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I didn't know a valid way to search for threads concerning this topic, so apologies if what I'm asking is a repeated topic on this board.

Back in the old days of 40K, the rules were perhaps a bit more complex, but this modern "magic the gathering" -style cardplay didn't exist. IIRC this type of stuff was introduced by GW in the thrid Space Hulk supplement "Genestealer" and I remember my friends dissing it saying it ruined Space Hulk for them.

Now I'm starting to feel the modern day card play in 40k is ruining my enjoyment of 40k in a similar way. Feels like its more important now to have a list that support certain playing cards and then use the cards to pull off ridiculous power combos that would most likely have been considered "OP/broken" in old 40K editions.

Why do the core rules get simpler, but then all these stratagems and tactics etc get piled on? Makes no sense to me.

I want to play with plastic figs and roll dice, get these MTG cards off my lawn!

thoughts?

It’s to sell you cards.

Cards do what a RNG lookup table does with the virtue to GW of being able to sell you another product, or mark up products they’re included with.

That’s all there is to it tbh. FWIW I enjoy using cards vs a lookup table as it speeds things up, useful aide-memoire etc. YMMV.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
It’s to sell you cards.

Cards do what a RNG lookup table does with the virtue to GW of being able to sell you another product, or mark up products they’re included with.

That’s all there is to it tbh. FWIW I enjoy using cards vs a lookup table as it speeds things up, useful aide-memoire etc. YMMV.

Yeah, I'll take purchased actions that I get to choose over bazilions of lookup tables any day.

I don't own any cards.

The irony is that you don't need to buy the cards; they're just really convenient and handy.

They're really not comparable to MtG cards, which are for an actual card game.

There is no card game in 40k, the cards have the same rules as their rulebook counterparts and it just makes it easier for referencing and tracking.

As stated; they're game tools, like measuring tapes and laser pointers. They help to facilitate random actions, but are also very helpful in tracking how you have scored your points at the end of the game. While newer missions allow deck customization, there's no resource management like a real card game, and rather it's just there to help eliminate the chances of pulling "useless" cards (like trying to score a victory point for manifesting a psychic power, but your army has no psykers).

They're basically just a rulebook with removable pages so you only have to bring the pages you need and not the whole book.

Cheap to produce, easy to sell.

I know people who don’t use the GW cards for games and make their own. The big thing it helps with is quick reference for psychic powers/stratagems and not having to roll on tables for tactical objectives. It’s nothing like a ccg like mtg, you can buy the optional deck if you want or use your rule book, and you don’t have to buy a bunch of them for every army to play.

The tactical objective games are usually more popular at our local FLGS because we have a limited player pool and it does help keep things a little more fresh.

The only random cards I have for 40k are the objectives. They are printed as a D6/D6 table in the book anyway. These are only used for some missions, which you can ignore.
The other pack I have is 'Open War'. If you want a properly a random game, all the way from deployment, mission type and a weather-type effect, try that. It has random options for imbalanced games, too. You pull something that doesn't work for you, pull another card.

The other cards are army options as found on the codexes. These are the psychic powers, the IG orders, stratagems, etc. They are also all in the books.

So, MTG is a world away from the random cards used in 40k.

Not to speak for the OP, but I think he’s referring more to the play style than the physical cards.

When deckbuilding for CCGs, you build around combos. Black Lotus + Channel + Fireball = turn 1 win. Or if I get these 3 cards into play, I can get infinite mana, millstone my opponent’s entire deck, and he will loose in his draw phase. (insert more up to date combos; I’ve been free of the flat-crack for a while now).

That mentality has crept into 40k. If you take a BA captain with certain relics/warlord traits, pop certain strats, he can do XX number of wounds to whatever after charging on the drop. Or the CP farms that you could make. Or even simpler things like making sure you have some ML/HBs in your marine list to use the MW strats.

A lot of the power is not intrinsic to the units themselves, but how you can leverage them with tricks and combos. I think this really took off in 7th with formations. And that feels more like a CCG than a miniature wargame, at least to me.

