Zustiur wrote: This thread has been a hilarious read. So many people need one or more of the following reality checks:
* Themed and Fluffy are not the same thing.
* Fluffy and balanced are not the same thing
* Themed and balanced are not the same thing
* MSU is not fluffy
* Spam is not fluffy
* Equally balanced armies on both sides of an engagement is not fluffy
* Matched Play and Organised Play are not the same thing
* 'Rule of 3' scales on game size
* Rule of 3 is for Organised Play, not for all Matched Play
* For a number of editions it was impossible to take more than 3 of a unit outside of troops. Rule of 3 is not a new concept even if it's been implemented in a new way.
* Matched Play is not the only way to play
* Matched Play is intended to increase balance as compared with Open or Narrative play. It is impossible to increase balance without SOME sacrifices.
* You cannot allow every possible combination of every possible unit and attain tight balance.
* Highly themed lists and fluff outlier lists do not make for good balanced play
* This game started out (Rogue Trader/1st ed) as a narrative game, with a game master. Competition and balance were never part of the intended design.
* If you're playing the game a way that does not meet the designer's intention or expectation, that doesn't make it a bad game
* It is not easy to balance a game, even checkers favours one player based on who goes first. It is extremely difficult to balance a game with this many variables
* Editing a ~180 page book for typos, grammatical errors and phrases that can be misinterpreted is a very demanding job. Doing that monthly, sometimes multiple books in a month is extraordinary. Errors, errata and FAQs are a fact of publishing products like this.
* Playtesting literal millions of combinations of unit options etc can only be done to a very limited degree without encountering exorbitant costs and development time.
* Your play group/meta is not the same as my play group/meta
* Ultra-competitive top-tier is not the only way to play. In fact I'd argue it's one of the least fun ways to play.
* Staying in the business of publishing games for decades is not the hallmark of someone incompetent.
* Jervis is not the sole designer of every game or edition GW has published
* Game designers have limited timeframes to work out. You may have come up with a 'better rule' in 5 seconds than the designers did, but they didn't have that luxury of an extra 5 seconds to rethink the rule they'd already come up with.
* Most of your 'better rules' are terrible. Seriously, if you're so good, bring it to Proposed Rules and let us tear it down.
* ForgeWorld products are primarily designed for collectors. They're not generally intended as a balanced expansion to the main game.
* Changing your mind (or business plan) after several years is not the same thing as lying several years ago.
Great post. My only disagreement in red. Thought i'm not concerned about fluffy stuff anyway. And the most popular rules do make it to most game types.
I agree with about half and disagree with the underlying conceits of the other half.
Worrying about what's fluffy in matched play creates most of the bigger problems 40k faces edition after edition.
Claiming 'it's not intended to be a competitive game' when there is a specific gameplay type intended for competitive play is obviously silly.
Matched play and Organised play are largely symbiotic. Playing matched without an eye to organised is like playing narrative with Starcraft fluff. It still kinda works but why?
Trying to keep matched play and narrative play together is where the disconnect is, not in how people are choosing to play.
Rules existing in the past is not a justification for rules existing now. You used to be able to blow up a landraider with a small hill.
Sacrifices made for balance are fine if they improve balance. There has been very little evidence that the rule of 3 improves balance.
People who say sacrifices need to made immediately rebel when the sacrifices are on the fluff side and not the gameplay side.
Rogue Trader is more different from Current 40k than current 40k is from Snakes and Ladders.
Has Forgeworld ever stated that their models are narratively supplemental? Because if not then we just can't know.
I agree that you cannot allow every combination of units and maintain tight balance, but just flat limiting essentially random units to totally a arbitrary number isn't great for it either.
I agree Balance is extremely difficult and expecting it to be perfect is insanity. But decisions to restrict player freedom should come with significant balance gains. That didn't happen.
I agree GW aren't incompetent(except for when the anger's talking), they're just conservative most of the time. Until they're not. And the 'when/where/why' of that is deeply confusing.
I honestly applaud GW for even bothering to try and edit their wordings. I still remember people arguing that Librarius conclave could cast a million spells thanks to the phrase 'based on'
I agree People do need to chill on the playtesters. There's honestly not a lot they can do there. Stuff has fallen through the cracks for the GENERAL playerbase.
Narrative play has been unfairly railroaded by the playerbase and that causes problems for both gameplay modes. Just mention you use powerlevel if you want to see exactly how bad it is.
People give fluff lip service, but only seem to care when they can twist it to condemn things they already don't like. They also don't seem to care enough to do actual narrative play.
The big one: Narrative deserves a lot more respect than it gets. I'm a competitive player, I play for tournaments so it doesn't interest me but I respect it for the creativity, freedom, and spectacle it allows. Currently it's not allowed to be distinct enough from matched play, by both GW and the playerbase, to be allowed to really come into its own. If people who leaned towards the fluff side were more willing and able to fully exploit the benefits of Narrative play it would open up opportunities for balance AND creative applications of the fluff to improve BOTH game modes. Like I mentioned earlier, you can't even use powerlevel without getting shouted down at the moment.
Yes for whatever reason anything other than Matched Play has the stigma of being "not fair" which immediately gets translated to "not fun" despite it not being directly related; you can have fun games where one person is defending in a desperate last stand against a force twice their size.
I think the biggest reason narrative doesn't get as much respect as it deserves it because narrative isn't something you can jump into; it takes forethought and planning. With "pickup game" mentality being so prevalent there exists the desire to have something that is as close to "pick up and play" as possible, which precludes Narrative Play since it requires more setup/discussion prior to a game. Instead, people want to just turn up at the store, ask "Anyone want a game?" and then be able to play any old random person without needing to bother with the details other than points.
gendoikari87 wrote: Msu and spam are both fluffy if your talking about troops
Agreed, which is why TROOPS do not get limited by the Ro3. But everything else should be
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Then what goes on with units that used to be Troop Choices in some respect (Space Marine Bikers, Windriders, Deathwing), and then some armies get a treatment that lets them avoid that pitfall (the four Cult Legions get their Cult Marines as Troops, but Night Lords NEVER get more than three Raptor squads).
You either need to be consistent or admit the system is flawed.
Oh, I do admit there is a flaw, just not with the Ro3. The flaw is with removing certain units as Troops *cough* Windriders *cough*
I am not saying that a fluffy army WOULDN'T have 80 Dreadnoughts.
I'm saying that it is unrealistic for all 80 to be:
A) the same kind of Dread. There are several different kinds for a reason and
B) unlikely to be on one small corner of a battle at the same time. A 6x4 table only represents a very small section of a battle
Aside from some very, VERY one-off stories, GW never portrays armies as "dozens or more of X non-troop single unit"
There is always a mix of unit types (all the better to advertised their product) in their stories.
The only times I can remember "spam" being part of the fluff is times when you see 8 Bloodthirsters storming Terra. But those stories are very, VERY large battles.
If you wanted to recreate those on the table top, that is what Narrative play is for.
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GW does that to show off everything in the kits and don't really care how the unit does at the end of the day. I've heard the horror stories of how the Deathwatch preview battle did because the squads were loaded up with no real goal intended.
I would be curious to see how a major tournament would go if the restrictions were:
1. No allies, period. You get one faction. 2. Rule of 3, all beta rules, all matched play rules. 3. No Forgeworld. 4. Chapter Approved missions. 5. 2000 points. 6. Chess clocks. starting round 1. 7. Varied terrain similar to ITC. ITC really gets terrain right. (tables are varied, beautifully painted, and thematic).
If the argument is that we aren't playing the game that GW intended, then let GW publish guidelines on how they recommend we play. Let's play the same game the designer play.
I laugh too when I see people who don't understand this is coming.
ive been telling people for a year there will be no 10th ed, there will be age of sigmar in space and primaris are the 40k stormcast eternals
I don't know the AOS enough to judge, but I've advocated for a long time all Primarchs return, the Emperor dies, galaxy balkanises as all sides fight. Ohh and Old marines are squatted.
Marmatag wrote: I would be curious to see how a major tournament would go if the restrictions were:
1. No allies, period. You get one faction.
2. Rule of 3, all beta rules, all matched play rules.
3. No Forgeworld.
4. Chapter Approved missions.
5. 2000 points.
6. Chess clocks. starting round 1.
7. Varied terrain similar to ITC. ITC really gets terrain right. (tables are varied, beautifully painted, and thematic).
If the argument is that we aren't playing the game that GW intended, then let GW publish guidelines on how they recommend we play. Let's play the same game the designer play.
Then why are you making suggestions that take the game much further from how GW intended it to be played?
Marmatag wrote: I would be curious to see how a major tournament would go if the restrictions were:
1. No allies, period. You get one faction.
2. Rule of 3, all beta rules, all matched play rules.
3. No Forgeworld.
4. Chapter Approved missions.
5. 2000 points.
6. Chess clocks. starting round 1.
7. Varied terrain similar to ITC. ITC really gets terrain right. (tables are varied, beautifully painted, and thematic).
If the argument is that we aren't playing the game that GW intended, then let GW publish guidelines on how they recommend we play. Let's play the same game the designer play.
I think this is a winner idea. I'm not up to date enough with the CA missions though. Mostly just play ITC.
Marmatag wrote: I would be curious to see how a major tournament would go if the restrictions were:
1. No allies, period. You get one faction.
2. Rule of 3, all beta rules, all matched play rules.
3. No Forgeworld.
4. Chapter Approved missions.
5. 2000 points.
6. Chess clocks. starting round 1.
7. Varied terrain similar to ITC. ITC really gets terrain right. (tables are varied, beautifully painted, and thematic).
If the argument is that we aren't playing the game that GW intended, then let GW publish guidelines on how they recommend we play. Let's play the same game the designer play.
Me too. It would be a fun one to play in I know that.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: GW does that to show off everything in the kits and don't really care how the unit does at the end of the day. I've heard the horror stories of how the Deathwatch preview battle did because the squads were loaded up with no real goal intended.
I wasn't even referring to Bat Reps. I was referring to the stories, usually portrayed in the Codex side bars, i.e the FLUFF. Speaking for Eldar alone (because I've had every codex since 4E) there isn't a single "army" referenced in those pages that would indicate hordes of jetbikes making up 1 Wildrider band. It's always a good number of Windriders (which were Troops) supported by Vypers, Shining Spears and Grav-tanks. The ratios always seem to be portrayed as only about 2-3 units of X accompanied by 1-2 of Y and 1 of Z. So a Saim-hann army with nothing but Windriders would not represent this fluff. You need a "healthy" amount of Vypers and Grav tanks at minimum.
An army could certainly have 80 Dreadnoughts, but at the scale we see on the table-top we should only see a "handful" mixed with other unit types. For Matched Play, GW has determined a "handful" to be 3. And since the editions that used the FOC, there have been several different Dreadnought units added. In 5th ed, you could only have 3 Dreads MAX no matter the type (I think maybe 6 cuz you could have 3 Elites and 3 Heavy, but still) This edition has so many more options that even with the Ro3, a player can easily have a dozen Dreads in the same list, so long as they have only 3 of a single kind of Dread.
The point isn't that 10 units of X is unfluffy, but that an army of ONLY X without several Y & Z is unfluffy. Ro3 ensures that players have to spend points taking Y & Z and don't spend them all on X.
Marmatag wrote: I would be curious to see how a major tournament would go if the restrictions were:
1. No allies, period. You get one faction. 2. Rule of 3, all beta rules, all matched play rules. 3. No Forgeworld. 4. Chapter Approved missions. 5. 2000 points. 6. Chess clocks. starting round 1. 7. Varied terrain similar to ITC. ITC really gets terrain right. (tables are varied, beautifully painted, and thematic).
If the argument is that we aren't playing the game that GW intended, then let GW publish guidelines on how they recommend we play. Let's play the same game the designer play.
Me too. It would be a fun one to play in I know that.
I would like to see something like this too. GW has now given up 3 different ways to play, but Matched play seems to be the default. More restrictions on Matched play would not only make organized events more "fair" for lack of a better word, but it might also make Narrative play actually get played. I like allies, but if they can't be balanced, take them out of competitive play and leave Narrative play as the viable alternative
Marmatag wrote: I would be curious to see how a major tournament would go if the restrictions were:
1. No allies, period. You get one faction. 2. Rule of 3, all beta rules, all matched play rules. 3. No Forgeworld. 4. Chapter Approved missions. 5. 2000 points. 6. Chess clocks. starting round 1. 7. Varied terrain similar to ITC. ITC really gets terrain right. (tables are varied, beautifully painted, and thematic).
If the argument is that we aren't playing the game that GW intended, then let GW publish guidelines on how they recommend we play. Let's play the same game the designer play.
I think this is a winner idea. I'm not up to date enough with the CA missions though. Mostly just play ITC.
Same, I am almost exclusively playing ITC missions. I am not opposed to ITC missions, however, since GW has published updated missions, maybe we give them a try. The mission pack to some degree does dictate the meta.
Of course none of what I'm saying will ever be tried, anyway.
Nah I think if GW added more restrictions to Matched Play, you'd see less Narrative play because of the "waaah it's not fair" stigma it has. You'd see even more Matched Play because it's "fair".
