MORALE AND BATTLESHOCK

It is a fortunate commander who can always rely on his troops to perform up to (and sometimes beyond) the limits of their courage. In the chaos and confusion of battle, troops can easily become demoralised, disoriented or simply terrified by the violence unleashed against them.

To represent this element of the unknown, your units have to check to see if their morale holds under certain circumstances. As you will have already gathered, particular events will require your units to take Morale checks, and a unit in particularly dire straits may be forced to take several in a single turn.

Morale Rules

The most common reasons a unit must take a Morale check are as follows:

• Casualties: A unit losing 25% or more of its current models during a single phase must take a Morale check at the end of that phase. There is an exception: units that lose 25% or more of their current models in the Charge phase do not take a Morale check.

For example, a squad of five Space Marines suffers two casualties from enemy shooting, so it takes a Morale check, which it promptly passes. Next turn, the unit, now three strong, suffers a single casualty from a Dangerous Terrain test in the Movement phase, which is now enough for it to have to take another Morale check.

• Losing an Assault: Units that lose a close combat (usually from suffering more Wounds than they inflicted) must pass a Morale check to hold their ground. If they fail, they are Battleshocked. Units taking this Morale check suffer a -1 LD modifier for each Wound their side has lost the combat by.

Battleshocked

If a unit fails a Morale Test, unless otherwise stated, that unit is now Battleshocked, the following rules apply to that unit:

• That unit immediately moves 2d6” towards the controlling player's board edge on the turn in which it becomes battleshocked. If the unit was locked in combat, it falls back out of engagement range and is subjected to a Sweeping Advance.
• That unit can only fire snap shots during the shooting phase.
• The unit cannot contest objectives.
• The unit can only move 2d6” towards the controlling player's board edge in movement phases unless it successfully regroups during a subsequent Command Phase..

If a unit runs off the board due to this movement, it is considered a casualty and the unit is destroyed.

Regroup

During your next Command Phase, you can make another LD test for the unit to see if it is able to rally and recover. If the test is passed, the unit can function as normal. If not, it is still battleshocked.