Fixing V2.0

[Foudroyant Virus]

Hey dear Hivemind,

Heresy 2.0 had some time to show how the rules play out. And tbh: i am not a huge fan.

i like the new balancing of the armies (since i mainly play EC it is nice to not fight uphill battles all the time). But there are still so many glaring balancing problems (looking at you, suzerains and Phalanx Warders).

not to mention the legacy units ( looking at you, Telemechrus when compared to say Rylanor).

But that isnt really my main problem with the rules.

 

there are many things in the core rules, that are just off and kill the fun for us. So we tried to come up with some rules changes to make to game more fun. I would love to hear your input and what you think the HH needs to be fixes.

 

1.) challenges

i really loath the new challenge rules. There arent any great fights between heroes anymore. It is just a game of "who can throw the most worthless model into the challenge". 
without wounds spilling out of the challenge, the abundance of chosen warrior and inexorable/stubborn just means your characters do nothing.

that put Sigismund from absolutly brutal and overpowered to useless.

I think wounds need to spill over out of a challenge again.

 

2. )wound allocation

A thing that i hated already in 8th edition. Being able to choose freely who takes wound makes the games super dumb and makes everything bar AP2 very weak.

Bolters arent really cutting it against Powerarmour, if everyshot gets tanked by a 2+/5+ or better.

we will revert back to allocation wounds from the front with look out sir.

 

3.) reserves/Deepstrike/Outflank

 

that is a weird one. I really hate the "roll a 1 and you are :cuss:ed" mechanic.

with a MoS it is even worse. There is nothing you can do about it. No way to chose a "safe" spot to deepstrike, since it doesnt matter: on a 1 your gameplan is probably over. And even a damocles or the likes wont help you.

the same goes for outflank. 

I like being able to outflank from the enemies tableedge. But that marker-thing is super weird: it is easy to just bodyblockthe outflanking units, unless they are jump/antigrav. A 10 man tactical squad is enough to prevent you from getting on the board.

once i placed that marker there isnt any flexibility any more. And with the insane power granted by augury scanners you will need to outflank a ton of guys for targetsaturation or nothing at all.

speaking of intercept:

I thought about playing one or two desthstorm droppods, because i like the fluff and idea of them. But that are 90PPM coming down turn one. And they will just be intercepted en masse without any negative effects for the enemy. You dont lose out on shooting in the next phase, you dont even spend a movement reaction. It is just a free kill.

 

4.) Coversaves

i like the idea of the shrouded roll. But often return fire is just better.

the insanity that is LasCas means that the meta (at least for us) is heavily skewed in favour of AP2 S8 guns. The same reason why the whirlwind scorpius is so good (and it only consts like 120P, :cuss: is up with that?!?).

to mitigate that we went back to using the old terrain coversaves: runins 4+, anything soft 5+, etc. Regarding how brutal dangerous terrain tests are by now, it is a fair trade off.

and antigrav units get coversaves as well. What was up with that rule?!?

 

so, just a few ideas to make the game more fun for us.

what are your takes? Where do you disagree? Does your group have houseruled some major parts of the rulebook? And any ideas how to fix reserves? I would love to hear it.

 

cheers

[Brother_Angelus]

Tanking handfuls of wounds on a sgt in artificer is whack and should be fixed. I don't think the answer is directional "nearest dies first" though.

 

All the time you're allowed to charge from reserves there needs to be a significant and sufficiently powerful deterrent. That's what reactions and by extension Augury Scanners provide. I'd rather this than getting rolled by Raven Guard and Blood Angels dropping in and wiping the floor with my army without reply.

 

Mentioning Shrouded then pivoting into cover saves being too weak is a weird structure for that argument? You know damage mitigation is an additional save after armour/cover/invulnerable is taken, yeah?

[Foudroyant Virus]

I think directional nearest dies first is a good way to mitigate that: You can tank shots with your Artificer Armour, but it is risky to put him up front, because a lascannon might kill him, if he fails his LoS. That solution makes mixed weaponry feasible again also. A single combimelta in a squad might force your enemie to make decisions. I like planning more than a simple pick and chose option.

