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Since there's talk in Dakka Discussions along the lines of "literally everyone who likes 40k is a moron or a child", thought I'd ask the community itself. Do you like the ruleset or not?

Just the rules I'm talking about here, not background fluff or models.

I like the rules. I don't love them, admit they are far from flawless, but they enable me to use the figures I have bought and spent time painting, and to create a story around them. That said, I have 0 interest in competitive play, so am not really bothered by internal/external balance of the various codexes and the rules themselves.

In the same way as you can enjoy a video game that suffers from glitches, poor graphics and/or sub-par mechanics, I enjoy 40k, purely for fun.

This is a little biased isn't it?

All your getting here is data from people who most likely activly play 40k, not data from Dakka as a whole.

There is already a poll in an anti-GW sub-forum. i know the results will be biased but it might at least put an end to the rediculous "only children can play 40k" and "40k is unplayable" nonsense.

I really love the WH universe, the fluff, painting and so on. I also like the rules as they are (with some exceptions) and i see them for what they are. Since I'm not a competative player i really like them but I can see why people who are very competative can see more flaws in them than i do.

It all comes down to what you want to gain from the game i think!

So your response to (what you think is a) biased thread is to make your own biased thread?

I stopped liking them a while back.

I loved them in RT and 2nd ed.
Love turned to like in 3rd and then to dislike in 4th.

It became a loathing in 5th and then progressed to a "wouldn't poke it with someone else's pole" in 6th.

 jonolikespie wrote:
So your response to (what you think is a) biased thread is to make your own biased thread?

Well yes. When pollsters interview people, they take into account bias. So they interview one group of people in a pro-Labour area, then interview another group of people in a pro-Tory area, then use maths wizardry to pick up trends.

Ok I am going to take off my bitter-(not very)old-veteran hat for a minute and ask the people in this thread, what do you actually like about the rules?

What do you think 40k does that other games don't do better?

I'm genuinely curious because the other thread is up to 12 or so pages with not a single person pointing out WHY they like the rules.

 jonolikespie wrote:
Ok I am going to take off my bitter-(not very)old-veteran hat for a minute and ask the people in this thread, what do you actually like about the rules?

Speaking for myself here, what I like about the rules is the easy interaction between the fluff and the ruleset. If the designers want to impliment something because they think it's cool, they don't have to use the existing mechanisms in the ruleset, they can just stick it in. I will give some examples of this since that won't much much sense on its own.

The old demon codex was full of special rules that were simply tacked on by the designers with no existing mechanisms used at all. The Changling for example, could simply select an enemy model, make it perform a Ld check, and if it failed then you'd get to shoot it that turn. It could well have been broken or usable, since within the game-rules that that special rule utilises, there is complexity, and there could be problems with the way the Changeling's rule interacts with existing shooting rules. But so what? It's an awesome special rule and it's fluffy as hell.

Or Fateweaver's ability to give anyone with 6" a re-roll to any armour/invul/cover save they could take. Potentially game-breaking but fluffy and cool.

Or GK's Warp Storm. Against the old demon codex it practically broke them, yet still fluffy and cool.

A "tighter" ruleset just sounds boring to me. It would essentially mean that anything actually *new* would be impossible, everything would have to be created from pre-existing methods.

 jonolikespie wrote:


I'm genuinely curious because the other thread is up to 12 or so pages with not a single person pointing out WHY they like the rules.

I like about the 40K rules that they allow me to push 40K miniatures across the table with other people.

Would the rules be needed for that? Strictly speaking, no.

But a lot of people (the majority of 40K players?) appear to have the need for some kind of rules to justify it to themselves to push 40K miniatures across the table, and the current rules seem to work fine in furnishing people with that justification.

xruslanx wrote:
Speaking for myself here, what I like about the rules is the easy interaction between the fluff and the ruleset. If the designers want to impliment something because they think it's cool, they don't have to use the existing mechanisms in the ruleset, they can just stick it in. I will give some examples of this since that won't much much sense on its own.

The old demon codex was full of special rules that were simply tacked on by the designers with no existing mechanisms used at all. The Changling for example, could simply select an enemy model, make it perform a Ld check, and if it failed then you'd get to shoot it that turn. It could well have been broken or usable, since within the game-rules that that special rule utilises, there is complexity, and there could be problems with the way the Changeling's rule interacts with existing shooting rules. But so what? It's an awesome special rule and it's fluffy as hell.

