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I keep seeing a bunch of posts floating around regarding opinions of the different editions, whether it be changes that need to be made, or to go back to the way things were. What is the general consensus for the direction GW is going?

The core rules aren't so much of a problem (at least to me) as the general "BIGGERBIGGERBIGGERBIGGER!" attitude that pervades the design team. Bigger models, larger price tags, more power, larger bases, et cetera, et cetera, if it can be bigger it should be bigger (to them, at least).

Major problems with this edition, I'm unhappy.

The core rules have some major functionality issues, with lots of mechanics not seemingly well thought out (jink, vehicles in general), and the army construction rules similarly completely bunk. The massive proliferation of gimmick lists and "bigger and BIGGER!" drains my desire to play.

Sillyness like formations and micro-transaction content coupled with the massively increased cost of publications hurts too.

I'm happy with 7-th but it could use rule tweaks and clarifications. Need combined 1-st and 2-d option.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
The core rules aren't so much of a problem (at least to me) as the general "BIGGERBIGGERBIGGERBIGGER!" attitude that pervades the design team. Bigger models, larger price tags, more power, larger bases, et cetera, et cetera, if it can be bigger it should be bigger (to them, at least).

That really is one of the best ways I've heard someone describe it so far. It seems like standard troops just don't even matter anymore. As much as I'd like to field more marines, they're useless against most of the big scaries that people field. My only choice to do well in my meta is to play one of the few sensible players or to just spam the board with anti-tank anti-MC.

 koooaei wrote:
I'm happy with 7-th but it could use rule tweaks and clarifications. Need combined 1-st and 2-d option.

agreed. I'm happy with 7th but there is definatly some room for FAQing and Errataing

 kingbobbito wrote:

That really is one of the best ways I've heard someone describe it so far. It seems like standard troops just don't even matter anymore

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/632878.page#7537252

They do what troops do. They run around, support and grab points. For cheap. Knights can't do that.

 koooaei wrote:

 kingbobbito wrote:

That really is one of the best ways I've heard someone describe it so far. It seems like standard troops just don't even matter anymore

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/632878.page#7537252

They do what troops do. They run around, support and grab points. For cheap. Knights can't do that.

I know, and I do still run standard troops, it just seems less like a battle and more like cat and mouse. Even when I win it just feels like I spent an entire game ducking between ruins and praying my squads survive long enough to get objectives. I play 40k looking for skirmishes and battles, not a one sided slaughter where my only chance of victory is surviving until the game ends. I do still have a handful of people that feel the same, but the rest? Bleah

I'm happy with it and it's fun, but there are some things that could be fixed.

I love 7th. Maelstrom was an excellent addition. Jink change makes the decision more tactical (in most cases). Smash attack numbering only one plus change on vehicle damage table brought MC vs AV more in line. All units scoring - love that.

Downsides were, invisibility still silly (flamers, blasts etc), skyfire options mostly being 'skyfire only', meaning less skyfire taken so FMCs and flyers got a big buff through that. Catacomb command barge got daft.
Clarification of some rules would be nice.

Tbf though, I picked the first option because to me, personally, it is that damn much better than 6th

I put major problems. It doesn't stop me for playing and having fun, but I HATE-HATE-HATE wound allocation. It is overly complicated and still completely unrealistic. If you're going to abstract, make it simple please.

I also hate the BIGGER issue. I want basic troops to matter more. Everything scoring was a mistake in this regard.

Of course, I've always preferred modifiers to cover saves (and all the broken ignores cover garbage) and binary AP.

I love hull points and the new vehicle damage chart and I like the more maneuverable rapid fire rules. I think USRs are a great idea, but there are far too many.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Major problems with this edition, I'm unhappy.

The core rules have some major functionality issues, with lots of mechanics not seemingly well thought out (jink, vehicles in general), and the army construction rules similarly completely bunk. The massive proliferation of gimmick lists and "bigger and BIGGER!" drains my desire to play.

Sillyness like formations and micro-transaction content coupled with the massively increased cost of publications hurts too.

This.

Perfectly happy with it. While I'm not a huge fan of the new Psychic rules, that's a small enough part of the game that it hardly breaks the deal for me. Apart from that it's basically 6th, and I loved that.

I enjoy it, there are some things I dislike but overall i enjoy it. I like that buff psychic powers can be denied, though I wish the psychic phase was more like the magic phase in warhammer.

The new Maelstrom missions are a lot of fun, vehicles being more survivable was good.

Invisibility needs a huge nerf.

