Hello guys, I'm looking into formation rules from Enemies of the Imperium and I'm considering using them in my game. I'm accustomed to the Horde Mechanics from Deathwatch, and although making hordes easy it kinda fit the "space marine god" philosophy.

Now I think using formations can be very helpful in speeding up combat while still having squad vs squad level combat rather than the D&D style "4 heroes vs 4-8 monsters" that it can become. I had a fight using 12 ork boys, where 4 were shootas and the rest sluggas. Although it was not my slowest battle, keeping track of status effects and crits on these orks became tedious, not to mention just wounds. Having some sort of "1 hit wound, 2 hit death" would be useful.

Anyway, the rules give me a few questions. First of all, it seems that going into a formation makes the enemy a lot less formidable, both in firepower and in survivability. Even tough orks or stormtroppers will die in droves to a decent heavy gunner. If my goups heavy fires at a squad of 10 he will probably score 4-8 kills in the first round, as minumum damage of his heavy stubber is enough to wound an imperial guardsman (1d10+6 Pen 2) vs TB 3+Armor4. This is just too easy, and makes automatic weapons insanely good against formations. Flamers and even grenades are significantly weaker as they kill a lot less potentially, although they will cause more consistent casualties. The rules does not address how to actually attack a formation with a Spray weapon - do you roll only a single agility test for the whole formation? That would make Flamers even worse, as normally you have several enemies in the cone and all have a pretty good chance at failing the Agility test. Grenades are better due to scatter, as they are likely to hit the formation even on a miss.

Secondly, attacking formations have no rules for semi-auto or automatic weapons. So a squad of troopers with autoguns are equally good to a squad of primitive troops using muskets, or any other Single Shot weapon.

In the Horde rules automatic fire would add hits per normal, but the +50% to hit makes maybe this too easy.

I suppose I can let every 2 extra DoS get another hit on semi-auto?

Yes, Formation Combat can be very fast moving and deadly. That's why, in terms of the times I've used it, I've used it in a more abstract method i.e., one turn of formation vs formation combat does not equal one turn of PC structured time. Of course, this doesn't really work when the PCs themselves are attacking a Formation ...

As for Formations of Orks, check the special "orders" for Formations, the Ork ones ... basically if you don't do Ork Toughness Bonus excess damage, the Orks get a Toughness(+0) test to just completely shrug off the attack. Addtionally, one of the orders, Scatter I think it is called, is used for evading sprays and blasts.

As for heavy weapon troopers in Formations, you can keep them separate from the rest of the unit so they roll their attack normally and are Overseer style for targeting purposes.

You are right in that the semi/full automatic weapons do not matter in Formation rules, but I think it assumes that BOTH sides would have semi/full automatic weapons so they more or less cancel out. If you are having a squad of autoguns attacking a squad of laslocks ... I think you can assume one side would clearly win

Yes, Formation Combat can be very fast moving and deadly. That's why, in terms of the times I've used it, I've used it in a more abstract method i.e., one turn of formation vs formation combat does not equal one turn of PC structured time. Of course, this doesn't really work when the PCs themselves are attacking a Formation ...

As for Formations of Orks, check the special "orders" for Formations, the Ork ones ... basically if you don't do Ork Toughness Bonus excess damage, the Orks get a Toughness(+0) test to just completely shrug off the attack. Addtionally, one of the orders, Scatter I think it is called, is used for evading sprays and blasts.

As for heavy weapon troopers in Formations, you can keep them separate from the rest of the unit so they roll their attack normally and are Overseer style for targeting purposes.

You are right in that the semi/full automatic weapons do not matter in Formation rules, but I think it assumes that BOTH sides would have semi/full automatic weapons so they more or less cancel out. If you are having a squad of autoguns attacking a squad of laslocks ... I think you can assume one side would clearly win

Ok, tested it tonight with my group. The heavy started with "I do 3 hits on one and 2 on the other". The round after this changed to "I do 1 bullet on each 8 targets". They shrugged off some with the toughness check, but it very often did not apply, either by a Fury (would normally also kill non-formation goons), or simply by doing more than TB excess.

heavy gunner vs ork: Penetration makes the armor worthless, so only 7 damage is enough to punch through TB - and the guardsman does minimum 8 . Ignoring the toughness check only takes 13 damage altogether, which means that in average half his hits should do so, more of you count the DoS improving damage on one of them. And the Toughness check (-10% actually) only means about 1/3 of the damaged makes it.

So I put a 10 man ork troop with shootas + one Nob against the party, moving in a Truck with extra gunner and driver. They didn't stand a chance, and didn't even get close despite me using the MoveMoveMove order (which is an IG/SD order) to get them there faster. -30 to hit was not enough to save them.

I don't mind running against heavy machineguns in open terrain is pretty much suicide, the problem is that the orks are so vulnberable if they do so in formation. If they moved up as normal individuals I might have gotten at least close to the enemy.

