Mitch Pelham, aka, Mr. “14 Hellhounds” and also top notch player and guy, weighs in on the recent Big FAQ. Read on to see what he thinks about it.
The “Big” Faq and revised Factions FAQs have been released and are here to turn the Meta on its head–or will they?
Hey guys, Mitch “Damn that’s alotta Hellhounds” Pelham here. and I am ready to dive into the pile of FAQs, go over some of the most notable and interesting changes and explore how they may affect the game. In this article I will be focusing on the BRB changes, rulings and in the Big FAQ PDF. There’s a lot to unpack. Let’s take a deep breath and dig in.
Battalion and Brigades
Starting with something fairly straight forward, Brigades and Battalions got bumped up from 9 and 3 cp each to 12 and 5 respectively. This is a nice change in general though it seems like the argument for a Brigade over 2 Battalions is pretty weak since it’s only a 2 CP difference which is even less then it was before. A lot of monodex armies will be glad for the change though. Be expecting to see Tau, Dark Eldar, Tyranids and Astra Militarum to be swimming in CP.
Next up we have a big clarification. Basically, vertical distance is disregarded for making charges yet you still have to measure base to base to make sure you are 12 inches or closer to have them as a valid target for a charge. This is a weird one, as it requires you to measure two different ways and yet you can still have a unfailable charge. Also, it’s important to remember if you aren’t infantry, then fly only gets you on the top or the bottom of the ruin. A big win for Jump pack models–that is if they can fit in to be in combat–which brings us to…….
So let’s break this down. In the past when a unit made a charge against a unit on another level and all of said unit couldn’t be placed, “wobbly model syndrome” was used more often than not to keep things moving. Iit also made sense from a fluff-and-gameplay perspective that say guardsmen weren’t keeping a bunch of Deathguard from storming into their ranks simply because there wasn’t quite room. This ruling–sticking to the within-an-inch-of-bases–is a big deal and creates some issues.
Ok, my intention with this article is to break things down and give all of it a chance. However I am calling it now this is the “Drop Pod Doors count as part of the model” ruling in this FAQ. I can see where someone made this ruling, thinking it made sense, but the potential to “game” this is immense. It creates so many scenarios that will make no sense. Take the picture above for example. Technically the only unit that can charge and make it into combat is the Predator. Now you might be saying, “Well, just kill one of the Inceptors, and then charge,” but here’s the thing. With this ruling, you would only be able to swing with just that one model as the other models will be more than a inch away. Now if the 1 inch measurement for being next to a model in combat isn’t base to base, then it might not be so bad. But even then, that’s just adding more measuring and more room for disagreement between players. It feels like an ill-considered ruling through-and-through, and with the other rulings impacting close combat armies, it definitely feels unneeded.
Next up we have another ruling that nerfs assault:
This is another rough one on assault-based armies, specifically Nids and Chaos. However, it makes Swarmlord more valuable. By itself is not a massive nerf. Overall, it just eliminates some tricks we all had gotten used to seeing in the meta.
This one is small but a great clarification. Deepstriking transports protecting their passengers from being intercepted is great news and could give new life to Drop Pods, Tyrannocytes and Elysian Valkyries, which leads into our next FAQ answer.
This one is actually a question I submitted and while they clarify one part, the answer raises another question. So they can disembark, but can they move?
A really interesting ruling that makes leadership auras far more useful, especially with things like Eldar negative leadership combos getting even stronger with Dark Eldar.
Ok onto the big ones, the rulings that have been setting facebook groups on fire.
The Rule of 3: As the guy who is known for running 14+ Hellhounds, you may be surprised to hear that I am a big fan of this one. I think it’s a great change that doesn’t limit people and encourages more variety in list design. Something to keep in mind this rule is 0-3 DATASHEETS not keywords for any non-troops and transports, so it really is not that limiting. (Also keep in mind, squadrons fall under this, so you can still have a bunch of tanks or whatnot easily.) This is a great way to adjust the state of game for several reasons.
One, it limits how much you can expect to face in any game–no more trying to come up with lists that can handle 10 Plague Burst Crawlers or 6 Shield Captains. Narrowing this makes the game more accessible and list design easier for newer players. Secondly, it makes balancing the game easier. if a unit is miscosted or a rule too strong. This limit acts as a inbuilt guard until a unit can be rebalanced. I have seen some Tau players asking how this affects drones taken with suits, as they refer back to the drones datasheet. I could see this being a question for Space Wolves as well with different characters being able to take Fenrisian wolves with them as well. So it needs a little clarification, but all-in-all, a great rule that moves the game forward. Anyone want to buy some hellhounds?
