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morale and leadership

First statment, in my opinion morale is near useless.
here is why.
Either units are msu to mitigate moral losses or fearless when moral maters.
Even for big blob of non fearless infantry there is a big "nop" in the form of a 2 cp stratagem planed when building the list.

A few ideas to spice up morale.

"priority target"

each time you select a unit to shoot roll à d6 and add one for each enemy unit within 12". If the result is higher than your leadership you must select the nearest valid target.

without negative modifiers or enemy units in the vicinity this rule have nearly no effect since most of units have a leadership of 6+.
even if there is a an enemy unit in 12" you can move away. most of the time you wont roll a dice and no time is lost.

the beauty in this rule:

_ if you move outside of those 12" with heavy weapons you have -1 to hit or perhaps this will push you out of your cover. so there is consequences.
_ if your ennemy throw fast chaff or deepstriking infantry in 12" you have to get rid of them or move away thus commiting firepower needed elswere or moving. A smart opponant will get you out of weapon range if you choose to move.
_ morale modifiers maters while they are actualy useless. having -1 leadership or -2 leadership bubble in your ranks is no joke (mostly -2, 1 for having something in 12", 1 for modifier.). with this rule you can actualy build a strategy around modifiers and morale. 3 deep striking units, one with -1 modifier, psyker with power for another -1 modifier, potential -4
even mighty marines with leadership 8 + reroll may think twice in his firing sequence.
_ it's also more complicated when you are trapped deep inside enemy lines to select long distance target while, on the other side it's fairly easy to position yourself near units you wants dead. so it's give and take.
_ "insane bravery" still opens plays that would be impossible otherwise.



"ramming"

after a sucessfull charge made by a unit with the "monster" or "vehicule" keyword, each enemy unit (wich are not buildings or fortifications) within 1" must roll a d6, add the charging unit's toughness and substract enemy untit's toughness (pick the model with the highest) if the result is superior to the unit's leadership value this unit can't fight this turn and must fall back during it's next move ending it's movment the further away possible from the charging unit.
if the unit can't fall back for any reason it takes the result of the test as mortal wounds.

This rule have many goals.
_using leadership value
_give a tool to open screening units.
_improve the usefulness of leadership penalties
_open plays to support or shutdown heavy melee units.
_disadvantage chaff units.

Well I'm thrilled. One of the best parts is how situational they are - i do't have to roll for priority unless the opponent has forced me to by moving their models. This is like march blocking from WHFB but much more relevant to a shooting game.

What's the outcome of this proposed ramming rule if you ram a rhino into a unit of 300 Orcs? You use a single die roll to determine whether the Orc unit does anything.

The reason why morale is useless (you either end up with units that have high enough leadership that it won't matter, or that rely on rules so that they automatically pass) is that people end up proposing this sort of mechanic where morale gets used for an 'all or nothing' result.

If your idea of "spicing up" the rules is "roll a D6, win big or lose big" based on a single roll, please consider that you'd have a lot more fun gambling for pennies.

 solkan wrote:
What's the outcome of this proposed ramming rule if you ram a rhino into a unit of 300 Orcs? You use a single die roll to determine whether the Orc unit does anything.

The reason why morale is useless (you either end up with units that have high enough leadership that it won't matter, or that rely on rules so that they automatically pass) is that people end up proposing this sort of mechanic where morale gets used for an 'all or nothing' result.

If your idea of "spicing up" the rules is "roll a D6, win big or lose big" based on a single roll, please consider that you'd have a lot more fun gambling for pennies.

"priority target" have some granularity, even if based on a d6. If i understand you correctly you are chocked by the idea of a 30 ork mob being shut down by a charging monster/tank and the roll of a mere d6.
i undestand this point of view but take in consideration the setup needed to actualy do something with ramming.

if i take your exemple, wich is a bit caricatural from my perspective.
First off all there is nothing like a unit of 300 orks, but again i understand the idea . Then, the same unit of 30 orks, if i remember correctly is fearless or 10+ morale. Assuming i have a t8 vehicule/monster willing to charge 30 orks and risking an "insane bravery" and a full phase of "beating something to death da proper way" , what are the odds to shutdown a melee phase and force a fallback?
rather poor without plan or commitment .

let's look at a more common situation .

a rhino inside enemy line with package delivered.
imperial vehicule with enemy melee unit about to charge.
carnifex in front screening line.
carnifex/leman russ charging a surrounded unit.

first step, you commit an asset at a task. Possible goals: avoid a melee phase, create space to manoever, or with other units try to force mortal wounds (d3 + difference between toughness can be rather poor).
You need to question the usefulness of your asset. is it worth it to try to ram a screening unit with your tank commander?
i know i am caricatural myself but you see the point here.

if you do the maths, sending a distraction carnifex or a transport (t6/t7) into a chaff line, what are the odds?
assuming we speak about t3, ld6 non fearless infantry wich is the ideal target: d6+4 vs 6 ld. you have 66% chance to force a fall back on a unit you might have crushed in melee. Avoiding retaliation is a joke.
What are you hoping for? make a hole in the screening line, make space for deep strike or forcing the use of insane bravery.
this is brain dead use of the rule and like you said, yeah you are gambling on a 100 point transport/distraction asset for 66% outcome wich is actual "strategy".
this rule is built arround this sweet spot.

another exemple: you want to shut down a marine melee unit before this unit charges your manticore/leman russ.
again what are the odds? Assuming it's a leman russ: d6 +4 against ld8. 5+ with reroll? with the risk to get wrecked during your own turn?
Total last resort action.
Now same situation with an objective in the balance. maybe the marine player will declare insane bravery just to secure the objective. Maybe, forcing the loss of these last 2 cp was your plan from the start.

let's talk about trapping units and forcing mortal wounds.
Tyranids with hormagants and carnifex.
You need a bit of setup, your opponnent see you coming for this. but you may have many carnifexes and many hormangants units with swarmy and stratagems.
what do you want to trap? low toughness, low ld infantry. Is this your best way to deal with it? i think not.
But again in this army the key is threat saturation.
another target: low ld vehicule/monster. for what, d3+2 mortal? if there is something to save after the combat phase?
Poor options but still, they exist.

