40k Overwatch rules

[grantix89]

Hi all,

So I am new to BoLS but I thought I would ask you all a question.

I have played 40k through many editions (although kind of skipped 5th as life got in the way) and as such I often forget the overwatch rule.

No I am tempted to ignore it altgother as personally it seems to make assault units more playable and me and my friend have had far better and more balanced battles by ignoring it, me using space marines and him using a variety of grey knights, blood angels and ravenwing.

What do you guys think? I just feel overwatch seems to nerf a lot of assault units and makes armies to focussed on shooting.

Your thoughts would be most welcome.

[Wolfshade]

Hello and welcome aboard.

I still continue to use mostly assault orientated armies. What it does do, is focus you to think hard about whether or not it is worth assaulting a unit.
Fortunatley my mate who plays IG with blobs, seems unable to roll 6s...

[Mr Mystery]

Don't drop it.

Despite reports, it's not game breaking!

[Calam]

I agree, it's not game breaking and I'd say use it to see.
I've only seen it be devastating twice.
First was a unit of Assault marines that charged my 10 man strong Wraithgaurd unit that was armed with d-scythes (I rolled 25 hits for their wall of death).
Second was in a planetstrike game, I think it was 4 tau units that got to open up on the remnants of my ork mob that had 12 left when they declared the charge, poor orks I never even to to roll the dice to see if they would have made the charge.

Most of the time the unit you're charging doesn't even score a hit.

[grantix89]

Thanks for the input. Just for your information I haven't dropped it because of anything I have seen or heard on the olde interwebs (mainly because I only really started playing again in the past year or so so probably missed all the flak when overwatch rules came out).

I will have a think about it. I just think shooting armies have enough advantages in this rule system and because it is a relatively minor rule that doesn't affect anything else in the game I feel dropping it is beneficial compared to keeping it.

Again thanks for the input.

[grantix89]

I do however agree its not game breaking. Just feels ever so slightly more balanced to me.

[Wolfshade]

You start to do cunning things, like charge walkers into squads first so that they take all the overwatch fire, hopefully, the majority (if not all) of the squad cannot damage it, then assult with foot troops. As enemy squad is already engaged it cannot over watch at the squad it can injure :D

[Defenestratus]

Its pretty easy to mitigate. Assault with a single model "unit" first. If they don't overwatch that unit, then they can't shoot at the other units assaulting the unit since they're already in combat.

[Mr Mystery]

Though I expect that to be tidied up in future.

In Warhammer, all charges are declared, and then your opponent chooses his reactions.

Reckon we might see that in 40k 7th Ed :)

[Arkhan Land]

crazy crazy idea but maybe elites army choices can use old school overwatch, do nothing in friendly turn, shoot at full BS during opponent's, after charges have been declared but before targets react

[This Dave]

crazy crazy idea but maybe elites army choices can use old school overwatch, do nothing in friendly turn, shoot at full BS during opponent's, after charges have been declared but before targets react

Um no. That led to whole games where no one did anything waiting for the opponent to move.

[John Bower]

Personally overwatch wasn't the game breaker, but not allowing assault from Flanking or DS once you allowed units to shoot the chargers did to me seem harsh. It now means you have to suffer 2 rounds of shooting before you assault. Everyone says being able to assault from DS would be broken, but having to suffer 2 lots of shooting somehow isn't?

[SaveModifier]

Overwatch is good, makes me think about assaulting more, its brutal in Zone Mortalis though, if you roll under the majority initiative of the unit you can fire at full BS!

[DarkLink]

Overwatch is a big nerf to assault armies (one amongst several, in fact), but it doesn't make them unplayable. Granted, 6th as a whole strongly promotes shooting, and you can often completely forgo any and all assault units in your army, but that doesn't mean that assault units are useless. I generally play Draigowing nowadays, as a matter of fact.

[Houghten]

So, one of the shootiest possible armies then.

[Wolfshade]

I've never suffered enoguh casualties to fail an assault.

I still play a CC orientated BA army.

Fluff-wise I do like the reason behind it, after all it was always a moan that it seemed silly that troops being assaulted would just stand there watching the assaulting unit come at them, then react.

[John Bower]

I've never suffered enoguh casualties to fail an assault.

I still play a CC orientated BA army.

Fluff-wise I do like the reason behind it, after all it was always a moan that it seemed silly that troops being assaulted would just stand there watching the assaulting unit come at them, then react.

I agree with that, but then it wouldn't have hurt to let reserve units assault straight off the bat, instead of removing the ability from outflanking units that used to be able to do it. And if you've never failed a charge from it you've been lucky is all I can say, it's knocked my Genestealers out of range a few times. In fact I generally run my Broody up front to soak the hits, better to lose 5 attacks than 9 from losing 3 ordinary bods on a charge turn.

