Some hate

If we're going down that route, why can I blow the arms off a dreadnought, but not off a dreadknight... or a chapter master.

Same goes for stuff like Imperial Knights, why the hell are they immune to Weapon Destroyed and Immobilised? They have some of the most vulnerable-looking weapon and leg systems I've ever seen. Aside from looking like someone forgot to put armour on their back, they just have a ton of exposed servos, wires and pipes.

The Shredder wrote:

Jimsolo wrote:

I have lost more than one game (several, actually) because one single model was still locked in combat with a dozen plus enemies.  Totally ridiculous.  

"Soldier, open fire on that horde of genestealers!"
"No can do sir.  There's still a single guardsman fighting them off."
"..."
"He might pull it off, sir."

The other aspect, of course, is that a lot of races would probably have no qualms whatsoever about shooting into their own men. Commissars do it all the time, gaunts are literally bred to soak bullets, a lot of DE would probably see it as a way to eliminate competition or fast-track their promotions (Dracon - "Dear me, it seems our leader is locked in quite the bloody combat over there. Why, I believe it's our duty to help him out. Mind your aim though, it would be so tragic if a stray shot were to hit him.) etc.

I've been proposing some kind of compromise for years. Every missed shot at the enemy has to then be rolled as an attack on the friendly unit? Fine. Every missed shot automatically hits the friendly unit? Also fine. Something, anything to prevent situations where I have two kabalites fighting a group of enemies while my entire (literally, the rest of my) army sits around twiddling their thumbs.

Jimsolo wrote:

I disagree.  I think that Overwatch, like all shooting attacks, is a minimal threat to super-resilient units (like all attacks, really).  It's still a credible threat to swarms of bugs, ork boyz, and other units that rely on weight of numbers to win their battles, where just a couple of casualties can often knock the enemy out of assault range.  Against tarpit units, while it may not present a credible threat to prevent assault, it can definitely mitigate the results of that assault, by allowing the victim unit to soften up the aggressor before they get stuck in.

(Although if I remember from another thread, you face Grey Knights almost every game, yeah?  Do you think that might be coloring your perception?  It'd be understandable.)

Not just GKs. I face a lot of melee units, and I can recall exactly one game where overwatch mattered (a Maulerfiend lost its last hull point to overwatching Necron warriors). Other than that, it either misses, bounces off, or kills a random ork boy that makes no difference whatsoever in the ensuing combat.

Other than that one incident, I've never seen it make a difference to the results of any combat. Also, I'm not just referring to my own overwatch - I've never seen my ally's overwatch do anything meaningful. Nor the overwatch of my opponents.

I guess you could make an argument for it affecting the game, but I'm still dubious. I certainly can't ever recall someone saying "if only I hadn't lost that one ork to overwatch, this game would have gone very differently."

So, honest question here - does overwatch really tip the balance of combat for you on a regular basis? If so, could you give some examples because I really am very curious.

Also, do you think it's at all strange that units only get to fire these extra shots when charged? [/quote]

Almost every week Overwatch dramatically affects one of the games at my local shop. The number of times I've seen Overwatch casualties make the difference between a failed charge and a successful one are beyond counting at this point.

Specific examples: very often I will need to charge a unit with warriors (usually on foot after being shot out of their transport) in order to bog the enemy down until time runs out (usually to prevent them scoring an objective, or to keep them from shooting a real target). Often overwatch negates this ploy.

In the last league I played in, I lost a game to Tau. If Overwatch did not exist (Supporting Fire never came into play, by the way) as a rule, I would have crushed him hands-down. As it was, a Dronemander mulched a good portion of my army, remaining virtually unassailable.

And I don't think them getting the shots when they get charged is weird, no. If you charge a machine gun nest, you're necessarily going to open yourself up to more machine gun fire than the guys keeping their heads down in the trenches.

Jimsolo wrote:

I've been proposing some kind of compromise for years.  Every missed shot at the enemy has to then be rolled as an attack on the friendly unit?  Fine.  Every missed shot automatically hits the friendly unit?  Also fine.  Something, anything to prevent situations where I have two kabalites fighting a group of enemies while my entire (literally, the rest of my) army sits around twiddling their thumbs.

Agreed.

I also think units should always have the option to voluntarily fail their morale check and try to break off from combat.

Jimsolo wrote:

And I don't think them getting the shots when they get charged is weird, no.  If you charge a machine gun nest, you're necessarily going to open yourself up to more machine gun fire than the guys keeping their heads down in the trenches.  

But, why?

