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I propose that heavy weapons, except from being -1 to hit after a move, cannot be used to fire overwatch. Heavy flamers should then no longer have the “heavy” rule (it has little relevance to an autohitting weapon anyway). In this way, melee units arent penalised as much by big multiwound weapons when charging in, this is especially relevant with the arms race we are currently seeing, with big models with masses of huge weapons doing lots of high str d6 dmg shots.

It also makes sense in a fluff or even realistic sense: heavy weapons are too cumbersome to quickly be redirected in the very moment melee units are charging in.

As for Tay players, i have no experience playing with or against Tau, but it seems the rumour is that they are low tier currently so Tau should still be able to overwatch with heavy weapons (maybe on a 6 to hit instead of their normal 5?)

Tau are middle tier and overwatch on a 6. One of thier sept (chaptor) benifits is overwatch on a 5 or 6.

But realistically charging an emplaced heavy weapon eg a machine gun or such should be a suicidal concept but really how many 6's are your opponents rolling?

At first I didn't disagree but Ice has a good point. As a Tau player I wouldn't mind not having overwatch on railguns and ion cannons. But things like autocannons on marines or hw squads i don't think should be denied. Even my larger suits seem like they should be able to make an attempt (though it would be nice if they weren't heavy since the suit was literally made to move and shoot those particular weapons).

I remember once I tried to charge a repulsor (standing next to a chapter master) with my daemon prince. That was a bad move.

I think to do this you'd need to reintroduce Ordnance weapons for this purpose; you absolutely should not be able to charge fearlessly at a unit with heavy stubbers, heavy bolters etc., it's the much heavier weapons that are the only problem.

I do think it is stupid that mortars get to fire in overwatch... or a basilisk's earthshaker lol.

w1zard wrote:
I do think it is stupid that mortars get to fire in overwatch... or a basilisk's earthshaker lol.

Yeah they also get to overwatch without LoS just for extra screw you for trying to do something other than have a stand up shoot out with IG

Ice_can wrote:

w1zard wrote:
I do think it is stupid that mortars get to fire in overwatch... or a basilisk's earthshaker lol.

Yeah they also get to overwatch without LoS just for extra screw you for trying to do something other than have a stand up shoot out with IG

If barrage weapons were still a thing, it could be as easy as saying weapons with the barrage rule can't be fired in overwatch. But no, USR are bad according to GW.

Ice_can wrote:

w1zard wrote:
I do think it is stupid that mortars get to fire in overwatch... or a basilisk's earthshaker lol.

Yeah they also get to overwatch without LoS just for extra screw you for trying to do something other than have a stand up shoot out with IG

Simple solution, every d3/6 weapon that is heavy can't overwatch. Every Heavy weapon, that has 3+ shots in a fixed fashion, aka LMG's, Heavybolters, etc. gain 1+ on their overwatch roll.
Basically a squad with an LMG has now 3 shots that hit on 5's , a squad with mortar can't profit from it.
Secondly make all flammers assult, maybee then heavy flamers are worth it.

I would not mind Overwatch from mortars or rocket launchers if they still would use the template and gain a min range of 6", because everything else would be plain and simple suicide to use those guns on, the same goes with mortars, altough technically an infantery dude that uses mortars can use the mortar shells as heavier handgreanades. That beeing said it is a dangerous practice and most of the time in such a situation one would expect to fall back on assultrifles,etc.

w1zard wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

w1zard wrote:
I do think it is stupid that mortars get to fire in overwatch... or a basilisk's earthshaker lol.

Yeah they also get to overwatch without LoS just for extra screw you for trying to do something other than have a stand up shoot out with IG

If barrage weapons were still a thing, it could be as easy as saying weapons with the barrage rule can't be fired in overwatch. But no, USR are bad according to GW.

Not sure what that has to do with USR. If they didn't want them to be fired in Overwatch, it would've just been added to the weapon profile.

GW does a lot wrong but that's basically the worst complaint I think one could've come up with.

If you charge heavy weapons, you deserve to get shot (or have risk of it). I do believe that all indirect fire weapons should have a minimum range though - such as 12", which would make them impossible to fire on overwatch.

That would be fine with me from a logical point of view. Indirect fire weapons are strong enough (and have enough of an advantage) that they could use some reigning in.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Not sure what that has to do with USR. If they didn't want them to be fired in Overwatch, it would've just been added to the weapon profile.

GW does a lot wrong but that's basically the worst complaint I think one could've come up with.

I'm just salty they removed the USR system. It was easy and effective, instead of having special snowflake rules for every weapon the rules were all concentrated in one spot and could be changed very easily without having to rewrite all of the codexes if you wanted to change one thing.