Possible change: Add wounded as status for troops. If you do more than Armor+TB, but less than TB extra, they are wounded. If they take more than TB extra, they are killed. Orks can take a Toughnes check to change it to wounded, but not if they take more than double TB extra. So Mr. Heavy Dakka needs to do 18 damage to autokill an ork, which is not impossible. Any wounded who would take another wound is instead killed. This means you'd need to track status for the troops, but if you don't want to do this, you could just assume that the next hit trooper is one of the wounded, if any.

Movement is also a big problem. If they want to shoot they only move Ag meters, which is nothing if they need to close on the enemy. In comparison, units move 6'' on foot in tabletop, which is about the equivalent of 15 meters (pistols have 12'' range, lasguns 36''). And that if is they move AND shoot, not just run. In real life humans walk comfortably 1.3 meters per second, which is about 6.5 meters in a 5-second round. And thats a fairly slow leasurely walk for a human. 3 meters is nothing, a little more than D&D's 5' step, and there everyone is 3 times as fast. So why did they make the rules like that in old Dark Heresy or even Warhammer fantasy? Balance? Nah, they generally want to favor melee. In WH40k melee combat is meant to be a lot more effective than it is today, which means it is sometimes very effective while in RL it is only used as a desperate last ditch attack if you have no other chance. This ramble is a problem with the main rules though, not formations by itself, but the combination of vulnerable NPCs in formation and slow movement speeds makes them suicidal. And since formations can't really benefit from full auto, you get at most 1 hit per soldier... which a single guardsman with a fast-firing autogun can achieve by HIMSELF.

The rules are fast and fairly simple, but they are designed for use against PCs, not formations vs formations.

while i agree that larger combats can be a bit clunky, sending your group up against a formation is a bit sketchy, you run the risk of losing the spirit of only war. unless your characters are VERY good, you shouldn't be able to dispatch 12 boys a trukk and a nob at all, let alone easily.

i think unless you have formations on both sides, you shouldn't group the enemies into formation, but instead just come up with some simplifying house rules and some time saving tips

"goon" level enemies die instantly on a righteous fury, die at 0 wounds too.

if an enemy is essentially taken out of combat (e.g. stunned for 4 rounds AND on 2 wounds) just kill them if a player hits them to save time.

have flash-cards for status effects, or just translate them into extra wounds on "goon" level enemies

also you can simplify enemy damage by just using an average. e.g. someone fires a lasgun at the players D10+3 you just assume 8/9 damage.

also, re: movement. its kinda scaled anyway: weapon range is much lower than it would actually be in the real world: lasgun's effective range is up to 200m whereas most rifles today are effective up to 350-400, and most combat encounters take place at up to this distance, whereas in only war this is not the case (well certainly not my firefights haha).

so if movement was increased so would gun ranges, and you would be no different to where you started except having giant battlefields which would be awkward for a gm

while i agree that larger combats can be a bit clunky, sending your group up against a formation is a bit sketchy, you run the risk of losing the spirit of only war. unless your characters are VERY good, you shouldn't be able to dispatch 12 boys a trukk and a nob at all, let alone easily.

i think unless you have formations on both sides, you shouldn't group the enemies into formation, but instead just come up with some simplifying house rules and some time saving tips

"goon" level enemies die instantly on a righteous fury, die at 0 wounds too.

if an enemy is essentially taken out of combat (e.g. stunned for 4 rounds AND on 2 wounds) just kill them if a player hits them to save time.

have flash-cards for status effects, or just translate them into extra wounds on "goon" level enemies

also you can simplify enemy damage by just using an average. e.g. someone fires a lasgun at the players D10+3 you just assume 8/9 damage.

I was under the impression that formation rules were intended for use against the PCs - in fact there are no clear rules of formations vs formations. It does kind of lose the spirit yes, but the idea is to speed up combat when there are many enemies, and being able to use a lot of them more effectively. For example, should the PCs ever find themselves facing a thousand enemies, it would be useful to be able to use formation rules for some of them to engage the PCs without bogging down. Of course, if the PCs don't immediately flee they will be killed.

A good argument against increasing movement overall is rate of fire: Now you can fire 1 round normally, 3 with semi-auto or 6-10 in full auto. In RL you can easily do that in half the time. So half speed and half RoF pretty much cancels each other out. Range matters too, but existing conditions often makes that redundant.

Goons not having wounds: I have seen others commenting that, and I think I sometimes used it as a house rule in DH. I haven't found any such rule in OW though, can you point me at it? As it is orks have a bunch of talents that helps them against crits, so not letting them take critical damage nerfs them a whole lot. I can assule you my group could take out a trukk with a squad of orks and a nob in the exact same situation if the orks died at 0 wounds. It just got a lot faster since they used formation rules this time.

That said, tracking seperate criticals for 10+ enemies takes too much time, so thats why I'd rather have a "wounded" and "dead" status. And the problem with using 10 shoota orks is that they can't hit for **** (14% chance if they use full-auto means that pretty much all misses, and Full Auto is wasted), but the formation rules helps out a lot with that, and takes a single roll vs. ten. With orders such as "More Dakka" this becomes even more effective.

So Im planning to use my own house rule to make them somewhat less squishy, and also not form formations until they are ready to engage the enemy, assuming there are enough still standing by then.