Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Hi guys

To answer my own question: Apparently, Space Marines do!

I have a problem with the survivability of melee-weapons based fighters in a world which also features high damage ranged weapons. My current headache is with a Warhammer 40'000 campaign where the PCs take on the roles of Space Marines. The PCs start out at 700 CP, they are extremely beefy warriors with high stats, all wearing power armour with 70 DR. Have a look at this post in which I linked a document if you are interested in the templates I used.<link zu pdf post>

So far, I've tried the following rule adaptions for melee-based PCs:

• Melee Etiquette: Whenever encountering a Boss or a Henchmen type adversary, melee-based characters can challenge them to a one-on-one fight. The fight between the two combatants is to the death but neither PCs or NPCs can interfere once the challenge is accepted. Also, you can only challenge unscathed opponents. So no gang-banging and then one-on-oneing. - this rule is pretty stupid come to think of it.. It suits the lore, sure, but from a pov
• Acrobatics Galore: All melee-based PCs can use Acrobatic Dodge several times per turn at -1 per attempt after the first.
• Uncanny Blocking: All melee-based PCs using a shield can use block as an active defense when being shot at, even with lasers.
• Assault Marines: Assault Marines get special equipment, a Jump Pack, which enables them to close with the enemy fast or get the hell outta dodge (Move 14).
• Enhanced Dodge: All melee-based PCs get +1 to Dodge, free of charge.
• All but the most modest of melee weapons have an armor divisor of (3)

Do you have any other ideas on what to do to help my melees survive?

Then there's the problem of scope. Assault Marines often carry a melee weapon and a ranged weapon. Do they get all, some or none of the benefits I mentioned above? Do only 'true' melees get the benefits?

I am mostly interested in hearing about experiences and additional rules exemptions you might have used in your games. And of course what you think of the stuff I did so far.

Cheers

Onkl

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Other things you can do:

Close quarters: melee weapons work best in quarters close enough that ranged weapons get bulk penalties and engagements start at melee range. (watch for it in action movies -- its really common).

High dodge, no deceptive ranged attack: If enemies (and PC's) have high dodges and you can't do deceptive ranged attacks, Closing to melee range may be the best way to hit ubersoldiers bouncing all over the place.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

It is not a stupid rule. Combat by champion is known in many cultures and has had examples as late as the Napoleonic Wars(the most iconic one in US memory was Chesapeake vs Shannon but it was also known for British and French subalterns to challenge one another in Spain). There is no reason inherent in improved military technology for it not to revive. The fact that Westerners don't go in for that much today is a cultural oddity that need not be presumed to be permanent.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

This rule is totally stupid, and the lore is totally stupid, and you should absolutely keep the rule. I'd change the name to "Duel Etiquette," though: the Assault Marine challenging a Tau Shas'O should force the two of them to focus on each other, but not force the Shas'O into disadvantageous melee.

Other than that, give everyone the rule Flesh Wounds, which lets you spend 1 CP to reduce the injury from an attack to 1, but let them pay FP instead of CP against ranged attacks. This makes sense, and it would also be 100% appropriate to the setting for some manner of special ammo to disregard Flesh Wounds (and be rare, of course).

I think it's best to implement special rules that protect the all PCs from ranged attacks rather than giving specific advantages to the melee ones. The Devastator marine with the Heavy Bolter is absolutely going to get more kills on average than the Assault Marine: however, the Assault Marine is going to shine against opponents that close quickly like Ork Bikers, shrug off damage like Necrons, or are hard as hell to hit like Harlequins. Don't make people feel bad for playing the Devastator by giving the Assault Marine free points, make them both feel good by giving them different enemies to annihilate.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Can't talk directly to WH40K, but typically speaking in video games with automatic weapons where melee is still of use, there are a few notable advantages to melee.

Accuracy: Firearms require you have the reticule on the target to hit, and many weapons have a decent amount of spread, while just having the target in range and within a wide arc is enough for an auto-hit with a melee attack. GURPS covers this fairly well already. Range penalties can easily give you a low chance to hit, although at high TL's Acc can offset this. Tactical Shooting requires you to use All Out Attack to benefit from Acc, however, so implementing that can help the melee characters. You can also disallow Prediction Shooting (so that Deceptive Attack is a melee-only option). Another option would be to give melee attacks a blanket bonus to hit - +2 could do it.

