Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

NuggzTheNinja wrote:

A fighter who suffers amputation of an extremity, like the hand, is not going to be keeping up with his brosephs, shooting and assaulting things. In rare cases people do override extreme pain and delay incapacitation, but a man without a hand is no longer going to answer "up" when they call his name.

Most things in 40K are abstract. The level of detail/realism you are trying to apply to 40K is counter to it's design and more suited for a detailed small-scale skirmish game (which 40K isnt).

Attempting to apply common sense and "ralism" to 40K is never a good idea...

>Sort out wound allocation
>Put a cap on the % of your army that can be deployed in reserve, say 50%?
>Sort out cover
>Have random game lengths for certain missions only.
>Complete rehaul of the codecies.

[quote=DeadlySquirrel>Put a cap on the % of your army that can be deployed in reserve, say 50%?

Deep striking is not supposed to be army-wide, it's supposed to be a clean clinical strike into enemy territory.
Fighting an all deep strike army is annoying. It's not particularly game-breaking or unbalanced but it's not really the spirit of the game.

Joey wrote:Deep striking is not supposed to be army-wide, it's supposed to be a clean clinical strike into enemy territory.
Fighting an all deep strike army is annoying. It's not particularly game-breaking or unbalanced but it's not really the spirit of the game.

Says you.


For some armies and scenarios it makes perfect sense. Space marines are famed for this type of military action for example.

Point is having the option for deepstriking armies, flanking, and reserves adds much needed play variety to the game and can facilitate scenario play, etc.

It also makes the standard 6x4 board feel more adequate for the size games that have become standard.

CT GAMER wrote:

Joey wrote:Deep striking is not supposed to be army-wide, it's supposed to be a clean clinical strike into enemy territory.
Fighting an all deep strike army is annoying. It's not particularly game-breaking or unbalanced but it's not really the spirit of the game.

Says you.


For some armies and scenarios it makes perfect sense. Space marines are famed for this type of military action for example.

Limitting it to 50% wouldn't cripple SM. I would have thought most SM armies are mainly mech these days anyway. You could still drop pod half your army, a couple of tactical squads and some assault terminators.

Part of the point of being able to Reserve is if the table's terrain is light, and one army has gone complete gunline shooty. If given guaranteed first turn, it's nice for the opponent to have the option of Reserving.

Of course, Reserving has its downsides too. Having half your force come up without the other half to help. Having to move on from the edge and be that much farther from the enemy they want to close with, etc.

I think they did some really great things with Reserves in this edition. Way better than 3rd or 4th.

Mannahnin wrote:Part of the point of being able to Reserve is if the table's terrain is light, and one army has gone complete gunline shooty. If given guaranteed first turn, it's nice for the opponent to have the option of Reserving.

Of course, Reserving has its downsides too. Having half your force come up without the other half to help. Having to move on from the edge and be that much farther from the enemy they want to close with, etc.

I think they did some really great things with Reserves in this edition. Way better than 3rd or 4th.

Well I liked 4th better, but I can agree it is an improvement relative to 3ed.

@ Vakthati


I agree partly with you. It is not a perfect system.

I just happen to prefer it (warts and all) to the older systems. I think the "advantage" of having a chance of losing "good" models outweighs the disadvantage of a few units being able to fully exploit it. To me even the odd "kill-more-by-shooting-less" outweighs the heavy/special/sergeant never dying.

im2randomghgh wrote:

Panzerboy26 wrote:

Brother SRM wrote:
I agree with most of your post, but I've got to reply to the three points above.

- Kill Points are something I hated at first. Your example shows they can be utterly ridiculous. However, they are the single penalizing factor for MSU spam armies. My fairly standard Chaos Marine army only stands a ghost of a chance against a venom/trueborn spam DE army, but with Kill Points I at least have the possibility of doing okay.

- Reserves keep the game steady and mobile. An all-reserves army is annoying to fight, I agree, but outflanking units add a lot to the game.

