AoS-like movement in 8thEd: some playtesting

 As hinted a few posts back, I have been working on a way to sneak some Age of Sigmar innovations into our cherished 8th Edition Warhammer.

Here are some shots of our testing of a 'Freeform Movement' experimental ruleset. Much of it worked well and flowed natural, some things didn't, and as such we got rid of them. I'm polishing this until it works well.
The final form of the rules is taking shape, I'm just ironing out the nastiest exceptions and loopholes people might find in there.
Here are a few teasers and examples:

Freeform unit shape

Models must always remain in base contact and with the same facing, but otherwise can be distributed in any shape to form a unit. Models must always remain at least 3" away from any enemy units (you'll see why below).
This allowed for greater mobility and great cinematic exploration of all the nooks and crannies in the scenery, just like in Age of Sigmar.

Dire Wolves sneak through the
gravestones, something that would be
impossible in "vanilla" 8th Edition.

Units having a hard time getting anywhere,
because they are too big to dodge
the scenery, is a thing of the past.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pile In and Ranks

Just as in Age of Sigmar, as soon as models get to go during combat they can make a 'Pile In' move up to 3' towards the closest enemy. The model must always face its front arc towards the enemy it wishes to attack (this is an exception to models maintaining a uniform facing). This replaces the 'Horde Formation' rule, as wide units can now engulf smaller units and bring more attacks to bear. This used to exist in 6th Edition Warhammer, called the 'Lap around' rule.
As normal, a model behind one in base contact with the enemy can make supporting attacks, even if that model is already lapping around via Pile In.

How does that narrow-frontage
bastard of a Hellpit Abomination
feels, now that you can encircle it
and attack its flanks?

Of course, the tradeoff is that smaller units will diminish their ranks if they spread themselves too thin. But as long as they have a block of complete ranks with the enemy unit in its front arc, they gain full rank bonuses from them.

Encircling with a unit of
plaguemonks... so worth it.

We had quite a lot of fun with these rules, the battle seemed more realistic and flowed more organically, and we didn't find any interference with existing special rules. Yet, it still included all the gritty detail of 8th Edition.

(EDIT) A polished PDF of these rules is available HERE.