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The core rules are available through Warcom. We don't have the *full* picture yet, but it seems like we have the gist of it given that the existing books aren't being invalidated. How are we feeling so far?

My impression so far is that while there isn't much to be excited over, there are some decent little quality of life tweaks that are nice to see.

* I like the changes to Fly. My wave serpents might go back to being faster than simply walking now that they don't have to use all their movement clearing a wall.

* The Hidden/Detection Range rules seem potentially interesting. I suspect they're going to get overhauled after people realize they kind of just let you make a World Eaters army untargetable for the first couple turns, but I like the *idea* of playing around with ranges and targetability.

* I like that we're swapping magic circles for terrain features. I think it will be easier to convey a sense of story when you're fighting over the bell tower instead of the random circular patch of ground next to the bell tower.

Aside from that, it seems like a lot of side-grades and shuffling, though some of that shuffling might be easier for them to work with when writing FAQs down the road, etc.

I'll have to wait and see Detachment Points before I can form much of an opinion on those. I suspect these are going to end up being mildly broken or at least end up with winners and losers, but we'll see. There's some potential for the really bad detachments (looking at you Armored Warhost) to find a place if they no longer deny you the ability to take a better detachment alongside them.

I feel like my group avoided enough of the annoying fight phase cheese that the new charge/fight phase rules are going to be a mildly complicated side-grade, but I acknowledge that it's probably an upgrade for people who play in competitive environments.

My main sourpuss complaint is that I was hoping we'd get some of the flavor and customization back that was missing from 10th and nothing we've seen so far suggests that GW is going that direction. But maybe all the customization and fluffy rules will be locked behind whatever the new Crusade equivalent ends up being.

I want to know how my various bombers (Marauders, Nightshrouds, the AdMech one, the Tau one, Voidraven, etc) are supposed to work.
RAW in the core rules pack? Their bombing abilities simply dont function.

The transport ones are also greatly fethed up.
Things like Stormravens, Thunderhawks, & Valkyrie arent meant to skirt the edges of the battlefield.
Well, maybe the Valk at timrs as its not the toughest bird.

And the poor Harpies & Helldrakes. :(

 Wyldhunt wrote:

* The Hidden/Detection Range rules seem potentially interesting. I suspect they're going to get overhauled after people realize they kind of just let you make a World Eaters army untargetable for the first couple turns, but I like the *idea* of playing around with ranges and targetability.

My main sourpuss complaint is that I was hoping we'd get some of the flavor and customization back that was missing from 10th and nothing we've seen so far suggests that GW is going that direction. But maybe all the customization and fluffy rules will be locked behind whatever the new Crusade equivalent ends up being.

To be hidden they need to be within a terrain area with dense terrain so unless you have these less then 6" of each other across the board they will have to move out of it to get closer, unless you are just going to leave them sitting in the terrain area for two rounds and at that point are you really playing World Eaters.

From what I can tell Crusade is now a deck of cards that I think will mostly based on drawing for upgrade from a deck and agendas for missions instead of the primaries.

ccs wrote:
I want to know how my various bombers (Marauders, Nightshrouds, the AdMech one, the Tau one, Voidraven, etc) are supposed to work.
RAW in the core rules pack? Their bombing abilities simply dont function.

The transport ones are also greatly fethed up.
Things like Stormravens, Thunderhawks, & Valkyrie arent meant to skirt the edges of the battlefield.
Well, maybe the Valk at timrs as its not the toughest bird.

And the poor Harpies & Helldrakes. :(

When I first read the flyer rules I thought that you would set up the flyer at a board edge (per ingress move) and then move its distance. That’s what I thought the rules as intended were, as it would make sense, function, etc. But actually reading and flipping around the document, I don’t see the “and then move” part. So by my (admittedly half awake and undercaffinated) read of RAW, you can ingress to a board edge, shoot and hang out until the end of your opponent’s turn, and then blip back into reserves to do it again. Which for gunships is not a half bad way of representing strafing runs. But as unless you have deep strike, being stuck to the board edge is bad for flyers with other roles.

Or I’m misreading something. Which is possible.