I do think the Chapter Approved missions are fine though. ITC missions are too close to the Warmahordes Steamroller scenarios (which is the point) and while I liked those when I played Warmahordes, I don't think it's the best for 40k. It's too symmetrical. I don't see anything wrong with the CA missions other than the fact ITC wanted to push their own missions to let you tailor things.
Wayniac wrote: Nah I think if GW added more restrictions to Matched Play, you'd see less Narrative play because of the "waaah it's not fair" stigma it has. You'd see even more Matched Play because it's "fair".
As much as I'd like this not to be true, you're probably right. It would be nice if there were just 2 methods of play (1 restrictive for competition, the other balance for fun) and both were equally viable. But I guess that's just too crazy to work
Wayniac wrote: Nah I think if GW added more restrictions to Matched Play, you'd see less Narrative play because of the "waaah it's not fair" stigma it has. You'd see even more Matched Play because it's "fair".
As much as I'd like this not to be true, you're probably right.
It would be nice if there were just 2 methods of play (1 restrictive for competition, the other balance for fun) and both were equally viable. But I guess that's just too crazy to work
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Thing is, I blame the players. Full stop. I don't know why there's such a stigma against Narrative Play (Open Play I can see why, although I still think it's embellished to the point of ridiculousness), but there is. While you find just as much, if not more, imbalances in Matched PLay under the assumed guise of being "balanced". The sad reality is a lot of people just refuse to touch anything that's not Matched Play with all the beta/experimental rules; essentially a tournament style game, with or without tournament style armies. And that is always the baseline and the assumed default, rather than an option. GW could remove the Open/Narrative sections of Chapter Approved and it probably would not change a thing; those sections may as well not exist since so few people care about them.
Wayniac wrote: Nah I think if GW added more restrictions to Matched Play, you'd see less Narrative play because of the "waaah it's not fair" stigma it has. You'd see even more Matched Play because it's "fair".
As much as I'd like this not to be true, you're probably right.
It would be nice if there were just 2 methods of play (1 restrictive for competition, the other balance for fun) and both were equally viable. But I guess that's just too crazy to work
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Thing is, I blame the players. Full stop. I don't know why there's such a stigma against Narrative Play (Open Play I can see why, although I still think it's embellished to the point of ridiculousness), but there is. While you find just as much, if not more, imbalances in Matched PLay under the assumed guise of being "balanced". The sad reality is a lot of people just refuse to touch anything that's not Matched Play with all the beta/experimental rules; essentially a tournament style game, with or without tournament style armies. And that is always the baseline and the assumed default, rather than an option. GW could remove the Open/Narrative sections of Chapter Approved and it probably would not change a thing; those sections may as well not exist since so few people care about them.
I'm not sure that's really the case - we've definitely got some confirmation bias online, the people who care enough to go onto a website and discuss tactics are generally going to be people with a more competitive mindset. Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal evidence but there's definitely a group of people in my local scene that use the narrative rules.
Cephalobeard wrote: I dont see a realm, at all, in which GW stops supporting allies.
It makes them money, and gives people a reason to branch out to new armies.
Tournaments can make whatever rules they want.
"If the argument is that we aren't playing the game that GW intended, then let GW publish guidelines on how they recommend we play"
Well the issue with that is I don't think GW is playing the same game as everyone else. Granted, that's been an issue for close to 30 years now, but it still remains. Unlike AOS where most of their designers seem to be tournament players (or at least the type of player who might enjoy a tournament now and then even if they aren't trying to win the whole thing), the 40k designers still seem to be in the old mindset from the olden days, and rely on people like Frontline Gaming to tell them what is/isn't balanced for tournaments (which has its own slew of problems seeing as Frontline Gaming is heavily invested/controls the ITC)
Unless the spam is fluffy. LolIG tank company or Ravenwing bikers.
You can have like a dozen IG tanks for a tank company WITHOUT having to repeat the same datasheet more than 3x (or at all for that matter).
You can have RW bikes, attack bikes, Black Knight bikes and various Landspeeders in a fluffy RW list. You don't have to, nor should you be encouraged to fill you list with JUST RW bikes
And RW and DW can take full units and Combat Squad them for more units if desired.
Why you seem to not grasp this is beyond me. Spam (of the same single unit) is not, nor has it EVER been, fluffy
Even in prior editions in which far fewer units existed, fluffy lists like RW, DW and Eldar Wraithhost or Saim-hann bike lists SPECIFICALLY had their "main" unit as Troops so you could have more. But even then, you were never meant to just fill you list with JUST those units. Usually 3-4 units did the trick.
Now the fluff has expanded and new units exist to flesh out those armies, removing the need to spam 1 type of unit as Troops to field a fluffy list.
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No it isn't. Deathwing are frequently deployed exclusively as Deathwing. A rule of 3 completely kills any remaining prayer of trying to field a Deathwing list which consists of 100-200 deathwing terminators and nothing else. Now tell me exactly how this rule of 3 is saving us from horrible imbalance, when it doesn't even hurt the BS lists in the first place?
Cephalobeard wrote: I dont see a realm, at all, in which GW stops supporting allies.
It makes them money, and gives people a reason to branch out to new armies.
Tournaments can make whatever rules they want.
"If the argument is that we aren't playing the game that GW intended, then let GW publish guidelines on how they recommend we play"
Well the issue with that is I don't think GW is playing the same game as everyone else. Granted, that's been an issue for close to 30 years now, but it still remains. Unlike AOS where most of their designers seem to be tournament players (or at least the type of player who might enjoy a tournament now and then even if they aren't trying to win the whole thing), the 40k designers still seem to be in the old mindset from the olden days, and rely on people like Frontline Gaming to tell them what is/isn't balanced for tournaments (which has its own slew of problems seeing as Frontline Gaming is heavily invested/controls the ITC)
Oh, I completely agree with you. We're not playing real 40k. My literal only point was to state I doubt, personally, GW will ever remove allies as they have a financial incentive to do so, and are making record profits, and then to provide context to the quote Xenomancers had done that didn't take why I wrote what I did into account.
I agree that rule of 3 is weak and does as much damage as it does good. It's not really the rule of 3 though. For the points of 100 DW terms you'd be in the 4000 point range for rule of 3 which up to 5 at those points. PLUS. 40 terms is roughly 4000 points....and you have 2 entrys for DW terms. DW knights and terminators. You'd have no issue.
Cephalobeard wrote: I dont see a realm, at all, in which GW stops supporting allies.
It makes them money, and gives people a reason to branch out to new armies.
Tournaments can make whatever rules they want.
"If the argument is that we aren't playing the game that GW intended, then let GW publish guidelines on how they recommend we play"
Well the issue with that is I don't think GW is playing the same game as everyone else. Granted, that's been an issue for close to 30 years now, but it still remains. Unlike AOS where most of their designers seem to be tournament players (or at least the type of player who might enjoy a tournament now and then even if they aren't trying to win the whole thing), the 40k designers still seem to be in the old mindset from the olden days, and rely on people like Frontline Gaming to tell them what is/isn't balanced for tournaments (which has its own slew of problems seeing as Frontline Gaming is heavily invested/controls the ITC)
Oh, I completely agree with you. We're not playing real 40k. My literal only point was to state I doubt, personally, GW will ever remove allies as they have a financial incentive to do so, and are making record profits, and then to provide context to the quote Xenomancers had done that didn't take why I wrote what I did into account.
I don't disagree that GW will probably never make a rule against allies - because it make them money like you said. Just saying. Tournament TO's are not bound by GW to run tournaments a certain way - GW in fact says they SHOULD make changes to the rules.
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Bharring wrote: 3x10man Termies: ~1200 pts
3x10man Black Knights: Not sure, but definitely more than 800 pts
Are you sure you can't do 2k points of Termies?
You never *could* do 100 Termies in a standard game. That'd be over 4k points.
Yeah thats what I am saying - due to the point cost required you aren't at rule of 3 anymore ether. It's rule of 5 at 4000 points.
Cephalobeard wrote: I dont see a realm, at all, in which GW stops supporting allies.
It makes them money, and gives people a reason to branch out to new armies.
Tournaments can make whatever rules they want.
"If the argument is that we aren't playing the game that GW intended, then let GW publish guidelines on how they recommend we play"
Well the issue with that is I don't think GW is playing the same game as everyone else. Granted, that's been an issue for close to 30 years now, but it still remains. Unlike AOS where most of their designers seem to be tournament players (or at least the type of player who might enjoy a tournament now and then even if they aren't trying to win the whole thing), the 40k designers still seem to be in the old mindset from the olden days, and rely on people like Frontline Gaming to tell them what is/isn't balanced for tournaments (which has its own slew of problems seeing as Frontline Gaming is heavily invested/controls the ITC)
Oh, I completely agree with you. We're not playing real 40k. My literal only point was to state I doubt, personally, GW will ever remove allies as they have a financial incentive to do so, and are making record profits, and then to provide context to the quote Xenomancers had done that didn't take why I wrote what I did into account.
I don't disagree that GW will probably never make a rule against allies - because it make them money like you said. Just saying. Tournament TO's are not bound by GW to run tournaments a certain way - GW in fact says they SHOULD make changes to the rules.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
You're still, for some reason, ignoring the context of my post.
It was never whether TOs were bound by GW, it was quite specifically in regards to us "Not playing the game GW's way" and "Letting GW set guidelines"
Cephalobeard wrote: I dont see a realm, at all, in which GW stops supporting allies.
It makes them money, and gives people a reason to branch out to new armies.
Tournaments can make whatever rules they want.
"If the argument is that we aren't playing the game that GW intended, then let GW publish guidelines on how they recommend we play"
Well the issue with that is I don't think GW is playing the same game as everyone else. Granted, that's been an issue for close to 30 years now, but it still remains. Unlike AOS where most of their designers seem to be tournament players (or at least the type of player who might enjoy a tournament now and then even if they aren't trying to win the whole thing), the 40k designers still seem to be in the old mindset from the olden days, and rely on people like Frontline Gaming to tell them what is/isn't balanced for tournaments (which has its own slew of problems seeing as Frontline Gaming is heavily invested/controls the ITC)
Oh, I completely agree with you. We're not playing real 40k. My literal only point was to state I doubt, personally, GW will ever remove allies as they have a financial incentive to do so, and are making record profits, and then to provide context to the quote Xenomancers had done that didn't take why I wrote what I did into account.
I never said remove allies. I said it would be interesting to see the results of a tournament where those rules were in place.
You misread me a bit. No harm no foul.
And if they WERE going to adjust the tournament format, they should come up with rulesets:
Tournament Play - specific missions, specific terrain layout requirements, beta rules required, no forgeworld, time limits, clocks required, etc. Matched Play - play whatever mission you want, man! terrain, do whatever. Agree or not to use beta rules. Narrative Play - i cast magic missile at the darkness Open Play - my kleenex box is a land raider, and it is full of allied tyranids.
Everyone continuously argues that there is a wide gulf between your casual matched play gamer and tournament players, so why not have 2 completely different rulesets? It'd still be up to your individual RTT to use tournament or matched.
It's not even hard to build a pure Deathwing list at 2k points.You can easily make a 2000 point army with only Deathwing models thanks to there being 4 different Deathwing terminator squads, 3 different elite characters, numerous HQ choices, plus access to the Armoury (and don't even try to tell me that Deathwing taking Land Raiders is unfluffy).
Cephalobeard wrote: I didn't misread you, I made a separate point. It's why I didn't quote you.
You did quote me with these handy little fellas: "
But, as long as you're not making the claim that i advocated removal of allies, i'm fine with it. I personally don't have a problem with allies. i would be curious to see how an event would turn out where there weren't any allies. More imbalance, less imbalance, who knows.
The intention of that quote was to set the tone for my reply to that specific line, because it was taken slightly out of context, not to imply you setting the tone of the discussion.
Cephalobeard wrote: The intention of that quote was to set the tone for my reply to that specific line, because it was taken slightly out of context, not to imply you setting the tone of the discussion.
I think this is a winner idea. I'm not up to date enough with the CA missions though. Mostly just play ITC.
The CA missions are *much* more varied than the ITC missions which makes it more of a challenge to build an army that is equally well equipped for all of them.
In AoS all the top tournaments use the equivalent GHB battle plans. It seems to go pretty well and there is a genuine tactical discussion around how to build your army for each mission and to cope with the special rules of some of them.
I forget where I saw it (might have been somewhere here actually) but I once saw someone argue that GW's rules for tournaments weren't "real 40k" because... I forget why, but something relating to how ITC was better/more balanced. Had a good laugh about that one.
If anything I think we see more variety with GW's actual GTs than we do with ITC's tournaments. Yet people still flock to ITC as "the" tournament style and ignore how GW themselves do it.
Cephalobeard wrote: I dont see a realm, at all, in which GW stops supporting allies.
It makes them money, and gives people a reason to branch out to new armies.
Tournaments can make whatever rules they want.
