Warhammer 40K: Melee Combat Needs Damage Carry Over
Melee combat needs to have damage carry over in 40k. It’s a simple fix with some big ramifications.
Close Combat in Warhammer 40,000 is a risky thing. A unit has to make it across the battlefield while taking obscene amounts of enemy fire and then they risk getting punched right back in melee combat once that phase starts, too. The trade off between shooting and melee just isn’t there for a lot of melee focused armies. One counter to this has been to give melee units more and more ways to be “in cover” or to penalize enemy units shooting at them. But that doesn’t make sense all the time.
Now you have shooting units that don’t even need Line of Sight to fire. They can effectively ignore any saves from cover you might have had also. That leaves melee-focused units in a tough spot. The risk vs reward for actually getting into melee just doesn’t seem worth it. You can see that in how the “Alpha Strike” is still a huge part of the game of 40k. It doesn’t help that the lethality of units has also increased to the point absurdity.
The balance has once again dipped hard onto the shooting side of the scale in 40k. Sure, you might have a model that can do a ton of theoretical damage in melee — but they have to make it there. And a lot of the time that reward just isn’t worth the risk. The good news is that GW has already solved the problem in another game they created. Turns out Age of Sigmar has the answer.
Help Arrives From The Mortal Realms
In Warhammer 40,000 with the way wounds and damage work any “excess” damage done to a model is lost. You might shoot or stab a grot with only 1 wound with a massive attack that does 20 damage — but you’re only killing a single grot. It’s the exact opposite in Age of Sigmar. If you nail a unit with a super high damage attack each point of damage gets distributed and resolved. Barring some outliers this means that folks can whittle big units down with fewer attacks that do more damage per hit.
Here’s the fix: Have excess damage carry over apply to MELEE only.
So think about that for a moment and what that would mean. Those melee units that actually make it across the battlefield and into combat are suddenly going to wipe the floor with whatever they charged. There’s a payoff there for surviving the blistering firepower your opponent can (and probably does) bring. Those close combat specialist unit also become SUPER scary. That also means they become even bigger threats and targets for your enemy.
Now you’re opponent is presented with an even harder choice: Do I shoot the things that can shoot me back? Or do I deal with that melee unit that’s getting a little too close for comfort.
One Shot, One Kill
I think the inverse is also true for shooting attacks. They DON’T need to have damage spill over. Thematically it doesn’t really make sense for a bolter round to hit one target and take out 2 or 3 targets. Yeah, sure they explode and all that but it still doesn’t make sense for a single shot to kill an entire squad. They aren’t Movie Marines! Besides, mechanically, that’s already been addressed. If a weapon is designed to hit multiple targets then just give the weapon more shots. We see that already with Blast Weapons.
Personally, I’d like to see the same approach apply to AoS. Shooting attacks shouldn’t have damage carry over. If the weapon is supposed to hit more targets just give it more shots and not more damage.
What About Terrain?
Look, I’m not here to spark the classic “how much terrain” debate again. It’s a pretty well established fact that the more terrain is on the board the better melee centric armies do. And the inverse is also true — the less terrain that’s on the board the better shooting armies do. It’s shocking I know. Threading that needle of “how much terrain is enough” shouldn’t be the determining factor of balance between melee and shooting. This “fix” doesn’t answer that question either.
Regardless of how much (or little) terrain is on the board there’s still the simple fact that shooting happens way more than close combat. The risk vs reward just isn’t there currently. And this rules change would be a quick “fix” for that issue. Besides, when armies don’t care about LoS or cover anymore you might as well be playing without terrain anyways…
TL;DR — make Melee Units deadlier by allowing damage to carry over for melee attacks ONLY. Let us know what you think in the comments.
