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I've noticed a lot of folks locally playing AoS that used to play 40k.

They dislike the lore, but love the rules.... which appear to me (remember, I only play WarCry, so I'm not very knowledgeable about the subject)... a lot simpler than 40k.


A couple guys at the shop said they wished 40k adopted the "streamlined" combat of AoS, and if so they would play more 40k.

What do you think?

So here's the thing about AoS right now

1) I'm all for single units with multiple weapons having a single profile type. A lot of this applies to the Warcry warbands and is simply making those groups functional to play with

2) I'm NOT a fan of having a single profile per unit when they've visually distinct weapons. An Axe is not a Spear is not a Sword.

3) Alternating close combat activations is basically as close in AoS/40K GW has got to alternating activations. It works in AoS mostly because there's a higher abundance of close combat; in 40K with a LOT of units relying on guns it would be nice to have but honestly just highlights how GW might do bettter with a full alternating activation game instead of half way

4) I'm not a fan of the Double Turn mechanic. Every argument I've heard defending it just tends to either lean into "Oh you have to screen units with chaff" which is just basic regular tactics you do anyway; or seems to entirely miss the point that its really not fun to watch your opponent have TWO whole turns in a row.

 Overread wrote:
4) I'm not a fan of the Double Turn mechanic. Every argument I've heard defending it just tends to either lean into "Oh you have to screen units with chaff" which is just basic regular tactics you do anyway; or seems to entirely miss the point that its really not fun to watch your opponent have TWO whole turns in a row.

THIS.

The double-turn is the biggest thing keeping me away from Age of Sigmar. I also hugely object to the lack of Strength/Toughness: Nobody should be wounding goblins and dragons on the same values.

There are also a lot of little things that irk me, such as all their dumb copyrightable names ('elf' does not start with an 'a' - and neither does 'Eldar')

I knew nothing of the AoS system before I started reading this post, but everything that's been written about it here makes it sound like garbage, so no, I would not.

 BorderCountess wrote:

There are also a lot of little things that irk me, such as all their dumb copyrightable names ('elf' does not start with an 'a' - and neither does 'Eldar')

I don't mind this- the word "elf" maybe fine for Monkeigh, but it clearly lacks the inherent lyricism and sophistication of the Aeldari language. In the real world, I tend to refer to groups of folks using the words they use to describe themselves, rather than the words used by other cultures to describe them. I think that degree of nuance adds to the fluff, which is the whole reason I play the game in the first place.

I was okay with the world Eldar, for the record, but I've never looked at a 40k model and thought "elf."

IIRC, AoS also has damage carry over between models. So a D2 weapon that wounds 1-wound models kills 2 models. That removes a lot of nuance from the statlines of weapons. Along with fixed wound rolls, it boils the maths down to a very simple calculation to figure out which is always the best choice.

Other things like the double turn are big problems, I think. AoS also seems even more herohammer than 40k, which I think is a step in the wrong direction.

In short, I don't think the combat is the thing to take from AoS. Some of the army selection and deployment rules look quite good, but I'd rather see 40k address its issues with solutions that work within the rough framework we already have.

I don't really play AoS, but everyone else had pretty made my points for me based on what I know of it. AoS can get away with some things 40k probably couldn't largely thanks to the relative lack of powerful ranged weapons and literal tanks.

I'd maybe be willing to play devil's advocate and say that you could maybe get away with a fixed to-wound roll if you just gave tanks dozens or hundreds of wounds to compensate, but I suspect you'd end up with a whole mess of balance and design issues if you tried to do a direct adaptation of 40k into AoS's core rules.

You'd have to do a huge overhaul to make it halfway fit. And at that point, why not put that effort into making a better system *for 40k* instead?

Also, the double turn thing still feels like madness to me. IGOUGO is terrible in its own way, but I've never thought to myself, "Maybe IGOUGO would be better if sometimes I got to take two turns back to back."

Double turn is the worst idea ever implemented.

I know AoS players like to defend the feature, that there is a drawback to it since 4th,that there is few shooting in AoS.

But it is up there with the IGOUGO+alpha strike of 40k as a problem the game designers keep adding layers of rules to mitigate, instead of straight up removing it.

The GW rule writers are super stubborn with legacy rules, even when they are simply bad.

