Understanding the Fight Phase

Yes it's possible, but all depends on how your opponent allocates wounds.

Wow. Thank you. Huge brain fart. Opponent designates wounds. I feel foolish

Barrywise wrote:

Wow. Thank you. Huge brain fart. Opponent designates wounds. I feel foolish

I hate that rule.
I understand that it was made to simplify the game. But first, it takes away so much tactical depth from the game (attacking from the right angle to kill the special weapon bearer, for example), and secondly, it adds so many cheesy moves...
Right now i think you can draw a Conga Line, and remove the casualties at the other side of the Conga Line so that there is no way to prevent you from charging. You can even do that with CC casualties...

Agreed. The only stupid thing about removing the closest model first was when firing blasts and templates where you ended up removing models that weren't under the markers. Now that there are no templates and blasts there is literally no reason not to remove the nearest model first.

Except that some other rules would also have to be rewritten. For instance no one would ever hit back after a charge because all models within 1 inch would die. Kill around 5 guys from an ork horde and the horde just stands there waiting. Protecting a character becomes nearly impossible, Just shoot the first few guys in front and then the rest of the unit will just stand by and watch as the character gets obliterated. Having a unit with a special weapon now actually is usefull, since it can shoot a different target and not be targetted first. Thus it does not just come down to spamming as much special weapons as possible, I hated the fact that for most armies any model not carrying a fancy gun seemed like wasted points.
(Not saying it could not be done, or should not have been done) but right now the rules are clearly not written to work that way.

|Meavar wrote:

Except that some other rules would also have to be rewritten.

It would take very little effort to sort out those problems, most of which only exist because GW changed rules that worked perfectly well already.

|Meavar wrote:

For instance no one would ever hit back after a charge because all models within 1 inch would die. Kill around 5 guys from an ork horde and the horde just stands there waiting.

3" pile in move at the start of your fight phase exists for this reason. You just need to include "Any unit that has already been attacked in the Fight phase" to the list of units that can fight

|Meavar wrote:

Protecting a character becomes nearly impossible, Just shoot the first few guys in front and then the rest of the unit will just stand by and watch as the character gets obliterated.

I'd argue that this then becomes a matter of skill. Under the current rules there is no skill involved. There is simply no way to remove bubble wrap short of completely obliterating the unit as the defending player can remove models from the other side of the unit (or battlefield in some cases). When you have to remove the closest models first you need to think a bit more about your unit positioning.

|Meavar wrote:

Having a unit with a special weapon now actually is usefull, since it can shoot a different target and not be targetted first. Thus it does not just come down to spamming as much special weapons as possible, I hated the fact that for most armies any model not carrying a fancy gun seemed like wasted points.

Again, that comes down to a bit of thought in your positioning.

I vastly prefer owner designated casualties rather than closest first. When the guy with the blaster dies, it's pretty silly that someone else couldn't just pick up the damn blaster.

I'd be open to a hybrid system, though. (Closest models first, but everyone can get a LOS roll, f'rex.)

Jimsolo wrote:

I vastly prefer owner designated casualties rather than closest first. When the guy with the blaster dies, it's pretty silly that someone else couldn't just pick up the damn blaster.

I'd be open to a hybrid system, though.  (Closest models first, but everyone can get a LOS roll, f'rex.)

You could argue that this is a 40k battlefield, and there is no reason to think your blaster still works after the bearer has been wiped by a termonuclear torpedo.
Although with lasguns it should probably be fine.

Personally, the owner controlled loses just sorry the game up. In 7th, I know very good generals that knew how to place models correctly to ensure the special weapons/characters were protected each turn. I could do that myself as well, but it took a while to think through the process.

So really, what is the difference between careful positioning each turn and just having the owner take the wounds? There is a skill difference, but it seemed to come down to a speed issue more often than not. For me, I prefer the speed. It is nice to not worry about where the guys are. And then I can put the cool guy with a banner in the front instead of having him hide in a corner.

Mppqlmd wrote:

Jimsolo wrote:

I vastly prefer owner designated casualties rather than closest first. When the guy with the blaster dies, it's pretty silly that someone else couldn't just pick up the damn blaster.

I'd be open to a hybrid system, though.  (Closest models first, but everyone can get a LOS roll, f'rex.)

You could argue that this is a 40k battlefield, and there is no reason to think your blaster still works after the bearer has been wiped by a termonuclear torpedo.
Although with lasguns it should probably be fine.

That was my reasoning behind the hybrid system argument. You make the 4+ LOS: the weapon's fine. Fail it, and the missile launcher got destroyed, too.

I could live with that. Infinitely better than removing models that are about 3 feet beyond the range of the weapons firing at them!

I seem to recall an earlier edition mentioning that unit footprints were only an abstraction of the shifting presences on the battlefield, not a perfect representation of everyone's exact positions (hence the ability to allocate wounds yourself). But yeah, it would make a little more sense.