Power: Melee attacks often do more damage than all but the most powerful of ranged weapons. High armor divisors for melee weapons and low wounding modifiers for ranged ones can accomplish this rather well in GURPS. Alternatively, you can accomplish something similar by having armor give high protection against pi and burn damage and lower protection against all other types.

Stagger: Related to the above, in many First Person Shooters ranged attacks will at best cause a foe to flinch slightly, while a melee strike sends them reeling. Have foes struck in melee suffer a higher shock penalty than those attacked at range to help facilitate this. Knockback can also be useful (due to the chance of the target falling).

Sneak Attack: In games with a sneak attack mechanic, melee strikes are almost invariably more effective than ranged ones. Again, GURPS already has something like this, with Telegraphic Attack. You could also give a blanket damage bonus - say, +1/die - and/or give reduced penalties for Targeted Attacks (and/or only allow the Targeted Attack Technique for melee skills).

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

From what little experience I have with Warhammer, it seems that melee weapons should have a higher armor divisor than ranged weapons, meaning you're more likely to murder the canned meat with a single attack than with any gun shot. Throw in sneaking up behind somebody so they get no active defense, and melee has a purpose.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

The reason you bring a melee weapon to a gun fight in Warhammer 40k is because the melee weapon does considerably more damage. Knives aren't a great choice even for space marines, but at least in their RPG it can be difficult to damage things with a gun, meaning you need to go over to higher damage melee weapons.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Yeah, whatever else the modern world is, we are not pragmatic about war. When we fight we are messy, underhanded, wasteful, and rarely settle for anything but unconditional victory. Its definitely a cultural thing: we've seen cultures that fight like that in history, and for many of the same reasons (ancient rome comes to mind). We've also seen cultures that are pragmatic about ending the war before one or the other sides has been turned into dust.

Its also worth recognizing that along with this we have the philosophy that violence is the last resort, so much of the time we use it, the above outlook is valid: if something less than unconditional victory was on the table we would have started with negotiations, not tested (emphasis on test) our strength first.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Champion duels aren't particularly pragmatic either.

If they're simply a part of a larger battle, it's not clear how they change anything. If they're instead of a larger battle, obviously they save a lot of destruction...but you could save even more by settling the matter with a game of chess instead. And a champion duel isn't any better than a chess showdown for determining who would actually win in a battle.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Saying thing that are conditional on "All melee-based characters" like that seems problematic. How do you define a melee-based character? Is the guy with Broadsword [12], Guns (Pistol) [12] who fights with a sword and pistol out most of the time a melee-based character? What about the chap with Guns [24], Broadsword [2] who uses the sword when he runs out of ammo or the one with Broadsword [24], Guns [2] who uses the pistol when he can't manage to close to melee. Giving melee weapons really high Armour Divisor is probably a decent way to go, as well as high movement speeds (which space marines should have anyway) and have enemies with high DR.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Yeah, high armour divisor is the first and most obvious thing. What about ammo loads? Maybe they risk running out of bullets in extended fights. Also, there are a lot of (mainly silly) exotic hand weapons in 40K. You can beef up the marines melee equipment with chainswords and power hammers and whatever other OTT stuff they have.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

I've bolded the assumptions you are taking for granted.

Many kinds of warfare have units that do greatly effect the outcome of the battle: Champions in pre-formation warfare, knights in medival europe, aircraft in many modern situations. Any of these will normally kill a lot of units, and you counter them by simply replying with your own.

If that is the situation, and both sides have other enemies to worry about, its best to pit the units that will decide the battle against each other as a 'champions match'. Presumably the outcome of the battle is the same (as the deciding arm is the same), and you didn't loose all of the conscripts you would have in a pitched battle.

Close Battles are costly affairs. If you are fighting an honest to goodness one on one war, that doesn't matter. If you are dealing with a complex political situation, its advantageous.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

If you don't mind being too meta about it, remember that in the wargame, personal long arms have an maximum range of 48 yards, and heavy weapons about 120 yards!

If you do't want to just have hard and fast max range cut off. Have something like a setting switch that has AD drop by two steps once you get to say 50 yards. That actually works well for marines who are only in danger within very close range due to their high DR, and also for everyone else in low DR who will still be effected at higher ranges even at the reduced AD so will use more realistic tactics. (Not that the IG or Orks aren't likely to rush forward but they will at least die in droves when doing so)

Given the high stats that Space marines will have they should be able to rush the effective range gap quickly and engage superior force sin CC where they might be protected from short range gun fire.

