Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

After a bad loss in a narrative campaign after doing, what I felt was, everything right, I had a thought afterwards about a possible fix for getting Guard at least to mid level competitiveness. Please critique if I've either gone too far or not done enough:

A) Make Veterans troops again

B) "If your army is Battleforged and contains only units that have the <Astra Militarum> keyword, your army gains the following rule:

Hold the Line:

Infantry units within engagement range of one or more enemy units may make a shooting attack in the shooting phase with any or all of its weapons against any enemy unit within engagement range. If you do so, subtract 1 from the hit roll. If the Infantry unit is a Veteran Squad or has the <Militarum Tempestus> keyword, it may fire without penalty.

Vehicle units within engagement range of one or more enemy models may make a shooting attack with any or all of its weapons against enemy units not within engagement range of friendly models as though it were not engaged. If you do so, subtract one from the hit roll, and the vehicle may not declare any melee attack until the start of your next turn."

I'm fine with making veterans troops again. The rest of it seems like it would make guard kind of non-interactive and create some weird fluff/crunch disparity.

It would be weird, for instance, that imperial guard can apparently remain cool under fire and keep firing their weapons at point blank while space marines and necrons freak out and start punching things? Similarly, vehicles piloted by space marines and necrons are apparently worse at focusing on optimal targets than unaugmented humans.

And from the perspective of someone facing IG, charging through the gunfire to temporarily turn off the enemy's shooting by reaching them in melee is interesting and creates a push and pull to the game. Guard just standing there and firing 100% of their guns regardless of what the enemy does does not; in fact, I'd argue it makes the game less interesting/dynamic. It sort of just turns the IG playstyle into a pure stat check. And giving up the unimpressive melee offense of a tank isn't really a meaningful trade off.

In general, rule changes that remove counterplay or diminish the impact of player choice tend to make games less interesting.

No worries, it was just an idea. Just trying to get around 9th Ed's requirement to get into melee, and was trying to find something that wasn't "let's be Tau but worse".

Moving on.

Well they could get a 'volley charge' style rule. Perhaps for Mordians. Ordered unit forms two ranks and gets to fire a volley of las with no modifiers against the first unit to successfully charge it or some such. Would mean your units are either forming up to receive a charge or doing FRFSRF etc.