The -3 to attack is huge, particularly if you just surged in to capture. And if anyone surges or shoots you, I doubt you'd be able to finish off the captive. Having to roll *again* with -3 attack will be difficult for even a unique, if you've already taken a hit.

OTOH, the Imperial ability is just scary. The way it was worded (from the capture rules example), it sounds like they don't even have to make the second roll. Run!

As for gang up.. yes they don't need to be of the same faction, but the need to have no tokens makes it too clunky in my eyes. You'd need to set it up from three turns away.

Well capture might be an issue. But then you have things like sneak attack. Order of Uhlrik surges into a back ark of a mounted piece. Effective 14 attack, 8 damage. You can even push next turn for another 8.
Overall the threat of possible elimination is not such a big deal to the overall propensity of figures to die quickly in 2.0

I wonder if the juice is strawberry flavored...

Well, last night my girlfriend and I sat down to give these capture rules a run through. We were testing a "worst case" scenario - a capture focused army vs. a melee army that's not berserk, battle-furied or commanding. We used all of the v2 rules we currently know of. What we were looking for was not who would win, but how much capturing would decide the battle.
Her BPR capture squad:
2 *** Amazon Mancathers
3 ** Amazon Mancathers
Amazon Queen
*** Leech Medic
*** Galeshi Ram Charger
*** Dwarven Ram Charger

My Knights Immortal swirling blades of doom:
Cornellian the Savior (the LE Heavy Cavalier)
2 * Heavy Lancers
1 ** Temple Blademaster
2 ** Elf-at-Arms
1 * Elf-at-Arms
1 ** Standard Bearer
1 ** Faith Healer
1 ** Shield Knight
1 * Gyre Falcon

We both picked two pieces of blocking terrain, and would up with a sort of walled in area around the center objective (and my objective, which was 12" forward) with 3-5" wide channels between terrain/objectives.
We both advanced forward, her Queen taking a position behind one of the high walls on the side to magic blast over it. My cavalry moved to the same side, hoping to move quickly around it and take her out. On my second turn I chose to surge my Falcon in to try to tie up the Ram Charger a little, also sweeping at a Mancatcher. It hit both.
She failed to capture the falcon, but another mancatcher surged around the wall and got one of my Heavy Lancers. The AQ dished out a nasty five click blast to Cornelian, and her Ram Charger along with some other catchers moving with quickness formed into a position to make it very hard for me to rescue the captured lancer.
The rest of her mancatchers engaged my footsloggers, but were thwarted in their capture attempts by the Shield Knights 17 Defend, and took serious damage from my elves at arms in return.
As soon as possible, I freed up Cornellian and got her back and healed, while sending my Standard Bearer to valiantly sacrifice himself against the AQ (he died quite unimpressively) so she couldn't just blast me again.
While she had temporarily shielded me from rescuing my Lancer, her attempt to eliminate it failed, and my healed Cornelian cut down the galeshi charger, allowing an elf at arms to surge past and hurt the mancatcher so much she was unlikely to ever eliminate the captive. A while later, I had reduced most of the mancatchers to uselessness, freed my Lancer, and 3 almost perfect condition chargers ready to go. We decided to quit there with a Knight victory and proceed to a rematch.

The second round started out similarly, an I once again surged the falcon, this time aiming at the Queen and a Mancatcher. I figured the Falcon would die, but hoped it would get in some damage and keep my cavalry from being shot. However, it missed its attack completely and was promptly captured.
My foot troops stayed close to the left wall, hoping for form a defensive stance. The Dwarven ram and several mancatchers were sent against them, while the Galeshi ram tied down my cavalry on the other side.
Then things started to go badly for me. Instead of shooting at the cavalry, the AQ shot a magic blast across the field and fried my shield wall knight, leaving the poor defense 14 Elves at arms to be easily trussed up by the mancatchers. While I elminated the Ram charger quickly and dealt with a few of the Mancatchers, the AQ was able to then wound my cavalry with more shots while their support was floundering against the mancatchers. My Blademaster had gone in to kill one, missed and succeeded only in getting himself captured instead of one of the more expendible elf at arms! A turn or two later, I failed to save enough actions to heal Cornelian, she exploited the chance, pushing the AQ to take weaken my last lancer out of charge and then breaking the Dwarven charger away to base my Faith Healer.
Cornelian tried to rush over and keep the leech medic from healing the queen, but she was also captured by a mancatcher. My full health elf at arms prepared to assault the Ram from behind, and was suddenly attacked in melee by the Amazon Queen! Had his attack hit I might have turned the game around, but he missed and was blasted soundly thrashed. From there on it was just a matter of her mopping up the pieces.
During the game, she captured and eliminated a Temple Blademaster, a Standard Bearer, a Gyre Falcon and Cornelian the Savior - a pretty hefty capture count!

