Let’s talk about melee

[SvenIronhand]

1 hour ago, ThePenitentOne said:

See, I feel like a captain's job is to be a CAPTAIN- you know, command troops, offer strategy, command a unit... etc.

 

Sure, he's a frontline combatant, but a monstrous tyranid is large enough to swallow him whole and is used to eating only that which it is skilled enough to kill.  I'm not saying a Captain shouldn't be able to win against a tyranid monster, but it shouldn't be a guarantee either. I could see a captain's odds as good as 60/40.

 

And again, I blame BL BS for promoting the idea that these kind of fights should always go in a marine's favour. It's crap. It's why I disagree with people who think that BL novels are the fluff. They aren't. They're like a based-on-a-true-story Lifetime stranger danger movie at best. It think all BL authors should be forced to play at least three games with the factions they're writing about and be told be GW that if it couldn't possibly happen on the table, don't put it in your book.

When I started this line of discussion, I specifically emphasized the sorts of melee weapons that were possessed of good anti-tank capability in prior editions: Thunder Hammers and Power Fists.

[The Unseen]

Man, remember the days when most vehicles had AV10 rear armor, 3 Hull Points, and Krak grenades were Str6? 

 

A Tactical Squad was an exisistential threat to most transports between a meltagun and melee.

 

This thread just makes me wish even harder that my local scene had Heresy players.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

15 hours ago, chapter master 454 said:

lets not get real-world and all that on things for stats. While it can be useful when crafting things, at the scale of battle 40k is at, getting to granular isn't going to help. Yes, a Guardsman may not WANT to use his bayonet on that Khorne Berzerker but hey, backs to the way, that monster runs twice as fast, weighs more than a range rover and one of his arms weigh as much as you do after an all you can eat buffet: fight because flight ain't an option and if you are going out, you go out fighting guardsman.

 

I may of foot in mouthed myself in my first post because of how many thoughts I had spinning in my head, but I took some time, going to leave my first mess up there for people to quote me and give me notifications about and grill me for, I can repent for that with the chaplains later.

 

The main issue I feel really is in stats. Core of them is AP in my opinion. Melee just feels like it lacks bite because I am shocked by what has barely AP2. I mean, looking through our own armoury of the adeptus astartes, find me AP3 weapons base that are melee.

I actually can't name any. Like...at all. Power Weapons of various kinds normally had AP ranging between 1 to 3 but now, a whole lot of AP1 and a good few AP2 but I can't seem to find AP3 without going into buffs and even then, I find it comically easy to find methods of hitting AP3 far more at range than melee. Granted, this could be a very consious and thought out consideration for melee as we don't have one very key thing in melee: cover. So naturally they maybe kept AP from reaching 3 in melee to help keep it in line, meaning power armour still offers decent protection while lighter troops get mauled quite quickly.

However it does mean some melee specialists really struggle at times when they shouldn't. Again, personally with my marines I am finding it quite odd that I can bounce melee threats off my centurions quite well with just armour of contempt, after asking "whats the AP of that?" and so far, I am yet to get any sort of regular answer of anything above 2, commonly landing on 1 or 2 being the answer. Maybe that is just armour of contempt being so outright BUSTED good (How...in emperor's name is it a Battle Tactic? Its a tactic to hold your enemy in contempt? Who knew) but again, even without it marines still bounce a lot of melee on a 5+ save and terminators and the like with 2+ saves don't even need their 4++ in melee.

 

Maybe other factions will come in with it but so far, I ain't sure. Do tyranids have AP3 melee on things? (or higher, that aren't on special units like say a leader bug or something) because I am pretty sure Mechanicus don't and so far from what I've seen from necrons, neither do they (then again...I don't see their melee a lot...I see what looks like Necrons cosplaying as grey knights with anti-tank!)

 

Also, again ruins are so hilariously one sided in what they favour in competitive scenes its obscene. Infantry getting the privlege pass to just ghost through is I think low-key a bad thing for the game. While it means you can counter charge easily...thats kind of the problem and why Indirect Fire is "a problem". Its kind of TOO easy to hide infantry with no penalty and any approach of an objective near a ruin can be impossible to properly deal with without giving a free charge. Again, I am one of the "melee haters" because personally I feel melee has been way too strong for multiple editions but considering I am a tread-head lover of tanks and monsters (who were famously shafted in prior editions) I think my distaste for melee would be evident as to why.

