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So, many moons ago when I played Necromunda I recall enjoying the "bottle test" - which was a army-level morale test. Once you hit a certain % of losses, you're army leader would have to start taking a bottle test (basic leadership test with a few modifiers) that would determine whether they would carry on or break and run. I see in the Middlearth / LotR game that there is a similar sort of army-wide morale test (break test).

I've never liked the arbitrary ending to the 9th edition missions (fixed at 5 turns). So it got me wondering about how a similar break/bottle test could work with the 9th edition missions (and particularly Crusade where keeping forces alive is more thematic). I could see something with having to start taking a bottle test once 25% of your army's units are destroyed (ignoring independent characters probably). Leadership modifiers could stack up at 50% and 75% losses. Additionally, holding more objectives than your opponent could give you a buff to your break test (or even prevent you from needing to take it in the first place). The game would proceed as normal and end at the END of a full battle round when a player's army breaks.

Lot of details to work out of course .... but what do others think? Is this something that's possible or worth exploring? Probably better for narrative play, but I wonder what people think.

Cheers!

It's an idea worth exploring-but also easy to screw up.

You tend to do good work, though, so I heartily encourage you to flesh it out more.

I don't think I'm sold on the concept. I've played with bottle tests in Kill Team, and it's kind of a problem mechanic. Armies that are designed to be squishy naturally lose a lot of units faster than durable (read: marine) armies, so you end up creating this new variable that potentially screws over a lot of armies in the game if you don't implement it just right.

Also, I've personally never had my army bottle out and been... entertained by the experience. It's mostly just frustrating. If things are actually going so badly that I'm going to lose the game, then I'll just lose the game. But if I still have a chance at winning, it's annoying to lose that chance because of a dice roll that only exists to take away my chances of making a comeback.

Also, unless my memory is betraying me, Tau actually kind of had this in the first (couple?) books. It used to be that killing an Ethereal caused the whole army to freak out and start running away. Similarly, necrons had Phase Out which basically meant they lost automatically if enough of their non-vehicle models died. Both of these mechanics were problematic, unpopular (though fluffy) and have since been removed.

I get that 5 turn games can end kind of abruptly, but losing on turn 4 because a bottle test decided you just lose because reasons doesn't seem like an improvement to me. Also, it's worth noting that bottle tests make more sense in campaign games where running away means that you're not taking as many permanent casualties. So while you might lose a mission (and the benefits associated with it), there's a silver lining in the form of, "Well at least I'm not making an extra five tests to see if my leveled up units are permanently dead." In a non-crusade game, that silver lining doesn't exist.