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+1 on the above. Game needs to work as a game, it is always going to have abstractions. "It's realistic" (whateve that means) is never a good excusefor mechanics that are crappy, by for example taking away player agency or, piling up tedious admin or creating negative play experience.

In my oppinion all this so called "feelsbad" is always childish gak commes from "oH No, my uber <unit name> not so uber!!!!1one Change the game my <unit name> shall be da Best" and this stupid. Look at HH 3 where bunch of suppression mechanics and dat not make it non interactive. All this interactive/non-interactive talks are from PC actions games influence. Where you move unstopable all the time.

Cyel wrote:
+1 on the above. Game needs to work as a game, it is always going to have abstractions. "It's realistic" (whateve that means) is never a good excusefor mechanics that are crappy, by for example taking away player agency or, piling up tedious admin or creating negative play experience.

Seems everything is a negative play experience these days.

Can't have pinning. Takes away agency.

Can't have units break and run. Takes away agency.

Can't have models get killed. Takes away agency.

Can't have models not get killed. Makes units feel ineffective.

Yet, I am pretty sure you know what I meant anyway But nice hyperbole, kudos.

Tyel wrote:
If "ball-punching" is too literal, you can come up with other examples.

I.E.
Armies have logistics issues. To simulate this, any time you select a unit to shoot you have to roll a dice. If you roll a 1, bad luck, you've run out of bullets. That unit can't shoot now or for the rest of the game.

We can, GW style, even embrace this rule, adding a complicated array of modifiers and rerolls, which may or may not be governed by keywords. In 20 years time people will debate whether it was fluffy or not that in 11th edition Space Marines auto-passed because Space Marines etc etc etc.

I think something like this even was a rule in Necromunda, maybe Gorkamorka.

Its something perfectly reasonable to have in a war game.

But...... I'd also argue however its adding a massive luck element to the game, which some players may or may not like. Its certainly adding a major "feels bad" moments, that will inevitably happen regularly. No one is going to enjoy being told "no, soz, left the ammo at home" when their big shooty unit is about to open up.

I don't think it would be remotely surprising if the bulk of players went "this rule sucks, please get rid of it GW". To which you might say "aha! You're not trying to play a wargame." To which they'd respond "we don't care."

This is the exact example I was about to give to Hellebore. Well done.

@Hellebore, as Tyel pointed out, designers pick and choose what aspects of the thing being simulated actually make it into the game. At times 40k has attempted to include pinning but not necessarily poor logistics or trench foot or what have you. Generally, the deciding factor in whether or not something makes it into the game is whether or not it adds to the game experience. So while I'm not opposed to including pinning again, I think it's fair to say that we should only include pinning if it's implemented in a way that adds to the game. Including an unenjoyable version of pinning like we had in the past purely because pinning is a thing that happens in war doesn't hold up as an argument for me.

Also, I hope my internet tone isn't getting too aggressive. I always enjoy conversing with you.




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kabaakaba wrote:
In my oppinion all this so called "feelsbad" is always childish gak commes from "oH No, my uber <unit name> not so uber!!!!1one Change the game my <unit name> shall be da Best" and this stupid. Look at HH 3 where bunch of suppression mechanics and dat not make it non interactive. All this interactive/non-interactive talks are from PC actions games influence. Where you move unstopable all the time.

That hasn't been my experience reading comments that mention "feelsbad" moments, and I don't think it's how I tend to use the term myself. To me, "feelsbad" isn't a term for when things merely go imperfectly; it's a term for when the rules screw you over despite no fault of your own or leave you in a position where you feel like you don't have meaningful choices or otherwise just generally feel like your army isn't being allowed to behave as advertised.

Speaking as an eldar player, strands of fate was a feelsbad mechanic at the start of 10th because it made people feel like there was basically nothing they could do to stop a bunch of literally automatic devastating wounds coming off of d-cannons at the start of the game. That's not non-eldar players whining about their armies not being uber enough; that's a reasonable reaction to a mechanic that disregards the defensive stats you invested in and basically guaranteed you were playing at a points disadvantage after the first eldar turn.