Its valid...but tanks not being able to push infantry out of the way irks me. (at least I have big guns never tire now)

I think AP-2 is just fine in general, the real issue melee weapons have is that the ones traditionally meant to kill vehicles are now only effective at killing light and medium vehicles.

 

but AP-2 is just fine if you’re throwing out 3-4 attacks per model and hitting on a 3 or better, and have sufficient S to reliably wound your target.

 

against infantry melee specialists do just fine. Most infantry has a 3+ with no invuln, so AP-2 has them saving on a much worse 5+ and a lot faction’s infantry will be saving on a 6+ or get no save at all from AP-2 weapons.

 

personally I think melee and shooting would be fairly well balanced if they fixed the ruin rules.

 

 

most ranged weapons with AP-3 or better tend to come in fairly low numbers and get only one shot.

 

meanwhile aggressors get 3 attacks each and rerolls to wound at S8 AP-2 D2 hitting on 3+ that’s pretty good chances for inflicting serious damage on the most durable targets.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

10 hours ago, Karhedron said:

I am going to be the dissenting voice here and say I quite like the balance between melee and shooting in 10th edition. I feel that 9th edition was too melee-centric. Lots of units like tanks were rarely seen because they could be overrun in a single turn by a bunch of guys with hammers and rockets on their backs. Everyone is going to have their own personal taste for the balance of shooting vs melee.

 

Personally I feel that melee is still viable. It is particularly important for sweeping enemy troops off Objectives. But unlike previous editions, you don't get deathstars rolling up the entire enemy army. The strong performance of armies like World Eaters shows that melee-heavy armies are still viable (at least they were until the latest balance slate). 

This is about how I feel about it. I’d bump PFs, THs and similar weapons to S10 and make ruins actually solid, but that’s as far as I’d go in order to improve melee as the entire mechanic currently exists.

 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

8 hours ago, jaxom said:

I'll take that a step further: I think melee is in a much better place than shooting at the moment, and shooting needs to be toned down.

 

However, that's in the context of the 10th edition rules. To @Inquisitor_Lensoven's original point, I think part of why I like not having Initiative and comparative WS is the reduction on what I need to know about my opponent's units. As game's have gotten larger and faction rosters expand it became more of a pain to do so. If 40k were smaller scale then I'd be a'okay with bringing back more granularity. 

 

 

Idk anything about any faction that’s not my own. Hell I barely know anything about my own factions’ stats and rules, doesn’t mean that a more in-depth melee system wont make melee more fun and interesting.

 

just my humble opinion, but you don’t need to know the exact stats of every unit in the army across from you.

 

you don’t need to know exactly what the stats on bullgryn are to realize you may not want your fire warriors to charge them or be charged by them. 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

7 hours ago, SvenIronhand said:

Then raise the points if that's such a problem. A SM Captain is supposed to be a front-line combatant, and he loses utility when his only viable target is light infantry or the occasional MEQ. He's not there to sit in the back and direct things from a map table with croupier sticks. He's there to solve the problem kinetically. 

IRL, infantry AT weapons have regularly outpaced tank armor, and that's without power fields or power armored superhuman soldiers swinging them home. 

You’re really undercutting the effectiveness of marines in melee.

 

a captain with a PF or TH is still a big threat to standard MEQ units, light vehicles, and every thing in between.

 

a captain w/ PF is hitting on 2+ wounding MOST targets on 3+, nerfing their saves by 2, doing 2 damage, and on top of all that he has 5 attacks. Go with a gravis captain and you can 6 of those attacks, they just can’t pull off primarch feats of melee (in lore) any more.

 

aggressors, VGV, Brutalis dreads, captains will still blend ANY infantry unit that doesn’t have an invuln save.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

5 hours ago, SvenIronhand said:

All of those are ranged options; this is a thread about melee.

R/woosh

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

4 hours ago, ThePenitentOne said:

 

See, I feel like a captain's job is to be a CAPTAIN- you know, command troops, offer strategy, command a unit... etc.

 

Sure, he's a frontline combatant, but a monstrous tyranid is large enough to swallow him whole and is used to eating only that which it is skilled enough to kill.  I'm not saying a Captain shouldn't be able to win against a tyranid monster, but it shouldn't be a guarantee either. I could see a captain's odds as good as 60/40.

