Radical YCE: melee

[JawRippa]

No Pushover
When a fighter rolls to hit against an enemy with a WS equal to or greater than their own, they subtract one from their results.

As appealing as it sounds, it does not solve main problems:

• Fighter's Attack stat still does not matter
• WS2+ still probably murders another WS2+ on the charge, and a flat -1 to hit punishes WS4+ fighters a lot more than WS2+/WS3+

When I look at the sum total of the YCE offering I come away with the feeling, "well, might as well just make a shooting gang," though.

From my experience (with houserules), people have to mix shooting and melee, simply because shooting is always good, but melee is inevitable. With GW rules, you want to slap as many guns as you can, because even if you become tied up in melee, your friends can just blast off whoever is engaging you.

• Getting into melee is a lot easier, and you are a threat even if you are pinned within M". You do not need to rely on overseer and other junk, since everyone's threat range is decent.
• Even moderate terrain gives enough cover for melee fighters because of 'hard target', as long as you don't put tall ruins into deployment zones and turn middle of the table into a killing field.
• BS2+ is not as crazy because in reality hard cover makes that into BS3+.
• Shooting at a friend now has a 50% chance to friendly fire even if you hit and you can't template snipe egnaged enemies anymore.
• Blasts no longer ignore 95% of rules.
• I've redesigned a rotation of 6 basic scenarios to promote fighters doing objectives and opening loot cascets. Opening cascets is going to be noticeably safer and give tactic cards.
• Guns are much more expensive. We are talking 25cr. lasguns from old necromunda expensive.

There used to be another way to tone down shooting; my ruleset used to force an ammo check when a six was rolled on to-hit, which essentially doubled the chance for an ammo check. However, I had to remove it, since players found it counter-intuitive for bad things to happen on natural six. I'm still trying to figure out a way to trigger more ammo checks per fight, but I can't think of anything elegant and easy to remember. Currently weapons last too long without going out of ammo, but it seems that this one can't be solved.

Overall, I don't see the reason to continue arguing about melee. I've been playtesting my own ruleset for more than 2 years as each campaign gradually introduced more and more changes into the game based on feedback and overall player's experience, so I'm adamant on every change, especially after I had to cut so much for YCE to be more accessible. If you do not find these changes good for the game, that is fine. You could always cherry pick things that you like from the ruleset, such as clarified movement rules or reworked bottle checks and continue playing with GW ruleset.

 

[JawRippa]

How about wording it this way
"Defender must leave one of his available attack die as a reaction attack"

This is a crisp wording, I'll use that when I get to updating rules from feedback. I think I'll also include an example of a melee fight, just to clear all ambiguities.

 

[Daganisoraan]

This is a crisp wording, [...]

I may go through your document to rewords things, but it's bit time consuming. I'll see if I have the time. I tried to do that a bit earlier today, but it's not easy.

 

[KA7777]

Overall, I don't see the reason to continue arguing about melee. I've been playtesting my own ruleset for more than 2 years as each campaign gradually introduced more and more changes into the game based on feedback and overall player's experience, so I'm adamant on every change, especially after I had to cut so much for YCE to be more accessible. If you do not find these changes good for the game, that is fine. You could always cherry pick things that you like from the ruleset, such as clarified movement rules or reworked bottle checks and continue playing with GW ruleset.

I guess it's my unease at you co-opting the YCE moniker that keeps me returning to the threads.

I reviewed some of the 2020 player polling from this forum. Something like ~15% of players desired serious changes to melee, WS impact, etc. Your rules do not reflect the desires of polled participants -- as you say, these are a thinned down version of your own extensive house rules. Why are you calling them YCE instead of JRE? It's bold, and it's misleading.

 

[JawRippa]

I reviewed some of the 2020 player polling from this forum. Something like ~15% of players desired serious changes to melee, WS impact, etc. Your rules do not reflect the desires of polled participants -- as you say, these are a thinned down version of your own extensive house rules. Why are you calling them YCE instead of JRE? It's bold, and it's misleading.

Because these rules incorporate more than 80 pages of discussion in private conversation between members of YCE committee, some of which wanted to see changes to melee. The poll happened a really long time ago, and after a while we've decided that it should be used as a general guideline, not something that you slavishly follow. After all, why would you want to ask making melee less deadly when it is next to impossible to get there in the first place?

Edit: In all fairness, I should probably include in the author's notes that the rules were changed, so readers know what they are dealing with right away. Clarifying stuff alone would not suffice.