The machine gun can surely shoot those extra shots even when no one is charging it, so why waste them at all other times by firing at nothing?

Interesting you should ask that. I read an interesting statistic the other day that claimed that over 90% of bullets fired in actual (modern) armed conflict hit nothing and are not intended to hit anything, but are instead supressing fire.

If I'm a machine gunner dug in somewhere, when a ravaging horde of ork maniacs comes rampaging over the sandbags, suppression suddenly takes a much higher priority than repulsion.

The Shredder wrote:

Not just GKs. I face a lot of melee units, and I can recall exactly one game where overwatch mattered (a Maulerfiend lost its last hull point to overwatching Necron warriors). Other than that, it either misses, bounces off, or kills a random ork boy that makes no difference whatsoever in the ensuing combat.

Other than that one incident, I've never seen it make a difference to the results of any combat. Also, I'm not just referring to my own overwatch - I've never seen my ally's overwatch do anything meaningful. Nor the overwatch of my opponents.

I guess you could make an argument for it affecting the game, but I'm still dubious. I certainly can't ever recall someone saying "if only I hadn't lost that one ork to overwatch, this game would have gone very differently."

So, honest question here - does overwatch really tip the balance of combat for you on a regular basis? If so, could you give some examples because I really am very curious.

Hand on heart I can say that I've had overwatch effect the course of an entire battle on numerous occasions. I had a unit of Warp Spiders take the last hull point from a charging Dreadnought with overwatch, enabling them to jump away in their own turn and claim an objective and line breaker. I've had overwatch take units out of charge distance quite a few times. I've had overwatch kill an enemy IC who would have single-handedly taken out my unit (granted that one was very lucky as it was obviously 6 to hit and then he failed a 2+ Lo,S! roll and his save).

I'm not saying it's a huge factor in most games but it certainly plays its part.

Jimsolo wrote:

Interesting you should ask that.  I read an interesting statistic the other day that claimed that over 90% of bullets fired in actual (modern) armed conflict hit nothing and are not intended to hit anything, but are instead supressing fire.  

Whilst true in current warfare, that's quite clearly not the case in warhammer.

In modern warfare, you use that sort of fire to make the enemy keep their heads down while you move into position.

In 40k, no one keeps their heads down unless forced to do so. I'd argue that it's actually the other way round - at least 90% of bullets are intended to kill something (probably closer to 99%), with the remaining shots being to try and get off pinning or other effects.

Moreover, bear in mind that you can't even pin a unit in 40k without inflicting casualties - i.e. it's the exact opposite of how it works in real life.

Jimsolo wrote:

If I'm a machine gunner dug in somewhere, when a ravaging horde of ork maniacs comes rampaging over the sandbags, suppression suddenly takes a much higher priority than repulsion.

Except that it doesn't and hasn't since 4th. That was the last system to have target priority.

Nowadays, the machine gunner gets to do both. He first fires a 'repulsion' volley (or whatever you call him shooting in his own shooting phase), and then fires again when they charge him.

While Age of Sigmar was poorly received, there were a couple of rules I really liked.

Monstrous creatures degrading with damage was one (attacks decline as they lose wounds, for example). A range on close combat weapons was another. Looser combat rules (fewer restrictions like 'locked' etc) might pave the way for a better Assault phase in 8th ed.

Agreed that gigantic units locked in combat with infantry or worse, swarms, is stupid.

Creeping Darkness wrote:

While Age of Sigmar was poorly received, there were a couple of rules I really liked.

Monstrous creatures degrading with damage was one (attacks decline as they lose wounds, for example). A range on close combat weapons was another. Looser combat rules (fewer restrictions like 'locked' etc) might pave the way for a better Assault phase in 8th ed.

Agreed that gigantic units locked in combat with infantry or worse, swarms, is stupid.

No crap. If 40k has to get infected with anything from Sigmar, please let it be degrading MCs.

Indeed.

The other thing I kinda liked about age of sigmar was the condensed rules. Now, granted, it went way too far, but I think it still shows pretty well that we don't need these huge rulebooks with about 300 pages of convoluted rules.

I'll admit that I'd miss the character customisation though.

The Shredder wrote:

Indeed.

The other thing I kinda liked about age of sigmar was the condensed rules. Now, granted, it went way too far, but I think it still shows pretty well that we don't need these huge rulebooks with about 300 pages of convoluted rules.

The Hordes rulebook (available to download for free) is 98 pages, 27 of which are basically background/fluff.

What's that book for?