Ok now onto the Big one, the rule no one saw coming.
Deep breath. So, there are two parts to this rule, and I want to focus on them separately, as I think one is much more simple than the other. So first, the Power level reserves rule.
I am a little baffled by this one, saying we need to use power level as well as drops to balance our reserves. To be clear, I think adding more rules to reserves to make it less gameable (i.e. Flyrants in reserve and spore mines on the table) makes sense, though doesn’t the rule-of-three handle a lot of that already? Further going with power level in matched play just seems bizarre.
Now this is not a article meant to rant and rave or bash GW. They are doing what we have always wanted and updating the rules set regularly and trying to give us the best game they can. However, I do feel some constructive criticism is warranted here. Specifically, why power level? Now, maybe they meant to put in for Matched play to use points, which fair enough. But if not, this rule creates some issues.
For starters, power level is not used in Matched play outside of rare exceptions (Daemons Summoning), so it’s a whole new set of numbers to learn to make sure you and your opponent are deploying legally, not to mention that Power Level has thus far not been adjusted in FAQs or Chapter Approved. Secondly, power level fluctuates based on thresholds, which is hugely confusing. For example, a squad of space marine scouts is PL4. Add one scout, and you are now looking at a PL8 unit. Or, as a example of “game-ability,” let’s take a look at wulfen. A 5-man squad is 155 points and 13PL, however if I add one wulfen, the unit is now 183 points and has a power level of 26! That’s the same as a Shadowsword. This also screws over Wulfen and other elite infantry, as they are almost impossible to fit into reserves unless you take the smallest unit possible. Please GW, make this work off of points and save us all a lot of headaches.
Moving on to the second half of the new Beta rules: Ok, I think this one caught everyone off-guard. To sum up, all deepstrikes and reserves for the first turn must be in your own deployment zone. First, let me say that I believe we need to give everything a thorough playtesting. Simply refusing to engage with the proposed changes helps nothing. That being said, I feel like this ruling came out of nowhere. There are entire codexes that seem to be built around the idea of deepstriking turn one. Is this an about-face on that? If so why Deepstrike assault armies? They hardly dominate the meta, and things like the Flyrant list would be taken care of with the rule of three. Outside of that, the new reserve rule also takes care of that issue. The thing is, I know the rationale is to limit reserve alpha strike armies, however those armies evolved out of the idea that, to be able to win, you need to be able to survive going second.
This rule simply takes us back to “Firsthammer.” Combined with the half-your-force-on-the-table rule, going first is now more important than ever, as you can still reserve. If you go first, you get to both shoot first at half your opponent’s army, and then you get to deepstrike first on the second turn for maximum board control. Not having to worry about first-turn deep strikes and charges fundamentally changes list design and biases the game towards shooting in a meta that already favored it. This feels like its leading to….
The argument against this is that monodex lists struggled against the alpha strike of these reserve lists. Now my father always told me, “Don’t come to someone with a problem but with a solution,” and I have some.
First, the simplest solution seems to be penalyzing going first. These deep strike alpha lists came from the idea that you needed to be able to survive going second, and if you go first, you nuke and/or board control your opponent off the table. Why not impose the “no deepstriking outside of your deployment zone” restriction to just whoever goes first? This leads to a asymmetrical dynamic that rewards being able to project board presence top of turn one.
Combined with the rule-of-3 and half of your army being on the table, it offers an incentive on going first or second based on list design or trying to thwart your opponents strategy either way when you win the role off. It adds layers to the tactics and overall strategy in everything from list design to deployment and reserving to balancing the advantage of going second for scoring objectives, which currently is an afterthought with the new ruleset. It adds depth to the game without complicating the game. Do you want to go first and shoot all the things? Cool, you can build to do that. Want to create a more cagey army that plays to the objective? Go for it!
My second suggestion is more involved, but I still think it has merit. Instead of nerfing armies, how about improving units that see little to no play. By that I mean things like Sicarian Infiltrators. Give them some twist on the scout ability, make sure every army has some unit or ability to interact in this part of the game, namely being able to buffer first-turn deepstrike armies. Now I know changing rules for units is a big ask, but it seems to me that with the FAQs, they are already doing it, and anyone looking to play competitively has to have these FAQs on hand. So, I don’t see the difficulty in making better some units that don’t see play and at the same time, balancing dexes to handle Deepstrike armies.
