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How do!

So I’ve seen a few mentions of such an entirely hypothetical rule cropping up in conversation. I’m intrigued, and I’d like to know more.

If distant, hazy memory serves it has featured in the past. In one of the later Epic incarnations, it added to enemy unit suppression. And I think it existed in an edition of 40K I either didn’t play, or don’t recall playing. So I couldn’t even venture much of a guess as to what it did for you, let alone if it was worth it.

I’m very interested in how folk might like to see it applied in the 10th Ed rules. But that I think requires an agreed definition of what is, and isn’t, crossfire.

For me? I think it would have to be incoming enemy fire from more than one quarter. Without going too deep into the weeds, fire coming from 11 and 12 o’clock wouldn’t set off Crossfire. But, 12 and 3 o’clock would. But hey, that’s just my suggestion and whilst I suspect it will be seen as not unreasonable, don’t for now treat it as set in stone.

I’d also advocate that whatever the effect? Some units and/or armies being resistant to it is fine, but nobody should be immune. Let’s leave such nonsense in the past where it belongs.

Right, off you go.

In 3e I think it worked that if you fled while having a unit behind you and crossed into their "corridor" you were instantly wiped. My book is at home so I'll check later.

I think for modern 40K it has to be pretty straightforward. One issue is determining where the "centre" of a unit is for such a rule, and then the way that whichever way you do that encourages more micropositioning.

But broadly I think having a unit on two opposite sides of you while you are under fire giving a defensive debuff.

http://epic-uk.co.uk/rules/m1320000_EPIC_updated_rulebook-sections_1-4_Oct09.pdf

Page 16 (numbered 23).

Formations that take fire from the flank or rear are caught in a deadly crossfire, and will suffer additional casualties as troops struggle to find cover from attacks coming from an unexpected direction.

To represent this, formations are allowed to use the following rules to claim a crossfire bonus when they shoot. You can claim the crossfire bonus if you can draw a straight line up to 45cm long from any of the units in the shooting formation to any unit in another friendly formation and this line crosses a unit from the target formation or the gap between two units from the target formation.

The friendly unit that the crossfire line is drawn to must have a line of fire to a unit from the target formation, but does not have to be in range with any of its weapons. You may not use units that are in broken or marching formations to claim the crossfire bonus.

All units from a formation caught in a crossfire suffer a -1 save modifier. This may result in some units automatically failing their saving throw. Some terrain features or special rules may counter this modifier (see 1.8.4 and 2.1.16). In addition, a formation caught in a crossfire attack receives two Blast markers for the first unit destroyed by the attack, rather than just one Blast marker for the destroyed unit as would usually be the case (see 1.9.4)

As to effect?
Increase AP by 1? So -3 becomes -4. 0 becomes -1, etc.
And/or take a battleshock test if any units are removed by this shooting.

Wonder if it could be implemented as a Weapon Trait/USR?

So to stick with the examples above?

I shoot at your unit from 11 o’clock with Eldar Rangers, and from 2 o’clock with Eldar Guardians.

The Rangers’ rifles now have Crossfire as a trait/USR*. So I shoot with the Guardians first, who just work out as normal. But when the Rangers take their shots, their Crossfire trait/USR kicks in, granting those hits an additional -1 AP.

*I’m not sure if those are the same or different things rules wise, hence using both. Just apply the right one and pretend the other isn’t there.


But I’m definitely keen on it not applying just because two units in front of you had a crack. Just doesn’t feel right to my mind.

I would say something like, for the target unit, draw an imaginary rectangle around the unit. The direction the unit is facing is the front. The two sides adjacent to the front are the flanks. The opposite side to the front is the rear.

If the unit is targeted by shooting from two or more different sides, it must take a battleshock test. The unit takes one mortal wound for each number the test is failed by, e.g. if the leadership of the unit is 6+, and the roll is 4, the unit takes 2 mortal wounds.

Modifiers:
Targeted from front and side: 0
Targeted from front and rear: -1
Targeted from both sides: -1
Targeted from side and rear: -2
Targeted from all 4 sides: -3

Negative results are possible - so if a unit with Ld 6+ is targeted from all 4 sides, and a 2 is rolled for the battleshock test, that counts as -1 so 7 mortal wounds are taken.

