Re: Bolters. The bolter is described, as far back as the basic Rogue Trader, as have an 'admantium penetrator tip.' This is a useless design without a muzzle velocity to power it through armor. Ergo, the bolter shell is a high-velocity thing, whichs means a nasty accelerator right out of the muzzle. QED, it's anything but recoilless. Besides, in the old days, Orks useta use 'em. Wassa use uv havin' a gun what don't kick 'n go BOOM! den?

Hee, hee! Want a specialty troop? Back in the day (well, it might have been waaaay back in the day! As in the Horus Heresy!), the Guard (or at least the Imperial Army) featured Beastmen troops! I've got 'em for the old Epic-scale Space Marine game, and I have an old lead Beastman leader with plasma pistol and chainsword. Also, around this time (original Rogue Trader), Guard troops could take allied mercenary Ork units! Blood Axes, most likely. I think this was the old timeline, before the Blood Axes were reduced as the leading faction of Orkdom.

Yes, we use battlebuilder. Although we also try to make the battlefield look real, like WWII, and not like No-Man's Land; that was the last War To End All Wars. Also, try going out to the woods, if you have any near-by, in the winter; you'll see that the so-called 'minimum foliage' is pretty thick, thanks to leafless cover stems and so on near the ground. And that doesn't even cover evergreens. (I live near a lot of woods; as a transport center, Springfield MO resembles a wooded suburb more than an urban area.) And even if the field is clear, like steppes in winter, the low weapon ranges still favor zombies.

I would hesitate to call the modular buildings from this game 'war-torn.' They are very nice buildings, as minis go, but I would describe them as 'incomplete,' as if the builders had simply knocked off work once the framing and concrete was done.

Stung by the range question, I looked through my set of Tactics cards for their weapon ranges. Some of the weapons got nerfed somewhat - the German MG and the .50 cal lost damage against armor 3 and 4 troops; I wonder why. And the Mickey's 75mm got taken down a peg; it had been as deadly as a whole Nebelwerfer barrage! That one deserved to be down-graded. But the ranges definitely got lowered. Given a 6" increment for every tile square - this is extrapolated from movement rates, as well as the ranges on shotguns, flamethrowers, sniper rifles, and tank weapons - then the Tactics range of 4, used by almost every rifle and MG, should translate to a Warfare range of 24". The bazooka/panzerschreck range of 3 becomes 18", and the panzerfaust 2 becomes 12". These would seem to be reasonable, and would give darned good reasons why apes and zombies don't suppress, and why Allied jump troops are wearing armor 3: In order to allow these units to survive long enough to make it into close combat. This leaves me wondering just why weapon ranges were lowered, and it also leaves me wondering if it didn't have something to do with Andy Chambers' favored Reaction rule. Since it was brought over almost unaltered from Starship Troopers, with its 12" trigger zone, it wouldn't work as well with longer weapon ranges. Of course, there could have been a straight-up Overwatch rule put in - a Command order, which would allow a unit to fire, at full range, at any one enemy unit during that enemy unit's activation - that would make for a lot fewer reactions… The reaction rule, as written, made a lot more sense with Cap Troopers, who could jump away from enemies scurrying their direction. It doesn't make as much sense when someone's shooting at you.

I should add that we do play with the 1/4 table area of cover rule, and I insist that all woods are opaque. We can actually look out of the gaming store windows and see modest foliage that can't be seen through. This means that close combat units - including the Allied jump troops - actually have the opportunity to work in close. Not that it matters with the aforementioned 16" BB gun range. What's up with that?

Dear Lord, how I must resist any sort of joke about Angela's, um, less than level gun barrel…

How about an untertoten team against Armor 3 infantry? You get 10 dice, and it only costs 19 points. And it never, ever suppresses, and it's fast, and so on. My point is that if laser troops are only good against vehicles and armor 3 infantry, at 12" range, and then only if they're firing sustained, isn't that a lot of trouble to go through at 21 points per unit when you can get zombies for cheaper and they're nastier, and you can get vehicles to shoot at other vehicles, and do it better? I mean, there aren't going to be very many armies that are composed of armor 3 troops - and if there are, said armies will be rather short on models, won't they? Against armor 2 troops - the norm - laser grenadiers just aren't worth the points, and a unit with a machinegun does so much better, at better range. Somewhere, between Tactics and Warfare, the zap went out of the lasers.

