable saves
6+ FNP
etc.

It just feels that an endless stream of time-wasting mechanics were added to the game.

 catbarf wrote:
I tend to feel that anything that has you throwing a bunch of dice to fish for 6s needs a pretty good justification for expending that much time for that little result. Overwatch in particular ought to either be reasonably effective (and subject to appropriate constraints), or shouldn't exist.

The post-5th Ed implementation of a bonus round of shooting because someone dared to charge you (or now, moved in your vicinity) always struck me as a kludge for IGOUGO sequencing issues. Ironically, I think that turning it into a stratagem was actually a decent way to reduce the amount of worthless rolling by reserving it for when it's actually relevant enough to be worth burning a CP, but again, it feels like using stratagems as a tacked-on solution to a limitation of the core structure.

I think the current Overwatch mechanic was used as a disincentive against just declaring charges willy-nilly with the "new" roll-2D6-for-charge distance, as opposed to the fixed 6" standard charge (exceptions for occasional units like Cavalry) that came before 6th. With that framing I feel like the thought behind it is understandable, but really the culprit was those random charge distances. I never really understood the motivation behind that change in the first place.

Like, I can remember occasionally pulling off a desperate 11 or 12" charge, but I sure felt like I got lucky, rather than cleverly outplaying my opponent. And I can remember staring at the 2, 3 or 4 I rolled trying to make a charge an opponent only 4.25 inches away, and I gotta say, those are some of the worst moments in 40K imo.

And to bring it back on theme, the random charge distance sure seemed like it fell into the category of rolls-for-rolls sake. And then Overwatch added more rolls.

I think the thought behind overwatch is that it would be stupid to stand there with a gun and do nothing while a close combat monster charges in to tear you to pieces.

Clearly, 40k is not a "total simulation game" - but I think in any discussion of overwatch, it's important to come back to the thing it represents before settling on a mechanic.

 PenitentJake wrote:
I think the thought behind overwatch is that it would be stupid to stand there with a gun and do nothing while a close combat monster charges in to tear you to pieces.

Clearly, 40k is not a "total simulation game" - but I think in any discussion of overwatch, it's important to come back to the thing it represents before settling on a mechanic.

Personally speaking, I’ve been heavily influenced by Xcom and so overwatch seems to me to be a way to take a reaction shot against a moving target that otherwise would be hard to hit behind cover. But that would only make sense in 40K if cover were as meaningful as in xcom, so we would need stronger cover rules to make overwatch make sense.

Now to your point about units doing nothing… I feel that aside from turn one, units are always engaged in whatever they were just doing their last turn. They presumably already shot at the units charging them, or some other near threat, or did something to distract them from the melee threat.
So maybe overwatch could just be active turn 1, where units get to shoot chargers as a free reaction at full BS. Which could be useful as deterrent to first turn charges and less of a feels bad for ranged units that get mulched before doing anything.

Though if overwatch were to stay as a strat it should be at full BS. It’s already limited by CP and usage, so make it worth doing.


Anyway, since were talking things that could change, the rule in 40K that I feel should get tossed into the shadow realm is… the invulnerable save. It just skews so much. Back when AP was all or nothing, it was a crutch to give certain units a little more staying power. Take a terminator for example, without the invuln, you would have no save vs plasma.
But now, with save mods weapon damage, and boosted wound counts, you don’t ‘need’ the invuln anymore.
For example, why can’t tau shield generators just boost armor saves by 1? Or increase toughness by 1 or 2? Same with assault terminators, their shield could boost their total wounds. Imperial knights should just get a 2+ sv and more wounds etc… then balance the game around that.

And Daemons get…

 JNAProductions wrote:
And Daemons get…

Are invulns integral to demons? If not, they could get boosted stats. Or maybe they regen? Or modifiers to hit and wound rolls depending on conditions? I just really don’t want to deal with magnus, or a bloodthirster with invulns.

For reference, I play admech and tau so losing invulns would impact my armies a lot too.

Dandelion wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
And Daemons get…

Are invulns integral to demons? If not, they could get boosted stats. Or maybe they regen? Or modifiers to hit and wound rolls depending on conditions? I just really don’t want to deal with magnus, or a bloodthirster with invulns.

For reference, I play admech and tau so losing invulns would impact my armies a lot too.

90% of the daemonic roster has worse armor than Invuln.
The only exceptions I can think of offhand are Daemon Princes, Bloodthirsters, and fortifications.

PenitentJake wrote:I think the thought behind overwatch is that it would be stupid to stand there with a gun and do nothing while a close combat monster charges in to tear you to pieces.

So is standing there with a gun and doing nothing while the heavy weapons squad walks up and deploys a trio of tripod-mounted lascannons to zap your ass, but that's how it goes in a pure IGOUGO system.

The issue overwatch historically caused was that it was free shooting, ie in addition to your normal activities. You got to do whatever you want in your turn, and then if the other guy charges you, you get extra shooting with no strings attached. There was no on-the-board counterplay (beyond cheesy crap like declaring a charge outside of LOS); the only real counter was special abilities or stratagems to turn it off. It's been drastically improved by giving it an opportunity cost and allowing it to trigger off more than just melee, but you still can't turn it off in a useful timeframe (opponent doesn't roll battleshock until their turn) and it's ultimately useless for most units.