Failing a 3" charge because you rolled snake eyes is feels bad because you made the effort to get your unit very close to your charge target and then failed anyway. With some pretty intense mental gymnastics required to explain why your berzerkers couldn't figure out how to jog a couple meters closer to the enemy to get within chain axe range. It feels like you're being put at a disadvantage by an arbitrary and abstract game mechanic that doesn't reflect your piloting choices and breaks some of the immersion with the fluff.

Playing against imperial knights when you brought a casual vanilla army can be feels bad because you signed up to have your dire avengers or intercessors trade shots with fellow infantry, and instead they're just going to spend the game fishing for 6s and waiting to be killed on objective markers.

For me, a key point I like to consider in the difference between "Feels bad" and "Git gud" is What could I have done differently?

If the answer is something like "I should've focused on another squad," or "I should've focused on scoring instead of killing," or "I should've deployed less aggressively," then that's okay. I goofed, I messed up, time to learn.
If the answer is "I did everything pretty much right and just got screwed anyway," that's less okay.

And yes, sometimes the dice will just say no and there's nothing you can do about it. But when any given game involves rolling thousands of dice over the course of it, the odds of truly being screwed by dice are pretty slim. (Barring some key rolls-Charge Rolls, for example, can be a small number of dice that can have outsize influence on the game.)

Agree with that sentiment, JNA. Flubbing my attacks for a turn isn't something I'd call "feelsbad." It might be frustrating in the moment, but randomized damage outputs are a big part of what keeps the game interesting.

Managing to fail your single shot with a hammerhead's big gun feels a little worse, but again, the potential to fail attacks are a good and accepted part of the core game experience.

Failing a 3" charge just feels like you're getting screwed over arbitrarily by an 8th edition game designer's bandaid fix for making charges out of deepstrike possible but not oppressive. Getting pinned similarly felt like you were getting screwed by a single roll that you probably didn't have much way to mitigate or interact with, though at least some pinning weapons felt like they were an intentional choice on the part of the player who opted to take them instead of a more lethal option.

Sometimes it's not the base game it's the stuff added later like unbalanced missions.

I remember some of the Psychic Awakening missions that had objectives that could only be completed by INFANTRY.

So a battle between Knights, Armoured Companies, or other Monstrous units turned into lame stalemates as neither side could win.

Things like that make you feel like you spent your money and time wrong, as you flip through books saying, "I can't play that mission... or that one."

Would say changing the charge rule to 2D6" but you can always get a minimum of 6" undermine "wargaminess"?

I kind of think flubbing all your attacks is "feels bad" - but not obvious there's a solution barring some bad luck protection which you could have in a computer game but not obviously in dice. I think you've got to accept that one. Part of 40k is the ability to roll lots of 6s.

Some newer games with randomised attacks move away from having "Miss" as an option.

For example I am now playing through a Tidal Blades 2 campaign and neither attack cards nor dice you use to determine damage on enemies have a "Miss". Depending on RNG you can do more, you can do less, you can do too much or (frustratingly!) not enough, but you never do "nothing".

I guess, these designers (quite reasonably) assumed that players do not sit to have a game and perform actions only to watch how "nothing happened". They designed an incredibly well thought out, state-of-the-art game by the way, so I am sure this decision also wasn't a coincidence.

Don't this give us(in our setting with it "lore" sm predominance) even more outrage cause some grot anyway do damage to terminator? Or knight?

kabaakaba wrote:
Don't this give us(in our setting with it "lore" sm predominance) even more outrage cause some grot anyway do damage to terminator? Or knight?

That is a scale issue.

To my knowledge, a lot of other wargames have a tighter scale. You wouldn’t see a single model half the size of a human fighting against a robot 60 meters tall.

Because I do agree that always doing something would be ridiculous when you have one grot versus a whole Knight. But if you have a horde of 100 grots represented as one base vs a Knight, it’s a lot more reasonable that they can (with grenades or whatever) do something.

