RE: [Epic] marine chapters (was: Orks with LandRaiders)

From: MCLAUGHLIN, RICHARD A. CPT <MCLAUGHLINR_at_...>
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 1997 16:40:35 +0200

----------
From: Joseph Michael Looney[SMTP:mlooney_at_...]
Sent: Thursday, September 04, 1997 10:58 AM
To: space-marine_at_...
Subject: Re: [Epic] marine chapters (was: Orks with LandRaiders)

<rant>
Ok, how about this one, you are a detachment of SM devs. You have a
detachment of 5 gretchen 35cm arway from you. You have a detachment
of
15 Ork Shooty boys 40cm away from you, on over watch orders. Which
one
is a threat? Under your concept, well, looks like the grots are
toast
and you have to eat the Shooty boys return fire. Damm, I hate it
when
that happens. A set of rules should not make the tatical calls for
the
player. They should allow him to make what ever move this is unit
is
capable of.

And for the record leaping in front the enemey to cover a retreating
unit is NOT "bonding overwatch" or "Covering Fire", at least that is
not
what I was taught. Blasting the crap out of the enemey unit that
will
be firing at the retreating friends IS, on the other hand. But of
course I have my screen of low point useless troops out in front so
you
can't do that.....

GW targeting rules have allways been one of their dumber rules. All
of
this, of course, is because their habbit of making "super troop"
units
that, if allowed to get close to you will wipe out 10x their numbers.
The didn't want you to be able to aim all your fire at the turkey
that
would be eating your lunch if he (or she, in some cases) gets close,
so
they came up with this targeting concept. If you could do this, of
course all the cheesy 12-15 year olds (and that is a concept, not an
age) would be crying "but my 200 pt Chaos Master Blaster Commander
with
his kill-them-all-god-will-know-his-own weapon just got killed by a
squad of 10 point troops. That's not fair. Lower point value troops
should not be able to kill higher point troops, you have to have your
own cheesy boy to kill my cheese boy." E40K avoids this problem by
not
having command figures that will wipe out whole unit in HTH combat.

The "lower point value" units vs "higher point value" argument, which
I
heard, more or less in those exact words, seems to be a problem with
GW
games. In a WWII micro armor game you very rarely hear a German
player
saying that your T-34 should not be able to kill my Tiger-II because
the
Tiger cost more. You might hear that a T-34 can't effect a Tiger-II
at
X meters, but that is a real world argument, not a game argument.
 The
fact that the big cat can kill the russki at twice the range that the
T-34 can shoot back at is just a fact of life. If the German lets
the
Russian get close or get a flank on him, well, thing like this
happen.

Sorry about ranting this morning, I am waiting on a site tech to get
their #_at_$@ act togther....

</rant>

MadMac replies:
Sheesh go get a Mountain Dew (I don't do coffee). What's a site
tech?

OK Gretchen 35cm away and Shooty Boyz 40cm away. Maybe a little split
fire is in order. You shouldn't be allowed to ignore them and their
mere presence should not force you into stupid moves. Maybe that's
why I don't write game rules.

As to the second part on "Covering fire". True, the example was not
perfect but it is as close as Epic40K is going to get to FM 100-5. It
is still just a game. I will never type again without footnoted
references and page numbers and expert commentary };^')

Maybe I am still to 40Kish. I do believe that troops should not be on
the battle field to meerly provide a screen for other units. Besides
our Shooty Boyz are going to have gretchen in the detachment with them
soaking up shots, they don't need the other fools.

MadMac
Received on Thu Sep 04 1997 - 14:40:35 UTC