- Random game length isn't a bad thing. First of all, it mitigates the last-turn skimmer jump. You know, the classic Eldar maneuver where they have all their falcons, jetbikes, or what have you move flat out/turbo boost/whatever onto every objective. It prevents this kind of late game dickery. Also, it means you'll take some risks. If it's the bottom of turn 6, and your guardsmen are holding an objective, do you risk running out to blow up that land raider and save it, or do you just hunker down and hope the game ends at the end of this turn? It's less predictable and more dynamic.

I don't think swinging the game in favor of death-star hyper-elite units is any better than swinging it in favor of spam. The remedy for your chaos being able to take on Venom Spam is, sadly, a better chaos book. It's the oldest book in 40k now, and it sorely needs to be re-written. I promise the 3rd ed Chaos book would have little problem taking down venom spam.

I have no problem with things outflanking, as that requires units to have special rules in order to do it. You can't simply decide to outflank your entire army on a whim (well, most can't). You can, however, decide to start with nothing deployed, and just roll on the table. This means that turn 1, nothing happens. Not really. The other players moves around a bit, and waits for the other player to show up. Combined with Random Game length, it means that a game can 'start' on turn 2, and end on turn 5. It's a wet dream for point-denial players.

I bolded the part where you confused Chaos and Tau.

I italicized the part where the guy who does that deserves the kroot konga line.

I underlined the part where YOU confused Tau and Black Templars.

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

im2randomghgh wrote:

Panzerboy26 wrote:

Brother SRM wrote:
I agree with most of your post, but I've got to reply to the three points above.

- Kill Points are something I hated at first. Your example shows they can be utterly ridiculous. However, they are the single penalizing factor for MSU spam armies. My fairly standard Chaos Marine army only stands a ghost of a chance against a venom/trueborn spam DE army, but with Kill Points I at least have the possibility of doing okay.

- Reserves keep the game steady and mobile. An all-reserves army is annoying to fight, I agree, but outflanking units add a lot to the game.

- Random game length isn't a bad thing. First of all, it mitigates the last-turn skimmer jump. You know, the classic Eldar maneuver where they have all their falcons, jetbikes, or what have you move flat out/turbo boost/whatever onto every objective. It prevents this kind of late game dickery. Also, it means you'll take some risks. If it's the bottom of turn 6, and your guardsmen are holding an objective, do you risk running out to blow up that land raider and save it, or do you just hunker down and hope the game ends at the end of this turn? It's less predictable and more dynamic.

I don't think swinging the game in favor of death-star hyper-elite units is any better than swinging it in favor of spam. The remedy for your chaos being able to take on Venom Spam is, sadly, a better chaos book. It's the oldest book in 40k now, and it sorely needs to be re-written. I promise the 3rd ed Chaos book would have little problem taking down venom spam.

I have no problem with things outflanking, as that requires units to have special rules in order to do it. You can't simply decide to outflank your entire army on a whim (well, most can't). You can, however, decide to start with nothing deployed, and just roll on the table. This means that turn 1, nothing happens. Not really. The other players moves around a bit, and waits for the other player to show up. Combined with Random Game length, it means that a game can 'start' on turn 2, and end on turn 5. It's a wet dream for point-denial players.

I bolded the part where you confused Chaos and Tau.

I italicized the part where the guy who does that deserves the kroot konga line.

I underlined the part where YOU confused Tau and Black Templars.

Touché

As far as the KP/VP debate, I say: why not compromise? In 4th ed you randomized Alpha, Gamma, or Omega missions where more special rules were allowed. 5th ed does something similar for the mission objectives. Why not just add VP's to one of the possible rolls? That way you aren't penalizing Death Stars any more than you are penalizing MSU. Both have an equal chance to get screwed and leaning how to counter those armies in those situations becomes another thought experiment. Like building your list with a couple of counters in case Night Fight happens.

