Warhammer 40K: Overwatch: A Requiem
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Overwatch, not to praise it.
We all just saw the new updated Overwatch rules for 9th edition and I have a few thoughts.
Firstly I wholeheartedly support these changes. I know that the big-picture structural changes to Overwatch seem severe, but there is method to GW’s madness. Let us look closer what what is going on.
An Inbalance In the Force
Overwatch ebbs and flows from edition to edition. In some it does not exist at all, while in others it is quite potent. 8th Edition saw it return in a strange hybrid form, where it was both common and ineffective. Something had to give, and it was a rule ripe for a tune-up.
Legacy Must Be Respected
I think one of the primary reasons Overwatch survived at all in 9th is the legacy of the rulesbase. There are over 30 codexes, campaign books, and more out there. Overwatch is all over the place, and baked into so many unit rules, stratagems, relics, and such that it would be almost impossible to cut it out of the game entirely without all kinds of FAQing. There was one chance to do that – a complete system rebook like we saw with 8th. But that ship has sailed. So Overwatch probably had to stay, in some form. And what a new form it has…
There is also the secondary issue of some factions having a real talent at Overwatch (looking at you T’au) which precluded its outright removal.
Melee Needed Help
Overwatch is fundamentally a thumb on the scales in favor of shooting. It first gained prominence in earlier editions to give shooting units a chance, back when melee units would sweeping advance from unit to unit, destroying entire armies in short order. No one complains about that happening in 8th. It is clear that the game needed structural changes to help, not neuter melee, and Overwatch is an easy target.
So many dice, so few wounds
Lots of Noise, for Little Effect
Overwatch’s biggest issue was that it was unneeded complexity. It used up time, a real precious commodity in 8th, rolled a whole lot of dice, for normally little to no effect. How many times did you see squads roll tons of dice with rerolls after rerolls against a tough target all to get zero wounds through, or maybe 1 or 2? Overwatch could realistically have been reduced to “for every 5 model in a unit being charged, 1 wound is inflicted on a 5+” for about the same effect, and saved a lot of time. With 9th Edition’s emphasis on speed, again, it was an easy target for cutting.
I got CP to burn…
A New Overwatch Focus
Now, is Overwatch gone? NO. What I think we will see now is a player emphasis on using it only where it matters. When you design out your army you can set up units that are built to be good at Overwatch, for example lots of flamers. These units can now be specifically used to draw assaults and use the all-valuable CP for Overwatch. But only on their terms and with a real payoff. Outside of these cases, I think we will see Overwatch fade into the woodwork. It won’t make any real difference in game results, we all just get back 15 minutes each game. A real reward!
~ What do you think of the new Overwatch Rules?
