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How do!

Help help! I’m being Suppressed! Come and see the Pinning Inherent In The System!

A thread, as per the title, where we discuss the new Tactical Status rules, and whether speccing into them might indeed derive executive power from some saucy git lobbing the right firepower your way.

First things first, I’m yet to form an opinion, and am miles off being able to rattle off the top of my head what each does, and which weapons might inflict which Tactical Status. So I think a potted rundown of each might help things along, particularly for those yet to get the rulebook, or hesitant to adopt 3rd Ed.

There are four Tactical Statuses (Stati?) in the game. They can be applied to vehicles via glancing hits, but also through the Shock weapon trait. But mostly, it’s our squishy little footslogger that are most likely to come a cropper from them, and so, for now, it’s on them I’ll focus. The four, and a quick description of what they mean follows.

Pinning When a unit fails a Pinning Test, it cannot move, rush or charge. If the unit was already in HTH, it can still Pile-In, but is precluded from Pursue or Disengage.

Suppressed. When a unit fails a Suppressed, all ranged attacks it might make are now Snap Shots. Outside of really high BS units, that’s effectively a -2 to hit modifier.

Stunned When a unit fails a Stunned test, it may not declare any Reactions.

Routed Basically running away. Triggered by the Panic weapon trait, 25% casualties in a single shooting phase (based on number still standing at the beginning of that phase, not original strength) and of course, Losing A Combat. Once Routed, you lose all other Tactical Statuses the unit had.

Interesting Things To Note.

Other than Routed, a single unit can be suffering from multiple Tactical Statuses. And you don’t just shrug them off for free at the start of your next turn, either. Instead you need to pass an unmodified Cool check for each Status you’re currently suffering.

There are also universal downers to having a Tactical Status applying. To rattle through them?

1. You can only make Disordered Charges
2. Units locked in Combat always strike at I1
3. Cannot hold, claim or contest an Objective
4. No benefit from being Stationary
5. Vehicles get no Cool check to shrug them off. Instead you need a Battlesmith on hand, or pass a repair roll.
6. If you suffer the same Tactical Status as one you’re already suffering from, nothing else happens. You’re still Pinned, Suppressed, Stunned or Routed.

So. Yeah.

On the face of it? Man it’s nice to have Psychology back. And given weapons which can inflict a Tactical Status check aren’t exactly rare, and many come with negative modifiers for a resulting test, I think they may be the key to victory. Certainly if one can whack say, Pinned and Suppressed? Even combat monster units can be quite nicely hamstrung, at least for a turn.

But, I think there is a risk it might go too far. Whilst temporarily crippling an opponent’s nastiest unit, then sending in your own Nutters to give them a good shoeing is undeniably funny? If it is a regular occurrence, we may simply not see Fancy Dan Legion Units terribly often. After all, you paid your point for Loonies, not Sizable Lady’s Chemises.

What are other people’s thoughts? Has anyone got any early game experience under their belt?

Can these TacStats affect vehicles like Dreadnoughts and Knights?

Dreadnoughts? A firm Yes. However, none have a Cool stat below 10.

By the time you factor in their overall resilience and reliable Cool you’d need to be pretty jammy or very determined to start stacking them up - and it most likely will only last a single turn, as they’ll very likely pass their Cool checks next turn.

Knights? I’ve only the rules for the Moirax Armiger which like Dreadnoughts are Walkers. So no damage table like a vehicle.

For the Questoris, I’m afraid I just don’t have that information to hand, as I don’t have that Liber.

Thanks. Want to guess which Liber sold out locally?

So what I'm understanding is that it's going to be pretty tough to Status away Dreadnoughts.

Maybe not as tough as all that. Bigger guns seem to tend toward the advantage of say, Pinning (2) or Suppressing (1) and so on.

I’m not sure I’d build it into an anti-Dreadnought strategy over “lots of Lascannons, that’s the ticket”, but in a pinch it has to be worth a try. And we know how wry a sense of humour the Dice Gods have.

Where it may instead pay dividends is neutering any “here to score objectives” units brought along in a Knight or Dreadnought heavy army.

It's an interesting state of affairs, the whole tactical status system. It does allow GW to differentiate weapons in a way without just upping the damage stats.

An example Infernus Firepike vs the infernus incinerator, the profile is the same with the exception of Panic (1) vs Panic (2) Which does put even elites in the coin flip territory of failing that test. Hell you can even have a weapon with weaker damage but better test modifiers.