Cards and randomness has been with us for a while. Either tables, or psychic powers, or whatever. I like cards as play aids, as long as they don’t dominate the game.

Ah, that makes more sense.
If list-building is now more like deck-building, I get the point.

That is how I saw AoS, when I got into it at Looncurse. "Take this HQ to buff your troop unit", etc.

I think a lot of people failed to read the post. This isn't about cards. It's about the very commonly parroted complaint that stratagems and the such are MtG like and they feel like they're playing a card game.

 Nevelon wrote:
Not to speak for the OP, but I think he’s referring more to the play style than the physical cards.

When deckbuilding for CCGs, you build around combos. Black Lotus + Channel + Fireball = turn 1 win. Or if I get these 3 cards into play, I can get infinite mana, millstone my opponent’s entire deck, and he will loose in his draw phase. (insert more up to date combos; I’ve been free of the flat-crack for a while now).

That mentality has crept into 40k. If you take a BA captain with certain relics/warlord traits, pop certain strats, he can do XX number of wounds to whatever after charging on the drop. Or the CP farms that you could make. Or even simpler things like making sure you have some ML/HBs in your marine list to use the MW strats.

A lot of the power is not intrinsic to the units themselves, but how you can leverage them with tricks and combos. I think this really took off in 7th with formations. And that feels more like a CCG than a miniature wargame, at least to me.

Cards and randomness has been with us for a while. Either tables, or psychic powers, or whatever. I like cards as play aids, as long as they don’t dominate the game.

To be fair I would say the super Death Stars from previous editions were much worse versions of the MTG list building, this unit is invisible and basically immune to all damage.

 Nevelon wrote:
I think this really took off in 7th with formations. And that feels more like a CCG than a miniature wargame, at least to me.

I concur. When decurions and formations popped up in 7th ed I got the impression the game designers were ready to shed the 3rd ed rules foundation and do their own thing.

If you look at it like that, you could view 6th ed as the first, last and final failed attempt to do something with the old design philosophy, finding that it did not work for the studio that didn't have any of the old rules writers left (except Jervis) and then making a new start of it with 8th ed. It would certainly explain why it felt like they were cranking up the stupid in 7th so much as it was both a placeholder while they worked on their own designs as it was a test bed for what they were planning to do. They didn't have time to put thought into it because it was never meant to be a good game in its own right, but they had to make sure it got frequent rules updates to keep the money flowing.

It's a "modern" play mechanic borrowing from the board game industry. GW using it means they are shifting from a model company to a game company, and that can only be a good thing for the game! And of course, it's another revenue outlet for GW. Win/Win for everyone.

While I'm a huge advocate of the use of card-decks in a variety of tabletop wargames, it's a two-faced creature. On one hand, when used properly it can be convenient and pretty cool...but it's also one of the easiest things to abuse with regards to sales. From a GW standpoint, it's about sales.

What's unfortunate is that they're doing it to a worse extent in games like Shadespire, where earlier warband boxes are already out of print (after 18-24 months) and their card content is not available in a rulebook (everything in 40K that's on cards is available in a rulebook/codex except....Open War?).

With the Shadespire stuff, basically those will become collectors items (which just bumps the "brand value" for GW). So it's just a win-win for GW.

"That mentality has crept into 40k. If you take a BA captain with certain relics/warlord traits, pop certain strats, he can do XX number of wounds to whatever after charging on the drop. Or the CP farms that you could make. Or even simpler things like making sure you have some ML/HBs in your marine list to use the MW strats."

I assume you and the OP were not around for 2nd edition where wargear cards were an integral part of the game - they came in the box - and buying certain gear for your characters and setting them up to use them properly was a significant part of the game - vortex grenades, etc.

Psychic powers were also card-based and often randomly drawn or rolled.

Stratagems are just army-specific special rules that burn a fixed resource. They aren't random and they typically do not interact with each other. They're not really much like a MtG type game.

Having a collection of elements with specific stats that attack and defend in different ways is quite a bit like MtG, but that's how Warhammer and 40K have been from the beginning, for years before Magic was a thing.

 Nevelon wrote:
Not to speak for the OP, but I think he’s referring more to the play style than the physical cards.

