7th Ed Rule Change of the Week

Today I am going to cover a new rule that will help a lot of armies that were hurt from last weeks rule change. The new rule is "No panic while in combat." To cover this new rule I'll also hit lightly on 2 other new rules that I think will play an important part of this new rule.
1. Never break on a 2.
2. BSB adds +1 to combat res and can be combined with another standard.

Lets look at the impact of the rule.
Any unit that is engaged in combat can no longer suffer from panic and run away. This helps avoid those weird situations where 2 combats are going on next to each other, each player wins 1, and the other units panic and all 4 run in different directions. Very funny but not very realistic. (haha, realistic in a fantasy game?)
So once a unit is in combat, the only way for him to leave that combat is to break and run, break the enemy or kill the enemy to the last man.

Now add in the 2nd rule of a unit always holds on a 2. So, no matter how bad you are beaten, outflanked, crushed, pounded on, you will always have a 1 in 36 chance (much higher for lizardmen) of sticking around. And if the rumors I'm hearing are true, this applies even if outnumbered by fear causers. (though that has not been confirmed, I'll look that up this weekend.)

Then add in the 3rd rule of a BSB adds +1 to any combat, even with other banners. I'll cover more on the impact of this rule later but for now lets suffice it to say, I think the result of this rule is that you will see a lot more BSB's running around.
So if the BSB is within 12 inches, you get to re-roll all break tests. Since that is the only way you can now leave a combat, you will always get to re-roll a failed attempt to stay.

Combine all 3 together and you have a situation where the only way to get people to flee from combat is to break them, they will always get a minimum chance of 1/36 to do that and they will almost always be able to re-roll any failed attempts at this.

Combined this gives them an approximate 5.5% chance of always staying in a combat no matter what. And if their break number is closer to 7, then you start with a 58.3% chance and with the re-roll it gets closer to 82.6%.

So the odds of breaking people on that lucky roll, just went way down.
Here are my estimations on chance to break an opponent with a BSB nearby with their modified leadership:
10: 1%
9: 3%
8: 7.7%
7: 17.4%
6: 34.0%
5: 52.2%
4: 69.4%
3: 84.0%
2: 94.5%

As you can see, to even have a greater than 50% chance of breaking an opponent you have to get their break test number to 5. And even then its about 50/50. You have to get it all the way down to a 2 or 3 to feel really good about it.
And it never, ever gets better than that 94.5% chance to break them.

Who will this help the most?
That is an interesting question, it obviously helps armies who have a great tendency to lose combats. My first reaction would be to say it helps Skaven the most. If charged in the flank, taking the panic test with no ranks, was an almost certain death penalty for the unit. Even if only engaged with a single model to the front and charged in the flank by 5 zombies.

But Skaven also rely on winning combats by only 1 or 2. So the reverse works against them as well. But I think they benefit the most from it.

Basically any low leadership armies that suffer badly from panic tests. Empire, Orcs & Goblins, Ogre Kingdoms, chaos mortals, chaos beasts & Bretonians.
Lizardmen also have got to love the "2 always stays" as their odds of staying are actually very, very good at 14.3% chance of hanging around no matter what with their cold blood rule.

The armies who benefit the least have got to be the undead. Vampire counts, being able to raise zombies to charge in the flank, and panic your enemies, those days are gone. Tomb kings with their magic movement, causing panic tests with flank charges was their bread and butter.
Add in the fact that they do not benefit at all from the rule and are also hurt by the "a 2 always holds" rule, and this is one they probably wish was left on the drawing boards.

Of course other armies immune to psycology will not be helped by this rule, slayers, daemon armies, full frenzied armies like Khorne Mortals, Skaven Pestilence, Wood Elf treemen armies, etc..

Then there are those middle of the road armies. I think very high leadership armies like Dwarfs, high elves & dark elves, will be helped some, but not as much as the lower leadership armies.

Ben