Over all though I am happy with this edition.

An incremental improvement over 6th.
Which was fun, but had issues.

We still have issues, but they are a little fewer and a little less bad.

Biggest issue, right now, would be some dumb things in the codecies, not the BRB. Following that would be either Invis or Unbound.

And plenty of things I'd love to change in the BRB (ObSec on non-infantry, take WHFB magic phase instead of this 4+ idea, etc), but its fun as it is.

Overall a big resounding Meh. its nothing special but it is playable enough to me.



There is no Meh option :/

It's dead to me. Some of the basic rules are good, but there are three big issues that really bother me.
1.) Restructuring the Ally Matrix to give IoM as many benefits and bonuses as possible. BB with everything else and several mini-dexs like Ik and Inquisition that offer more units outside of FOC and ally slots.

2.) It went from needing 2 books in 5th and started ramping up to taking about a dozen books/documents with all the dataslates and rule books. It was mostly done in 6th, but 7th still bothers me by making me keep two extra books I didn't want just for the basic rules.

3.) The games just aren't fun or tactical to me. There is a bad system for cycling out bad cards and even then the game basically devolves into who gets the better draw. They had to make as stupid of a chart as possible to make book keeping such a hassle that you need to purchase the card pack just to make it easy. This is what really killed the game for me. I honestly tried to get into 7th, but after 4-5 games I realized that nothing I did in the game mattered as much as a random pack of cards.

Ya know, you never "needed" to use 2+ books.

most people "want" to because they "want" to win or like the fluff.

The game is playable 1 codex vs 1 codex.

just pointing that out.

Maelstorm gets silly stupid.

Well you need BRB plus codex.
But if you want to run a supplement instead it adds on another book.
Fortifications require an all new book now as well.
If you want a super heavy for your army.
or allies
or allies having a supplement

They are peddling it out as "make any army you want" which boils down to buy as many books as you want. I don't need to do it, I know that. But it's what they are pushing.

I'm between two answers so I answered major problems and I'm unhappy. Really these problems are just tweaks but the required tweaks going unhandeled are a serious issue. IE invisibility - nothing this powerful should exist in a 40k game. hitting on 6's is strong enough to protect a flyer with 10 armor throughout a game usually. Give a squad with some real toughness this ability and it becomes an indestructible unit. Most armies only access to anti flyer has to start in reserve and might never show up (this is anti fun and problematic). Allies are too strong. Some buffs need to be added to armies that take no allies - maybe an additional warlord trait reroll or additional force allocation of your choice or something.

Meh.. I generally dislike the schizophrenic nature of the game. Some things have been streamlined and made into USR for the sake of being simple, but on the other hand, we have micro managing bs and challenge systems and a myriad of random tables that doesn't belong to a bigger battle game.

I'm okay with this edition, but I miss the spirit of 3rd/4th edition, not the BRB, god no, but the fun factor and "feel" of the game and how even GW encouraged custom made converted armies (although GW parts preffered by them of course).

I put "It needs some tweaks but I am happy."

Some things need adjusting, like the MC-Vehicle dynamic, and Invisibility.

On the whole, however, the edition has been a blast for me. I literally have not had this much fun in ages with 40k. Especially not in 5th, when it was "Practice for tournaments or go home!"

 Zewrath wrote:
Meh.. I generally dislike the schizophrenic nature of the game. Some things have been streamlined and made into USR for the sake of being simple, but on the other hand, we have micro managing bs and challenge systems and a myriad of random tables that doesn't belong to a bigger battle game.

I'm okay with this edition, but I miss the spirit of 3rd/4th edition, not the BRB, god no, but the fun factor and "feel" of the game and how even GW encouraged custom made converted armies (although GW parts preffered by them of course).

The "feel", artwork, layout, pictures, etc of the 3E/4E era publications definitely feels a lot cooler and more interesting. The newer stuff looks more and more like a catalog the way they present it.

 Vaktathi wrote:
The "feel", artwork, layout, pictures, etc of the 3E/4E era publications definitely feels a lot cooler and more interesting. The newer stuff looks more and more like a catalog the way they present it.

What do you mean 'looks like'?

@Those of you who complain about this:

- What's wrong with vehicles? Do they die too easily? If yes, is it all armies which it happens to and/or all armies which deal too much damage?

- The AP2 problem - is it every army which have too many of these? It seems Eldar have a lot but I don't see that many Lascannons out there, maybe many Plasma guns but not Lascannons...