Edit:
All the other move actions have “EFFECT: Your unit moves as described in Moving (03).” Ingress only has "EFFECT: Your unit is set up as described in Set Up (03.02)."

It's no secret that I'm not a fan of 10th, so it probably doesn't come as much of a surprise that I'm also not a fan of '10th but with a few tweaks'.

- Characters are still glued to one specific unit all game. Also can only join ze designated unit, because that was a barrel of fun.

- Speaking of characters, no sign that customisation has been improved in any way.

- Hidden probably wouldn't even need to exist if GW weren't completely wedded to TLoS.

- Stratagems still exist in the book as opposed to, say, being condemned to the pits of Hell where they belong.

- Psychic abilities are still indistinguishable from regular guns and abilities, save that they have the word 'Psychic' slapped onto them.

In short, I think I'll sleep this one out.

We won’t know about customization until we see the codexes. Can’t blame that on the core rules. Not holding my breath though. The new detachment system helps a little on that front, but probably not as much as some people would like.

Psychic actually has a bonus. You can ignore mods to hit and wound for psychic attacks, so it’s more then just a keyword.

 Nevelon wrote:
We won’t know about customization until we see the codexes. Can’t blame that on the core rules. Not holding my breath though. The new detachment system helps a little on that front, but probably not as much as some people would like.

Psychic actually has a bonus. You can ignore mods to hit and wound for psychic attacks, so it’s more then just a keyword.

Slightly hot take: I was actually fine with psychic powers just being guns that could interact with anti-psychic rules. If your opponent can use cover or forcefields or smoke grenades to defend against necron lightning guns, then it makes sense enough to me that those same tools could defend against psychic lightning attacks. That is, how much sense it makes for a psychic attack to ignore to-hit/wound mods kind of depends on the attack. Mind War where you're just telepathically mind crushing them? Probably shouldn't be impacted by a smoke grenade or forcefield. Telekinetically lobbing a rock at someone? Probably should be. Psychic fire? Probably should be unless we're going the extra step to say that it just so happens to be anti-smoke bomb/force field magic fire because reasons.

I didn't like the 7th edition psychic system, but I did think the witchfires tended to be pretty flavorful.

But yeah, mostly agree with vipoid. I'm fine with characters being glued to a single unit all game (a strat to let them join a new squad would maybe make sense), but the limitations on which squads they can join feel very artificial. Looking at you, haemonculus who isn't allowed to lead grotesques. No sign of improved customization is a big bummer for me. Sticking to a single detachment and ditching strats so we can reallocate that page space/complexity to more in-depth thematic detachment rules would have been preferable to multiple detachments per army.

I think Hidden could prove to be neat though. Especially if they go a bit farther with how things interact with it than what we've seen previewed so far.

I think the character restrictions on who they can join stem from a very SM-centric viewpoint from the designers. I think it's fine that the gravis Captain can only join the Gravis-armoured units and has some special rule to represent his armour type. But it breaks down when armies have more restricted characters and try to apply the same logic. Yes, a Haemonculus is a different type of thing in terms of size and equipment to a Grotesque, but that shouldn't prevent them joining, especially when we already see it for armies like AdMech.

The new rules seem fine but we really don't have enough info to make a judgement yet. Early reports suggest shooting is very dominant because the Hidden rules basically don't matter as much as people think and there are plenty of ways to brute-force your way through the -1 to hit for being in cover. There are rumours GW may try to implement a "fix" with a day-one patch, which is kind of peak GW. The problem is they still haven't addressed the sheer lethality of the units in the game. Until they do, everything else is just a sticking plaster over a severed limb.

The new detachment/mission system seems pretty neat. I'm concerned that it's another potential vector for imbalance but if they get it right I can see it leading to much more interesting games simply due to the asymmetry in the missions. It will be interesting to see if we get detachments with good rules but less desirable dispositions as an attempt to balance things out. The new secondary scoring allowing you to not score cards and hold onto them from turn to turn should lead to more meaningful decisions about when to discard and when to keep them.

I'm cautiously optimistic, but we'll need to see if there's a change in approach in the Codices before we can really tell which direction the game is going.

They can't lower lethality this edition, to do so would require them to level the whole game at once, which requires an index.