Making a game simpler means it is accessible to a much wider audience. However, it also makes it incredibly unappealing to people who enjoy the crunch.

I'm also surprised, I thought 40k was already a very simple game. Do people want it simpler? At what point do we just roll 1d6 each and declare the person who rolled high the winner?

I have mostly played 40k but I also got into AoS because I like dragons and my partner likes all the models. I've played a bit, but not as much as 40k.

1) The double turn is really not that big a deal, because AoS has alternating activations where it matters most (the combat phase). Shooting isn't as destructive as in 40k (which I found I like a lot, melee is much more dynamic). There are also other mechanics that discourage you from taking the double turn. It ultimately becomes something you have to hedge against, but rarely something that decides the game unless one part neglected to hedge.

2) The abstraction over weapon types is largely fine with me. I get that a hammer is not the same as a sword, which is not the same as two hammers, but the difference also isn't that large, and it means you have more modelling freedom without things being confusing on the tabletop.

3) The background material and the naming is atrocious and kept me away from the game for a while. Some of the material is not actually that bad, but there is still a distinct lack of physicality to the universe. Compared to 40k it is awful.

4) The lack of strength/toughness is fine. Big monsters are resilient against small dudes by granting them good saves and lots of health instead. It feels fine and is fast in play.

5) The damage spillover is also largely fine. In 40k, the purpose of not doing so is so that you can have single-target weapons (classically "anti-tank") that are not so useful for anti-personnel purposes, in imitation of real weapons. In the AoS world (or generally in fantasy) you don't usually have that distinction.

At a high level, I also like that AoS and 40k do things that are qualitatively different in the rules. It means you get to play a game that flows differently, and isn't just golden space marines against green Tyranids, as would otherwise be the risk when both are small-scale skirmish games. I do slightly worry that 40K and AoS may end up copying bits of each other and gradually grow more similar, which I think would be a detriment to both.

I worked out something else I don't like with modern AoS - GW keeps messing with unit counts.


At inception it was broadly like Old World - infantry could be up to around 3 box contents.

Then they shifted to allowing you "reinforcement points" where in 2K game you could only reinforce a unit (basically add 1 box worth of content to a squad) a limited number of times across your whole army. Functionally this meant you could only have 2 full stacks (4 reinforcements) and everything else had to be minimum numbers

Now they've relaxed that but you can only reinforce once, so two boxes.



This really messes with army building. It doesn't help that they also can't decide how banners and musicians work. Both give a flat bonus to a unit; but both are also allowed at a "one per box" on unit count. For things like cavalry this ends up looking utterly daft because in theory it means that a full 10 model squad has 1 commander, 2 banners and 2 musicians and 5 basic troops. Half your "force" is command.
Yet GW still sells those command models with regular build options.


I still don't get why they can't simply cut it to one per squad or even use the Old World style of "if your banner unit is killed another just picks it up until there's no basic units left" and just swap the models on the tabletop or something.


Granted that wouldn't be an issue for 40K as there aren't any banner models and such, but it is another sign that GW doesn't seem to really know what to do with AoS as a game. I honestly can't tell if its because they are protecting sales and growth by limiting armies; if they are trying to give monsters a chance without a toughness score so they are hobbling infantry to prevent them dominating; or if its an attempt to make OW and AoS look different by one having fewer models on the table than the other.


I priced up Slaves to Darkness VS Chaos Warriors at 2K points in each and roughly speaking AoS was deploying 500 points fewer models.

 Overread wrote:
I priced up Slaves to Darkness VS Chaos Warriors at 2K points in each and roughly speaking AoS was deploying 500 points fewer models.

I think my biggest bugbear about AoS is that so many armies look nothing like "armies" - or at least what I imagine armies should look like.

Its "the Grand High-King of the entire faction, his 2 pet monsters, and 10 blokes he found down the pub". (A bit of a simplification obviously, some factions take cavalry bricks over monsters, and you need characters for drpos etc).
And clearly you can do that in 40k. See idk, "the Silent King with Doomsday Arks and C'Tan to taste".
But it seems so explicit in Sigmar.

I think the "rules" however are mostly fine. I'd probably scrap the double turn - but agree with those saying its not as impactful as you might think if you come at it with a 40k mindset.