Great posts from Wyldhunt and JNA. Said everything I wanted to say but better.

kabaakaba wrote:
Don't this give us(in our setting with it "lore" sm predominance) even more outrage cause some grot anyway do damage to terminator? Or knight?

No. As the way you would sensibly design this would be to make such an action not possible in the game to begin with (like old S5 or less never damages T8 or AV12). The action is simply never undertaken.

But when you allow players to choose such targets, make them go through some kind of a process (rolling, counting etc) just for the result to be "nothing happened, you all just wasted your time" ... that's the kind of situations that a designer may want to avoid with such a solution.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Tyel wrote:
If "ball-punching" is too literal, you can come up with other examples.

I.E.
Armies have logistics issues. To simulate this, any time you select a unit to shoot you have to roll a dice. If you roll a 1, bad luck, you've run out of bullets. That unit can't shoot now or for the rest of the game.

We can, GW style, even embrace this rule, adding a complicated array of modifiers and rerolls, which may or may not be governed by keywords. In 20 years time people will debate whether it was fluffy or not that in 11th edition Space Marines auto-passed because Space Marines etc etc etc.

I think something like this even was a rule in Necromunda, maybe Gorkamorka.

Its something perfectly reasonable to have in a war game.

But...... I'd also argue however its adding a massive luck element to the game, which some players may or may not like. Its certainly adding a major "feels bad" moments, that will inevitably happen regularly. No one is going to enjoy being told "no, soz, left the ammo at home" when their big shooty unit is about to open up.

I don't think it would be remotely surprising if the bulk of players went "this rule sucks, please get rid of it GW". To which you might say "aha! You're not trying to play a wargame." To which they'd respond "we don't care."

This is the exact example I was about to give to Hellebore. Well done.

@Hellebore, as Tyel pointed out, designers pick and choose what aspects of the thing being simulated actually make it into the game. At times 40k has attempted to include pinning but not necessarily poor logistics or trench foot or what have you. Generally, the deciding factor in whether or not something makes it into the game is whether or not it adds to the game experience. So while I'm not opposed to including pinning again, I think it's fair to say that we should only include pinning if it's implemented in a way that adds to the game. Including an unenjoyable version of pinning like we had in the past purely because pinning is a thing that happens in war doesn't hold up as an argument for me.

Also, I hope my internet tone isn't getting too aggressive. I always enjoy conversing with you.

And that's all within the wargame discussion. Feels bad saying things should just not be there is not.

You can absolutely discuss what parts of warfare you want to model and how to make the game 'fun' as a result. But there will be a pyramid hierarchy of warfare challenges going from biggest impact to least impact that will naturally show which ones are more likely to be relevant and deleting them because the players don't want that challenge undermines the cohesion of what you're trying to represent. You can keep stripping 'unfun' warfare challenges out, but you are left with nothing to play.

These arguments keep conflating concepts with execution..I never claimed bad pinning should exist. But people.keep saying it should go because the implementation was bad. It's beholden to the designer to create good rules around necessary concepts. I think th concept of pinning is necessary which necessitates good execution for an enjoyable game experience. Removing the concept entirely is not a good execution.

As to the feels bad argument, I am an example of a counter to it. Because I depsise what current 40k is. I find it a comptety bland, challengless.dice chucking snooze.fest that makes me feel bad to play. And I found older pining rules feels good because they were another challenge and tactic to manipulate the game with.

Hence why personal feelings are a poor measure because if I'm playing someone who likes current 40k I want it changed and they don't, and vice versa with older editions.

Thus expectation management and objective design are better than personal preference.


Current 40k plays like a computer game where you figured out your optimal attack pattern and just press the same 5 buttons over and over again. Feels bad is when people don't get the victory they were expecting from their 5 button action.

Stack strategies, alpha strike, chuck as many dice as possible the end. There's no nuance at all. It's very binary.

