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Issues I'm trying to tackle:

* Most units in most armies in 40k don't seem like they should run away when their friends get blown up. Sure, you can say that some marines go pinned down too far from their squad to be useful or that they're busy dragging the wounded to safety, but that always feels like a bit of a stretch.
* Many that used to have the "pinning" keyword feel like they've sort of lost their niche in a world where pinning isn't a thing.
* A small morale debuff here and there almost never matters due to the number of units in the game that are either fearless or semi-fearless. You can maybe go all-in on a leadership debuff gimmick, but you're unlikely to take, for instance, the Night Lords leadership debuff legion tactic unless you're a dedicated Night Lords fan.

So with that in mind, here's what I'm pitching:

* Give all units in the game +1 Leadership.

* Give many buffs in the game the "Command" keyword. This would be things like captain reroll auras, certain psychic powers, guard orders, the necron My Will Be Done rule, certain stratagems such as the "shoot bolters better" strats marines have, etc. Basically, any rule that represents a unit taking orders or demonstrating some form of special tactics would be labeled as "Command" abilities.

* Certain weapons, psychic powers, and abilities cause you to place "suppression markers" on units. Generally, weapons would only place suppression markers on units that don't already have them. Very specific weapons, psychic powers, and strats would allow you to place suppression markers on units that do already have one.

* Morale no longer works as it currently does nor does it remove models from play. Instead, units with one or more suppression markers make a morale test in the Morale phase. To take a morale test, roll 2d6 + the number of suppression tokens on the unit. If the result is greater than the highest Leadership score in the unit, the unit is suppressed until the end of the following player turn.

* Suppressed units cannot benefit from friendly command abilities. So a suppressed guardsman squad couldn't be targeted by orders. A suppressed dire avengers squad wouldn't be able to use the "Charge and Shoot after falling back" strat. Suppressed devastators next to Guilliman wouldn't benefit from his reroll auras. That sort of thing.

And that's the gist of it. Basically, morale stops being a horde punisher and starts being a way of disrupting your opponent's buffs. It's much easier for MSU squads to be impacted by leadership under this system meaning that rules that debuff morale tests are more likely to kick in when you're not facing hordes. Plus, I'd argue that leaving your opponent too disorganized to pull off their extra special combat maneuver is a fluffier representation of morale for most 40k factions than actually running away would be.

Obviously you'd have to make some minor tweaks to a lot of rules, but you can probably imagine what those would look like. For a handful of examples...
* Snipers, phantasm grenade launchers, and heavy bolters (who arguably lack a niche next to assault cannons) would put a suppression marker on units that don't already have one. Maybe phantasm launchers put a marker on units that DO already have one.
* Rules like the Night Lords' leadership debuff aura would probably place a suppression marker on units within X" of one or more units with that rule.
* Hemlock Wraithfighters would NOT put suppression markers on units, but their Leadership debuff aura would make units more likely to fail morale tests.

So yeah. Pretty sure that came out coherently. What do you think?

Hmm, it needs some fine tuning but I like the idea as it makes LD more important.

I really like it, it would add a huge amount of depth to the game with minimal impact, and in a world dominated by stratagems would really make a difference. It would also cause an effect to single model units like knights and characters, which would be brilliant.

It would also make the "auto pass morale" stratagem really worth considering, if you have a unit which needs to use strats next turn.

What I like most about it is that it gives shooting a function other than killing the enemy. The depth you'd add to the game with this little idea would be brilliant.

I’d like any old weapon to be able to cause a morale check, and any failed morale check to inflict suppression. Given it’s not as paralyzing as actually being pinned it could cause too many problems.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:Hmm, it needs some fine tuning but I like the idea as it makes LD more important.

some bloke wrote:I really like it, it would add a huge amount of depth to the game with minimal impact, and in a world dominated by stratagems would really make a difference. It would also cause an effect to single model units like knights and characters, which would be brilliant.