Yes, charging from reserves is really strong. But augury scanners are just too good: It is 10P, it doenst get capped by your reaction limit, you shoot with full BS, the target unit has no way to react to that and you dont suffer any consequences down the line. If you outflank you just gift a whole shooting phase to your enemy.
The problem here is again: Either i outflank a huge force, so you cant kill them all or i outflank nothing at all. there is no inbetween possible.
Remeber every deredeo, every arcus will intercept as well. Additionally one unit can intercept as the standard reaction.
It get worse with flyers. It is really hard to get them on the board without being shot down instantly. And without a jink or anything flyers are just doomed in this game.

Yes, I know how Shrouded works. And if your deathstar is shot at it is a good reaction. But you usually have one reaction (maybe two, if you got the right WLT). And returnfire in the current way (you shoot back, before your enemie even shot you is really weird) is superior in almost every way.
So, no. I dont think Shrouded does anything to boost coversaves. Therefore the argument stays: Shrouded is a nice mechanic. Though it doesnt have anything to do with cover (except for the fluff-text).

[Brother Sutek]

I actually liked that you took wounds from the nearest model.  My Sgt right now is cartwheeling around the unit. 

 

[Galron]

I like nearest model gets hit as well. 

 

My only pet peeve is reactions and mostly because they neuter any sort of fluffy deep strike army. I think shooting reactions(counting the free augury scanner intercept) should be reduced to one shooting reaction per unit per TURN. That will prevent one unit from shooting up to three times in the opponent's phase. The guys have to stop and reload sometime. Even the old Fury of the Legion made a shooting unit have to take a turn off of shooting after its use.

 

What this does is still allow for mass interceptor from the entire gunline if the player wants to do so. Or they can choose to return fire, or they can shoot overwatch. Cant do all three in one round however.

[LameBeard]

My preference is just to ban artificer armour on sergeants. There is no particular justification in the fluff, no need for any rules change, just a single friendly agreement on army lists.
 

Mixed armour slows things down. Might also extend the agreement to all units: so storm shields would be all/none in a unit etc. Only independent characters can then “tank” and you are risking more that way. Maybe there are funny exceptions like Techmarine and I am not familiar with non-marine lists, but this seems the most elegant way.

 

For a challenge, I would make them specific. Character X challenges Character Y. Refusal means Y cannot attack - whether or not another character accepts on their behalf. This lets Sigismund get more bang for his buck but still allows sergeants and chosen warriors to use some bravado and slow characters down. Again, seems to fit the fluff well enough.

 

 

Edited February 23, 2023 by LameBeard

[MrZakalwe]

I prefer 2.0 wound allocation to 1.0 - weird angle sniping and jank weren't a plus. Also the idea that marines couldn't recrew a heavy weapon etc, but artificer tanking is a nuisance.

I feel that if you can find a way to minimise that, you pretty much get a best of both worlds. 

[Noserenda]

Yeah sergeant tanking is the real problem, just stop them taking artificer armour. 

Personally id just chuck challenges in the bin and given certain characters like champions a challenge special rule that forces a specific character into a 1 on 1 combat. 

Id also switch to 40k styled datasheets, i love a big swathe of blank paper as much as the next man but id prefer some special or weapon rules to stop flicking back and forth across all the books needlessly

[MichaelCarmine]

I'd like the idea of Artificer getting some kind of "wound" system. For example, an Artificer Armor gives you, lets say, 5 "wounds"/rolls with a 2+ ArmorSafe.

After that amount of saves is depleted, the armor becomes 3+.

[Foudroyant Virus]

1 hour ago, Galron said:

I think shooting reactions(counting the free augury scanner intercept) should be reduced to one shooting reaction per unit per TURN.

That is actually a really good idea! 
You need to make a decision: when do i want to (react-)shoot the enemie. No more getting shot 3 times in your own turn before you can silence those Heavy support squads :)

[Stitch5000]

All issues with artificer armour and augury scanners just go away if you actually vary up your army composition a little and take some stuff with Precision Shots/Sniper. 

People seem to be pretty lethargic when it comes to building up new forces to work with the HH2 meta and are instead dragging their HH1 forces through and wondering why they don;t do the same work they did. 

[MrZakalwe]

16 minutes ago, Stitch5000 said:

All issues with artificer armour and augury scanners just go away if you actually vary up your army composition a little and take some stuff with Precision Shots/Sniper. 

People seem to be pretty lethargic when it comes to building up new forces to work with the HH2 meta and are instead dragging their HH1 forces through and wondering why they don;t do the same work they did. 