 Wyldhunt wrote:


Slightly hot take: I was actually fine with psychic powers just being guns that could interact with anti-psychic rules. If your opponent can use cover or forcefields or smoke grenades to defend against necron lightning guns, then it makes sense enough to me that those same tools could defend against psychic lightning attacks. That is, how much sense it makes for a psychic attack to ignore to-hit/wound mods kind of depends on the attack. Mind War where you're just telepathically mind crushing them? Probably shouldn't be impacted by a smoke grenade or forcefield. Telekinetically lobbing a rock at someone? Probably should be. Psychic fire? Probably should be unless we're going the extra step to say that it just so happens to be anti-smoke bomb/force field magic fire because reasons.

I didn't like the 7th edition psychic system, but I did think the witchfires tended to be pretty flavorful.

I think it is big hot take. Plus Turning psychic powers in to guns ended with elimination of most utility/no "witchfire" powers. I don't want psychic powers to be heavy weapon X, but with extra loops atteched to use it. I want melee buffs/debuffs, powers that affect terrain (dense it or undense it), maybe even create terrain. Make psychic powers actualy a thing.

Flyers not having plunging fire is wierd, because if anything is higher then stuff on the table, it is a flyer. What I really want to know is some faction/unit rules interactions with the core rules. Like how does the Death Company and all the other self battleshock detachments suppose to work, and I hope it is not turned in to MW to the units, because it doesn't work for elite armies. And do Deathwing terminators really ignore cover.

In general the new terrain rules are a big improvment over 10th.

Some of the non-attack psychic powers are still there. But just as flavor text on a psycher’s one abilty. One of the new marine detachments tries to highlight librarians. Hopefully GK will get something similar.

I miss the days of being able to choose powers, and generally always went for the utility ones. Plenty of units i. The codex that just strait up murder things. But if you wanted to teleport a unit across the table and turn off invulnerable saves, there was only one guy you could get.

Karol wrote:
I think it is big hot take. Plus Turning psychic powers in to guns ended with elimination of most utility/no "witchfire" powers. I don't want psychic powers to be heavy weapon X, but with extra loops atteched to use it. I want melee buffs/debuffs, powers that affect terrain (dense it or undense it), maybe even create terrain. Make psychic powers actualy a thing.

See, I want the buffs/debuffs/terrain powers too. I just also want some psykers to shoot fire and lightning, and I'm okay with shooting fire/lightning out of your brain being mechanically similar to shooting fire/lightning out of a gun. If the rules are doing a good job of making a flamer feel like it's shooting fire, then having psychic fire behave like a flamer probably means that the psychic fire *also* does a good job of feeling like fire. I remember thinking it was neat that the space wolves living lightning power in 7th edition had similar stats to a necron tesla weapon.

Sometimes the magic part of magic lightning is just that a dude conjured up some lightning. It doesn't have to be special sapient lightning that burrows through dimensions to bypass forcefields and ignore smokescreens or whatever.

Flyers not having plunging fire is wierd, because if anything is higher then stuff on the table, it is a flyer.

That *is* weird. They went out of their way to give it to knights but not planes? Strange.

Nevelon wrote:Some of the non-attack psychic powers are still there. But just as flavor text on a psycher’s one abilty. One of the new marine detachments tries to highlight librarians. Hopefully GK will get something similar.

It's not perfect, but I *do* like the librarius detachment. Its powers feel relatively fluffy, and the flexibility it provides makes it feel like your psykers know how to pull off a suite of tricks instead of being locked into one or two super specific things. (Which also felt weird in past editions.)

I miss the days of being able to choose powers, and generally always went for the utility ones. Plenty of units i. The codex that just strait up murder things. But if you wanted to teleport a unit across the table and turn off invulnerable saves, there was only one guy you could get.

Agreed! Although the killy powers had their place. I had a farseer in a red robe (because red is the angry color!) who would take a singing spear and frequently ended up with Eldritch Storm and either Doom or Mind War or Executioner, depending on the edition. All the most aggressive powers, basically. And he was my spicy little farseer whose fiery personality came through in his casting as he went around blasting enemies. It was the kind of "rpg" style customization that I really miss in 10th. Being able to project personality onto small choices like those went a long way towards making me feel like I was telling the story of my dudes instead of just loading up Pregenerated Farseer FIle 27.

