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Introducing Fog of War in 40k.
The fog of war is a balancing mechanism typically used in RTS games like StarCraft. It is primarily used to prevent certain units with superior range from becoming overpowered. Generally, its sight range is shorter than its attack range, thereby requiring some type of synergy/aid from other sources to make use of its superior attack range.

Back in prior editions, we were offered the ‘night fight’ rule, where you were required to roll a dice to see if the rule was in effect until cancelled, or you’d have to roll to see if you can spot the enemy prior to engaging.

Introduce new stat called Sight Range (R)
This new stat is to counter-balance the proliferation of board-wide ranged weapons and ever increased lethality of shooting phase. This further exacerbates the lack of tactical/strategic depth in the game where it is possible for a player to ‘park’ his/her army and simply play the shooting phase only.

In order to declare a ranged attack, one must be able to ‘see’ the enemy unit, much like how charges work (i.e. must be within 12”). When a unit can be seen by enemy unit, they are considered to be ‘spotted. ‘Spotted’ units can be seen by rest of the army – example provided below.

Sight Range Mechanics & Details
There are multiple ways to ‘spot’ a unit.
1. Get within range of R.
2. Use certain war gears.
3. Makes an attack.

Typically most units will have R of 12”. Certain units will be able to see further into the fog of light, through being suited for reconnaissance or equipped with certain war gear that enables them to detect/see through fog of war better (i.e. searchlights, marker lights) In certain cases, certain units/war gear could diminish enemy’s visibility. (i.e. smoke launchers, terrain).

The unit is also spotted when it makes a ranged attack – the muzzle flashes are hardly dismissible, despite the chaos of the battlefield. When a unit declares a ranged attack, it is considered to be illuminated until the beginning of the player’s next turn. Certain weapons do not cause them to be spotted (i.e. sniper rifles).

Certain units cannot benefit from the fog of war - some units are simply too large to be hidden by the fog.

For example:
-A unit of scout (R 12”), and a unit of Tac Squad (R 12”) are going against enemy unit of cultist (R12”).
-The Tac Squad and cultists are deployed along the edge of respective deployment zones, 24” away from each other. Neither units can ‘spot’ each other as they both have R of 12”.
-The player controlling the tac squad then deploys his scouts, anywhere not in enemy’s deployment zone, 9” away from any enemy units using its special rule. The scouts are placed 10” away from the cultists. The scouts and cultists are now within sight range of each other, and both units can ‘spot’ each other.
-The tac squad, previous unable to ‘spot’ the cultists, can now see them because of the shared vision from the scouts.
-The tac squad now fires with its boltgun towards the cultists. The tac marines are now ‘spotted’ until the beginning of the player’s next turn.

Alternatively, a unit equipped with a searchlight can attempt to spot an enemy further than its normal sight range. Choose a unit within line of sight of the unit – roll a d6 – on 2+, both the unit with the search light and the enemy unit is now spotted. On a roll of 1, the unit fails to spot the enemy, and is now spotted. The search light has given away its position to the enemy!

A unit equipped with auspex can scan the area – unit equipped with this wargear has its Sight Range increased to X”.

What does this accomplish?
This proposal moves the focus of the game from “bring the biggest, cheapest guns with piles of cheap, expendable bodies to screen the said guns”. More focus is given to positioning, and deliberate decision making is required when choosing to fire a weapon.
Certain war gears that have 0 purpose, or certain units with no apparent niche is made viable.

What are your thoughts?

Interesting idea

Although probbaly need to differentiate more between a bunch of cultists/squad of Guardsmen and Space Marines (Eldar, Sister of Battle, Kroot, Tau Suit etc etc ) which have enhanced senses and/or high tech geer like preysight, Scanners etc. Then add scouts/snipers on top of those base stats?

An issue with this that I see is that it doesn't actually mimic the function of 'Fog of War' in those RTS games. You and your opponent will still know exactly where enemy units are and where you need to go in order to hurt them.

Waaaghpower wrote:
An issue with this that I see is that it doesn't actually mimic the function of 'Fog of War' in those RTS games. You and your opponent will still know exactly where enemy units are and where you need to go in order to hurt them.

The way I see it, you (the player's) view of the battlefield is like looking at the minimap w/ units represented as blips. So you know who & where they are but your units are not within sight range to actually engage them. Knowing that they're there ans seeing them should be a separate aspect of the game.

Or you can choose to see it as RTS game with maphack on.

Alternatively, you can rule that any ranged attacks made against units that are not spotted are treated similar to overwatch and can only hit on 6's? To reflect that they could choose to fire into the general vicinity where they know the enemy is. But, you'd be 'spotted' by enemy units by firing your ranged weapons.

It's an interesting idea for sure. And it favors melee over shooting, which I like. But as it stands now, I'm not sure it'd work well. Conceptually, I like it-just needs tweaking and tuning.

 JNAProductions wrote:
It's an interesting idea for sure. And it favors melee over shooting, which I like. But as it stands now, I'm not sure it'd work well. Conceptually, I like it-just needs tweaking and tuning.