 Hellebore wrote:


Current 40k plays like a computer game where you figured out your optimal attack pattern and just press the same 5 buttons over and over again. Feels bad is when people don't get the victory they were expecting from their 5 button action.

Stack strategies, alpha strike, chuck as many dice as possible the end. There's no nuance at all. It's very binary.

I'm not exactly going to disagree, because the rules DO facilitate what you describe quite effectively. I understand what you and others dislike about modern 40k, and there are elements of 10th that I don't like much either.

But I do think that a great deal about "how the game plays" does depend on how you play it; I know that some people's control over the way they play is limited to some degree by external factors beyond their control, and I'm certainly not telling anyone they are playing wrong.

But when I play, the game doesn't feel like what you describe at all. I mean, I'm playing 500 point Crusade games using Boarding Actions rules with an overarching narrative that that is designed to escalate to 3k armies and incorporates Kill Team games into the campaign structure. It's a lot of work, but I take as much pride in the campaigns that grow my armies as much as I do about my armies.

500 point Crusade games combined with Kill Team side missions really does capture the warband feel of the Rogue Trader Era. It is the perfect format for exploring novel experiments like the WD Blanchitsu/ Pilgrim project. I think that was actually 7th or 8th ed, but man, systems like Crusade and Spec Ops really open the doors on campaign play; they're best when employed co-operatively by a small group of like minded players.

Now it's entirely possible that I may encounter some of the things you write about with more frequency once my armies grow to a more cumbersome size; I might also encounter these problems more often if I played a greater variety of opponents... I'm working on that, with another game scheduled in the last week of August once my vacation wraps up. I'm using the time until then to get the raiding party fully painted, and I might be able to snap off an Arena fight next week so that I can bring the proper Wych Cult models to the battle.

Granted, some people just don't like small games, and want all their games to be 2k, and that's a valid choice. Some people aren't going to want to invest as much time into protracted narratives, and that's a valid choice too. And some people have already tried every flavour of the game and still can't find one that feels the way they want it to feel. But if you haven't tried the small escalating warband style of campaigning, and you're disillusioned with stand-alone 2k games, it might be worth your while to try it before you invest in a whole other game. It might not work for you, but then again it might.

At the moment, it's doing a decent enough job to give me what I want from it. Good luck man.

This tough just hit my brain. Doesn't we already have all kind of suppression mechanics that's looks fine? I mean there is all that special rules on almost every IG units for example which give battle-shock, reduce movement and charge, reduce hit roll, strip BoC.

kabaakaba wrote:
This tough just hit my brain. Doesn't we already have all kind of suppression mechanics that's looks fine? I mean there is all that special rules on almost every IG units for example which give battle-shock, reduce movement and charge, reduce hit roll, strip BoC.

Which are both bespoke, not universal; and don’t remove agency entirely. They reduce effectiveness without denying you your choices.

Doesn't that what we wanted? I mean we reduce effectiveness but opponent still can play this unit. No one loosing control.

The thing is people aren't complaining that German machine guns can pin British infantry in their D-Day game.

These are the factions of Warhammer 40k:
Brainwashed fanatical super-soldiers in impenetrable armor
Fanatical super-soldiers in impenetrable armor who are insane and worship demons
Legions of the soulless robots from Terminator
Mindless alien insects who attack in an endless horde
Wacky green Mad Max gorillas who think war is fun
Insane torture-elves who are all high on drugs
50-foot tall killer robots piloted by brainwashed fanatics

And then you do have the Guard, Eldar, and Tau, who are the only ones that would be more-or-less subject to regular morale. But they're what, 20% of the armies played? And even a Cadian, Fire Warrior, or Aspect Warrior has spent a lifetime training for war and is, by modern standards, a hyper-indoctrinated kamikaze. If it's possible to convince a regular French conscript to try charging across No Man's Land into machine guns - and it is because that happened - then you can bet your ass that a Cadian raised to obey orders from childhood on a 10,000 year-old fortress-planet will do so every time.

