Hello folks,
Today I was reminiscing about the fun of the Dawn of War computer games. Of course, I enjoy the real game much more as I have the creativity of assembling and painting things how I want that I lack in the
PC game. Still, the
pc game was fun, it had good voice-work and a strong representation of the main characters and units of each army. I also enjoyed that a game of
DoW would take 20-30 min whereas a game of
40k takes two hours. Obviously most of this comes from the plastic pushing. Taking out all those models moving them while maintaining formation (which means more time measuring). Of course some it is from the dice rolling, but that's the good part anyway.
While much of this physical moving of the piece takes time, some of it can be reduced and thus make the game quicker and in my opinion, more fun.
First off I actually do enjoy 6th edition, I think flyers in general are well balanced and overwatch, smash and challenges are more cinematic elements that enhance the game. However, I have always disliked the arrangement of assaults. By having to remove models from the front (always a pain when their weapons get caught together like braces in some bad romance flick) and also you have to assign wounds specifically to models, and then each side makes its consolidation move. Me and a few a my friends just use rules similar to 5th ed, you just squish the two units forward and determine how many models are within the 2" range and then just resolve hits against the "basic" models of the unit and remove them from the back. We just agree that the models with special weapons or are srgt would naturally last longer then their standard brethren. Of course, just like in 5th, there is the issue with "hidden" power weapons in squads (oh,
IG power assault blob, I miss you) that couldn't be removed until near the very end. However that was just a problem in 5th, now that there are challenges as well as the precision strike rule (which a lot of people forget about) and it exist on not just characters, but some units like death wing knights have them.
This way, you can still have a fun game with a quicker assault phase and less knit picking about exactly which models should be removed first or whose striking whom. It also feels more cinematic to have your sergeants and champions last longer and seem more powerful. I know I really enjoy playing this way as there is a good balance between speeding up the game while still keeping it fair. However, precision strike is still not that common of a special rule, if it were it would probably be more balanced against "hidden" specialists, but otherwise my group seems to enjoy this version of the assault phase, what do you think?
