AoS Siege battles / rules / ideas

[Aginor]

hmmm.... all melee weapons?

I am thinking about monsters.
- The tail swipe of a Bastiladon
- the club of a giant
- The mighty fists of a Maw-Krusha
- Ghal-Maraz, Sigmar's own warhammer wielded by the mightiest Stormcast, the Celestant-Prime

Even the weapons of some elite units with magical weapons:
- Stormcast Concussors
- Stormcast Retributors with Starsoul Maces
- A Saurus Sunblood with his weapon bristling of Celestial Energy, whatever.

I mean: Sure, in a realistic world a infantry weapon regardless of its quality cannot damage a stone wall. But in Warhammer? Where do we draw the line?

 

[Crowsfoot]

hmmm.... all melee weapons?

I am thinking about monsters.
- The tail swipe of a Bastiladon
- the club of a giant
- The mighty fists of a Maw-Krusha
- Ghal-Maraz, Sigmar's own warhammer wielded by the mightiest Stormcast, the Celestant-Prime

Even the weapons of some elite units with magical weapons:
- Stormcast Concussors
- Stormcast Retributors with Starsoul Maces
- A Saurus Sunblood with his weapon bristling of Celestial Energy, whatever.

I mean: Sure, in a realistic world a infantry weapon regardless of its quality cannot damage a stone wall. But in Warhammer? Where do we draw the line?

Tricky one, maybe all weapons that cause 1 damage have no effect on structures? or do you have options to add weapons that can do damage, bit like the troll in LOTR when he uses his head as a ram.

 

[tom ndege]

How about subtracting from the damage characteristics depending on the building attacked? Like for walls you say something like "subtract 3 from the damage characteristics of every attack made against the wall with no-siege weapons"...
And maybe some kind of ability that slows down the attacking unit? Like "if a unit attacks this building the models who attacked can not attack in their next combat phase" or "always strike last until their next combat phase" symbolic for swords stuck in the wood or between the bricks...

 

[Aginor]

Either that or like it was done in those old siege rules:
You could add the siege abilities to your monsters if you wish and otherwise they are no good for sieges.

 

[Canas]

I'd do the following:

• Terrain:
  • Depending on the material, quality & type of fortification give it a certain number of wounds a save and potentially rend or mortal wound protection. As a general outline:
    • Ultra; fortified stone walls; virtually indestructable.
    • Major: stone walls, heavy gates; have rend and mortal wound protection alongside the best save and highest number of wounds.
    • Medior: gates, wooden pallisades; Rend protection mediocre save and wounds.
    • Minor: barricades; low save and wounds.
  • They're immune to most debuffs and buffs. Only some stuff like mystic barrier or summon starlight works. Use some common sense.

For siege equipment:

• Ranged attacks:
  • Proper siege equipment: cannons; catapults etc: their attacks work as normal
  • Anti-personal siege equipemt, organ guns etc: incapable of hurting any but the most minor of fortifications.
  • Minor siege equipment: e.g. the "guns"/cannons an ogre carries do not work against major fortifications.
• Melee attacks:
  • There is no need for a hit roll; if your guy needs an hitroll for hitting a gate with a magic axe he's an idiot.
  • Units at least as big as bastilidons or stegadons can use their attacks against the terrain as normal provided the attack makes sense. E.g. a bastillidon can smash it with its tail, but a carnosaur can't take a bite out of a gate. If such a unit doesn't have an appropriate attack it gets the special siege attack ability.
  • Units the size of rat-ogers get an extra siege attack ability. This attack does not work against major fortifications.
  • Units the size of a human with magical, or technological advanced weapons or that can otherwise be considered especialy strong (e.g. a sunblood or orruk megaboss) get this attack as well. This attack does not work against major fortifications.
  • Monstrous units the size of a human (orruks, saurus etc.) get this attack but only against minor fortifications
  • Other: cannot damage fortifications.

Special siege attack ability:
This unit can attempt to destroy fortifications dring the hero phase. It can choose to do this attack with any model touching the fortification. This model is incapable of performing any other actions this turn as it recklessly slams into the fortification with all its might and reduces his save with -1 for the remainder of the turn.

Again, several levels for the attack to differentiate between the various units. A rat oger is going to be better at this than a sunblood most likely even if both can eventually take down the same level of fortification.

For magic/abilities, these are all reduced to 1 mortal wound, and only the ones that do actual physical damage count to keep things simple. E.g. a magister's bolt of change doesn't do anything but arcane bolt does.