Also with SM if you give them high enough stats melee will favour them anyway while also protecting them. Give H-Th weapons better AD than rifle equivalents (pretty in setting)

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Problem is with that is champion vs. champion (or elite vs. elite) was actually a resource maintenance tactic. It's was mainly employed by people who just can't afford to lose large numbers of able bodied people who will otherwise be responsible for keeping you society fed and warm win or lose.

dedicated soldiers had one job to fight*. So while they are individually resource intensive to train, equip and maintain and you don't waste them by any means if they're fighting their earning their keep.

Once warm bodies become a less critical resource (and equipping them less of a burden) to gamble the out come on your best chap not having an off day becomes less attractive.

*and keep the chaps with the big hats in power.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

The AD drop is a good idea. Would you cap it at (1) or keep going?

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Depends on the balance of weapon to DR I guess. If you keep going into fractional than you don't have to worry about making power armour really high (which also means you don't need really high AD in melee).

But ultimately the balance between DR and weapon damage is what going to matter here. (you can combine this all with lowering 1/2ranges as well of course which is an effective halve in AD anyway).

What's nice about it, you can still have some weapon that either don't drop their AD as much or have much longer threshold range for doing so, so that you can mix the threats up a bit.

Want to scare Mr. Chainsword wielding Space marine? Put him up against a sniper who can get past his brightly coloured power armour at 300 yards!

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

If they are members of small tribes, eliminating the greatest warrior in either tribe could make resuming hostilities impractical. It would be like sinking a carrier. If they are nations, with a dispute that is minor strategically but major in terms of face, a duel is a reasonable way to solve it, and possibly the only way to do so and avoid shedding blood without looking like one is trying to. A game of chess lowers the stakes to much, unless of course the loser has to commit sepukku. No nation of course could be trusted to wager it's existence on a duel if it can continue to fight afterwords, but for minor disputes it can be a useful way to keep one's street cred. And of course high-strung young fools wanting to send challenges across no mans land because they are bored don't need to be practical. A lot of champion duels were no more then that and had no other intention.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Given that I would assume that all of your space marines (and orks, and necrons, and and and...) are going to have HPT, giving melee weapons shock that bypasses shock, or knockback enhancements to stagger things that don't have shock penalties, seems good.

I'm going to echo all the other posters that are saying that the key is to make sure that the armor to penetration setup is such that the heavily-armored marines can close without getting ripped to shreds. Maybe justify the absurdly-short ranges mentioned above (48/120 yards) with defensive jammers/point defense that make shooting beyond that range ineffective?

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

An ordeal might do for this purpose but it has to be a conspicuous display of prowess. I once wrote a short story where a feud in the Sword Worlds was aborted by the Wise Woman of the Mountains(a famous local backcountry diplomat), ordering the two tribes to have a race to capture an eagle in the cliffs and present it to the local Hertug's aviary. If I remember both tribes captured one, the Hertug took the hint and accepted both eagles. But the point was the Wise Woman of the Mountains realized that the real reason they were feuding was to avoid being looked upon as people who wouldn't feud-and by extension as easy prey. Giving them a rigorous task serves the same purpose. Just as a duel does. A mere chess game doesn't.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Why does it work in 40k?

Are effective weapon ranges incredibly low, or maybe weapons are incredibly inaccurate, jam all the time or hold very low ammo and reload or cycle very slowly?

Then again, maybe it doesn't work in 40k either.

How close to the source (which I barely know) do you want to stick?

Misunderstood, badly maintained technology is easy to make cumbersome to use. Maybe firing a ranged weapon requires being stationary, drilling spikes into the ground, getting a lock-on (which registers on your target's sensors) and so on, making you melee bait.

Give weapons a huge Bulk, and impose Bulk on unaimed shots (sort of like a better version of Third Edition Snapshot). Cap Move and Attack at 9 with ranged weapons. There's a ton of stuff you can do here.

As an aside, GURPS rounds are 1 second. If you take the duration of a 40k round (6 seconds, 1 minute, I have no idea) and determine that this is the actual rate of fire, you can possibly both follow the lore and make ranged weapons stupidly slow.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

In the tabletop game, the ranges are incredibly low.

In the fiction I've seen, it mostly works because of furious handwaving. With an occasional side of fighting in close environments that make it at least slightly less implausible.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

The entire premise of 40K is Maximum Grimdark, with an additional side-helping of grimdark. They are the Spinal Tap * of grimdark, if you will. Missing out on bloody melees would reduce the grimdark quotient and therefore the rules are tweaked to ensure that hand-to-hand combat is useful at a technology level where it should seldom be a thing.