Tyel wrote:

 Overread wrote:
I priced up Slaves to Darkness VS Chaos Warriors at 2K points in each and roughly speaking AoS was deploying 500 points fewer models.

I think my biggest bugbear about AoS is that so many armies look nothing like "armies" - or at least what I imagine armies should look like.

Agreed and honestly I can't tell if its because GW are downsizing because the game hasn't grown as fast and they are keeping the "2K standard" small to get people in; or if its an outright design approach that they want to have smaller niche armies that are more like skirmisher squads

The double turn is probably overhated but I get the problem. Its important to remember that you can only get a double turn if you're going second, so in theory its a first turn advantage mitigation. The real problem is that its hard to actually do anything when you have the first turn so its not much of an advantage and if second player flips it off the bat, its catastrophic.

That said.... and I'm rarely one to say things like this.... I honestly think AoS sucks. It's legitimately just a boring exercise in rolling dice that never really feels like you get to make any rewarding decisions. Things get engaged and then you just spend a lot of time resolving combat. Profiles lack variety and often feel like there are simply right and wrong choices. Attempts to add complexity have really only added complication rather than depth.

What AoS has is probably the single best looking model range in the industry. The armies look incredible and make the game super appealing. I want to like it, but I actively resent having to play my turn and kind of find myself wishing it just sort of resolved itself while my opponent and I cheer on our troops like some kind of highly advanced electric football table.

I can't say it would entice me. I haven't played 40k since 10th was vomited out, and I'd argue that one of the main issues with modern 40k is that the designers keep inserting the worst possible mechanics from the wretched gruel that is AoS.

In terms of what I wouldn't want to see imported from AoS:

- Points being Power Level in all but name. Whoops, too late.

- The decline of wargear, artefacts etc., such that there are barely any options for a given model. Whoops, also too late. It's like 40k and AoS are locked in battle to see which can have the fewest and least interesting choices available.

- The Double Turn. Just why?

- The removal of contesting stats. In AoS, you hit and wound on fixed values, irrespective of your target. 40k is already halfway there, having removed WS contests. At some point maybe it will grow up and realise that the problem was never that WS was contested but rather that BS wasn't.

- Armies not looking like armies. Tyel already covered this point very well, so I'll just direct you to his post above. Though, again, this seems to be the direction of travel for 40k anyway. It just doesn't appeal to me.

- Bigger = Better. In WHFB, one of the strongest characters in the game (with a hefty point investment) was the Vampire Lord. It could be mounted but even on foot (just a 20mm base), it was incredibly powerful - potentially being a Lv4 spellcaster and one of the strongest warriors in the game, with Vampire Powers in addition to magic items.

Now a Vampire Lord is just a mediocre melee character who can cast all of 1 spell per turn. Whooo. Because the only way a model is permitted to be actually strong in AoS is if it is also the size of a double-decker bus. Bonus points if it is also a named character, in which case it gets to be extra extra strong.

I think a big part of this is that characters in WHFB used to start off fairly weak but were then upgraded with abilities and items. However, in AoS those have been almost completely stripped out (no more paying for extra wizard levels, no more basic equipment, no more magic equipment save one-per-army artefacts, no more Vampire Powers or the like), and what little is left is clearly intended for 18-wound behemoths and not for 5-wound infantry heroes.

Again, I presume most players are fine with this, it's just that monster mash doesn't appeal to me.

- The magic system is absolute gak. Pick a spell and roll 2d6. If you meet the spell's cast value, you cast the spell. Okay. Can I add extra dice at some additional cost or risk? No. Can I try to cast an extra spell at some additional cost or risk? No. Can I interact with this system in any way other than picking the spell and the target? No.

Thrilling.

And yes, I'm fully aware that 8th and 9th 40k used this system - it doesn't make it any less gak. Though it does help illustrate my point of gak mechanics being taken from AoS and inserted into 40k like a faecal enema.

 vipoid wrote:


- The magic system is absolute gak. Pick a spell and roll 2d6. If you meet the spell's cast value, you cast the spell. Okay. Can I add extra dice at some additional cost or risk? No. Can I try to cast an extra spell at some additional cost or risk? No. Can I interact with this system in any way other than picking the spell and the target? No.

Thrilling.

