Episode 121: New 40K: Fighting & Morale

In this episode, we talk about changes to the charge and fight phases in the game. We also cover the Morale phase. There are a number of minor changes that have taken away some of the nuanced movement you could do in the last edition during assault.

Introduction

Charge 2 phases; charge and heroic intervention.

Still select a unit within 12” to charge. You can still select multiple targets, BUT, if you fail to make the charge to all available targets, you fail.

You can’t move to within engagement range of targets that were not selected as targets, and you don’t have to move the first model to engagement range, you just need to end up in engagement range of your targets.

This is big, no more speculative charges for potential movement, and no more consolidating into fight if you did not make the initial charge distance.

Heroic Intervention is after the charges step and is still for characters not in engagement range and they can move 3” in their opponents phase.

Units that do this though CAN be attacked in the fight phase.

Remember engagement range is 1” horizontal, 5” vertical.

If a terrain feature is more than 1” in height, you have to climb it as part of  your charge move. You can climb terrain for a charge move, but can’t end “mid climb.” Units with Fly ignore this.

BUT… there are two terrain rules we will cover in another episode.

• Breachable: Infantry, beasts, swarms can move through walls, girders, chains and foliage
• Scalable: infantry, beasts, swarms can move through floors, ceilings, and gantries

Most ruins have both of these rules, although of course that is up to the players to define these rules.

Overwatch is not automatic anymore; its a stratagem in the core book. So overwatch happens before the charge roll is made.

Fight

You start with the player who’s turn is not taking place to pick units to fight. Charging units fight first though, so this comes into play only when an ongoing combat has happened.

Pile in 3”, must end closer to closest enemy model, so you can “base surf” around a model, but you can’t hop to another model that is farther away during pile in.

Models fight when in engagement range AND if the model is within ½” of another model that is ½” of an enemy model, basically meaning you fight in 2 ranks.

You can target units in engagement range AND units that made a heroic intervention. If no units to fight, have to consolidate. If you target multiple units, you have to resolve against one unit before moving to the next. If multiple weapons, have to resolve by weapon profile then move to the next one.

Consolidate is still 3”, have to end closer to the closest enemy model.

Morale

Take a test, same as before,and lose a model.

Then take an attrition test; for each 1 (or 2 if half strength), a model is removed.

Coherency; any models NOT in coherency are removed. This is a big change, no more splitting units in half across the board. BOTH players have to do this, so if you can target models to remove, you can force this on your opponent.

Benefits hordes of cheap bodies in a way, as you can lose less this way in some cases. Expensive multi-wound models though with mediocre leadership in largish units could be in trouble.

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