Artificer Armour Conundrum

[Dave]

Back to doing some hobby stuff and watching some battle reports whilst doing so and man does the tactical marine sgt with artificer armour tanking hits get boring quick.

I wonder if we should think about either banning it for normal squad sergeants or changing how wound allocation works.

Just off the top of my head;

1) If the sgt is not under a template (blast or flamer) then he can’t take the saves for the unit. And/or;
2) A maximum of half (and that’s quite generous I feel) of the wounds a unit takes can be allocated to a model(s) with a different armour save value than that of the majority armour save value of the unit.

All that said, maybe once sniper models come out it won’t be a problem at all.

I’m not meaning to put a downer on anything, I am really enjoying my games so far, we can keep it as is if that’s the preference.

[ErebusMort]

I don’t like it either. I’ve used it, but don’t like that I feel I should and it leads to counter intuitive situations.

It doesn’t seem right that the sarge can choose to tank the breaching hits from the plasma weapon, but not the other ones. Nor that he stands in front of a flamer. The wordbearers special reaction where one model dies and everyone else survives can’t be used against blast or template weapons and that seems to be the closest comparator I can think of?

Simplest option is to only allow the armour to work in close combat. Otherwise perhaps he can start taking the wounds when his unit is down to less than half or quarter strength to demonstrate him being heroic at that point?

[Ray]

While I agree the way it works now is very weird, I worry how overpowered AP3 shooting would become if we nerfed it. That mechanicum unit is crazy enough already.

[Dave]

Having just played mechanicum I get what you’re saying.

Lets leave it for now and if it starts to get ridiculous then we can revisit the subject.

[Tom]

I bow to superior experience, but as all you have to do is roll one 1 for the gravy train to end, and then you've lost leadership and significant cc ability, I wasn't too worried about it.

I suppose it makes you roll all your saves one by one which would be a bit of a pain?

Just thought, apothecaries could start making it silly again as you'd need to also fail your FNP for the armour guy to die.

[Dave]

I suppose it makes you roll all your saves one by one which would be a bit of a pain?

This is really my only issue with it, the time it takes to roll individual die.

With regard to the FNP save, you would make all your normal armour saves first so if you kill the sgt you would then roll the remaining wounds on the squad, you then do any FNP saves.

[Mike]

Watched several youtubes and they all use the seargent to tackle the wounds. Sometimes dying quickly as they roll all 1's.

I would have thought the old way of allocating at least 1 wound per model then around again would work better

What about you are only allowed to allocate wounds up to the number of models in the squad to the seargent, you must advise a number for the seargent before you roll so you cant keep pushing your luck. Once dead the remainder carry over to normal squad members.

[Tom]

With regard to the FNP save, you would make all your normal armour saves first so if you kill the sgt you would then roll the remaining wounds on the squad, you then do any FNP saves.

That can't be right. In a mixed armour situation you have to roll FNP at the point of individual wound allocation immediately after the armour save. If you do FNP after finishing wound allocation and armour saves then passing a single FNP would mean the model can't be allocated any more wounds because you've already finished emptying the pool.

Like imagine if I shoot a single guy and get 3 wounds. Allocate the first wound to him, roll his armour, it fails, what do you do with the rest of the wound pool? If you're doing FNP last then you can't allocate them to the one guy because he has already reached his wound capacity. FNP (and other damage mitigation) has to happen at time of individual wound allocation like armour saves.

[Dave]

Looks like you are right, I’ve been watching too much YouTube!

That makes him even more durable, time to get the bits box out and convert up a dozen apothecaries!