AoS Siege battles / rules / ideas

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...

 

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.

 

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?

 

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.

 

- 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.

 

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.

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.)

 

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.)

 

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.