It would also make the "auto pass morale" stratagem really worth considering, if you have a unit which needs to use strats next turn.

What I like most about it is that it gives shooting a function other than killing the enemy. The depth you'd add to the game with this little idea would be brilliant.

Thanks, guys!

pelicaniforce wrote:I’d like any old weapon to be able to cause a morale check, and any failed morale check to inflict suppression. Given it’s not as paralyzing as actually being pinned it could cause too many problems.

Hmm. Well, that would simplify things by removing the need to label some weapons as having the "suppressing" rule. On the other hand, that would make suppression less "special" for armies that lean into it. If suppression is limited to specific weapons and a handful of special abilities, then armies that can cause half the enemy squads to roll for morale each turn feel unique.

I'm also a bit worried that this would result in every infantry squad on the table rolling for morale every turn of every game. I feel like that might be a bit too much buff cancellation and a bit too much time spent rollng dice for morale checks. Or maybe not. Thoughts?

On a related note, do these rules encourage players to split fire too much? I could see someone divying up their 5 man sniper squad shots into 5 different targets every turn to try and maximize the number of morale tests the enemy has to make. That could be annoying enough on its own, and it would be even more annoying if you were doing it with every unit in your army (if all weapons had the potential to suppress enemy units). Maybe there should be something in place to discourage excessive splitfiring, but ideally such a limitation would avoid adding too much complication to things. I'd rather not go back to checking to see if 25% of a unit had been removed like in previous editions, for instance.

I'm also a bit worried that this would result in every infantry squad on the table rolling for morale every turn of every game. I feel like that might be a bit too much buff cancellation and a bit too much time spent rollng dice for morale checks. Or maybe not. Thoughts?

I would like them to test every turn. Most games have a core mechanic they revolve around. In Fantasy it was the rank and movement rules, you had to trick opponents into giving you a flank charge, and you had to march block them to slow them down. Warmahordes has all its units abilities go through a single caster, and you have to choose what unit they support while keeping them safe. 40k 8th pretty much has the command point economy to manage, although most editions have been pretty spare on mechanics.

The command points are pretty second level and abstracted from the game. I’d rather let units use those abilities any old time as long as they aren’t suppressed. And then then the command abilities we now have are more related to what’s actually happening with the models on the board.

pelicaniforce wrote:

I'm also a bit worried that this would result in every infantry squad on the table rolling for morale every turn of every game. I feel like that might be a bit too much buff cancellation and a bit too much time spent rollng dice for morale checks. Or maybe not. Thoughts?

I would like them to test every turn. Most games have a core mechanic they revolve around. In Fantasy it was the rank and movement rules, you had to trick opponents into giving you a flank charge, and you had to march block them to slow them down. Warmahordes has all its units abilities go through a single caster, and you have to choose what unit they support while keeping them safe. 40k 8th pretty much has the command point economy to manage, although most editions have been pretty spare on mechanics.

The command points are pretty second level and abstracted from the game. I’d rather let units use those abilities any old time as long as they aren’t suppressed. And then then the command abilities we now have are more related to what’s actually happening with the models on the board.

Ah. I think I see where you're coming from, but I'm not sure allowing all weapons in the game to have a chance at causing units to become suppressed is the way to go. It's not all that difficult to take out at least one model in each of your opponent's units, and morale tests themselves don't present a lot of interesting decisions. So functionally, having a third of your army unable to use cool abilities on a given turn for reasons largely outside of your control seems like a lot of dice rolling to reduce the number of interesting decisions in the game. If spending command points and using command abilities is one of the central mechanics of 40k, then this would functionally just make it so that you can't interact with that central mechanic.

If you limit suppression to to specific wargear and abilities, then players who take those options are actively investing in suppression during list building. Similarly, players who want to invest in something like a comissar to give themselves resistance to suppression are also making an interesting choice in how they invest their points. Just having some of your army's options grayed out from time to time semi-arbitrarily is very different from being on the receiving end of a resource you know your opponent invested in.