JNAProductions wrote:And Daemons get…

Extra wounds? Higher toughness? Damage reduction? Regeneration, or resurrecting killed models? Attacker strength reduction? Are there no other ways the incorporeal nature of daemons could possibly be represented beyond an invuln?

As with every other objection that amounts to 'this change would break my faction if you did literally nothing else to the rules', there are ways to address it.

Yeah, structurally and conceptually, the shooting that happened in the enemy's previous turn is supposed to simultaneous with the charges happening the attacker's current turn.

IGOUGO means it's all supposed to be happening at once.

You could equally say that an enemy melee unit wouldn't just stand there and take shots in the opponent's shooting phase, they'd run forward or move to take cover in response to the incoming fire.


IMO overwatch really should only be included if it's part of a suite of reaction mechanics that applies equally to all units, rather than just giving gun guys extra free turns.

That or commit to alternate activation or a variation thereof.

If anything overwatch is anti-realistic; being forced to react to a charge would mean less shooting than if the unit was in a safe firing position. Not twice the shooting or even +25% the shooting.

That's going to be down to implementation, to balance it out because it's an advantage that only some units can use. If it were a purely downside no one would use it.

If Daemons lose Invulns (also Harlequins and a few other units) they’d need something else.

And honestly? For Daemons, Invulns feel pretty right.
Harlies could probably use hit penalties or similar, but Daemons just noping some hits feels accurate to lore to me.

I think, for rules like overwatch and similar rules. It often feels like a lot of there issues come from 40K often being a bit of a dumping ground for good ideas, that often work badly or counter intuitive to the design.

Daemon’s especially have been lacking in creativity and much fun, often being extremely strict considering the chaos tag they come under.

I even think back to 6th edition and quite enjoying it when like half a dozen things were not happening. But those things were so counter to fun it dragged everything down.

It’s also why I think it’s so hard for even players now to pin down on what they would like to see.
I been trying to think specifically what I want from 11th and I’m not sure. Following 10th I think 40K is Ok, but it’s kinda just meh as a game for lots of little reasons.
So I just kinda expect 11th to spin the wheal again and see where it lands.

Maybe units have to make a LD test to perform a ln Overwatch...

And have the Unit Leader still alive.

IMO you need to go back to basics and decide what each army or faction's concepts are, and then build rules around them, rather than trying to make them fit the ever decreasingly complex core rules.

I'll harp on it until the day I die, but a feature of all eldar factions was their 'speed=defence', they used being hard to hit to make them more survivable than their statline would otherwise suggest.

But if the game's only mechanism of resilience is T,W,Sv, there are no rules to use to represent that concept.

So things like daemons, is an invuln a good representation, or just the best you can use given the limitations of the system?


Starting with the what and then determining the best representation for that will create better outcomes. Either that or you push further down the abstraction route and just ignore the meanings of the stats and use them for their mechanics - ie all eldar are W2 because the first wound they lose is a 'graze' to represent their speed.

For daemons, they are not wholly corporeal, so they sometimes just don't get struck, or they don't really suffer any damage if they do. So what if they had a 'Warp save' which was applied to hits rather than wounds? Just an example of how you can find different ways to represent the concepts that might better reflect what they actually are. Another idea might be that daemons can only ever suffer 1 damage from an attack, regardless of its damage value, because they just don't interact with it the same way as a corporeal creature. Only psychic key words or daemonic keywords inflict normal damage.

Saving on hits instead of wounds wouldn’t actually be a meaningful difference.
And capping damage at 1 doesn’t even really make sense, beyond its balance issues.

Speed as defense is something the system
Struggles with. But Invulns for Daemons isn’t out of whack for what I’d expect.

Random Charge Distances and Overwatch were a rules reaction to allowing players to premeasure distances at any time. Premeasuring allows player to guarantee a charge was possible (I am within 6" of you after I move, charge time) or impossible (I am more than your move + 6" away from you at the end of my move, you can't charge me next turn).

Here's the chain of thought.

1. You don't want to exclude people from the game based on their ability to estimate distances visually. Some people have disabilities that prevent that. Some of us just suck at it.

2. You don't want the ability to premeasure at any time to allow players to guarantee avoiding being charged.

3. So you instead add ambiguity to charges by randomizing the distance. They settled on 2d6 being the Charge range, probably because of the bell curve of distance it gives and the simplicity of the roll.

4. Now there needs to be a downside to allowing units to charge unto 12 inches, so they resurrected the name overwatch and gave your opponent an opportunity to avoid a charge. Back in 6th, casualties were taken from the closed models to the firing unit, so charges could be pushed out of range by an effective round of Overwatch.

Now this became a total time sink as unit after unit fired overwatch at units attacking them. Then GW had the brilliant idea to allow Tau units to fire overwatch for their neighbors, making it that much worst!

That leads us to today, where overwatch cost a CP and is rarely worth bothering to pay the cost. It would be more functional rules-wise if units were just better during the first round of combat because everyone is firing their guns as they charge or are charged.