Or Fateweaver's ability to give anyone with 6" a re-roll to any armour/invul/cover save they could take. Potentially game-breaking but fluffy and cool.

Or GK's Warp Storm. Against the old demon codex it practically broke them, yet still fluffy and cool.

A "tighter" ruleset just sounds boring to me. It would essentially mean that anything actually *new* would be impossible, everything would have to be created from pre-existing methods.

Why on earth do you think this? There is absolutely no reason the things you listed couldn't be implemented, but costed appropriately so they are balanced. WHY does fluffy have to mean unbalanced? Why is different impossible in a balanced system?
This isn't a case of 'everything has to be perfectly balanced therefore it all has to be the same' like chess, this is just a case of 'X is only good at shooting, Y is only good at melee and costs as much as X, Z is good at both but costs more than X or Y'.

Zweischneid wrote:
I like about the 40K rules that they allow me to push 40K miniatures across the table with other people.

Would the rules be needed for that? Strictly speaking, no.

But a lot of people (the majority of 40K players?) appear to have the need for some kind of rules to justify it to themselves to push 40K miniatures across the table, and the current rules seem to work fine in furnishing people with that justification.

So what you're saying there is that you only like the game because you like the models and fluff, which is exactly what the thread this one splintered off from (and to some extent this one) are trying to disregard.
If it were just as easy to get a game of In the Emperors Name, or some other game using 40k fluff and models, why would you pick 40k over that?

 jonolikespie wrote:

Why on earth do you think this? There is absolutely no reason the things you listed couldn't be implemented, but costed appropriately so they are balanced. WHY does fluffy have to mean unbalanced? Why is different impossible in a balanced system?
This isn't a case of 'everything has to be perfectly balanced therefore it all has to be the same' like chess, this is just a case of 'X is only good at shooting, Y is only good at melee and costs as much as X, Z is good at both but costs more than X or Y'.

Well obviously I think that points should be balanced as best as they can. I don't think anyone is argueing that points should be distributed arbitrarily, if that's what you think the thousands of people who play 40k regularly think, then you are grossly miss-informed.

What is your actual point? Could you demonstrate how you think the 40k ruleset is poor beyond things being under-over costed?

xruslanx wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:

Why on earth do you think this? There is absolutely no reason the things you listed couldn't be implemented, but costed appropriately so they are balanced. WHY does fluffy have to mean unbalanced? Why is different impossible in a balanced system?
This isn't a case of 'everything has to be perfectly balanced therefore it all has to be the same' like chess, this is just a case of 'X is only good at shooting, Y is only good at melee and costs as much as X, Z is good at both but costs more than X or Y'.

Well obviously I think that points should be balanced as best as they can. I don't think anyone is argueing that points should be distributed arbitrarily, if that's what you think the thousands of people who play 40k regularly think, then you are grossly miss-informed.

What is your actual point? Could you demonstrate how you think the 40k ruleset is poor beyond things being under-over costed?

My point was that there is no reason new things can't be implemented or for things to be different as long as they are costed appropriately but sure, luckily with several threads going on about this at once I can give you a nice long list.

 jonolikespie wrote:
...
I would love to do a pre heresy Iron Warriors army since the HH books are quickly turning them into my favourite legion but every time I look at it all I see is a codex that can't give me an army that plays the way I want and the HH list which isn't exactly designed for play against regular 40k forces. I could play them with the current chaos dex but then I've got to take some guard allies to get access to all the cool siege toys I need, but at that point any list I write would make a lot more sense as guard with chaos allies and all of a sudden I lose interest.

I'd love a Raven Guard army using lots of bits and pieces from anvil since some of them are amazing for giving marines that realistic modern/future soldier look GW seem to ignore but with the latest book that has come out the only way for me to do it is lots of assault marines and I really, really don't want to do that because I think assault marines should not be the focus of a raven guard force, they are an infiltrating force, not a jump pack force. Unfortunately the only way I have seen to do that is to take a chaos marine list with Huron as 'counts as' to get his warlord trait.

Even a guard footslogger list seems like fun since I could do it really cheap with mantic models, but even as I try to tell myself that I can't bring myself to do it because as I write the list people tell me to take X because it's OP and make sure I pick up Y because I'll have to deal with fliers and stay away from Z because it's useless. After exploring other systems I just can't deal with that kind of while list building.


