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The Bane Of RZ (a.k.a.-RME)

5/1/2011

3 Comments

 
Righteous Zeal, once one of the hallmarks of the Black Templars has fallen on hard times.  Formerly a way to make your opponent pay for killing a Chapter brother by giving us a free way to get closer for that short ranged firefight and/or assault, then a way to sneak a +1 cover save (voluntarily GtG, then RZ out of it) pre-FAQ and now merely a way to get an extra d6" move between the opponent's shooting and assault phases, if you really want to move.  Hence, it resembles Righteous Mild Enthusiasm more than Zeal.

What kills many lists, especially more competitive mechanized ones with our overpriced codex, is that Commanders are less attractive for the points spent.  This opens up a loophole for your opponents since if you take even one casualty, you must take a morale check at the end of shooting.  Not even IG has a chance to fall back this easily, you at least have to kill two or three of them.  Yes, it is true, you will make most of those checks, but the fact is there is still a 27.8% chance a Ld8 unit (like our Crusaders) will fail and fall back.  Many times this is just annoying, but sometimes it can be devastating, especially for a gun line list that is trying to maximize its range advantage.  Even if they set up 7" away from the board edge, if they fall back, there is a 58.3% chance that the unit will be eliminated if it falls back since you only have to have one model "contact" the board edge to eliminate the entire unit from play when falling back.

Combined, that is a 16.2% chance that any Ld8 unit in a Black Templar list will flee from the battlefield if placed 7" away from the edge.  It drops to 9.7% for Ld9 and 4.9% for Ld10, so even with a Commander, the risk is still there for a very limited benefit.  It also gives a tactic usable when facing a Black Templar army without a Commander of simply shooting as many infantry units as possible.since for Ld8 units at 7" of the table edge, it is pretty much a 1 in 6 chance of killing the unit if you kill one model.  Not bad for a bit of plinking, is it?


3 Comments
Devjon
5/2/2011 01:57:06 am

Righteous Zeal is nearly the exact same thing it once was, the only difference now being that you can't get a free charge out of it.

While you do have that that good chance of a unit running off the board edge this is actually still a benefit for foot-based assaulty armies ( I don't mean Black Tide, I mean when you get de-meched) and, were it only worded right, would help to shift the power towards the side of assault over shooting for the Black Templars. But as it is, it is a handicap for everything except units with chaplains.

I wouldn't call it Righteous Mild Enthusiasm, unless you only moved d3" or something, since we haven't lost much of anything; but the switch between insane bravery and cowardness after losing 1 brother...yeah, it's RBS (Righteous Bipolar Syndrome).

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Algesan link
5/2/2011 09:41:31 am

I call it Righteous Mild Enthusiasm because of change between the editions. With no ability to assault and the way consolidation moves work it becomes, meh, okay, I made my roll, so tell me again why I'm moving out of cover?

True, I've used it to move into cover and actually had a couple of squads saved from the CC death that was in their face by failing the RZ roll, rallying to shoot and assaulting back, but almost all of the time, it is just a morale check that can make us fragile.

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Devjon link
5/3/2011 12:37:38 am

Ah, yes. I had forgotten that change to not having to move.

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