I've been playing Germans, mostly, in my Warfare games. In the course of play, I've come upon the nigh-unbeatable combo of using gorillas and zombies; with support, those are a devastating combo. I've also played Americans, while teaching others to play, and that off-beat combo works perfectly well against me. My question is this: How do I beat the zombie/ape combo? I invite and solicit commentary from one and all!

Not adding to the fray, just saying thanks to all for this thread. I, too, missed the bit on command squads and their special rule. Thanks awefully!

I sincerely hope so. I have them all anyway, but I know people who don't have them, and there's little chance of getting Bazooka Joe and Fraulein Von Thaler otherwise. Besides, it's pretty punk to say you've got to spend $45 for two heroes, which is a couple of the sets, basically.

Painting on Gran'Ma. I noticed, while covering the whole model (except for the decals), that it had Gundam feet. Specifically, Federation mobile suit feet, like the RX-78 Gundam, and the RGM-79 'GM' suit. As something of a Gundam fan (One-Year War), I was amused.

Strange, I've seen a lot of background that says bolters kick like crazy. (It's the initial charge that clears them from the gun, you know. That's the reason they spit brass. If they didn't have an initial charge to get them out, they'd have the gyrojet problem, that the round is still trying to attain velocity when it exits the muzzle - a gyrojet pistol, .45 cal, would hit like a mule at 20m range. At 1m, it wasn't even a spit-wad. Having a bolter do the same thing would be real stupid, particularly for a close-ranged device like a pistol…)

(Thick, Boris Badinof accent) Am in process of painting Gran'Ma. Am lucky to be having really good Tamiya black-green color; it covers a lot. Beeg problem is being decals already applied, feh! Will have to be painting around them, very carefully, with tiny detail brush, so that they remain.

Ever since the American Civil War, when long-ranged, accurate guns became common issue, infantry's mantra has become "stealth is wealth." Or, more literally, "stealth is life." Doubly so when mobile fortresses (armored fighting vehicles) are about. To summarize a lot of the wisdom already mentioned on this thread, the smartest doctrine when facing vehicles is: 1) Hide; maybe it'll go away. 2) Call up someone who's equipped to deal with the nuisance; i,e., tanks, tank destroyers, artillery, air strikes, et al. 3) If all else fails, fight as dirty as possible. Get close; AFVs are open-country monsters. Use mines if you have them (or IEDs; look at Iraq). Do not rush, yelling (after 2004, that tactic utterly stopped in Iraq, since those who practiced that tactic failed to survive it).

My dear Aluminiumwolf, the problem with making something from something else, especially from literary material, is that you really can't make anyting without changing the basic matter. And so it is with making a game from already-existing source material; in order to do this, you have to get down to nuts and bolts…which means you have to find, or surmise, those nuts and bolts in the first place. I'll simply stick with the notion that Commissars are more like lessened military Ordo Hereticus: They're there to keep troops loyal to the Imperium, to preach the Imperial Creed (never forget that commissars are officially trained by the Ordo Ministorium), and to watch for signs of heresy and corruption. Of course, with so many variations and sub-sects in the Imperial Cult, 'heresy' is one of the most-used words in the game, up there with 'bolter,' Speaking of bolters, I am amused by the fiction of a Space Marine giving a guardsman a bolt pistol. Sure, I could believe that it would be done (not a bolter. Those are holy to the Astartes). It's just that Deathwatch, and the Space Marine video game, make a lot of the relative size of Marines, and their kit. Said bolt pistol would be at least 70cm long by 25cm thick by 50cm deep, the size of a suitcase, and probably weigh zoggin' lots. Handling it would take a weapons mount, and where would said guardsman get the ammo? Special issue, Astartes only, by law. (And you don't want to see who the Astartes send to enforce that law. Sure, a few rounds here and there, but a steady supply?). The pistol would be something of a trophy, in the end.