40k is not a game I can enjoy on any level because as much as I love the fluff and models the rules are:
A) Horribly unbalanced compared to every other system I have tried.
B) Overly complicated in that rule A means X happens but unit B has rule C that turns X into Y unless someone has brought Z, and if that is the case we'll have to check the rulebook to see what Z does.
C) Very, very poorly written. So much so that one of the rules writers admitted in White Dwarf that often while playtesting if something came up where they did not know how new rule X interacts with another units rule Y they would 4+ it themselves and make that how it goes. There is no justification for that, the rules writers are admitting to playtesting things without having a very clear idea at all how the rule is supposed to work.
D) Not sure what scale they are at. I said it in the last thread and I'll say it again, there are elements of a skirmish game in a game that involves jets and artillery.
E) Tactically speaking, very shallow. Between weapon ranges and no sort of facings on units it's not hard to sit on an objective in the middle of the board and stay there. If I want to get you off it I run strait at you with a weapon that can dislodge you, there is no benefit to flanking you or outmaneuvering you in any way. Either I have the tools in my list to deal with your unit on the objective or I don't. (This might be a little bit of an oversimplification I'll admit but in general I think it's a very valid point.


Go ask anyone in the infinity sub forum what units you should take in your list, their answer will be 'whatever you like, they are all viable'. Try winning a game of W-wing if your opponent is good enough to stay out of your firing arc all game. Me and my friends are still new enough to Dystopan wars that we certainly don't know all the rules so the other night we had a bit of an issue with wording when it came to ramming. As soon we got home we jumped on the net and looked up the 1.1 rules (we only had 1.0 on us) and all of a sudden it became perfectly clear.

...

Oh okay. I didn't realise that you wanted every single unit, upgrade and special rule to be equally viable. It's clear that you and I do not see eye to eye on that so we'll agree to disagree

xruslanx wrote:
Oh okay. I didn't realise that you wanted every single unit, upgrade and special rule to be equally viable. It's clear that you and I do not see eye to eye on that so we'll agree to disagree

How is that not a good thing? How can you possibly prefer some units to be auto include and some to be never worth taking? I'm not saying a lascanon needs to be as good at taking out hordes as a flamer but if a heavy flamer does everything a flamer does but better then it needs to cost more (I'm assuming they still do but you should be able to see my point there).

I have fun with the current ruleset. It's certainly not perfect, but I don't think any set of rules as large as 40k can be. I also play Warmachine and X-Wing, and while Warmachine is certainly tighter and arguably more balanced, games of it just aren't quite as fun and I've never quite been so engaged with it as 40k. X-Wing is a whole different type of game and I don't think they can even be compared.

Lots of the ambiguity present in the rules is easily cleared up by just deciding how your group will play it, or your opponent before the game. The system allows for a lot of flexibility in list-building (in non-competitive play especially). Units are very customizable. It represents medium-scale battles very well (medium-scale meaning greater than skirmish, but less than Epic or Apoc).

The rules are flat out bad, by far the worst written rules. Not helped by Idiotic layout where you have to reference multiple different sections just to get a clear picture of what supposed to be happening. HOWEVER It's by far my favorite game so they are doing something right. For me the background, art and just style of the Warhammer 40k universe is just irresistible and that’s why I play 40k, has zero to do with the rules.

I don't mind the rules. They aren't perfect, which is unsurprising given the breadth of the ever-updating armies and units they have to accommodate. But they work well enough so that competitive tournaments aren't a complete farce, which is good enough for me.

 jonolikespie wrote:


So what you're saying there is that you only like the game because you like the models and fluff, which is exactly what the thread this one splintered off from (and to some extent this one) are trying to disregard.
If it were just as easy to get a game of In the Emperors Name, or some other game using 40k fluff and models, why would you pick 40k over that?

Nothing.

But it's not a big factor either. There are gazillions of games with "tight" rules out there that I could play and never in my life spend more than US$ 5,- on gaming.

So when I decide to spend hundreds, if not thousands of quid on 40K, the decision isn't particularly influenced by the rules. There are great rules for free, and they don't particularly interest me. There is 40K which is extremely expensive, and yet I am in it.

Ergo, I must conclude that the rules are largely irrelevant to my gaming-preferences.

