40K 6th- First Impressions- Movement

Hi all,

So, movement in 40K' latest edition. And not much has changed. Ultimately, units can move up to 6", must remain in unit coherency (2" for infantry, 4" for vehicles) and you can't pass within an inch of an inch of enemy models unless they are assaulting. All straight forward.

However, since movement in any wargame is pretty important (read: "most important") all of the other rules will impact your decisions in this phase. The good news is that you can pre-measure at all times in this edition, so your decision making can be more informed. Also, with the new wound allocation system, position of models within units is of primary importance, so movement of units isn't as simple as it sounds.



I'm going to touch on a few of the influences on your movement decisions here. this won't be a complete list by any means, but it will hopefully provide a bit of an over-view.

Difficult Terrain.

The rules for moving into terrain haven't changed- roll 2D6, pick the highest, that's your movement. However, terrain is more viable as a means of defending against assaults. Since the assault move is now 2d6 (ore on this in the Assault post) you now roll 3d6 and discard the highest dice for you assault distance. this makes long range assaults (12") less likely to occur (you'd need to roll three sixes, which is 1:216 probability), but means that shorter distances become exponentially more likely to occur. 7" is still the average distance- but with pre-measuring, in the movement phase you can position your units 15" from the enemy, maximising your chances of keeping them out of assault range.

Taking wounds.

Wound allocation is now performed closest model to closest model, firer to target. this means that not only do you need to check that units are in range, you also need to make sure that important models in your unit are positioned to take less fire from the enemy. Thanks to deep strike and Outflank, and the general mobility in 40K, this doesn't necessarily mean leaving your characters at the back of the unit- you need to check all angels of fire from the enemy, and position models accordingly.

Focus fire also means that you need to be careful of which models are in cover and which aren't. Essentially, enemy shooters can decide to only hit models in cover, or out of cover. So if you place 6 models out of 10 in cover, but leave the heavy weapon and the character outside, then the enemy can single them out more easily (similarly, if you lave 6 outside of cover but the specialist inside, they can still be singled out.)

Finally, only models that can be seen can be hit. put your character behind a wall, and he is completely safe.

Assaulting.

Follow up attacks are now only 3". this means that if your characters/ sergeants etc. don't have a clear route through to the fight, they won't be able to get involved. Obviously the best place for them for this is on the outside of the unit, or at the front, but that means that they will be taking a lot more save due to wound allocation....


So that's just 3 areas of consideration which will affect your decisions in the movement phase. For me, it remains the most important phase, simply because it affects everything else that happens over the course of the turn. get this right, and you will be in a stronger position. However, I can see it distracting from the game slightly as players try to figure out exactly where the best position for their models- lots of shuffling and pre-measuring. We'll see.

Comments, as always, are welcome.