With regard to the AP2 issue, it's a real pain for my DE. We still pay premium prices for Dark Lances, but their chance to destroy a vehicles has halved.

Chaospling wrote:
@Those of you who complain about this:

- What's wrong with vehicles? Do they die too easily? If yes, is it all armies which it happens to and/or all armies which deal too much damage?

- The AP2 problem - is it every army which have too many of these? It seems Eldar have a lot but I don't see that many Lascannons out there, maybe many Plasma guns but not Lascannons...

Hull points mean light vehicles die too fast to heavy machine guns (shuriken cannons, multilasers, et cetera). I want tanks that take anti-tank weapons to take out, not tanks that get shot up because a guy with a machine gun rolled well. Light vehicles (Land Speeders, for instance) are completely worthless in a meta that has Wave Serpents.

The AP2 problem is a mixture of expanded availability, expanded range, reduced consequences, and increased weapon power. When I started playing in 4e if you wanted AP2 guns you were restricted on range and you usually had to deal with Gets Hot (which didn't allow armour saves) or Ordnance (which you couldn't move and fire at all); 6e saw power weapons changed to AP3 as standard or AP2 if you wanted to deal with Unwieldy and the design team started tossing out consequence-free AP2 Large Blasts like candy. The combination made the game vastly shootier (since you couldn't reliably chop apart deathstar units in melee anymore but you could shoot them to death very easily) and 2+ saves became truly worthless because AP2 guns are now a lot cheaper than 2+ saves. The issue is anything that's an AP2 Large Blast or has underpriced volume of AP2 fire more so than lascannons (Riptides, Wraithknights, Black Knights, D-Scythes, Executioners, et cetera).

(In the interests of full disclosure I play Black Knights regularly and I would play D-Scythe Wraithguard every game if I had the models)

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Chaospling wrote:
@Those of you who complain about this:

- What's wrong with vehicles? Do they die too easily? If yes, is it all armies which it happens to and/or all armies which deal too much damage?

- The AP2 problem - is it every army which have too many of these? It seems Eldar have a lot but I don't see that many Lascannons out there, maybe many Plasma guns but not Lascannons...

Hull points mean light vehicles die too fast to heavy machine guns (shuriken cannons, multilasers, et cetera). I want tanks that take anti-tank weapons to take out, not tanks that get shot up because a guy with a machine gun rolled well. Light vehicles (Land Speeders, for instance) are completely worthless in a meta that has Wave Serpents.

The AP2 problem is a mixture of expanded availability, expanded range, reduced consequences, and increased weapon power. When I started playing in 4e if you wanted AP2 guns you were restricted on range and you usually had to deal with Gets Hot (which didn't allow armour saves) or Ordnance (which you couldn't move and fire at all); 6e saw power weapons changed to AP3 as standard or AP2 if you wanted to deal with Unwieldy and the design team started tossing out consequence-free AP2 Large Blasts like candy. The combination made the game vastly shootier (since you couldn't reliably chop apart deathstar units in melee anymore but you could shoot them to death very easily) and 2+ saves became truly worthless because AP2 guns are now a lot cheaper than 2+ saves. The issue is anything that's an AP2 Large Blast or has underpriced volume of AP2 fire more so than lascannons (Riptides, Wraithknights, Black Knights, D-Scythes, Executioners, et cetera).

(In the interests of full disclosure I play Black Knights regularly and I would play D-Scythe Wraithguard every game if I had the models)

To be fair, IRL Light vehicles on the scale of cars can be disabled with heavy machine guns thats why they are light while APCs should be able to handle it. in reality i think HP would work better only on pens while glances give you some ability to disrupt.
Wave snakes are silly everyone knows this.

Well, i still play it. Sometimes, just because i have 3 fully painted armies on the shelves, but motivation is down and quite a few buddies quit or jumped to other games.



My opinion? The whole game needs to be completely rewritten!

