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It's been a long time since I played 40k. Last time I played it, the Necrons had just had their relaunch in plastic, and the general state of the game was good, but with a few things that needed a fix.

I know that the Psychic phase has been added since. Which I am actually feeling positive about, since it gives a definitive phase for all of those little abilities we would either do in the wrong phase, or forget about.

But I'm interested in knowing the general state of the game overall.

I'm enjoying playing 40k immensely. Not played since 2nd edition, started again around Feb/March time this year.

I feel 40k ain't that bad. The new dex are slowly balancing themself out (although I feel for people that need to wait a while before a new, up to date dex hit the field.)

Hopefully, they won't change their ''codex making'' politics right in the middle of the process, like they did last time.

I really like the Psychic phase (but I moved to Tau about 2-3 months ago and I don't get to cast spell :( )

There has been some power creep, but besides some armies that need to get updated (CSM, Guard, Nids) to the new standard the current 3 that are (SM, Eldar, Necrons) are well internally balanced between the 3 of them IMO. Basically whats causing this jump in power is SUPER FORMATIONS. Its a very fluffy way to build an army (eg. half battle companies and 1st company formations) that are powerful but not unstoppable.

I'd say that being a newbie to warhammer relatively (2014) I enjoy the state of the game immensely. I play fluffy ultramarine lists, usually honour guard and a chapter master in a land raider running about killing daemons for existing and sweeping necrons under a rug in no time flat. Its a fun game, but its a tad bit broken at the second.

Im surprised by how positive those reviews are. IMO the game is abomination, but it has cool minis and fluff, so I guess its got that going for it.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Im surprised by how positive those reviews are.

Not everybody's trying to break the game you know...

I'm having a blast with 7th edition, even more than I enjoyed 6th edition. Mostly this is because I don't play in highly competitive metas, but the game is still going strong at the FLGSs that I frequent.

Are there problems with the rules and the power creep of armies? Absolutely. But if you aren't trying to actively break the ruleset or build the most overpowered lists possible the game is still fun, and that's what matters most to me.

The "Decurion Detachment" is kinda the trend as of late where some "uber detachments" are a thing for various armies.
"Maelstrom" has become the go-to scenario for a few games.
Big Stomping machines/critters are being a general power-level controversy with Imperial Knights and such.

I would say for variety of models and varying scales of warfare this has never been a better time to play.
For balance of a pick-up game or competitive play it is a bit of a mess however.

There have been more than a couple discussions on this topic, some links below to get a "state of the union"
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/90/659543.page#8050525"Pet peeves you have with 40k" just get that out of our system now.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/30/664002.page#8129104"It's hard to come back to 40k" a few words on balance and favored codex's.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/664008.page#8125975 "A step back into the Grimdark..." talk on armies and a feel for the local scene.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/120/662763.page#8119526"40k woes" talking with a guy feeling the "burn-out", mind-you under attack for saying Necrons are not very good that he plays
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/645330.page#7769697"Is now a good time to get back into 40k?" bit of a mixed response.

There you go for now.
GW is a bit distracted with giving Age of Sigmar a BIG push so it is a bit quiet with 40k at the moment.
Good luck!

There is a refreshing amount of optimism in this thread so far, very cool. 7th has been great to my group so far, Psychic phase has indeed helped in remembering when/what to cast.

If you're into competitive gaming you might have a pretty rough time, you'll see a lot of people with (legitimate) gripes about balance.

Dakka as an internet forum tends to draw a particular type of player, but in person I've not been through half the nightmarish stories people seem to experience. As long as you talk to your opponent before a game 7th ed. and 40K is pretty great right now IMO.

I'm enjoying it so far, having played since 4th I have to say I've liked 6th and 7th the most so far. 4th was clunky and 5th was parking lots to put it bluntly, but for my area at least the big stuff seems to be scarce and not under 1500 without people knowing and that's good cause I actually like seeing the big stuff; just not spammed and in low points where it's just going to stroll freely through the field.

I'll have to admit though, I enjoyed the 6th Eldar with Iyanden better than the 7th. I want to run my full wraith army without it seeming too intimidating when it isn't really.

There is a lot of positive reviews of 7, but also a lot of people have left since 6th. At least the way I see it.

