The Abstraction Distraction

Wow, first post of 2020! It's not so much that there's been nothing to talk about, more that I've felt others were more qualified to do so. Today, though, I thought I'd ramble a bit about the concept of Abstraction, and how I feel it's being applied in 40k at the moment.

Firstly, let's define what we mean by 'Abstraction'. Put simply, this is the fact that what we see going on on the gaming table is at best a very rough approximation of what would actually be happening. For example, the Flyer rules rely very heavily on abstracts- the Flyer isn't really staying still in the spot where the model is, it's actually flying rather higher than the flying base suggests (except when it isn't, for LOS purposes..) and it's apparently manoeuvring more than it seems to be given that it ignores any concerns of arc of fire, so a Dakkajet can shoot something behind it with its wing-mounted guns, for example.

In more general terms, we're also using a turn-based system to reflect something that certainly isn't turn-based in real-time, which is another layer of abstraction. Now obviously, this leads to a lot of odd situations, like the fact that two opposing models separated by a piece of LOS-blocking terrain who want to move to shoot each other will have who shoots first determined by who's turn it is, so your hyper-swift Eversor Assassin will still stand there slack-jawed whilst a platoon of Guardsmen amble around a corner, form a firing line.. wait for it, second section.. and First Rank Fire him back to Pluto.* Here, the designer is banking on that abstraction evening out over the course of a game. Even the alternating-activations system many people would dearly love 40k to adopt still falls prey to this problem, though the alternation tries to compensate for it faster.

What this boils down to, though, is another reason why the current Character rules don't make a lot of sense.** The reasoning behind the Character rules comes in two parts- the actual reason for them, and the in-universe explanation for them. The actual reason for the Character rules is so that we can use our Warboss/ Captain/ Daemon Prince in a game of 40k without the enemy army taking the sensible measure of levelling four Lascannons at the big angry guy from the other side of the table and blowing him all the way back to.. Pluto.*** To achieve this, we have the rule that Characters must be the closest target to the shooting model, which is explained as the fog-of-war preventing them from picking out the enemy commander specifically. The issue, however, is that this abstraction breaks down completely as soon as you play the game.

We'll leave aside for the moment the fact that it seems very odd that only the most dedicated Sniper models can tell the difference between a Chaos Cultist and a Daemon Prince of Khorne at a distance of ten meters, and instead look at what players do about the Character rule. Of course the simplest approach is simply to shoot the beejeezus out of anything closer to you than the Character you want to get rid of, and in this case the rules work fairly well, with the notable exception of enemy units out of LOS or locked in melee who are closer than the Character. But there's another option, especially in more competitive games, which is to use movement tricks to get the would-be assassin**** into a position where the Character they wish to kill is the closest target. A classic example is to use a Flyer to buzz the Character and 'stop' right next to them before unloading into them. Advanced players will of course try to counter this by 'bubble-wrapping' the Character, either making it so they're surrounded by friendly models or preventing the Flyer from fitting its base in a suitable position. (Of course, the latter measure is once again relying on an abstract rule- you can't place your Flyer on the table in a given position so it can't 'fly' there, even though that makes no sense in 'reality'.)

Here's the problem, or at least one of the problems, with that scenario. We've established that the Flyboy in my Dakkajet can't tell Roboute Guilliman from a Tactical Marine at anything beyond point-blank range, which is why I, as Supreme Warlord, can't tell him to shoot the Blue Meanie. And yet I can order him to fly on a precise course straight up to the Pimp-Handed Primarch and then give him the benefit of Maximum Dakka.***** How? What's the explanation for my units knowing exactly where to stand, sometimes to an accuracy of a fraction of an inch, in order to shoot a target which the rules preventing me shooting said target assume they don't know is important? (I re-read that about four times and I think it makes.. about as much sense as any of this does.)

I mean to be fair, they're both blue.

