Warhammer 40K: Indirect Fire Shaping Up To Be An Issue In 10th Edition

Let’s take a look at one of a big issues plaguing the early days of 40K 10th Edition – Indirect Fire.

10th Edition is well and truly here. Many, maybe most, of you have books in your hands right now. We’ve even had the first 10th Edition events go off. In many ways it’s bringing some good changes to the game. However no new edition launches without its hiccups.  Our own Goatboy took a look at a few of them recently. Today I want to dig into one big issue that’s shaping up to have a major and negative impact on the game: Indirect Fire weapons.

A Long History

Indirect Fire weapons have been in the game for a long time. Over the decades and editions their rules have undergone a lot of changes. They’ve always been a bit tricky to balance. Line of Sight of is an important aspect of the game and any weapon that ignores it has the potential to be super powerful. You also can’t really totally remove them from the game as they are a common facet of warfare. So the design challenge has been to make Indirect Fire weapons good – but not too good. Too far one way and they dominate the game, and aren’t fun. Too far the other way and no one will take them.

In early editions this was normally done by a combination of things. They were kept relatively rare for one. In addition most indirect fire weapons were guess weapons. This meant a player had to literally guess a distance from the gun and that was where, or around where, the shot would land. This made them a weapon that took some skill to use. They could be quite powerful, but a poor guess would waste your shots. However more recent editions have done away with guessing and this level of randomness. Indirect fire became like normal shooting, just ignoring LoS and sometimes with a few negatives. Towards the end of 9th Edition Indirect Fire weapons had clearly skewed toward the too good side. As such – players were hoping 10th Edition would fix this.

The Current Rules

10th’s rules do try to balance out Indirect Fire weapons to some degree. Essentially when shooting at a target you can’t see with an indirect fire weapon you take a -1 to hit them and the enemy gets the Benefit of Cover, a +1 to their save. This is trying to balance things out.  Indirect Fire is good, but comes with downsides. On the face of things this might have fixed the issue. However it did not.

Why 40K’s Indirect Fire A Problem

A number of factors combined to make indirect fire just way too good right now. The first is that the downsides of it are capped. While you do take a -1 to hit and the enemy gets cover, those are both negative effects that don’t stack. If the enemy is already in cover for instance, then half the downside of indirect fire is gone. Likewise if the enemy already has a -1 to be hit, say from stealth, then the -1 from indirect fire has no effect. Shooting at a stealth unit in cover effectively removes all the downsides of firing indirect.

On top of that Indirect Fire weapons are just a ton more common now. Many of armies have multiple options for Indirect Fire weapons. Many of these are good and cheap. The new Desolation Marines are a prime example of this.

Lastly, a ton of units with Indirect Fire have rules that effectively ignore the penalty for firing indirect. Take the Space Marine Desolation Squad again. If they stand still they just get to ignore the downsides of indirect fire. Many of the Guard indirect fire units, such as the Manticore and Basilisk have the heavy keyword. Since their weapons fire on normal Guard BS of 4+ normally, this means if they don’t move heavy cancels out indirect fire and they can fire indirectly at their normal BS. Eldar can just auto hit and then do mortal wounds with their Strands of Fate dice. The game is littered with units like this. Indeed either natively or through combos with other units I think most indirect fire weapons have ways of getting around some or all of the downsides.

This Is An Fun & Balance Issue

Look, a game where the other player just shoots your army off the table isn’t very fun. A game where the terrain doesn’t really matter and you can’t even hide to prevent being shot off the table is even less fun. And yet that is where 40K could be headed. Indirect Fire weapons are simply too good. The downsides aren’t high enough, they weapons are too plentiful, and it’s too easy to avoid the downsides altogether. This has the real potential to create and unbalanced and unfun game. I’m not sure what exactly GW needs to do to address this. Points increases probably aren’t enough on their own, but they should do something. Sooner than later.

Let us know if you think indirect fire is an issue, down in the comments! 

Author: Abe Apfel

Abe is that rare thing, an Austin local born and raised here. Though he keeps on moving around, DC, Japan, ETC., he always seems to find his way back eventually. Abe has decades of experience with a wide range of tabletop and RPG games, from historicals, to Star Wars to D&D and 40K. He has been contributing to BOLS since almost the start, back when he worked at and then owned a local gaming store. He used to be big into the competitive Warhammer tournament scene but age has mellowed him and he now appreciates a good casual match. He currently covers 40K tactics and lore, as well as all things Star Wars, with occasional dabbling in other topics. Abe remains in mourning over the loss of WFB to this day.