Alan Ritchie wrote:
> "John Hwang" <JohnHwangCSI RemoveThis @cs.com.no.com> wrote in message
> news:0ILzg.4166$cj7.3327@trnddc01...
> > Ty wrote:
<snip>
> But a 1 vs 1 fight is hugely unlikely, so you should account for the
> possibility of one scorpion killing more than one marine.
Context is important for sure, and missing from a lot of these
examples.
At 3 attacks
> each, 4 scorps kill one marine. At 4 attacks, 3 scorps kill one marine.
> The suriving normal marines get 1 attack each at 1/9 chance of a kill, so
> three or 4 scorps can be expected to draw a single round of combat with 10
> marines. Now marines are hard to rout, as they should be, but ignoring
> morale, scorps should wipe out an equal number of marines in 4 rounds of
> combat, or 2 turns. Even if the marines are inflicting some casualties,
> they rarely win a combat, and always run the risk of being routed and
> destroyed completely.
To be fair to 40K in relation to other games, maybe picking Space
Marines as the example is a poor choice. Regardless of how many people
take them, there's just no real comparison in historicals.
So here's 10 Stormtroopers (modern elite infantry with excellent body
armor) vs 10 IG (modern steady infantry). The Stormtroopers are assault
troops in the modern meaning, but lets see. (I'm not looking at the
Codex, but close enough to illustrate)
Assuming the APC or another unit puts in one round of prep fire: 2 dead
IG
Storms assault: 18 trooper attacks, 4 vet sgt attacks
IG defends: 7 trooper attacks, 2 sgt attacks
(Simultaneous combat due to initiative or use of frags)
Storms kill ~4 IG, IG kills ~1
IG outnumbered 2-1 and under 50%, fails leadership test, breaks, is run
down.
Combat over in 0.5 turns (1 round of HtH)
If the Stormies has fired their weapons at close range they would've
actually done better with their 'armor piercing' assault rifles.
For Fantasy/WH Historicals
20 halberdiers (A)
vs
20 halberdiers (B)
halberdiers (A) gaining the charge (initiative) and goes first
(A) 5+1 halberd attacks: 3 hit, 2 wound: 2 dead
(B) 3+1 halberd attacks: 2 hit, 1.333 wound: 1.333 dead (say 1)
Combat res: (A) Caused 2 wounds, 4 ranks, standard: +6
Combat res: (B) caused 1 wound, 3 ranks, standard: +4
(B) takes a break test at -2 (Leadership 5), fails, and routes.
(17 dice rolled, in 5 batches. Yahtzee veteran not breaking a sweat
here).
Even if they pass their test due to the general or a battle standard,
they're likely to lose the following rounds of combat due to the
initial loss of initiative, and will statistically speaking break now,
or very soon...or the vagaries of fate (dice) could perpetuate a
valiant stand to the last man, or even a victory.
*Every* wargame worth it's salt has die rolling/luck to some extent.
Play a game of chess with d6 versus d6 to take a piece, add +1 to the
roll of the higher rank piece, and +2 and tie wins to the attacking
piece. I'll bet you statistically get the same results as regular
chess, but it's more characteful and fun ;o)
---
Roll to hit, roll to wound, roll to save:
---
As Ty mentioned, it's hard to reduce the die roll count for 40K
(&Fantasy) if you're going to stick to the stats etc. already in place.
I don't have a problem with this. Here's why:
Roll to hit: Reflects skill in shooting, or skill vs. skill in HtH
Roll to wound: reflects strength of weapon and/or attacker in relation
to toughness of target
Roll to save: Takes into account armor, force fields, dodges, magic
bubbles, whatever.
With historicals in a set period (i.e. very similar units with nothing
new coming really) or a reduced scale game where say a regiment is one
or a few stands, you can distill all of that info down into a CAF.
Warmachine went with stat cards. I hate stat cards.
With the diversity in races and options in an effectively 1:1 scale
sci-fi or fantasy wargame, it'd make a damned dull game if all the
little tweaks or peculiarities weren't accounted for, and the current
system does this in a way that say upgrading a unit's light armor to
heavy armor and shield has a definite, but not world shattering impact
on the game. This *almost* RPG element is IMO what allows the
"Warhammer" family to operate from skirmish level up to grand
engagement (thousands of points per side). If anything, this is the one
thing, with adaptation, I'd willing to incorporate into any wargame, or
even an RPG-lite.
You'd have to come up with an exceedingly cunning plan to change my
mind on that, but I'm willing to listen to new ideas.
---
Overall
---
In general, without making huge changes to the game, I think breaking
up the strict Igo-Ugo structure of the warhammer family would be a good
thing although I would still want each unit to be self-directing and
not sit idle like morons for turns in a row due to lack of characters
(HQs may be a bonus though). The simplest thing I can think of at the
moment is simply taking turns moving or shooting, etc.but this would
screw up declaring charges, flanking, assaults, the two turns of HtH,
etc. and probably require markers. I also like the *idea* of
overwatch/hold, but am leary of it's implementation. This is something
I'm all ears on.
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