Wound Allocation is plain silly the way it stands now. They could tweak it to be where you have to assign the wounds in ascending order of AP value. So you assign all the AP1 stuff first, then the AP2, 3, and so on. It's still less convoluted than "majority toughness" and "whole models," but will cause more carnage than the current version does. This could allow a fix without wholly nerfing the (agreeably) preponderance of EW and FNP.

I think I'm the only person who liked how terrain worked in 4e, with the greater degree of abstraction and differing levels of terrain. PP does this with their differently sized bases, and it works very well for them. (IE: Large bases can see past small and medium bases, but not large, Medium can see past small but not medium or large, etc.) They measure LoS through models by seeing what you could see of the base, and through terrain by what you could see of the model (not including weapons on infantry.) Of course, the also denied you cover bonuses if you were too far away from the cover. IE: there is a wall between us. I am more than 2" away, so you can shoot me cleanly. Less than an inch, and I am considered to crouch down behind it for cover (so as to allow you cool basing and modelling)

I really like outflanking and reserves, it's a sharp ability and adds another wrinkle to gameplay. I think I'd also like to see cover return to more of a penalty to hit rather than bonus saves, but I'd have to run the math first. It might be a huge nerf for GEq. >.<


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, ref the sweeping advance issue: bear in mind that it doesn't represent a guy necessarily killing everyone, but scattering them so that they are not combat effective within the next several minutes that the battle represents.

In Fantasy, you used to have to have at least 5 models in order to destroy a unit after a failed LD check. I think a similar mechanic might be more realistic.

Nagashek wrote:
Also, ref the sweeping advance issue: bear in mind that it doesn't represent a guy necessarily killing everyone, but scattering them so that they are not combat effective within the next several minutes that the battle represents.

In Fantasy, you used to have to have at least 5 models in order to destroy a unit after a failed LD check. I think a similar mechanic might be more realistic.

Maybe inflict d6 wounds (no saves of any sort) per model in the victoriuos unit, with Walkers/MC's inflicting 2d6?

I was thinking that the victorious unit gets a free round of CC (using their base number of attacks), where his attacks hit and wound automatically.

So if a 10 man squad of boyz were to beat a squad of marines, the marines would suffer 20 wounds. Saves allowed.
That should stop cases were one IC can slaughter like 15 guys.

CT GAMER wrote:

NuggzTheNinja wrote:

A fighter who suffers amputation of an extremity, like the hand, is not going to be keeping up with his brosephs, shooting and assaulting things. In rare cases people do override extreme pain and delay incapacitation, but a man without a hand is no longer going to answer "up" when they call his name.

Most things in 40K are abstract. The level of detail/realism you are trying to apply to 40K is counter to it's design and more suited for a detailed small-scale skirmish game (which 40K isnt).

Attempting to apply common sense and "ralism" to 40K is never a good idea...

In this context it would actually speed up gameplay. I wrote that to justify it from the point of view of realism, but from a gameplay fluidity perspective it makes sense too.

I think we need to step back and remind ourselves that this is the game where the rulebook says that is you lose, but succeed in killing off most of your oppenent's forces, you win bragging rights.

Look in the Victory Points section in the rulebook. It actually says that.

Generally speaking I love 5th edition. So much was done right now it's a question of smoothing out some of the, aherm, 'rough' edges.

Wound allocation shenanigans. That's all horse hockey, fix it.

I'm truly, deeply, madly in love with how assault resolution has been shifted from a four turn slog-fest to short, decisive fights but with no capability to re-engage. Honestly a marvelous introduction in my opinion. Now can we have outnumbering benefits added back into the system so a 25-ork/gaunt/IG group isn't completely obliterated by one guy? I mean seriously?

Vehicles. Good GOD this stuff needs fixed, stat. 2D6 damage table to differentiate between scratched paint and apocalyptic explosion, and if you're not going to rewrite codices to balance transports then do it in the rule book. There must be some sort of trade-off for all the benefits that a transport gives the units inside.