Slipspace wrote:
Early reports suggest shooting is very dominant because the Hidden rules basically don't matter as much as people think and there are plenty of ways to brute-force your way through the -1 to hit for being in cover. There are rumours GW may try to implement a "fix" with a day-one patch, which is kind of peak GW.

Kinda what I figured. With most armies hitting on 3s in the first place a -1 to hit just means doing three-quarters as much damage, which isn't much of a penalty, and anything that can get a +1 from Heavy, plunging fire, or buffs just won't care. Then 15" detection range casts a pretty wide bubble so you only need one or two sacrificial spotters to get up the board turn 1. Maybe they'll patch it to a 12" detection range, which would cover about two-thirds as much area and fit a little better with the usual 6" increments.

Well, I like a lot of the changes I've seen with 11th but my usual group is pretty burnt out on 10th, so not sure how much or if we'll even play it at all. It's a shame because I felt 10th had some solid ideas with respect to play aids, USRs, and reining in stratagems, but none of my guys are happy with the current approach to listbuilding and for a group invested in Their Dudes it's become a dealbreaker. Could change in the codices but I'm not holding my breath.

Ultimately I think the people who liked 10th are going to really like 11th, but people who didn't like 10th aren't going to find 11th particularly redeeming.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Flyers not having plunging fire is wierd, because if anything is higher then stuff on the table, it is a flyer.

That *is* weird. They went out of their way to give it to knights but not planes? Strange.

For starters, they clearly either hate aircraft or have no idea how to make them work right.

I thought I saw a comment about aircraft not getting plunging fire because they're moving too fast or something. That, or not letting them have that benefit is just another example of trying to get them out of the game.

I definitely think GW is just erring on the side of caution for aircraft. They're quite happy for them to be unplayable crap, just a millstone for any narrative/thematic players. But really don't want them to be any sort of overpowered again

I think its a reasonable compromise on aircraft.

I think the tension is that GW don't want them interfering with the game with a base that should not physically exist. You can I guess argue all bases are questionable, but they sort of represent an zone of control to the respective mini that an aircraft operating thousands of feet above the battlefield shouldn't have.

This way they are stuck on a board edge further than 8" away from any opposing units, and so for the most part shouldn't interfere with the positioning of any other minis.

You could just make them skimmers but having an Ork take out a Voidraven Bomber with a choppa and a surfeit of ambition doesn't seem right either.

Yeah, the problem has always been the ability to use the space they take up on the table to interfere with units. I'd be curious if GW could adapt flight stands similar to what Legion is looking to use in the future as they seem like a really good solution.

Slipspace wrote:

The new rules seem fine but we really don't have enough info to make a judgement yet. Early reports suggest shooting is very dominant because the Hidden rules basically don't matter as much as people think and there are plenty of ways to brute-force your way through the -1 to hit for being in cover. There are rumours GW may try to implement a "fix" with a day-one patch, which is kind of peak GW. The problem is they still haven't addressed the sheer lethality of the units in the game. Until they do, everything else is just a sticking plaster over a severed limb.

I'll believe that when I see it. I've heard a lot of this as well, and it sounds like people crying doom just like they have at the start of any other edition. No one has played it yet and it's just guesswork for attention.

That being said, I'm sure that there will be something imbalanced at launch, GW has a proven track record of that as well, I just don't think it's going to be anything near as broad as shooting is OP, or melee is OP (I've heard both about this edition from many people.) If something does come out OP at launch it will likely be a specific army taking advantage of a new tweak in an unexpected way and get nerfed around as quickly as 10th edition Aeldari did at launch.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 catbarf wrote:
none of my guys are happy with the current approach to listbuilding and for a group invested in Their Dudes it's become a dealbreaker. Could change in the codices but I'm not holding my breath.

Ultimately I think the people who liked 10th are going to really like 11th, but people who didn't like 10th aren't going to find 11th particularly redeeming.