* It goes up to 11.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

It's also a wargaming artifact where you don't have an entire gym's worth of terrain to push your guys over.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

First off there's a difference between just looking at space marines and looking at the whole setting.

Believe me if you play Imperial guard (WW1 rifles troops) or Tau (manga power armour) it very much becomes a shooting war.

Space Marines chapters (loose organisational groupings) are basically all of histories great warrior cultures with the word space tacked on the front. So you have space Mongols, space Vikings, space legionaries, space crusader knights (and when that's not enough you have space vampires). hand to hand combat fits the motif.

You have to remember of course that 40k came our of warhammer fantasy battle, and it's first edition was practically the same rules set.

Now in the setting (and the RPG, Death watch), marines are very tough, very strong, very fast and very well armoured. Their initial purpose was for small numbers of them to win wars against much greater numbers of less well equipped troops.

They are functionally immune to normal rank and file weapons (but can be brought down my massed fire). Hand to hand combat suits them in because it plays to their strengths and to the weaknesses of who they are supposed to be fighting.

But it also suits their tactics, they are all lighting strikes to the opposing commanding officers and out again etc, etc. They are not rank and file in gun lines or normal engagements. So h-t-h is good for them because they can do while they go, these chaps theoretically don't get bogged down in fire and manoeuvre fire fights.


Someone once described a standard warhammer 40k battle (two roughly equal armies lining up approx 100 yards away from each other) as something having gone badly wrong for both sides.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Most tactically interesting scenarios involve significant mistakes. If only one side makes mistakes, you wind up with either no fight or a slaughter, depending on whether the side that didn't make a mistake was weaker or stronger than the side that did.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Of course you could have neither side making (significant) mistakes, and their are other factors that can add interest.

But I get you point, but given the very different factions motifs and combat ethos involved it particularly glaring in 40k.


There is of course also the point that if you were being true to the setting then 95% of fights should be Imperial guard vs. Imperial guard equivalent, or Imperial Guard vs. Ork (but then thst an issue to an extent with most wargames)!

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Tueller Drill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDPlWAq-11I

In WWI the soldiers improvised Weapons for Close Quarter, then the armies reintroduced the dagger for fighting in the trenches.

AFAIK the Gurkhas used their kukris in WWII in Close combat.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Both very short LoS situations.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Drive me closer!
I want to hit them with my sword!

In 40k the overall movement speed seems to be high compared to effective weapon range. Especially if you aren't playing something shooty like Tau or Imperial Guard.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Yes, now I'm not completely up on the latest edition, but IIRC you could start at max range for rifle equivalent weapon and arrive in close combat with rifle wielder, in the time it takes the rifle wielder to attack twice.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

So in other words:

There are no ranged weapons in WH40k, just long spears that have been cleverly renamed 'ranged weapons'.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Well since 40k never defined what an attack is and how long a turn is (but how quickly can you run 48 yards), an attack could be a single shot, a clip, or more.

Actually I'm being unfair an automatic weapon can fore twice at half range (24 yards)!

But yeah 40k is basically "wait until you see the white's* of their eyes"


Of course as said there's the inherent table top issue that you are actually fighting on a table top.

Or red's, or green's or tentacles of their eyes

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

You ask this question on knives and gun fights but is it for tabletop purposes or fluff purposes? Because the tabletop rules don't really reflect the fluff for 40K. It's the same reason why we shouldn't assume battlemechs from Battletech only have 90-meter range machine guns.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

I've played Rogue Trader RPG, and skimmed Dark Heresy RPG. The allegedly 'rapid firing' weapons are not what they call themselves. Ranges are meh too, but I don't remember the numbers.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Someone using a rifle in dark heresy has a pretty good chance of being able to attack, with a meaningful hit chance, at 400 meters. Not amazing, but compared to a movement rate that's generally 8-16 meters/turn when running, there's still plenty of time to hit and kill a charging foe unless there's terrain preventing you from engaging them.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

For whatever reason 40K always made me think of late 19th century warfare for some reason, probably that officers tend to have a sword and pistol. Though bayonets are seemingly rare in the 40K universe, which seems a bit odd. I've found this video to be a fairly good explanation of why one would want both a firearm and either sword or bayonet in late 19th century warfare, I wonder how much of it could reasonably be applied to 40K as a setting?

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

They're available in the tabletop, though they're chainswords because who would have a simple knife when you can have a chainsaw attached to your gun?