"If the argument is that we aren't playing the game that GW intended, then let GW publish guidelines on how they recommend we play"
Well the issue with that is I don't think GW is playing the same game as everyone else. Granted, that's been an issue for close to 30 years now, but it still remains. Unlike AOS where most of their designers seem to be tournament players (or at least the type of player who might enjoy a tournament now and then even if they aren't trying to win the whole thing), the 40k designers still seem to be in the old mindset from the olden days, and rely on people like Frontline Gaming to tell them what is/isn't balanced for tournaments (which has its own slew of problems seeing as Frontline Gaming is heavily invested/controls the ITC)
Oh, I completely agree with you. We're not playing real 40k. My literal only point was to state I doubt, personally, GW will ever remove allies as they have a financial incentive to do so, and are making record profits, and then to provide context to the quote Xenomancers had done that didn't take why I wrote what I did into account.
I never said remove allies. I said it would be interesting to see the results of a tournament where those rules were in place.
You misread me a bit. No harm no foul.
And if they WERE going to adjust the tournament format, they should come up with rulesets:
Tournament Play - specific missions, specific terrain layout requirements, beta rules required, no forgeworld, time limits, clocks required, etc.
Matched Play - play whatever mission you want, man! terrain, do whatever. Agree or not to use beta rules.
Narrative Play - i cast magic missile at the darkness
Open Play - my kleenex box is a land raider, and it is full of allied tyranids.
Everyone continuously argues that there is a wide gulf between your casual matched play gamer and tournament players, so why not have 2 completely different rulesets? It'd still be up to your individual RTT to use tournament or matched.
"Everyone continuously argues that there is a wide gulf between your casual matched play gamer and tournament players, so why not have 2 completely different rulesets? It'd still be up to your individual RTT to use tournament or matched."
You've got it backwards. Typical causal matchplay games are more like the actual game GW made for us. Tournament players are playing a house ruled game. Lots of games are house-ruled but casual games are played as ether CA missions / maelstrom or eternal war. Typically in a pick up game (this is how most games are played) to keep things simple you just play by the rules. Not made up missions. Not made up secondary objectives. What needs to happen is tournaments need to actually have players compete in the game everyone is typically playing - not the game they made up. That would be interesting. Or instead we can keep doing it like this where I have a matchplay rulebook group / a matchplay houserule group / a few ITC player I play with / and a dude that is always wanting to play narrative because of all this horsegak. A legit matchplay ruleset from GW would fix this over night. I can sympathize with the need for houserules cause this games rules are GAK. It sucks to be playing the game differently with everyone I play though. I want every game experience to make me a better player - not make me forget how things actually work.
Xenomancers wrote: "Everyone continuously argues that there is a wide gulf between your casual matched play gamer and tournament players, so why not have 2 completely different rulesets? It'd still be up to your individual RTT to use tournament or matched."
You've got it backwards. Typical causal matchplay games are more like the actual game GW made for us. Tournament players are playing a house ruled game. Lots of games are house-ruled but casual games are played as ether CA missions / maelstrom or eternal war. Typically in a pick up game (this is how most games are played) to keep things simple you just play by the rules. Not made up missions. Not made up secondary objectives. What needs to happen is tournaments need to actually have players compete in the game everyone is typically playing - not the game they made up. That would be interesting. Or instead we can keep doing it like this where I have a matchplay rulebook group / a matchplay houserule group / a few ITC player I play with / and a dude that is always wanting to play narrative because of all this horsegak. A legit matchplay ruleset from GW would fix this over night. I can sympathize with the need for houserules cause this games rules are GAK. It sucks to be playing the game differently with everyone I play though. I want every game experience to make me a better player - not make me forget how things actually work.
Now that is a big point. The game is divided. The ITC missions are basically house rules, so you have people playing games with house rules and people playing the game without house rules (i.e. Eternal War/Maelstrom missions). You have people who think the "pure" game (i.e. not ITC) is not "proper" 40k and the houseruled version is. I absolutely sucks to have to figure out what set of houserules you're using; it brings back memories of the olden days where each game store/club would have their own addendum to the main rules that you had to know, such that going to a different store often meant learning that they played the game in a totally different way with different restrictions.
Tournament can of course set whatever houserules they want. It however becomes a problem if GW starts to balance the game based on results of those tournament, which are not even playing proper 40K.
Crimson wrote: Tournament can of course set whatever houserules they want. It however becomes a problem if GW starts to balance the game based on results of those tournament, which are not even playing proper 40K.
Which is what they do, seeing how they kneejerk react to things in ITC tournaments that are often made possible due to how the ITC missions/objectives work. At this point, they should just fully endorse the ITC as the tournament rules for 40k and be done with it. "We are partnering with the Independent Tournament Circuit to standardize a set of rules and scenarios for competitive Warhammer 40,000 gameplay"
Wayniac wrote: I forget where I saw it (might have been somewhere here actually) but I once saw someone argue that GW's rules for tournaments weren't "real 40k" because... I forget why, but something relating to how ITC was better/more balanced. Had a good laugh about that one.
If anything I think we see more variety with GW's actual GTs than we do with ITC's tournaments. Yet people still flock to ITC as "the" tournament style and ignore how GW themselves do it.
Because it's the standard.
ITC became the standard because GW didn't really take a serious approach to game balance at the tournament level in previous editions, and doesn't really seem interested in doing so in 8th edition. In previous editions, ITC rules were required to make the game function. Because ultimately the rubber meets the road and rules have to be interpreted with a definitive answer so the game can continue moving, and 7th edition as an example had a lot of "grey areas," where there was no settled answer in debate forums. You can't have a 30 minute argument before ever game in a tournament, you need an answer. In the end, people were submitting FAQ requests to ITC because they were just more likely to answer, and frankly, you'll get a faster response from them even still. Additionally, they also added balance to the game when it really had none. Fulmination was absurd, along with many of the other powers, like the ones that let you move terrain about the board.
ITC remains the standard at this point because they're more committed to the tournament scene and evolving the game in a positive way. For example, GW's original rule was that the person who finishes deploying first, gets the choice for first turn. ITC immediately rejected that, because it's an absurd advantage, and added a rule that players roll off with a +1 to the person who finished first. Surprise surprise, that became a rule. At the start of 8th edition, GW didn't have a tournament mission packet. It was the same tired, boring, eternal war and maelstrom nonsense. I have yet to meet someone who actually misses end of game scoring from eternal war. ITC was the first to create a progressive scoring mode, and also allowing you to choose secondary objectives, rather than a bland fixed "Slay the warlord, linebreaker, and first strike." More ways to win creates more opportunities for a skilled player to overcome a disadvantage from list imbalance, and it also removes the random dumb luck from drawing maelstrom cards.
Additionally, ITC offers a ranking system that many people actually really buy into. Players can know how they stand in comparison with their peers. Wizards of the Coast had a system like this for magic the gathering. Competitive players need leaderboards, and the ITC has leaderboards.
If you attend a tournament hosted by the ITC folks, you'll see the following:
1. Thematic tables, with fully painted and varied terrain, on a matching FAT mat. 2. Space between tables, with room on the sides of the tables for your dudes. 3. Best coast pairings to ease matchup management and swiss pairings. 4. Livestream tables, for people to follow along.
You don't see this kind of commitment from GW. So naturally, ITC is the standard. And, it's for good reason.
GW really needs to get with the times and embrace the tournament community, rather than keeping them at arms length. People have proven that they don't need perfect balance to enjoy playing this game competitively. There is no reason for GW not to get invested in this.
Crimson wrote: Tournament can of course set whatever houserules they want. It however becomes a problem if GW starts to balance the game based on results of those tournament, which are not even playing proper 40K.
Which is what they do, seeing how they kneejerk react to things in ITC tournaments that are often made possible due to how the ITC missions/objectives work. At this point, they should just fully endorse the ITC as the tournament rules for 40k and be done with it. "We are partnering with the Independent Tournament Circuit to standardize a set of rules and scenarios for competitive Warhammer 40,000 gameplay"
That would be fantastic. Or in the reverse if GW made an acceptable matchplay rule set - they should just adopt that. Casual match play and tournament play should be playing by the same rules.
Crimson wrote: Tournament can of course set whatever houserules they want. It however becomes a problem if GW starts to balance the game based on results of those tournament, which are not even playing proper 40K.
Which is what they do, seeing how they kneejerk react to things in ITC tournaments that are often made possible due to how the ITC missions/objectives work. At this point, they should just fully endorse the ITC as the tournament rules for 40k and be done with it. "We are partnering with the Independent Tournament Circuit to standardize a set of rules and scenarios for competitive Warhammer 40,000 gameplay"
That would be fantastic. Or in the reverse if GW made an acceptable matchplay rule set - they should just adopt that. Casual match play and tournament play should be playing by the same rules.
Why?
I see no reason why tournament play needs to align 100% with matched play.
"Every tournament play game is a matched play game, but not every matched play game is a tournament play game."
Crimson wrote: Tournament can of course set whatever houserules they want. It however becomes a problem if GW starts to balance the game based on results of those tournament, which are not even playing proper 40K.
Which is what they do, seeing how they kneejerk react to things in ITC tournaments that are often made possible due to how the ITC missions/objectives work. At this point, they should just fully endorse the ITC as the tournament rules for 40k and be done with it. "We are partnering with the Independent Tournament Circuit to standardize a set of rules and scenarios for competitive Warhammer 40,000 gameplay"
That would be fantastic. Or in the reverse if GW made an acceptable matchplay rule set - they should just adopt that. Casual match play and tournament play should be playing by the same rules.
Yes. I think ITC is basically the same rules anyways other than them adding that the first level of any building/ruin blocks LOS. Apart from that, it just uses all the beta rules that GW suggests anyway. At that point though you have your split:
Matched Play (pickup games, etc.): Use BRB/Chapter Approved missions Competitive Play: Use ITC Champions Missions
and everything else is the same. Which, typing that, you kind of have now it's just not officially codified. But most people I play with do that already. You often aren't using ITC missions in a casual pickup game, but you're using all the other beta rules. The only thing that's often discussed is the LOS blocking rule (which I honestly like and think it should be baseline. I also think they need to have the woods rule from AOS 2.0 ported, where you can't see through woods if a line between the two models crosses more than 1" of its base, to actually make woods do something useful)
Marmatag wrote: I would be curious to see how a major tournament would go if the restrictions were:
1. No allies, period. You get one faction. 2. Rule of 3, all beta rules, all matched play rules. 3. No Forgeworld. 4. Chapter Approved missions. 5. 2000 points. 6. Chess clocks. starting round 1. 7. Varied terrain similar to ITC. ITC really gets terrain right. (tables are varied, beautifully painted, and thematic).
If the argument is that we aren't playing the game that GW intended, then let GW publish guidelines on how they recommend we play. Let's play the same game the designer play.
RIP FW exlcusive armies.
That's just me being salty, I do agree that FW can't balance gak, and it's probably a fair restriction.
ERJAK wrote: The big one: Narrative deserves a lot more respect than it gets.
No it doesn't. In fact, it gets way too much respect as it is. GW's version of "narrative" play is an absolute joke, consisting of little more than a mission pack that wouldn't be terribly out of place in a conventional tournament and a suggestion to use a point system that deliberately does a poor job of evaluating unit strengths for no benefit in return. IOW, it's just a normal matched play game with a worse point system, there's nothing at all narrative about it. And TBH I'm surprised that narrative players are willing to put up with that lack of respect from GW, and allow their form of gaming to be hijacked by CAAC TFGs who find power level useful for virtue signalling about how much they hate competitive players.
If GW wants respect for narrative play then they need to make it a genuine narrative system with things like missions tailored to specific armies and stories, character creation and development over time, guidelines on how to make a compelling scenario that is also balanced enough to be fun, etc. It needs to put the story first and properly support it, not just make a vague statement of FORGE A NARRATIVE and leave it all up to the players to figure out.
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Sir Heckington wrote: That's just me being salty, I do agree that FW can't balance gak, and it's probably a fair restriction.
It's not like anyone else at GW can balance anything either. FW bans are idiotic and TFG behavior, and the whole idea needs to die. Anyone suggesting them needs to be met with the same contempt as someone who suggests banning space marines because tactical marines are overpowered cheese.
meleti wrote: Every time I see a tournament with GW's missions I see a bunch of 120 Plaguebearer lists because they don't need to actually kill things to win.
Well I've played in one of their tournaments at warhammer world this year and I did not see a single list like that.
meleti wrote: Every time I see a tournament with GW's missions I see a bunch of 120 Plaguebearer lists because they don't need to actually kill things to win.
Well I've played in one of their tournaments at warhammer world this year and I did not see a single list like that.
Of course there's probably a degree of selection going on, where GWHQ's rules and implicit policies say "don't bring optimized lists" and the events only attract the kind of players who aren't going to build a tournament list with the primary goal of winning.
Martel732 wrote:Maelstrom is frequently not decided by player choices, or even die rolls, but card draws. It can die in a fire. Eternal war is better, but limited.
Yeah, Maelstrom is pretty bad.
I kind of feel the same way about the Open War cards, but everybody around me seems to like them. They're okay, but four games with "Acid Rain" and "Eager for a Fight" later, and I'm kind of tired of them.
meleti wrote:Every time I see a tournament with GW's missions I see a bunch of 120 Plaguebearer lists because they don't need to actually kill things to win.