When deckbuilding for CCGs, you build around combos. Black Lotus + Channel + Fireball = turn 1 win. Or if I get these 3 cards into play, I can get infinite mana, millstone my opponent’s entire deck, and he will loose in his draw phase. (insert more up to date combos; I’ve been free of the flat-crack for a while now).

That mentality has crept into 40k. If you take a BA captain with certain relics/warlord traits, pop certain strats, he can do XX number of wounds to whatever after charging on the drop. Or the CP farms that you could make. Or even simpler things like making sure you have some ML/HBs in your marine list to use the MW strats.

A lot of the power is not intrinsic to the units themselves, but how you can leverage them with tricks and combos. I think this really took off in 7th with formations. And that feels more like a CCG than a miniature wargame, at least to me.

Cards and randomness has been with us for a while. Either tables, or psychic powers, or whatever. I like cards as play aids, as long as they don’t dominate the game.

So much of this^^

tauist wrote:
I didn't know a valid way to search for threads concerning this topic, so apologies if what I'm asking is a repeated topic on this board.

Back in the old days of 40K, the rules were perhaps a bit more complex, but this modern "magic the gathering" -style cardplay didn't exist. IIRC this type of stuff was introduced by GW in the thrid Space Hulk supplement "Genestealer" and I remember my friends dissing it saying it ruined Space Hulk for them.

Now I'm starting to feel the modern day card play in 40k is ruining my enjoyment of 40k in a similar way. Feels like its more important now to have a list that support certain playing cards and then use the cards to pull off ridiculous power combos that would most likely have been considered "OP/broken" in old 40K editions.

Why do the core rules get simpler, but then all these stratagems and tactics etc get piled on? Makes no sense to me.

I want to play with plastic figs and roll dice, get these MTG cards off my lawn!

thoughts?

Which old days - I still have boxes of cards from old editions? Wargear cards, Vehicle template cards, pyschic cards etc etc.

Most of those today are to make life easier(IMO) - stat cards and strat etc cards mean less looking up in books (or phones and similar slower crap)

 Blacksteel wrote:
"That mentality has crept into 40k. If you take a BA captain with certain relics/warlord traits, pop certain strats, he can do XX number of wounds to whatever after charging on the drop. Or the CP farms that you could make. Or even simpler things like making sure you have some ML/HBs in your marine list to use the MW strats."

I assume you and the OP were not around for 2nd edition where wargear cards were an integral part of the game - they came in the box - and buying certain gear for your characters and setting them up to use them properly was a significant part of the game - vortex grenades, etc.

Psychic powers were also card-based and often randomly drawn or rolled.

Stratagems are just army-specific special rules that burn a fixed resource. They aren't random and they typically do not interact with each other. They're not really much like a MtG type game.

Having a collection of elements with specific stats that attack and defend in different ways is quite a bit like MtG, but that's how Warhammer and 40K have been from the beginning, for years before Magic was a thing.

I’ve been here since RT, and do recall those days. My recollection of those times has a lot less leveraging synergies and rules interactions which I associate with combos and CCG-syle list/deck building. But I’ll admit that 2nd was the edition I played the least of, and at the casual level (I was playing mostly WHFB at the time)

I’ll give you that elements of it have been around from the start. But it wasn’t as front and center as it is now. Any time you have point systems and army building, you are going to want to choose units and options that work well together. Overall in previous editions it was more about taking units that worked well together. Not layering buffs and strats for their interactions.

6th edit allied deathstars are probably a better point for where it really took off, rather then formations.

Someone seems to have forgotten the Wargear cards of 2E, as well that psychic stuff was done with a deck of cards.

I hate MtG, but I will take reference cards over flipping through a book any day. As for popping stratagems, I think it’s a far better system to spend resources to pull off a stunt rather than to have the ability baked into the unit to use it every time you sneeze.

 Nevelon wrote:

 Blacksteel wrote:
"That mentality has crept into 40k. If you take a BA captain with certain relics/warlord traits, pop certain strats, he can do XX number of wounds to whatever after charging on the drop. Or the CP farms that you could make. Or even simpler things like making sure you have some ML/HBs in your marine list to use the MW strats."