Specifically what kind of potential interactions do you have in mind?

 skchsan wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
It's an interesting idea for sure. And it favors melee over shooting, which I like. But as it stands now, I'm not sure it'd work well. Conceptually, I like it-just needs tweaking and tuning.

Specifically what kind of potential interactions do you have in mind?

Well, there's the obvious:

You need to go through all the units and give them a Sight Range.

Beyond that, let's say I'm playing pure CSM. If I'm not Alpha Legion, I'm out of luck unless I waste a bunch of units on Spotlight duty, whereas Marines can just plop a unit of Scouts forward and unload with everything.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 skchsan wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
It's an interesting idea for sure. And it favors melee over shooting, which I like. But as it stands now, I'm not sure it'd work well. Conceptually, I like it-just needs tweaking and tuning.

Specifically what kind of potential interactions do you have in mind?

Well, there's the obvious:

You need to go through all the units and give them a Sight Range.

Beyond that, let's say I'm playing pure CSM. If I'm not Alpha Legion, I'm out of luck unless I waste a bunch of units on Spotlight duty, whereas Marines can just plop a unit of Scouts forward and unload with everything.

Yes, assigning sight range to every datasheet is by far the most difficult task. Which is why I started off with everyone has 12" unless stated otherwise. For example, units with AIRCRAFT keyword has a sight range of 40" (corresponding to its max M value to reflect the fact they need to be able to see at least up to the range of their flight path) but may not benefit from Fog of War, and is always Spotted.

As for the second point, I feel like inclusion of this rule would be a good way to enforce a smarter deployment rather than setting up your entire army for a napoleonic stand off at the edge of deployment. If you expect your opponent's scouts, you'd put up some screens (to prevent scouts from being deployed at your line before you can put something down) and then place your more important units that much far away to prevent it from being spotted. Though, I do agree that scout moves will be too powerful under this scheme, and may be toned down to read somewhere along the lines of "This unit can be deployed anywhere 12" away from opponent's deployment zone".

I like the concept overall, that positioning and sight matter, but the implementation has some odd possible outcomes. Including making an entire army on the first turn unable to shoot anything if they don't deepstrike anything, or charge a couple units up the board - which may not be much fun.

Also my guardsmen cannot see the tank that's 13" in front of them, but can see the infantry unit 23" infront of them, because my scions spotted it after I deepstruck them further back. That's a bit weird to me.

It unfairly penalizes most basic infantry units; units not being able to shoot each other till they are in 12" range (which for most is rapid fire range) seems a bit off too.

I'd have probably gone for something like: a penalty to hit (or bonus to cover saves) if the target is more than 24" away, unless its also within 12" of another friendly unit. So most basic infantry with 24" RF weapons are fine to romp around shooting at whatever they want, but tanks and heavy weapons need a bit of close up assistance to get the best shots off.

 Kcalehc wrote:
I like the concept overall, that positioning and sight matter, but the implementation has some odd possible outcomes. Including making an entire army on the first turn unable to shoot anything if they don't deepstrike anything, or charge a couple units up the board - which may not be much fun.

Also my guardsmen cannot see the tank that's 13" in front of them, but can see the infantry unit 23" infront of them, because my scions spotted it after I deepstruck them further back. That's a bit weird to me.

It unfairly penalizes most basic infantry units; units not being able to shoot each other till they are in 12" range (which for most is rapid fire range) seems a bit off too.

I'd have probably gone for something like: a penalty to hit (or bonus to cover saves) if the target is more than 24" away, unless its also within 12" of another friendly unit. So most basic infantry with 24" RF weapons are fine to romp around shooting at whatever they want, but tanks and heavy weapons need a bit of close up assistance to get the best shots off.

Right, which makes screening against deep striking more important than ever.

One possible options is to decrease the potentials of scouting units (or upping their cost, or shifting them to elites/fast attacks) or possibly make scouting into a general stratagem to offer scout ability to armies that doesn't have access to it, and increasing the sight range to 15"~18" for infantry units. As I'm writing this, I do like the idea of differentiating sight range based on their FOC (heavy support should be less than troops, fast attack uses mobility gimmicks + basic sight range, troops have basic sight range, etc).

Furthermore, one of the reasons why I steered away from rule based on adjacency to friendly units that is x" away from enemy unit is that certain units do tend to sit back to provide heavy fire support, and I didn't want the proposal to specifically deter these types of units from functioning properly. A basilisk sitting at the table corner shouldn't have to rely on conga line to fire accurately.

This sounds like another way to punish elite armies without screening units. They already can't screen against deep strike without allies, and now you want them to be unable to shoot without allies too?

 AnomanderRake wrote:
This sounds like another way to punish elite armies without screening units. They already can't screen against deep strike without allies, and now you want them to be unable to shoot without allies too?

It's more of a problem for a static gunline army than it is for elite armies with low model count IMO. Take this into consideration:

A gunline army relies on standing it's ground and pummeling down fire at the enemy. Currently as it stands, there's nothing to prevent them from target anyone and everyone they want to shoot at. They are completely happy with not playing out a psychic phase or the movement phase and just play out the shooting phase. This rule would force these types of lists to commit a portion of their army to pull ahead of its army in order for it to function at their best.