It is my opinion that the destruction of enemy units should not contribute directly to victory. Victory should be decided by capturing and holding positions; and the destruction [or threat thereof] of enemy units simply facilitates the completion of such objectives.
It's not like anyone else at GW can balance anything either. FW bans are idiotic and TFG behavior, and the whole idea needs to die. Anyone suggesting them needs to be met with the same contempt as someone who suggests banning space marines because tactical marines are overpowered cheese.
FW creates balance problems. Your canned response seems to be "but GW has balance issues." Yes, that is true, but it's also a horrible argument, because balance isn't binary, there are degrees of imbalance and FW further exacerbates imbalance.
Can you make a credible argument that isn't built on snide or calling people TFG for why FW should be allowed in tournaments?
It's not like anyone else at GW can balance anything either. FW bans are idiotic and TFG behavior, and the whole idea needs to die. Anyone suggesting them needs to be met with the same contempt as someone who suggests banning space marines because tactical marines are overpowered cheese.
FW creates balance problems. Your canned response seems to be "but GW has balance issues." Yes, that is true, but it's also a horrible argument, because balance isn't binary, there are degrees of imbalance and FW further exacerbates imbalance.
Can you make a credible argument that isn't built on snide or calling people TFG for why FW should be allowed in tournaments?
We both know he can't. At this point, we could probably make a Peregrine-Bot. "CAAC" "GW are incompetent idiots" "TFG" and a few other things and it'd be close to the real thing.
I mean, he's technically not wrong. Banning FW isn't a good idea, but it's also the sort of thing that really can't be handled any other way. GW themselves banned it indirectly by upping the points costs of a ton of things in Chapter Approved that priced them out of play. An outright ban isn't much further from that. It stops some of the worst offenders that tend to be brought by a minority of people. It does nothing to change the actual balance of the game though, but it does remove some outliers.
I mean, he's technically not wrong. Banning FW isn't a good idea, but it's also the sort of thing that really can't be handled any other way.
Not wanting FW to be banned for the sake of balance is a perfectly reasonable position. I support it fully. It just becomes ludicrous when the same person is advocating all sort of other restrictions, such as banning allies.
Marmatag wrote: FW creates balance problems. Your canned response seems to be "but GW has balance issues." Yes, that is true, but it's also a horrible argument, because balance isn't binary, there are degrees of imbalance and FW further exacerbates imbalance.
And Codex: Space Marines also exacerbates imbalance. Codex: Eldar exacerbates imbalance. Allowing anything but IG exacerbates imbalance. Therefore everything but IG should be banned, and we can finally have a balanced tournament format.
Can you make a credible argument that isn't built on snide or calling people TFG for why FW should be allowed in tournaments?
Because it's published by GW as part of the standard 40k game.
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Crimson wrote: It just becomes ludicrous when the same person is advocating all sort of other restrictions, such as banning allies.
The difference is that banning allies doesn't prevent you from using any parts of your collection. You might not be able to use all of those models together, just like you can't use all four of your Baneblades in a 1000 point game, but if there's a specific unit you want to use you are free to do so. Banning FW means telling players who bought those units that they aren't permitted, period. It's much more equivalent to banning alll space marines than banning soup.
The difference is that banning allies doesn't prevent you from using any parts of your collection. You might not be able to use all of those models together, just like you can't use all four of your Baneblades in a 1000 point game, but if there's a specific unit you want to use you are free to do so. Banning FW means telling players who bought those units that they aren't permitted, period. It's much more equivalent to banning alll space marines than banning soup.
This. It also means certain armies are basically just told to feth off just because a subsection of the same company makes their rules, so they don't get to play in that tournament.
The difference is that banning allies doesn't prevent you from using any parts of your collection. You might not be able to use all of those models together, just like you can't use all four of your Baneblades in a 1000 point game, but if there's a specific unit you want to use you are free to do so. Banning FW means telling players who bought those units that they aren't permitted, period. It's much more equivalent to banning alll space marines than banning soup.
Except many factions really only work properly with allies. Except many people have collections which rely on allies. It is just arbitrary. If you can bring models from two books, Codex Astra Militarum and IA Index Astra Militarum then other players should be allowed to bring models from two books as well, Codex Adeptus Mechanicus and Codex Space Marines, for example.
Crimson wrote: Except many factions really only work properly with allies. Except many people have collections which rely on allies.
No faction should require allies to function. If you can't accept that your faction has weaknesses (and yes, every faction should) then you are the problem, not reasonable list construction rules. Every major faction is capable of fielding a list without allies, every model from those factions is usable without allies.
It is just arbitrary. If you can bring models from two books, Codex Astra Militarum and IA Index Astra Militarum then other players should be allowed to bring models from two books as well, Codex Adeptus Mechanicus and Codex Space Marines, for example.
This is exactly the problem with FW bans and the reasoning behind them, you're obsessing over which book rules are printed in instead of which faction they belong to. IG is a single faction no matter how many pieces of paper GW splits the rules between. Admech and space marines are two separate factions even if GW glued their pieces of paper together. It would be nice if GW consolidated all rules for a faction into a single book, but the fact that they don't is not relevant to anything but frustration over the total purchase price for those books.
Forgeworld's rules aren't written by the GW rules team for 8th edition.
FW does not engage in playtesting with the community.
FW does not engage in playtesting with GW.
GW does not playtest FW rules.
There is no quality control for FW rules.
Your entire argument hinges on a false equivalence.
And this is why we need "Tournament Play" and "Matched Play," with tournament play only to be used specifically for larger, organized events. So you FW guys can still play 40k in pick up games all day long under matched play.
meleti wrote: Every time I see a tournament with GW's missions I see a bunch of 120 Plaguebearer lists because they don't need to actually kill things to win.
Well I've played in one of their tournaments at warhammer world this year and I did not see a single list like that.
What, you've never seen the Nurgle spam lists at a GT heat? Go check the tournament results and those lists, alongside stuff like Boyz spam, were dominant. It's because the format gives players an incentive to take a list that doesn't give up many kill points, even if it's not actually killing much itself either.
Marmatag wrote: Forgeworld's rules aren't written by the GW rules team for 8th edition.
Just going to stop you here, they absolutely are written by the GW rules team. Every rule author at GW is part of the GW rules team. You don't get to define "GW rules team" in your own arbitrary and narrow way just because it's convenient for your argument.
If you can't accept that your faction has weaknesses (and yes, every faction should) then you are the problem, not reasonable list construction rules.
Every major faction is capable of fielding a list without allies, every model from those factions is usable without allies.
Field list and field functioning list is different. Also, minor factions exist. Imperial Guard has like twenty times more options than Harlequins or Custodes.
This is exactly the problem with FW bans and the reasoning behind them, you're obsessing over which book rules are printed in instead of which faction they belong to. IG is a single faction no matter how many pieces of paper GW splits the rules between. Admech and space marines are two separate factions even if GW glued their pieces of paper together. It would be nice if GW consolidated all rules for a faction into a single book, but the fact that they don't is not relevant to anything but frustration over the total purchase price for those books.
'Faction' is just word printed on datasheet. It is arbitrary. Cult Mech and Skitraii used to be different factions, now they're the same. Inquisitors and Grey Knights used to be the same faction, now they're different. Your whole idea that there is some solid mechanical faction identity and that each faction has carefully calculated strengths and weakness is pure fantasy. It is how you'd like it to be, but it isn't how it is. FW doesn't stop think to for one minute whether a new unit they introduce unduly plugs a carefully constructed weakness of the faction thus wrecking the balance.
Frankly, you're just being a selfish hypocrite. You would casually introduce restrictions that wreck other people's armies, whilst not accepting restrictions on your own.
Crimson wrote: {nonsense meme instead of productive content}
It's good game design. If you're selling a faction as a separate entity then it should be able to stand on its own. The codex is "Codex: Space Marines", not "Codex: Some Space Marine Units For Your Imperial Soup". And the game worked just fine for several editions without allies.
Field list and field functioning list is differnt. Also, minor factions exist. Imperial Guard has like twunty times more options than Harlequins or Custodes.
Those minor factions shouldn't exist at all. Harlequins are just GW's cash grab of taking them out of the Eldar book and making a separate book to buy, put them back where they belong and the problem is solved. Custodes have fewer units, especially if you reject FW rules, but they also cost a ton of points per model and don't have room in a list for tons of different units. They're perfectly capable of fielding a reasonable list without allies.
'Faction' is just word printed on datasheet. It is arbitrary. Cult Mech and Skitraii used to be different factions, now they're the same. Inquisitors and Grey Knights used to be the same faction, now they're different. Your whole idea that there is some solid mechanical faction identity and that each faction has carefully calculated strengths and weakness is pure fantasy. It is how you'd like it to be, but it isn't how it is. FW doesn't stop think to for one minute whether a new unit they introduce unduly plugs a carefully constructed weakness of the faction thus wrecking the balance.
"Faction" is far more than a word on a datasheet. IG and space marines are clearly different armies, each with their own codex. That's how it worked for most of the game's existence, and it will work just fine once we get rid of soup.
You would casually introduce restrictions that wreck other people's armies, whilst not accepting restrictions on your own.
If your army is "wrecked" because you can't take soup then it's your fault for building an army based on exploiting GW's balance mistakes. It's like people who bought a ton of scatter laser jetbikes in 6th complaining that their army is "wrecked", or Riptide spam players whining that they don't get formation buffs anymore. Allies were a disaster for the game and GW should never have allowed it to get to that point. If you exploit their mistake you don't really have much sympathy if GW fixes the mistake and your exploit army is no longer legal.
It's good game design. If you're selling a faction as a separate entity then it should be able to stand on its own. The codex is "Codex: Space Marines", not "Codex: Some Space Marine Units For Your Imperial Soup". And the game worked just fine for several editions without allies.
Most of the editions of this game have had allies. And again, what you think is good game design... Well, I don't need to repost the pic. Personally I think it is good game design to allow people to build the sort of armies they want.
"Faction" is far more than a word on a datasheet. IG and space marines are clearly different armies, each with their own codex.
And Blood Angels and Dark Angels are different armies with different codices... except they have more shared units than unique ones. Oh and one time they used to share a codex. Tempestus Militarum used to be different codex, now it is in IG codex. Chaos marines have IG-like mooks in their codex, loyalists gotta ally theirs. Factions may have some identity as ideas, but as game concepts they're hella vague and arbitrary, and they most definitely do not have some carefully balanced strengths and weakness.
That's how it worked for most of the game's existence, and it will work just fine once we get rid of soup.
No.
If your army is "wrecked" because you can't take soup then it's your fault for building an army based on exploiting GW's balance mistakes.
More like people building fun armies based on the models they like, organised in a way GW said they could.
In any case, you disagree with the fundamental design principles GW is goig with, so the discussion is pretty pointless. Perhaps in Peregrine's perfect game banning allies wouldn't cause problems, but we're talking about 40K here.
Crimson wrote: Personally I think it is good game design to allow people to build the sort of armies they want.
So you're fine with people bringing Tau in their Imperial soup list? Can my Necron army take an IG detachment for a CP battery? Oh wait, "build the sort of armies they want" only applies for some factions.
And Blood Angels and Dark Angels are different armies with different codices... except they have more shared units than unique ones.
You got me on that one. I have argued for a long time that all space marine armies should be consolidated into a single codex, each with their own chapter tactics rule.
Tempestus Militarum used to be different codex, now it is in IG codex.
Only because GW pulled a cash grab by trying to sell another codex with a single unit that was already in the IG codex. They were never a real faction.
Chaos marines have IG-like mooks in their codex, loyalists gotta ally theirs.
That would be one of those faction differences I mentioned. CSM get cultists, loyalists don't get a horde unit. You aren't entitled to have every possible unit you want, that's part of committing to a single faction instead of allowing soup.
More like people building fun armies based on the models they like, organised in a way GW said they could.
And guess what: you can still use those armies you like. You might not be able to use all of them at once, but that's no different from not being able to use all four of your Baneblades at once in a 1000 point game.
In any case, you disagree with the fundamental design principles GW is goig with, so the discussion is pretty pointless. Perhaps in Peregrine's perfect game banning allies wouldn't cause problems, but we're talking about 40K here.
Well yes, I disagree with GW's idiocy and incompetence. That's kind of the whole point here.
Wayniac wrote: You aren't allowed in 40k tournaments for the good and health of the game. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the (no pun) greater good.
You mean "to pander to obnoxious people who won't get over the fact that FW is part of the game". The health of the game is not being improved by banning FW rules.
So you're fine with people bringing Tau in their Imperial soup list? Can my Necron army take an IG detachment for a CP battery?
I actually started to build a small Tau mercenary contingent to go with my Rogue Trader style IG project when the rules allowed these two factions to ally, so sure!
Well yes, I disagree with GW's idiocy and incompetence. That's kind of the whole point here.
But it makes your suggestions worthless. They don't really work for the game as it is.
You aren't allowed in 40k tournaments for the good and health of the game. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the (no pun) greater good.
Because my renegades and heretics are SO op...