Plus, less dice rolling.

This is probably one of the best suggestions for suppression I've seen on this forum. Reducing the capability of a unit via some ranged weapons and special rules is much more thoughtful and fairer to melee vs shooting armies rather than every ranged unit being able to shut down the opponent's army to do anything.

What if we were to combine this idea with how it works at the moment - where instead of removing models for them "fleeing", it instead prevents you from using stratagems, "command" auras, or any order except perhaps one which cancels it out.

This would stop the silliness of a meganob running off from a bad roll, and with the way stratagems are becoming more ingrained in the system now, it would be enough of a punishment to use the unit unaugmented.


All it would take would be to add "command aura" to the glossary (EG rerolling 1's for being near bjorn = command aura, 5++ from shooting for being near a kustom force field = aura) and it would be ideal.

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
This is probably one of the best suggestions for suppression I've seen on this forum. .

Why thank you!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 some bloke wrote:
What if we were to combine this idea with how it works at the moment - where instead of removing models for them "fleeing", it instead prevents you from using stratagems, "command" auras, or any order except perhaps one which cancels it out.

This would stop the silliness of a meganob running off from a bad roll, and with the way stratagems are becoming more ingrained in the system now, it would be enough of a punishment to use the unit unaugmented.

All it would take would be to add "command aura" to the glossary (EG rerolling 1's for being near bjorn = command aura, 5++ from shooting for being near a kustom force field = aura) and it would be ideal.

As in not increasing Leadership stats across the board by 1 and using the d6 + casualties vs Leadership roll to see if a unit becomes suppressed? I'm not necessarily opposed to that, but I kind of like how a 2d6 + tokens vs leadership test can make a dash of suppression effective even against smaller, more elite squads. d6 + casualties vs Leadership puts us back in the weird position of having small squads be semi-immune to morale while taking more models in a unit can potentially become a detriment.

Also, I'd actually probably forego labeling the KFF as a "command ability" as it's more of a passive thing that just happens by virtue of standing near the machine generating the field. Having a painboy operate you or reacting to your boss's Waaaagh on the other hand...

I suppose the approach then would be to state that any unit with a suppression token counts as having taken 3 additional casualties for the sake of determining morale.

Thus suppressive fire will be effective, as will regular shooting, but you'll need suppressive fire to realistically affect marines & other tough, small units.

 some bloke wrote:
I suppose the approach then would be to state that any unit with a suppression token counts as having taken 3 additional casualties for the sake of determining morale.

Thus suppressive fire will be effective, as will regular shooting, but you'll need suppressive fire to realistically affect marines & other tough, small units.

Hmm. At that point though, a leadership 7 unit that suffers a single casualty from a suppression weapon would have a 50/50 chance of being suppressed. (1 casualty + 3 = 4; a d6 morale result of 4+ results in an 8+ vs leadershp 7). And that's before you factor in other casualties. A squad that suffers 3 casualties including 1 from a suppression weapon would be looking at a d6 + 6 for a morale test. They'd be suppressed on a 3+. Do more than 3 casualties, and being suppressed becomes basically guaranteed.

So I'm not sure that's an ideal direction to go in. What's your intention in keeping the d6 + casualties vs Leadership style of morale test? At the risk of coming across as entrenched in the defense of my pet idea, a 2d6 + tokens leadership test, only allowing suppression to be caused by specific weapons and powers, and giving everyone +1 Leadership to balance the math out seems like it does the intended job without creating a lot of extra problems. A unit with Ld7 and a single suppression token would still have a better than 50% chance of ignoring suppression, but every extra token or point of Leadership penalty would swing those odds dramatically towards being likely to become suppressed.

And that seems pretty good on paper to me, but maybe I'm missing something big?