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

The ones in the RPGs are pretty reasonable (it all depends on what you firing at) the problem that they have is they have to fit on scale of lots of weird and wonderful weapons, so the basic auto gun is a it lack lustre. The TL in the setting is all over the place. (The original rogue trader has stats for black powder muskets).

The RPGs and the TT do rather differ in this, the stuff I posted above is more relevant to the TT than the RPG.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

That's really only if you're a Space Marine. Guardsmen just use the standard knife bayonet we all think of regarding bayonets while Sisters of Battle use some sort of elegant but tough blade for their bayonets called a sarissa.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

The advantages of a bayonet over a sword are less weight, less cost, and better ability to keep your opponent at a distance. Space Marines have powered armour which makes the weight saving fairly irrelevant, and presumably costs enough to make the cost a minor issue. And the setting's all about close-in brutality in combat.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Let's see:
Lasgun: range 100m, RoF S/3/-.
Autogun (read: assault/battle rifle): range 90m, RoF S/3/10.
Heavy Stubber (apparently what fills the GPMG/HMG role in their world): range 120m, RoF -/-/10.

A Round is 5 seconds long, which means that the most rapid-firing weapon has a cyclic rate of 2 rounds per second. And poor Steyr AUG A1 at TL8 has a ½D of 800 yards and an ability to make extreme shots at up to 3,500y . . .

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

one more important reason why melee might work in WH40k- Because people THINK it might work.

WH40k has a very active 'collective unconscious' between all individuals that actually shapes reality. The gods are real, but only because enough people think they are real. The entire orc 'technology' exists due to a racial ability to do this: Weapons and armor work, despite being nothing more then cobbled together bits of pipe and loosely arranged plates, because they think it does. For orcs painting red stripes on things DOES make it go faster, and putting a cardboard box over there heads that says 'no ork here!' means that they are invisible to advanced sensors.

So the collective unconscious may be contributing to allowing melee weapons to maintain viability- of course that's just fluff, ways to explain it away in game. It looks like mechanically its 'weapons have basically no range and terrible rates of fire'.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Ah sorry i thought you meant in terms of effect on targets. yes by the numbers they are rubbish against RL stuff. But even so they are better than in TT

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Figure scale=/= ground scale. Well, not in most wargames, and it certainly hasn't been that way in 40k since 1st edition. 2nd edition onwards has not specified any ground scale. 24" is purely a game abstraction of normal infantry small arms engagement distance, and that wouldn't even be maximum range, just effective range (in 1st edition, for example, projectile weapons could as an optional rule fire up to 10x their maximum range, while energy weapons could fire 5x, just with very little chance of hitting).

No time is specified. I think 1st edition originally also specified about 5 seconds, but no edition of the game since has. RoF is simply an abstraction of much effect a weapon will have over a game turn. 1 shot does not represent 1 shot (again, 1st edition gave weapons that fire bursts of fire a bonus to hit at short range). Personally I tend to imagine that each turn is about 5 minutes or so, but I don't really have any justification for this.

Some of the fiction did...

The TL being all over the place is sort of part of the point of the setting. Of course this is difficult to translate into a more structured set of rules like GURPS. This is a setting where a big brute of an ork has to be able to force his axe through sheer strength alone through armour that gives at least some measure of protection against light anti-vehicle weapons.

The RoF & range in Dark Heresy does not in any way necessarily reflect the the whole rate of fire over a whole turn or the maximum range. For one "Range" in DH is used in a formula to determine what bonus or penalty you have to shoot. The original maximum range was 10x range, but this was reduced to 4x (but even then this probably more reflects "effective range", rather than true maximum). The RoFs are pretty much abstractions, and meant to include time for lining up the weapon etc, and might be a number of short, controlled bursts spaced over the whole 5 seconds, with aiming between. I would take the RoF number probably to be indicative of the cyclic RoF (so RoF -/-/10 essentially means 10 rounds a second, with no semi-automatic or burst fire option, so the equivalent of 10! in GURPS).

Of course this is all talking about what are entirely abstractions that are designed to make a game work in a specific context (and having the issue that the rules for the tabletop game where developed from a game for a stereotyped fantasy battlefield). Truthfully it is often commented that even in DH (where the rules are weighted to favour melee) melee combat is usually inferior to ranged combat. Now, the specific circumstances of that game, where fights usually occur at short ranges, often mitigate against that, but the few advantages that Melee does get are actually oddities of the system, rather than in universe ones. Adding strength bonuses to damage often makes it better against targets with high levels of damage mitigation, and the fact that melee resolves multiple attacks as separate attack rolls (rather than ranged attacks modified single dice roll) often makes it more reliable in some ways and certainly better able to burn through someone's active defences.