Maybe instead of all this arguing about FW we should just try to get FW rules better, because being told I cant play in a tournament with my army that I spent basically 2 kidneys for sucks alot.
Maybe instead of all this arguing about FW we should just try to get FW rules better, because being told I cant play in a tournament with my army that I spent basically 2 kidneys for sucks alot.
Yeah, banning FW sucks. it shouldn't happen.
Though I really think all rules for one game should be written by one team. It is obvious that FW guys have different design sensibilities. Main studio guys should write rules for FWs40K stuff too. They still wouldn't be good, but at least ti would be more consistent. FW guys could continue to write rules for HH, Titanicus etc.
But still, FWs inconsistent rule quality is not enough reason to ban them outright.
So you're fine with people bringing Tau in their Imperial soup list? Can my Necron army take an IG detachment for a CP battery?
I actually started to build a small Tau mercenary contingent to go with my Rogue Trader style IG project when the rules allowed these two factions to ally, so sure!
Well yes, I disagree with GW's idiocy and incompetence. That's kind of the whole point here.
But it makes your suggestions worthless. They don't really work for the game as it is.
Personally I'm sad that I lost the ability to field the 4 Assassin formation with my Necrons. I had a nice Vindicare and Eversor stand-in done, a Callidus in the works, and was planning on doing a Culexus. No point in finishing that!
Wayniac wrote: You aren't allowed in 40k tournaments for the good and health of the game. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the (no pun) greater good.
You mean "to pander to obnoxious people who won't get over the fact that FW is part of the game". The health of the game is not being improved by banning FW rules.
You know, it's really not helping your case in either matter to use opposite sides of the same argument when debating allies and forge world...
NurglesR0T wrote: Personally I'd like to see Allies not bringing any benefits like CP etc.
That's too rough. If you have an army made out of about equal parts of two factions, you'd be playing at almost half the CP less than a monofaction. Now mono getting something like 3 CP more might be okay. Though the whole CP battery mess has been caused by an insane disparity of different factions' ability to generate CP, which was a huge mistake. It is probably too late to fix that now though.
Wayniac wrote: You aren't allowed in 40k tournaments for the good and health of the game. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the (no pun) greater good.
You mean "to pander to obnoxious people who won't get over the fact that FW is part of the game". The health of the game is not being improved by banning FW rules.
You know, it's really not helping your case in either matter to use opposite sides of the same argument when debating allies and forge world...
To be fair, we can basically condense the Angels and Space Wolves into the Vanilla codex. That would solve issues of balance AND bloat.
Though I really think all rules for one game should be written by one team. It is obvious that FW guys have different design sensibilities. Main studio guys should write rules for FWs40K stuff too. They still wouldn't be good, but at least ti would be more consistent. FW guys could continue to write rules for HH, Titanicus etc.
Totally agree here. The rules would be much more nice and neat then what they currently are.
NurglesR0T wrote: Personally I'd like to see Allies not bringing any benefits like CP etc.
That's too rough. If you have an army made out of about equal parts of two factions, you'd be playing at almost half the CP less than a monofaction. Now mono getting something like 3 CP more might be okay. Though the whole CP battery mess has been caused by an insane disparity of different factions' ability to generate CP, which was a huge mistake. It is probably too late to fix that now though.
Perhaps. But that's what Allies are being used for - either a CP battery or to fill in the weaknesses that are native to your codex that the codex is balanced around (obviously the degree of balance is up for debate around here)
I do concede to your point that perhaps the problem isn't allies in general, but the mechanics that allies are being abused to exploit. Fix the exploits and allies are fine and fluffy.
Marmatag wrote: Forgeworld's rules aren't written by the GW rules team for 8th edition.
FW does not engage in playtesting with the community.
FW does not engage in playtesting with GW.
GW does not playtest FW rules.
There is no quality control for FW rules.
Your entire argument hinges on a false equivalence.
And this is why we need "Tournament Play" and "Matched Play," with tournament play only to be used specifically for larger, organized events. So you FW guys can still play 40k in pick up games all day long under matched play.
Here is what happens when you introduce Tournament Play in addition to Matched Play.
(Almost) everyone playing Matched Play moves to play Tournament Play, and when you ask them for a Matched Play game so you can use your FW stuff you get the same answer you get now when you ask for an Open Play game.
People emulate the highest level of competitive play even if they themselves have nothing to do with it. It happens in Warhammer, it happens in gaming, it happens (almost) everywhere.
Its human nature, and trying to fight human nature is a battle your going to lose.
Personally, I'm hoping for nothing to happen to allies. That way people can get the message that they aren't going anywhere and will politely and maturely accept that and move on from the subject.
Lemondish wrote: Personally, I'm hoping for nothing to happen to allies. That way people can get the message that they aren't going anywhere and will politely and maturely accept that and move on from the subject.
Lemondish wrote: Personally, I'm hoping for nothing to happen to allies. That way people can get the message that they aren't going anywhere and will politely and maturely accept that and move on from the subject.
I have the same hope for 4 point guardsmen.
You have to be a troll at this point. Infantry are almost universally agreed to be undercosted.
NurglesR0T wrote: Personally I'd like to see Allies not bringing any benefits like CP etc.
You nominate a primary faction and only get CP and benefits from that faction. Allies filling in your weaknesses is enough IMO.
Probably an unpopular opinion
I think that would be a good way to work around the CP benefits while also having other factions/allies that you like and/or need. People get to use their allies and their opponent doesn't get overloaded with CPs.
NurglesR0T wrote: Personally I'd like to see Allies not bringing any benefits like CP etc.
That's too rough. If you have an army made out of about equal parts of two factions, you'd be playing at almost half the CP less than a monofaction. Now mono getting something like 3 CP more might be okay. Though the whole CP battery mess has been caused by an insane disparity of different factions' ability to generate CP, which was a huge mistake. It is probably too late to fix that now though.
Perhaps. But that's what Allies are being used for - either a CP battery or to fill in the weaknesses that are native to your codex that the codex is balanced around (obviously the degree of balance is up for debate around here)
I do concede to your point that perhaps the problem isn't allies in general, but the mechanics that allies are being abused to exploit. Fix the exploits and allies are fine and fluffy.
I'd be happy restricting CP to the group that brought it in. If you have three armies via allies, and one of those armies has +5CP, then those 5CP must only be used for that army. (The 3CP starting point should probably go to the group that has the Warlord in it?) For those people only taking allies to increase their CP, this should help against it. For people taking allies for fluff, then that shouldn't be a problem.
Marmatag wrote: Forgeworld's rules aren't written by the GW rules team for 8th edition.
Just going to stop you here, they absolutely are written by the GW rules team. Every rule author at GW is part of the GW rules team. You don't get to define "GW rules team" in your own arbitrary and narrow way just because it's convenient for your argument.
Change "GW rules team" to "Games Workshop Design Studio" then, or "Games Workshop Games Design Team." They are not the same group of people as the Forge World team within the org chart of the company or even located together.
NurglesR0T wrote: Personally I'd like to see Allies not bringing any benefits like CP etc.
That's too rough. If you have an army made out of about equal parts of two factions, you'd be playing at almost half the CP less than a monofaction. Now mono getting something like 3 CP more might be okay. Though the whole CP battery mess has been caused by an insane disparity of different factions' ability to generate CP, which was a huge mistake. It is probably too late to fix that now though.
Perhaps. But that's what Allies are being used for - either a CP battery or to fill in the weaknesses that are native to your codex that the codex is balanced around (obviously the degree of balance is up for debate around here)
I do concede to your point that perhaps the problem isn't allies in general, but the mechanics that allies are being abused to exploit. Fix the exploits and allies are fine and fluffy.
I think the problem is tying CP to troops tbh. GW and the community seem to have made the troops slots into something kinda mythical? Rather than just a force org slot. There's all this effort that goes into forcing people to bring troops for no adequately explainable reason(if you bring up fluff as a reason, slap yourself. This is about competitive balance.) in every way they can think of beside...yunno...just making troops good? Or bad? Like, if they made troops either consistently strong choices, or consistently terrible choices then that would help a lot. If troops were universally strong choices, you'd see double/triple battalion lists all over and at that point everyone has so much CP it wouldn't matter who has more. If troops were universally terrible overpriced garbage, then getting strong bonuses for taking them would make sense and create interesting list building decisions.
Right now GW are subsidizing troops across the board when some units don't need it, other units are so cheap the subsidy is worth more than they cost, and some units are so awful even the subsidy can't help them. Oh, and you also get to pick which of those 3 you want in your list, even if they're not present in your faction.
When you have these, honestly fairly deep, subsidies applied to a force org slot as schizophrenic in its design as troops, it creates a minefield as far as design space goes.
NurglesR0T wrote: Personally I'd like to see Allies not bringing any benefits like CP etc.
That's too rough. If you have an army made out of about equal parts of two factions, you'd be playing at almost half the CP less than a monofaction. Now mono getting something like 3 CP more might be okay. Though the whole CP battery mess has been caused by an insane disparity of different factions' ability to generate CP, which was a huge mistake. It is probably too late to fix that now though.
Perhaps. But that's what Allies are being used for - either a CP battery or to fill in the weaknesses that are native to your codex that the codex is balanced around (obviously the degree of balance is up for debate around here)
I do concede to your point that perhaps the problem isn't allies in general, but the mechanics that allies are being abused to exploit. Fix the exploits and allies are fine and fluffy.
I think the problem is tying CP to troops tbh. GW and the community seem to have made the troops slots into something kinda mythical? Rather than just a force org slot. There's all this effort that goes into forcing people to bring troops for no adequately explainable reason(if you bring up fluff as a reason, slap yourself. This is about competitive balance.) in every way they can think of beside...yunno...just making troops good? Or bad? Like, if they made troops either consistently strong choices, or consistently terrible choices then that would help a lot. If troops were universally strong choices, you'd see double/triple battalion lists all over and at that point everyone has so much CP it wouldn't matter who has more. If troops were universally terrible overpriced garbage, then getting strong bonuses for taking them would make sense and create interesting list building decisions.
Right now GW are subsidizing troops across the board when some units don't need it, other units are so cheap the subsidy is worth more than they cost, and some units are so awful even the subsidy can't help them. Oh, and you also get to pick which of those 3 you want in your list, even if they're not present in your faction.
When you have these, honestly fairly deep, subsidies applied to a force org slot as schizophrenic in its design as troops, it creates a minefield as far as design space goes.
They could always go back to only having troops able to capture objectives.
NurglesR0T wrote: Personally I'd like to see Allies not bringing any benefits like CP etc.
That's too rough. If you have an army made out of about equal parts of two factions, you'd be playing at almost half the CP less than a monofaction. Now mono getting something like 3 CP more might be okay. Though the whole CP battery mess has been caused by an insane disparity of different factions' ability to generate CP, which was a huge mistake. It is probably too late to fix that now though.
Perhaps. But that's what Allies are being used for - either a CP battery or to fill in the weaknesses that are native to your codex that the codex is balanced around (obviously the degree of balance is up for debate around here)
I do concede to your point that perhaps the problem isn't allies in general, but the mechanics that allies are being abused to exploit. Fix the exploits and allies are fine and fluffy.
I think the problem is tying CP to troops tbh. GW and the community seem to have made the troops slots into something kinda mythical? Rather than just a force org slot. There's all this effort that goes into forcing people to bring troops for no adequately explainable reason(if you bring up fluff as a reason, slap yourself. This is about competitive balance.) in every way they can think of beside...yunno...just making troops good? Or bad? Like, if they made troops either consistently strong choices, or consistently terrible choices then that would help a lot. If troops were universally strong choices, you'd see double/triple battalion lists all over and at that point everyone has so much CP it wouldn't matter who has more. If troops were universally terrible overpriced garbage, then getting strong bonuses for taking them would make sense and create interesting list building decisions.
Right now GW are subsidizing troops across the board when some units don't need it, other units are so cheap the subsidy is worth more than they cost, and some units are so awful even the subsidy can't help them. Oh, and you also get to pick which of those 3 you want in your list, even if they're not present in your faction.
When you have these, honestly fairly deep, subsidies applied to a force org slot as schizophrenic in its design as troops, it creates a minefield as far as design space goes.
They could always go back to only having troops able to capture objectives.
Which takes the Boyz vs Tacs problem from 'disheartening major balance issue' to 'What's a space marine?'
I'd rather they just stop trying to push the troop slot altogether. I don't think that's the CORRECT solution, but I think it's better than increasing the importance of troops from 'dripping in CP' to 'Literally cannot win without at least a battalion'.
If GW and the community are dead set on seeing troops as a necessity to the game(for whatever reason) rather than just another couple of pages in your codex, then they need to be designed better and more consistenly. If troops are supposed to be showing up in every army, in every faction, then they should be designed like a core mechanic, rather than a crappy Elite slot unit with crutches.
Wayniac wrote: Not only that but GW almost always has things with different loadouts even when repeated. So you might see several dreads, but they're all differently equipped. You rarely if ever see even 2 with an identical kit. Same with how they evn build troop squads; it's always a mix of equipment never like 3 completely identical squads.