 

And again, I blame BL BS for promoting the idea that these kind of fights should always go in a marine's favour. It's crap. It's why I disagree with people who think that BL novels are the fluff. They aren't. They're like a based-on-a-true-story Lifetime stranger danger movie at best. It think all BL authors should be forced to play at least three games with the factions they're writing about and be told be GW that if it couldn't possibly happen on the table, don't put it in your book.

I mean :cuss: even Dante nearly died fighting a swarm lord but homie thinks random imperial fist captain #7 should be able to solo one like it’s no problem.

[Kallas]

10 hours ago, Emperor Ming said:

If you blow the enemy away from orbit, they cant hit you with a sword

 

Spoiler

 

[Mechanicus Tech-Support]

So is this just about SM melee or melee in general, cuz didnt WE just eat a nerf due to T1 charges essentially winning games

[TheArtilleryman]

I think the OP was arguing that the current system of melee is too basic and doesn’t allow for enough variety between units, as well as being weird that you hit just as easily no matter how skilled your opponent is.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

1 hour ago, TheArtilleryman said:

I think the OP was arguing that the current system of melee is too basic and doesn’t allow for enough variety between units, as well as being weird that you hit just as easily no matter how skilled your opponent is.

That’s how it started but then it quickly devolved into is melee underpowered or not 

[chapter master 454]

I mean, if we are talking how the system operates, it is fine imo.

Maybe missing to some extent having a universal ability to say "close combat weapon" and not have that range between a guardsman's mayonet to a tanks treads, but you take and give for benefits.

 

However as I would point out, they apparently don't like the way The Old World does it ether, wanting it simpler but yet they would like the return of Inititive and Weapon Skill, which are the two major factors in making things complicated. The only way to make the system relatively simple but not as it is now is having models have an extra stat (seperate from their melee weapon or we need to introduce Weapon Skill Modifier to weapons that alter a models weapon skill) which represents their ability in melee and we would have that stat compare against an opponent with a basic requirement: If you are equal or only one lower than them, you hit on 4+. If you are 2 lower or more, you hit on 5s. If you are one above the opponent you hit on 3s, if you are three points higher you hit on 2s. But now we need weapons that carry inherent penalties to Weapon Skill to represent their cumbersome nature, and they would have to be character specific ones too so power fists on characters would have our brand new "Cumbersome X" modifier which is a negative trait (something they didn't want to do in 10th) that lowers your weapon skill by the amount listed, representing how comfortable these units are with the weapon or capable of using them.

 

Not really sure that rolls well ether, because now you have to compare Weapon Skill, compare Strength vs. Toughess (with a different system of roll required) then check saving throws (with again, another system for modifying) and everything feels quite clunky now because before that we had our roll to charge, then we had our pile-in, and that ignores any other nonsense going on.

 

And I have even considered giving a go at some sort of "less that old world but more than 10th edition 40k".

It would give skill melee units a slight boost to defence but...as a veteran from 4th edition...Weapon Skill barely ever mattered to a point that it negatively affected the attacker. Like I think I saw grots once swing at a space marine captain once and needed 5s...once. Most times, it just meant the attacker had an easier time hitting the target on 3s...which most melee specialists currently hit on anyway. All this would add is a minor boost to the crack-back melee which if a melee specialist unit charged would mean a single guardsman attacking back with 1 attack hitting on 5 instead of 4.

 

Not to mention the only faction I found that really benefited from these system was the Eldar who I only ever once got to say "higher than you" against because that is what their stats were in terms of Weapon Skill and Initiative and that just meant even charging them meant you got hit first and then died so even less counterplay. Oh and the one time I got to go first in combat was with an Eversor Assassin vs. an Autarch.

 

I would agree however that melee vs. larger targets is somewhat lacking in options. Would be nice to see maybe a return of Melta Grenades are a melee weapon for some units, a single attack melta stat-line weapon with D6+4 damage or something? Doesn't have extra attack, just an option when swinging against tanks and monsters (because thermal charges of that scale will hurt chitin just as much as it would ceramite).

 

It isn't exactly going to be a good solution no matter what we do though for melee as we have established here:

Some of us like it.

Some of us don't like it.

And we all speak within this lovely echo chamber where only a select few of us represent not even a speck of dust in the titanic scale of the hobby.

 

Still fun to discuss but keep that in mind, we ain't changing the future here. But keep yer stinking meltaguns from pre-10th edition away from me because having a single infantry trooper invalidate an entire tank isn't fun nor skillful. I lived through 4th, I saw what glancing blows did to tanks...

