It's a fortunate commander who can rely on his troops always performing fearlessly. In the chaos and confusion of battle, troops can easily become demoralised, disorientated or simply terrified by the violence unleashed against them. To represent this element of the unknown, your units of troops have to check to see if their morale holds under certain circumstances. As you will have already gathered, certain events will require that your troops take a Morals check, and a unit in particularly dire straits may be forced to take several Morale checks in a single turn.

Note that Leadership tests are used for other functions in Warhammer 40,000, such as choosing a target. Morale checks are a very specific kind of Leadership test.

Units use their Leadership characteristic (or taking Morale checks. This represents the grit, determination, elan or (sometimes) plain stupidity of warriors in action. Morale checks are taken by rolling 2D6 and comparing the total score to the unit's Leadership value. If the score is equal to or under the unit's Leadership value, the test is passed. However, if the score rolled is higher, then the test is failed and the unit will immediately fall back, as described below.

Certain circumstances can make Morale checks harder for a unit to pass. For example, a unit that has already suffered heavy casualties will be more inclined to give way than a unit that is at full strength. This is represented by applying Leadership modifiers to Morale checks, which can reduce the unit's Leadership value by -1, -2 or sometimes even more.