And my single biggest complaint is directly aimed at GW itself. It's 2012 now. You have absolutely no excuse beyond incompetence or indifference for not having some sort of living FAQ/Errata system updating minor issues in older books in a timely manner. It's totally inexcusable to be updating books once, maybe six months after they are released and then never again touching them for years upon years. This alone is the sole reason I have chosen to not further invest monetarily in the hobby. There are so many armies out there that are SCREAMING for one or two simple fixes to reflect the changing nature of the game system and the abysmal customer support given after a sale is just deplorable. Shame, shame on you for not pulling your heads out of the sand on this issue.

Uhh IG stubborn blobs do NOT get wiped out easily. If they get charged turn 2 the unit that charged them will either be dead or in combat for the rest of the game, unless they have a stupid number of attacks or are very very good at close combat.

Nagashek - so, you want 3 missions that entirely encourage MSU, and 1 that doesnt? That isnt "compromise", that is "making a poor trade off worse"

Vaktathi - no, it isnt elite, it is "average", when you have 6 x 5 marines on the board as scoring units.

After hating 4th Ed (such a dull game) and tolerating the extremes of 3rd Ed, I was quite willing to give 5th a go. But then came a list of deal breakers that I could not stand:

1. The vehicle rules. In toto.
Every edition of the game since 2nd Ed has seen the vehicle rules become more and more simplified, and more and more abstracted. I'm not asking for a BattleTech level of vehicle detail, but I am asking for something that resembles the fun of 2nd Ed vehicles. Even if all the other problems I had with 5th Ed didn't exist, the lack of a decent set of vehicle rules would still be the ultimate deal breaker.

2. True Line of Sight.
The fact that you can remove models that are both out of range and out of LOS pretty much says why TLOS isn't. It's even more puzzling when you consider that there weren't any real problems with LOS in the previous editions and what is so hard about removing only models that you can both see and are in range?

3. Wound Allocation.
GW likes to dumb things down, but at the same time add more complexity to rules that don't require it. The 3rd and 4th method of roll wounds, apply wounds, roll saves, remove models was simply. Now we have to worry about weapon and model types, who has what wargear and a host of other things.

4. Blast Markers.
GW likes to dumb things down, but at the same time add more complexity to rules that don't require it. Yeah, I just repeated myself, but it applies to scattering every blast marker. It just adds time to the game for no benefit. The previous method of roll to hit, count who is under the blast marker, roll wounds, roll saves, remove casualties has been replaced with place marker, roll scatter, work out who's under, roll wounds, apply wounds to specific sub-sets of models based on weapons and wargear, roll individual groups of saves, remove specific models. Now do that 3 more times for your Dev squad. Uhhg! Why add complication to something that didn't need it?

5. Kill Points.
My unit of Gretchin is worth just as much as your Chapter Master which is worth the same as those 3 Genestealers which is worth as much as his Land Raider which is worth as much as that unit of 10 Chaos Terminators.

No. Just no.

nosferatu1001 wrote:Nagashek - so, you want 3 missions that entirely encourage MSU, and 1 that doesnt? That isnt "compromise", that is "making a poor trade off worse"

Vaktathi - no, it isnt elite, it is "average", when you have 6 x 5 marines on the board as scoring units.

Actually I believe I was suggesting half and half. Not properly detailed, as I'm still getting the hang of 5E missions, but certainly what I meant.

The issue is that Victory Points always benefit MSU list design. It's harder to get the points when they're distributed around the field. MSU design is also always better in objective missions. The more units you have the better off you are.

In 3rd ed and 4th ed it was ALWAYS to your advantage to have as many units as possible, and fill out the force org as much as you could, The introduction of KPs in 5th finally gives a counterbalancing element to let armies built around fewer, more expensive units have a decent chance. The distribution of the three core mission types in 5th is actually one of its best qualities, in part because it creates a tension between wanting to have more units and wanting to have fewer. Thus meaning there is no one optimal approach of the two in making an all-purposes list, and players are encouraged to find a working balance between the two.