That, in a nutshell, is the problem with complaining about "bad" 40K rules. It's like complaining about sub-standard peanuts on a US$ 10.000,- first class flight from Paris to Las Vegas. Sure, it'd be nice if the peanuts they'd serve would be better, but good peanuts are easy and cheap to have elsewhere. They aren't the reason I'd pay for and take that flight and I am not about to forfeit my ticket just because the peanuts are crap.

xruslanx wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:
Ok I am going to take off my bitter-(not very)old-veteran hat for a minute and ask the people in this thread, what do you actually like about the rules?

Speaking for myself here, what I like about the rules is the easy interaction between the fluff and the ruleset. If the designers want to impliment something because they think it's cool, they don't have to use the existing mechanisms in the ruleset, they can just stick it in. I will give some examples of this since that won't much much sense on its own.

The old demon codex was full of special rules that were simply tacked on by the designers with no existing mechanisms used at all. The Changling for example, could simply select an enemy model, make it perform a Ld check, and if it failed then you'd get to shoot it that turn. It could well have been broken or usable, since within the game-rules that that special rule utilises, there is complexity, and there could be problems with the way the Changeling's rule interacts with existing shooting rules. But so what? It's an awesome special rule and it's fluffy as hell.

Or Fateweaver's ability to give anyone with 6" a re-roll to any armour/invul/cover save they could take. Potentially game-breaking but fluffy and cool.

Or GK's Warp Storm. Against the old demon codex it practically broke them, yet still fluffy and cool.

A "tighter" ruleset just sounds boring to me. It would essentially mean that anything actually *new* would be impossible, everything would have to be created from pre-existing methods.

The fact that thy do this in warmachine/hordes too makes a mockery of this argument. Take epic butcher, Magnus or Caine as examples. In each case, their fluff matches their in game rules. In butchers case, he even has a rule called homicidal maniac, his berzerker nature, ehere he goes into a killing spree, heedless of whether he kills friend or foe is represented perfectly within hid rules, the fact that his rage ebbs and flows, and fuels his sorcery, and his extremely unstable nature is represented by his random focus generation, his rage is literally transferred to the war jacks under his command as thy become more aggressive by default. Even if you look at his feat, where his rage boils over and infects his whole army is excellently done.
Look at Magnus. His crushed leg held together by a brace - low speed and def. look at his special rules - backstabbing, feign death and resourceful - all perfectly within character. Look at his spell list - representing a former cygnar affiliation along with more from being on the run since.
Look at Caine. Look at his feat. Try and tell me it's not cool and flavourful.

And yet this is all in a game famous for its extremely tight rues set and balance. Which puts a mockery to the claim that 40k is somehow better, despite all its faults, because it allows the background to be represented on the table top.

xruslanx wrote:.

What is your actual point? Could you demonstrate how you think the 40k ruleset is poor beyond things being under-over costed?

40k suffers from bloat, and from needless excess layers of rules, excess die rolls and other aspects that essentially add nothing but clutter. clutter is bad. Sure, you can work around it, and still have fun with friends, but ask yourself this - are you having fun because of the rules, or in spite of them.

I'll give you a few examples.

Excess rules. Bloat, essentially. and more crucially, bloat that does not add to the game. Take the simple example of movement. You have the basic movement rules for infantry for example, and then all the exceptions. Jump packs and their jet pack exceptions, bikes, jet bikes, cavalry, vehicles, fliers, monstrous creatures etc. now why does 40k need all these extra classifications to add a pseudo-depth to the the when others pull it off with variable movement values. Rules exist that tell you how to do things, except for everything else that does it some other way how about needless rules - like how 5th ed marines could simply ignore the whole part of the rule book about morale?
Excess die rolls. Roll to hit, wound, armour save, fnp. The latter three essentially deal with the same question (does the shot that hit me kill me?) other games like infinity and warmachine (and even dnd!) use 2. Wmh - roll to hit, roll to damage. Infinity - roll to hit, and roll to save against the power of what hit you. Simple, elegant, and streamlined. 40k is excessive for the sake of it and adds nothing except time, and the mistaken belief that more dice is more depth.
Further excess - vehicles and infantry use different mechanics. One uses wounds the other armour. Historically, vehicles were an add on to a fantasy game, but gw as stuck with this awkward dual system ever since. Other games use a universal inflict damage system, and use universal 'wound' mechanics, with vehicles simply having more, or else having damage effects marked differently - look at warjacks and infantry in warmahordes - same universal system is at the core of both.
Further excess and layers of extra game mechanics - try strength and ap in guns. You use the ap to determine if you get through infantry armour (strength means nothing) and you use strength to determine if you get through vehicle armour. It's pseudo-depth. Why? Surely it keys sense to use the one system? For me it achieves nothing but dissociation from the game when I realise a str10 ap5 gun will in all likelyhood pulp a land rider, predator tank, and most apc's in the game, but will bounce off a grot with power armour.
Cover- terrible mechanic with the alternative save. A marine with power armour in 6+ cover could take a cover save against a lasgun, and fail, and die in the game- somehow he loses his power armour because he ducked behind a tree.ok.... Surely a guy in power armour and cover should gain more of it than this?! But you use one or the other when common sense would tell you it's more than the sum of its parts. Other games with treat cover as increasing the difficulty to hit you (warmachine, hordes, early 40k editions) or offer superior protection via positive armour save mods (starship troopers) . Some like infinity do both. But 40ks system is nonsensical, and poorly taught through.

