Battleshock

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

Is the new mechanic worth anything at all?

I’ve yet to have an opportunity to play this edition and have seen a lot of posts about how it’s useless.

 

so what’s your experience with the mechanic? Has it made a difference in the game for you?

[SkimaskMohawk]

In its initial form it can make a difference. I've seen games in tournament decided because a unit failed a battleshock test and couldn't score.

 

But, it's definitely not as impactful as imagined due to how below half strength is calculated and due to less CP/stratagem economy.

 

Also, of all the abilities that inflict battleshock, most are useless due to wearing off before scoring. Shadow in the warp is a bit of an outlier, but so are nids in general since they have multiple mechanics that key off failed battleshock.

[Kallas]

18 minutes ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

so what’s your experience with the mechanic?

I thought it was interesting, but it's had very limited impact in the few games I've played. Hell, I had one game where I failed most of my Battleshock tests (maybe not quite that much, but at least two turns of majority fails) and it still didn't make much of a difference.

 

It's a good concept, but it's got two main problems:

1. It's much of a penalty overall, and
2. It's not likely enough to happen.

With #1, the OC penalty is potentially important, but generally speaking units are going to get hammered hard enough that it won't matter - they'll often be so battered that they can't contest what the opponent puts up to take it away anyway; or they'll just get destroyed outright. The Stratagem penalty is also kind of similar: if they're Battleshocked from casualties, they're probably not a good target for Stratagems and the limited CP of 10th means it'd often be a waste to use them frivolously anyway. Finally, the fact that Battleshock automatically clears itself means it's really not that impactful when it happens out-of-sequence, making it less useful for those that can force out-of-sequence tests.

 

For #2, high Leadership across the board makes it super unlikely. Maybe Guard, Necrons and GSC can fail, but they're all factions that can absorb casualties in varying manners (Guard have back-up units and generally tanks don't care too much; Necrons ressurrect, so can counteract the check outright, plus characters boost their Ld; and GSC units are often wiped out and simply replaced, though maybe less so post-Dataslate; and things like Tyranids have Synapse to counteract the otherwise low Ld or their horde units).

 

The changes to Insane Bravery were good, by making it more limited it's now much harder to just stop it affecting something important, but it's still weak just from Ld values being so high across so many factions. Personally, I think there are two main changes I'd like to see to Battleshock to make it more important to the overall flow of the game:

1. Battleshock is only removed on a successful test, not automatically
2. Some kind of Ld penalty somewhere to make failures more common/likely (eg, maybe a unit that is already Battleshocked that is forced to test again suffers a -1 in their next Command Phase? I dunno, just something to make the high Ld less reliable)

It's a fine rule in principle, it just isn't impactful enough or frequent enough to be worth the ink in its current form.

[DemonGSides]

I'd prefer if it made the unit automatically Go to Ground; make is slightly more durable, but also remove the ability for the unit to move.  They can still shoot, but movement should be 0'd out until the battleshock wears off (They successfully fought or shot their way out of the situation) or they are dead.

I agree with Kallas that the current iteration has good bones, but needs actual teeth or meat or something to make it effective.

[MARK0SIAN]

Battleshock isn’t very impactful but to be fair, I don’t mind that. Nothing sucks more than your units just not being able to take part in certain elements of the game. I’d honestly rather they just died. Plus battleshock/morale has always been really immersion breaking in 40k because it runs so counter to the lore of many of the factions. 

[Helias_Tancred]

On 9/20/2023 at 4:28 PM, MARK0SIAN said:

Battleshock isn’t very impactful but to be fair, I don’t mind that. Nothing sucks more than your units just not being able to take part in certain elements of the game. I’d honestly rather they just died. Plus battleshock/morale has always been really immersion breaking in 40k because it runs so counter to the lore of many of the factions. 

 

I agree. The game is more enjoyable with rare Battleshock. That being said units that were balanced around battlshock abilities (looking at you DA Detachment rules) need revisited. 

 

[Rain]

On 9/20/2023 at 1:28 PM, MARK0SIAN said:

Battleshock isn’t very impactful but to be fair, I don’t mind that. Nothing sucks more than your units just not being able to take part in certain elements of the game. I’d honestly rather they just died. Plus battleshock/morale has always been really immersion breaking in 40k because it runs so counter to the lore of many of the factions. 

I know that it’s an abstraction and not meant to only represent terror or shell shock, but the idea of Angron becoming “battle shocked” is really funny to me 

[Cenobite Terminator]

Are there any units completely immune to battle shock?

[Kallas]

1 hour ago, milddead said:

Are there any units completely immune to battle shock?

No, but yes: any unit with two models is immune, because you need to be "below half strength" to test for Battleshock, which means 2-strong units cannot ever be below the threshold. This affects this like Chaos Spawn or 2-strong Obliterators, for example.

[MARK0SIAN]

12 hours ago, Rain said:

I know that it’s an abstraction and not meant to only represent terror or shell shock, but the idea of Angron becoming “battle shocked” is really funny to me 

Yeah, you know the violence has gone too far when even Angron mutters “I say, steady on old chap!” 

[Tyriks]

I have won a game off Battleshock but it was a super tight game. It has barely mattered in my other games. I agree though that the game tends to be more fun when units are actually doing things, so I'm fine with it being a rare issue.

[Arikel]

4 hours ago, Kallas said:

No, but yes: any unit with two models is immune, because you need to be "below half strength" to test for Battleshock, which means 2-strong units cannot ever be below the threshold. This affects this like Chaos Spawn or 2-strong Obliterators, for example.

Only in the case of single wound models I believe. A 2 man unit of multiwound models that has lost one model and had suffered one wound or more on the other would be below half strength from my understanding of how half strength is calculated for multiwound models.

[Kallas]

3 hours ago, Arikel said:

Only in the case of single wound models I believe. A 2 man unit of multiwound models that has lost one model and had suffered one wound or more on the other would be below half strength from my understanding of how half strength is calculated for multiwound models.

This is incorrect, from page 12:

Spoiler

A unit with a Starting Strength of 2 is affected by the second bullet point, and so the first bullet point is not relevant, meaning that that unit only tests when has a number of models "less than half" of its SS. The Rules Commentary also does not make any allowances for such units.

 

Though it would be true that these units could still be affected by any ability that forces Battleshock, they're just immune to normal Command phase-triggered Battleshock.

[sairence]

4 hours ago, Arikel said:

Only in the case of single wound models I believe. A 2 man unit of multiwound models that has lost one model and had suffered one wound or more on the other would be below half strength from my understanding of how half strength is calculated for multiwound models.

 

Not quite. A unit is below half strength if it lost more than half its starting models. If it only consists of one model, it's instead considered that once it drops below half its starting wounds. At least that's how everyone I've played against throughout 10th has done it. :)