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So, it's come to my attention, just how silly it is for a unit of 40 chaos cultists holding back dozens and dozens of orks or chaos daemons who are in most cases much much stronger.

For example, let's say I have 3x 30 chaos cultists with abaddon nearby and I have 150 orks charging at them. If you play your cards, your cultists can hold back those orks for at least 3 turns if they all stood still, as the orks are lousy shots and can't kill enough to charge through the squads.

Using Orks vs Humans as an example. Humans, even most catachans who are known for their specialty in close quarter fighting, stand no chance against orks in terms of general strength.

To prevent thin lines of weak humans holding back units of much stronger orks and other adversaries. I proper that the stronger units be allowed to "knock" their enemies back. This will be based on the units actual strength including buffs, but not including weapon strength.

For example,

Ork Warboss (S6) vs standard Imperial Guardsmen (S3)

The Ork warboss needs 6" to successful charge a unit of guardsmen and successfully rolls the required distance.

He should then be able to advance further into the enemy unit based on the differences in their datasheet strength. So, have a strength of 6 compared to the guardsmen's 3, he should be able to wade 3" into the enemy unit (pushing models aside if need be to make room) to reflect that, before any pile in moves are made.

Because it's silly seeing a unit of guardsmen hold a carnifex back when it charges them and the carnifex pushing into the unit should reflect weaker enemy units being thrown back or simply running out of the way to avoid being trampled. A carnifex would run 3" further into a guardsmen squad on average or 2" for space marines (except Mephiston, dreadnoughts and tanks)

In most cases, no none vehicle units have a strength greater than 7 and generally, the weakest units have a strength of nothing less than a 3 (bar nurglings etc). So, it won't be too op, but should accurately reflect how the momentum of the charges by stronger foes break enemy lines, while preventing weak units holding back stronger ones. Because that is being abused like hell in competitive tournaments ever since I started playing back in 5th edition.

This proposed rule seems easy, simple and quick to use, but that's my thought. What do you guys think?


Oh and I've already sent this suggestion to the GWS section that deals with rules feedback, because I'd love to see this implemented.

To me, this feels like it would introduce a lot of complicated interactions for no real benefit.

Moving enemy models around always gets a little tricky, but this seems even more clunky than things like the old Lash of Slaanesh power or interactions with the original Mawloc rules. Say you charge a unit standing on some elevated terrain with those orks. Your proposed rule lets the warboss wade into a squad of bunched up guardsmen who almost entirely occupy the level of the terrain they're on. Now with your warboss and his charging boyz, they're being forced to move, but how do you handle that? Is your new rule just ignored for the sake of simplicity? Do you introduce rules for knocking models off of the current level? Can you charging me now potentially push me onto or off of an objective based on how you position yourself? Can I effectively be pushed out of combat because 3" lets me move more than 1" away from the boss? How exactly do you determine the direction you're pushed, especially if the charging unit is coming at you from multiple sides? Do you only get pushed once, or can you be pushed each time you're charged? If you charge my squad while they're near a wall, it implies they can't move through the wall and have to go "left" or "right." One of those directions will push me onto an objective. The other won't. How do we determine whether or not I'm now on an objective?

Lots of questions to answer there, and some of the potential answers may result in a need for yet more rules to make them functional.Despite the complexity, what are we really gaining from this rule? It's pretty rare that I"ve felt the need to physically push enemy models around the table. Sure, pushing units off of objectives would be a big deal, but that doesn't seem to be your main goal. Getting more models into close combat would be helpful, but there are way less complicated ways of doing that.

Also, I get the impression that you might be failing to acknowledge a certain amount of abstraction. In your examples, you talk about weak units holding back strong ones, but they really don't. Those cultists will be slaughtered by the orks unless Tzeentch blessed/cursed some dice. After that, the orks will get to consolidate, effectively hitting the wall of cultist bodies and pushing through. If your issue is with some models in a weak squad surviving, well, that's a dice game. A proposed rule for automatically wounding a sufficiently overwhelmed unit would probably call for its own thread.

If you're talking about those times that the units closest to the front lines don't die right away, that's an abstraction. The guys up front died, then the guys behind them moved in to fill the gap.

As for carnifexes being "stopped" by the units up front, I could see an argument for basically giving flip belt-esque rules to MCs and vehicles. However, this would reduce the utility of screening units, and I"m not sure that's a good direction to go in.

Could you clarify what exactly your goals with these rules are? You talk about disliking that weak units have the potential to survive strong ones, but then you introduce rules that don't seem to directly deal with that issue and instead just make players pause to scoot models around.