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Hi everyone,

I came up with this one on the "flamers should have +2" range in overwatch" thread, and I thought it was quite a good one to discuss on it's own;

Integrating charging with the movement phase would be a way to go - move the distance you can, then resolve overwatch with everyone in range. If this was the same as advancing, it would make it a more interesting route to take.

move + advance = further move, but no fighting if you roll well
move + charge = same further move, fight if you get close but they'll shoot you back.

Simply put that any unit which wasn't in CC at the start of the turn can shoot, so models charge in the movement phase, shoot in the shooting phase, are overwatched by who they charged at the start of the combat phase. This also stops the weird ability of a unit to only fire one missile a turn, unless 15 units fail a charge at them, in which case the damn thing's a minigun. pick a unit which charged you, and shoot overwatch at them. then start resolving fights.

This would need some tweaks on which guns can be fired when you advance or charge, and advancing & charging would have to be the same mechanic (move + 2D6).

Key points changing here are:
1. models move their charge move, even if they don't make it to the enemy
2. units only get to overwatch once - they're not suddenly ultra-rapid fire!
3. realistic overwatch ranges - no more long charges somehow negating a wall of flame!

It would also add another mechanic to the game - fleeing & counter charging. If a unit declares a charge on you and fails it, then your unit can declare a counter charge instead of overwatch in the fight phase, and make a charge move (2D6") toward them. if you make it, then not only are you now in combat, but as the charging unit, you get to go first! Puts a bit more bite into CC units, and makes them a little more scary to attempt charges on. let's face it, if a unit charges bezerkers, they won't be just standing & taking pot-shots at them! if they fail, then you ultimately end up a bit closer to the enemy. Alternatively, they can flee, and move D6" away. they will count as moving in their turn, so there will be penalties for heavy weapons, but it might give them the distance they need to try and keep away from the attackers. It'll have to be less than the charge or they will always outpace them, but I think fleeing would add to the game a lot, and allow baiting tactics etc. However, as the flee is done if the charger doesn't make it, the unit might just get caught and mushed.

Net Result:
Overwatch not as punishing on multiple units charging the same unit, but more effective with short range weapons
Failed charges still move you closer
countercharge useful for CC units who want to be in combat and are too impatient to wait for their turn!
units can move away if they were targeted by charges but none succeeded instead of overwatch, meaning if you take a gamble on a long charge, it can have consequences beyond overwatch!

Thoughts?

So you might as well get rid of the advancing mechanic. Not a fan. You have no reason to not attempt to charge.

Old "run" mechanic worked so much better than folding "Advancing" into movement except for the JSJ abuse.

Woah! lookie here! eldar ruined the day for everyone! AGAIN!

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
So you might as well get rid of the advancing mechanic. Not a fan. You have no reason to not attempt to charge.

If you attempt to charge, the unit you attempted to charge can overwatch you, flee, or countercharge. if you just advance, they can't. That's the advantage of not charging.

 some bloke wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
So you might as well get rid of the advancing mechanic. Not a fan. You have no reason to not attempt to charge.

If you attempt to charge, the unit you attempted to charge can overwatch you, flee, or countercharge. if you just advance, they can't. That's the advantage of not charging.

They can still counter charge if you advanced, and PLEASE don't say Overwatch is going to really do much. It doesn't outside fringe cases.

So a few thoughts in no particular order:

* Melee armies are generally considered at a disadvantage compared to shooting armies.

* In 99% of cases, as Slay-Fan123 points out, overwatch is a lot of rolling for not a lot of impact. Honestly, overwatch should probably be dropped from the game entirely (maybe kept for hedge cases like Tau). It's usually a lot of extra rolling (read: time) added to the game for very little impact. When it does make a difference (because the overwatcher got lucky at a critical moment), then it's generally punishing the charger for having the audacity to attempt to do damage with their army after it crossed the table to attempt a charge. My ravagers have gotten lucky and killed off carnifexes and terminators and such when they went for a charge. It was a feel bad moment for both my opponent and myself. I was basically just getting a free shooting phase that my opponent couldn't really do anything about. Like, yeah, you outplayed me by maneuvering into position to have a chance of maybe getting into combat to stab me, but overwatch is a small chance for me to just randomly ignore the penalties of my own bad maneuvering. It made a little more sense when you removed casualties from the front meaning overwatch had a chance of making the charge an inch or two harder, but that's no longer the case.

So to try and summarize this rambling point, overwatch slows down the game, punishes melee armies that don't need to be punished, and yet is also usually a lot of rolling for basically no result. It's something that should be removed, not mitigated.

