An additional side effect of this is that it forces the shooting player onto the back foot, as he is not able to move proactively, and must instead try to stay away in the classic (not to mention boring) gun-line mould so beloved of the Imperial Guard. This in turn, brings up the Guard’s, and to a lesser extent all other shooting armies, curse – the inability to move and seize objectives without getting assaulted, because shooting alone is never effective enough to drive the enemy off or wipe them out.
An example that is quite instructive of the problems with Rapid Fire is that of the Thousand Sons – the only unit in the game that can always move and shoot at full effectiveness. Putting aside for a moment the effect of the AP3 Bolters, simply consider the fl exibility that always being able to shoot at least once to twenty-four inches gives. They are able to advance (albeit slowly) towards the enemy while shooting, allowing them to bring their strength to bear without having to sacrifi ce their mobility to do so. By the time they get to within twelve inches of the enemy, they have already subjected the foe to several turns of sustained shooting, and may have whittled their numbers down suffi ciently to make the ensuing close combat a more even affair. It is because they ignore the normal limitations of Rapid Fire that they are able to function as a true all-rounder unit.
6” INCREMENTS
At the heart of the Rapid Fire problem is one basic issue, which is that virtually everything in 40k is done in 6” increments. Everyone (almost) moves, shoots, assaults, falls back in units of 6”
or D6”. This is particularly problematic when the key distance for both shooting and assaulting is twelves inches. Back in the old days, when different races had different movement rates, it was fi ne to have relatively standardised gun ranges, as the movement rates created a diversity of situations where unit A would be in assault range, but not unit B, or where A could move in and shoot, and still be out of assault range of B. By standardising the movement phase, the rules have created a situation where if A moves to shoot B, B will be able to assault A, or vice versa.
As everyone knows, it is almost always better to assault an enemy unit than to allow it to assault you, if only to prevent the enemy from gaining extra attacks by charging. This means that as soon as a unit moves close enough to assault, they will almost always do so. Unless the shooting unit is a particularly combat ineffective one like Tau Fire Warriors, there are very few situations where the unit is better off shooting rather than assaulting. This effectively means that once a shooting unit is within twelve inches of the enemy, they can shoot and forgo the assault, or skip shooting (their strength) and pile in, if only to blunt the enemy from doing the same, resulting in the effectiveness of shooting units being compromised even before they are actually engaged in combat.
CONCLUSIONS
Rapid Fire is a mechanic that has evolved over the course of a number of editions of 40k, with different versions being applied at different times. The result of this has been a lack of consistency in the interaction of this mechanic with other mechanics of the game, specifi cally,
the standardisation of movement rates, and rules on assaults. This has resulted in a ‘chessboard’ like situation, where movement is highly constrained by the 6” increments that everything is measured in, and the need to be the one who gets the assault trumps all others. Combined with the range limitations imposed by Rapid Fire, it is quite possible for units equipped with Rapid Fire weapons to never actually shoot them during a game – if they move each turn, then assault (or are assaulted) once they are within twelve inches of the enemy.
While it could be argued that the choices Rapid Fire imposes force the player to make a decision between moving and shooting, and shooting and assaulting, the reality is that there is not much choice at all, as the game requires units to move in order to meet mission objectives and the mechanics of combat necessitate pro-active assaulting. The current balance seems to be based on the assumption that the effectiveness of shooting and assaulting is relatively similar. As was noted earlier, this is simply not the case. There are far more limitations on shooting, and Rapid Fire in particular, than on assaulting, in spite of the fact that it is already demonstrably less potent than assaulting.
The purpose of this discussion is not to provide a solution to the problems of the Rapid Fire mechanic, but to raise it as an issue among players who are interested in improving the game, and to draw some attention to how Rapid Fire might be improved in the future.
STREAMLINING: MINIMIZING YOUR 40K GROWING PAINS
The nature of Warhammer 40,000 differs greatly from your typical game because not only is it a game, but also a hobby. Players become interested in it because of its stunning models, as well as a fascinating background story upon which the individual histories of its factions are built. One of the most interesting things
about this hobby-game is that the specifi c way a model is built can have effects on how the game is played – this is perhaps its greatest strength, as well as its greatest foible!
Part of the nature of this hobby-game is its ability to suck people into a black hole of story and modeling. Many newer players spend months building and painting their
armies before actually playing a game. They concentrate on customizing their models and creating their own vision of what an army of the Dark Millennium would look like. And fi nally, when the time comes for them to actually test out their newly fi nished army, they are faced with two problems: 1) they don’t know the rules very well, and so they inevitably lose, and 2) they fi nd that all the awesome accessories, wargear, and extraneous modeling confi gurations that they’ve put so much time into aren’t actually worth using. We’ve all seen it happen a hundred times – even my fi rst Chaos army was populated by models wielding a pistol in each hand, as well as back-slung Plasma Guns; the occasional Plague Marine wore a Jump Pack. Many times I’ll see a new player’s Space Marine army list that includes over three hundred points of wargear on its Veteran Sergeants alone. While it’s always amusing to see a Devastator Squad Sergeant with an Adamantine Mantle, it makes me wonder if we veterans should be trying just a little harder to coach the newbies.
TIP #1 – If you’re just getting into 40K, read the rules and watch people play the game. You will minimize the possibility of a major headache later on. Your models won’t have extra guns sticking out of their foreheads, and your bikers won’t be wielding Lascannons.
Before going any further, I must clarify that this article is for the 40K player who is moving into the main phase of army building. You’ve bought your models. You’ve begun assembling them (or you might have even fi nished putting all of them together). You have a tentative