The joy of house rules - solving the close quarter problem

[Hephast0]

I'm lucky. I have a great group of people to play 40k against and we spent all of Friday and Saturday having skirmishes and trying out a bunch of rules that the group brought to see what worked and what didn't. I was challenged about a month ago to come up with a way of solving the "fall back, get rekt" problem of cqc (close quarter combat).

 

I arrived with the following rule to experiment with -

 

"Any unit which contains only weapons with the grenade, melee and pistol types gains the "close quarter specialist" keyword.

 

Close quarter specialist - if this unit charges and opposing infantry unit or is charged by any opposing unit, that unit MAY NOT FALL BACK during the owners following turn"

 

We played two games with this rule. My god what a difference it made! No longer was the fight phase a "one and done" deal and it came with the drawback that your unit had to specialise to close combat! Reivers became mighty units of fear (as they should be). Crusader squads in rhinos were worth worrying about immediately.

 

I love this rule. To put it plainly, our main nids player (I respect the guy, great to play against and honest in his assessments) wants to have it for his army too - he thinks it makes "swarms" work in a way they haven't for ages.

 

Interested in other people's opinions. We had a lot of talk at our games that the rule made melee slog "worth it" but we had a few voices say that they'd like it to be linked to either a sergeant/sword brethern being alive or perhaps be a "marine-wide bonus" which costs a CP to activate before the battle begins.

 

I know GW won't change their baby for a while but house rules are always fun. This also doesn't solve our wet noodle problem (I would really like some melee special weapons.... Crusader squads would look very different if they could take a melee weapon in the special slot too).

 

So yeah, I would love to hear other people's thoughts on this as it worked really well for us.

 

Fire, Blood and Helbrecht brothers!

 

Hep

[allegedlynerdy]

Two things:

 

1. Maybe instead of being unable to fall back, when they do fall back the "close quarters specialists" get to go as if it's fight phase?

 

2. Maybe a unit specific thing? It's starting to sound like a USR and the lack of USRs is the best part of 8th.

[Quixus]

I would not limit that to the "Chainsword/Bolt Pistol" load out, this should be part of any unit that has dedicated melee equipment. As written no terminators would get it, nor would Company Veterans depending on loadout (Chainsword/special weapon is quite popular). Tacs are still in a weird place with this change as they would not benefit from it despite being called adept at all forms of combat.

 

I'm not sure though how that change would affect tyranids and other units with "built in equipment". Do they have claws etc. as equipment, even though primarily ranged combatants?If not, its good, if they do, we would need another characteristic to determine whether the rule applies. then it indeed sounds a lot like an USR.

 

I second allegedlynerdy's proposal of not prohibiting falling back, but making it a costly decision, as it should be.

[Marshal_Roujakis]

Yeah, USRs are no longer a thing with 8th ed. and sort of adding one in would break all hell lose in terms of screeching Tau players and 8th ed. in general...

 

You could tie it up as certain rules for certain squads, or if you'd prefer it as a faction rule, add it in as a (Chapter/Kabal/Hive Fleet) Tactic so that only specific groups that are supposedly melee focused would have this rule...

 

TBH, I'd prefer it if there was a roll off or something similar in order for units to fall back and it's not just an automatic thing... if you ever try and fall back from melee if you were ever in a real fight, you'd be exposing your back, making it easier for enemies to actually hit you and making it impossible for you to fight back... or them just catching up to you as you run away... either case, it should have a higher penalty than 'not being able to do anything' and should actually cause players to lose models/HP if they try to run away.

[Hephast0]

Funny you should bring these things up... we worked through a bunch of iterations regarding *how* the rule should work and decided that a single turn of guaranteed fight phase interrupted the flow of the game a lot less than the need for more dice rolls. That's actually part of why the rule only works against infantry units you charge (although anything that charges you) as we figured vehicles should be able to reverse... you aren't stopping an engine. 

 

I think rewriting the rule as 'the unit cannot fall back on their next activation' clarifies the wording a bit better.

 

As for which units should get this (and trying to avoid the USR thing!) I agree that as it stands the rule is a little loose - that's why it's still a work in progress. I like the idea of it being attached to basically any unit which would be considered 'close combat assault' in the space marines - termies, veterans, crusader squads, assault squads, reivers and I can see how it could be applied as an army specific thing for nids (his main point was that he'd love hormagaunts and genestealers to have this rule - neither has any ranged weaponry and suffer from the same poor fight phase->shot to hell problem we do). It certainly increases the 'need to deal with this before it gets out of hand' level of these troops to a level which turns them into a genuine threat vector on the table.

 

Cheers for the feedback brothers, always good to hear the opinions of others. I've got another game tomorrow - first time out for a LRC with 3 crusader squads and Helbrecht. 

 

I still wish we had some melee options in the special weapons slot.....

 

Hep

[Quixus]

How about:

"CQB Specialist: If unit (with this rule)* starts a turn locked in combat with another unit, it cannot be targeted in the shooting phase of that turn even if all enemy units fall back or otherwise are no longer locked in combat until the end of the turn."

 

* replace this with whatever characteristic you want the unit to have for the rule to be applicable: BP/CS, proper melee weapon, other characteristic.

[allegedlynerdy]

I personally prefer that if you fall back, any infantry model with a dedicated melee weapon can act as if it were fight phase against the withdrawing troops. Still allows withdrawing, and instead of making it a USR just make it part of the fight phase rules.

 

I.e. my initiates with melee weapons in a squad could, but not the meltagunner.

[Rabidweasel]

Sounds very good, my only concern, putting my heretic hat on, is that Bezerkers who are already very nasty in CC, would be even more nasty!  But, house rules are house rules! What works well with your group is always good.

 

We tend to have simple house rules like if you pull a tactical objective card that is impossible to get (kill a flyer and your opponent has nothing with the fly keyword for example) then you can discard it straight away and pull another.  So i applaud your group going the extra mile with this one. 

[Crimson cowboy]

I personally prefer that if you fall back, any infantry model with a dedicated melee weapon can act as if it were fight phase against the withdrawing troops. Still allows withdrawing, and instead of making it a USR just make it part of the fight phase rules.

 

I.e. my initiates with melee weapons in a squad could, but not the meltagunner.

So like saying how we used to be able to do sweeping advances we could do like an melee version of overwatch? I think that would be great and not be so over the top....except instead of 6 we get like a 4+ Or at least something like your WS -1 since we know tau are like wet noodles on cox (bc come on how can you really miss somebody at point blank range.....even if I have to just throw my sword at them lol)

[Medjugorje]

 

I personally prefer that if you fall back, any infantry model with a dedicated melee weapon can act as if it were fight phase against the withdrawing troops. Still allows withdrawing, and instead of making it a USR just make it part of the fight phase rules.

 

I.e. my initiates with melee weapons in a squad could, but not the meltagunner.

So like saying how we used to be able to do sweeping advances we could do like an melee version of overwatch? I think that would be great and not be so over the top....except instead of 6 we get like a 4+ Or at least something like your WS -1 since we know tau are like wet noodles on cox (bc come on how can you really miss somebody at point blank range.....even if I have to just throw my sword at them lol)

 

that would perfict fit in the system