The thing i've not gotten to test yet is how much of your force is going to be under a status effect at any given time? The models are still on the board longer but unable to perform to their fullest. Will this feel good or balance out? That remains to be seen.

Yeah. I’m of the same broad concern.

Whilst we’re in the early days, I think we might see some polarised experiences. For those who’s existing collections now happen to include a decent number of Status Attacks (just a place mark term for now), there’ll be those which largely revolve around Just Killing Stuff.

And so, if two such players were to have a game against each other, the one lacking much in the way of Status Attacks might feel it entirely unfair, as their army is constantly on the blink, and their opponent gets all the fun.

But I do like that it adds attraction to stuff like Rotor Cannons. Traditionally only really good against massive Hordes, they now offer a different perk - ruining a units turn by stopping it from scoring and contesting. Or even setting up something otherwise quite scary for an unexpectedly one-sided kicking in hand to hand.

I really do see potential here, but I think it’ll be a few weeks, maybe even months, before we’ve a reasonably well informed consensus.

More psychology more better!

But... is it actually more psychology? Isn't it just old Pinning split into 3 parts? Means a failed check is only 1/3 as debilitating as before. Remains to be seen if checks are now 3x more common, to keep the overall density of debuffs. It might be more difficult to build a status list as it was before - yes you have more options, but you still need 3 units of 3 different specialized weapons to replicate 1 old Pinning unit. And they actually removed Pinning from combi-grenades, my old favourite way of forcing a check for just a 5 point pot-shot on every unit.

The more granular statuses should provide more interesting gameplay choices, however, than the old you're-either-completely-fine-or-you're-completely-useless Pinning.

I think it’s more the general impact of having at least one applied to a unit.

Not being able to move, or having your BS reduced isn’t exactly fun. But when you’re also prevented from scoring or even contesting objectives, can only fight at I1 and that? It might be very debilitating. Especially as if I can get them to stack, you need to shrug them off individually.

And it’s that persistence I think may be key. No suddenly belting up just because I’ve charged you. You can never truly count on them not applying from the start of your next turn.

Likewise, anything with the Panic trait is currently whispering sweet nothings in my ear. Yes ideally you’d want that (X) modifier. But being able to force multiple Panic checks in a turn feels really useful, as even a single failed test could seriously disrupt the opponent’s line.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Turning to Vehicles, I’m very interested to see how that pans out.

From the Mechanicum point of view, most of my heavy hitting weapons have Armourbane, which mean I either fail or penetrate - and so can’t easily inflict Tactical Status. But I will, naturally, destroy the target in fairly short order.

And I’m not sure if that’s completely desirable. Sure a tank gone bye-bye is to be preferred to one still on the board. But, what when I whiff it, and only damage the bugger? Where a different suite of weapons will chip away the Hull Points whilst keeping the target Pinned/Suppressed/Stunned? They may have a better time of it, as should the target survive it might not be capable of much retaliation.

I suspect it’s not as big a problem as I’m thinking right now, hence the curiosity.

My gaming group is having a "learn to play" day this saturday. I'm not sure what points levels we're playing (I assume 1500 or less) but I'll take a wide array of units so I've got a bit to play around with.

I'll report back on my thoughts about the Tactical Statuses and other such things. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't interested in playing with the new rules. I'm just greatly tempering my expectations in the (likely?) even that I don't enjoy it.

And it’s these early days I worry about skewed opinions.

No, not sad acts just making it up. But someone fielding an army not armed to press for Tactical Statuses, and finding themselves outclassed against an army specced into it.

It’s definitely a big change, and it’s gonna take a bit for folks to get used to mobile heavy weapons and squads being temporarily neutered. These could be very good changes - once people are used to them.

Shouldn't people be playing the armies they want, which they build for prior editions? It would be a bit much, aside for maybe those that had access to the rules 3-6 months in advance to be told that in order to play optimaly, they now have to drop 400$ and paint a few boxes of units and vehicles. Especialy if those units don't match their army style.

If someone has something like a World Eater zerker horde, they aren't going to be happy, if the optimal way to play their army is to not be horde, but rather some sort of an army that looks like a siege company with a lot of tanks and artilery.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
And it’s these early days I worry about skewed opinions.

No, not sad acts just making it up. But someone fielding an army not armed to press for Tactical Statuses, and finding themselves outclassed against an army specced into it.

It’s definitely a big change, and it’s gonna take a bit for folks to get used to mobile heavy weapons and squads being temporarily neutered. These could be very good changes - once people are used to them.

The timeframe for getting used to them is pretty much the entire reason our group has decided against picking up HH3.