40K in my area pretty much dried up because of 7th. Maelstrom missions randomly change the course of the game. The system is too clunky to use the dice for a moderately paced game so you're pushed to purchase the cards. In any case every game seemed more dependent on card draws than anything happening on the field.

I see people say the armies are starting to balance out. We saw the same trend when 6th hit. CSM and DA had fun builds and were rather lack luster. Looked to be a good trend of a more balanced game. Then Tau and Eldar came out and any hope of balance got tossed out the window. Now look where we are at. Eldar is out and even worse with Tau right at the door with possibly 3 gargantuan creatures and the first squad of gargantuan creatures.

I have a lot invested in 40K and I'm waiting to get back into it. But I'm just not seeing it right now. Too many elements in games that you can't prepare a TAC list, too many formations, psychic phase seems to be an all in or nothing matter to me, and Warlord traits are still random.

A friend of mine has been playing 40K for a long time and he got me into the game mid 5th. We both had fun with 6th despite the problems. 7th made us both quit pretty much at the same time. We had 4 local tournaments in the beginning of 7th that were all canceled due to lack of participation. I'm glad to hear some areas are doing well with it, but the game is pretty much just circling the drain here.

It has a few balance issues. There are a few rules that may need some houserulling until/if we get an faq. But overall it's still 40k.

I have a lot of fun with it. And for all the negative that can be said about formations and such, I do see more variation on the table than I did in 4th 5th and 6th. I enjoy maelstrom.

Also check your local gaming hubs, as their meta will be a little more specific than the general picture strangers online can paint. Your local group could be super competitive, fluff bunnies, or anything between. Unless you are playing with only your group of friends, this will likely have a larger impact on your games than the state of the rules will.

Take my local group for example. 40+ people, mostly strangers outside of 40k games. We have our own quick house rules for tricky stuff. We are almost entirely void of... less than desirable players. People don't scoff at the idea of toning down/up lists so people get the game they are looking for. Combined with Internet forums and Facebook pages, it's never been easier to find games when/where you want, with prearranged points, friendly limit requests(commonly no super heavies for example), ect.

On the flip side, if you get sucked into the grim dark bowels of some posts, you may be led to believe that every group is nothing but rules lawyers. Every player only takes skyhammer, jet bike spam, or dercurion. Every other person cheats, has weighted dice, has an odor pungent enough to strip lead based paint. If your local scene is as bad as some posts on here, I am truly sorry.

40k is much the same as its always been. A quick discussion before a game, and a mature attitude are all that you really need to have a good time. Like most hobbies, it's as fun as YOU make it.

True, it really depends on your local meta and who you'll be playing with. You local store might be full of WAAC players, or fluff based lists for days.

Over saturation of Gargantuan Creatures and Super Heavies can be a pain, but for most games around 1850 it's really cool to see one or two on the table.

I personally love the Maelstrom cards, but have heard many people shy away from them due to the randomness it brings. Not playing in a competitive meta I'm not really bothered by how quickly it can shift, I've always found it helps to keep players from stagnating. However you can still play non-maelstrom games, they are still printed in BRB even.

The rules for 40K are basically broken if your going for pure RAW and unmodified rules tend to create for some one sided stomps and army mismatches. Way too easy for WAAC mentality players to exploit the rules. With reasonable restrictions put in place and a patching up of unclear rules then the game is decently good. Still a lot of internal and external codex imbalance plus some fairly broken mechanics like invisibility, rerollable 2+, str D, and stomp but for the most part with a bit of social contracting the game is fun.

Yeah I recently played against the Dark Shroud w/ Dark Angels bike spam. It was... not fun. Re-rollable skilled rider shrouded jink.

To be fair it was a tournament list he wanted to practice and I figured I would see how it goes. I'm not as big a fan of patching up the rules, but rather making sure each opponent has a list that can be an enjoyable fight for both sides.

Well, 40k is not externally balanced. Some xenos armies like Eldar and Necrons can be very powerful. Others like DA or Chaos are rather underwhelming.
There is a thread here asking if 40k is playable. The consensus was - it is not in general. Its still playable in a closed group, but if two unknown players just meet for game, it doesn't work.
Moreover, GW have had a button ''Gaming'' at its homepage. It has been replaced by ''Painting and Modeling''. Says it all.
But if you have fun playing 40k, get back into it.

@wuestenfux - DA are pretty good, man.