* These changes would create a lot of extra work that hasn't really been covered here. Is coming up with rules for which guns can fire where after charging worth the perceived benefits of these changes?

* Letting units "flee" is basically just a way to make shooty armies better at avoiding combat. It's either worth it to the unit to flee or it isn't. This would slow down the game with additional movement of models and increase the problematic disparity between melee and shooting units.

* Counter charging doesn't seem needed. If my opponent just failed a charge against me, then I'll be in range to either walk up and then charge you (in the official rules) or make an easy charge now that you've staggered towards me with a failed charge (in your proposed rules). Plus, counter charging would just prevent me from shooting your unit before I start stabbing it on my own turn. The only real advantage to counter-charging is that you'd end up in close combat one player turn earlier, but you'd give up a chance to shoot the enemy, a chance to buff yourself, a chance to make the charge shorter, and the advantage of the target being considered to have not charged to do that. Countercharging as you've presented it seems like a trap decision.

What a hypothetical countercharge mechanic should look like probably warrants its own thread (and has in the past).

* If I'm close enough to the enemy to attempt a charge against them, then I am most likely going to be able to reliably run them down in the following phase. The extra movement from being forced to move after charging, therefore, probably doesn't really gain me anything. It does, however, make me more likely to have wandered out of cover leaving me more exposed to enemy fire on the following turn. So this mostly feels like another rule that low key hurts melee armies while helping shooty ones.

 some bloke wrote:

Net Result:
Overwatch not as punishing on multiple units charging the same unit, but more effective with short range weapons
Failed charges still move you closer
countercharge useful for CC units who want to be in combat and are too impatient to wait for their turn!
units can move away if they were targeted by charges but none succeeded instead of overwatch, meaning if you take a gamble on a long charge, it can have consequences beyond overwatch!

Thoughts?

So of these net results...
* Your rules nerf overwatch, but nerfing overwatch isn't really helpful. In most situations, overwatch is pretty unimpressive, and we should probably just remove overwatch entirely.
* Failed charges moving you closer to the enemy is arguably a bad thing. Melee armeis don't need more bad things.
* I mean, it's fluffy for those berzerkers to make the bad tactical decision to blunder forward early rather than letting their pals shoot the enemy and buff them first, but it's not a decision a player attempting to play smart is likely to utilize. Using countercharge would be like intentionally wandering away from the game winning objective so you can stab the unit you want revenge against. It's fluffy, but basically always a bad decision from the perspective of wanting to win the game.
* If it's worth it to a shooty unit to flee, then they'll do so. You're just giving shooty armies more options. More options = more power = you're widening the gap between shooty and stabby armies.

Basically, I question if we'd really be gaining anything of value from these changes, and I see a lot of problems being created as a result.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 skchsan wrote:
Old "run" mechanic worked so much better than folding "Advancing" into movement except for the JSJ abuse.

Woah! lookie here! eldar ruined the day for everyone! AGAIN!

I mean, JSJ was as game-breaking as it was fluffy, but Advancing is still loads better than the old run mechanic. Sure, you can't choose which direction to go in in the middle of the shooting phase any more, but you also cut the number of times a player has to move their army in half for mobile armies. By the end of 7th, many of the local players (especially the ork players) were already rolling their "run" moves into their movement phase movement, basically doing a houseruled version of advance.

I agree that overwatch is usually ineffective, but when you have 3 units attempting a charge on one unit with some flamers, and the first two fail their charge rolls, you end up with the flamers firing 3 times for free at these units.

Regarding the claim "units can countercharge if you advance", in this context a countercharge would be a charge reaction - you can either overwatch, countercharge or flee. so no, you couldn't countercharge a unit which advances, as there wouldn't be a charge to react to.

The "countercharge" mechanic would be effective for countering glass cannon lists, where players rely on getting the charge to cause high damage. but, conversely, it will also improve the glass cannon, as they would have the opportunities to countercharge in the game too.

Countercharging would be a boost to CC vs CC armies, as the opponent is likely in a good range to charge, and as said it'll get you in combat a player turn earlier. at the end of the game, if you have ground to cover and there's a unit in your way, this could be the best way to go - they fail a charge, you countercharge, wipe them out in their player turn, then consolidate closer - and then start your turn, much closer to the enemy. Countercharging, as a charge reaction, would be a much fluffier response and could give an extra mechanic to the game.

I don't see a huge amount of work that would need to be done to integrate this - a simple going-over of the weapon types to establish if they can be fired after charging/advancing, a rule to state that a model which charged may only target a unit within 1" of his unit with shooting, and a change to overwatch to be done once per turn, in a dedicated "charge reaction" section at the start of the combat phase.