So the morale rules cribbed from Napoleonic wargames never made sense for 40k. 10e's "battle-shock" is actually much more realistic for most armies: morale doesn't inhibit their ability to fight, it inhibits their ability to do anything else. They were trained and brainwashed and genetically or digitally programmed to fight normally under stress and do so, but they can't deploy teleport beacons or set demo charges or engage in coordinated maneuvers. In game terms, they can't score objectives or use stratagems.

Yeah maybe PDF, conscripts, and grots could have some special rule where they lose combat effectiveness while battle-shocked but they're hardly worthwhile fighters anyways. All of the serious fighting forces in 40k are willing to die for their objective points, and since every game is supposed to be a battle of annihilation I guess that's what you should expect.

Pined more about survive and do what your commander/Synapse creature/pharaon said you to do and not about morale. You lay in your cover and wait until mg gone for reload. And then you rush into fight with all your fanatism or insanity or honor or whatever. And also if you got shell-shock or shok-wave hit you, no matter hon zealous you are. You can't normally shoot run or do anything. Even if you super-human alien murderous cadian gorilla robot.

kabaakaba wrote:
Pined more about survive and do what your commander/Synapse creature/pharaon said you to do and not about morale. You lay in your cover and wait until mg gone for reload. And then you rush into fight with all your fanatism or insanity or honor or whatever. And also if you got shell-shock or shok-wave hit you, no matter hon zealous you are. You can't normally shoot run or do anything. Even if you super-human alien murderous cadian gorilla robot.

There's a bit of fluff from one of the Mechanicus, where a Tech-Priest simply orders his troops to walk into the guns of the enemy... and they walk without complaint to their death.

That's a case and krieg do so and some other too like some harmogaunts rushing on heavy bolters or some death company guys brainlessly running into cc, but it's degraded case and in most situation we as commanders wanna our troops alive and winning our battle so we ok with them take cover for some time.

 Hellebore wrote:
You can absolutely discuss what parts of warfare you want to model and how to make the game 'fun' as a result. But there will be a pyramid hierarchy of warfare challenges going from biggest impact to least impact that will naturally show which ones are more likely to be relevant and deleting them because the players don't want that challenge undermines the cohesion of what you're trying to represent. You can keep stripping 'unfun' warfare challenges out, but you are left with nothing to play.

These arguments keep conflating concepts with execution..I never claimed bad pinning should exist. But people.keep saying it should go because the implementation was bad. It's beholden to the designer to create good rules around necessary concepts. I think th concept of pinning is necessary which necessitates good execution for an enjoyable game experience. Removing the concept entirely is not a good execution.

+1 to this. The purpose of pinning is to allow certain weapons to provide temporary incapacitation of the enemy without permanently killing them. It's to allow you to have support elements that can contribute in ways other than just being another means to scoop models off the table. It's in the same design space as debuff auras, psychic abilities, and anything else that applies to your opponent but isn't a shooting attack or dice roll's worth of mortal wounds.

And yeah, more fundamentally, everything your opponent does to you in a competitive wargame is a means of reducing your ability to influence the board state. Be it pinning, wiping units off the board, or just blocking your movement and deep strike, they all chip away at your freedom to control objectives or go where you want or project force. Getting tabled is when the game ends early because your ability to influence the board has been reduced to zero.

The important thing with any mechanic is how it's implemented and whether it's any fun to be on the receiving end. The 'unfun' mechanics people complain about tend to be ones that offer no counterplay besides just hoping it doesn't happen. Indirect fires that need spotters to function have counterplay. Pinning/morale mechanisms that gradually build up friction but can be mitigated by rallying or breaking contact have counterplay. Getting shot causing you to randomly, sometimes, lose control of a unit doesn't have counterplay beyond 'don't get shot' or 'roll better' or 'don't play an army that suffers from morale'; that's why a lot of people didn't find it fun.