As for the elite armies, while it's true that they have harder time covering the entirety of their deployment zone - but that's not the end all solution. Having a few high-mobility units on the perimeter allows you to screen for DS's and if it survives, it can simply retreat away from the unit that deep struck. The units that deep struck (which most of them have only average M barring few exceptions), they're forced to foot slog towards their next enemy.

As I play elite army myself, I never found the need to cover my deployment zone entirely. Yes, DS denial is the best defense against them, but there are more ways to deal with DS than simple screening.

What this rule essentially does is give every army a chance to get into their best fighting range without turning into pulp before getting there. It's not fool proof (i.e. fast units intercepting them, deepstriking to reveals them prematurely, facing them head on, etc), but the entire game as we know it is 'maintain 24" and shoot your +36" guns at them'. I mean, there has to be more the game could offer than that.

Most (if not all?) elite armies should have a higher spotting distance.

Might be worth considering bonuses for large, clanky or otherwise easier spotted units?

 skchsan wrote:

Furthermore, one of the reasons why I steered away from rule based on adjacency to friendly units that is x" away from enemy unit is that certain units do tend to sit back to provide heavy fire support, and I didn't want the proposal to specifically deter these types of units from functioning properly. A basilisk sitting at the table corner shouldn't have to rely on conga line to fire accurately.

Perhaps I misunderstood what you wrote, or you me. But what I meant was that a long range unit, would need another friendly unit within sight range of its target in order to fire at no penalty. Not a conga line, just one 'spotter' that can see them. So a Basilisk in the back corner, shooting 50" at an enemy unit, that is 'spotted' by some guardsmen within 12" of the target.

 skchsan wrote:
. Currently as it stands, there's nothing to prevent them from target anyone and everyone they want to shoot at.

Perhaps this is the real problem then. Screening only works for melee, not shooting. Forcing units to target the closest visible infantry, vehicle/monster or titanic unit might go some way to helping protect things (at least my HWS's anyway! )

You could just add the fog of war penalty to targets that are 'not the closest'. So you may only target a unit if it is the closest visible target OR also visible to another friendly unit, if it is not the closest - or something to that effect. So now screening works vs shooting, but DS and positioning can give you the tasty shots against the softer backfield targets.

I'm with you on the general principle, of far away targets being harder to spot/shoot, and positioning being important.

I don't think 40k is played on a scale that fits what you're trying to do here. I'm not sure how many feet/yards/meters 1" of tabletop space translates to, but the impression I get is that my 18" dire avenger guns aren't shooting all that far. Certainly not so far that they can't see the enemy well enough to shoot at them unless some rangers jump up and down and point them out.

I feel like game table is meant to represent roughly a football field's worth of space. I'm a lousy shot, but even I could probably see and shoot a target standing at half field from the goal post. Not letting sniper rifles and missile launchers fire at static targets standing out in the open unless someone gets within charge distance and confirms the target over a walkie talkie just feels bizarre.

So from a fluff angle, I feel like this would be pretty immersion breaking. From a mechanical angle, you'd be heavily nerfing any long-ranged units and invalidating any list builds that have long-ranged guns but not a lot of durable infiltrators. Chaos is a good example of this. Unless you're suiciding a squad of bikes forward on turn 1 (assuming your opponent's army with infiltrators didn't wipe them out at the top of 1), you're basically telling chaos it can't shoot until turn 2.

Basically, your concept is neat to think about, but I feel that you'd be creating a lot more problems than you solve.

A few things to consider:

* You mention Night Fighting. There are actually rules for Night Fighting in the 8th edition rulebook. Basically, you suffer to-hit penalties based on how far away you are, and I think there are stratagems for illuminating targets ala spotlights. Maybe just work those rules into more of your games?

* Maybe there should be terrain rules for things like forests, patches of unnatural shadow, fog banks, etc. that impose to-hit penalties against ranged attacks made from X+" away rather than benefitting your armor save?

* I've seen pitches for "spotter" units that allow things like mortars to fire without having line of sight so long as the spotter unit has line of sight to the target. Maybe do something like that? Or perhaps eschew your spotting distance stat and simply say that no weapon may fire beyond X inches (with X being like.... 36" or 48" or something sufficiently long-ranged) unless you have a spotter unit within, let's say, 18" of the target. That way, all guns in the game can still be useful in most situations, but the tau gun castle in the corner won't be able to reach out and touch the stuff in your corner unless they move some cruit or vespid or something into position. Basically, it caps out extreme range rather than being a complicated hassle for short and mid ranged units.





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 skchsan wrote:

A gunline army relies on standing it's ground and pummeling down fire at the enemy. Currently as it stands, there's nothing to prevent them from target anyone and everyone they want to shoot at. They are completely happy with not playing out a psychic phase or the movement phase and just play out the shooting phase. This rule would force these types of lists to commit a portion of their army to pull ahead of its army in order for it to function at their best.

That's kind of true. Many missions (especially tournament missions like the ITC's) will make it pretty difficult to win unless you control objectives outside of your deployment zone. The main rulebook's Eternal War missions are kind of bad about this, but running an extremely static castle doesn't seem to be a popular competitive strategy these days.