4th Edition Rules - comment now or forever shut yer trap!

[Matt W]

If the defense had a first fire I would not permit the AT shot in the "activation" approach. In essence the defender has to absorb the shock of the assault prior to firing their weapon. Of course, they have a much greater chance of surviving the shock in the event that they have first fire which is enough of an advantage.

Alan, I understand your desire to manage this on the assault table but that thoroughly changes the metric as Vince has suggested. Perhaps instead of increasing the defender's column you would consider decreasing the attacker's column since the presence of such weapons would be likely to make the AFVs a little more skittish, or if nothing else to take away any combined arms column shift. I don't like the approach but if that is the one we have to take I would err on the side of making the attack less powerful rather than the defense more powerful.