Maybe the new detachment combinations might help there? It's given me a bunch of list building ideas, and they have said that some partial weapon option points will return like in the old days, just not to that extent. It seems like they are leaning much more into make your guys your guys in 11th over 10th, though it's not all revealed yet.

Yeah, that usually happens with the odd numbered editions. We'll probably get another huge shakeup in 12th. That being said as someone who has played since 3rd, I would consider 10th one of my favourite editions (Probably 5th, then 3rd, then 10th if I had to rank them.) So am still pretty happy to be going into 11th as is.

To me, the big shakeups haven't been revealed in a way I can really judge. Hidden is a wild change I can't speak on until I've experienced it and the detachment shakeup is extremely dependent on how the whole puzzle comes together. The rest of the changes are pretty much what I'd expect so my opinion really comes down to how these work in practice.

One thing that concerns me is that a lot of the detachments that affect the entire range seem to 3 point detachments so that you cannot pair them with a bonus detachment at 2000 points. An fine balance decision meaning you can either buff your entire range a little bit or take a 2 point and a 1 point to buff the 2 parts of the range on which you want to focus.

The problem is that I mostly play 1000 point games. This means that most detachments that provide a wide buff will be unavailable and any list constructed will either be unoptimized or a skewed list as the 2 and 1 point detachments heavily incentivize certain units. I know GW does not usually consider balance outside of 2000 points, but they keep releasing rules and for lower point values so I hope some thought is put this.

 Tawnis wrote:
Maybe the new detachment combinations might help there? It's given me a bunch of list building ideas, and they have said that some partial weapon option points will return like in the old days, just not to that extent. It seems like they are leaning much more into make your guys your guys in 11th over 10th, though it's not all revealed yet.

Maybe, I don't know. I just look at my Scions army and think about whether I should count all the sergeants as having plasma pistols and power fists, or stick with their objectively completely worse modeled wargear. Inevitably I resolve this question by popping on over to the Grimdark Future listbuilder where I can keep them WYSIWYG and not feel hobbled.

I know this complaint is three years old at this point but it's been a recurring sore spot for my group. I played a decent bit of 10th with my Tyranids as they didn't suffer much from this, but for the guys in our group with Guard and Marines it's been a big point of contention.

Don't want to hijack this thread with bitching and I appreciate that your suggestion is made with constructive intent. Guess we'll see how it shakes out.

 the Signless wrote:


The problem is that I mostly play 1000 point games. This means that most detachments that provide a wide buff will be unavailable and any list constructed will either be unoptimized or a skewed list as the 2 and 1 point detachments heavily incentivize certain units. I know GW does not usually consider balance outside of 2000 points, but they keep releasing rules and for lower point values so I hope some thought is put this.

I would just houserule this one. There is very little lost in moving a 3DP down, we already use those currently. I think you're right on the money that GW doesn't consider 1k games that much and it's just a consequence of making sure that 2k is balance.

 the Signless wrote:
One thing that concerns me is that a lot of the detachments that affect the entire range seem to 3 point detachments so that you cannot pair them with a bonus detachment at 2000 points. An fine balance decision meaning you can either buff your entire range a little bit or take a 2 point and a 1 point to buff the 2 parts of the range on which you want to focus.

The problem is that I mostly play 1000 point games. This means that most detachments that provide a wide buff will be unavailable and any list constructed will either be unoptimized or a skewed list as the 2 and 1 point detachments heavily incentivize certain units. I know GW does not usually consider balance outside of 2000 points, but they keep releasing rules and for lower point values so I hope some thought is put this.

This isn't a new issue really, several editions have had common house rules to play at 1 point over or under a traditional sized game to unlock preferred rules. Playing small games at 1,001 points will give you the 3DP options.

 catbarf wrote:

 Tawnis wrote:
Maybe the new detachment combinations might help there? It's given me a bunch of list building ideas, and they have said that some partial weapon option points will return like in the old days, just not to that extent. It seems like they are leaning much more into make your guys your guys in 11th over 10th, though it's not all revealed yet.

