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1. Let swarms move through ruin walls. The whole idea behind infantry/beasts being able to do so is that they're squeezing through tight spaces, vaulting over rubble that would slow a bike, etc. It seems like swarms should excel at this sort of thing.

2. Swarms take a max of 1 damage non-blast weapons, but take double damage from blast weapons. It's weird that a lascannon or power klaw is somehow popping whole swarms, yet blast weapons have no inherent advantage against critter clouds that are just begging for some splash damage.

3. Scrap the overwatch stratagem entirely. Make overwatch a thing you can do with specific weapons (like flamers) or with specific special abilities. As-is, overwatch is kind of a feels-bad rule. 99% of the time, it's a bad idea to use it because hitting on 6s makes it too unreliable to be a good use of command points. The other 1% of the time, it's too effective (basically a free shooting phase) and feels bad to face. Or put another way, overwatching with bolters and doing nothing feels bad for the overwatcher, but overwatching with flamers and wiping out a unit in the movement phase feels bad for the overwatched.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
1. Let swarms move through ruin walls. The whole idea behind infantry/beasts being able to do so is that they're squeezing through tight spaces, vaulting over rubble that would slow a bike, etc. It seems like swarms should excel at this sort of thing.

2. Swarms take a max of 1 damage non-blast weapons, but take double damage from blast weapons. It's weird that a lascannon or power klaw is somehow popping whole swarms, yet blast weapons have no inherent advantage against critter clouds that are just begging for some splash damage.

3. Scrap the overwatch stratagem entirely. Make overwatch a thing you can do with specific weapons (like flamers) or with specific special abilities. As-is, overwatch is kind of a feels-bad rule. 99% of the time, it's a bad idea to use it because hitting on 6s makes it too unreliable to be a good use of command points. The other 1% of the time, it's too effective (basically a free shooting phase) and feels bad to face. Or put another way, overwatching with bolters and doing nothing feels bad for the overwatcher, but overwatching with flamers and wiping out a unit in the movement phase feels bad for the overwatched.

1) Agreed
2) Max of one damage from non-blast feels REALLY strong. I don't think my Nurglings should be able to tank three Lascannons that get through their invulns. Maybe half damage?
3) Fair.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
1. Let swarms move through ruin walls. The whole idea behind infantry/beasts being able to do so is that they're squeezing through tight spaces, vaulting over rubble that would slow a bike, etc. It seems like swarms should excel at this sort of thing.

2. Swarms take a max of 1 damage non-blast weapons, but take double damage from blast weapons. It's weird that a lascannon or power klaw is somehow popping whole swarms, yet blast weapons have no inherent advantage against critter clouds that are just begging for some splash damage.

3. Scrap the overwatch stratagem entirely. Make overwatch a thing you can do with specific weapons (like flamers) or with specific special abilities. As-is, overwatch is kind of a feels-bad rule. 99% of the time, it's a bad idea to use it because hitting on 6s makes it too unreliable to be a good use of command points. The other 1% of the time, it's too effective (basically a free shooting phase) and feels bad to face. Or put another way, overwatching with bolters and doing nothing feels bad for the overwatcher, but overwatching with flamers and wiping out a unit in the movement phase feels bad for the overwatched.

1) Agreed
2) Max of one damage from non-blast feels REALLY strong. I don't think my Nurglings should be able to tank three Lascannons that get through their invulns. Maybe half damage?
3) Fair.

2.) Idk. I feel like lascannons should never have really been a good tool for that particular job in the first place, and the blast changes mean they'd be much easier to remove via blast weapons than before. So while those lascannons are stuck popping one or two booger demons at a time, a frag missile or battle cannon would make quick work of them.

It shouldn’t come for free, at a minimum.
Nurglings are already good, and ripper swarms are too (I think)

 Wyldhunt wrote:

2. Swarms take a max of 1 damage non-blast weapons, but take double damage from blast weapons. It's weird that a lascannon or power klaw is somehow popping whole swarms, yet blast weapons have no inherent advantage against critter clouds that are just begging for some splash damage.

the warhammer armies project for fantasy does something similar to this

Warhammer Armies Project wrote:However, any Swarm base that is hit by a template attack suffers Multiple Wounds (D6) rather than 1.

JNAProductions wrote:It shouldn’t come for free, at a minimum.
Nurglings are already good, and ripper swarms are too (I think)

Hmm. Maybe. I'm not sure how prevalent blast weapons are at the moment, so not sure how big of a buff it would be for swarms to switch weaknesses from high D weapons to blast weapons. I guess the half damage approach could work if blasts turn out to be too rare or something. I wouldn't want to raise the points costs of swarms overly much just because I made their weakness rarer.