That being said, you still mostly see people bringing MSU armies, because despite KPs, MSU armies have a number of pure tactical advantages. Specifically they allow you much greater flexibility of maneuver and in distribution of force around the table. If you have, say, 100% of your antitank firepower divided between two units, or divided between five units, the guy with it spread around five units has both greater flexibility and greater durability. If one of them is killed he's only lost 20%, whereas the other guy has lost half. Even better, if the first one unit's firepower gets lucky and pops a target, you've still got 80% of your firepower to distribute elsewhere around the field. If you've got the same firepower in two units, you can only engage two targets at maximum. And if the first unit doesn't do the job on your #1 priority target on a given turn, you've only got one more unit to allocate.

Part of that is also because people don't like and misunderstand KPs, and water down their impact on the game. And/or they alter the objective missions to make them favor MSU even MORE, like by defaulting to 5 objectives and forcing them to be spread around the field rather than letting a player with fewer units bunch them up as alternating placement does.

H.B.M.C. wrote:After hating 4th Ed (such a dull game) and tolerating the extremes of 3rd Ed, I was quite willing to give 5th a go. But then came a list of deal breakers that I could not stand:

1. The vehicle rules. In toto.
Every edition of the game since 2nd Ed has seen the vehicle rules become more and more simplified, and more and more abstracted. I'm not asking for a BattleTech level of vehicle detail, but I am asking for something that resembles the fun of 2nd Ed vehicles. Even if all the other problems I had with 5th Ed didn't exist, the lack of a decent set of vehicle rules would still be the ultimate deal breaker.

What sort of stuff are you after? What made 2nd Ed vehicles fun?

H.B.M.C. wrote:2. True Line of Sight.
The fact that you can remove models that are both out of range and out of LOS pretty much says why TLOS isn't. It's even more puzzling when you consider that there weren't any real problems with LOS in the previous editions and what is so hard about removing only models that you can both see and are in range?

Line of sight and range is ALWAYS going to be an issue. Theres no way to do it without making it gimmicky. Whats so hard about removing only models in sight and range? Nothing, but it means I can create artificial lines of sight with vehicles and terrain and snipe any model I want from your units. Theres going to be WTF? moments no matter how you do it, but this way works the best, IMO.

H.B.M.C. wrote:3. Wound Allocation.
GW likes to dumb things down, but at the same time add more complexity to rules that don't require it. The 3rd and 4th method of roll wounds, apply wounds, roll saves, remove models was simply. Now we have to worry about weapon and model types, who has what wargear and a host of other things.

It was simple, but made models with exceptional wargear impossible to take down, resulting in the very gamey and artificial feeling of having a ten wound heavy weapon, instead of a ten man Marine squad. This way works, but just needs the added caveat that all weapons of a particular type should be fully resolved before moving on to other weapons being fired. So, all plasma guns are fully resolved, then all lasguns are fully resolved, etc.

H.B.M.C. wrote:4. Blast Markers.
GW likes to dumb things down, but at the same time add more complexity to rules that don't require it. Yeah, I just repeated myself, but it applies to scattering every blast marker. It just adds time to the game for no benefit. The previous method of roll to hit, count who is under the blast marker, roll wounds, roll saves, remove casualties has been replaced with place marker, roll scatter, work out who's under, roll wounds, apply wounds to specific sub-sets of models based on weapons and wargear, roll individual groups of saves, remove specific models. Now do that 3 more times for your Dev squad. Uhhg! Why add complication to something that didn't need it?

Yeah, gotta agree on this one.

H.B.M.C. wrote:5. Kill Points.
My unit of Gretchin is worth just as much as your Chapter Master which is worth the same as those 3 Genestealers which is worth as much as his Land Raider which is worth as much as that unit of 10 Chaos Terminators.