 

[pendrake]

And maybe some kind of ability that slows down the attacking unit?

At most, a unit attacking a structure will get to swing at the structure 12 times in a 6 turn game.

I propose a thought experiment:

What can you destroy if you hit it twelve times? Could you chop down a door with an axe? Could you hack through a dense hedge with a bardiche? Batter down a field stone wall with a sledge hammer?

 

[pendrake]

Pondering the Silly

Kislev. I remember a siege game where some Orcs (or possibly Chaos dudes) pushed a siege tower forward for four turns. It moved at a painful 4 inches per turn. Each turn the Elves, defending the walls of Praag, peppered it with arrows. It died on turn four...and just disappeared from the table. 6th or 7th Edition I think.

Cannon. @Canas did you just propose that stupidly big Ogre Cannons do little damage to structures but Dwarf Or Empire Cannon do a fine job blasting big holes in walls?

Flyers-Airboats. AoS has these. I don't even know where to begin...

 

[Aginor]

At most, a unit attacking a structure will get to swing at the structure 12 times in a 6 turn game.

I propose a thought experiment:

What can you destroy if you hit it twelve times? Could you chop down a door with an axe? Could you hack through a dense hedge with a bardiche? Batter down a field stone wall with a sledge hammer?

If it is magical? Maybe all of those. Hard to tell.

@pendrake thanks for those examples!
Really interesting questions that might not be easily solvable. But then keep in mind: while we can reduce silliness to a certain degree there will always be some kind of simplification that will cause such things. It is just necessary because otherwise the rulrs become far too complex.

 

[Aginor]

As for the flyers: there have to be some kind of anti aircraft artillery (short AAA) towers.

Magic would do the trick as well though.

Or storm generators preventing units from flying....

 

[Canas]

Pondering the Silly

Kislev. I remember a siege game where some Orcs (or possibly Chaos dudes) pushed a siege tower forward for four turns. It moved at a painful 4 inches per turn. Each turn the Elves, defending the walls of Praag, peppered it with arrows. It died on turn four...and just disappeared from the table. 6th or 7th Edition I think.

Cannon. @Canas did you just propose that stupidly big Ogre Cannons do little damage to structures but Dwarf Or Empire Cannon do a fine job blasting big holes in walls?

Flyers-Airboats. AoS has these. I don't even know where to begin...

I was under the impression that the ogre's didn't carry the equivalent of empire great-cannons but a slightly smaller caliber cannon But I might just be overestimating the scale of the great-cannons. If they carry essentially the same thing they should be just as effective.

As for flyers; they should be pretty much as is I think. However, the defender could have put javalins (or other things) at places on the wall to lob at the enemies . Units within 2" of a of javalins can use those as a ranged attack should they not have one themselves. This could potentially be increased to some proper defensive works depending on the scale of the fortifications (e.g. cannons fixed into the walls). But this isn't a specific anti air kind of thing. To be honest, apart from the skydwarves most armies don't seem like they'd field entire armies worth of flying stuff so shouldn't be that much of an issue I think.

 

[Crowsfoot]

Would the flyers be able to take out defenders off the walls?

Imagine a Terradon dropping rocks on walls that might work.

 

[Aginor]

Sure I don't see why they couldn't.
They just have to make sure to end their movement somewhere their base fits.

 

[Aginor]

And further elaboration on the topic of flyers and sieges:

I think bigger flying units are no problem either.
That's because they are too big to just fly into the fortress and land there. their bases just won't fit in many cases. If they fit inside then the defender probably has made a mistake. Putting units on the walls or right behind the walls is important.
Units like a Maw-Krusha or a Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon probably just have to wait outside and pound the walls. No problem there either I think.

Even deep strikes are not THAT much of a problem I think, because if the defender placed his walls well the attacker just won't be able to drop lots of his stuff inside. They might be able to drop _some_ stuff in there, like an assassin or so, but that's OK and even intended. But if there is enough place for me to teleport 40 Skinks and a Dread Saurian into the fortress, then the defender has only himself to blame.

 

[Aginor]

I just noticed I forgot some important aspect of attacking a fortress:
If you cannot destroy the walls (and that was a real problem in medieval times), why not scale them?