Loads of weaponry (anything AP 3, really) requiring a sniper to hit a tac squad before it can efficiently deal with it, really isn't a feature.

[MichaelCarmine]

5 minutes ago, Stitch5000 said:

All issues with artificer armour and augury scanners just go away if you actually vary up your army composition a little and take some stuff with Precision Shots/Sniper. 

People seem to be pretty lethargic when it comes to building up new forces to work with the HH2 meta and are instead dragging their HH1 forces through and wondering why they don;t do the same work they did. 

Well 5 man SniperSquad generates 1 Breach on average. With Cover and an Apothecary, thats pretts far from a guaranteed Charackter/Artificer kill... 

A Seeker Squad is much beter, but is also kind of wasted on, lets say, a tac squad. They (you) want to shoot elite units, or ICs, where their breaching and precision shots do the most Damage.

And even a Vigilator doesn't want to focus his first shots on a mere TacSergeant. 

You can't always snipe your way around/through an artificer. So most of the time, or if your opponent has a brain, he's looking to hide his Chars out of sight of your snipers. 

 

So no, not "all issues go away" just because you field a few snipers... sadly!

[Foudroyant Virus]

32 minutes ago, Stitch5000 said:

All issues with artificer armour and augury scanners just go away if you actually vary up your army composition a little and take some stuff with Precision Shots/Sniper. 
 

Especially untrue for augury scanners. You can easily hide your augury scanners, since they dont need to shoot. 
and since Nemesis bolters are heavy weapons, the positioning ist often quite clear, so you can easily hide your Apothecaries, MoS or Augury scanners.

yeah, for tac sa it might be true. Those arent the big problem, as far as i am concerned. The problem are 20 jumpmarines with a sergeant and two characters.

you can tank wounds endlessly, using the grunts to take any AP2 shots.

and of course, snipers might mitigate it a bit, but is the viable way for everygame that you need at least 10 nemesis veterans, so your bolters are actually going to do anything?

That is my problem with this rule: it is just super dumbed down. Neither the shooting player has to think about anything like what weapon to fire first, nor does the shot at player take any meaningfull or hard decisions... put AP3 on characters and AP2 on grunts.

 

2 hours ago, MrZakalwe said:

I prefer 2.0 wound allocation to 1.0 - weird angle sniping and jank weren't a plus. Also the idea that marines couldn't recrew a heavy weapon etc, but artificer tanking is a nuisance.

Yes, i get that. Angle sniping is not much fun. It might be a thing in tournament play, but not something i encountered really often. 
and saying that: we have a really hard and competitive meta, but with not a lot of cheese in it. So it works quite well for us :)

[Xenith]

1 hour ago, MichaelCarmine said:

I'd like the idea of Artificer getting some kind of "wound" system. For example, an Artificer Armor gives you, lets say, 5 "wounds"/rolls with a 2+ ArmorSafe.

After that amount of saves is depleted, the armor becomes 3+.

 

This is more book keeping in a game with thankfully less book keeping compared to 40k.

 

I did see a proposed rule on FB where characters can only be allocated a number of wounds equal to their initiative before the rest has to go on the unit. That might work, and stop a serge from occasionally batting away 15 volkite wounds.

Edited February 23, 2023 by Xenith

[arnesh88]

I think using Auspex Scanners should require a Leadership check to fire on the Deep Striking unit. If they fail, they count as having performed a Reaction still, but don't actually do anything, or fire Snap Shots. Either leadership 7 across the board, or base leadership of the unit (I lean towards the latter). 

Edited February 23, 2023 by arnesh88

[MrZakalwe]

26 minutes ago, arnesh88 said:

I think using Auspex Scanners should require a Leadership check to fire on the Deep Striking unit. If they fail, they count as having performed a Reaction still, but don't actually do anything, or fire Snap Shots. Either leadership 7 across the board, or base leadership of the unit (I lean towards the latter). 

Just have them count towards the 3 reactions per phase limit. They still perform their role while and provide a solid deterrent to nearby deepstrikes but can't be spammed. 

As far as I can tell (like a great many things in Heresy) they are only an issue in unusually large quantities. 

