Shaking up selection

[El Capitan]

Just some ideas to ponder, given in OGC are games had become a little vehicle-centric. We have very successfully engineered the character section so what about support?

at the moment we have the Imperial Guard style rule, one squad = one vehicle. so some ideas. . . . .

one - vehicles / vehicle squads can be chosen one per one squad but come in the same points bands. ie a Combat squad could = a predator but you'd need a tactical squad to have a land raider. Then again, this is quite unwieldy and land raiders a usually solo when they appear.

two - half the support section. this cannot be stated without obvious bias as a chaos player and it risks messing up armies like the Eldar, who always seem to be modest in vehicle expenditure, 3 for about 600 pts, but how about next time two loyalist Space marine armies play trying this out. I'd like to hear the results. + we could always drop Chaos to a paltry 240 pts of vehicles. . . . on second thoughts. . . .

[Adoni-Zedek]

What has worked for me is giving a 25% cost discount to all Troops. It makes them relatively cheaper, giving you an incentive to take more of them. (This also helps keep characters down as well.)

Or you could reduce the Support allowance to 33% (667pts out of 2000). Taking it all the way down to 25% seems rather harsh. For Chaos I would say leave it at 25%. That's already so low, they don't need further punishment.

[El Capitan]

33% support is definitely a very interesting proposal. I would go for that and stick the IG at 50%, I'm sure that would produce the kind of armies GW intended (maybe?), you could still get 3 fire prisms into 33% in an Eldar army!

I don't wish to touch the troop points costs just for the balance of victory points, a lot of points costs are made to fit into the VP system and from making the Dark Eldar, Necron and Tau codex's, final modification were often made to reflect this, after all army section is one of the games biggest challenges which is why I have never liked the VP100 system.

thoughts?

[Simon]

I'd go more down the route of plonking a rule of "you can't spend more on the support section than you do on the troops section". It should help to prevent beard armies like Brown's of last year. I reckon that would work better than a 33% cap.

Or you could leave it untouched and let it add a bit of flavour to the game.

[James 40K Champ ***]

Interesting proposals, I think I would prefere 33%, or perhaps 40% better than other idea. Even 40% would swing the balance in favor of troops. Last years beard army aside (which only only army Ive ever feilded a single HEAVY vehicle in), cutting it too much would spoil my entire style of play being fast attack, which ever army I was playing.

Just as a potential curve ball, we could think of something that could weaken tanks a bit, maybe a huge disturbance of energy in the eye of terror has caused all energy sources to become unstable and invisible psychic rays (similar to solar rays), cause large machinery to randomly fail, sometimes catastrophically.


this could be implimented as every vehicle has to roll a +2 every turn to move. On a 1, they cannot move, cannot fire primary/ turret mounted weapons and if they are traveling at speed coast straight ahead 1D6 for slow 2D6 for cobat and 3D6 for fast (or maybe just use standard out of control rules).
In adition, any vehicle that rolls a 1, rolls a second D6 and on a number, which im unsure of, the engines explode as per datafax.

I belive over a 4 turn game this wont hit vehicles too badly, but the more you take the more in trouble you are. And that extra edge of uncertainty could mean they are a less obvious selection everytime.

Dont think I'd fancy rellying on that many rolls of +2 over the course of a tourn.

Maybe this has flaws, might be too harsh on small vehicles and not hard enough on large ones, so maybe could be +3 roll, 1D6 for tanks 2D6 for smaller vehicles.

Thoughts?

[James 40K Champ ***]

Just had a think, and a chat with Mark, and probably a much easier and less painful solution would be to limit vehicle cards, either by removing them, or a cap of 1 per vehicle.

You do know the source of all my power comes from vehicle cards right? And not just a cheeky one here and there, its specific combinations that win the day.

Examples:

• You all know about abaltive armour and its ability to double the life span of a barley armoured twin multi-melta weilding immolator, or razorbacks, not to mention anything heavier like preds.
  
  
• Extra speed making things harder to hit at same time as extra armour
  
  
• Things that improve weapons like ammo feeds
  
  
• etc lol
  

If you think about my army selection, Ive always stuck to the 1 for 1 rule but basically got around this using the loop hole of loads of add ons to sometimes double the efficiency of the vehicle.

With the 1 for 1 rule still in place, but no vehicle cards, or at best 1 vehicle card per 1k points (cannot be doubled up onto 1 vehicle), I think that would balance the vehicles out a fair bit.


Also as a side note, I don't win purley off the back of vehicles, (although they clearly play a huge role), when I sit down with an army list I dont just choose whatever I think is really powerful individually, often my armys lack some of the best stuff available to armys like dreads of big tanks, in favor of making sure every single unit compliments each other.

In other words, yes I have some mad vehicle combos, but theres ussually tailored squads following them round dealing quite a bit of damage themselfs.

I really try not to waste any points at all, right down to making sure the lowly teck marien has something vaugely useful to do

[James 40K Champ ***]

Oh and as a further example, if I had chosen to feild Eldar this year, you would have seen my ussual fast attack style of play, but with an all new potential danger.

Given free run of vehicle cards with Eldar, Id have near maxed my support section again, forgoing the hugely powerful psychic side of things, for some crazy vehicles:

Its not hard to feild more than one grav tank complete with star engines and holo feilds, (as a starting point).
This means that a grav tank could fly around the board using its lovely combat and fast speeds, with a tasty -3 or -4 to hit, with cover thats not hard to find taking that to -4 and -5.
In adition, star engines allow the tank to make a second move after the shooting phase, so I would position them so they can move into hard cover after shooting something up.
The enemy should now be faced with a vehicle that is near impossible to hit and out of LOS from most his army anway, I certainly wouldnt be scared of the odd vehicle capable of manouvering to get a shot, and these would of course be at the top of the list of things to eliminate. Thanks to that Ive also won a control battle, forcing you to move you vehicles around pretty much where I dictate.
A natural adition would be Crystal matrix (comes on Fire Prism anyway) to mean my shots fire unhindered by fast speed.

To enhance those vehicles as always my troops would closely support, so maybe *2 warp spiders, jetbikes, swooping hawks, etc

THIS is how eldar should be played (or at least fast attack anyway)

This strat still has the potential to fall on its arse as all my armys really have, over watch as always is a potential counter, but I wouldnt be too scared by it. But If id supprised people with this, I think a lot would really be sturggling for something to do, and pretty much loosing faith in the game.. IF i pulled it off well anyway.


This is what I mean about vehicle cards, without them, that entire army turns into a duck shoot more or less.

i think vehicle cards allow my to RELY on vehicles, rather than to have them as an adition that can do damage but be taken out. A lot of vehicle cards seem to me to enhance survivability, in a game with limited shots in a 4 turn battle. Thats a win as far as Im concearned.

[James 40K Champ ***]

On a final note of beard, here is my entry for this years support section!!

A NECRON LANDRAIDER

Would you look at that rail gun! I call it: The Analiser.

[James 40K Champ ***]

And theres more:

JOYCRONS

[El Capitan]

The idea of having vehicles randomly malfunctioning is a little bit 'third edition', so nice idea but more of a campaign thing I think rather than for competitive play.

Scrapping vehicle cards this Tournament though? Sounds like an interesting quirk, lets try it!!!!! (no OGC restriction jsut a restriction in the Tournament)

[James 40K Champ ***]

I'd be happy to go for it. All the ablative armour we whack on things doesnt really make the game any more fun, just a whole lot more beard. Ablative on average gives most vehicles +1 turn of survivability. Without it we'd be forced to be more tactical with them, and cerrtainly not rely on them.