So what I am talking about is ladders (can also be used for grappling hooks or similar things). Here are some rule ideas, first draft:
- Ladders can be carried by infantry.
- For the sake of simplicity I'd just say one model per 10 models in a unit can carry a ladder. And yes that means that a minimum size unit of Ardboyz, Skeletons, or Saurus Warriors can carry ladders and a minimum size unit of Brutes, Liberators, or Saurus Guard can't. The player has to decide whether they will make them a larger group or rely on other means to get up or into the fortress.
- Setting up a ladder can be done in the hero phase.
- 10 models can scale one ladder in one round, but they cannot fight while doing so, it basically counts as a run move, except that they may ignore the 3" rule if there are defenders near the ladder's top. If there is not enough space on the wall to place the models, they have to move in a way so they can maintain unit coherency.
- Whenever a ladder is placed within 3" of an enemy unit the enemy can try to knock it down. Throw a dice. On a 4+ the ladder is knocked down before a model has climbed it. On a 6+ there was an attacking model on the ladder already, the unit suffers 1d3 mortal wounds as the model and the ladder fall onto the attackers. (or maybe roll against each other?)

 

[Aginor]

Note to self: Discuss the following things:

- siege tunnels
- Grot Spider Riders, can they climb fortress walls as it they weren't there?
- Nighthaunt. Basically all of those can fly, will that be a problem? How to balance that?

 

[Canas]

Note to self: Discuss the following things:

- siege tunnels
- Grot Spider Riders, can they climb fortress walls as it they weren't there?
- Nighthaunt. Basically all of those can fly, will that be a problem? How to balance that?

- siege tunnels are probably a tad too complicated to work interestingly.

- Yes, or at least at say half speed or something. The vertical distance just being treated as horizontal.

- Same as any other flyer, they can go wherever they fit.

What I think is more interesting is what benefit exactly do the defenders get from being in fortification? Does it count as being in cover? A bigger bonus? I think this would also help balancing out armies like the nighthaunt. Yes they might have an easier time scaling the walls than other armies, but they lack siege equipment to break the fortifications that protect the defenders and they lack the ranged firepower to cover their assault. Allowing the defenders the opportunity to just fire into their ranks at will. If then the ramparts provide some bonus to the defenders (cover bonus when attack from the outside of the wall? Something stronger?) just being able to fly shouldn't negate that bonus.

 

[Aginor]

Agree about the tunnels.
They tried to do _something_ with them in the GHB2017 siege rules, but those are pretty underwhelming. I'd rather omit tunnels than doing them half-assed.

Also agree about the spiders. Those walls will still be a speed bump - as they should - if they have to spend movement inches for the vertical distance, and that's enough.



As for the defenders:
The obvious bonus is that the walls and fortifications help them so they need less troops. Since we want battles to be balanced that basically means that at least defense towers will have some sort of point value.
I think we don't need points for simple walls since - compared to defense towers that use weapons - they are not very useful if nobody is there to guard them.

About wall bonuses specifically:
In general I would say that sombody standing on a fortress wall is fully within a piece of terrain, so yes I'd say walls grant cover.

Also we could talk about walls having anti-siege equipment mounted on them. Like this:
For each wall segment of 5" you can choose a anti-siege weapon. Pick one of the weapons below, it can be used once per turn by one unit standing on that wall segment:
- drop/throw rocks: 4 attacks, 1" range, 4/4/-1/1 (or something like that)
- drop oil: (works like a Salamander's stream of fire, but limited to 3")


Balancing-wise the goal is to have the game balanced on a 3-1 ratio of attackers vs. defenders. So if the defender brings 1000 points of troops the attacker will need roughly 3000 points to win the game. The defensive structures have be effective enough to be worth the point difference.

 

[pendrake]

- Grot Spider Riders, can they climb fortress walls as it they weren't there?

Yes, or at least at say half speed or something. The vertical distance just being treated as horizontal.

This climbing ^ business has been a pet peeve of mine for years. It started with those wretched Yeti in the Ogre army. I absolutely detest a climbing rule that allows something to ignore a vertical distance.

Also agree about the spiders. Those walls will still be a speed bump - as they should - if they have to spend movement inches for the vertical distance, and that's enough.

Good ^ man. Climbing an eight inch tower should cost eight inches of movement. We concur. (And that is being incredibly generous, since normal, real life, mundane climbers need far longer to ascend a given distance.)

 

[pendrake]

The way tunneling was handled in the old Siege Rules Book: it was a separate battle that happened underground.

It was a prior scenario to the final assault scenario.

(Which is really what this thread is about... Final Assault meant to end a Siege; rather than the Siege itself.)

 

[pendrake]

Would the flyers be able to take out defenders off the walls?

A dragon should be able to swoop in and snatch figures off the walls (and then drop them)...rather like the Giant's attack of grabbing people and stuffing them in a sack.