Now on top of this, consider the fact there is no higher direction as to what 40k actually is. This is crucial. Games need direction. Games need a purpose. Infinity is an infantry based small scale sci fi skirmish game with a huge emphasis on guns. Warmachine is a small scale skirmidh game that is character driven, melee centric and designed for competitive play, with a huge dose of hero hammer. There is direction, and purpose and so, a game can be structured around that purpose. But 40k? Is it about shooting? Then why are so many armies and so many rules all about cc? Is it a skirmish game? You can do it that way but... Is it a mass battle game? You can do it but... Is it about infantry? Well, yes except for all the tanks. So it's about armour? No, not quite... Is is about competitive games? No, but it van be. You see, 40k is a mess of design ethos. It can best be described as 'a user defined sandbox' in that it tries to allow itself to be a game open to all, but this clear lack of focus is also a glaring weakness. 40k tries to be a mass battle game in terms of numbers and pieces fielded, and yet it insists on using an individual model based micro management system far more appropriate to a skirmish game. It ends up being messy on all levels.



I'll be honest - I don't enjoy the 40k rules set. It is a thirty year old relic. In evolutionary terms, it's a dinosaur. It simply has not keep with the times. Game design theory is actually something I'm quite interested in, and it has moved on significantly from those days in the early 80s when 40k was ported over from fantasy as their '... But in space' game. I'd like to enjoy 40k again - I really would! I went through my bits box organising things and found a whole bunch of unassembled marines. I'm very tempted to do a marine project, of some kind. The sad fact is whatever the project evolves into, it won't be done using the rues set from 40k.b

 jonolikespie wrote:

xruslanx wrote:
Oh okay. I didn't realise that you wanted every single unit, upgrade and special rule to be equally viable. It's clear that you and I do not see eye to eye on that so we'll agree to disagree

How is that not a good thing? How can you possibly prefer some units to be auto include and some to be never worth taking? I'm not saying a lascanon needs to be as good at taking out hordes as a flamer but if a heavy flamer does everything a flamer does but better then it needs to cost more (I'm assuming they still do but you should be able to see my point there).

of course i would like to see abilities costed as fairly as possible, why wouldn't i? But a system where the devs can throw in cool abilities as they see fee, and put a point value that they deem approriate on them, is clearly more flexible than a system where every unit ability is perfectly algorithmically costed.

Just look at imperial guard doctrines. Clearly, carapace armour is over costed. But that doesn't mean you can't make a viable army with them, is just means you pay a few too many points for what you get and will be at a slight disadvantage for that reason.

It is still preferable to a system that had a set cost for how much 4+ armour should cost for anything with toughness 3.

One of the things I like about the 40k rules in the vast array of special rules, which always keeps you on your toes against new opponents/lists, as there is always a chance you'll come up against something you're not expecting. On an armywide level, the same variety is also great, as every army has something unique (Chapter Tactics, Supporting fire, Orders, Battle Focus ect) which means there is more at work than just the same old statlines. For example, stat-wise a necon immortal is almost identical to a Tac marine, barring Init, but thanks to the extra rules, the two play entirely differently.

The best comparison I have is Mantic's Warpath system (also a ruleset I like), where almost every rule in the game is contained on 2-3 pages of USRs, which are then just added to armies. While this makes the game faster, and more streamlined, it outs more focus on the model characteristics rather than unique abilities. I personally enjoy both systems, as sometimes the fast-paced, more interactive style of Warpath keeps both players involved, but in 40k there is argubly more character to units, where almost everything has a special rule (universal or unique) of some kind or other, making the game more varied.