Thankyou to Dhallnet, Galef and bullyboy for backing up my points over the last few pages.
I too would love to see some tournaments run with the restrictions mentioned. Not all tournaments, but some. I personally would find tournaments like that more fun to participate in. I recognise not everyone agrees, but clearly some do.
I'd also like to see a mirror match tournament style where everyone must use the same exact army to really prove who's the best.
Honestly, I wish GW had separated matched, open and narrative differently. I'd have chosen:
Narrative - bring whatever models you want to tell the story. Ignore points. Use power as a rough guide only.
Open - pick up play. Use points. All options open. Use the detachment system.
Matched - use points and strict army composition rules.
Horst wrote: They could always go back to only having troops able to capture objectives.
The way everything dies in 40k right now that would mean my opponent gets 1st turn, slaughters all my Skitarii (which are all on foot because my only transport option is a 130€ FW kit) or Kataphrons and then I lost the game because the only points I can score are killing related.
It would be nice if every Troop didn't have ObSec though. Cultists, Conscripts, Brimstones (Pink Horrors are fine) could eventually not have these rules. The -1 to Hit, 5++ and 5/6+++ TS Cultists I've seen the other day made me angry with the game. Why do Cultists have <Heretic Astartes> for starters ?
Horst wrote: They could always go back to only having troops able to capture objectives.
The way everything dies in 40k right now that would mean my opponent gets 1st turn, slaughters all my Skitarii (which are all on foot because my only transport option is a 130€ FW kit) or Kataphrons and then I lost the game because the only points I can score are killing related.
It would be nice if every Troop didn't have ObSec though. Cultists, Conscripts, Brimstones (Pink Horrors are fine) could eventually not have these rules. The -1 to Hit, 5++ and 5/6+++ TS Cultists I've seen the other day made me angry with the game. Why do Cultists have <Heretic Astartes> for starters ?
Honestly, Cultists / poxwalkers / Tzaangors should have the keyword <Heretic>, and the "true Chaos Space Marines" have keyword <Heretic> and <Heretic Astartes>. That may be more fair.
Having single faction lists is something that is done at all of the No Retreat events (bar examples like assassins and admech+Knight etc). I think it does lead to interesting and fun games, but, it’s also a very different game to when you play a “standard” ITC or ETC game. Whether that is a good thing or not, is all down to personal preference. One issue it does highlight even more than the ITC format, is that, the codices aren’t balanced against each other. Souping exaggerates the issue, sure, but, the underlying issue is still there.
I played at the WHW Vigilus weekender last weekender, and even though it was only 1000 points, I enjoyed the 3 simple games of CA Eternal War missions only and as a result, I’m looking forward to the Heat 3 games next weekend. I think, as more time goes by, the need for things like the ITC/Nova/Adepticon mission formats will start to reduce, as the basic missions will suffice. They took a step in the right direction with the CA2017 missions, so we can look forward to the CA2018 missions with interest. ETC style missions still have a place imo, as it is essentially just a mix of basic Eternal War and basic Maelstrom in 1 game. But, I also agree, that “competitive” Maelstrom games should meet a fiery death.
I’ve not been to an ITC event since the new missions/changes were made. I have an event in Jan running them, but, until then, I’m not really that focused on running them.
I think the current rules regarding objective claiming are fine. Just because a unit is an elite choice, doesn’t mean it can’t “temporality” hold an objective. If anything, these are the guys that WOULD be going to secure the objective, allowing the troops to then come up and “permanently” hold it while they move onto another objective.
FW units don’t bother me at all. I don’t think they need banning outright across the board. All they need is the same treatment as all the broken (Both OP and massively UP) GW units. Treatment that is coming in the next couple of weeks via CA.
IF GW keeps up it’s growing level of support for events and mission styles, and a commitment to attempting to address balance issues, then, I think the future is good, and one that I personally think is a potential issue for FLG and the ITC mission format. ITC will survive as a ranking system and series of events, it just depends what happens to the mission pack.
Chaos Keyword issue – personally, I’d just remove the HERETIC ASTARTES keyword from some of the units and leave them with the <Legion> keyword. Easier fix.
Aaranis wrote: The way everything dies in 40k right now that would mean my opponent gets 1st turn, slaughters all my Skitarii (which are all on foot because my only transport option is a 130€ FW kit) or Kataphrons and then I lost the game because the only points I can score are killing related.
The point about only troops scoring is that things die the way they do right now because non-troops can score. If everything can score there's no incentive to bring anything but the biggest guns you can get. Limiting scoring to troops only, as it was in previous editions, means that you have to have a solid core of basic units with limited weapons and taking high-firepower offensive threats comes at direct cost in your ability to score objectives. If your opponent takes an alpha strike list that can wipe your troops out they have few scoring units of their own, and you can easily remove them in return.
Aaranis wrote: The way everything dies in 40k right now that would mean my opponent gets 1st turn, slaughters all my Skitarii (which are all on foot because my only transport option is a 130€ FW kit) or Kataphrons and then I lost the game because the only points I can score are killing related.
The point about only troops scoring is that things die the way they do right now because non-troops can score. If everything can score there's no incentive to bring anything but the biggest guns you can get. Limiting scoring to troops only, as it was in previous editions, means that you have to have a solid core of basic units with limited weapons and taking high-firepower offensive threats comes at direct cost in your ability to score objectives. If your opponent takes an alpha strike list that can wipe your troops out they have few scoring units of their own, and you can easily remove them in return.
I agree. But balancing Troops choices across all codices would become even more necessary, as SM players would have to play mechanised Troops, so the cheapest might be 5 Scouts in a Land Speeder. Tacticals/Scouts in a Rhino/Razorback, and Intercessors in a Repulsor.
I mean by that that transports would go from "viable option for some builds" to "necessity" and that would imply a lot of balancing issues. Dark Eldar/Ynnari would have a really good board control with their Flyers and cheap Troops.
Galef wrote: My position is that some people were saying that the Rule of 3 prevents fluffy lists...
In a few cases it does, in the majority of others it simply limits them and makes them much more difficult to do. Seriously, I can acknowledge that the rule of three does a good job at limiting people from spamming overpowered units, but it is ham-handed in that it prevents any kind of spam, even the good kind in thematic lists.
Galef wrote: Not only is this not true, but many who claim this aren't actually taking a fluffy list, but are trying to spam 1-2 good units under the guise of a fluffy list
So by spamming terminators (which are garbage) I'm not trying to make a thematic force, but instead am trying to secretly game the system and use overpowered units... LOL
Galef wrote: No one wants to face a list with a dozen of the exact same unit
Speak for yourself, I would have no problem playing against a spam/skew list so long as it made sense fluff-wise I'd consider it an interesting challenge.
Ice_can wrote: I'm genuinely intrigued as to how you have made the rule of 3 a problem for a scion foot list given i can get past 1000 points without Breaking the rule of 2 they can bring an almost 2k points of pure infantry in 2 battalions without breaking rule of 3. Add in some valks or vultures or vendettas and your rappidly at 3k for your arial spec opps strike force
What if I want to have 4 officers for better order coverage? Nope, can't apparently that makes foot scions too broken.
Aaranis wrote: The way everything dies in 40k right now that would mean my opponent gets 1st turn, slaughters all my Skitarii (which are all on foot because my only transport option is a 130€ FW kit) or Kataphrons and then I lost the game because the only points I can score are killing related.
The point about only troops scoring is that things die the way they do right now because non-troops can score. If everything can score there's no incentive to bring anything but the biggest guns you can get. Limiting scoring to troops only, as it was in previous editions, means that you have to have a solid core of basic units with limited weapons and taking high-firepower offensive threats comes at direct cost in your ability to score objectives. If your opponent takes an alpha strike list that can wipe your troops out they have few scoring units of their own, and you can easily remove them in return.
I actually agree with this, with some caveats for armies that have options for running troopless lists. Like IG armored with their rule that lets their leman russes score like troops. Or ravenwing that lets bikers score.
w1zard wrote: So by spamming terminators (which are garbage) I'm not trying to make a thematic force, but instead am trying to secretly game the system and use overpowered units... LOL
Again, if you're spamming terminators RO3 is not a problem because you're running out of points before you run out of copies of your units.
What if I want to have 4 officers for better order coverage? Nope, can't apparently that makes foot scions too broken.
Then you deal with not having four officers and 100% order coverage. Having four copies of a company-level HQ is not fluffy, you should be limited to one, maybe two at most in a typical 40k army. But thanks for admitting that it isn't about fluff and your goal is to get more buffs applied to your units.
Again, if you're spamming terminators RO3 is not a problem because you're running out of points before you run out of copies of your units.
that is not true, efore RO3 was a thing I was running 4 units of 3 paladins each and 3 apothecaries supporting them plus draigo. No I can no longer do that. I have to turn some of them in to termintors, which means am both taking worse units and it messes up my unit size, because I have to take normal termintors in 5 man sized squads.
Peregrine wrote: Again, if you're spamming terminators RO3 is not a problem because you're running out of points before you run out of copies of your units.
Not if I want to do MSU, which IS fluffy for terminators because every depiction of them I have seen in the fluff (especially space hulk stuff) has been in teams of 5, not 10.
Peregrine wrote: Then you deal with not having four officers and 100% order coverage. Having four copies of a company-level HQ is not fluffy, you should be limited to one, maybe two at most in a typical 40k army. But thanks for admitting that it isn't about fluff and your goal is to get more buffs applied to your units.
Not if you are treating tempestor primes as platoon-level commanders, which they are, they default to one order like guard platoon commanders, and only get two if you buy them an upgrade.
Again, if you're spamming terminators RO3 is not a problem because you're running out of points before you run out of copies of your units.
that is not true, efore RO3 was a thing I was running 4 units of 3 paladins each and 3 apothecaries supporting them plus draigo. No I can no longer do that. I have to turn some of them in to termintors, which means am both taking worse units and it messes up my unit size, because I have to take normal termintors in 5 man sized squads.
Peregrine wrote: Again, if you're spamming terminators RO3 is not a problem because you're running out of points before you run out of copies of your units.
Not if I want to do MSU, which IS fluffy for terminators because every depiction of them I have seen in the fluff (especially space hulk stuff) has been in teams of 5, not 10.
Peregrine wrote: Then you deal with not having four officers and 100% order coverage. Having four copies of a company-level HQ is not fluffy, you should be limited to one, maybe two at most in a typical 40k army. But thanks for admitting that it isn't about fluff and your goal is to get more buffs applied to your units.
Not if you are treating tempestor primes as platoon-level commanders, which they are, they default to one order like guard platoon commanders, and only get two if you buy them an upgrade.
As said above you can combat squad terminators if you so choose.
Also even with squads of 5 you have 3 x normal, assualt, Catafract and tartarus armour for 60 terminators with rule of 3 and MSU.
Again your complaining about orders, order coverage doesn't prevent you running a full scion list at 2K your equating efficiency with unplayable which given how often guard players conplain that orders arn't automatic complaining you can use orders on your troops is hypocrisy. Either your troops are OK because you pay for orders with your HQ's or if order coverage for everyone is "how guard should work" the orders have to be baked into the points cost of these units in which case you can add 2ppm to all guard infantry straight off.
Again, if you're spamming terminators RO3 is not a problem because you're running out of points before you run out of copies of your units.
that is not true, efore RO3 was a thing I was running 4 units of 3 paladins each and 3 apothecaries supporting them plus draigo. No I can no longer do that. I have to turn some of them in to termintors, which means am both taking worse units and it messes up my unit size, because I have to take normal termintors in 5 man sized squads.
..... 4x3=12 ......... so does 3x4
If I take 3 squads they die too fast. With 4 squads, one was alive at the end of turn 2. It also let me capture objectives. Most missions played at my store have 5 objectives, and most event games, which aren't all games of course, require to have at least 4 infantry units. If I take 3 units of paladins, I don't have the points to take a 4th unit most of the time, and it really sucks to pay an event fee mostly to pay for prizes for other people.
Also even with squads of 5 you have 3 x normal, assualt, Catafract and tartarus armour for 60 terminators with rule of 3 and MSU.
Well that is great for normal marines I guess. But GK have only paladins and normal termintors, they don't have the access to the other terminator units or the flying primaris termintors or the ground shoty ones etc.
Again, if you're spamming terminators RO3 is not a problem because you're running out of points before you run out of copies of your units.
that is not true, efore RO3 was a thing I was running 4 units of 3 paladins each and 3 apothecaries supporting them plus draigo. No I can no longer do that. I have to turn some of them in to termintors, which means am both taking worse units and it messes up my unit size, because I have to take normal termintors in 5 man sized squads.
..... 4x3=12 ......... so does 3x4
If I take 3 squads they die too fast. With 4 squads, one was alive at the end of turn 2. It also let me capture objectives. Most missions played at my store have 5 objectives, and most event games, which aren't all games of course, require to have at least 4 infantry units. If I take 3 units of paladins, I don't have the points to take a 4th unit most of the time, and it really sucks to pay an event fee mostly to pay for prizes for other people.
Also even with squads of 5 you have 3 x normal, assualt, Catafract and tartarus armour for 60 terminators with rule of 3 and MSU.