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 Orkeosaurus wrote:
All of the serious fighting forces in 40k are willing to die for their objective points, and since every game is supposed to be a battle of annihilation I guess that's what you should expect.

Well, if we're talking realism/verisimilitude: Morale in wargames is not a binary 'are you too scared to fight y/n', it's an abstract representation of unit cohesion and coordination that is impacted by the friction and chaos of combat.

Maybe that squad of Cadians is composed of ten brainwashed die-hards who will fight to the last man. But if five of them get hit at once, it's going to take some amount of time for the other five to assess casualties, determine who is still alive and therefore in command, re-establish communications with the next echelon up, assess whether they are still combat effective or can better serve the Emperor by breaking contact, and take proper cover against whatever just shwacked half the squad.

Marines shall know no fear but still make a point to safeguard the gene-seed of their fallen brothers, Eldar are a dying race who prioritize extracting their wounded, Orks always love a good scrap but if the boss gets krumped they might leg it or they might have a friendly disagreement over who's in charge now. You might not be afraid of bullets, but that won't make it any faster to pry the previous autocannon gunner's disembodied hands off his gun and get it back in the fight.

Many of the factions are ostensibly fearless but the ones that do not react at all to incoming fire represent a minority. Some kind of temporary degradation of combat capability is a better representation of friction, even for complete fanatics, than the Space Invaders model where every dude just stands there with the trigger held down until he gets picked off.

 catbarf wrote:
Many of the factions are ostensibly fearless but the ones that do not react at all to incoming fire represent a minority. Some kind of temporary degradation of combat capability is a better representation of friction, even for complete fanatics, than the Space Invaders model where every dude just stands there with the trigger held down until he gets picked off.

It's why I think Battleshock is actually pretty good as a general morale mechanic for 40k.

It's not crippling, it doesn't outright wipe models without other rules getting involved (Daemons!) but it represents an at least somewhat significant loss of cohesion. That's something I see happening to Orks and Marines and Necrons and all them.

8th and 9th morale, where models just went "Poof!" and vanished... That was bad.

 JNAProductions wrote:
8th and 9th morale, where models just went "Poof!" and vanished... That was bad.

Agreed, and like I always have to caveat in these discussions, I didn't really like the all-or-nothing implementation of 2nd-7th either. I know that was a feels-bad mechanic for many players and I think the lack of counterplay is key; you could boost Ld with characters or upgrades but once the game actually started it became more of a random debuff that couldn't reasonably be avoided. I liked the way it differentiated some factions- Guard hitting hard but being susceptible to crumbling from morale felt thematic- but the implementation was crude.

My issue with battleshock is how often it just... doesn't matter. It's great when it hits a unit that's on an objective, but otherwise if it's not a unit with a key stratagem then they just don't care; their combat ability isn't degraded at all. And the fact that it's rolled for at the start of your opponent's turn precludes any clever sequencing within your own turn to, say, battleshock an enemy with shooting and then charge it.

I like it more than what it replaced. But that's a low bar.

 catbarf wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
8th and 9th morale, where models just went "Poof!" and vanished... That was bad.

Agreed, and like I always have to caveat in these discussions, I didn't really like the all-or-nothing implementation of 2nd-7th either. I know that was a feels-bad mechanic for many players and I think the lack of counterplay is key; you could boost Ld with characters or upgrades but once the game actually started it became more of a random debuff that couldn't reasonably be avoided. I liked the way it differentiated some factions- Guard hitting hard but being susceptible to crumbling from morale felt thematic- but the implementation was crude.

My issue with battleshock is how often it just... doesn't matter. It's great when it hits a unit that's on an objective, but otherwise if it's not a unit with a key stratagem then they just don't care; their combat ability isn't degraded at all. And the fact that it's rolled for at the start of your opponent's turn precludes any clever sequencing within your own turn to, say, battleshock an enemy with shooting and then charge it.

I like it more than what it replaced. But that's a low bar.

Yeah, fair.

May I interest you in some Morale Rules?