My third suggestion is not a new one, but I think it should be reconsidered: Simply limit the detachments to reflect what Games Workshop thinks should compose an army.Iit seems like alot of these new rulings would not be necessary if the Outrider, Supreme Command, Vanguard etc. detachments did not exist or were limited to one per army. This certainly isn’t an idea original to me, and while I do like these detachments in a small dose, they seem tailor-made for abuse at this point.
My last suggestion is definitely the most extreme, but at the same time I think it has the most to offer for creating a more interesting play environment: Sideboards. OK, bear with me. I propose a 500-750 sideboard for the tournament format. It allows players to build a core force with the flexibility for the extremes of the meta, and allows players to feel like they can really equip a force to handle anything. Now the downside to this is like anything. It will be optimized and gamed, but that’s sort-of the whole point of this article–no matter what you do, gamers will game it, and accepting that is important.
Now all of that being said where do we go from here?
I love 40K, and I am guessing anyone reading this article does too. I want to see this game and the competitive aspect of it grow by leaps and bounds, and I am sure all of you do too. In that, we need to include the rules and FAQ writers and the play testers. They want what’s best for the game as well.
From here where do we go? First and foremost, we need to stay positive and realize whether you are for or against the new changes presented by the new FAQs and beta rules, we all love this game and this hobby. I have seen amazing acts of of kindness and support from this community ( #Brandwillnotbeforgotten). We have gotten what we have been begging for for years–a living set of rules with a GW that listens and pays attention to the feedback from the community–so we need to do just that.
Play the hell out of these new rulings and document the issues we come across. I know I have a Major and a GT coming up in the next few weeks, and every example of unchargeable units will have a picture to go with it and will make its way to GW. We need as a community to pick up the slack and give them the feedback they need to make good decisions with the ruleset. Instead of flooding them with complaints, let’s swarm them with well-thought-out examples of where things may not be working as intended.
I plan on playing a ton of games with the new rules, and I would love to be surprised to find my initial impressions wrong, but the only way to find out is to put in the time on the table. Change is always frustrating, but we should embrace it and see how it works before we decide how we feel about it.
Thanks for reading. I hope it was worth your time.
Seriously though, you want to buy some Hellhounds?
What do you all think? Do you agree with Mitch? How are you settling in to the post-FAQ meta?
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
Great suggestions! I think vertical close combat should always be measured from the model and never from the base. That would solve half of the problem already. I think bases should pretty much only track horizontal movement on a war game and that’s all.
Other half of the problem would be solved if units with fly could assault anything they get within 1 inch of horizontally. After all vertical height is pretty much irrelevant to models that can attack airplanes with their chainswords.
If these were done I don’t think there would be much of an issue left. I could live with grots on the ground floor not being able to reach Guilliman and his honour guard who have filled the top floor of the ruin.
Well I would say making it a measurement still tends to lead to complications and disagreement, I would rather see something to the effect that units can charge as long as they can get within one level of the model they are trying to charge, keeps it simple and easily definable. Also Guilleman cant get to the top of the ruin as he has the Monster key word but not fly 😉
And I thought he was safe from the grots!
Anyway, that idea about being one level lower could work and I’d be fine with that.
I’ve actually liked pretty much all the changes so far, but that one rule, as it is today, makes the game look even more ridiculous than it did in the past.
For the record I don’t even play knights (or Guilliman for that matter) but it still bothers me that my men would be safe from it’s close combat attacks while literally standing next to it’s chainsword with the blade touching their bodies!
I see so much angst about the ruling on assaulting up into ruins but I have to say that none of them ever seem to want to answer the problem of not having to place your models in a game where accurate precise positioning is crucial to the combat phase. As I have said before the ability to just claim your models to be where you want seems to suddenly turn every assault player into the perfect player who never makes a mistake. The same player when they actually have to position and move their models for real somehow becomes fallibly, human and error-prone again.
A terrain ruling to prevent this kicking in on trivial pieces of terrain (say 2″ or less) would be very sensible. Totally bypassing the reality of model positioning so that the assault player just rolls dice and then can claim to be exactly where they want to be without actually having to do it is too dubious.
Fundamentally when you start allowing models to pretend to be where they physically are not you do not just have measuring issues in the game; you have who said what issues which are much worse. No judge can ever sort those out – how can they possibly know if your model can consolidate into a position to 3-point a defending model if it is physically not where you claim it is and your opponent does not agree that it was ever quite there in the first place. Wobbly model should be constrained to places you can actually put your model and take your hands away so the judge can see exactly where everything is.