Some Vindicators never recovered you know...they never regrew their demolisher cannons...they had to be put down...-sniff-

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

47 minutes ago, chapter master 454 said:

I mean, if we are talking how the system operates, it is fine imo.

Maybe missing to some extent having a universal ability to say "close combat weapon" and not have that range between a guardsman's mayonet to a tanks treads, but you take and give for benefits.

 

However as I would point out, they apparently don't like the way The Old World does it ether, wanting it simpler but yet they would like the return of Inititive and Weapon Skill, which are the two major factors in making things complicated. The only way to make the system relatively simple but not as it is now is having models have an extra stat (seperate from their melee weapon or we need to introduce Weapon Skill Modifier to weapons that alter a models weapon skill) which represents their ability in melee and we would have that stat compare against an opponent with a basic requirement: If you are equal or only one lower than them, you hit on 4+. If you are 2 lower or more, you hit on 5s. If you are one above the opponent you hit on 3s, if you are three points higher you hit on 2s. But now we need weapons that carry inherent penalties to Weapon Skill to represent their cumbersome nature, and they would have to be character specific ones too so power fists on characters would have our brand new "Cumbersome X" modifier which is a negative trait (something they didn't want to do in 10th) that lowers your weapon skill by the amount listed, representing how comfortable these units are with the weapon or capable of using them.

 

Not really sure that rolls well ether, because now you have to compare Weapon Skill, compare Strength vs. Toughess (with a different system of roll required) then check saving throws (with again, another system for modifying) and everything feels quite clunky now because before that we had our roll to charge, then we had our pile-in, and that ignores any other nonsense going on.

 

And I have even considered giving a go at some sort of "less that old world but more than 10th edition 40k".

It would give skill melee units a slight boost to defence but...as a veteran from 4th edition...Weapon Skill barely ever mattered to a point that it negatively affected the attacker. Like I think I saw grots once swing at a space marine captain once and needed 5s...once. Most times, it just meant the attacker had an easier time hitting the target on 3s...which most melee specialists currently hit on anyway. All this would add is a minor boost to the crack-back melee which if a melee specialist unit charged would mean a single guardsman attacking back with 1 attack hitting on 5 instead of 4.

 

Not to mention the only faction I found that really benefited from these system was the Eldar who I only ever once got to say "higher than you" against because that is what their stats were in terms of Weapon Skill and Initiative and that just meant even charging them meant you got hit first and then died so even less counterplay. Oh and the one time I got to go first in combat was with an Eversor Assassin vs. an Autarch.

 

I would agree however that melee vs. larger targets is somewhat lacking in options. Would be nice to see maybe a return of Melta Grenades are a melee weapon for some units, a single attack melta stat-line weapon with D6+4 damage or something? Doesn't have extra attack, just an option when swinging against tanks and monsters (because thermal charges of that scale will hurt chitin just as much as it would ceramite).

 

It isn't exactly going to be a good solution no matter what we do though for melee as we have established here:

Some of us like it.

Some of us don't like it.

And we all speak within this lovely echo chamber where only a select few of us represent not even a speck of dust in the titanic scale of the hobby.

 

Still fun to discuss but keep that in mind, we ain't changing the future here. But keep yer stinking meltaguns from pre-10th edition away from me because having a single infantry trooper invalidate an entire tank isn't fun nor skillful. I lived through 4th, I saw what glancing blows did to tanks...

Some Vindicators never recovered you know...they never regrew their demolisher cannons...they had to be put down...-sniff-

I said TOW as a whole could use some streamlining.

im perfectly happy with how the combat itself works. Combat resolution is a little silly imho, but it is what it is.

[Valkyrion]

It's sometimes difficult to take the omniscient point of view, but all of the dice being rolled represent the combat as a whole, regardless of structure or rules or the numbers involved.

So a guardsman hitting an ork vs a primarch - yes, the dice rolls may be the same, but the guardsman is wounding the ork on 5's and guilliman on 6's, and the ork is saving on 6's and guilliman on 2's, and the ork has 1 wound and guilliman has 8 - or whatever the numbers are. 

Can a guardsman kill an ork? Yes, but it is unlikely. Can a guardsman kill guilliman? Demonstrably not.  I don't have any real knowledge of 10th, but how many guardsman can attack Guilliman in combat? 20, tops? I would imagine we'd be looking at scores if not hundreds of guardsman to take down Guilliman using 10th edition rules. 