Count Adhemar wrote:

The Shredder wrote:

Not just GKs. I face a lot of melee units, and I can recall exactly one game where overwatch mattered (a Maulerfiend lost its last hull point to overwatching Necron warriors). Other than that, it either misses, bounces off, or kills a random ork boy that makes no difference whatsoever in the ensuing combat.

Other than that one incident, I've never seen it make a difference to the results of any combat. Also, I'm not just referring to my own overwatch - I've never seen my ally's overwatch do anything meaningful. Nor the overwatch of my opponents.

I guess you could make an argument for it affecting the game, but I'm still dubious. I certainly can't ever recall someone saying "if only I hadn't lost that one ork to overwatch, this game would have gone very differently."

So, honest question here - does overwatch really tip the balance of combat for you on a regular basis? If so, could you give some examples because I really am very curious.

Hand on heart I can say that I've had overwatch effect the course of an entire battle on numerous occasions. I had a unit of Warp Spiders take the last hull point from a charging Dreadnought with overwatch, enabling them to jump away in their own turn and claim an objective and line breaker. I've had overwatch take units out of charge distance quite a few times. I've had overwatch kill an enemy IC who would have single-handedly taken out my unit (granted that one was very lucky as it was obviously 6 to hit and then he failed a 2+ Lo,S! roll and his save).

I'm not saying it's a huge factor in most games but it certainly plays its part.

I've had a few. Most memorably, a tournament game where I dropped a destroyer lord in my backfield and then did turbo-boost/assault moves forgetting that it wasn't necessarily dead yet. He got back up, charged my reavers, and promptly went back down to an overwatch blaster/heat lance/whatever AP2/1 weapon I had on them. Not a big deal on its own, as I'd easily have dealt with him the following turn with only one wound, but my game plan at the time involved hiding the reavers until the final turn then turbo-boosting them for linebreaker, and without them the win would have been harder to pull off.

The Shredder wrote:

What's that book for?

Hordes (sister game to Warmachine) from Privateer Press.

Panic_Puppet wrote:

Count Adhemar wrote:

The Shredder wrote:

Not just GKs. I face a lot of melee units, and I can recall exactly one game where overwatch mattered (a Maulerfiend lost its last hull point to overwatching Necron warriors). Other than that, it either misses, bounces off, or kills a random ork boy that makes no difference whatsoever in the ensuing combat.

Other than that one incident, I've never seen it make a difference to the results of any combat. Also, I'm not just referring to my own overwatch - I've never seen my ally's overwatch do anything meaningful. Nor the overwatch of my opponents.

I guess you could make an argument for it affecting the game, but I'm still dubious. I certainly can't ever recall someone saying "if only I hadn't lost that one ork to overwatch, this game would have gone very differently."

So, honest question here - does overwatch really tip the balance of combat for you on a regular basis? If so, could you give some examples because I really am very curious.

Hand on heart I can say that I've had overwatch effect the course of an entire battle on numerous occasions. I had a unit of Warp Spiders take the last hull point from a charging Dreadnought with overwatch, enabling them to jump away in their own turn and claim an objective and line breaker. I've had overwatch take units out of charge distance quite a few times. I've had overwatch kill an enemy IC who would have single-handedly taken out my unit (granted that one was very lucky as it was obviously 6 to hit and then he failed a 2+ Lo,S! roll and his save).

I'm not saying it's a huge factor in most games but it certainly plays its part.

I've had a few. Most memorably, a tournament game where I dropped a destroyer lord in my backfield and then did turbo-boost/assault moves forgetting that it wasn't necessarily dead yet. He got back up, charged my reavers, and promptly went back down to an overwatch blaster/heat lance/whatever AP2/1 weapon I had on them. Not a big deal on its own, as I'd easily have dealt with him the following turn with only one wound, but my game plan at the time involved hiding the reavers until the final turn then turbo-boosting them for linebreaker, and without them the win would have been harder to pull off.

I guess my group is the exception then.

Count Adhemar wrote:

The Shredder wrote:

What's that book for?

Hordes (sister game to Warmachine) from Privateer Press.

Ah, sorry, I thought you were referring to another GW rulebook.

Yeah, Hordes/Warmachine has a very good rulebook IMO.

The Shredder wrote:

Count Adhemar wrote:

The Shredder wrote:

What's that book for?

Hordes (sister game to Warmachine) from Privateer Press.

Ah, sorry, I thought you were referring to another GW rulebook.  

Yeah, Hordes/Warmachine has a very good rulebook IMO.

Available online for nothing and containing concise, well-written rules with suitable amounts of fluff and you thought it was GW? Are you delusional man? NURSE!!!