As a guy who plays primarily assault armies, using wobbly model syndrome never made any of my units into unstoppable cheese machines.
In fact, it was the only way for me to even make use of large models like Maulerfiends, Bloodthirsters, Helbrutes, and Daemon Princes in close combat due to the terrain dense boards with uneven surfaces I usually play on at my LGS.
I do agree with you that trivial pieces of terrain should not affect the 1″ rule; guardsmen shouldn’t be able to become immune to CC just by standing on crates.
But I also think that the current ruling is unfair to Monsters and Vehicles designed for CC, especially Knights who can no longer attack enemies on 2nd and 3rd floor buildings, despite literally being taller than the building in question.
The FAQ did nothing at all that I can recall to typical vehicles that lack the Fly keyword – they have been unable to go up onto higher levels of a ruin since 8th dropped. You could not wobbly model a maulerfiend up on to the 2nd level of a ruin anyway, that did not change.
There is a general harshness of the rules towards monsters and vehicles in 8th relative to infantry. It feels like a deliberate set of design decisions to make footslogging infantry more central to the game.
MaulerFiends really need a rule that lets them get to the higher levels of Ruins. Their climbing ability is a significant part of their fluff, and it’s just completely unrepresented in their rules.
But wobbly model syndrome is okay on uneven terrain, if you can hold your models to they just don’t fall of. It was bad when you could pretend that they can stand in the air with not even slightest surface to stand on.
At our local store (monthly tournament with 8-10 tables active) we ruled that of you try to pull the unassaultable positioning B.S., then every model that WOULD have reached the required charge distance is considered “in” by placing them at the base or as closely as possible to that position. The attacker loses some positioning shenanigans with pile ins and all that, but can at least make the assault. Not perfect, but does put a little lipstick on a pig.
RE sideboards: Chaos players already have a form of sideboarding built in to their armies in the form of summoning.
RE fix the 1st turn deepstrike: I actually really like your suggestion to making the restriction for the first player turn only. First I’ve seen it.
The subject of sideboarding comes up in AOS at times and one of the points against it is that it further devalues summoning – which is already a bit of a niche mechanic and that rather hurts factions built around summoning.
If everyone gets a sideboard then summoning loses one of its few distinct benefits. Now that might be a worthwhile trade in tournament play but we should not assume that sideboarding benefits all factions equally.
For combat on multiple levels the first thong that came to my head was models with keywords or some combination there of; fly, monster, vehicle, titanic etc you measure from the model instead of firmly the base.
I dont think the new reserve rule only effecting the player with first turn ends up being all that fair since it leave the same alpha strike problem but gives it to on player.
See, the problem with measuring from models, as always, is modeling for advantage. Are my dudes with awesome rocks on the base now OP/not tournament legal, because they can punch higher than a normal model?
It’s ok if infantry and bikes keep measuring from the base, but models with fly should definitely reach the upper floors somehow. Personally I’d be fine if they ignored vertical height altogether. Also there is absolutely no sense in having to measure a knight from the base.
Besides if you’d model your men on huge piles of rocks, climbing ladders or whatever, the harder it would be for them to hide out of sight. It’s a trade off and I don’t know if enough people would bother to do that for it to become a problem.
Fair. And I totally agree that there should be some kind of assaulting higher floors, even if it is TITANIC and FLY models ignore floors, or w/e. I just don’t like when fluffy models lead to advantage/disadvantage
re: power level example, space marine scouts are 6PL (but dark angel and blood angel scouts are 4PL, wtf?)
Limiting Deepstrikes to whomever is going second is a good idea. Thumbs up!
I participated in a 5 match ITC that Mitch was at this weekend. I think overall the FAQ changes were positive to my matches. Yet I feel gun lines have become more intractable for an all assault army. Slaanesh Daemons in my case. I was really at the whim of how the table terrain was set up to avoid being shot at.
But couple quick feedback blurbs from my experience.
CP Changes
Battalion CP change seemed positive it was nice to get some more CP to work with. It does seem kind of a rough trade for codices that have subpar troop choices that are not inexpensive (Ripper swarms, etc). As it is basically a tax to include 3 min Troops, 2 HQs, in your army to get those 5CP versus codices that have viable troop choices.
