Hey ya’ll! Marshall here, with some 6th Edition Wish-listing.
We all know 6th is right around the corner… rumours have it sitting sometime in the summer… and although I’ll admit I’m not too up to date on the current rumour set (I have a tendency to not read into/believe anything until it’s in proper scanned-pdf leak form) I figured I’d jump on the wishlisting bandwagon and let loose with what I hope is in the new ruleset! Be wary, I wrote this on a whim at work! It’s just off-the-top of my head stuff, nothing too polished!
1) Wound Allocation changes. Here’s the thing – I actually LIKE wound allocation in 5th. As in, I’m fine with 2 wound Paladin units, Nob Bikers, etc, shuffling around wounds for extra resilience. 100%. I’m also fine with 5 man Marine units having a chance to lose meltaguns, Sergeants, etc. The only change here I would say needs to be done is : Allocate weapon groups separately. Lets say you have 5 Paladins, each with a different weapon. You take a whole shwack of Lasgun wounds, and 3 melta wounds (Yes, I play guard. It’s going to happen to YOU.). As it stands, the savvy player would allocate all of the melta wounds to a single model, using the lasguns to spread out the damage. Basically, you would be smarter to fire no lasguns and only the meltaguns. I want to use my little lasgunners, dammit! They are more than just extra wounds to shield the meltagunners!! [[I agree with this. Not firing weapons because it’ll cause less damage is just a design flaw.]]
The only other change I would make in this area is *maybe* have already-wounded models have to have the first wound allocated to them when rolling saves. Would kind of even out the mass allocation
resiliency a bit as well.
2) Vehicle movement. Right now, you can pivot for free and at the end of the movement of your tank/transport. It works fine from a rules point of view, but I feel it doesn’t feel quite as realistic when you have 4 Rhinos side-shuffling up the field. Maybe make pivoting count as part of the movement? Measuring your pivot-arc would be a pain… maybe just make vehicles lose 2” movement if they pivot. Call it a ‘momentum loss’…… that way you’d see more Rhinos facing the direction they are racing (And Ryan, I know you’ll be just itching to bitch about this in the comments). [[This is too far on the other end. I think you should be allowed 1 free pivot a turn (more than 45 degrees) and unlimited turns (under 45 degrees) Would cut down on the shuffling vehicles BUT wouldn’t limit vehicle mobility when it comes to unload troops, getting around obstacles, etc.]]
3) Vehicle damage chart. I propose the following:
Instead of suffering weapon destroyed, vehicles with Turret mounted weapons can elect to be stunned instead (Yes, I’m tired of getting my demolisher cannon blown off.). This would hopefully boost underused Main Battle Tanks (Predator, Leman Russ, Fire Prisms, etc) Skimmers can elect to be stunned instead of immobilized (as far as I’m concerned, “immobilizing” a helicopter is as good as killing it in real life, hah.). (Some love for the Eldar and Dark Eldar) Vehicles with enough armour (ie. Add up from, side, and rear to get a total…. Rhino would be 32, Leman Russ Demolisher would be 38) count as ‘bulky’ downgrade Stunned to Shaken, and ignore Shaken entirely (when rolled for off the bat). It should not be so easy to stun-lock a Land Raider or a Demolisher with glancing hits. [[The guard power creep comes out here. WAAAAAY to powerful. A lot of armies don’t have ways to scratch AV14 as it is. When you make it literally impossible to stop them you have a unit that’s going to upset the balance. Maybe ordnance weapons should have a 5+ repair roll in the shooting phase where they can sacrifice movement to attempt to ready their gun quicker.]]
4) Dangerous Terrain for vehicles. Get rid of the chance of immobilization. Roll 2d6, get your movement from that. Terrain should slow your cautious drivers down… not immobilize your Land
Raider.
5) Cover saves:
For infantry – terrain density. 4+ from heavy forests – which prompt a difficult terrain test, and 5+ from light forests, which allow infantry to move at normal speed. Yes, players would have to decide upon terrain density before a match. Also… maybe a -1 to cover if the unit moved in the previous turn. Not THAT hard to keep track of.
For vehicles, 4+ from smoke, 5+ from everything else. If at least a 3rd of the vehicle facing is covered, get a 5+ save. More liberal as to what gives you a save, but less awesome than the current 4+.
6) Overwatch? Elect to shoot when something moves into your LOS in your opponents turn? I’m a fan of the rule, but it would make my Imperial guard hugely overpowered. In my opinion, keep this to the new Vanilla Marine Codex. At the very least, only Infantry should be able to do this.
7) Shooting.
Here are my general shooting change ideas:
– Rapid fire shoots up to 24”, one shot, on the move. 2 shots up to 24 if standing still. Being mounted in a vehicle counts as moving for this purpose.
– Heavy Weapons stay the same (but as a note, the Heavy bolter should have 4 shots to put it back in play. Just saying…)
– SNIPER WEAPONS. Cumulative pinning tests – only with Sniper Weapons. Take 4 sniper wounds? -4 pinning check for you! BAM. Also, wound on 3+. Back into play they go! Rending on a 5 and 6. Vs
Vehicles, they do NOTHING (Screw off with your “I shot the fuel tank” bullcrap. Fuel tanks just don’t work that way… and really? Could you Snipe an M1A2 Abrams Battle tank? An Apache Helicopter? Yeah… I thought not.) [[Snipers could/should be able to direct wounds.]]
8) Walkers. Remember my “bulky” rule with vehicle armour? Walkers should have this too… but if Bulky enough (I’m looking at Dreadnought levels, not Sentinals) they should have a “Stomp” attack. 1 attack vs everything in Melee range.. hit on WS value. Obviously pierce armour and all that if applicable.
9) Roll for 1st deployment… and THEN roll for 1st turn AFTER both sides are deployed. Not knowing if you’re going first means less brazen “ALL RHINOS TO THE FRONT!” and whatnot. Let’s be real… nobody really goes for that 6+ sieze… and when you do happen to get it, you’ve deployed defensively because you didn’t expect it – and can’t take advantage anyways!
Alright so that’s it for now. I could go on (Independent Characters, etc, etc). I’ll be honest, I wrote this in a hurry at work – so I’m sure someone out there will find holes to poke in my ideas. Obviously I come from an Imperial Guard background… so the issues addressed are ones I’ve discovered playing Guard. I’m sure people have plenty of thought depending what codex they are using though (for instance the Dreadnought issue with pitiful CC ability)
Let’s hear your guys’ thoughts!!!!