If you're starting an army and want to be "competitive", play a codex printed after 2015

As long I as continue to avoid the toxic tournament scene and play with a small group of friends the game is fine. It's definitely not my favorite minis game though.

 Savageconvoy wrote:
There is a lot of positive reviews of 7, but also a lot of people have left since 6th. At least the way I see it.

...
.

That's the way I see it too.

I gave up during 6th because I didn't like the direction of the rules (Maelstrom, Unbound, Super heavies, etc) but largely because of the massive leap in cost of the rulebook and codexes. All this only got worse in 7th.

The fact that GW have lost over 20% of their sales in the last three years shows people have been leaving in droves.

However if you like the current rules and don't mind the prices, I am sure you can have fun.

So the general state is good, then. That's handy to know.

But damn is it expensive now. It's going to cost me at least £2-300 to get a decent playable army roster again.

Myc wrote:
So the general state is good, then. That's handy to know.

But damn is it expensive now. It's going to cost me at least £2-300 to get a decent playable army roster again.

How did you get 'the general state of 40k is good' from the comments in the thread? Sure some like it but there are enough comments clearly indicating that the lack of external balance and GW`s doubling down on crazy have driven many 40k players away. So games with a close group of players can work fine but there are serious issues with pick-up games and competitive play.

40k is pretty good.. lots of new units options, and even entire races. Still issues in deployment clarity and melee infiltrators, though.

I've been playing for 19 years and to be honest I find this to be my favourite version. There's a couple things I dislike but it's impossible to be perfect. There's some super broken combos and as mentioned before, some rather outdated codecies, but on the whole it's a great game.

I just wish my dice would cooperate more

This is my favorite edition since I started playing at the end of 2nd

 Ventus wrote:

Myc wrote:
So the general state is good, then. That's handy to know.

But damn is it expensive now. It's going to cost me at least £2-300 to get a decent playable army roster again.

How did you get 'the general state of 40k is good' from the comments in the thread? Sure some like it but there are enough comments clearly indicating that the lack of external balance and GW`s doubling down on crazy have driven many 40k players away. So games with a close group of players can work fine but there are serious issues with pick-up games and competitive play.

There's like... three negative posts. How did you come to the opposite conclusion?

7th got me to quit after playing since 3rd. The state of 40k is abysmal.

For a casual game, 40K is okay. It could be better.

I've been recently playing in a very casual Escalation league with 'Nids. While I'm getting my eyes beat out (God, is the Tyranid codex bad), the people I've been playing it with have kept it fun. The model range and armies that can be chosen to be played is the best it's ever been.

I would not, however, touch a serious 40K tournament scene with a 10 foot pole. Not with a game that too easily can be won with an army list before the first miniature hits the board.

Likewise, prices are way too high, Apple levels of pricing.

7th edition is fun. Don't listen to all the naysayers. All you have to do is not go blind into a match and you will have fun. Talk to your opponent, make sure both armies are around the same power level, and have fun. Most of the negative posters are all crying about imbalanced tournament play...This game is not built for it, no point beating your head against the wall trying to make it that way. If you wan't a tournament feel, bring two lists that have equal chance of beating each other.

Myc wrote:
It's been a long time since I played 40k. Last time I played it, the Necrons had just had their relaunch in plastic, and the general state of the game was good, but with a few things that needed a fix.

I know that the Psychic phase has been added since. Which I am actually feeling positive about, since it gives a definitive phase for all of those little abilities we would either do in the wrong phase, or forget about.

But I'm interested in knowing the general state of the game overall.

The power creep has exploded off the scale, and the current imbalance between many armies is worse than at any time since the worst parts of 4E and 2E, possibly moreso.

The plus side, for some things, is that there's no problems bringing any model of any type to the table in any game. In some ways this can be cool.People have largely untwisted their panties with respect to Forgeworld stuff now for example. In other ways, it obviously is not a great thing.

What 40k is at this point is a sandbox best left to close gaming groups with lots of self imposed (either implicit or explicit) restrictions and pre-planning. As a casual pickup game or anything competitive, it's a total shitshow.

The tournament scene is basically dead. Some will object but tournament organizers will need to add extra rules for getting the tournament going. GW sells miniatures in the first place and not a game.

The situation is different with PP. The rule set of WMH is pretty tight and it works very well in tournaments via SR. The only downside are their miniatures - hard plastic or metal.