Well that is great for normal marines I guess. But GK have only paladins and normal termintors, they don't have the access to the other terminator units or the flying primaris termintors or the ground shoty ones etc.
1 Hence why I wasn't replying to a comment about Grey Knights. Them sucking has nothing to do with tge rule of 3 and all to do with them being overpriced upgrades to overpriced marines.
2 Primaris don't have terminators Gravis armour has more like bike stats changes than terminator stats.
Karol wrote: Well that is great for normal marines I guess. But GK have only paladins and normal termintors, they don't have the access to the other terminator units or the flying primaris termintors or the ground shoty ones etc.
Grandmaster Librarian
Ancient Apothecary 5 Paladins 5 Paladins 5 Paladins
5 GKT 5 GKT 5 GKT
There, 2011 points of terminator armor. What exactly is your problem with the rule of 3?
Karol wrote: Well that is great for normal marines I guess. But GK have only paladins and normal termintors, they don't have the access to the other terminator units or the flying primaris termintors or the ground shoty ones etc.
Grandmaster
Librarian
Ancient
Apothecary
5 Paladins
5 Paladins
5 Paladins
5 GKT
5 GKT
5 GKT
There, 2011 points of terminator armor. What exactly is your problem with the rule of 3?
jfc lol, thats going to be approximately 300-400 points cheaper after ca. Smdh. At least after ca you can add some land raiders to that list.... 2 maybe if you get rid of an ancient or two.
Crimson wrote: Tournament can of course set whatever houserules they want. It however becomes a problem if GW starts to balance the game based on results of those tournament, which are not even playing proper 40K.
Which is what they do, seeing how they kneejerk react to things in ITC tournaments that are often made possible due to how the ITC missions/objectives work. At this point, they should just fully endorse the ITC as the tournament rules for 40k and be done with it. "We are partnering with the Independent Tournament Circuit to standardize a set of rules and scenarios for competitive Warhammer 40,000 gameplay"
That would be fantastic. Or in the reverse if GW made an acceptable matchplay rule set - they should just adopt that. Casual match play and tournament play should be playing by the same rules.
Why?
I see no reason why tournament play needs to align 100% with matched play.
"Every tournament play game is a matched play game, but not every matched play game is a tournament play game."
The way I see it is - are preseason football games played by different rules? Exhibition baseball games? No - they play the exact same game there is just no stakes. They are practice games. Why exact should matched play and tournament play not align - IYO?
The way I see it is - are preseason football games played by different rules? Exhibition baseball games? No - they play the exact same game there is just no stakes. They are practice games. Why exact should matched play and tournament play not align - IYO?
Because tournament play's one very specific way of playing the game that appeals to a certain player mindset, and a general "balanced-enough" set of matched play rules is good enough for most people playing "competitively-but-for-fun" rather than "hardcore-competitvely". I don't disagree that there's an argument to be made for tweaking the rules for the sake of competitive play, but not everyone's really all that interested in playing hyper-competitively. Don't really see the problem with Tournament Organisers setting additional rules as they see fit.
There's a *lot* more moving parts to something like 40K than most sports, so I'm not sure how useful an analogy it is, but when I'm playing footy with my mates in the park, we're certainly not referring every disputed decision to the VAR, we're just getting on with it and enjoying ourselves.
The way I see it is - are preseason football games played by different rules? Exhibition baseball games? No - they play the exact same game there is just no stakes. They are practice games. Why exact should matched play and tournament play not align - IYO?
Because tournament play's one very specific way of playing the game that appeals to a certain player mindset, and a general "balanced-enough" set of matched play rules is good enough for most people playing "competitively-but-for-fun" rather than "hardcore-competitvely". I don't disagree that there's an argument to be made for tweaking the rules for the sake of competitive play, but not everyone's really all that interested in playing hyper-competitively. Don't really see the problem with Tournament Organisers setting additional rules as they see fit.
There's a *lot* more moving parts to something like 40K than most sports, so I'm not sure how useful an analogy it is, but when I'm playing footy with my mates in the park, we're certainly not referring every disputed decision to the VAR, we're just getting on with it and enjoying ourselves.
I don't think we need another definition of the game supported by GW. You already have Open, Narrative, and Match. And we want Organized.
I think it should redefined as Easy mode (and open Narrative casual play) Hard (match play) Organized (Match play with lots of restrictions to try to allow what is left to be as balanced as possible)
The match play rules should hopefully be the best way to get a balanced 40k game - just like the rules in football. Due to the dynamics this will mean "balance" around the 1750 point bracket that GW has decided is standard.
If you want to play differently - like say kicking the ball around with your friends - then that's what open play is for.
I think all of you declaring what "should" happen are setting yourselves up for disappointment, tbh. GW have clearly made a decision to go with the "three ways to play" that they've had in place since the first AoS General's Handbook, and I can't see them firing that all into the bin (and thereby invalidating a significant chunk of the existing materials for 8th edition) in a CA update.
There's nothing to stop players, or tournament organisers, imposing their own additional restrictions in order to tighten up the competitive "balance" of games played within a certain set of parameters, but I can't see GW suddenly pivoting from "here's a variety of rules to allow you to play the game in a variety of ways" to ploughing all their time and effort (which is, ultimately, a finite resource) into fine-tuning the way a certain faction of the player base chooses to play.
I prefer facing a decent spammy list if it means my opponent knows what he's doing and can easily identtify his units.
I don't think tournaments should ahve a different ruleset to matche play (bedsides event specifc variants). Certainly not something GW should do themselves in a CA.
Rule of 3 is better than no rule of 3, but fixing miscosted units would be better. Keep raising price of Flyrant until you only see 2 or 3 used per list. Done.
The corollary to this is lower the price on units until you actually start seeing them appear in 1's 2's or 3's.
I think the GW team never wanted to lose to something like heptaflyrant ever again. There was some ego bruising there. I've noticed that lots of game designers don't accept it when players understand the game better than they do.
Addendum: people say dakka is a cesspool and all that. But none of the regular posters would have been surprised by flyrant spam last March. It's flabbergasting that GW guys never conceived of it until they were blindsided.
Martel732 wrote: Rule of 3 is better than no rule of 3, but fixing miscosted units would be better. Keep raising price of Flyrant until you only see 2 or 3 used per list. Done.
And in that specific case, raise the price of the wings upgrade. Is anyone spamming foot tyrants? GW often underprices mobility options to the point they become effectively mandatory.
Oh, yeah. It's always a jump capt or sometimes biker capt. While I still can on the biker. I've been using smash capt as more of a sheriff for half the game now. You have to thin out the screens before you can go smash now.
Martel732 wrote: Addendum: people say dakka is a cesspool and all that. But none of the regular posters would have been surprised by flyrant spam last March. It's flabbergasting that GW guys never conceived of it until they were blindsided.
Not convinced by this. Plenty of people (including our friends at FLG) went "yeah its pretty good - but its not as if you'd want more than 2."
Admittedly I think this is because people underestimated the extent of the buff the Hive Tyrant received in the codex - and it took some time for the abstract theory to become practice.
I can't get over how when the indices die, BA lose jump priests. The buff guys that are supposed to be buffed the jump units? There are definitely inexplicable mobility holes.
DE characters should be able to get those little hoverboards.
Even Autarchs - they're supposed to be the only people who can take Aspect gear after leaving their Aspect Shrine - yet they can only take a couple aspects' gear.
This 'no models no rules' thing sucks. And, mixed with the "Why do you want a kit to build your model, when we can sell you a clampack to make our model" it's even worse.
I still can't believe they discontinued the SM Force Commander. I wish they made that kit for every faction.
Martel732 wrote: Addendum: people say dakka is a cesspool and all that. But none of the regular posters would have been surprised by flyrant spam last March. It's flabbergasting that GW guys never conceived of it until they were blindsided.
Not convinced by this. Plenty of people (including our friends at FLG) went "yeah its pretty good - but its not as if you'd want more than 2."
Admittedly I think this is because people underestimated the extent of the buff the Hive Tyrant received in the codex - and it took some time for the abstract theory to become practice.
You weren't convinced after they made it and its weapons cheaper, gave it a 4++, and the Hive Fleet rules were added?
A lot of the people here didn't miss this as they didn't do any underestimation. GW hasn't a clue sometimes.
Martel732 wrote: Rule of 3 is better than no rule of 3, but fixing miscosted units would be better. Keep raising price of Flyrant until you only see 2 or 3 used per list. Done.
And in that specific case, raise the price of the wings upgrade. Is anyone spamming foot tyrants? GW often underprices mobility options to the point they become effectively mandatory.
People say that like it's an easy thing. There's a break point where the model goes from totally spammable to where it ceases to be useful.
At what point level do you think Tyranid players would take only 3 or at most 4 flyrants?
I don't know. It will take empirical determination. It's not easy. Starcraft uses huge amounts of metadata to determine this. And even they had to redesign the swarm host like 4 times.
Ice_can wrote: [Again your complaining about orders, order coverage doesn't prevent you running a full scion list at 2K your equating efficiency with unplayable which given how often guard players conplain that orders arn't automatic complaining you can use orders on your troops is hypocrisy. Either your troops are OK because you pay for orders with your HQ's or if order coverage for everyone is "how guard should work" the orders have to be baked into the points cost of these units in which case you can add 2ppm to all guard infantry straight off.
You aren't getting it. I am not complaining it's impossible, I'm complaining that I now have to jump through hoops I didn't used to have to jump through and have my army choices much more restricted because of overpowered units in some other codex.
A broad generalized rule across all factions to fix very specific issues are going to have unintended consequences. My problem with the rule of three is not that it doesn't work, (it does for the most part) but that it is LAZY and hamfisted.
People say that like it's an easy thing. There's a break point where the model goes from totally spammable to where it ceases to be useful.
At what point level do you think Tyranid players would take only 3 or at most 4 flyrants?
I don't know as I know very little about tyranids. But such point cost will exist. There also exists a point cost for for wings where they aren't an autoupgrade, but something you have to consider. If you're cramming as many of one thing in the lists as the rules allow, then they're obviously too cheap.
Martel732 wrote: Rule of 3 is better than no rule of 3, but fixing miscosted units would be better. Keep raising price of Flyrant until you only see 2 or 3 used per list. Done.
And in that specific case, raise the price of the wings upgrade. Is anyone spamming foot tyrants? GW often underprices mobility options to the point they become effectively mandatory.
What if they had different rules. lets say nids got a footslogging buffbot with heavier bio weapons, and a more melee or shortrange centered flyerant. Balance both with points and slight differences. make the buffbot more tanky, higher T, higher W and better save. the fly dude gets much lower save and less T. GW could even give them different psychic powers, or different number of psychic powers. I don't get why GW often ends up with a single HQ slot armies. I get that they don't want to give rules to units that don't exist, but they could easily give separate rule sets for the same model sprue.
I don't know as I know very little about tyranids. But such point cost will exist. There also exists a point cost for for wings where they aren't an autoupgrade, but something you have to consider. If you're cramming as many of one thing in the lists as the rules allow, then they're obviously too cheap.
Or other HQs just suck. Take the GK codex, there is Draigo and there is the NDK GM. Everything else is mind blowing worse for almost no point difference. When the foot tyrant has nothing for it, and the fly tyrant for a few points more is much better. No one is going to take the foot tyrants. How many people take chaplains over librarians or cpts ?
Martel732 wrote: Rule of 3 is better than no rule of 3, but fixing miscosted units would be better. Keep raising price of Flyrant until you only see 2 or 3 used per list. Done.
And in that specific case, raise the price of the wings upgrade. Is anyone spamming foot tyrants? GW often underprices mobility options to the point they become effectively mandatory.
What if they had different rules. lets say nids got a footslogging buffbot with heavier bio weapons, and a more melee or shortrange centered flyerant. Balance both with points and slight differences. make the buffbot more tanky, higher T, higher W and better save. the fly dude gets much lower save and less T. GW could even give them different psychic powers, or different number of psychic powers. I don't get why GW often ends up with a single HQ slot armies. I get that they don't want to give rules to units that don't exist, but they could easily give separate rule sets for the same model sprue.
I don't know as I know very little about tyranids. But such point cost will exist. There also exists a point cost for for wings where they aren't an autoupgrade, but something you have to consider. If you're cramming as many of one thing in the lists as the rules allow, then they're obviously too cheap.
Or other HQs just suck. Take the GK codex, there is Draigo and there is the NDK GM. Everything else is mind blowing worse for almost no point difference. When the foot tyrant has nothing for it, and the fly tyrant for a few points more is much better. No one is going to take the foot tyrants. How many people take chaplains over librarians or cpts ?
Chaplains will only ever get taken if they're a Special Character. Otherwise, if you had a reason to take large squads to give the LD bonus or decent melee to give the rerolls they MIGHT be used.
Martel732 wrote: Addendum: people say dakka is a cesspool and all that. But none of the regular posters would have been surprised by flyrant spam last March. It's flabbergasting that GW guys never conceived of it until they were blindsided.
Not convinced by this. Plenty of people (including our friends at FLG) went "yeah its pretty good - but its not as if you'd want more than 2."
