What could Chapter Approved do?

[Volt]

All I really want from terrain is to switch to the kill team method which just makes more sense. Not only is -1 to BS a lot more valuable to 1+ to armor, it's a lot more sensible. How the hell after all, does terrain even add to your armor? Although it would also help if there was a re-balancing of the excessive bloat of all of the -1 to hit traits. 

[MARK0SIAN]

All I really want from terrain is to switch to the kill team method which just makes more sense. Not only is -1 to BS a lot more valuable to 1+ to armor, it's a lot more sensible. How the hell after all, does terrain even add to your armor? Although it would also help if there was a re-balancing of the excessive bloat of all of the -1 to hit traits.

I would be really against any more to hit modifiers entering the game. There’s already way too many. For a start, If you make cover a -1 to hit it’ll be easier to just errata the Eldar codex to say ‘Eldar models can never be shot at by anyone’

 

I know you said the hit modifiers would need rebalancing but they wouldn’t, they’d need removing totally or you’d have models that, just by being in cover and simply existing would force armies like Tau and Guard to only hit them on a 6. Throw in another hit modifiers from a psychic power or other source and we are back to the invisibility problems of 7th.

 

Terrain needs to change but not with hit modifiers.

[Ishagu]

-1 to hit in terrain could work as long as they remove every single negative hit modifier ability from army rules.

[FirstSonofHorus]

-1 to hit in terrain could work as long as they remove every single negative hit modifier ability from army rules.

 

Or made army wide -1 to hit non stackable/count as cover as rumoured.

[Panzer]

I wonder how Scout camo cloaks and similar abilities would work then. Would they get -2 in cover? ^^

[Finkmilkana]

Wouldn’t that fit with the rumor a bit back that -1 to hit army rules will be changed to “always in cover” in CA? Maybe the faction rules are not “really” changing, it’s cover that’s changing. And this way you make it clear that it can’t stack. Would also instantly make the new “going second” stratagem a lot more useful for many factions (and completely useless for those that either way always have cover).

[Panzer]

Would also instantly make the new “going second” stratagem a lot more useful for many factions (and completely useless for those that either way always have cover).

 

That's actually very true. I'm sure Daemon and Ork players would be extremely happy about that change lol

[Atrus]

A cover change from +1 armour to -1 hit would help give flamer weapons a nice little boost to the role theyre supposed to have.

Shall see come december.

[Beams]

I like +1 to armor...

[Daimyo-Phaeron Lenoch]

Yes, it sounds nice, but I also had an enemy squad of termagants survive two rounds of a Land Raider Redeemer shooting into them, backed up by a marine squad and captain with the Primarch’s Wrath. I could not kill more than one or two a turn (sometimes I didn’t kill any) after the Tervigon replenished them. That squad should have withered and died before my troops’ eyes, not sat there and eat fire for two turns. They had +2 armor due to cover and a scenario rule, and they were impossible to shift.

 

Call it fun, but I think cover the way it is it’s broken. If they make cover -1 to hit as opposed to +1 to armor, I’d like it a lot more. Flamers would finally be useful again. If GW doesn’t make that change in CA, I hope they at least let the old template weapons ignore cover again. As it is they’re kinda useless against cover.

[Beams]

Yes, it sounds nice, but I also had an enemy squad of termagants survive two rounds of a Land Raider Redeemer shooting into them, backed up by a marine squad and captain with the Primarch’s Wrath. I could not kill more than one or two a turn (sometimes I didn’t kill any) after the Tervigon replenished them. That squad should have withered and died before my troops’ eyes, not sat there and eat fire for two turns. They had +2 armor due to cover and a scenario rule, and they were impossible to shift.

 

Call it fun, but I think cover the way it is it’s broken. If they make cover -1 to hit as opposed to +1 to armor, I’d like it a lot more. Flamers would finally be useful again. If GW doesn’t make that change in CA, I hope they at least let the old template weapons ignore cover again. As it is they’re kinda useless against cover.

So the termagaints went from a 6+ to a 4+? That seems like a problem with your army not having enough shots, not cover, if you can't kill that many 4+ saves a round.

 

With a -1 to hit on cover, Eldar will only spam gaurdians, who will get a -3 to hit on them, meaning guard needs a 7+ to hit, sisters of battle/Scions and marines - the best of the best, would need a 6+, and if they cast conceal, one squad would be at a 7+ to hit.

 

I routinely use the +1 to cover, and it helps my sisters/orks immensely, but never so much that it appeared broken.

[Zodd1888]

Give me a -2 to hit cap with CA approved and cover rules can remain the same.

 

If we're capping invulnerables why not modifiers to hit?

[Montford]

If a player truly dislikes cover then there is always the option to play Imperial Fists. :)

 

I personally have no issues with cover as it is now.

