Frustration overwhelms my ability to write as it pulls me in so many directions at once, but here we go.
Most GW games have issues with morale rules, in that they're garbage-to-non-existent. 40K has always been victim to this, especially since the game never really featured ways to invoke morale rules without 1) killing and/or 2) special rules that apply to only a handful of weapons.
In comparison, in Bolt Action, every time a unit gets shot at, you automatically gain one pin even if nobody is wounded, and that pin will already make the unit harder to activate, less accurate, etc..
8E/9E was probably the most garbage about it, with failing a Battleshock roll meant that a few more guys in the squad died out of sympathy.
10E is slightly better. Sure, the unit has to be below half the starting strength to take the test in the first place (though quite a few units get special abilities to cause Battleshock test), and a unit that fails can't hold objectives, have stratagems applied to them, and is liable to get wiped out if it tries to escape melee.
And those idiots just made a Stratagem that:
- Was applied to a unit after it failed the Battleshock test, meaning that if you had several shocked units, you could save it for those units that failed the test.
- Was cheap.
- Could potentially be used beyond the once-per-turn limitation on repeat stratagem use by ubiquitous "lol, use that strat on this unit for free" rules.
Having to use it BEFORE the roll and only ONCE PER BATTLE is a much better change.
But why wasn't it caught before the launch?