Maybe, I don't know. I just look at my Scions army and think about whether I should count all the sergeants as having plasma pistols and power fists, or stick with their objectively completely worse modeled wargear. Inevitably I resolve this question by popping on over to the Grimdark Future listbuilder where I can keep them WYSIWYG and not feel hobbled.

I know this complaint is three years old at this point but it's been a recurring sore spot for my group. I played a decent bit of 10th with my Tyranids as they didn't suffer much from this, but for the guys in our group with Guard and Marines it's been a big point of contention.

Don't want to hijack this thread with bitching and I appreciate that your suggestion is made with constructive intent. Guess we'll see how it shakes out.

This and the fixed unit sizes are my main two issues with modern 40k. Honestly, I can tolerate just about everything else, but I don't like it when the game messes with what I have in this way.

Priced wargear has a bad reputation, but only because GW never bothered to balance it well. GW's first-take balancing is terrible, that's never changing, that's why we get quarterly updates now to fix that. Do the same with the weapons and we'd be fine. No, obviously 15 points for a plasma pistol is and was always silly. A points cost absolutely exists though, because if you made it half a point like WHFB shields used to be, it'd remain a spectacularly efficient upgrade and an autotake. The truth lies in between.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Priced wargear has a bad reputation, but only because GW never bothered to balance it well. GW's first-take balancing is terrible, that's never changing, that's why we get quarterly updates now to fix that. Do the same with the weapons and we'd be fine. No, obviously 15 points for a plasma pistol is and was always silly. A points cost absolutely exists though, because if you made it half a point like WHFB shields used to be, it'd remain a spectacularly efficient upgrade and an autotake. The truth lies in between.

I'm not sure the difference between 0 and 0.5 points is meaningful to a game.
And since I doubt taking plasma pistols on say your sergeants noticeably impacts your win rate, I tend to think they can safely be valued at zero without effect.

Its the same argument for why I think fixed unit sizes is actually a good thing.

Imagine you have an army which is 3 units of 10 and 2 units of 5 for 40 models. They have 5 units for holding objectives, doing secondary actions, move blocking, whatever. The things that actually win you the game.
And GW says the army is too good, and applies a 15% points nerf. So they need to ditch 6 models.
Well if they can just go to an army of 3 units of 8, and 2 units of 5, its likely they lose very little functionality. Their win rate, if it was too high, likely remains high. So the only option is to nerf the unit into the ground - which was GW's historical style. (And still occasionally is, but they have got a bit better).
By forcing you to lose 6 models with fixed load outs of 5 or 10, you have to change the composition of the army. You have to lose either a full unit of 10, or the two units of 5. Sure you get "4 models" worth of something else to slot into your army, but the composition is now changed. With fewer units, it likely performs worse.

I don't think GW has improved just because they are balancing on a faster pace. They've also fundamentally changed the philosophy of how they balance the game. By having much stricter controls on what an army will look like, there's much fewer variables they have to consider. Bringing back points for gear and variable unit sizes will massively increase the complexity of balancing the game.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Priced wargear has a bad reputation, but only because GW never bothered to balance it well. GW's first-take balancing is terrible, that's never changing, that's why we get quarterly updates now to fix that.

GW's quarterly regular updates have been a huge improvement to the game, but the one thing they do really, really bad is improving bad units. Their current approach is mostly data based, and you don't get any data on the things no one is playing.

I highly doubt that the quarterly updates would do anything but nerf outliers. For the vast amount of units there will still be one "correct" way to equip your models and a bunch of modeling opportunities, just like in any other edition which had points for wargear.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tyel wrote:
[I don't think GW has improved just because they are balancing on a faster pace. They've also fundamentally changed the philosophy of how they balance the game. By having much stricter controls on what an army will look like, there's much fewer variables they have to consider. Bringing back points for gear and variable unit sizes will massively increase the complexity of balancing the game.

I fully agree with this. I understand how the current state feels wrong to everyone who is used to configure every single model like a character from an RPG. But I truly think that moving the flight level of the game to squad level instead of model level has vastly improved the game part of the hobby.

The problem with free wargear is that it heavily discourages and punishes people that build for cool or theme or whatever.
There is one objectively best and correct loadout and anything else is notably inferior.

