No Retreat! rules question

[GTang]

Another way to look at this is, say I have a unit of 20 berserkers fighting 4 units of 5 berserkers. If the 20 berserkers loose, they (as a side) take saves equal to the amount they lost by. If the 4 units of 5 loose, they (as a side) take saves equal to the amount they lost by TIMES FOUR. So for some reason, essentially identical forces suffer very differently for loosing combat. That makes no sense.

It's a quirk of multi-unit combat. If they were regular units, you wouldn't divide the LD penalty if those several units lost to one, either. It'd be taken in full each time around.

[Lord Humongous]

Since the additional wound are applied on a unit basis (as would be a morale test required by each unit separately) you could perhaps say that a unit as a whole will fight coordinated and is suffering the designated number of wounds because they are being overwhelmed, and one single bigger unit would handle the situation better and with more coordination than four separate units would. You would only test once for morale for the bigger unit, while you would test separately for each smaller unit. Each unit has to see how they are holding up for themselves. Again not a perfect fluff explanation for a balancing game mechanic that was put in place. GW does not wanted to have massive drawn out combats, but rather to end them quicker in this edition. That is why they established the new and higher leadership penalties and the additional wounds. In the last edition that was based entirely on the amount of enemy models on the winning side. Now it is based in the amount of suffered casualties in one round instead.

 

One big unit testing for morale at -X is pretty much the same as multiple small units testing morale at -X; the results average out to being the same. In fact, having multiple small (non fearless) units in one combat is BETTER if you loose, because if just ONE of them passes, then the unit they are fighting can not perform a sweeping advance on those which fail.

Clearly the results do NOT average out to being the same when the unit is fearless, and having multiple small fearless units in one combat seems MUCH worse (if you loose) than having one big unit.

 

I understand the rule is intended as a balancing game mechanic, but in fact it seems more to UNBALANCE things. Combats being descisive is OK; combat results being decided based on rather arbitrary criteria is not so good.

[GTang]

If you want to fluff justify it, you can do it backwards. The only way five fearless units could be set back by one is if that one did remarkably well in combat due to a series of surprising circumstances or what have you.

 

For rules balance justification, I guess the days when fearless were an unmitigated good are over. Fearless is now a characteristic than can be exploited in some situations.