I’m currently thinking that this is the best balance point between making BA too powerful and too ineffective. It’s still not a great deal of use against Asterian Cyphers, but they are particularly heavily armoured for Constructs, and not all will be. I’ve been using the Zombies with a similar rule that goes one worse (for the zombies) in that they always count as Suppressed. That’s because they really don’t care and don’t use cover, so it makes sense that the BA always has maximum effect. For the Constructs who do use cover and do care, it makes sense that the effect is at least somewhat mitigated.
Construct Models Versus Blaze Away Damage
Add the following new paragraph to the description of Construct.
The model acts as if their Aggression level was Alert at all times with one exception. When a Construct model is the target of a Blaze Away attack they suffer damage as if they were Pinned. Note that this does not affect the success or failure of the test itself – only the application of the results.
Quirkworthy 
Wished that it would come out somewhat like this but still, average Cypher will be immune to Blaze Away, unless the BZ attack also has at least AP1?
“It’s still not a great deal of use against Asterian Cyphers, but they are particularly heavily armoured for Constructs, and not all will be.” I think that was the idea will see if it works tomorrow.
Blaze away is never going to be good at killing things, which is for the best in my opinion.
Otherwise I would be totally cool about it, but many Rapid Fire weapons are going to find a little bit hard time trying to destroy them (burst laser for example) while I assume that in Warpath, they will have no problem doing such a thing.
Sounds like a good idea
Is there any chance of this addition to the construct rule, along with excessive force (if it becomes official), and the FAQ’d bits making it into a revised rulebook in time to be printed for the hardbacked collectors edition print run?
It’d be really good to get all these additional rules collated together.
Another possible solution is to add AP values to some of the rapid fire weapons. This could result in the same desired effect without implementing a change that overpowers blaze away. It makes sense that you can blaze away with a rifle and a heavy machine gun, but, if you do get hit by the HMG it is going to cause a lot more damage than the rifle. In this manner, you can make slight tweaks to specific weapons and use the rule above without breaking or significantly affecting the blaze away mechanic. Basically, only specific (powerful) BA weapons would have a chance to injure the constructs and other models.
I like this solution a lot
I quite like this rule, it is nice and simple. Bit of a shame that Cyphers will be completely immune to a large number of weapons though, that could be really annoying in pick up games. Maybe making headshot cards have an option to give +1 AP to a blaze away action would mean you can never be quite sure a rapid fire weapon is no threat at all? I suppose there is always AP ammo too.
Perhaps if Cyphers had 1 arm and a couple/few energy shields they would be less annoying to play against (while still being hard as nails most of the time). But then AP becomes a bit useless against them which might be unfluffy.
Would it be so bad to just add an exception to blaze away weapons that they can shoot against constructs (or other targets they can’t suppress) but with -2 dice or some other penalty? So in a clear shot scenario they still have a chance to do some damage.
Alternatively you could let Cyphers use the table from shoot to decide how many dice they get as victims of blaze away but count them as suppressed for damage resolution?
On balance this may not be as much of an issue as I am thinking (I haven’t tried it out yet). Suppressing the commander would still be quite valuable so a couple of rapid fire/ firestorm weapons probably wont go to waste when fighting an Asterian force. I suppose that’s what playtesting is for!
Good compromise for counting BA damage against constructs. But are you also going to fix the problem of cover making it easier to hurt constructs with BA?
Because they suffer the samage as if they were pinned, they don’t get a negative dice.
Of course! Overlooked that. Thanks 🙂
Yes, but there is still the strange fact that they get one more dice outside cover :
With cover : -1 from cover, +1 from pinned
Without cover : only +1 from pinned
I would rather have cover give to them a +1 bonus instead of a -1
The model acts as if their Aggression level was Alert at all times with one exception. When a Construct model is the target of a Blaze Away attack they suffer damage as if they were Pinned. Note that this does not affect the success or failure of the test itself – only the application of the results
So in your case Jack you dont apply those modifers so they count as alert always but Suffer damage as if pinned. So would still get the -1 for being in cover becasue that is how cover works for everyone else. But they would never get +1 for being pinned as they only count as pinned when working out BA damage.
Here is an odd idea: change the damage rules for blaze away to ‘any model in the cube that is not pinned or suppresed takes 1 damage +1 for each supporting attacker +1 for weight of fire +2 for firestorm, apply armor tough and very tough as normal.’ Then allow constructs to elect to become pinned if they want. That way a robot being blazed away by a rebel with a rifle could shrug off the damage but would choose to enter cover and become pinned if being attacked by a firestorm capable weapon.
Does this rule work for Unflinching and Crazed abilities with only overwritting Suppressed with “Alert” and “Enraged” ?