I don't think it's wrong to be questioning how much a sergeants pistol actually matters, but I do question if "take a plasma pistol or you're wrong" is the solution or even preferable to points. If we want to disregard a sergeant's pistol, I think just giving them a "sergeant's pistol" would be better way of doing it. Especially since what pistol the designer gave them is almost entirely arbitrary.

 Jidmah wrote:
I fully agree with this. I understand how the current state feels wrong to everyone who is used to configure every single model like a character from an RPG. But I truly think that moving the flight level of the game to squad level instead of model level has vastly improved the game part of the hobby.

The thing is, though, it feels like the game is trying to occupy an awkward middle-ground.

For one, if the game wants to focus on the squad-level then it seems weird to not only permit but actively enforce having as many different weapon types in a given unit as possible.

For example, take DE. In prior editions, a Warrior squad might be something like:
5 Kabalies with 1 Blaster (or Shredder).
or
10 Kabalites with 2 Blasters and 1 Dark Lance (or 2 Shredders and one Splinter Cannon).

The former has just two types of weapon to resolve. The second has either 2 or 3 (depending on whether Dark Lances have the same profile as Blasters, range notwithstanding).

This would seem good for a squad-based game as you're minimising the amount of weapon profiles (which need to be resolved separately).

However, 10th changed the Warrior squad such that you can no longer double up on special (or heavy) weapons, but instead promoted one of each to be taken. Thus, a squad will typically be:
10 Kabalites with 1 Blaster and 1 Shredder and 1 Dark Lance and 1 Splinter Cannon. That's five different weapon profiles that all need to be separately resolved.

But Warriors are an old unit, so let's look instead at the Hand of the Archon - a unit that didn't exist until 10th edition:
10 Kabalite Agents with Blaster, Shredder, Dark Lance, Splinter Cannon, Shardcarbine, Stinger Pistol

Even accounting for the Shardcarbine basically having the same profile as the Splinter Rifle, that's still six different profiles that need to be separately resolved.

And in melee it gets even worse. The normal Kabalites would have 2 melee weapon profiles at most (if the sergeant gets a special weapon). However, with the Hand of the Archon, you're looking at:
10 Kabalite Agents with 1 Pain Sculptor, 1 Power Weapon, 1 Razorflail.

That's four different melee weapon profiles on a unit that's not even particularly good in melee. And this is after Wyches had their weapons 'streamlined'.

I feel a game actually interested in squad-based rules would want to encourage simpler squads, rather than squads that appear to have collected one each of half a dozen different weapons.

Tyel wrote:
I'm not sure the difference between 0 and 0.5 points is meaningful to a game.

Because the point isn't that it should be half a point. The point is that some people will go "omg, if they weren't free, I would never take a plasma gun on my guardsmen squads" and I think that's extremely narrow-minded. If the plasma gun was half a point you can bet I would take it. It'd make its points back 20x with every shot. That's a good investment in my book.

It wouldn't be balanced at half a point. You'd need to go higher to find an equilibrium. But that equilibrium isn't zero.

And since I doubt taking plasma pistols on say your sergeants noticeably impacts your win rate, I tend to think they can safely be valued at zero without effect.

Their value is not zero. A pro player can skip their cheapest enhancement and it'd probably not impact their winrate either. That doesn't mean enhancements should be free.

Its the same argument for why I think fixed unit sizes is actually a good thing.

Imagine you have an army which is 3 units of 10 and 2 units of 5 for 40 models. They have 5 units for holding objectives, doing secondary actions, move blocking, whatever. The things that actually win you the game.
And GW says the army is too good, and applies a 15% points nerf. So they need to ditch 6 models.
Well if they can just go to an army of 3 units of 8, and 2 units of 5, its likely they lose very little functionality. Their win rate, if it was too high, likely remains high. So the only option is to nerf the unit into the ground - which was GW's historical style. (And still occasionally is, but they have got a bit better).
By forcing you to lose 6 models with fixed load outs of 5 or 10, you have to change the composition of the army. You have to lose either a full unit of 10, or the two units of 5. Sure you get "4 models" worth of something else to slot into your army, but the composition is now changed. With fewer units, it likely performs worse.