And yes, I'm fully aware that 8th and 9th 40k used this system - it doesn't make it any less gak. Though it does help illustrate my point of gak mechanics being taken from AoS and inserted into 40k like a faecal enema.

Agree with everything in your post, and don't even necessarily disagree with the overall point you're making in the quote, but in point of fact, in 9th there were numerous ways to interact with rolls and powers to shake it up- sometimes it was a relic, sometimes a WL trait, sometimes a piece of wargear, sometimes a ritual and sometimes a Crusade Battle Honour.

I think the overall point still stands, because it wasn't consistent from army to army; Ksons, GK and Aeldari in particular had CRAZY options for modifying all components of the psychic rules ecosystem, while Tau and Drukhari didn't even get to play.

Sorry to basically be the semantics guy.

Yeah, being a fan of the psychic system from 8th/9th 40K, Vipoid apparently found the one thing I'd like about AoS rules.

 vipoid wrote:

- The Double Turn. Just why?

because the community demanded early on that the IGoUGo mechanic needs to go
hence GW replaced alternating player turns (IGoUGo as in My Turn Your Tun) with random player turns effectilvy removing IGoUGo from the game

so be careful with the monkey pawn as asking for IGoUGo to be gone doesn't mean alternating activation (which is also IGoUGo) but anything random (be it activations, phases or turns and as AoS was turned bases going from alternating to random turns was simply and easy to meet the demand)

 PenitentJake wrote:

 vipoid wrote:


- The magic system is absolute gak. Pick a spell and roll 2d6. If you meet the spell's cast value, you cast the spell. Okay. Can I add extra dice at some additional cost or risk? No. Can I try to cast an extra spell at some additional cost or risk? No. Can I interact with this system in any way other than picking the spell and the target? No.

Thrilling.

And yes, I'm fully aware that 8th and 9th 40k used this system - it doesn't make it any less gak. Though it does help illustrate my point of gak mechanics being taken from AoS and inserted into 40k like a faecal enema.

Agree with everything in your post, and don't even necessarily disagree with the overall point you're making in the quote, but in point of fact, in 9th there were numerous ways to interact with rolls and powers to shake it up- sometimes it was a relic, sometimes a WL trait, sometimes a piece of wargear, sometimes a ritual and sometimes a Crusade Battle Honour.

I think the overall point still stands, because it wasn't consistent from army to army; Ksons, GK and Aeldari in particular had CRAZY options for modifying all components of the psychic rules ecosystem, while Tau and Drukhari didn't even get to play.

Sorry to basically be the semantics guy.

That feels like the illusion of choice, rather than choice itself. In practice there were very few ways to manipulate psychic powers in 40k and most psychic-heavy armies got maybe one way to do it, then just spammed psykers, which in turn spammed Mortal Wounds everywhere. In 90% of case 40k psychic was just "roll 2D6, see if you meet target number". What makes it even more frustrating is they've had numerous systems that either worked well, or could have been tweaked to work well, but they went with the least engaging approach that requires zero real decisions.

The rest of Vipoids points are very well put too. They've articulated exactly what turns me off AoS. The armies don't look like armies, the combat system is criminally anaemic for a game based so much around melee and it seems to be the epitome of style over substance. WH had complex close combat and movement rules but that was because of the importance of close combat in the outcome of games, which necessitated more detail for manoeuvre and combat. By comparison, shooting was pretty lacklustre, which was fine. AoS doesn't even seem to have the depth of 40k with how its victory conditions work.

I'd also take issue with LunarSol about the miniatures. Some of them are really cool, I agree. Many of them are simply awful. I notice they recently had a top 10 rundown of the best models for AoS's 10th anniversary. I agree with the winner - very worthy model indeed. But models like Alarielle on war beetle (seriously, a war beetle?) always look ridiculous to me, and not in a good way. Then there's the fact that so many "armies" are literally 1-3 of these type of models with a smattering of infantry or cavalry. Not only do armies not look like armies, the models that make them up are often terrible in their own right. I really appreciated that for a long time even the biggest, most impressive models in WH were usable as models on the table and relatively easy to transport given their size. I genuinely have no idea how people safely transport many of their AoS armies. This is leaking over into 40k now. If I never see another model suspended on wispy smoke or a billowing cloak again I'll be very happy indeed.