Count Adhemar wrote:

The Shredder wrote:

Count Adhemar wrote:

The Shredder wrote:

What's that book for?

Hordes (sister game to Warmachine) from Privateer Press.

Ah, sorry, I thought you were referring to another GW rulebook.  

Yeah, Hordes/Warmachine has a very good rulebook IMO.

Available online for nothing and containing concise, well-written rules with suitable amounts of fluff and you thought it was GW? Are you delusional man? NURSE!!!

My funniest overwatch moment was when a guardian blob wiped a charging 5 man assault terminator squad with storm shields. It had nothing to say for the outcome of the match because the craftworlders were already steamrolling the marines. But it was a delicious little piece of insult to injury.

The lack of balance between some armies... to wit, Unless you use an allied detachment of Craftworld Eldar for example, and the cousins bring some of their dead friends and tanks along to the party, where are DE weapons that can seriously ruin the day of anyone with Super Heavies? I've got lots of Dark Lances, but my mate (bless him) has an IG army with a Baneblade and an Imperial Knight plus an Ork horde with a Stomper and Gorkanaut. We only game against each other, tournaments aren't our things, but it still highlights the fundamental flaws with the system, even if it goes along perfectly with the fluff.

Dark Eldar are peerless raiders, swift, deadly. It reminds me of a phrase I saw used by the armed forces "If you find yourself in a fair fight, you haven't planned your mission properly" but surely with the incredible tech at our disposal, a D weapon or equivalent isn't out of the realms of possibility? Even the mighty Void Raven's mine is a large blast only.

I'd be shocked if we don't get a D weapon with the next codex.

That being said, I don't think armies with Battle Brothers should be fielded solo.

That being said, we do have the capacity to deal with superheavies. We can put out quite a few lances, melta lances, and haywire weapons fairly cheaply.

Jimsolo wrote:

I'd be shocked if we don't get a D weapon with the next codex.

Personally, I'd prefer if everyone else lost them. And then super heavies and such were put back in Apocalypse. Where they belong.

Jimsolo wrote:

That being said, I don't think armies with Battle Brothers should be fielded solo.

I'm the opposite - I don't think Battle Brothers should even exist, let alone be the only viable way to field those armies.

I remember when people thought it was just wrong and unnatural to see multi-colored decks be effective in Magic, too.

Jimsolo wrote:

I remember when people thought it was just wrong and unnatural to see multi-colored decks be effective in Magic, too.  

There's a difference in having multi-coloured decks be effective, and gimping mono-decks to force people into using 2+ colours.

I'll admit though, I don't remember that time in Magic. Was this close to the dawn of the game? (I started playing around Scourge/8th)

I started playing in Ice Age, and mono-color decks were pretty much all that won tournaments for a long time. I wound up quitting right when Mercadian Masques dropped (whichever cycle that was), and I'd stopped following big tourneys, but I think mono color decks and multi color were competing at events together.

When I looked at getting back into it, everything I've seen says mono decks can't compete, though. So they have made mono so uncompetitive that you can't bring them to an event. (Unless everything I've heard is wrong, of course.)

Personally, I think it makes a great deal of sense, especially with the Chaos factions, and the armies of the Imperium.

And once we factor racism into the equation, it makes sense for the eldar armies too.

Jimsolo wrote:

When I looked at getting back into it, everything I've seen says mono decks can't compete, though.  So they have made mono so uncompetitive that you can't bring them to an event.  (Unless everything I've heard is wrong, of course.)

I wouldn't know. I haven't played for a couple of years, and even when I did the only event I ever attended was one of the ones where you get about 5 booster packs and have to make a deck from the contents (and some land, obviously).

Jimsolo wrote:

Personally, I think it makes a great deal of sense, especially with the Chaos factions, and the armies of the Imperium.  

And once we factor racism into the equation, it makes sense for the eldar armies too.  

I disagree. I think mono armies make at least as much sense as ones with allies - especially given the general xenophobia in 40k, as well as all the arguments over command structure and such.

At the very least, I see no reason why armies that use allies have to be outright better than those which choose not to.

Virtually every major engagement in the fluff depicts more than one tabletop army per side. The armies of the Imperium all work together on a regular basis. Chaos Marines and Daemons should have been a single codex long ago.

With Necron-Eldar matchups, or Ork-Tau matchups, sure I can see what you're saying (and even then, many armies have a sub-faction which is described in the fluff as working as mercenaries for hire). But IG-Space Marines? That absolutely makes sense.

There's no reason I shouldn't be able to take Harlequins-Dark Eldar, or Corsairs-Eldar.