I think detachments should vary between Codices in the minimum selections required to reflect the difference in prices. Or that codex stratagem should be limited in use by your Warlord’s faction or have an increase in cost for stratagems outside of your Warlord’s faction. I still saw people bringing throw away Imperial Guard detachments for cheap CP to augment their main detachments.
Charge Changes
This came up at least once in each match. am playing an all Slaanesh Daemon army so I don’t have access to shooting attacks. There were a couple instances that my flying Daemon Prince couldn’t fit into terrain, so I had to lean on psychic powers to kill elevated enemy units. As already suggested by other commenters, if there was charge verticality or abstraction on wobbly model in terrain, it would have made less enemy units immune from charging.
Rule of 3
Playing Slaanesh Daemons, I have 7 HQs, 1 Elite, 1 Troop, 3 Fast, 3 Heavy, choices. I found it difficult to come up with an army list for this ITC tournament because so many of my units are noncompetitive. Before Rule of 3, I would run something like 6×9 Seekers, 2 Heralds on Steeds, and 3 Flying Daemon Princes. It wasn’t a particularly strong army, but it did well enough. How morale works in 8th it is just a bad idea to change this list to 3×19 Seekers, 2 Heralds on Steeds, and 3 Flying Daemon Princes.
Instead I ran 3×30 Daemonettes, 2x Heralds of Slaanesh, the Masque, 3 Daemon Princes, and 3 Daemon Princes of Chaos. This felt contrary to the intent of Rule of 3. As there is currently 4 different data sheets for “Daemon Prince” but I am not really sure what else I can bring now.
Tactical Reserves
This change is really rough for Chaos Daemons. The stratagem “Denizens of the Warp” was a tough pill to swallow having to pay CP to deep strike but with all the new restrictions and arriving on turn 2+. Playing foot slogging horde also slows down my game as now I need to physically move lots of models across the table. I get why this rule was added but it feels like it punishes melee units more than shooting with the turn 1 restriction. As the deep strike problematic units were mostly shooting units Flyrants, Obliterators, etc and a couple melee units that could 3d6 charge.
& you can still run 9 hellhounds…
Hey now, I only ran 8 at the last tournament 😀
That’s not nearly enough to be FUN
Luckily for you, you can go add 3 more squadrons of forge world variants. 18 is almost 20
How many Daemon Princes can I fit into a list?
I believe 13, if you can find the points. There are four distinct Datasheets for them, and then Be’Lakor is a Daemon Prince, too. I think there are a couple of FW Special Character Daemon Princes too, so maybe like 15-16?
It depends on how exactly you define “daemon prince,” but Samus and Cor’bax Utterblight both have the daemon prince keyword and thus presumably count; I would guess that Mamon Transfigured also counts, although I’m not 100% on the lore behind him.
Since you’ll need over 2000pts to fit them all, you could run 4x each of the “normal” Princes, plus the four named ones, for a total of twenty Daemon Princes in your 4000pt list. And they all fit nicely into the four Supreme Command detachments you’re taking!
I actually only run the Forge world ones, the codex ones are too expensive lol
A nice summary – but the BETA rules are focussed on serious competition, which 99.9% are not interested in!! Which discounts many of the people weighing in on boards like this one.
The sideboard is a nice idea (I’ve used it before at Warhammer World in a campaign/tournament) but that was designed for only a few folks (less than 32) NOT 512 which some American organisers seem to be fixated about. (HINT – aim for the best tournament experience for everyone NOT the biggest. I honestly think many of the problems have been caused by over-expansion, without the necessary number of judges, rules etc.)
Some tournaments were already restricting what you could bring … eg specifying one battalion and another detachment. Others seemed to be “bring what ever you want to cheat with.”
The terrain change makes sense to me … why should an entire unit be able to fight when only a few are on the same level in contact ? (eg LVO – where a player had 3 on the ground floor, 2 on the first floor yet still fought with 5 – even though there was a 3″+ separation between the parts of an unit.) Flyrants might be able to take models off the top of a building, but would a SM with jump-pack be able to fight in mid-air with two hand-weapons? I think hitting a flying ‘plane is a one-in-a-blue-moon suicide mission against a massive object that’s hard to miss, taking both hands off the controls, not to be taken as a standard, easy to do move against humans fighting back in melee.