 

[Petitioner's City]

Another point is that the poll also was tiny and in no way really a "community"; thousands or, more likely, tens of thousands of people collect and play this game. There is no real value in the poll, given it wasn't conducted in a ethical or tested manner. But that isn't a bad thing, as polls themselves aren't necessarily better than any other form of decision making and leadership

 

[KA7777]

Another point is that the poll also was tiny and in no way really a "community"; thousands or, more likely, tens of thousands of people collect and play this game. There is no real value in the poll, given it wasn't conducted in a ethical or tested manner. But that isn't a bad thing, as polls themselves aren't necessarily better than any other form of decision making and leadership

Ok... but doesn't that make the sequence of events,

1. Decide to make a community edition
2. Decide to call it YCE
3. Decide to base the final decisions on collaboration
4. Decide to poll players to determine the extent of changes
5. Decide to cancel 3.
6. Decide to cancel 4.
7. Call it YCE anyways

I'm turned off by the sense that a set of very particularly individually-suited house rules are being camouflauged as the consensus result of community discussion/effort, without any indicators that that's what happened. I guarantee you I wouldn't be posting about this if the document didn't use the YCE name.

It's all well and good to mention "80 pages of committee discussion" but that's still not transparent. How many people were on the committee? Did the conversation end with a committee vote in favour of a contested melee system with defense rolls?

I see like 2-3 people consistently engaged in the defense of the final version of the melee rules, and many of the Yaktribe members whose opinions I value most highly haven't really said anything more substantial than "Congrats for tackling the project!" or "I might use some parts of this."

 

[JawRippa]

@KA7777 I'll reply in another thread, because this is offtopic and should not be discussed here.

 

[JawRippa]

Our group has been fairly happy with hand-to-hand changes, but there is a problem of killy melee fighters being hard to push with anything other than shooting or other high level melee fighters. So, here are the possible tweaks, as well as summarised hand-to-hand combat.

1. If able, a fighter has to *Fight* after making a *Charge*.
2. Whenever a fighter is selected as a target for a *Fight* and has been a target for another *Fight* during this round, they reduce their WS by 1 while an enemy WS is improved by 1 until the *Fight* resolves.
3. Once per round, whenever a fighter is selected as a target for a *Fight*, they can choose to make reactionary attacks: the decision has to be made before any rolls are made. The fighter can choose to defend while making reactionary attack, if they had an enemy within their vision arc when the *Fight* started and at least one of the following is true:

• fighter's attack characteristic is 2 or more
• fighter is equipped with two weapons

When defending, a fighter reduces their WS by 1 until the end of the *Fight* and rolls a number of dice, less than their attack dice total and no more than opponent’s attack dice total. Each roll is called a defence roll and is a WS test. For each success cancel one successful enemy hit, starting with attacks with the lowest result. A defence roll of 6 can cancel any successful enemy hit, and only this defence roll can cancel a successful enemy hit of 6.
5. When making reactionary attacks, reduce attack dice total by the number of defence rolls, if the fighter made any.

I think that the following changes will make it possible for a chaff fighters to overcome big spooky melee fighters with numbers. Second, third and so forth fighters will get +1 to WS, while the enemy will get -1 to WS, making it tempting to blow their reaction attacks/defence on the first enemy that charges into them.

 

[Gdolkin]

Apologies if something like this has been discussed already and I've missed it, but how about just inserting a 'Block' stage between hits and wounds, whereby an attacker charges, rolls to hit, then the defender gets to make a free 'Block' roll of their A dice using their own WS, just like a regular or reaction attack, and any successful Blocks negate an attacker's successful hits, working up from lowest as you've already discussed..? A successful attack/Block with a Parry weapon could force re-roll successful Blocks when attacking or force re-roll any remaining successful attacks after Blocking..? Or successful Blocks could 'merely' force re-rolls of successful Hits but Blocks with a Parry weapon outright negate them? I'm just spitballing but y'all have clearly thought this through more thoroughly, so would what I describe work at all? It's basically just another Reaction attack but one that blocks incoming damage instead, giving you the chance of inflicting some back if you survive said incoming damage to make a regular Reaction attack.. make sense? It gives crap melee fighters a slightly better chance of survival and makes it harder to OOA a melee specialist by simply getting the charge in first, right?

 

[JawRippa]

Apologies if something like this has been discussed already and I've missed it, but how about just inserting a 'Block' stage between hits and wounds, whereby an attacker charges, rolls to hit, then the defender gets to make a free 'Block' roll of their A dice using their own WS, just like a regular or reaction attack, and any successful Blocks negate an attacker's successful hits, working up from lowest as you've already discussed..?