With all due respect - what are you talking about?

If my army is too strong, you nerf the workhorse units, and my response is to just cut something superfluous and keep my workhorse units intact, that indicates one of three possible scenarios:

1. The workhorse unit remains OP. You haven't nerfed it enough. Fixed unit sizes doesn't help anything here. Your tap was too light.

2. The rest of the codex sucks, and I rely on the workhorse unit to actually win games. Again, fixed unit sizes doesn't help anything here. The rest of the codex still sucks. Me having to give up a whole smaller unit instead of just a few models hasn't improved the matter, you've just worsened internal balance.

3. I want to take the workhorse unit even after nerfs, because I think it's very cool, or because its particular mechanics are necessary to the specific game plan I have in mind. Again, fixed unit sizes changes nothing here. I still want to use the unit and will continue to until nerfs make the strategy not functional at all, which probably isn't a good outcome.

The goal of a nerf isn't for a unit to stop seeing any play. It's to reach something close to an equilibrium where a powerful unit comes at an appropriate cost, and where taking it means giving up the chance to take a similar level of power in other units.

Also, fixed unit sizes is violently anti-hobby and just doesn't belong in Warhammer in general. If someone has 6 Raveners from the old kit (they were sold in 3s) let them play 6 instead of 5-10 the way you have to now. It doesn't hurt the game to have those 6 raveners running around. The game can survive it.

I don't think GW has improved just because they are balancing on a faster pace. They've also fundamentally changed the philosophy of how they balance the game. By having much stricter controls on what an army will look like, there's much fewer variables they have to consider. Bringing back points for gear and variable unit sizes will massively increase the complexity of balancing the game.

This part of the excuse but not the real reason if you look deeper. The real reason is to discourage kitbashing in an effort to boost sales of character models (who have the highest markup of all GW kits). If you can no longer play a unit of 9 Intercessors, converting one to a Captain is no longer a viable option.

This gets increasingly obvious when you see how a number of units are handled. Look at the abject comedy that is the Allarus Terminator MFM entry:



Allarus Terminators are sold in boxes of 3, and GW also lets you double up with two boxes to make 6. However, there is no separate Allarus Shield-Captain blister; that model can only be built out of this kit, leaving you a model short. For this reason GW has no choice but to allow a carveout so that box remains playable. The net result however is farcical - GW doesn't want to give you an inch more than they absolutely must, so as a result, you are allowed to play 2, 3, 5 or 6 models to a unit, but not 4, obviously. 4 would snap the game in half and would be way too much for GW to handle, evidently. An entry that says 2-6 models, 55 points per? Don't be silly! The poor new players would never understand such a layout!




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 vipoid wrote:
I feel a game actually interested in squad-based rules would want to encourage simpler squads, rather than squads that appear to have collected one each of half a dozen different weapons.

Yeah. Nemesis Claw (another very new unit) displays well why boxlocking is another big problem with 10e. That unit is just a mess. It has a gorillion weapons but due to boxlocking you can't double up on them, so you end up with a unit that sucks for both competitive, hobbyist and casual players; for competitive players, they're a chess clock time sink, for hobbyists they bar kitbashing to focus on the option you like more, and for casuals they are needlessly messy and confusing with keeping track of who has what weapon and which weapon does what.

Well, now that we're talking about it... The fundamental objection to points for wargear is that GW never gets the points right and so there are clear winners and losers. But by not having points for wargear there are still clear winners and losers anyways, often worse than when the losers at least saved a few points or provided some kind of overcosted functionality. It's not the loss of fifty wargear options for every officer that bothers me, it's that even with the greatly reduced options my 2000pts and your 2000pts may be significantly different in actual practical power due to lack of internal balance. I don't think GW has actually made the game more balanced this way, unless you're only considering strictly competitive play where avoiding trap units and wargear is a given.

My position is that even if plasma pistols were under-costed and still an auto-take, I would feel less bad about not having a plasma pistol on all my sergeants because it would mean saving points I could put somewhere else, and that would be closer to 'correct' than having no compensation at all for an objectively inferior loadout. I'm not expecting or looking for perfection. Less wrong would be enough.