I think it would be a neat rule to use for big games on 12x8 tables we do sometimes at club (we could do larger, but then everyone else who wants space complains). Rather than do apoc cram everything on have more dynamic moving smaller mech forces and see how it goes.

Crispy78 wrote:
I would say something like, for the target unit, draw an imaginary rectangle around the unit. The direction the unit is facing is the front. The two sides adjacent to the front are the flanks. The opposite side to the front is the rear.

If the unit is targeted by shooting from two or more different sides, it must take a battleshock test. The unit takes one mortal wound for each number the test is failed by, e.g. if the leadership of the unit is 6+, and the roll is 4, the unit takes 2 mortal wounds.

Modifiers:
Targeted from front and side: 0
Targeted from front and rear: -1
Targeted from both sides: -1
Targeted from side and rear: -2
Targeted from all 4 sides: -3

Negative results are possible - so if a unit with Ld 6+ is targeted from all 4 sides, and a 2 is rolled for the battleshock test, that counts as -1 so 7 mortal wounds are taken.

I like the rectangle thing, but the implementation feels overly deadly for armies which rely on small, expensive units. Like Marines, Knights and Custards to name three, as they’ll often lack the option to not be exposed on multiple sides.

But as I said, the Rectangle. That I do like, as it feels straight forward. And having some kind of stack for multiple angles of attack would reward good positioning and encirclement.

I’m wondering if it might work better in a suppressive manner, rather than deadly?

Mind jumps to “what if when caught in a crossfire, the target unit can, in its own turn, only target one or both crossfiring units”? Represent them trying to fight their way clear/drive them off?

Crispy78 wrote:
I would say something like, for the target unit, draw an imaginary rectangle around the unit. The direction the unit is facing is the front. The two sides adjacent to the front are the flanks. The opposite side to the front is the rear.

If the unit is targeted by shooting from two or more different sides, it must take a battleshock test. The unit takes one mortal wound for each number the test is failed by, e.g. if the leadership of the unit is 6+, and the roll is 4, the unit takes 2 mortal wounds.

The intent of the rule in epic was to never have to worry about what was the side. The belief was units would manoeuvre to keep the enemy on the best aspect. But when surrounded that was no longer possible. The crossfire rule is being hit in the side of rear. To add more chrome to it detracts from the intent and slows things down further.

Also in general, why gild the lily further with the save and the battleshock test (or other mechanisms). Always try and use core mechanics rather than new. If the AP mod isn't enough increase it rather than make it more complex. If the battleshock test isn't enough make it harder to pass. But you want a rule that rewards manoeuvre but doesn't dominate because 40k isn't built around manoeuvre but unit exchange. These things are cool flavour, anything more its play something else or redesign the game.

Yeah, honestly I was aiming for it being pretty lethal. I've not played a huge amount of 10th yet, but so far battleshock itself feels a little lacklustre, and it didn't seem drastic enough for what should be an extremely lethal situation on a real battlefield.

9th Edition GSC had a Crossfire rule and it worked pretty well. I was sad that they took it away in favour of the new revival one, but I guess it was a bit convoluted for some people? It used Crossfire tokens and the exposed rule to determine buffs. I'll paraphrase below:

Crossfire:
- Whenever a unit shoots, if they all target the same unit, that unit receives a crossfire token if a) 5 or more hits were scored, or b) a weapon above D1 scored a hit.

Exposed:
- When making a ranged attack, draw a straight line from the attacking unit to any allied unit, any enemy units under this line are exposed.

Effects:
- When you shoot a unit with a Crossfire token, you get +1 to hit.
- If the target of the ranged attack has a Crossfire token AND is exposed, the attack is +1 to wound.
- If the target has a Crossfire token, is exposed, AND is within 12", the attack ignores cover.

We don't play 10th, but we do have a crossfire modifier for Morale Checks.

If a unit takes any casualties from separate firing enemy units that can trace their LOS through that unit to each other, the unit needs a Morale Check.
Each following condition is an additional +1 to a Morale check roll: taking casualties from a crossfire, losing 25% of the unit (+2 if 50%+), or taking casualties from a pinning weapon.