That's what defence dice are for, yes. Successful blocks negate attacks, but to keep high WS high A fighters from becomming untouchable by everyone less skillful, you get -1WS if you choose to defend, you can't roll more defence dice than an opponent makes attacks and each attack of 6 ignores defence, unless defence also rolls a natural 6.

 

[Gdolkin]

Ah nice, yes I've just been finding that high WS high A can block with impunity and I like your solutions there.. just been trying to figure out how/when to trigger/tweak Parry and Disarm and Entangle etc with this system.. FUN!

 

[Gdolkin]

Any thoughts on making these 'Block' rolls dependent on the defender making an Initiative check, for even more 'realistic' interactivity? Attacker charges in and makes hit rolls, defender needs I check to attempt Blocks, resolve remaining hits, if survived defender makes reaction attacks, initial attacker makes I check to attempt Blocks, resolve remaining hits, end of initial attacker's Charge action..? Minus 1 to I check for Blocks if the defender has to turn to face their attacker, and the usual -1 to WS for turning to face on top of the -1WS for making Blocks..?

 

[JawRippa]

Any thoughts on making these 'Block' rolls dependent on the defender making an Initiative check, for even more 'realistic' interactivity? Attacker charges in and makes hit rolls, defender needs I check to attempt Blocks, resolve remaining hits, if survived defender makes reaction attacks, initial attacker makes I check to attempt Blocks, resolve remaining hits, end of initial attacker's Charge action..? Minus 1 to I check for Blocks if the defender has to turn to face their attacker, and the usual -1 to WS for turning to face on top of the -1WS for making Blocks..?

You can check the draft of the rules here:

(Finished!) YCE Rulebook draft (Proofread,Discussion)

Hello! I've completed the first draft of core rulebook for YCE. It needs proofreading - I'm not a native english speaker and a bit rusty, so there might be some bad grammar here and there. The red text means that the rule differs from original GW rules. I recommend downloading PDF instead of...

yaktribe.games

I'd prefer to keep things as fast as possible, so adding yet another stat into the mix is too much in my opinion. Only WS and A should be decisive for an actual melee combat. If you are worried about Initiative being a useless stat, it is used to leap over small obstacles (less than 2" but higher than 0.5") without 2" penalty. We've tried it, worked pretty alright.

 

[JawRippa]

I've made a draft for a simplified hth:
1. Reaction can only occur once per round for each fighter. After a fighter does it, they become exposed - all enemies gain +1WS when fighting them till the end of the round.
2. If you are facing the attacker, you can defend while making reaction attacks.
3. When defending you get -1WS for the fight and roll the same ammount of D6 as the attacker (does not matter what weapons they are using). For each defence success attacker has to choose and cancel 1 attack roll success (6's do not have to be discarded).
4. To make Attack characteristic matter, if attacker has bigger number of attacks in their fighter card, then defender is at disadvantage, which means that they have to discard 1 successful defence roll.

 

[Heart of Storm]

Does this not make melee beasts even more untouchable?

 

[JawRippa]

Does this not make melee beasts even more untouchable?

Since the reaction attacks are limited, you could send in multiple juves - and all but one of them will get to strike for free.
There is a potential problem though, perhaps charging first would stop being profitable when fighters are equally matched...

 

[Heart of Storm]

Charging first will always be an advantage for the bonus attack, and the rules you set out will help melee beasts survive against other melee beasts, however rules which allow models with lots of attacks to counter, for free, means that lesser fighters have an even tougher job taking a melee specialist out if they manage to get the charge in first.

Case in point, I throw a Delaque ganger with a web gauntlet into a Death Maiden looking for a lucky wound, my two 4+hit 5+ wound attacks now have to contend with the Maiden countering any hits i make on a 3+

I can see where it lets pile in attacks be more helpful, but honestly how often does that come up?

 

[JawRippa]

An alternative hand-to-hand system, based on Killteam. Combined with once-per round reaction attacks, this one should be serviceable. Also it does not seem too different from original rules, mechanically at least.

 

[Heart of Storm]

^ not bad, I'm not a fan of the 6s are crits thing, it makes melee powerhouses even more dangerous, which they really don't need, and it adds complexity and ambiguity to the rules, which again isn't needed.

I assume interactions like parry, shock etc are resolved after the strike/defence stage?