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Yaho,

Pinged on me in an 8th ed wishlist thread; would be fun in 7th too I think.

Situation as follows:

1. Hordes are clunky but effective in some cases
2. Horde shooting isn't all that well handled when all you do is throw lots and lots of dice which just bounce off the opponent, with nothing to really represent the weight of fire
3. It's generally not worth the bother, and hordes in turn become a chore to use.

So why not treat them like vast multi wound MCs?

Suggestion:

IG/Nid/Ork hordes, in close combat or assault, may exchange a number of models equipped with the same weapons, to grant all the rest of the models in the unit with those weapons the following benefits. Any/All of these can be applied more than once.

10 models don't attack:
+1 Str
-1 WS for opponent in CC on attacks against the unit

20 models don't attack
-1 leadership against pinning or morale checks this turn
+1 relevant to-hit characteristic
+1 AP
-1 attacks characteristic (to minimum 1) for models attacking the unit

30 models don't attack
Gain Rending
Gain Shred

So for example

A combined infantry platoon with 45 guardsmen and 5 sergeants swaps 30 lasgunners to use 15 S6 lasguns.
A 30 boy ork mob gang piles a wraithknight, forgoing their attacks which can't hurt it, to make it strike them back on 5s


This will need tweaking but I think it's viable.

Thoughts?

Little math here on your example.

45 Lasgun Shots, hitting on 4s, is 22.5 hits. Against, say, Marines, wounding on 5s, for 7.5 wounds. 2.5 through the saves.

15 Multilaser shots, hitting on 4s, for 7.5 hits. Wounding on 2s, for 6.25, or 2.09 past the saves.

So you're actually losing effectiveness. Huh.

I guess my issue with this idea is that you suddenly become able to hurt tanks with Lasguns, and RoF is ignored. So let's say you have 50 Conscripts, if only 10 fire you get S7 Lasguns, which can hurt a Knight. A Knight should never be hurt by a Lasgun. In addition, you gain the same bonuses whether you gave up 40 shots (24") or 120 shots (12", FRFSRF).

I dunno. I like the idea-I'm just not sure how to balance it out.

If you believe the issue is rolling so many dice for hoarde units?
Eg a mob of 30 Orks rolling 60+ dice.

Then why not look at the core issues /errors of judgment, that pushed the game in this direction?

When shooting became overly effective , after the removal of to hit modifiers,etc.That were not replaced with a simpler proportional system,
All that happened was units with without good AS had to take more 'ablative wound models' to survive rounds of shooting .
And also ignore the effects of morale in some way or another.(Mob rules, Synapse etc.)

IF the balance between shooting and assault could be fine tuned using simple systems that give proportional results.Morale effects could be re introduced to replace 'just killing stuff' ..
The max unit size could drop to 20, 1 dice per ' grunt' model attack.

In short opposed values for all combat resolution and a simple suppression system based on failed armour saves.(This would allow more of the models in game characteristics to be covered directly be the stat line.)

If you just wanted to add some special rules to hoard units , please ignore my post...

 JNAProductions wrote:
Little math here on your example.

45 Lasgun Shots, hitting on 4s, is 22.5 hits. Against, say, Marines, wounding on 5s, for 7.5 wounds. 2.5 through the saves.

15 Multilaser shots, hitting on 4s, for 7.5 hits. Wounding on 2s, for 6.25, or 2.09 past the saves.

So you're actually losing effectiveness. Huh.

I guess my issue with this idea is that you suddenly become able to hurt tanks with Lasguns, and RoF is ignored. So let's say you have 50 Conscripts, if only 10 fire you get S7 Lasguns, which can hurt a Knight. A Knight should never be hurt by a Lasgun. In addition, you gain the same bonuses whether you gave up 40 shots (24") or 120 shots (12", FRFSRF).

I dunno. I like the idea-I'm just not sure how to balance it out.

Capping at +2s, since enough las fire on the front of a rhino would eventually hit one of the windows enough times to melt it perhaps?



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Lanrak wrote:
If you believe the issue is rolling so many dice for hoarde units?
Eg a mob of 30 Orks rolling 60+ dice.

I eventually stumbled upon the simpler answer; for every 6 attacks, roll to hit and wound once, then d6 wounds if successful. It shakes out the same

Lanrak wrote:
If you believe the issue is rolling so many dice for hoarde units?
If you just wanted to add some special rules to hoard units , please ignore my post...

 malamis wrote:
I eventually stumbled upon the simpler answer; for every 6 attacks, roll to hit and wound once, then d6 wounds if successful. It shakes out the same

Does it? 6 4+ to hit, 4+ to wound attacks. 1.5 wounds.

1 attack same 0.25 wounds which is multiplied with 3.5(average of d6) 0,875 wounds.

tneva82 wrote:

 malamis wrote:
I eventually stumbled upon the simpler answer; for every 6 attacks, roll to hit and wound once, then d6 wounds if successful. It shakes out the same

Does it? 6 4+ to hit, 4+ to wound attacks. 1.5 wounds.

1 attack same 0.25 wounds which is multiplied with 3.5(average of d6) 0,875 wounds.

I stand rebuked :|

I suppose you could just multiply by 6 in that case, which does shake out the same, albeit only worth doing in large numbers.