 

This applies whether you are hitting on a static number, or comparing weapon skills.

You can't really justifiably argue that a guardsman hitting a primarch and a gretchin on the same number is silly without following the combat procedure to the end. 

 

 

[jaxom]

18 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

just my humble opinion, but you don’t need to know the exact stats of every unit in the army across from you.

 

you don’t need to know exactly what the stats on bullgryn are to realize you may not want your fire warriors to charge them or be charged by them. 

Strategically, sure. But if I need to know their WS to figure out which of my dice rolls hit, then it matters, instead of just being able to roll my dice and pick the hits because I know my own units WS.

 

 

As for TH and PF needing more oomph, I'm a-okay with them requiring a larger volume of attacks compared to the past. It's the same concept we've seen applied to some of the shoot weapons. A single autocannon can't kill a vehicle nowadays, etc etc.

[gideon stargreave]

I once played a game of 2nd ed where a commissar killed a hive tyrant. It was awesome, even for the nod player. Melee is where stories are made, where million to one chances come true ninety nine percent of the time. Shooting with pie plates or sustained fire dice or exploding d6 or whatever is fun and fine, but close combat needs to be epic. It’s the only phase where both parties can have murderous dice rolls. I don’t care that it’s balanced or granular or realistic, I care that it’s awesome. 
I want carnifexes killing entire squads, and I want a line guardsman to take its last wound in revenge. If the system provides that, if there is real peril and real deadliness, then it works. 
as an aside, it’s why 5e dnd is a weak system in my opinion, and why morkborg, or whfrp are so awesome. Combat has risks and rewards at their most extreme, it is swingy and nail biting for all parties. As someone else pointed out, ws comparison charts don’t mean one thing nor the other when it comes to exciting games.

give me legends and last stands 

[TheArtilleryman]

52 minutes ago, gideon stargreave said:

I once played a game of 2nd ed where a commissar killed a hive tyrant. It was awesome, even for the nod player. Melee is where stories are made, where million to one chances come true ninety nine percent of the time. Shooting with pie plates or sustained fire dice or exploding d6 or whatever is fun and fine, but close combat needs to be epic. It’s the only phase where both parties can have murderous dice rolls. I don’t care that it’s balanced or granular or realistic, I care that it’s awesome. 
I want carnifexes killing entire squads, and I want a line guardsman to take its last wound in revenge. If the system provides that, if there is real peril and real deadliness, then it works. 
as an aside, it’s why 5e dnd is a weak system in my opinion, and why morkborg, or whfrp are so awesome. Combat has risks and rewards at their most extreme, it is swingy and nail biting for all parties. As someone else pointed out, ws comparison charts don’t mean one thing nor the other when it comes to exciting games.

give me legends and last stands 

I once took out two hive tyrants in the same game with the same Eldar guardian squad. Same tactic each time - close range shuriken volley and then a charge. It was amazing

[Valkyrion]

You've also got the fact that a guardsman should be hitting a space marine in close combat, given barn doors and banjos. Whether that hit actually does anything and whether the rest of the squad are alive to back him up is a question answered by the other dice. 

[Nephaston]

My main gripe with every adaptation of melee combat is the pattern of IGOUGO where where either the charger, or, depending on edition, the one with the higher Initiative usually is the one winning the fight. That is of course if said unit doesn't completely suck or the rolls are just supremely unlucky. I do really like the system in kill team where it's semi-comparative and simultaneous, a veritable clash, trading blows, and the trade-off of having to parry to prevent that one wound instead of dealing yours.

 

Then again theres always been these weird roundabout ways of portraying the action on the tabletop, like simple stuff like dodging being an invulnerable save, a unit not moving at all if doesn't charge fast enough, bullets evaporating after a certain range, armour saves coming after the wound instead of resolving during the hit, everything having only six degrees of success and/or failure, et cetera.

[Valkyrion]

2 minutes ago, Nephaston said:

My main gripe with every adaptation of melee combat is the pattern of IGOUGO where where either the charger, or, depending on edition, the one with the higher Initiative usually is the one winning the fight. That is of course if said unit doesn't completely suck or the rolls are just supremely unlucky. I do really like the system in kill team where it's semi-comparative and simultaneous, a veritable clash, trading blows, and the trade-off of having to parry to prevent that one wound instead of dealing yours.