My overall issue with this discussion is that 40k hasn't been a representative "wargame" of the setting since probably 2nd edition, maybe not even back then.

It has always been a game, during 3rd-7th it was a game masquerading as a wargame, but the inconsistent scope, inconsistent lore and the marine protagonism killed that possibility in the crib.

You can make 40k more tactical, more interactive, a better game. But I don't believe you can make a good wargame out of 40k when the lore itself is an inconsistent mess. Real wargames have the advantage they are working with real history and trying to simulate real warfare/engineering/physics issues (because warfare has always been about implementing physics into soft human bodies).

Meanwhile 40k is trying to make chainswords a viable weapon in the same setting as melta guns and planet wiping starships... so I see any attempt of making a wargame out of 40k as an inherently flawed and doomed, because the lore that would be the bedrock for such wargame is less solid than jelly.

EDIT: I mean the whole pinning discussion? there are good game-related reasons about why pinning should be a thing. It reduces lethality, it makes the game less binary, etc. But being a "wargame that simulates the setting"? I can think of at least one instance of Marines casually walking through an artillery barrage because the shells lacked the caliber to hurt them. And I'm sure that is one of dozens if not hundreds of different interpretations of how that situation should go. There is no consistent lore reason why pinning should be a thing.

 catbarf wrote:

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
All of the serious fighting forces in 40k are willing to die for their objective points, and since every game is supposed to be a battle of annihilation I guess that's what you should expect.

Well, if we're talking realism/verisimilitude: Morale in wargames is not a binary 'are you too scared to fight y/n', it's an abstract representation of unit cohesion and coordination that is impacted by the friction and chaos of combat.

Maybe that squad of Cadians is composed of ten brainwashed die-hards who will fight to the last man. But if five of them get hit at once, it's going to take some amount of time for the other five to assess casualties, determine who is still alive and therefore in command, re-establish communications with the next echelon up, assess whether they are still combat effective or can better serve the Emperor by breaking contact, and take proper cover against whatever just shwacked half the squad.

Marines shall know no fear but still make a point to safeguard the gene-seed of their fallen brothers, Eldar are a dying race who prioritize extracting their wounded, Orks always love a good scrap but if the boss gets krumped they might leg it or they might have a friendly disagreement over who's in charge now. You might not be afraid of bullets, but that won't make it any faster to pry the previous autocannon gunner's disembodied hands off his gun and get it back in the fight.

Many of the factions are ostensibly fearless but the ones that do not react at all to incoming fire represent a minority. Some kind of temporary degradation of combat capability is a better representation of friction, even for complete fanatics, than the Space Invaders model where every dude just stands there with the trigger held down until he gets picked off.

Well this actually touches on another issue with 40k, which is that the scale isn't consistent. If you go by the distances of the models compared to their height, and the terrain features, and the distance they move over the course of the game, your expectation should be that a game of 40k represents only several minutes of real-world fighting. But there are many other rules, like medics, orders, and random secondary missions, that imply the game takes place over the course of several hours, and that is a substantial difference.

So when I see a squad of guardsmen and they have some genestealers a mere 30 yards away from them, I tend to think of the chain of command and who's wounded as irrelevant; they'll consider that after the game, when they aren't seconds away from being ripped to shreds. But if you think of those genestealer models as representing a threat that's ten minutes away that does change things, and I don't think that question has a right answer because there just is no underlying logic keeping it consistent.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
An interesting idea could be that a unit which fails morale becomes "disordered" and all rolls to hit them are at +1, but then they can forgo shooting/assault to remove that condition before the enemy's turn. So the player has a choice as to whether the out-of-position unit reacts by falling back and regrouping or charging forward recklessly.

Then perhaps certain units (berzerkers, grots) would always do one or the other, if you wanted a bit more fluffiness.

JNAProductions wrote:8th and 9th morale, where models just went "Poof!" and vanished... That was bad.

It was bad but I always liked to imagine it represented one of my models taking a wounded member of the squad back to HQ for medical attention rather then just disappearing.