These were both hard fought battles. We did a lot more surging than we have before - I couldn't afford to let her get in a capture attempt, while she couldn't afford to lose her high attack values. Luck played heavily into both games. In the first, she tried to capture four times, always needing an 8, and only hit once. In the second game I missed several attacks needing 5 or 6 by rolling 4s. However, in the second game she was very clever about directly attacking my weakest points, and I don't think I would have pulled it off even with better luck. Overall, while this was a "worst-case" scenario and the capture was hard for me to deal with, I didn't feel like it was too horrible. If I had a bit more ranged support, or a leader with command who couldn't be captured, I think it would have gone much better for me. I do think capture will be very powerful, and games will see a fair amount of capture attempts. I see a lot of armies adding in a stray Mancatcher or two. Don't underestimate them! For their cheap cost they are fast, move on their own, and only need an 8 to capture a model with 17 defense! Yes, you can shoot them...but those will be shots you aren't spending on their bigger troops, and the catchers have a deep enough dial to survive and get healed.
So, I have decided that I don't think I mind the new capture too much. Its powerful, but I don't think its overpowering (time will tell how I feel about the Altantis Elite Guard things). Most troops don't have the highly focused capture potential that the Mancatchers do. My girlfriend still doesn't like it, and I can entirely see her points - it bypasses the normal damage mechanic and creates a situation where luck, more than tactics determines the outcome.
We talked about why we disliked capture so much. I think a lot of it went back to our first games of mageknight, when Command didn't protect you from being captured and huge monsters like the Heirophant were in terrible danger from being just captured and dragged off to ignominious defeat. This was worsened with Lancer and Whirlwind, when fast easy breaking cavalry could readily get away with enemy models, while on the other side of the coin having to run in circles to avoid being captured themselves. Introducing shake-off damage and making command models capture immune helped both of these problems, but by then we had become so frustrated with capture we had stopped using it in friendly games.
So my own capture worries are alleviated a little...at least for now. I would still rather see them steal a bit from either MWDA - where a failed capture attempt causes a click to the attacker, or HC where models can make attacks to free a captured model, but I'm not feeling its the end of the game anymore. We may still remove or modify as a house rule however, after we see all of the 2.0 rules.

Thank you for the report. It went pretty much as I expected and this trend I think is how it will go. Some players will try and use the new capture rule and some will just go with their usual style of play. It sure can influence a game but it dosen't unbalance it to the point that we all were concerned about. Time will tell of course.

Thanks again for your time and report

capturing has always been a wonderfully useful strategy.
i usually have a mancatcher in all my armies cuz they are the perfect body guard
oh you pushed to hit so and so... base with mancatcher
oh no you have to pass...
push and capture need a 5..
and he/she is mine :)
but in no way is capturing unbalancing the game
without point totals capturing would have been worthless
100% waste of time
this way all those mancatchers and the like are still decent figures
quit complaining... you still have immunity with 4 abilities....
ghostwhatever should too. dont know if it does or not.
but unless your mancatcher is a ghostbuster how she gonna capture it?
my 2 cents
Ruestev Hwen

Do you honestly consider expending a 19 point figure of yours to take out of action a 50 odd point figure of mine a "waste of time"?

Fast, quickness, excellent for hitting Shield Golems and other defenders...I hardly think they were in danger of becoming worthless.
Actually, I think its five, since I think Frenzy makes you immune as well. I could be wrong - haven't used it much. And there aren't many models that have it.
But the question really isn't whether or not there are ways to stop capture. Heck, if I had Shyft and a squadron of Vurgoyles they probably could have torn apart the entire BPR army listed above. The question is whether or not there is even a point in trying to use a non capture protected model melee model in the 2.0 rules. I now think there will be, but I hardly think "quit complaining" is a good response to trying to get a good discussion going on potential problem areas. Perhaps some people have blind faith in WKs ability to do everything right, but if they really can, we wouldn't have 2.0, would we? :D