Hee, hee! Moglwi does have a good point ('Crab air'); the specialty switching I've heard of all comes from modern military, emphasis on 'modern.' And specifically wartime modern military. Dunno how it would work with the Guard…but a big part of the Guard is that it's a galaxy-spanning force, made up of units from disparate worlds and cultures, all tenuously linked by Imperial service and a basic manual. Relatively unsupported, each Guard unit maintains a lot of its own logistical tail, and reinforcements? Unless you're serving on a War World, you have to drum those up yourself. Resupply? Ditto. And so on. My point is this: I believe the Guard would be a much more nebulous thing, in specific organization, practice, doctrine, personality, and culture, varying from unit to unit, than any number of Space Marines, in particular the Codex Chapters (those following the Codex Astartes).

Interesting. Back in 1992, I believe, I put together the 'Uncle Al's Auto Stop and Gunnery Shop' compilation for Car Wars. We solicited player input and a lot of the gadgets (it was a gadget book) came from players. Now, I don't know if you know anything about Steve Jackson, and I can tell you a lot, but if there's one person who's going to be careful about his legalities, it was Evil Stevie. Not that I blame him; having the Secret Service - no kidding; look it up! - raid his offices in connection with the production of GURPS Cyberpunk (because there was a tenuous connection with a person said to belong to a hacking community), made him cross his t's and dot his i's. We never had any problem with a 'quagmire,' as you put it. You want to check it? My actual name is Craig Sheeley. And I'm honestly surprised how many addresses on the internet list me as having games I wrote still being for sale…

Crying shame, that. Such things are easy to avoid by a disclaimer at the Home page or some such, having people sign away their claims to any material put on the site. A little legal boiler-plate goes a long way. Refusing to even admit that the player base might be right smacks of two attitudes: 1) A lazy lawyer whose single response to almost any question is "Nope, can't do it, we might be sued," and/or 2) "How dare those upstart players act like our work is anything but perfect!!!" (The Games Workshop attitude.)

I belong to the school of gaming thought that prizes custom character design over level-based systems. Level systems are a serious archaism, left over from original D&D; they are designed to make character design and development easy for people who are uncomfortable plotting out character design and development. This is a surprising amount of people, who have real problems making decisions, particularly those that require that you know something of the rules of the game before being able to make an informed decision. It seems like a lot of work for them. Me, I prefer to be able to make choices to develop a character the way I would like to. This allows me more control, and in the case of the RPG line we're discussing, allows me to avoid crap levels - there are levels in all of the games (except Black Crusade) where there's often no skills or talents I want to buy, and the only good reason to spend XP is raising stats. My players have trouble with this. In addition, there are some very odd skill choices we found just playing Dark Heresy for the first campaign - why is Awareness practically forbidden to Arbitrators, with said upgrades are given to every other class at much lower level? I personally was happy to see the 'choose your own path' in Black Crusade. To view these forums, it seems I was in the minority.

Actually, a lot of squad packs were priced at $20 months ago - The Gunners and Battle Grenadiers were that expensive last year.

Rules should be written to be exclusive, which means that if the rule doesn't specifically say it, it's not legal. Actual law is supposed to be written this way, as a matter of interest; naturally, there are loopholes and omissions, which leads to people who find a loathsome occupation exploiting said loopholes, etc. It also leads to similar folks in gaming…

Hmm. In a perfect world, the employees of the producing company would be perusing posts, looking for good ideas and cogent discussions that could be used in the upcoming product. Yes, it would be a lot of work, but the benefit would be tapping the ideas, freely given, of a lot of players. But, as has been said before, this is the internet, and there seem to be a lot of people who think it works very differently than being a useful feedback tool.

In as much as the models I have are Cpt. Koshka and her powered suit, I'm going with classic Russian black/green, the color of early and mid-war armor. I'm going to decorate it with some patriotic slogans, too. On the subject of the powered suit, I think that the Russian suits look much more functional than every other walker in the game. They're compact, their armor doesn't have humongous gaps with lots of ridiculous exposed and vital motive equipment, and their weapons have enough space to work. My only objection is that their arms are so long that they can stilt along if they want to, and are in danger of tripping up on them if the pilot's not careful.

Except for the fact that the nebelwerfer doesn't have "flame symbol/2," it has "2 flame symbols/1" for infantry armor 1-3.