 PenitentJake wrote:

 vipoid wrote:


- The magic system is absolute gak. Pick a spell and roll 2d6. If you meet the spell's cast value, you cast the spell. Okay. Can I add extra dice at some additional cost or risk? No. Can I try to cast an extra spell at some additional cost or risk? No. Can I interact with this system in any way other than picking the spell and the target? No.

Thrilling.

And yes, I'm fully aware that 8th and 9th 40k used this system - it doesn't make it any less gak. Though it does help illustrate my point of gak mechanics being taken from AoS and inserted into 40k like a faecal enema.

Agree with everything in your post, and don't even necessarily disagree with the overall point you're making in the quote, but in point of fact, in 9th there were numerous ways to interact with rolls and powers to shake it up- sometimes it was a relic, sometimes a WL trait, sometimes a piece of wargear, sometimes a ritual and sometimes a Crusade Battle Honour.

I think the overall point still stands, because it wasn't consistent from army to army; Ksons, GK and Aeldari in particular had CRAZY options for modifying all components of the psychic rules ecosystem, while Tau and Drukhari didn't even get to play.

Sorry to basically be the semantics guy.

I think the issue with all the points you mention is that they're all decisions in the list-building stage pre-battle. There's little you can do at the time of casting the spell, other than I guess spend a CP to re-roll.

Slipspace wrote:

I'd also take issue with LunarSol about the miniatures. Some of them are really cool, I agree. Many of them are simply awful. I notice they recently had a top 10 rundown of the best models for AoS's 10th anniversary. I agree with the winner - very worthy model indeed. But models like Alarielle on war beetle (seriously, a war beetle?) always look ridiculous to me, and not in a good way. Then there's the fact that so many "armies" are literally 1-3 of these type of models with a smattering of infantry or cavalry. Not only do armies not look like armies, the models that make them up are often terrible in their own right. I really appreciated that for a long time even the biggest, most impressive models in WH were usable as models on the table and relatively easy to transport given their size. I genuinely have no idea how people safely transport many of their AoS armies. This is leaking over into 40k now. If I never see another model suspended on wispy smoke or a billowing cloak again I'll be very happy indeed.

Definitely an aesthetic preference. I've never been too enamored with medieval fantasy warfare and prefer my fantasy more fantastical in general. AoS models appeal to me more personally but I know a lot of people are far more attached to the more grounded, Tolkien approach and that's cool.

Big awkward models are definitely why magnet transports have taken off though. Definitely not unique to AoS though; its the competitive direction of the industry.

 PenitentJake wrote:

 vipoid wrote:


- The magic system is absolute gak. Pick a spell and roll 2d6. If you meet the spell's cast value, you cast the spell. Okay. Can I add extra dice at some additional cost or risk? No. Can I try to cast an extra spell at some additional cost or risk? No. Can I interact with this system in any way other than picking the spell and the target? No.

Thrilling.

And yes, I'm fully aware that 8th and 9th 40k used this system - it doesn't make it any less gak. Though it does help illustrate my point of gak mechanics being taken from AoS and inserted into 40k like a faecal enema.

Agree with everything in your post, and don't even necessarily disagree with the overall point you're making in the quote, but in point of fact, in 9th there were numerous ways to interact with rolls and powers to shake it up- sometimes it was a relic, sometimes a WL trait, sometimes a piece of wargear, sometimes a ritual and sometimes a Crusade Battle Honour.

I think the overall point still stands, because it wasn't consistent from army to army; Ksons, GK and Aeldari in particular had CRAZY options for modifying all components of the psychic rules ecosystem, while Tau and Drukhari didn't even get to play.

Sorry to basically be the semantics guy.

It's fine.

I understand what you're getting at. However, the things you bring up (like artefacts, WLTs etc.) are all external factors that are usually made during the list-building stage. They're not elements of the psychic system and don't really offer any tactical options once the battle begins.

For example, a Warlord Trait that gives +1 to Casting rolls might present some interesting dilemmas during list-building (depending on what the competing traits are and whether you'd prefer a non-caster as your Warlord). However, once the battle actually starts, it doesn't present any actual choices or options. You're just rolling 2d6+1 instead of 2d6.