If a Morale Check fails, a unit is suppressed.
If a Morale Check fails by 3+, a unit breaks.

 Tawnis wrote:
9th Edition GSC had a Crossfire rule and it worked pretty well. I was sad that they took it away in favour of the new revival one, but I guess it was a bit convoluted for some people? It used Crossfire tokens and the exposed rule to determine buffs. I'll paraphrase below:

Crossfire:
- Whenever a unit shoots, if they all target the same unit, that unit receives a crossfire token if a) 5 or more hits were scored, or b) a weapon above D1 scored a hit.

Exposed:
- When making a ranged attack, draw a straight line from the attacking unit to any allied unit, any enemy units under this line are exposed.

Effects:
- When you shoot a unit with a Crossfire token, you get +1 to hit.
- If the target of the ranged attack has a Crossfire token AND is exposed, the attack is +1 to wound.
- If the target has a Crossfire token, is exposed, AND is within 12", the attack ignores cover.

Something like that probably works pretty well. I feel like there's maybe one or two too many rules floating around in there for it to be a universal rule, but the gist of it seems fine.

For a hypothetical crossfire rule, I'd want:
* To avoid having to draw invisible rectangles or breaking out protractors. That's just asking for a more convoluted version of the armour facing problems. To this end, something like drawing a line between allies and through the target is probably preferable to trying to figure out "quadrants." If you really wanted to do the quadrant thing, I think we'd just need to make "crossfire tokens" a thing and have them feature a + symbol that you could quickly and unambiguously line a tape measure up with to figure out whether an attack is in an appropriate quadrant.
* Simple enough to resolve instantly. You want to be able to check for crossifre and be done with it instantly. It's theoretically going to be coming up a lot.
* Probably a lethality boost rather than a battleshock modifier. I just don't think people are going to be interested in going out of their way to make battleshocks happen more often, and that turns any related mechanics (i.e. crossfire) into a lot of added complication for not a lot of added impact. Whereas crossfire resulting in more enemy casualties (through better AP or whatever) is intuitive, satisfying, and generally worth positioning your units to take advantage of.

The exact benefits of the crossfire are, I think, the part that would need to be toyed with the most. An improvement to AP would be very helpful most of the time, but it wouldn't help at all in some matchups. For instance, eldar guardians with their shuriken weapons are already AP-1 meaning that cultists out in the open aren't any worse off than they already were. And on the flip side, you have entire armies (daemons, harlequins, some tyranids such as genestealers) that mainly use their invulnerable saves anyway.

+1 to-wound is universally useful, but I'm not sure if we want to make it relatively easy for lasguns to wound tanks and greater daemons on a 5+. Ignores cover is basically just a more niche version of -1AP.

Of those, I'd probably be most inclined to just go with the +1 to-wound (some ambush specialists might get additional benefits from crossfire), but to then add a limitation saying that you only get the benefit with weapons targeting something whose Toughness is *not* double the weapon's strength or higher. So bolters and lasguns would remain bad at punching through tanks, but plasma guns, blasters, etc. would be able to punch up against higher toughness via good positioning, and dedicated AT (lascannons, lances) would be made that much better at it.

EDIT: So I guess my pitch would be something like:

CROSSFIRE
When making a ranged attack in your Shooting phase, the attacking unit may draw a line between any model in the attacking unit and any friendly unit. If...
* The line crosses the attack's target.
* The friendly unit has line of sight to the attack's target.
* The friendly unit possesses a ranged weapon that could reach the attack's target and whose Strength is more than half the Toughness of the attack's target
...then add +1 to the attack's to-wound roll.

So basically, +1 to-wound if you have a unit on opposite sides of the target. You could maybe add a restriction forcing all units involved in a crossfire to contribute at least one elligible attack to any crossfired units, but I'm not sure how to word that without making things overly complicated.

It still feels overly complex for 10th.

Which isn’t to say it’s a poor process and that. Just, 10th is pretty stripped back by comparison.

I think it’s the S is more than potential targets T. And that the second unit in the hypothetical line needn’t fire on the unit to be affected.