StudentOfEtherium wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

2. Swarms take a max of 1 damage non-blast weapons, but take double damage from blast weapons. It's weird that a lascannon or power klaw is somehow popping whole swarms, yet blast weapons have no inherent advantage against critter clouds that are just begging for some splash damage.

the warhammer armies project for fantasy does something similar to this

Warhammer Armies Project wrote:However, any Swarm base that is hit by a template attack suffers Multiple Wounds (D6) rather than 1.

Makes sense. Iirc, the oldschool rule was that blasts (and templates?) did 2 Wounds instead of 1. So a frag missile wasn't wiping a base of scarabs on its own, but it was relatively efficient compared to most weapons. I don't recall whether they were immune to insta-death from high-strength weapons or not.

1. 100% Agree

2. I like this idea, but points would have to be re-balanced as this would be a large buff. There are way more damage 2+ weapons running around than there are blast weapons.

3. Yeah, it is in a weird spot. I always liked the old overwatch rule where you just got to do it for free if anyone charged you, but I do see how that slows down a game too.

Tying it to weapons of characters is a neat idea. Going by that logic, I'd make it a unit keyword that works on a -1 to your BS (so that is negatively stacks with Stealth). That way it's still not as accurate as normal shooting, but also doesn't often feel pointless either.

 Tawnis wrote:
1. 100% Agree

2. I like this idea, but points would have to be re-balanced as this would be a large buff. There are way more damage 2+ weapons running around than there are blast weapons.

Fair enough then. JNA's suggestion of halving damage from high strength weapons instead of setting it to 1 might be more appropriate then. The fluff is sketchy, but letting high-strength weapons continue to have some (limited) extra effectiveness against swarms is probably better for the game. Especially because I feel like increasing the points of most swarm units is likely to be too big of a downside.

3. Yeah, it is in a weird spot. I always liked the old overwatch rule where you just got to do it for free if anyone charged you, but I do see how that slows down a game too.

It slowed the game down, and it also just kind of felt bad. Your opponent's melee dreadnaught or deff dread finally managed to lumber across the board to reach your ravager or war walker, and then it randomly just dies when it finally tries to charge. It doesn't create interesting decisions; just random feelbad moments.

Tying it to weapons of characters is a neat idea. Going by that logic, I'd make it a unit keyword that works on a -1 to your BS (so that is negatively stacks with Stealth). That way it's still not as accurate as normal shooting, but also doesn't often feel pointless either.

I could see that for a character that grants overwatch to a unit. I was also picturing having some weapons with the overwatch keyword be allowed to overwatch, but the rest of the squad doesn't get to join them. So the flamer guy(s) in a tactical squad could overwatch, but their bolter buddies couldn't.

Bit of thread necromancy, but how do people feel about proposal #2 now that swarms are mostly (all?) OC0 and unable to do actions? Previously they were really good as action monkeys, but now it seems like people are struggling to find much use for them.

Are you fielding swarms? Would you field swarms if they took a max of 1 damage from non-blast weapons but took double damage from blast weapons?

It wouldn’t really affect how much I take Nurglings. They don’t last long to D1 weapons anyway, what with being T3 6++.

It's one of those things that I would consider more incidental and thematic. I think it would feel better and more logical to go with how you think about swarms. However, I don't think it is such a buff or nerf to them that it would effect points or playability unless Blast weapons were everywhere or D1 weapons were nowhere.

I never bothered with Swarms anyway, although I do have two small general 40k proposals.

1. A model which gives a bonus when attached to a unit should still get that bonus when on his own. Reading through the Daemon book earlier, and a Bloodmaster/Herald of Khorne gives +1 to wound when attached to a unit, but not on his own. Doesn't make much sense that he's suddenly worse.

2. Falling back should be much more difficult. It irks me how a unit can very easily just escape out of combat, so I had in mind something like this:

If a unit wishes to fall back it must first take a Desperate Escape test, subtracting one if the unit is already Battleshocked and another -1 if surrounded. The unit may then make a normal move. Each player then rolls 2D6, if the fleeing player scores higher, nothing happens, if the pursuing player wins then the attacking unit immediately moves back into Engagement Range

Obviously you could have USRs that could modify that, such as:

Fleet: When a unit with this rule makes a Pursuit move, you may reroll 1 dice of your choosing

 Valkyrie wrote:
I do have two small general 40k proposals.

1. A model which gives a bonus when attached to a unit should still get that bonus when on his own. Reading through the Daemon book earlier, and a Bloodmaster/Herald of Khorne gives +1 to wound when attached to a unit, but not on his own. Doesn't make much sense that he's suddenly worse.

Yeah, I think that's probably a good change. Agreed that it's weird when characters stop knowing how to do stuff just because their squad is gone. The only counter-argument I can conjure to mind is that *maybe* certain cheap characters would be slightly more cost-effective than GW would like if you can just run them solo without paying the extra overhead for an attached squad. But then such characters would hypothetically be really easy to kill off. I don't think solo palatines retaining their Lethal Hits as they pop out of an immolator is going to break anything.