This is not the point at all.
The point is: have yourself and your oponnent considering new opportunities involving leadership.
Both player have to keep track of the odds and make the best out of their situation.
An actual strategy with this rule will be stacking ld penalties or forcing 30 man blob chaff to fallback 6" using a disposable transport. And this may be too powerfull but it's an actual strategy.


Believe me when i say that i don't like rolling dices just for rolling dices , fun random things and "all or nothing" plays.
I am not very proud of this rule in fact. lacking granularity in my opinion. but in a game where you speculate on 25 percent charges or 54 percent charges with cp and outcomes based on d6 result you can't charge a rule for "being gamble". even a 93% outcome is still a gamble. but due to the prevalence of rerolls these days an other tools of fiabilisation we tend to forget that.
In this game all is about outcome and comitment.

we can go deeper and say gw is traped behind it's d6 system with too many rolls and no space to create new things, too many time lost due to rolls and rerolls...
There is far too much work to do. i just wanted to make rules that fits the actual system and open new plays using leadership, no revolution here.

"ramming", i agree, is far from polished but on the other hand there is something in "priority target".

keep in mind that gw will not change drasticaly it's system. they will make minimum adjustments one after the other. i try to do the same and make the most from it.

for sports, obviously.

Priority Target is interesting. It's kind of cinematic. It would make "scary" armies like NIght Lords or any of the other leadership debuff factions more powerful. A bunch of NIght Lords raptors diving into your lines and forcing you to shoot at them instead of the predators doing the heavy lifting would match the "disrupting enemy lines through terror" thing pretty well.

However, I'm concerned that this would result in extra measuring and dice rolling while also removing interesting decisions. Sure, falling back out of 12" from an enemy unit to avoid Priority Target is interesting, but a unit with 6" of movement that starts its turn 3" away from an enemy unit isn't going to be able to clear that 12" bubble without advancing (and thus not firing heavy weapons) anyway.

Plus, it does weird things to deepstriking special weapon squads. If I drop some scions with plasma guns down with the intention of shooting at a tank, I might suddenly find myself forced to point that expensive plasma at a screen instead just because some MSU units are in the general area.

Maybe make it a consequence of failed morale? If a unit failed a morale test in the last morale phase and is within 12" of an enemy unit, it may only target units within 12" during the shooting phase.

^Cuts down on the number of extra rolls and the amount of extra measuring, doesn't interact oddly with MSU vs large squads, and accomplishes more or less the same thing.

Not a fan of ramming. It brings back a lot of the weird edge cases of tank shocking from previous editions. It punishes melee armies who don't particularly need another obstacle to overcome. It adds a fair bit of extra rolling (I already charge vehicles frequently to eat overwatch). It removes interesting decisions (it forces players to fall back rather than weighing the pros and cons of doing so). It provides vehicles and monsters with a pretty potent baked in ability that would probably warrant a price increase, even on units unlikely to take advantage of this rule.

Plus, with some modest leadership debuffs floating around (like a hemlock and its -2 Ld aura), my wave serpents could somewhat reliably spend the game charging a dedicated melee unit over and over preventing it from ever actually swinging an attack in melee. And that's both silly and probably not much fun to be on the receiving end of.

honestly, msu units it's a problem on its own and i think it's quite easily handled here .

my reasonning behind deepstriking units was the following:

_ even if surrounded by ennemt unit's you still can use the bravery stratagem.
_ most of the time for a purely shooty unit you can deepstrike outside this 12", loosing 3" threat range. Considering the game it's oriented toward shooting already i think it's fair.
_ assuming you choose your unit in adequacy with the task and you decide where it lands thus how many units will be in that 12" bubble i am sure that 90% of the time this will be a high leadership value vs low malus. in fact there is a good chance you won't have to roll for priority target.
That's the point of screening: pushing back deepstrike with forward chaff line of soldiers. If you want to play with target priority defensively well fair enought: play with multiple units in a small area and maluses bubble wich protect you from multiple deepstriking heavy shooty units (on a side note: insane bravery is still a thing). But on the other hand what will you do against melee heavy list? they only need to charge and suddenly what you won against shooty deepstrike become a nail in your coffin. Unless you are yourself running heavy melee list.

I dont remember the leadership value of astra's vets or scion,s let's say it's 7, you deseperatly need to deepstrike exactly 9" away from a screen, beacause reasons, and you didnt find a place where you'll be 12" from less than 2 units . That's 16% chance to be forced to shoot at the nearest unit , without cp reroll.
Listen, even with -1 malus bubble on top of that's 33% chance. Compare this to melee only deeps strike units wich have to roll for a 26% odds or do nothing.
i think it's ok. if you go the msu way you'r already giving something to your opponent.

For exemple about the use of chaff units. Either you decide to play a big screen of chaff or you take multiple assault/defensive units for distraction but they are fairly easy to get rid off, giving kp/objectives/speedbumps, or you take both for a hefty investment.

Give it a try.

You can add a limit if you want (wich i discarded for complexity) : only consider units of higher or equal power level or give another -1 for higher lp value if you want. Try both systems and see for yourself wich one you want to discard.

For the heavy weapon issue it's totaly intended, because positionning matters.

Like is said, you are in the "give and take" area.