First off thank you all for the particiaption in the last post. There were some good thoughts but this is one I wanted to address directly as it King does a good job at stating why he perceives the games as slanted toward shooting. This is naturally open discussion. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and I'm not cutting or slamming TKE. I felt I should point that out as, while I'm sure TKE knows it, I wanted to make sure other readers did too.
TheKingElessar wrote:
Vis-a-vis a shooting game, however, I have to disgaree that the two are perfectly balanced in the core rules. The fact that you hit vehicles on the Rear is poor compensation for hitting them on 4+ or 6s virtually any time you catch up to one you haven't already damaged, only getting a single strike from Grenades, Melta Bombs not being AP1, and then the myriad issues with time constraints, distances, blocking, bubblewrap, and the fact that (barring Kharn) it will always be easier for skilled shooting units to hit and thereby have a chance to inflict damage than for combat units* - there are a great many more limiting factors to inflicting melee damage than shooting damage.
Is the gap as wide as perhaps it is sometimes asserted? No. However, if hyperbole is the only way to get people to pay attention to the debate long enough to see for themselves the inequality, then I have no qualms with that.
* - For anyone who doesn't already realise, this is two-fold: the fact that you can hit on a 2+, and often with a re-roll built in, shooting, but can't in CC; but also because shooting rolls to hit are based only on your own ability without the comparative process for Weapon Skill. A Shooting unit will always be exactly as good at hitting in any circumstance, but a combat unit is inherently less reliable, despite the variation being small and unusual, but they also variably take damage BACK, a much more important factor as they can hit things that kill them much more easily than they'd like.