My biggest concern is that I'm not sure if the modern form of the game could handle something like a conscript blob if they went back to not suffering morale penalties due to these proposed rules. Perhaps I should partially steal JNA's idea from the other thread and suggest that specific horde units (gretchin, conscripts, gaunts, maybe guardsmen and ork boyz) should have special rules that cause them to suffer casualties as a result of morale? So your 10 man marine squad would never lose bodies to a failed morale roll (they'd just become suppressed), but your conscript blob would.

I was basically suggesting that morale stays as is, but instead of models disappearing, you would simply become suppressed.

The advantage of a suppressive weapon would be that it will nearly guarantee suppression. Otherwise, a unit will have to take casualties to initiate suppression.

I'd have no issue with changing the method of rolling for morale, but my aim was to make regular weapons have a chance to do it, and suppressive weapons have a high likelihood of doing it. I don't think it would be game breaking to have it as a fairly major feature.

One thought:

1: Units gain +1Ld, as you suggested
2: Units gain a suppression token each time it takes 1 or more hits from a suppressive weapon (limit of 1 per turn per weapon, EG 1 heavy bolter can dish out 1, 3 heavy bolters could dish out 3).
3: units roll morale as 2D6 + lost models this turn + suppression markers. If the roll exceeds leadership, you are suppressed.

so you no longer lose models for running away, and you don't lose out on suppression if your army doesn't have many suppressive guns - it just becomes harder to achieve.

I think this would really add to the game.

 some bloke wrote:
I was basically suggesting that morale stays as is, but instead of models disappearing, you would simply become suppressed.

The advantage of a suppressive weapon would be that it will nearly guarantee suppression. Otherwise, a unit will have to take casualties to initiate suppression.

I'd have no issue with changing the method of rolling for morale, but my aim was to make regular weapons have a chance to do it, and suppressive weapons have a high likelihood of doing it. I don't think it would be game breaking to have it as a fairly major feature.

One thought:

1: Units gain +1Ld, as you suggested
2: Units gain a suppression token each time it takes 1 or more hits from a suppressive weapon (limit of 1 per turn per weapon, EG 1 heavy bolter can dish out 1, 3 heavy bolters could dish out 3).
3: units roll morale as 2D6 + lost models this turn + suppression markers. If the roll exceeds leadership, you are suppressed.

so you no longer lose models for running away, and you don't lose out on suppression if your army doesn't have many suppressive guns - it just becomes harder to achieve.

I think this would really add to the game.

I think my personal preference might still be for suppression to remain somewhat rare, but I could see your approach working if we wanted suppression to be more common place.

However, I think we'd have to boost leadership by more than just +1 if wanted to avoid making suppression basically automatic. The average on 2d6 is 7; 7 comes up slightly more often than 50% of the time. So a marine squad that loses just 3 models would have a better than 50% chance of being suppressed. Guard squads (Leadership 8 with the +1 applied) would be close to the 50% mark after losing just 1 or 2 guys. If they lost 5 guys, they'd have to roll snake eyes to avoid being suppressed. 3 dead marines and 5 dead guard are both extremely easy to accomplish. Throw in suppression weapons that add +1 to those morale tests, and suppression becomes even easier to accomplish.

If suppression remained rare, then it would be a mechanic that a TAC list could use to disrupt key enemy units here and there. Armies that focus on it could more or less guarantee it would impact key enemy units and would likely be able to incidentally suppress a few other units on the side. Your approach would make it easy to force all of your opponent's exposed units to roll suppression every turn and to have a decent chance of failing their morale test when going so. It wouldn't be all that strange for half or more of your opponent's infantry units to be unable to use half their stratagems or character buffs every turn of the game. But that might be a feature not a bug depending on personal preference.