The only bad thing about the USR system was that GW gave these rules out like candy so nothing really felt unique or that it stood out. Instead of fixing their design philosophy they just blamed the system that was causing the symptoms and threw out the baby with the bathwater.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Elbows wrote:
If you charge heavy weapons, you deserve to get shot (or have risk of it). I do believe that all indirect fire weapons should have a minimum range though - such as 12", which would make them impossible to fire on overwatch.

That would be fine with me from a logical point of view. Indirect fire weapons are strong enough (and have enough of an advantage) that they could use some reigning in.

No thanks, minimum ranges are stupid from a game mechanic perspective, and not how artillery/mortars work IRL either. I will agree though that they shouldn't be able to be fired in overwatch.

Besides, your solution would still enable them to fire overwatch at things charging them from >12" away like howling banshees.

w1zard wrote:

I'm just salty they removed the USR system. It was easy and effective, instead of having special snowflake rules for every weapon the rules were all concentrated in one spot and could be changed very easily without having to rewrite all of the codexes if you wanted to change one thing.

The only bad thing about the USR system was that GW gave these rules out like candy so nothing really felt unique or that it stood out. Instead of fixing their design philosophy they just blamed the system that was causing the symptoms and threw out the baby with the bathwater.

Uhhh... I disagree. There is no functional difference between USR and unit abilities except that you can tweak a single unit's rule without breaking 30 other units. Why do you think the USRs got so bloated in the first place? They were trying to provide reasonable rules to a huge variety of units while keeping them universal. Ditching USRs was the only logical next step. And as someone who barely played prior to 8th, it was a nightmare trying to figure out what my units could actually do.

Dandelion wrote:

w1zard wrote:

I'm just salty they removed the USR system. It was easy and effective, instead of having special snowflake rules for every weapon the rules were all concentrated in one spot and could be changed very easily without having to rewrite all of the codexes if you wanted to change one thing.

The only bad thing about the USR system was that GW gave these rules out like candy so nothing really felt unique or that it stood out. Instead of fixing their design philosophy they just blamed the system that was causing the symptoms and threw out the baby with the bathwater.

Uhhh... I disagree. There is no functional difference between USR and unit abilities except that you can tweak a single unit's rule without breaking 30 other units. Why do you think the USRs got so bloated in the first place? They were trying to provide reasonable rules to a huge variety of units while keeping them universal. Ditching USRs was the only logical next step. And as someone who barely played prior to 8th, it was a nightmare trying to figure out what my units could actually do.

Now on the other hand, if you want to fundamentally affect a change to the game (ala making it so that artillery units can't fire in overwatch) you have to rewrite every single datasheet in many codexes instead of changing 1 rule. I don't see the improvement.

Dandelion wrote:

w1zard wrote:

I'm just salty they removed the USR system. It was easy and effective, instead of having special snowflake rules for every weapon the rules were all concentrated in one spot and could be changed very easily without having to rewrite all of the codexes if you wanted to change one thing.

The only bad thing about the USR system was that GW gave these rules out like candy so nothing really felt unique or that it stood out. Instead of fixing their design philosophy they just blamed the system that was causing the symptoms and threw out the baby with the bathwater.

Uhhh... I disagree. There is no functional difference between USR and unit abilities except that you can tweak a single unit's rule without breaking 30 other units. Why do you think the USRs got so bloated in the first place? They were trying to provide reasonable rules to a huge variety of units while keeping them universal. Ditching USRs was the only logical next step. And as someone who barely played prior to 8th, it was a nightmare trying to figure out what my units could actually do.

I keep seeing this brought up.

When have they done this? Give me an example.

 JNAProductions wrote:

Dandelion wrote:

w1zard wrote:

I'm just salty they removed the USR system. It was easy and effective, instead of having special snowflake rules for every weapon the rules were all concentrated in one spot and could be changed very easily without having to rewrite all of the codexes if you wanted to change one thing.

The only bad thing about the USR system was that GW gave these rules out like candy so nothing really felt unique or that it stood out. Instead of fixing their design philosophy they just blamed the system that was causing the symptoms and threw out the baby with the bathwater.

Uhhh... I disagree. There is no functional difference between USR and unit abilities except that you can tweak a single unit's rule without breaking 30 other units. Why do you think the USRs got so bloated in the first place? They were trying to provide reasonable rules to a huge variety of units while keeping them universal. Ditching USRs was the only logical next step. And as someone who barely played prior to 8th, it was a nightmare trying to figure out what my units could actually do.

I keep seeing this brought up.

When have they done this? Give me an example.

Grinding advance and steel behemoth have both been changed so far.
edit:
Pulse laser discharge is similar, but not the same as grinding advance. Pulse laser discharge has been erratad but grinding advance has not. Had there been a USR, both would have been changed.