[Panzer]

 

With a -1 to hit on cover, Eldar will only spam gaurdians, who will get a -3 to hit on them, meaning guard needs a 7+ to hit, sisters of battle/Scions and marines - the best of the best, would need a 6+, and if they cast conceal, one squad would be at a 7+ to hit.

 

 

I think the proposed change to cover includes changing those army-wide to-hit penalties into granting free cover. So it would basically change nothing for Eldar except that they wouldn't be able to stack their to-hit penalty with cover anymore.

[Ishagu]

-2 to hit is already far too powerful.

 

It utterly neuters Guard, Marines, Tau, etc

 

The mechanic is far too common at the moment. The maximum modifier should be - 1

[Kallas]

A cover change from +1 armour to -1 hit would help give flamer weapons a nice little boost to the role theyre supposed to have.Shall see come december.Well, either they're regular Flamers with :cuss range and so won't have any capability to shoot; or they're one of the good "Flamer" weapons (ie, Hellhound Inferno Cannon, Hemlock Wraithfighter) which were already good even when not targeting negative modifier units!

 

Edit: Long day, so I brain farted. I thought you were referring to the 2CP Cover Stratagem only, sorry!

[Ratherdashing]

I think the idea behind cover increasing armor is that it allows AP weapons to penetrate cover like they should. Making it -1 to hit would be fine if, as others have said, current -1 to hit effects were changed to nonstacking cover. I'd be sad to lose the effect as it is on Stealth Suits, but it's probably better for the game as a whole.

 

Personally I think the more important change is to what counts as being in cover. With so many tables having barricades, fences, and sandbags that currently do nothing, the real change that we need is to allow intervening terrain instead of having to stand on top of the sandbag to be blocked by it. And it doesn't have to be complicated or as wonky as before either. Simple fix: if you draw line of sight over any terrain piece (or intervening enemy model) that the shooting unit is not itself touching, the target gets cover. So the cover you are behind or within doesn't block your shot but any other cover you shoot through does.

 

IMO this fix would work better with the current, armor buffing cover. Because armor saves are taken model by model, you can check each model to see if it's in cover. If any model in the firing unit can draw an unobstructed line to a given model, that model gets no cover. But models that can't be drawn to without crossing terrain get the bonus just for their personal save.

[Kallas]

-2 to hit is already far too powerful.

It utterly neuters Guard, Marines, Tau, etc

The mechanic is far too common at the moment. The maximum modifier should be - 1

I mean, my current list is based around a Psychic Power for Cover, a 3CP stratagem for -1 to hit, and a once-per-game ability (Smoke Launchers) to affect only those units. That's the only real reason my Space Wolf list is competitive, and it's requiring a fairly heavy investment and almost mandates going first for full effectiveness.

 

But I do agree that negative hit modifiers are a huge problem.

[MARK0SIAN]

I think the idea behind cover increasing armor is that it allows AP weapons to penetrate cover like they should. Making it -1 to hit would be fine if, as others have said, current -1 to hit effects were changed to nonstacking cover. I'd be sad to lose the effect as it is on Stealth Suits, but it's probably better for the game as a whole.

 

Personally I think the more important change is to what counts as being in cover. With so many tables having barricades, fences, and sandbags that currently do nothing, the real change that we need is to allow intervening terrain instead of having to stand on top of the sandbag to be blocked by it. And it doesn't have to be complicated or as wonky as before either. Simple fix: if you draw line of sight over any terrain piece (or intervening enemy model) that the shooting unit is not itself touching, the target gets cover. So the cover you are behind or within doesn't block your shot but any other cover you shoot through does.

 

IMO this fix would work better with the current, armor buffing cover. Because armor saves are taken model by model, you can check each model to see if it's in cover. If any model in the firing unit can draw an unobstructed line to a given model, that model gets no cover. But models that can't be drawn to without crossing terrain get the bonus just for their personal save.

A cheap screen of cultists, nids or conscripts or even scarabs would give the entire army behind it cover if you used that rule. That’s way too easy to exploit. Screening units are already powerful this edition, we don’t need to make them even more powerful.

 

Plus there are plenty of weapons that would simply go over the heads of intervening cover/models. I don’t just mean indirect fire ones either like basilisks or mortars. Tank turrets would be shooting over the heads of infantry, so would Knights or their equivalent.

 

Cover needs to change but the unit receiving the bonus should still have to be tied to an actual cover feature in some way, not just getting cover because half way between them and their attacker is some sand bags or similar.

[Ratherdashing]

I guess my thinking is that unless we want to lean down and figure out 75% coverage or whatever, which some people want and some people don't but GW definitely doesn't want; then in that case we either have to err on the side of too much cover or too little. Right now I think it's way too little and I personally would rather give too much, at least if cover gives +1 AC. If cover goes to -1 to hit, then I would agree that GW needs to be careful how easy it is to get cover.