At the risk of over-complicating the concept, what if units had a "suppression threshold?" ...That needs a better name, but the idea would be that they gain a suppression token for every X models their unit lost rather than adding their raw number of casualties to their morale tests. So if fire dragons had a threshold of 4 and you killed 6 of them in a turn, they'd gain a single token. If you killed 8 of them, they'd gain 2 tokens instead. This would allow non-suppression weapons to force suppression tests, but it would keep the modifiers to the morale test from becoming crazy high. "Thresholds" could either be unique to each unit, or you could make it a one size fits all number that applies to all units in the game. Like... 5. We could say any unit in the game that suffers casualties gains a suppression token at the start of the morale phase for every 5 casualties (rounding down) it suffered that turn.

I think an added statistic is unneeded, I think it would be bloat for bloat's sake.

If I'm reading right, your suggestion is to remove morale entirely and then replace it with suppression, which would be inflicted by specific weapons.

I personally feel that:

A: suppression is less of a penalty than the current morale system. not getting stratagems, orders or auras is not as bad as having your models run away - it simply represents the chaos of the battlefield, and to me is a nicer way of doing it.

B: an army should not have an entire game without suppression/morale just because the opponent didn't bring any. that makes the game even more one dimensionally "do what you want" than it is now, and is a bad idea.

I think that it would be a more balanced rule if suppression can be done by everything (being shot lots = suppressive fire) but that some weapons (EG h. bolters, snipers) would do it much more efficiently.

Perhaps keeping morale checks as they are, but instead of losing models, the unit is suppressed. Then suppression tokens count as 2 casualties, in addition to casualties caused.

I'd then have suppressive weapons inflict a suppression token if they hit with 1 or more shots.

I'd also add suppressive weapons in with low strength & high volume of shots to make them almost exclusively suppressive weapons - unlikely to wound but likely to suppress.


Why do you want to remove morale across the board, except in special circumstances?

This reminds me of how suppression works in DoWII. Suppressing an enemy is critical. It slows movement and makes them vulnerable to outmaneuvering and taking greater damage and makes their fire slower and less accurate. They can still advance but they are "crippled" shoot less and less well and that is a great "tool". Esp if suppression is more limited and special talent.

Suppress that Unit!

I would change it to full DOWII style

A heavy burst type weapon may suppress a single squad, leader, etc.

A Suppressed Unit Moves at Half It's M value.
It may charge but halves it's charge distance and does not benefit from any special "on charge" buffs.
It cannot fire overwatch
It suffers -1 to hit and halves number of shots for multi-shot weapons.. rounding up.

Vehicles are Immune to Suppression.
Bikes are Immune to Suppression.

Jump/hover Infantry however are vulnerable to suppression. Only non-infantry and bikes (which are not really infantry) are immune.

In the video game we would use strategic suppression to allow our hard hitting infantry to kick some serious ass unmolested.

Aren't hordes already resistant to morale, due to the number of buffs they get? Shouldn't hoards be susceptible to morale to begin with, as they are supposed to be poorly trained conscripts? I actually think elite units are more susceptible to morale, because if they lose one model to morale its like 2-3 times what a horde loses in terms of points.

Suppression would be nice, but I'd rather it be a weapon ability than a morale replacement.
Maybe something like this -

"Suppressive Fire :
A model with weapon that has this rule may choose to suppress an INFANTRY target instead of shooting normally. Roll double the number of shots on the weapon profile, but the weapon only hits on a unmodified 6 to represent the firer going full auto and not caring about precision. Abilities that generate additional hits do not take effect during this firing mode. For every hit that's inflicted against the target unit, its movement stat is reduced by 1 during its next movement phase"

The restriction against extra hits is to stop DDD and tesla from being abused.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Aren't hordes already resistant to morale, due to the number of buffs they get? Shouldn't hoards be susceptible to morale to begin with, as they are supposed to be poorly trained conscripts? I actually think elite units are more susceptible to morale, because if they lose one model to morale its like 2-3 times what a horde loses in terms of points.