Once you step back from thinking of the game as simply an interaction of rules, and start thinking about it as an attempt to depict something happening, more of this sort of thing rapidly piles up. Artillery currently doesn't need spotters, so we can fire indirectly at units out of LOS with it without penalty, but we can't fire Overwatch at a unit that starts its Charge move out of LOS. But the unit being charged clearly knows the enemy is there, so why can't it wait until they show themselves? For that matter, how is it possible to Charge a unit armed with Flamers from outside the range of the Flamers to avoid their Overwatch fire, when the charging unit is clearly going to have to get closer to them? Does the charging unit teleport? On the flip-side, how does one unit manage to fire Overwatch multiple times in one turn? (Due to failed charges or the Overwatch wiping a charging unit out) Does the rate of fire of their weapons suddenly increase, or do we assume they usually spend the enemy Assault phase firing at nothing?******

Now you could say, with a certain level of justification, that since we're playing a game rather than attempting to accurately simulate the Battle of Waterloo none of this stuff matters very much. After all, I'm pretty sure that medieval queens weren't known for rampaging around killing the subjects of rival kings before finally pinning them in a corner and shouting 'Checkmate' at them*******, and yet Chess is a game still played and enjoyed by millions. The difference, though, is that most games aren't tied so closely to a narrative. After all, one of the types of 40k is literally called 'Narrative Play' and we have a wealth of fiction that tries, with varying degrees of success, to reflect what happens on the tabletop. For me, at least, the fact that we can control our troops' actions so precisely, right down to deciding exactly how many swings of Gorechild Kharn is going to favour each of the three separate squads he's enthusiastically butchering with, and yet are prevented from doing other things because of the 'fog-of-war', is bizarre.********

What I find particularly strange is that many of the odder abstractions have been added to the game comparatively recently. I still consider the older Character rules, where Characters were attached to squads and could also benefit from Look Out Sir rolls, to work a lot better than the current mess. We used to have arcs of fire on vehicle weapons and Flyers that didn't somehow cease to exist if they flew off the board and I find it hard to believe that either rule was that hard to fathom. For that matter, Overwatch was once per turn, originally. It seems the rationale for a lot of these changes is 'simplicity', and indeed attached Characters with different profiles to their unit threw up more than a few issues, but I think the repeated tweaks and tinkerings with the 8th Edition version illustrate that the newer version is no better, and makes less sense.

What? No, this time you can't shoot me because the tactical guy is standing behind you. Honest!

Inevitably at this point the question arises as to what I would do to 'fix' things, assuming it's agreed that fixes even need to be made. It's a non-trivial question, certainly. For Characters, I'd allow them to be attached to squads, with shooting wounds never allocated to them until all the models in the unit other than the Character were slain, until the squad was destroyed at which point the wound pool empties and the Character becomes a valid target. (This method avoids worries about mixed Toughness values which used to plague prior editions.) I'd also allow Characters to palm off shooting hits onto squads within 6" on a 2+, making them hard to take out but always in at least some danger. In melee, I'd just make them fair game as they are now. Whilst I'm at it I'd limit Overwatch to once per turn, per unit, and have a unit that Overwatched miss its following Shooting phase, but remove the LOS and range restrictions because the enemy is running towards you, duh. (And into that bargain I'd have units that failed a charge still move the rolled distance towards the enemy, rather than the odd situation now where they.... I can't even explain exactly what a unit that fails a charge is supposed to be doing.)

Then again, if I had my way I'd bring back armour facings, weapon arcs, and templates, and I can hear the tournament players throwing tape measures at me from here.

So there we are- not that I expect a mass of comments but I'll ask the question- do these abstractions bother you, or do you not care? Would you tweak the Character rule still further, and if so, how?




*Or wherever they're based. Pluto sounds about right.

**Yes, this again.

***Apparently Pluto is popular this time of year.

****Not an actual Assassin, since most of those don't care about the Character rule for one reason or another

*****Which will probably do him about two wounds, but it's the principle of the thing.

******If they're Orks, this is entirely feasible.

*******This would make history lessons far more interesting, though.

********I don't use Grammarly, but I think the installation of it that I don't use on a server somewhere in the far corners of the internet just had a seizure and died anyway.