 

Then again theres always been these weird roundabout ways of portraying the action on the tabletop, like simple stuff like dodging being an invulnerable save, a unit not moving at all if doesn't charge fast enough, bullets evaporating after a certain range, armour saves coming after the wound instead of resolving during the hit, everything having only six degrees of success and/or failure, et cetera.

 

2nd ed was simultaneous, with fumbles, critical hits and so on. It's been a long time, but if I remember rightly it was;

roll a number of Attack dice, pick the highest and add your WS.

For every 6 after the first, you gain +1. For every 1 including the first, your opponent gains 1.

Winner scores that many hits, roll to wound and save each one. 

highest initiative won a tie. 

 

I think there were other things, like high ground and multiple combats, but the premise was based on 1v1 combat, and it could take a while to fully resolve, but if you were playing space marines you probably only had 30 models in your entire army, and the other melee based armies were usually pretty squishy so their numbers were diminished by the time melee ensued. 

Plus, the whole 2nd edition psychic phase was a hell of a thing if there were multiple psykers, vehicle damage charts and other 2nd ed chicanery that took a long time. Most Ork weapons had two pages of rules each, Cyclone Missile Launchers could trigger on being hit and riders could dismount bikes, so it was very much RPG like in many ways, which isn't really conducive to the dice fest/money maker it is now. 

[MaximusTL]

i think my beef with melee this edition has been brought up earlier in this thread: all melee anti-tank is gone. i think the erasure of 99% of marine D3 is a huge blow to their efficacy. melee has always had lower strength and damage, and its often difficult to get your whole squad into combat as at least a few and sometimes most of the squad would be gunned down before getting into combat, and if you fail your charge, that squad isn't gonna be there your next charge phase. now, it feels like if you DO get there, you don't have enough oomph to actually matter. Marines in particular fall short, with black templars being the exception that proves the rule. honestly, i think you could take the devastating wounds off of thunder hammers and give them back D3. 

Its not just a marine problem either. Howling banshees are :cuss: this edition, striking scorpions are only *vaguely* passable melee combatants due to their devastating wounds. If they're gonna make melee tyranid warriors more expensive than ranged ones, they should be damage 2 imo. it just generally feels that outside of world eaters and custodes, ranged damage is just the better option for damage.

[Nephaston]

27 minutes ago, Valkyrion said:

 

2nd ed was simultaneous, with fumbles, critical hits and so on. It's been a long time, but if I remember rightly it was;

roll a number of Attack dice, pick the highest and add your WS.

For every 6 after the first, you gain +1. For every 1 including the first, your opponent gains 1.

Winner scores that many hits, roll to wound and save each one. 

highest initiative won a tie. 

 

I think there were other things, like high ground and multiple combats, but the premise was based on 1v1 combat, and it could take a while to fully resolve, but if you were playing space marines you probably only had 30 models in your entire army, and the other melee based armies were usually pretty squishy so their numbers were diminished by the time melee ensued. 

Plus, the whole 2nd edition psychic phase was a hell of a thing if there were multiple psykers, vehicle damage charts and other 2nd ed chicanery that took a long time. Most Ork weapons had two pages of rules each, Cyclone Missile Launchers could trigger on being hit and riders could dismount bikes, so it was very much RPG like in many ways, which isn't really conducive to the dice fest/money maker it is now. 

Yeah, that all sounds amazing and like a damn chore simultaneously.

[Aarik]

I'm fine with the removal of comparing weapon skill to hit.  But I was sad about the removal of initiative.  I think it's pretty easy to understand, and prevents some of the clunkiness that's come from resolving all the various fights first/fights last abilities.  It feels like those are basically initiative anyway, just collapsed into three levels and hidden behind the scenes.  We effectively have initiative 3 (fights first), initiative 2 (default), and initiative 1 (fights last), but they're not explicit so its harder to figure out how to resolve competing effects.  Just make the numbers explicit again.  Charging can give you a bonus, fights first can give you a bonus or put you at I10, fights last can give you negatives or put you at I1.  And you can have a bit more granularity between different versions of the same effect.    

[crimsondave]

As I don’t have qualms about house ruling things, I’ve thought about playing melee by comparison just like strength vs toughness is now.  The idea a guardsman could hit Magnus with the same roll he can hit a Fire Warrior just seems silly.  This thread has me thinking about it harder now.