[MARK0SIAN]

I guess my thinking is that unless we want to lean down and figure out 75% coverage or whatever, which some people want and some people don't but GW definitely doesn't want; then in that case we either have to err on the side of too much cover or too little. Right now I think it's way too little and I personally would rather give too much, at least if cover gives +1 AC. If cover goes to -1 to hit, then I would agree that GW needs to be careful how easy it is to get cover.

I agree that standing behind a feature should give cover rather than having to stand directly on it like your sand bag example but the models should need to be standing directly behind it, within one inch like the rules for the aegis defence line. You can’t give cover just for intervening models of features though, otherwise it makes it way to easy to be in cover.

[Feral_80]

I totally agree that negative to hit modifiers are an extremely poor part of the rules now, with major implications that unfairly affect the game.

 

Eldars are broken, period. Even without stacking -1 modifiers, actually, but without that at least you could kill some of them. And other armies can abuse modifiers to hit, albeit not to the absurd extent Eldars do.

 

Currently, in a mixed environment shooting is a luxury reserved for some BS 3+ armies. If you play Guard or Tau you'll just have to pray to face one of the armies which cannot access negative to hit modifiers, otherwise you are pretty much screwed. Yes, if you are very lucky and good you might win by lurking, objectives, and desperate weight of numbers - but hear ye, hear ye, playing like that is NOT funny.

 

As for terrains, technically it would make more sense to have cover confer -1 to hit instead of +1 save, but that would only slow down games even more, make many armies even less effective, and above all make cover totally broken. Cover should stay the same, as currently it is an easy, simple, useful but not broken rule. What we need are sensible terrain rules, which is an entirely different thing since the one on cover is the only rewarding mechanic in the whole terrain rules system.

 

 

What I'd like to see:

• army-wide -1 hit modifiers uniformed and heavily changed/converted into always in cover
• negative to hit modifiers can never stack
• -1 to be hit reserved for *a few* really powerful and fluffy cases from some codexes; -2 to be hit for a couple of super-powerful units (almost invisible, etc.) in the whole game only

[Ishagu]

I actually think the +1 to saves in cover is a great mechanic that makes thematic sense.

 

I would be looking at the way vehicles and monsters interact with terrain, that definitely needs some tweaking.

[chapter master 454]

Technically, some terrain should have different effects. Trees offer NOTHING for actual cover if someone knows you are there but their benefit is obscuring your position as to make it harder to hit you. Bunkers and reinforced ferrocrete walls offer protection by giving the trooper something to hide behind that can stop bullets.

 

Thus technically there needs to MORE rules for terrain but I am not advocating that however to humour some folks here is some ideas that would come about IF and only IF there were to be more rules.

 

Obscuring Terrain: The terrain isn't made of sturdy stuff however it does offer visual cover meaning the enemy cannot so easily find your position however explosives tend to be quite excellent at it. Any unit attempting to fire at a unit benefiting from Obscuring Terrain suffers a -1 to hit the target. This penalty does not apply to weapons with the "blast" keyword (again you will have to tolerate some things I add as only working with what is in the game currently causes issues).

 

Hard Cover: This terrain was meant to take a pounding. It does have limits but it will give infantry the cover they need against light arms. Units benefiting from Hard Cover treat any ranged attacks with AP1 or AP2 as AP0 instead. Unless the terrain is enclosed, this benefit is negated relating to any attacks made by weapons with the "Indirect" keyword.

[Schlitzaf]

Honestly I think cover should be stackable and intervening models/terrain should grant cover again. And for those who say “but screens”. Um isn’t that the point of having screens?

 

Like if Melee Forces need to deal with screens so should Shooting Forces. I know this is weird but it seems silly to me that they don’t this edition. But if I had to fix cover I’d do the following change;

Cover is stackable up to some modifier. Likely would say +2 and most be different kinds of cover.

These covers would/could be;

1) Intervening Models or Terrain

2) Being in Terrain

3) Special Rule/Strategem.

 

So if you go second and pop cover Strategem, you get +2 for being in cover, and from the Strategem. And while this might be too complex I’d add another rule; any weapon that hits the target automatically ignores cover. Or just add “if a target is in cover add an AP to this weapon”.

 

But something I want to stress in Emperor’s name PLEASE DO NOT BRING BACK TEMPLATES. I honestly never want to have to roll to scatter or have to run around my LGS to find a flamer, small or large blast template again. Also I’d change back deep strikes to that first turn player cannot bring them in. But the player going second can as normal.

 

I’d also change LoS rules back to some variant of 4th where structures block LoS Period. Unless your in the terrain.