Suppression would be nice, but I'd rather it be a weapon ability than a morale replacement.
Maybe something like this -

"Suppressive Fire :
A model with weapon that has this rule may choose to suppress an INFANTRY target instead of shooting normally. Roll double the number of shots on the weapon profile, but the weapon only hits on a unmodified 6 to represent the firer going full auto and not caring about precision. Abilities that generate additional hits do not take effect during this firing mode. For every hit that's inflicted against the target unit, its movement stat is reduced by 1 during its next movement phase"

The restriction against extra hits is to stop DDD and tesla from being abused.

I quite like that. But I'd add in -1 per hit to movement and -2 to hit in their next turn as when you are being suppressed your goal is to not get hit you don't fire as much/if at all and it tends to be random. That's why we suppress in real life.

 meatybtz wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Aren't hordes already resistant to morale, due to the number of buffs they get? Shouldn't hoards be susceptible to morale to begin with, as they are supposed to be poorly trained conscripts? I actually think elite units are more susceptible to morale, because if they lose one model to morale its like 2-3 times what a horde loses in terms of points.

Suppression would be nice, but I'd rather it be a weapon ability than a morale replacement.
Maybe something like this -

"Suppressive Fire :
A model with weapon that has this rule may choose to suppress an INFANTRY target instead of shooting normally. Roll double the number of shots on the weapon profile, but the weapon only hits on a unmodified 6 to represent the firer going full auto and not caring about precision. Abilities that generate additional hits do not take effect during this firing mode. For every hit that's inflicted against the target unit, its movement stat is reduced by 1 during its next movement phase"

The restriction against extra hits is to stop DDD and tesla from being abused.

I quite like that. But I'd add in -1 per hit to movement and -2 to hit in their next turn as when you are being suppressed your goal is to not get hit you don't fire as much/if at all and it tends to be random. That's why we suppress in real life.

Ah right, there should be a hit penalty. I forgot about that. It would be hard to return fire when being suppressed

 some bloke wrote:
I think an added statistic is unneeded, I think it would be bloat for bloat's sake.

Probably right about that. What if it was a one-size-fits-all number then? For instance, what if all units gain a suppression token for every 5 models they lose during a player turn?

If I'm reading right, your suggestion is to remove morale entirely and then replace it with suppression, which would be inflicted by specific weapons.

I personally feel that:

A: suppression is less of a penalty than the current morale system. not getting stratagems, orders or auras is not as bad as having your models run away - it simply represents the chaos of the battlefield, and to me is a nicer way of doing it.

B: an army should not have an entire game without suppression/morale just because the opponent didn't bring any. that makes the game even more one dimensionally "do what you want" than it is now, and is a bad idea.

I think that it would be a more balanced rule if suppression can be done by everything (being shot lots = suppressive fire) but that some weapons (EG h. bolters, snipers) would do it much more efficiently.

Perhaps keeping morale checks as they are, but instead of losing models, the unit is suppressed. Then suppression tokens count as 2 casualties, in addition to casualties caused.

I'd then have suppressive weapons inflict a suppression token if they hit with 1 or more shots.

I'd also add suppressive weapons in with low strength & high volume of shots to make them almost exclusively suppressive weapons - unlikely to wound but likely to suppress.


Why do you want to remove morale across the board, except in special circumstances?

You make good points. My concern with having suppression weapons pile up tokens so easily is that it seems like a person could basically suppress the entire enemy army without too big an investment. Especially if pretty common weapons like heavy bolters and sniper rifles can suppress targets with just a to-hit roll. I'm not sure taking away everyone's cool abilities all game is a desirable end result. If suppression is harder to pull off, then it feels like a deliberate strategy that you choose to apply to key enemy units. So on paper, I kind of prefer the idea of suppression being a limited thing you have to lean into to make the most of rather than being a thing that just takes away your cool abilities because you lost too many dudes.