Edited February 23, 2023 by MrZakalwe

[arnesh88]

22 minutes ago, MrZakalwe said:

Just have them count towards the 3 reactions per phase limit. They still perform their role while and provide a solid deterrent to nearby deepstrikes but can't be spammed. 

As far as I can tell (like a great many things in Heresy) they are only an issue in unusually large quantities. 

I agree that anything in unusually large quantities in Horus Heresy causes problems for the game. I come from a mindset of making "softer" adjustments and trying them out before pursuing a stricter restriction. I might very well be wrong, I fully admit that. But I think taking smaller steps will help lead to a healthier gaming environment.

[Gorgoff]

Hard cap of 3 reactions per phase would be good. They shouldn't have change it. 

[MARK0SIAN]

My personal choice would be one reaction per unit per turn with each reaction only being useable once per phase, so no matter how many augury scanners you had you could still only intercept once. I’d also make it so reacting had a downside, like if a unit fired they couldn’t fit in their own turn.

 

I agree with the OP about challenges, wounds should spill over. Or, make it so that if you didn’t answer the challenge with an independent character then any independent characters in the unit were ineligible to fight at all, they are clearly cowards after all 

[Brofist]

I think its time we said goodbye to the vehicle damage table. Keep armor values, drop the table.

[MichaelCarmine]

25 minutes ago, Brofist said:

I think its time we said goodbye to the vehicle damage table. Keep armor values, drop the table.

I wouldn't go that far, just no Explode on 7+, more like - change it in something like AmmoStorage hit on 7+ and you have to hit that twice (so two times 7+) to explode. So that way you'd have to get reeeeeeeeeeally lucky to explode a Tank with one shooting attack.

[Gorgoff]

1 hour ago, MARK0SIAN said:

My personal choice would be one reaction per unit per turn with each reaction only being useable once per phase, so no matter how many augury scanners you had you could still only intercept once. I’d also make it so reacting had a downside, like if a unit fired they couldn’t fit in their own turn.

 

And when your EC opponent olay Maru Skara and outflanks 3 units of terminators or you play against BA who Deep Strike three or four Assault marine/ special units you are pretty much :cuss:ed. That isn't a good solution. Interceot is the direct counter to this and needs to be but it can't be allowed too much. 

1 hour ago, MARK0SIAN said:

I agree with the OP about challenges, wounds should spill over. Or, make it so that if you didn’t answer the challenge with an independent character then any independent characters in the unit were ineligible to fight at all, they are clearly cowards after all 

Or simpler you can choose how many attacks you put on your opponent in the challange and how many into the unit. So you could get both 

29 minutes ago, Brofist said:

I think its time we said goodbye to the vehicle damage table. Keep armor values, drop the table.

But how should that work?

[MARK0SIAN]

14 minutes ago, Gorgoff said:

 

And when your EC opponent olay Maru Skara and outflanks 3 units of terminators or you play against BA who Deep Strike three or four Assault marine/ special units you are pretty much :cuss:ed. That isn't a good solution. Interceot is the direct counter to this and needs to be but it can't be allowed too much. 

But outflanking and deepstriking already have risks attached to mitigate them. There’s scatter and disordered for deepstrike, which if you have a Damocles makes the deep strike a very risky proposition for your opponent. It’s also easy to screen and prepare for outflanking units. 
 

you’re also talking about strategies that can cope with the intercept because they’re dropping several units at a time, they’re built to overwhelm via deepstrike or outflank. If, however, the player isn’t going all out on deepstrike/outflank units but wants to use one or two it’s tantamount to suicide as they could be intercepted by multiple units using augury scanners. 
 

If you’re not going to cap intercept at once per turn then at the bare minimum it should be a rule that no single unit can be intercepted more than once. 
 

It’s never been a good idea in any edition of this game when armies get powerful abilities for free or at very little cost, it was one of the biggest complaints about 7th editions formations. Reactions, particularly interceptor, fall into the same category for me, extremely powerful but don’t really cost anything. It needs toning down.

[Brofist]

2 hours ago, Gorgoff said:

But how should that work?

 

Well there aren't that many meaningful outcomes of the table: you explode, you can't move, you can't shoot. Infantry already have that approximation without a table through the pinning mechanic. I'm confidant they could drop the table while still keeping armor values. EX: By how many did you beat the armor value? If this is equal or higher than your AP, you stunned the tank.

Edited February 23, 2023 by Brofist