By contrast, imagine if you could choose to add additional dice when casting but if you do the caster will suffer d3 Mortal Wounds on any double (representing the caster channelling a dangerous amount of power). This makes it much more likely that a given power will be cast, but also makes it much more likely that the caster will suffer damage in the process. Thus, you'd have to carefully weigh the importance of any given power and decide whether it's worth the additional risk for the higher chance of success.

Obviously this is just a quick, off-the-top-of-my-head example, but I think it's the sort of thing that would add some additional depth to the system, rather than players just rolling 2d6 (or 2d6+1) and hoping for the best.

Does that make sense?

^This. Exactly what Vipoid said. You could add some finnicky adjustments to your psychic tests in 8th/9th, but on the tabletop there weren't a ton of interesting decisions to be made. Sometimes your powers just randomly failed to go off, and there wasn't much you could do to impact that.

Even things like Deny the Witch were really more of an illusion of choice/interaction rather than *actual* interesting decisions. Most of the time, it either was or wasn't mathematically "correct" to use a deny the witch at a given moment.

I only recall feeling like I was making a non-obvious choice in the psychic phase once in 9th (8th?). My GSC opponent's magus had already taken damage from perils in a previous turn. So in my opponent's psychic phase, I opted to not use my drukhari character's helm of spite on the patriarch's power and instead waited for a chance to deny the magus so that I could use the helm's rule to trigger perils and make him kill himself.

So to get that single interesting decision, I had to:
* Take a specific relic that makes DtW also cause perils.
* My opponent's psyker had to perils in a previous turn to lower his wounds enough to be at risk of dying from a second perils.
* My opponent had to opt to cast a power with a different psyker in range so that I could make the interesting choice to *not* go for the deny right away.
* That psyker had to succeed on his cast. Otherwise there would have been no point in denying.
* The wounded magus then had to also choose to cast a power and succeed on the cast and succeed with a low enough result that I could then beat that result with my deny the witch roll.

And after all those factors lined up, I got a single satisfying moment of having made a difference in my game thanks to a non-obvious choice in the psychic phase. And while I say "non-obvious," it wasn't exactly an obscure big brain move either.

I'll take the 8th/9th psychic phase over 6th/7th any day, but the whole psychic test mechanic does basically just boil down to an X% chance that your cool thing doesn't happen. Followed by a Y% chance that your opponent might make the cool thing not happen anyway if they opt to deny the witch.

EDIT: The system Vipoid just proposed is basically how Thousand Sons army rule powers work right now, btw. I still don't love it because it's an X% chance of farting instead of being a cool wizard, but the option to dig deep and improve your odds of casting the power and/or casting the power with more potent effect definitely feels better than other systems we've had in the past.

I've got to say its one thing I like about what I've played of One Page Rules is that at the end of the game I feel like the choices I and my opponent made during the game, contributed the most to the win/loss result at the end.

I'm all for some fun list building, but yeah I also want choices I make to matter on the tabletop. It's also rewarding because making good and bad choices is something you can learn from. When you have no choice or when the result is purely on a dice roll you can't "learn" your way out of that. It just "is" a thing


It's one reason I hate the doubleturn - to highlight what I think is the worst example. It's purely a dice roll. There's no tactics, no game state influence, honestly very limited choice on if you take it or not (almost most times you'll take a double turn if you get a choice).

If it was weighted based on points value during the game so the under-dog player got a chance, it might be something; but its just one dice roll not connected to anything in the game itself.



AoS has fantastic models, really out standing ones even within GW's own system of creativity I keep thinking "wow" when I see them because they feel like the design team is just pure gold in what they make; but darn if I don't wish GW could get a handle on more engaging rules.
Honestly part of me wonders if GW needs two rule systems - one for beginners and one for "experienced" players. Something that they could EASILY do if they settled down away from the 3 year rotation.

This is similar to why I really enjoy the removal of Wargear points. To me it felt like a massive exercise in list building that resulted in a game where all the cool and interesting weapons of the setting just didn't really exist. I've seen so many more varied weapon profiles in armies this edition and significantly more interesting games as a result.

Wargear points worked well in 3rd edition when armies like Tyranids had a lot of "Jack of all Trades" models like the Warrior and Carnifex.

You'd pick the right options to compliment the weapons. So you'd take close combat boosters for a close combat one; or a ranged option for ranged.