2. Falling back should be much more difficult. It irks me how a unit can very easily just escape out of combat, so I had in mind something like this:

If a unit wishes to fall back it must first take a Desperate Escape test, subtracting one if the unit is already Battleshocked and another -1 if surrounded. The unit may then make a normal move. Each player then rolls 2D6, if the fleeing player scores higher, nothing happens, if the pursuing player wins then the attacking unit immediately moves back into Engagement Range

Obviously you could have USRs that could modify that, such as:

Fleet: When a unit with this rule makes a Pursuit move, you may reroll 1 dice of your choosing

So what I don't like about this proposal is that it only fixes the problem some of the time. If we accept that there's a problem with falling back, then only being screwed over 50% of the time instead of 100% of the time feels like a bandaid fix.

When discussing fallback on this forum in the past, something that was suggested (by me?) was to basically give enemy units that began the turn within engagement range lone op. So you can still fall back and let your friends shoot those nobz, but only only the friends who are in the general vicinity. The idea being that the chaos of melee makes it too risky to try and toss lascannons across the battlefield for fear of hitting your retreating allies, but the squads closer at-hand with a clear view of the situation can still line up shots just fine.

So something like that might be a better fix to the perceived problem? But honestly, I'm not sure I have an issue with fallback at the moment, personally. Now that fly doesn't grant free fallback & shoot, making an enemy fallback is usually a pretty meaningful consequence. Generally it means you've cost that unit a turn of offense or a command point spent on a stratagem to let them ignore that consequence.

Could you elaborate on what problem you see with fallback at the moment? When you say, "it should be much more difficult," why do you think that?

 Wyldhunt wrote:

So what I don't like about this proposal is that it only fixes the problem some of the time. If we accept that there's a problem with falling back, then only being screwed over 50% of the time instead of 100% of the time feels like a bandaid fix.

When discussing fallback on this forum in the past, something that was suggested (by me?) was to basically give enemy units that began the turn within engagement range lone op. So you can still fall back and let your friends shoot those nobz, but only only the friends who are in the general vicinity. The idea being that the chaos of melee makes it too risky to try and toss lascannons across the battlefield for fear of hitting your retreating allies, but the squads closer at-hand with a clear view of the situation can still line up shots just fine.

So something like that might be a better fix to the perceived problem? But honestly, I'm not sure I have an issue with fallback at the moment, personally. Now that fly doesn't grant free fallback & shoot, making an enemy fallback is usually a pretty meaningful consequence. Generally it means you've cost that unit a turn of offense or a command point spent on a stratagem to let them ignore that consequence.

Could you elaborate on what problem you see with fallback at the moment? When you say, "it should be much more difficult," why do you think that?

It just seems such a lazily-written rule. Compared to previous editions where there was a serious risk of being swept if you failed Morale in CC, the whole notion of "just make a normal move" is boring and unimaginative.

"Trooper Smith held the terror back as the dreaded Khorne Berzerker leapt towards his unit. With a flick of his wrist three of Smith's closest friends were split in twain, the unholy warrior bludgeoning the Sergeant on his return strike. More Astartes joined the bloodshed as the terror overwhelmed him. Smith knew what must be done...he moved backwards at marching pace, the Berzerkers remaining several feet away, utterly unable to follow them.

Yeah it's boring. I'm not saying this as a salty melee-player, but you shouldn't simply be able to waltz your way out of melee. Desperate Escape as it currently stands can hurt, but even then most armies just accept it as statistically it'll only go off 1/6 times. I do like the Lone Op idea you mentioned, that does seem to fit in the whole fog-of-war narrative.

Thanks!

But yeah, we discussed a very similar idea quite a bit here in 8th/9th. Ideas that boil down to just randomly not being able to fall back are kind of a bandaid fix as I mentioned above, and fixes that boil down to doing some damage to a unit that would still rather take damage than stick around and get wiped out don't really fix anything.

It's worth noting that the current version of fallback doesn't seem to have been intended as a replacement for sweeping advance. It came about as a way to prevent game-long tarpits. That old situation where you toss a blob of fearless gaunts at a dreadnaught who was then subsequently stuck killing one or two bugs at a time for the rest of the game instead of just leaving. Or flipping that around, situations where something like a dreadnaught charges a squad of fire warriors that are utterly unable to meaningfully hurt it, and they're just stuck there until it eventually kills them rather than trying to make space for someone better equipped to step in.

In a vacuum, not being able to shoot/charge after falling back makes sense. If your guardsmen want to run like heck instead of trying to swing back, they can reasonably put some distance between themselves and the berzerkers; at least briefly. The problem is when a crack-shot basilisk and his russ bodies halfway across the table are reaching over to blast the exposed berzerkers into oblivion.

Which is why I kind of like the lone op fog of war solution. If your opponent wants to blast your exposed berzerkers, he has to put units dangerously close to said berzerkers before doing so.