[Tynskel]

I agree with that, but then it wouldn't have hurt to let reserve units assault straight off the bat, instead of removing the ability from outflanking units that used to be able to do it. And if you've never failed a charge from it you've been lucky is all I can say, it's knocked my Genestealers out of range a few times. In fact I generally run my Broody up front to soak the hits, better to lose 5 attacks than 9 from losing 3 ordinary bods on a charge turn.

Honestly, either you were in the open, or you didn't bring enough. Genestealers have fleet. They get to re-roll their charge on individual dice. The probabilities are bent toward ~10". Are you charging at maximum range?

[This Dave]

Honestly, either you were in the open, or you didn't bring enough. Genestealers have fleet. They get to re-roll their charge on individual dice. The probabilities are bent toward ~10". Are you charging at maximum range?

Don't they have Move Through Cover too? Or is that just the Gants?

[John Bower]

20, they'd been whittled down and there was no cover available at that point on the board. In fact, cover was pretty sparse in one game all around. And when I'm the guard and we deploy the terrain ourselves I try my best to deny area or cover to nids.

[DarkLink]

Don't they have Move Through Cover too? Or is that just the Gants?

Doesn't matter for assault moves. Also, I think the average for fleet on the charge is more like 8-9".

[This Dave]

I know but I was wondering why he didn't advance through cover instead of running out in the open. But since it turns out there wasn't that much cover on the table it's a moot point.

[John Bower]

Surely if you know that you are facing nids the best thing to do is make sure your own army is surrounded by a bubble of open terrain, and worse now that you can take trenches as well as Aegis lines, it is very hard to reliably get stealers into a well dug in guard/elder/tau gunline. I guess that's why not many folk take stealers anymore. It's just another part of the crap dealt the nids in the new dex. Like all armies we're being forced to a stand up shooting match which unless you're Tau you aren't going to win reliably.

[Dave Mcturk]

dont think overwatch is broken per se... and players need to know how to handle it both when attacking and using it to defend... but our house rules allow only the nearest 10 models per unit to fire overwatch which makes 'elite' [high bs] units 'better' and 'horde' units like ork and guards are suddenly gifted a 'free' shot !

[Angelofblades]

Overwatch on it's own, isn't bad per se. But when you add in along with random charge length, and for some armies, uberwatch, along with the general change to rapid fire weapons (can now fire at full distance all the time), it makes a difficult environment for cc oriented units to survive in.

I really think that they should have brought back "consolidate into enemy unit after combat," back when they implemented overwtach.

[DarkLink]

Plus the other dozens of little nerfs to assault, like Disordered Charge and pulling Overwatch casualties from the front of the unit.

[Angelofblades]

Plus the other dozens of little nerfs to assault, like Disordered Charge and pulling Overwatch casualties from the front of the unit.

While I do agree those are nerfs, I think they are well founded. Multi-charges in 5th ed while an art form, were ridiculous in lethality, especially when well planned. Heck, iirc, it played a pivotal moment in a game I had against you several years ago (wonder if it gets you wondering who I am :P)

Pulling overwatch casualties from the front, just goes in line with casualties being pulled from the direction of the shots imho.

But cc oriented armies should be given abilities that allow them to be or have exceptions to the rule. Like the SM Vangaurd vets, now ignore disordered charges.

I'm still quite surprised that Tyranids wern't given an ability to ignore or prevent Overwatch. Heck, Chaos and Daemons (I think) got it, albeit in different forms.

[DarkLink]

In 5th, you could still play a purely assault-oriented army. In 6th, you basically can't. And even in 5th, shooting was still the main focus of the game. Assault did not need the nerfing that it got. In fact, I remember back in 4th when assault was even better than 5th and it wasn't normally a problem, excluding a few problem units. I guess my point is, it's not any one specific thing that was too big of a nerf to assault, but the combination of a dozen little things that makes assault oriented armies much weaker now.


Heck, iirc, it played a pivotal moment in a game I had against you several years ago (wonder if it gets you wondering who I am :P)

I don't know, I've multi-charged so many people so artfully over the years ;)... I've only played one or two that I know was from Texas, though.

[Dave Mcturk]

Plus the other dozens of little nerfs to assault, like Disordered Charge and pulling Overwatch casualties from the front of the unit.

yes this is annoying ... but "realistic" lol... so our house rule gives genuinely 'fast' units a complete re-roll for failed charges... {ie Bikes/Jetbikes/Jump Units/Beast etc} ... also combined with our house rule of '10' models/unit overwatch ... leads to less failed charges and thus cc units are still a threat... {except banshees ... !}