A guy in my gaming group recently suggested to try out a house rule:
“instead of chargers moving twice the movement speed, they move their movement speed of D6+movement instead. Models with movement 8 or more may reroll the D6. This is in addition to any charge ranges gained from wild charge”
Seems like a nerf to fast moving units and a lot more randomness thrown in.
I’m not 100% sure what to think. So that’s why I come here:
Has anyone tried the above house rule or one like it? And if so, what were your results? Did you like it?
Knowing those mechanics from other games and I don’t like it.
The argument is usually that you cannot plan a charge and therefore the “shooting avoidance” tactic is reduced and it helps new players as mistakes can be negated by bad rolls from the opponent
but this is also the argument against it as you start playing against the dice instead of playing against your opponent and as the game is designed without it, there are no real problems that need to be solved by such a rule
Here are some things that pop to my mind when thinking about this houserule:
Most importantly, the game is balanced using point values that take the spd into account, changing a core rule to weaken a stat skews the balance.
Drastically punishes things that are >spd 6 by capping their charge range to spd+6 while everything spd 6 or lower has the same or higher charge cap.
Ranged attacks are indirectly made stronger as they are more reliant and melee is slower.
Surge becomes far more reliable and better than charging.
Single dice are way too random.
If one absolutely needs to succeed, you basically charge at spd+1. The chance of going > spd + 3 is a coin toss. (Does the person suggesting this have a ranged focused army? :P)
You replace thinking and planning with chance
It slows down the game with extra rolls.
If that isn’t enough of a reason, the rolls are not fun let’s see how good my guy is, but let’s see if my guys can even run in straight line to attack without tripping over their own bootlaces. But only when they are attacking!
Personally seems like a terrible idea to me. But that might just be my tastes
I understand the underlying want, since now the faster army gets the charge almost always (unlike in WHFB 6th and 7th where you had to kind of eyeball it, although skill in that improved as you got more games under your belt) and that can really get frustrating for slower armies. Now, chaff helps with this certainly and for that reason (and the above mentioned, although elven shooting would need a Buff!) I can’t say I support the random dice roll either ( although if you HAD to, I’d suggest 2d3 rather than 1d6)
All kinds of nope from me, adding more randomness removes the impact of player skill (or lack thereof).
KoW does have randomness, but it is generally mitigated by the dice rolls involving lots of dice, the ones where only one or two dice are involved (nerve, war machines) are often highly debated as being too random, a single d6 determining charges instead of player skill would basically ruin the entire design ethos of the game.
No, that just ruins the appeal of the game for me. Not a fan of random elements like that.
The only things I would wish for KoW to adopt in the future are alternative activations, and a way for characters to join units (they could act as an upgrade).
Other than those two things, the system is near perfect at doing what it represents.
Well.it seems that my mate really wants to test this house rule, so we’re going to try it out. Will probably be after Corona, so you will have to wait a bit before I can get back to you.
Movement + D6 for charging will always give the advantage to faster units… actually breaks the game, especially when it comes to cavalry and flying creatures… it means that a cavalry with movement of 10 will always have a guaranteed charge of 11… whereas infantry with a move of 5, will always have a guaranteed charge of 6… just doesn’t work.
Mh … just wondering: The Person promoting this rule isn’t - just coincidentally of course - playing an army that benefits from this rule change that basically makes huge sweeping changes to balance and unit effectiveness - without adjusting point costs?
Just wondering. But even if that isn’t the case … Chance being a factor in combat is fine imho … but in movement and to such a huge extent? Why not go all the way and just roll a dice at the start to see who wins and call it a day without playing? … but that’s just my opinion on this.
I suspect that suggesting such a rule has more to do with adding things that seemed like a good idea from “a certain game”.
I know people who are new to KoW are often disappointed that the are not spell lores and a separate magic phase too. With the
That kind of thing is always (in my experience) not actually as good in game terms as one thinks, but rather an idea that seems good.
@DarkBlack: fully agree. But then again, when someone really thinks a house rule is a good idea, it’s not that hard to try it out. I mean, at worst it’s an hour and a half wasted.
Better that than to grow resentment over “only playing the game YOU want”. And maybe, it might be a pleasant surprise after all…
Does this person want to roll for each unit at the start of the movement phase? As each unit is selected to move? After charge is declared? What about on a multi charge? Unit 1 charges, gets a high enough roll, slides over to final position to make way for other charging unit, unit 2 doesn’t roll high enough. What now? Unit 2 moves the distance rolled and… Stops? Does unit 1 now shuffle back again to line up in the middle? How are you even measuring? In third edition charge range is measured from nearest point. You don’t actual measure the movement of the unit itself. So if your corner is 8" away from the enemy, and you’re speed 5 and you roll a 2… What do you do? Pivot the unit to face the enemy, move 7 forward? If you’d rolled a 3 and pivoted the unit and moved it 8 forward it still wouldn’t have reached, either.
for it to work in the current edition you would have to treat it as wild charge, everyone gets rolled at the start of the movement phase and marked off and then play as normal. But that’s the thing with house rules until they’re tested you never know. His friend may decide that it was a terrible idea, or they may find something that works for them and becomes the norm in their group. Play test tweak and play test again.
