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Victory condition variant - Morale High Ground

Started by Wargamer, August 17, 2012, 03:31:10 PM

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Wargamer

Just an idea that bounced through my head...

Calculating Army Morale:
Army Morale is easy - it's equal to half the points of the game being played. So, if you're playing 2,000pts both armies will have 1,000 "points" of Morale.

Throughout the course of a game, armies will take Morale Damage. This is dealt via two means: destroying units and achieving victory conditions.

When a unit is destroyed, the controlling player loses an amount of morale based upon the number of units in his army. This is intended to represent the fact that a great horde like Orks or Tyranids care little for losses save on a massive scale, whereas an elite strike team will feel every loss keenly! This is known as "Adjusted Unit Morale," or AUM.

Calculating AUM:
AUM is, once again, an easy thing to work out; simply divide your army size by the number of units in your army, and round all fractions up to the nearest whole number.

For example, if you have 12 units in a 1,500pt army, your AUM is 125, and so you will lose 125 points of Morale for each unit destroyed, whilst an army of just 6 units loses 250 points of Morale per unit lost.

Other Morale Modifiers:
Below are a selection of Morale Modifiers. Feel free to make your own.


  • At the start of your turn, you lose 100 Morale if the enemy holds any objectives outside of their own Deployment Zone.
  • If your Warlord falls back for any reason, your army immediately loses 100 Morale. This applies even if the Warlord rallies automatically ("It's all part of the plan!" have been the last words of many generals!). It does not apply to Hit & Run attacks, however.
  • If your Warlord is killed (and wasn't already falling back) your army loses 100 Morale, in addition to AUM losses.
  • The first time you enter the enemy's deployment zone you immediately gain +50 Morale; it feels good to take the fight to the enemy!
  • The first player to destroy an enemy unit earns +50 Morale.

Reaching 0 Morale - "All Is Lost!":
As soon as your army reaches 0 Morale, and at the start of each of your turns thereafter, your Warlord must take an unmodified Leadership test. If passed, he keeps the army fighting with heroic speaches, threats, promises of chocolate biscuits or whatever else it takes to keep them in line. If failed, the entire army has a sudden outbreak of common sense and runs for it! The game ends immediately and your opponent is victorious! Huzzah!

If your Warlord is dead, then it falls to one of his subordinates to take charge! You may use the Leadership of any other model in the army to take the test, so long as they are a HQ character that could themselves be taken as a Warlord. If no such characters are available (either because you didn't bring any, or they're dead as well) then you must use the Leadership value of your basic troops instead!

To save any arguing, here are the base Ld values:

  • Chaos (Space Marines & Daemons) - Ld 9.*
  • Necrons - Ld 9.**
  • "Imperial" Space Marines (all Chapters) - Ld 8.
  • Sisters of Battle - Ld 8.
  • Eldar (Dark and Craftworld) - Ld 8.
  • Imperial Guard - Ld 7.
  • Tau - Ld 7.
  • Orks - Ld 7.
  • Tyranids - Ld 7.

* Note, the reason Daemons are not given their base Ld of 9 is to actually give you a penalty for losing your Warlord - it's a bit unfair otherwise!
** Again, this is for balance.
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Quote from: Liberate the Warhammers
People who have no sense of Sportsmanship have NO PLACE designing any Gaming system

Lord Sotek

#1
Love this idea! It strikes me that not only is it fluffy, but its implementation might help stave off the frustrating occurrence of "Beat the snot out of your opponent, but lose anyway on technicality because their list is uber-elite and has very few kill points."

Basically, it'd stop penalizing sizable/horde armies for being sizeable/horde armies, which is a good thing considering the relentless tide of Spehss Mehreens and Supah Speshul Silver (or Gold and Wingy) Spehss Mehreens and other tiny-powerhouse-army configurations that are currently frustratingly favored.

I also wonder if there shouldn't be more situations that can earn an army back some morale, though? Perhaps a succesful Sweeping Advance- There are few thrills in battle such as routing a foe so utterly!

Challenges strike me as another perfect opportunity; the winner of such a momentous event might perhaps gain their force a modest +10 to +25 Morale?
Quote from: Saulus on March 17, 2011, 06:16:56 PM
Often I hear delusional ramble like "I painted and collected my army as ultramarine tyranid hunters....but Pedro is really good, so now I'm using him, but I'm just going to call him Jimbob-Fistpumper, cause that fits with my