But again, you do make some good points. If we were to stick with more or less what we have now (d6 + casualties vs leadership), I'd be tempted to ditch the +1 Ld and the concept of suppression weapons in general and to simply have suppression replace "morale casualties." So basically ignore my entire opening post except the parts about ditching morale casualties and instead causing units to be suppressed. No suppression weapons. No suppression tokens. Just suppression as the result of failed morale tests. Weapons like phantasm launchers and shrieker rounds would still help you to suppress enemy units by penalizing their Leadership stats, and we wouldn't be making the math extra quirky by throwing suppression tokens into the mix. Thoughts?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Aren't hordes already resistant to morale, due to the number of buffs they get? Shouldn't hoards be susceptible to morale to begin with, as they are supposed to be poorly trained conscripts? I actually think elite units are more susceptible to morale, because if they lose one model to morale its like 2-3 times what a horde loses in terms of points.

In the current rules? Sort of. Elite units are more susceptible to morale when you take a lot of bodies in a given squad, but they also tend to have the option to field small squads (5 guys minimum instead of 10). A 5 man squad with a decent leadership is nearly immune to morale unless leadership debuffs are in play. A horde, on the other hand, is typically more vulnerable to taking at least some damage form morale because you can take out a lot of bodies in a single turn. If you kill 5 models in a 5 man squad, morale can't get you because you're already dead. In a 30 man squad, you can lose about half the unit to morale if your opponent killed half the squad in a single turn.

As for hordes being poorly trained conscripts, that's only rarely true in 40k. It's true for literal conscripts and some cultists, but not for things like wyches (max squad size of 20), death company, termagaunts/hormagaunts, ork boyz (not well trained but not really a "conscript" either), necrons warrior blobs (technically conscripts, but with the "benefit" of robot protocols), etc. Plenty of large squads in 40k are made up of experienced veterans and engineered war creatures.

Suppression would be nice, but I'd rather it be a weapon ability than a morale replacement.
Maybe something like this -

"Suppressive Fire :
A model with weapon that has this rule may choose to suppress an INFANTRY target instead of shooting normally. Roll double the number of shots on the weapon profile, but the weapon only hits on a unmodified 6 to represent the firer going full auto and not caring about precision. Abilities that generate additional hits do not take effect during this firing mode. For every hit that's inflicted against the target unit, its movement stat is reduced by 1 during its next movement phase"

The restriction against extra hits is to stop DDD and tesla from being abused.

I could see something like this working as a universal "Suppressive Fire" stratagem. It probably wouldn't work as a replacement for morale due to its complexity, but a streamlined version could be an interesting addition to the game. Maybe just streamline it to, "Use this stratagem when a friendly unit shoots during your Shooting phase. Select a single enemy unit being targeted by the friendly unit. If the selected unit suffers any unsaved wounds as a result of the attack, it suffers a -1 to all ranged to-hit rolls and lowers its Movement by half until the start of your next turn."

Gets rid of a lot of extra modifiers and book keeping.

I'm thinking instead that you have 2 types of weapon:

Suppressive weapons - very good at suppressing, if something is shot by one, it's much more likely to be suppressed

Normal Weapons - Cause suppression by virtue of causing damage.

The main goals for this would be to inflict suppression on units which are very difficult to actually hurt, and can do so using suppressive weapons.

I think it would integrate well if we used the existing "casualties influence morale(suppression) checks" system, and then add in weapons with rules such as "a unit hit by this weapon counts as taking X additional casualties for the purposes of suppression checks". Snipers being the best candidate for this.

Thus various weapons can have different profiles to suit. EG:

Heavy Bolter - additional profile: fires 6 shots, only hits on 6's, suppressive. spray bullets to pin the enemy. The target unit counts as taking 2 additional casualties for suppression tests.

This would also give the Big Shoota a role in the Ork army. I feel orks (with their style of shooting, being to spray all bullets and see what happens) would be the most suppressive army - entirely by accident!