I assume you and the OP were not around for 2nd edition where wargear cards were an integral part of the game - they came in the box - and buying certain gear for your characters and setting them up to use them properly was a significant part of the game - vortex grenades, etc.

Psychic powers were also card-based and often randomly drawn or rolled.

Stratagems are just army-specific special rules that burn a fixed resource. They aren't random and they typically do not interact with each other. They're not really much like a MtG type game.

Having a collection of elements with specific stats that attack and defend in different ways is quite a bit like MtG, but that's how Warhammer and 40K have been from the beginning, for years before Magic was a thing.

I’ve been here since RT, and do recall those days. My recollection of those times has a lot less leveraging synergies and rules interactions which I associate with combos and CCG-syle list/deck building. But I’ll admit that 2nd was the edition I played the least of, and at the casual level (I was playing mostly WHFB at the time)

I’ll give you that elements of it have been around from the start. But it wasn’t as front and center as it is now. Any time you have point systems and army building, you are going to want to choose units and options that work well together. Overall in previous editions it was more about taking units that worked well together. Not layering buffs and strats for their interactions.

6th edit allied deathstars are probably a better point for where it really took off, rather then formations.

The problem is that this isn't new.

Second edition had gamebreakers that people thought of combos as well, including just busted units like Space Wolf Terminators that didn't need anything else.

Third edition gave rise to various sorts of combo's like Blood Rhino Rushing, and the various stacking buff issues that people think Chaos should be punished for to this day.

I've some old Warhammer stuff around here - some old Epic and Titan Legions - cards were very much part of those games. Heck several boxes of that era came with card print-outs for some models (I believe one was a gargant in one boxed game).

Heck the old Titan Legions method of controlling titans gave you a big sheet of card for the Imperator upon which you had your collection of counters to move around for power allocation. Yep not just cards but counters too!
And they weren't just game aids they were part and parcel of how the game worked.



Today most of the cards in the 40K games and such are a convenience product. Not essential but darn nice which is why people buy them up fast and why people get annoyed that GW doesn't do more print runs to restock many of those lines

 Nevelon wrote:
Not to speak for the OP, but I think he’s referring more to the play style than the physical cards.

When deckbuilding for CCGs, you build around combos. Black Lotus + Channel + Fireball = turn 1 win. Or if I get these 3 cards into play, I can get infinite mana, millstone my opponent’s entire deck, and he will loose in his draw phase. (insert more up to date combos; I’ve been free of the flat-crack for a while now).

That mentality has crept into 40k. If you take a BA captain with certain relics/warlord traits, pop certain strats, he can do XX number of wounds to whatever after charging on the drop. Or the CP farms that you could make. Or even simpler things like making sure you have some ML/HBs in your marine list to use the MW strats.

A lot of the power is not intrinsic to the units themselves, but how you can leverage them with tricks and combos. I think this really took off in 7th with formations. And that feels more like a CCG than a miniature wargame, at least to me.

Cards and randomness has been with us for a while. Either tables, or psychic powers, or whatever. I like cards as play aids, as long as they don’t dominate the game.

Yes, this was pretty much my point. I feel like the meta which you get from the combined stratagems and "shoot/attack twice" buffs combined with certain units get abused to the point where I feel the pressure to twist my own playing style to match. And I dont like that. Makes me feel like my personal playing skills (and even my luck with dice, to a degree) matter far less than picking this unit with this card, and using this HQ and this formation to gain this and this many CPs, heck, some of these combos are mathammered to the point where that stuff almost always gives an expected end result.. I'm thinking about what models would make up a "fluffy" army (among the vast millions of worlds of 40k, how many sanguinary guards and mephistons are there for every 30 marines again?), and my opponents is just thinking how to get enough CPs to table me on turn 1. Feels like we are not even playing the same game anymore.

Maybe the cards are not at fault. Its all the buffs and auras that these cards represent, and the utter importance of using them in the most optimized manner. Thats it. Sorry I didn't think of it in those terms earlier. The end result being, the game feels different from what I remember, in a more stressing way..