 Paradigm wrote:

The best comparison I have is Mantic's Warpath system (also a ruleset I like), where almost every rule in the game is contained on 2-3 pages of USRs, which are then just added to armies. While this makes the game faster, and more streamlined, it outs more focus on the model characteristics rather than unique abilities. I personally enjoy both systems, as sometimes the fast-paced, more interactive style of Warpath keeps both players involved, but in 40k there is argubly more character to units, where almost everything has a special rule (universal or unique) of some kind or other, making the game more varied.

This is actually what I was worried about when 6th came out. With so many special rules I was worried every unit in the codex would simply be a list of references to USRs. Thankfully that does not seem to be the case, I suspect as time goes on we will see codexes deviate more and more from 6th edition baseline and into a "6.5 edition".

xruslanx wrote:

 Paradigm wrote:

The best comparison I have is Mantic's Warpath system (also a ruleset I like), where almost every rule in the game is contained on 2-3 pages of USRs, which are then just added to armies. While this makes the game faster, and more streamlined, it outs more focus on the model characteristics rather than unique abilities. I personally enjoy both systems, as sometimes the fast-paced, more interactive style of Warpath keeps both players involved, but in 40k there is argubly more character to units, where almost everything has a special rule (universal or unique) of some kind or other, making the game more varied.

This is actually what I was worried about when 6th came out. With so many special rules I was worried every unit in the codex would simply be a list of references to USRs. Thankfully that does not seem to be the case, I suspect as time goes on we will see codexes deviate more and more from 6th edition baseline and into a "6.5 edition".

What I'm actually liking most about the way 6th is going is that every army so far has had unique rules that really fit the style of the army. SM now have chapter tactics that really change the dynamic of the list, Tau are now the superior shooting army that always should have been with Supporting Fire and Markerlights, eldar are now faster and deadlier than ever before ith Battle Focus and Bladestorm. Regardless of potential balance problems on the tournament scene, in a casual meta this just adds far more diversity to the game, which I think is what GW intended. In all honesty, I'd rather have a more complicated ruleset that represents each army to the fullest than a simpler game where everything works on variations on the USRs.

I'd never say it's the best ruleset ever made, but it's one of the most fun rulesets I've played. It's dynamic, big, and facilitates cool stories really well.

Deadnight wrote:

xruslanx wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:
Ok I am going to take off my bitter-(not very)old-veteran hat for a minute and ask the people in this thread, what do you actually like about the rules?

Speaking for myself here, what I like about the rules is the easy interaction between the fluff and the ruleset. If the designers want to impliment something because they think it's cool, they don't have to use the existing mechanisms in the ruleset, they can just stick it in. I will give some examples of this since that won't much much sense on its own.

The old demon codex was full of special rules that were simply tacked on by the designers with no existing mechanisms used at all. The Changling for example, could simply select an enemy model, make it perform a Ld check, and if it failed then you'd get to shoot it that turn. It could well have been broken or usable, since within the game-rules that that special rule utilises, there is complexity, and there could be problems with the way the Changeling's rule interacts with existing shooting rules. But so what? It's an awesome special rule and it's fluffy as hell.

Or Fateweaver's ability to give anyone with 6" a re-roll to any armour/invul/cover save they could take. Potentially game-breaking but fluffy and cool.

Or GK's Warp Storm. Against the old demon codex it practically broke them, yet still fluffy and cool.

A "tighter" ruleset just sounds boring to me. It would essentially mean that anything actually *new* would be impossible, everything would have to be created from pre-existing methods.

The fact that thy do this in warmachine/hordes too makes a mockery of this argument. Take epic butcher, Magnus or Caine as examples. In each case, their fluff matches their in game rules. In butchers case, he even has a rule called homicidal maniac, his berzerker nature, ehere he goes into a killing spree, heedless of whether he kills friend or foe is represented perfectly within hid rules, the fact that his rage ebbs and flows, and fuels his sorcery, and his extremely unstable nature is represented by his random focus generation, his rage is literally transferred to the war jacks under his command as thy become more aggressive by default. Even if you look at his feat, where his rage boils over and infects his whole army is excellently done.
Look at Magnus. His crushed leg held together by a brace - low speed and def. look at his special rules - backstabbing, feign death and resourceful - all perfectly within character. Look at his spell list - representing a former cygnar affiliation along with more from being on the run since.
Look at Caine. Look at his feat. Try and tell me it's not cool and flavourful.