No. Just no.

Kill points are a fine way of balancing armies. Some armies are more penalised than others, but thats more of a codex issue than a rule issue.

Kaldor wrote:Whats so hard about removing only models in sight and range? Nothing, but it means I can create artificial lines of sight with vehicles and terrain and snipe any model I want from your units.

It also means more time spent measuring ranges rather than just getting on with it.

The current shift towards more of a unit based game rather than every rule dealing with individual models is actually one of the things I love about 5th edition.

Joey wrote:Uhh IG stubborn blobs do NOT get wiped out easily. If they get charged turn 2 the unit that charged them will either be dead or in combat for the rest of the game, unless they have a stupid number of attacks or are very very good at close combat.

Why yes thank you the entire post is irrelevant if you have one special rule specifically designed for that situation. Again, thank you for pointing that out.

Nagashek - yet you only posited adding a mission, VPs, to the existing missions. Giving 4 in total, and only 1/4 being in favour of non-spam armies

As Mannahein said - people have made MSU even MORE of a no brainer by poor mission design; I rail against this with all tournaments I go to - dont make it ALWAYS 5 Objectives (theres a reason it is random you know) and dont make them spread out; both benefit spam armies

ITs funny when those same TOs then complain about the prevalence of spam armies, without realising that they are usually part of the problem. (especially when you have too short time limits, as that also comps against horde over mech armies, simply on a time basis)

HMBC - so you preferred rhino wall to snipe sarge and plasma out of units? Lash making that even greater an idiocy of game design? You also realise its been TLOS since RT, yes? 4th just got abused by people not understanding the (admittedly poorly written) rules, and making everything "area'

RE KP - given 2 missions HEAVILY favour MSU, what do you propose to counter that and not make MSU even more of a no brainer? Remember that anything based on points cost IS VPs, just in a different guise, and thus encourages MSU again.

KPs try to discourage MSU, but arent effective enough. 1/3 missions shoudl not be KP _ it shoudl be 1/2 or greater. Tournaments that only run 1 KP in 5 games are a big problem here.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
RE KP - given 2 missions HEAVILY favour MSU, what do you propose to counter that and not make MSU even more of a no brainer? Remember that anything based on points cost IS VPs, just in a different guise, and thus encourages MSU again.

Design codex's and units so that the 5man squads aren't more effective point for point than the 10man squads? That's really the issue.

Some armies inherently are designed to have more units than others, they shouldn't be punished for that, the smaller unit count armies should be designed with capabilities to engage such larger armies in mind. What should be fixed however is the ability to take a bunch of minimum sized squads with almost full wargear alotment, and the ridiculousness of stuff like henchmen units should be apparent at first glance and fixed in early playtesting.

KPs try to discourage MSU, but arent effective enough. 1/3 missions shoudl not be KP _ it shoudl be 1/2 or greater. Tournaments that only run 1 KP in 5 games are a big problem here.

This assumes that KP are actually a balance mechanic of which GW hasn't ever really said, as opposed to simpler victory tabulation without requiring a calculator.

No assumption necessary. It's self-evident even if GW didn't do it intentionally. But it seems obvious that the purposes of it are a) to counter-balance MSU, and b) speeding up victory tablulation.

Mannahnin wrote:No assumption necessary. It's self-evident even if GW didn't do it intentionally. But it seems obvious that the purposes of it are a) to counter-balance MSU, and b) speeding up victory tablulation.

I wouldn't say "obvious", as the design studio has never really expressed any problems with MSU that I can recall, and they continue to design books that emphasize it more than ever. It may be, but it certainly isn't expressed or presented as such anywhere, and in fact operates rather contrary to the description of the annihilation mission.

GW has repeatedly made design choices which steer people away from MSU. KPs are one example. Pretty much everything about 8th edition WHFB is another.