I personally think that for a games master the major problem of translating 40k into GURPS are actually with mundane weapons, rather than how to make melee as a concept viable. It is a setting where fights happen at close ranges, which instantly makes melee attacks more viable, and Power weapons and the like will have large armour divisors, and pretty high damage ratings as well (they are essentially the setting's equivalents to lightsabers). People don't charge over open ground on foot and expect to get to use their swords before they die. You avoid being shot by taking cover, or you get to the enemy quickly (jump packs and the like). Even then, most soldiers primary weapons is a gun, it only being characters and specialist close combat units that focus on melee weapons. The real issue is the one I mentioned before: straight up Strength should still be able to punch through power armour (or any of the other armour types), at the same time as those armours providing decent protection against quite powerful weapons. It isn't realistic, and it doesn't really lend itself to the way GURPS does things. Not saying it isn't possible, just it would take a lot of work to get it to feel right.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

I take the abstraction point, but I thought 1" = 2 yards was still canon?



Really? it's been a long time I'll have to pull my old books out tonight!

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

That problem makes me wonder if it isn't better to try and run a hybrid game, mixing Gurps and tabletop WHk40 for the roleplaying and combat? It seems unavoidable the more you move away from the WH40k tabletop abstractions the more you change the feel of the setting.

A fun exercise is to take the WHk40 units and swap the rules with something like Stargrunt II, Tomorrow's War, or Infinity. Ranged fire is much more effective in those rule sets and doing something useful with the sword and pistol guys is a real challenge.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Also, Australians and New Zealanders notoriously used fixed bayonets in WWII.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

The British won the battles of Goose Green and Mount Tumbledown with bayonet charges (Falklands 1982), and a skirmish near Basra (Iraq 2004).

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Yes, and besides:

Australians won the Battle of Beersheba in 1917 with a mounted bayonet charge against infantry in trenches with machineguns.

Australians and New Zealanders won the Battle of 42nd Street on Crete in 1941 with a bayonet charge against German paratroopers who outnumbered them two to one. Inflicted a casualty ratio of over five to one, too.

Bayonets rock.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Granted, but don't we remember all these because they were exceptions? You don't hear about the times they charged with bayonets and were cut down by machine gun fire before they had moved ten yards.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Unless you read about the Western Front 1914–18

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Right. Now, if the British had fielded Emus instead... (they were apparently very resistant to machine gun fire)

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

The Japanese Banzai charges didn't do too well in the Pacific during WWII, either.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

Yep problem with banzai charges and bayonet charge etc in the modern day (include WW2), is that it's high risk.

It might surprise the enemy who stand there while you do it, or it might not and they'll shoot you. Circumstance will effect which is more likely of course!

either way it's a last ditch thing, unless you think you'll gain some specific benefit form it due to who you are who the enemy is (which was partly the justification for the banzai charges)

The recent instances i.e Goose Green and in Afghanistan wasn't done through choice

In both cases The British had I believe run out of ammunition, and the one in Goose Green was at night.

Re: Who brings a knife to a gun-fight?
 

No, or at least I am not aware of it being so. Every book since has failed to mention any solid range rule explicitly to avoid it, as they realised 1"=2 yards was... well, a bit dumb, but didn't want to change the rules or tie themselves down to anything like they did initially. I think the little "learning to play" rulebook in the 4th edition starter set (with Tyranids and Space Marines) had some throw away line about a "sliding scale", ala Flames of War (where 16" is "effective small arms range" and artillery then has a range of 48"), but I haven't seen anything like that since. They have realised tying themselves down to a scale leads to daft things (like the 90m range Battletech machine guns, which, while now stated to be a game abstraction, apparently featured in in-canon novels before they formalised it into "the weapon ranges are purely a convention for playability, not their actual ranges"), yet they like the rules they have... or at least are too scared to kill the golden goose that they are unwilling to drastically change the core of the rules.

And yes, there is an optional rule somewhere in the 1st edition ruleset for longer ranged shots. First you needed a 6 "to hit" and then make another BS check. Think it is towards the end of the combat section, but I am not totally sure. Going to admit I am not 100% certain on the range multipliers (it might be x5 for projectile weapons and x2 for energy weapons), but I am pretty sure it was x10 and x5.