And yet this is all in a game famous for its extremely tight rues set and balance. Which puts a mockery to the claim that 40k is somehow better, despite all its faults, because it allows the background to be represented on the table top.

xruslanx wrote:.

What is your actual point? Could you demonstrate how you think the 40k ruleset is poor beyond things being under-over costed?

40k suffers from bloat, and from needless excess layers of rules, excess die rolls and other aspects that essentially add nothing but clutter. clutter is bad. Sure, you can work around it, and still have fun with friends, but ask yourself this - are you having fun because of the rules, or in spite of them.

I'll give you a few examples.

Excess rules. Bloat, essentially. and more crucially, bloat that does not add to the game. Take the simple example of movement. You have the basic movement rules for infantry for example, and then all the exceptions. Jump packs and their jet pack exceptions, bikes, jet bikes, cavalry, vehicles, fliers, monstrous creatures etc. now why does 40k need all these extra classifications to add a pseudo-depth to the the when others pull it off with variable movement values. Rules exist that tell you how to do things, except for everything else that does it some other way how about needless rules - like how 5th ed marines could simply ignore the whole part of the rule book about morale?
Excess die rolls. Roll to hit, wound, armour save, fnp. The latter three essentially deal with the same question (does the shot that hit me kill me?) other games like infinity and warmachine (and even dnd!) use 2. Wmh - roll to hit, roll to damage. Infinity - roll to hit, and roll to save against the power of what hit you. Simple, elegant, and streamlined. 40k is excessive for the sake of it and adds nothing except time, and the mistaken belief that more dice is more depth.
Further excess - vehicles and infantry use different mechanics. One uses wounds the other armour. Historically, vehicles were an add on to a fantasy game, but gw as stuck with this awkward dual system ever since. Other games use a universal inflict damage system, and use universal 'wound' mechanics, with vehicles simply having more, or else having damage effects marked differently - look at warjacks and infantry in warmahordes - same universal system is at the core of both.
Further excess and layers of extra game mechanics - try strength and ap in guns. You use the ap to determine if you get through infantry armour (strength means nothing) and you use strength to determine if you get through vehicle armour. It's pseudo-depth. Why? Surely it keys sense to use the one system? For me it achieves nothing but dissociation from the game when I realise a str10 ap5 gun will in all likelyhood pulp a land rider, predator tank, and most apc's in the game, but will bounce off a grot with power armour.
Cover- terrible mechanic with the alternative save. A marine with power armour in 6+ cover could take a cover save against a lasgun, and fail, and die in the game- somehow he loses his power armour because he ducked behind a tree.ok.... Surely a guy in power armour and cover should gain more of it than this?! But you use one or the other when common sense would tell you it's more than the sum of its parts. Other games with treat cover as increasing the difficulty to hit you (warmachine, hordes, early 40k editions) or offer superior protection via positive armour save mods (starship troopers) . Some like infinity do both. But 40ks system is nonsensical, and poorly taught through.



I'll be honest - I don't enjoy the 40k rules set. It is a thirty year old relic. In evolutionary terms, it's a dinosaur. It simply has not keep with the times. Game design theory is actually something I'm quite interested in, and it has moved on significantly from those days in the early 80s when 40k was ported over from fantasy as their '... But in space' game. I'd like to enjoy 40k again - I really would! I went through my bits box organising things and found a whole bunch of unassembled marines. I'm very tempted to do a marine project, of some kind. The sad fact is whatever the project evolves into, it won't be done using the rues set from 40k.b

Deadnight is 1000% correct, couldn't have come close to saying this better myself.

Personally, I enjoy the rules. Every edition brings adjustments and refinements, rather than a complete overhaul (ala D&D), so we're working towards a better game for everyone.

I like the fluff behind 40K, but the more I play, the more I get bored.

I move, shoot, assault, you move shoot assault, makes for a very boring game, at least for me.

Alot of ambiguity in the rule set, where people have to explain their view of the interpretations of the rules, slows the game down as well.

GW need CLEAN, CLEAR, CONCISE rules so YMTC is shut down.

To be honest I don't understand what polls like this are suppose to prove . If some realy doesn't like w40k , then he probably stoped playing it when 6th started. Melee armies or chaos players won't be voting on this . On the other hand people like me who play IG or those who play armies which do ok in 6th , will say that the rule set is totaly ok or even great. Tau/eldar players will probably call 6th the best edition ever made.