Given that HH is almost certainly on the three-year cycle now, why should I spend a year and a half learning the system, then retooling my army, only for it to maybe be entirely different again in the same amount of time? This isn't the joyous days of youth, where I'm going to Saturday Warlords every week down the local GW and doing another couple of games a month after school finishes on Fridays coupled with no financial burdens.

Karol wrote:
Shouldn't people be playing the armies they want, which they build for prior editions? It would be a bit much, aside for maybe those that had access to the rules 3-6 months in advance to be told that in order to play optimaly, they now have to drop 400$ and paint a few boxes of units and vehicles. Especialy if those units don't match their army style.

If someone has something like a World Eater zerker horde, they aren't going to be happy, if the optimal way to play their army is to not be horde, but rather some sort of an army that looks like a siege company with a lot of tanks and artilery.

Congrats, you've figured out the GW model of selling things. Change the rules so people are forced into buying new models.

Well, I’ve checked the entire thread. And I can’t see where anyone said people should go and buy a new army.

I’ve no doubt some heavily themed lists (which can include meta chasing list) may lose some lustre here. But they always have. New editions, new codexes have always done that, where or not there’s been a significant shift in the base rule set.

It doesn’t mean they can’t work. It doesn’t mean the whole of the thing must now be replaced. Just people will need to relearn their army.

I'll do it, say you should buy stuff.

Get heralds! They still have fear so any tact status rolls will be effectively (2) or even (3) that puts even custodes at the coin flip point.

I am curious how impactful tactical statuses will be on high hull point vehicles. The "test" to apply a status to vehicles is essentially a 1/6 chance (equaling the armor of the vehicle). But every weapon that can hurt a vehicle can apply any of the status effects. For larger vehicles like knights and super heavies this could mean they accumulate status effects quickly. And since most vehicle clear status effects only on a 6, or a 5+ with auto repairs, those status effects will stick around longer than on infantry taking leadership tests.

Maybe I missed something about super heavies not being effected, but I noticed knights have auto-repair 5+ so I am assuming they can take statuses.

I’ve got the Knight & Titan Liber arriving tomorrow, so will see if I can roughly familiarise myself with how they and Tactical Status interact.

Titans don't care. Knights do, and really benefit from the one title that gives more repair checks, I think preceptor?

 MajorWesJanson wrote:
Titans don't care. Knights do, and really benefit from the one title that gives more repair checks, I think preceptor?

Yep, it's Mechanicum only. This is why I'm glad I painted my Knights in House Taranis Blue

 SamwiseTheBrave86 wrote:
I am curious how impactful tactical statuses will be on high hull point vehicles. The "test" to apply a status to vehicles is essentially a 1/6 chance (equaling the armor of the vehicle). But every weapon that can hurt a vehicle can apply any of the status effects. For larger vehicles like knights and super heavies this could mean they accumulate status effects quickly.

Well, actually, most dedicated anti-tank weapons can't apply status effects since they have Armourbane. Glancing hits happen only when you try plinking something with autocannons/plasma.

Another feather in the cap of Panic?

By design, once you fail a Panic test, you flee at least twice. The first is the initial Brown Trousers time. The second is done before you attempt to rally. And there’s a text box in the rulebook explaining this is deliberate.

Which means any weapons packing Panic (X) may be pretty desirable.

Heavy Flamers for instance aren’t Heavy, but do come with Panic (1). Same with Flamers. Both aren’t exactly uncommon weapons.

Stick a squad in a transport, and you’ve a squad capable of driving off enemy units.

Oh yea Flamers make me happy in my pants... and I already always fielded loads of them, so it's all upside for me, no need to break arms off etc.

As someone who (I think) avoids scans, MDG, have you heard yet that the Auxilia have a Hellstorm sized Panic(2) flamer on the Malcador Infernus, and it's AP3 when stationary?

That’s the one Liber I don’t own or have on order. But that sounds pretty damned handy to have! Get a good angle, and who knows how many units a single roasty toasty might send packing?

I also think it’s a super fluffy thing. Flame weapons should drive people out of cover and general just in a backwards or away direction.

Phosphex Bombs and Dischargers also have Panic (3). So that ought to be good for a laugh!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
How do!


There are four Tactical Statuses (Stati?) in the game. They can be applied to vehicles via glancing hits, but also through the Shock weapon trait.

Not adding anything to the topic but in case you were actually wondering, the nominative plural of status in latin would be status with a long "u" (so "statoos"). English usually doesn't care.