While the amount of rules conundrums has decreased compeard to 6th, the current ruleset is by far the weirdest and shortsighted of all editions i know (beginning with 2nd). The ridiculous random tables are only in the rules because the writers were too lazy to come up with interesting and worthwhile, yet balanced options and should be kicked out apart from a few exceptions like terrain effects or ork weaponry. Invisibility has finally shown the limits of the concept of cover as a saving throw, especially regarding template weaponry (i propose going back to to-hit-modifiers). The massive favoring of skimmers and monstrous creatures compared to ground vehicles and walkers is still present, the new jink save rule has done rather little to mitigate this and despite common misbelief, monsters still get a cover save by sticking the left toe into a pile of rubble. Maelstrom is a very interesting idea, but the way the missions are designed currently is a total F...I mean: cast a psychic power? whats next? Move a unit? This stuff has clearly been written by one guy on a sunday because the boss wanted to have it on his table on monday 8am. The whole challenge thing can go too...the hive tyrant doesnt give a crap about the sergeant yelling at him, no matter how bad the sarge insults his brood mother. Wound allocation also needs a rework, too much shenanigans possible there. The new vehicle damage table massively devalues high strength single shot weapons against vehicles, a certain authors statement that the new damage table is supposed to increase the value of dedicated anti tank weapons clearly shows that these guys doesnt play their own game.

Just a short rant about things that came to my mind quickly. A few guys sitting and writing down in depth about all the issues would propably end up with a catalogue of problems bigger than the actual rulebook. And then there is the heeling between and inside the codices, OP-units, codex corpses and whatnot. I think the game reached a blind alley, and the only way outis backwards!


Conclusion: "They" should make a complete hard reset...everything back to zero, like they did with 3rd back then, but this time correctly! Hire competent writers (maybe get Graham McNeill back in the saddle, the codices he participated in writing were among the most creative ever, and had very little balancing issues) and make a solid, thought trough core ruleset with properly playtested army lists. Them we can see were to go from there.

Chaospling wrote:
@Those of you who complain about this:

- What's wrong with vehicles? Do they die too easily? If yes, is it all armies which it happens to and/or all armies which deal too much damage?

There's multiple issues.

First is that, yes, in general they are way too easy to kill, for several reasons. They've functionally been made Toughness/Wound units, but they don't get armor saves the way everything else does. On top of that, they still have a double-overlapping kill mechanic where any shot that that rolls higher than the minimum required to wound them can still cripple them or if AP1/2 can still kill them in one shot.

A curious side effect of the 7E changes is that dedicated heavy anti-tank guns are comparatively less effective than flexible-multi-role weapons. For the additional investment to get that big AT gun, like a Lascannon, you'll get overall more value from taking a greater number of lighter weapons like autocannons that have a greater potential to strip more HP's and get through a greater number of cover save rolls than the single shot heavy AT gun will, and the heavy AT gun's low chance of actually exploding a vehicle is low enough that it does not typically make up for the loss of volume of fire and flexibility of target engagement of the lighter weapon.

Additionally, vehicles are absurdly easy to kill in CC. Hitting on rear armor, against WS1, with HP's means that most basic troops in the game can kill any tank on a charge even with less than average dice rolling (either with krak grenades, basic attacks, hidden powerfists/klaws, etc), to say nothing of dedicated CC units which you usually don't even need to bother rolling for, a bare minimum squad of 3 Necron Wraiths for 105pts (until Saturday when they get even better) for instance will put 4 HP's on a flat out speeding Falcon or a moving Leman Russ tank on average, when they only have 3 HP's. Walkers are a bit better off since you don't hit rear armor, but are still way easier to kill than MC's as they lack saves typically.

Additionally, there's a huge gap between skimmers and non-skimmers, that usually isn't really reflected in cost, primarily through the Jink mechanic and additional Flat Out movement speed when Fast. Jink *does* give these vehicles a save, a 4+ cover save. They also have access to wargear that can enhance this save, such that they can benefit from a 3+ cover save in the open. While this does make them fire snapshots the next turn, many have powerful, multishot, twin linked weaponry that can still function effectively even while jinking, and can Jink even when moving Flat Out. Jink additionally has no effect on passengers who can operate normally while their transport is Jinking. The most perplexing thing is that Skimmers can now Jink even if immobilized, which makes zero sense (and skimmer benefits in previous editions did not work if skimmers could not move). Meanwhile for Non-skimmer vehicles, usually their option (besides terrain/intervening units), is Smoke Launchers. These are one-use only, and only give a 5+ cover save. They prevent any shooting at all, do not allow you to move Flat Out, and do not allow passengers to fire out (if there are firing points), and Smoke Launchers aren't even universally standard, some have to pay for them and some don't have access to them at all.

Vehicles really need to either be entirely moved over to T/W units with a save and no damage table, or moved back to a damage table and left there. What's amusing is that typically the worst units for fighting vehicles are other vehicles. Jink and Smoke Launcher need to be moved more in line with each other, Jink needs be fixed to not work on immobilized skimmers, and should have an effect on passengers, and in the case of non-vehicle units should have an effect on assaulting after jinking as well.