I do realize that deathstars might have been worse, but at least everyone agreed on what was OTT back then.

By the way, thanks for your thoughts everyone! You have given me ideas to contemplate on.


Cheers

Yes, you’re all right, second edition had wargear combos. Eighth edition also has interlocking systems of support characters and stratagems.

That is one of the things people liked the least about second edition. What happens now in later editions is that when I paint a Carnifex or a Terminator squad there isn’t absolutely nothing about the model that indicates they can’t spend an invisible resource to make themselves reroll die that they also don’t know about and that their appearance doesn’t suggest.

I just want to move my models around while they ha e an adventure. I don’t need to manage a fake and pretty shallow trait and token economy that I had to buy from some rando online and then scan so all my friend sent can have it too.

tauist wrote:


Why do the core rules get simpler, but then all these stratagems and tactics etc get piled on? Makes no sense to me.

I want to play with plastic figs and roll dice, get these MTG [rules] off my lawn!

thoughts?

Look, flashy new mechanics are essentially marketing material. You buy a new supplement because it’s got new rules, and it’s essentially paying GW to advertise to you. They’re never going to have good rules or perfect rules, they’re just going to re release essentially the same thing as you e already bought, it’s like how the plot of every marvel movie is essentially the same and Disney is selling princesses and Star Wars stuff that has been around for decades.

I mean, you don’t have to do most of that stuff. No one is telling you how to play and Open Play and Narrative Play are both things. Stop thinking 2K WAAC wannabe-tourney ITC is the only way to play and have fun.

"CCG" used as a pejorative is really only used by people who can't articulate their complaints with the system but feel the need to whine loudly about it anyway, so I wouldn't lean too heavily on that comparison or you risk being lumped in with them and getting ignored by others who are just tired of all the noise. It's like the people who scream "DLC!" whenever a new expansion for a game comes out, as if new content was somehow a bad thing. Poor balance/rules/fluff, not their delivery method, is the problem (and there's plenty of that).

Matching a unit to a strat that lets it do its job better is no different than giving that unit the proper wargear for its job. You wouldn't give a marine a bolter to go tank hunting and you wouldn't give a marine a lascannon to hunt grots. If you want a lone character to break face in combat, you give him a properly murder-y melee weapon, a way of getting into combat faster than walking, and maybe a bit of added protection to ensure he gets there, right? In just the same way, you save the "fight twice" and "punch harder" strats for when he needs to heroically break face.

Stratagems being of wildly differing quality is a completely separate issue (and a really quite valid one). As is feeling that X ability is critical to the identity of Y unit and shouldn't have been removed to be made into a strat.

40K isn't like MtG, and people need to stop with the hyperbole. until GW starts forcing us to buy Space Marine hero boxes for a chance a rule they're not really comparable. If I sit down with an ultramarines army, against another guy with an Ultramarines army, we're both capable of doing the same thing. there's no "I got lucky in my random card pack, but you didn't perpare to be annialated!"

 Trimarius wrote:
Matching a unit to a strat that lets it do its job better is no different than giving that unit the proper wargear for its job.

Huh? They're completely different.

Stratagems can't be used on two of the same unit at the same time, wargear can. Wargear can't be reallocated to units that will benefit more on any given turn, stratagems can. Wargear is generally WYSIWYG, stratagems can be a complete surprise if you're not already familiar with all of an army's tricks. Wargear tends to work within the basic rules (eg increase your Movement characteristic), Stratagems tend to work outside the basic rules (eg fight twice). Wargear costs points, stratagems do not.

I'm really not a fan of how stratagems have been implemented. If they were more reflective of command assets on the tabletop (or support assets off-board), rather than being means to supercharge powerful units or execute rule-breaking abilities, it'd feel less CCG-esque. Having what were previously innate abilities to units stripped out and replaced by stratagems is annoying too.

I feel like most of the replies in this thread read the title but didn't read the OP. The comparison has nothing to do with physical cards or collectibility. It's about the design ethos of the game being based on ability and unit combos, supercharged by stratagems.