These would add up, eg 2 H. Bolters firing like this can inflict 4 extra casualties for suppression. All sniper shooting a unit = guaranteed suppression.

 some bloke wrote:
I'm thinking instead that you have 2 types of weapon:

Suppressive weapons - very good at suppressing, if something is shot by one, it's much more likely to be suppressed

Normal Weapons - Cause suppression by virtue of causing damage.

The main goals for this would be to inflict suppression on units which are very difficult to actually hurt, and can do so using suppressive weapons.

I think it would integrate well if we used the existing "casualties influence morale(suppression) checks" system, and then add in weapons with rules such as "a unit hit by this weapon counts as taking X additional casualties for the purposes of suppression checks". Snipers being the best candidate for this.

Thus various weapons can have different profiles to suit. EG:

Heavy Bolter - additional profile: fires 6 shots, only hits on 6's, suppressive. spray bullets to pin the enemy. The target unit counts as taking 2 additional casualties for suppression tests.

This would also give the Big Shoota a role in the Ork army. I feel orks (with their style of shooting, being to spray all bullets and see what happens) would be the most suppressive army - entirely by accident!

These would add up, eg 2 H. Bolters firing like this can inflict 4 extra casualties for suppression. All sniper shooting a unit = guaranteed suppression.

I could see that working. I'd be willing to test it out if someone came up to me with a list of suppression effects and some solid guidelines for what is and is not a "command ability". I still question whether suppressing an enemy that easily is actually a desirable thing.though. You know how people get annoyed when someone uses Agents of Vect because it basically says, "No, you can't use your cool thing." Suppression is like an Agent of Vect that costs no CP, potentially works on all your important units at once, can work on abilities as well as stratagems, and works against ALL command abilities for a turn instead of just one strat per phase.

So if you wanted to benefit from a chaplain litany, a lieutenant aura, and a stratagem to shoot better with a unit that I happened to suppress, I basically just Vected you 3 times at a cost of 0CP instead of 12CP..

Wyldhunt wrote:

 some bloke wrote:
I'm thinking instead that you have 2 types of weapon:

Suppressive weapons - very good at suppressing, if something is shot by one, it's much more likely to be suppressed

Normal Weapons - Cause suppression by virtue of causing damage.

The main goals for this would be to inflict suppression on units which are very difficult to actually hurt, and can do so using suppressive weapons.

I think it would integrate well if we used the existing "casualties influence morale(suppression) checks" system, and then add in weapons with rules such as "a unit hit by this weapon counts as taking X additional casualties for the purposes of suppression checks". Snipers being the best candidate for this.

Thus various weapons can have different profiles to suit. EG:

Heavy Bolter - additional profile: fires 6 shots, only hits on 6's, suppressive. spray bullets to pin the enemy. The target unit counts as taking 2 additional casualties for suppression tests.

This would also give the Big Shoota a role in the Ork army. I feel orks (with their style of shooting, being to spray all bullets and see what happens) would be the most suppressive army - entirely by accident!

These would add up, eg 2 H. Bolters firing like this can inflict 4 extra casualties for suppression. All sniper shooting a unit = guaranteed suppression.

I could see that working. I'd be willing to test it out if someone came up to me with a list of suppression effects and some solid guidelines for what is and is not a "command ability". I still question whether suppressing an enemy that easily is actually a desirable thing.though. You know how people get annoyed when someone uses Agents of Vect because it basically says, "No, you can't use your cool thing." Suppression is like an Agent of Vect that costs no CP, potentially works on all your important units at once, can work on abilities as well as stratagems, and works against ALL command abilities for a turn instead of just one strat per phase.

So if you wanted to benefit from a chaplain litany, a lieutenant aura, and a stratagem to shoot better with a unit that I happened to suppress, I basically just Vected you 3 times at a cost of 0CP instead of 12CP..

I'd say that this is where you have to balance when to use the "auto-pass" stratagem, which everyone ha s- if your unit wants to use this many things, I'd recommend forking out the 2CP and passing that check!