Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Disembarking/Reserves, Shooting and Assault: A Solution?

If you couldn't tell, I play Blood Angels. I have always played Blood Angels. I love them and I am not going to change. However they are hard to play right now. Not just because they lack the USR granting formations and detachments other armies have, or the massive amounts of Psychic power, or the countless free upgrades or super low costed units. All those would help. The issue is this

They are an Assault Army in a game of Shooting.
It used to be you got shot in the shooting phase and that was it. In These days BA were great. To counteract this, you  eventually couldn't charge out of a vehicle UNLESS it was an assault or open topped vehicle. Annoying but okay.

But then there came overwatch. And a psychic phase full of Witchfire. And Interceptor. And Grim Resolve. And Cognis Weapons. And a million powers to reroll to hits or to wounds or saves. FNP everywhere. Do I need to go on?

All of these things slowly made Assault go from GREAT to "Why bother?"

I am not saying the game needs to go back to the days where assault was king. But it needs something. There is too much stuff now that counteracts it to leave it how it is.

Now the biggest reason for DISALLOWING charging after disembarking from a stationary vehicle or coming in from reserves is that your opponent doesn't get a chance to shoot you, but you get to shoot and assault.

Well the 1st part isn't entirely true is it. They do get overwatch. BUT for the most part it is valid. They should be able to do something or you shouldn't be able to hit as hard. And I still agree with not getting to assault from a moving vehicle unless it was open topped or an assault vehicle.
"Don't worry, I am not going to land on you swinging. I think it is only fair I stand directly infront of you and let you shoot at me before I charge you. Oh, and go ahead and shoot then too. I don't mind. Its not like I am trained to be death from above anyway..."
However to me it just doesn't make sense that a dedicated and trained assault unit like Assault Marines or Howling Banshees can't run headlong at the enemy at all times, but ever joe shmoe in the game can shoot his weapon like the Hero in every Action Movie EVER!

So what to do?

Well I propose a simple fix:

When you disembark from a vehicle, you may only fire Snap Shots. Simple and effective. Allow me to charge, but don't give me a full effective round of shooting. And if getting out is such a hassle to prevent an assault as it is now, why am I able to take aim and fire to full effect. Even better would be to apply this to all non-vehicles arriving from reserve as well IMO.

If you think this is too powerful, we can take this one step further: You may only make a disordered charge after disembarking or arriving from reserves. BAM. See how I did that. Now I can still come to grips. I won't be as effective, but I served my purpose and made contact with the enemy.
What this allows is for me to not worry about leaving my vital assault troops sitting unprotected while my opponent can deliver their effective shooting units with impunity. Contrariwise it also means that shooting troops will never get hit full force by an assault unit that just appeared.

This would also go along way to balance Drop Pod of Doom armies/elements like Skyhammer, Grav-cents etc. etc.  Especially if the SNAP SHOTS ONLY applied to arriving from reserve as well.

Tell me, what do you think of this?  I honestly believe there is just WAY too much to counteract assault these days and not enough mechanisms to enable it. This seems like a pretty simple and logical fix IMO.