You also had some leeway to creating either swarmy units with lower stats but greater numbers (or allow you to take something else expensive); or fewer units but higher stats.

In that regard I enjoyed them.
The issue now is GW did away with the points ,but kept the upgrades. So now its all in the "no choice" section. Unless you want to field "worse" units you'd always take the upgrades. There's no statistical nor game reason not too.

If GW wanted to get rid of points like that they should have got rid of upgrades as a concept and had fixed profiles with varied profiles for different key weapons for units like Carnifex where clearly a close combat one needs boosts in certain stats and not others compared to a ranged one.

They actually had fixed the points values by the end of 8th, but because of reasons I'll never understand they scrapped their refinements with 9th and made everything cost 0, 5 or 10 points even though the rules hadn't changed at all. And with 10th they just gave up entirely on pricing options and replaced points with Powerlevels in all but name.

What I don't understand is the free upgrades in 10th.

You have the option of taking the free Hunter-Killer Missile.

You have the option of taking the free Storm Bolter.

Why would you say, "Naw. I'm going to not take the free weapon for my vehicle."

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
What I don't understand is the free upgrades in 10th.

You have the option of taking the free Hunter-Killer Missile.

You have the option of taking the free Storm Bolter.

Why would you say, "Naw. I'm going to not take the free weapon for my vehicle."

It's entirely a legacy support deal for people that stick very strictly to WYSIWYG. There's a reason these "choices" only really exist on older kits. That's the situation with the vast majority of the extremely subpar options.

There's a lot of weapons they've done a good job providing interesting options between weapon choices. I feel like the big current failures are mostly things that lost their original design niche. Assault Cannons were very clearly designed around Oath giving wound rerolls for example.

 LunarSol wrote:
I've seen so many more varied weapon profiles in armies this edition and significantly more interesting games as a result.

There's a lot of weapons they've done a good job providing interesting options between weapon choices. I feel like the big current failures are mostly things that lost their original design niche. Assault Cannons were very clearly designed around Oath giving wound rerolls for example.

Yeah. I'm reluctant to give GW any kudos here. Because any weapons in 10th that compete for the same slot and see roughly equal use with their rival options... just could have been a weapon that got designed to be worth the same points. Whereas any weapons you never see (bolt pistols instead of plasma pistols on sergeants, blasters instead of dark lances on scourges, etc.) could have simply cost fewer points than their more powerful counterparts and been made "valuable" as the cheap option.

I feel like I wrote that weird. If guns are balanced against eachother, they could have just had the same points cost. When they aren't balanced against eachother, you never see the weak options taken. If we still had points, you could just make the weak option cheap or even free.

If GW really wanted to keep a more simplified approach to list building while still undoing a lot of the damage caused by removing wargear costs, they could probably take a hybrid approach. So devastators might do something like:

* Pay 80 points for your baseline squad of 5 bolter boys.
* Pay 10 points to unlock wargear options for the sergeant.
* Pay 20 points to let up to 4 non-sergeants swap their bolters for one of the weaker special weapons OR...
...pay 40 points to let up to 4 non-sergeants swap their bolters for one of the weaker special weapons or one of the better special weapons.
* Pay 70 points for another 5 bolter boys.

So now you only ever have to juggle 4 numbers for a given unit instead of calculating a bunch of individual weapon costs for each of the sergeant's options and each of the special weapons, etc. This approach still lets you discount (or charge a premium for) extra bodies based on how efficient those extra bodies are compared to the value of just taking an extra squad. This approach lets you have multiple "tiers" of special guns so you're not paying multi-melta prices for meltagun value (or whatever; I don't know the current marine meta). Sergeants can be customizable, but you can also opt for a simple, naked sergeant if you'd rather save those points and spend them elsewhere; meaning both upgraded and non-upgraded versions have merit.

The problem there though is points are a stat all of their own and you will NEVER pay for a better pistol. It's just way too niche of a choice. That's always been the problem with wargear points and very much what min/maxing is all about. You strip every bit of extraneous wargear to buy more generic bodies with generic stuff. I personally think the game is better when sergeants have cool pistols they never use over generic pistols they also never use. It's not like the generic pistols are gone from the game. It's just what you see on the grunts.