Spam within detachments is gone (not mentioned above) – so no more Cellestine, 3 AM squads and assassins. Spam of datasheets is gone (no more 4 units of dark reapers or 7 flyrants.) Alpha-strike is gone … yet you’re trying to get it back. The games we’ve played in the past two weeks have all gone much more quickly since the BETA dropped. No more turn one losses. Let’s play a first turn before the drop troops come in.
PS – on the Warhammer Live broadcast announcing the changes PL and points were used interchangeably. We’re playing 1000 points on the board. (Otherwise the PLs need to catch up eg – big chicken is 37PL but rose to 1500 points in the Chapter Approved 2017. ) That’s an easy change for any TOs to make.
I do think that a certain level of abstraction is being used in this game. It’s not that an assault marine is supposed to be floating in air swinging his chainsword. The squad is charging into a unit and then a swirling melee occurs. If we accept tanks shooting behind them then I feel that allowing infantry and flyers to assault upper floors of ruins isn’t too much.
Yeah, I wouldn’t bring realism in to this when the fluff equivalent we have now is akin to this:
– “Colonel, I must congratulate you for handling the Red Grief Wych Cult assault in such an efficient manner. How ever did you succeed to stop them with so few losses?”
-“Well, I began by ordering my men to climb on top of the cargo containers. This confused the reavers in such a manner that they could do nothing but circle us.”
-“I see and what of your successes in the defense of Ultramar? Did you perchance employ a similar strategy there as well?”
-“I certainly did. As soon as I saw the deamon primarch Mortarion approach our lines I ordered my men to stop hiding behind the cargo containers and climb on top of them instead. This confused Mortarion in such a manner that he could nothing but shoot us. I swear, he never made an attempt to attack us in any way.”
-“Good thing there were a lot of cargo containers.”
-“Yes! We would have surely won, had not the frustrated plague marines driven over my men, on the cargo containers, with their Rhino APC’s.”
And, alternatively:
“Sergeant, shoot the Baneblade Cannon at the man behind that wall.”
“Can’t, sir, I can’t see him.”
“But you know he’s behind the wall.”
“Yessir. Watched him walk behind it with my own two eyes.”
“And the cannon could easily penetrate the wall?”
“Oh, absolutely, sir. The main gun on this honey will blast right through 400cm of adamantite plating, much less a shoddy concrete brickhouse like that one. Vaporize half a city block, like as not.”
“So then why can’t you fire the cannon at him?”
“Because he’s behind the wall, sir. It wouldn’t be fair.”
Don’t try and make sense of the rules of 40K. They are abstractions, not realistic representations of what actually happens on the battlefield.
I am not here to argue otherwise. 40k has always been abstract even when the “cinematic experience” catchphrase was being touted in the past it was anything but that. 8th is perhaps the most abstract version of the game so far, but it also plays better than 40k has for years.
Sure it’s filled with things that make no sense. Some can be explained by a “dynamically moving battlefield” or whatever, but I find that it’s best to just ignore the things that can’t be explained. I mean, trying to come up with a sensible explanation why anyone would refuse to shoot at Guilliman, who stands in the open, just because there are some hidden ratlings in the nearby building, only leads to disaster. “Maybe they hate the ratlings because they are so ugly!” “Maybe that Talonmaster’s land speeder is faster than a normal one and that’s why it can’t be shot at, despite the fact that it looks like it hovers above the marines and has done so for two turns already!” It’s all a joke and doesn’t bother me in the least.
Having said all this, I still think that the vertical assault rule wasn’t fully thought through. It is counter-intuitive and it will end up looking really, really stupid. Even by 40k’s standard.
Just imagine a war torn city with soldiers standing on top of the crates because somehow those are the safest places to be against flying swarms of gargoyles and hive tyrants. Hell, I’ll do it too, if it gives me an advantage. But every time a knight’s chainsword points to the crotch of my men and they are somehow immune to it, I can’t help but hope that GW had come up with something better than that. Actually, scratch that. I am almost certain that they will think of something better than that and that they will update this particular rule with something more sensible in the future.
I really like your idea of limiting the first turn alpha strike to only the player that goes first. It allows gun line armies that go second to still get their shots in and move stuff around to push back the alpha strike without being overrun by your opponent when they went first. It also allows alpha strike armies (who now have to start half their PL on the board) to survive without facing 2 full rounds of shooting when they go second. It seems like a fair solution for both types of lists.
Thanks, I dont know that it fixes everything but I definitely think its worth playtesting.
Night Fighting, 12-24 -1 to hit, -36″ -2, -48″ -3 but only for the first turn of the first battle round.