Admittedly I think this is because people underestimated the extent of the buff the Hive Tyrant received in the codex - and it took some time for the abstract theory to become practice.
You weren't convinced after they made it and its weapons cheaper, gave it a 4++, and the Hive Fleet rules were added?
A lot of the people here didn't miss this as they didn't do any underestimation. GW hasn't a clue sometimes.
Martel732 wrote: Addendum: people say dakka is a cesspool and all that. But none of the regular posters would have been surprised by flyrant spam last March. It's flabbergasting that GW guys never conceived of it until they were blindsided.
Not convinced by this. Plenty of people (including our friends at FLG) went "yeah its pretty good - but its not as if you'd want more than 2."
Admittedly I think this is because people underestimated the extent of the buff the Hive Tyrant received in the codex - and it took some time for the abstract theory to become practice.
You weren't convinced after they made it and its weapons cheaper, gave it a 4++, and the Hive Fleet rules were added?
A lot of the people here didn't miss this as they didn't do any underestimation. GW hasn't a clue sometimes.
Martel732 wrote: Addendum: people say dakka is a cesspool and all that. But none of the regular posters would have been surprised by flyrant spam last March. It's flabbergasting that GW guys never conceived of it until they were blindsided.
Not convinced by this. Plenty of people (including our friends at FLG) went "yeah its pretty good - but its not as if you'd want more than 2."
Admittedly I think this is because people underestimated the extent of the buff the Hive Tyrant received in the codex - and it took some time for the abstract theory to become practice.
You weren't convinced after they made it and its weapons cheaper, gave it a 4++, and the Hive Fleet rules were added?
A lot of the people here didn't miss this as they didn't do any underestimation. GW hasn't a clue sometimes.
It proves that people are oblivious. RG won that poll with 0 players voting for shinning spears. More people voted for tactical marines than flying hive tyrants. LOL.
bananathug wrote: If you didn't answer the alphabet bird himself you have given the wrong answer.
And no he isn't balanced now (they priced him off the table) but you can't really balance a model that can fight/kill an entire army.
Aetaos'Rau'Keres
Mal lords
pre-nerf lictors (I'm not so smart either...) malenthropes
DakkaFlexes (180ish points for 24 s6 shots in a t7 12 wound 4++ package that doesn't BS degrade until 3 wounds with smite and deepstrike is crazy, a guy at my shop ran 8 of them last tournament...)
Eversor assassins
Reapers
Celestine
Magnus
girlyman
primaris psychers (cheap smite but any sniper unit kills them dead)
And those of you saying guilliman, yep he's so overpowered that you see him at all of the top tournament final tables now that other armies have their codexes.
And tac marines. Yep, Dakka Dakka gunna Dakka Dakka I guess.
That most posters on Dakka play in beer+pretzels metas and don't realize how the game is played/broken at "WAAC" levels vs people with cash to burn/massive collections.
Without the rule of 3 8th would be spam fest 9000. Remember how fun those assassin armies were to play against?
As bad as the rules are they have gotten better. The main reason I'm holding out hope for 9th edition. Hopefully GW takes its lumps with Beta 40k and releases real 40k for 9th.
bananathug wrote: If you didn't answer the alphabet bird himself you have given the wrong answer.
And no he isn't balanced now (they priced him off the table) but you can't really balance a model that can fight/kill an entire army.
Aetaos'Rau'Keres
Mal lords
pre-nerf lictors (I'm not so smart either...) malenthropes
DakkaFlexes (180ish points for 24 s6 shots in a t7 12 wound 4++ package that doesn't BS degrade until 3 wounds with smite and deepstrike is crazy, a guy at my shop ran 8 of them last tournament...)
Eversor assassins
Reapers
Celestine
Magnus
girlyman
primaris psychers (cheap smite but any sniper unit kills them dead)
And those of you saying guilliman, yep he's so overpowered that you see him at all of the top tournament final tables now that other armies have their codexes.
And tac marines. Yep, Dakka Dakka gunna Dakka Dakka I guess.
That most posters on Dakka play in beer+pretzels metas and don't realize how the game is played/broken at "WAAC" levels vs people with cash to burn/massive collections.
Without the rule of 3 8th would be spam fest 9000. Remember how fun those assassin armies were to play against?
As bad as the rules are they have gotten better. The main reason I'm holding out hope for 9th edition. Hopefully GW takes its lumps with Beta 40k and releases real 40k for 9th.
You mean how it was spammfest 9000?
You mean, remember 6 Stormravens with all re-rolls?
Remember 200 Razorwing Flocks with 6+++?
Remember the 1st character change rules before Ro3 with 30+ DE characters?
Remember Commander/Drone Spam?
Flyrant Spam and Mawloc Spam?
Biovore Spam (36 of them lol)
Over all it is getting better, i just hope this CA removes many of the faqs and we have less books/papers to work with
When is chapter approved actually out then?? I just want it now please.
Also can anyone tell me if this chapter approved will have the previous FAQs and chapter approved etc included or I'll have to buy the the previous ones too??
Rogerio134134 wrote: When is chapter approved actually out then?? I just want it now please.
Also can anyone tell me if this chapter approved will have the previous FAQs and chapter approved etc included or I'll have to buy the the previous ones too??
I think someone said 12/15, and it's supposed to include everything from the previous Chapter Approved from what I can tell.
They should have really tried to push Chapter Approved into November instead of December.
I don't know about anyone else here, but the changes to CA really affect what I'm going to be buying, and if it comes out too late in the year I might not be getting it for Christmas.
Brutus_Apex wrote: They should have really tried to push Chapter Approved into November instead of December.
I don't know about anyone else here, but the changes to CA really affect what I'm going to be buying, and if it comes out too late in the year I might not be getting it for Christmas.
Same here.
I'm trying to stop being *optimise at all costs* but there is nothing like buying, assembling and painting something (especially if there are multiple build options) just before it gets nerfed.
Brutus_Apex wrote: They should have really tried to push Chapter Approved into November instead of December.
I don't know about anyone else here, but the changes to CA really affect what I'm going to be buying, and if it comes out too late in the year I might not be getting it for Christmas.
This is actually a problem they have with the way they did CA. The GHB had all the points for the whole game losted in it, so it totally overwrote the previous book's points. CA only had changes which means you have to keep both, unless they reprint every points change every year, which will eventually cover most of the game anyway.
I thought we'd had confirmation that CA2018 was going to include the full list of current points changes (so including/amending the changes from CA2017 and the Spring FAQ)?
Brutus_Apex wrote: They should have really tried to push Chapter Approved into November instead of December.
I don't know about anyone else here, but the changes to CA really affect what I'm going to be buying, and if it comes out too late in the year I might not be getting it for Christmas.
November was too close the orks releases though, which GW wanted to push as well.
gendoikari87 wrote: Marines are gonna suck even harder because everyone will be taking gobs of high ap
Why take low strength low AP weapons anymore if all the basic troops are getting price increases (Ork boyz to 7ppm). Every tournament list for Orkz I have seen recently has gone from 180-240 Boyz to 60-90 with 90 being rare. So we are getting away from TAC lists and getting more into skew lists across the board and at the moment that means Anti-armor is going to get a priority in place as opposed to high ROF low AP weapons.
gendoikari87 wrote: Marines are gonna suck even harder because everyone will be taking gobs of high ap
Probably honestly. Because why take low strength low AP weapons anymore if all the basic troops are getting price increases (Ork boyz to 7ppm). Every tournament list for Orkz I have seen recently has gone from 180-240 Boyz to 60-90 with 90 being rare. So we are getting away from TAC lists and getting more into skew lists across the board and at the moment that means Anti-armor is going to get a priority in place as opposed to high ROF low AP weapons.
Not that I don't understand the sentiment, but when have been people taking high ROF low AP weapons? My impression was most people still took as much plasma/eq and lascannons as they could with only the occasoinal anti-infantry.
Dysartes wrote: I thought we'd had confirmation that CA2018 was going to include the full list of current points changes (so including/amending the changes from CA2017 and the Spring FAQ)?
I think that assumption was from the fake Tau points rumor.
It does make sense though, otherwise you reach a scenario where you need multiple CA to have the point costs between codcies-and that would kill any possible sells.
If marines are terribad unplayable when cheap infantry is prevalent [because they don't have the firepower/toughness density to compete], and they're also going to be terribad unplayable when light infantry becomes uncommon [because the points spent on anti-light infantry weapons will be spent anti-marine weapons]...
Just because your little dudes are dying doesn't mean you're losing. If your enemy is allocating firepower in ways that aren't in their best interest, because they're shooting plasmaguns at your line infantry or are forced to focus all power into a fast assault unit before it hits their lines, you're still able to extract value from the destruction of your units.
Plasma doesn't seem so impressive if you're unwilling to Overcharge. That's why I'm trading out plasma for Blight Launchers in my Death Guard lists. Guard units dont care about exploding, but an expensive Marine unit or Primaris might.
Dysartes wrote: I thought we'd had confirmation that CA2018 was going to include the full list of current points changes (so including/amending the changes from CA2017 and the Spring FAQ)?
I think that assumption was from the fake Tau points rumor.
If I remember correctly, it actually comes from a GW Facebook / event remark, where they alluded to such an idea. Not 100 % sure, but a vivid memory.
I believe that Facebook post was that all point changes, include those from earlier publications, would be in CA2018. It did not state that all points values for all units/equipment would be in CA.
Basically, CA would include all points changes from those in the Codex/Index.
gendoikari87 wrote: Marines are gonna suck even harder because everyone will be taking gobs of high ap
Probably honestly. Because why take low strength low AP weapons anymore if all the basic troops are getting price increases (Ork boyz to 7ppm). Every tournament list for Orkz I have seen recently has gone from 180-240 Boyz to 60-90 with 90 being rare. So we are getting away from TAC lists and getting more into skew lists across the board and at the moment that means Anti-armor is going to get a priority in place as opposed to high ROF low AP weapons.
Not that I don't understand the sentiment, but when have been people taking high ROF low AP weapons? My impression was most people still took as much plasma/eq and lascannons as they could with only the occasoinal anti-infantry.
They can't complain if they can't beat drukhari then
IMHO S4,S5 and/or S6 spam is more important than having a bazillion of lascannons and plasmas. IK break the meta, but against any other army low and mid strenght weapons are mandatory. 1-shotting a knight shouldn't be the priority in list building, unless it's a 2-3 turns game, basically only a tournament thing.
Some orks builds with 60+ shielding grots can annihilate competitive lists, and neither gretchins, lootas and the stratagems that buff them are undercosted, people just need to adapt. I'm already hearing the complaints from some players that bring 20 lascannons, 15 plasmas and can't break the lootas castle.
There's a key difference between take all comers and present all targets.
The opposite of take all comers is a tailored list.
The opposite of a skew list is a list that presents all varieties of targets.
You want to be TAC and skewed. Have guns for killing every type of target, but only present one kind.
If you present a skewed list, ie, a list of only one target type, like IK, then you have achieved the aim of neutralizing all the non-antitank weaponry your opponent brought.
If you present a tailored list, let's say to knights and have a lot of lascannons, you will lose games against people who do not rely on tanks to win, but you'll beat knights well.
alextroy wrote: I believe that Facebook post was that all point changes, include those from earlier publications, would be in CA2018. It did not state that all points values for all units/equipment would be in CA.
Basically, CA would include all points changes from those in the Codex/Index.
...which is what I was saying I thought would be the case?
gendoikari87 wrote: Marines are gonna suck even harder because everyone will be taking gobs of high ap
Why take low strength low AP weapons anymore if all the basic troops are getting price increases (Ork boyz to 7ppm). Every tournament list for Orkz I have seen recently has gone from 180-240 Boyz to 60-90 with 90 being rare. So we are getting away from TAC lists and getting more into skew lists across the board and at the moment that means Anti-armor is going to get a priority in place as opposed to high ROF low AP weapons.
I'm sorry, how is 180-240 boyz NOT a skew list? 180-240 is not only a HARDCORE skew list, it is also THE most bullgak army to play against ever. Oh yes, I super love to spend 40 minutes in your first movement phase another 20 in your first shooting phase and another 35 in your first combat phase. Screw horde skew lists, I'd rather go against 10 Castellans.
gendoikari87 wrote: Marines are gonna suck even harder because everyone will be taking gobs of high ap
Why take low strength low AP weapons anymore if all the basic troops are getting price increases (Ork boyz to 7ppm). Every tournament list for Orkz I have seen recently has gone from 180-240 Boyz to 60-90 with 90 being rare. So we are getting away from TAC lists and getting more into skew lists across the board and at the moment that means Anti-armor is going to get a priority in place as opposed to high ROF low AP weapons.
I'm sorry, how is 180-240 boyz NOT a skew list? 180-240 is not only a HARDCORE skew list, it is also THE most bullgak army to play against ever. Oh yes, I super love to spend 40 minutes in your first movement phase another 20 in your first shooting phase and another 35 in your first combat phase. Screw horde skew lists, I'd rather go against 10 Castellans.
Show me on this miniture where idex orks touched you
gendoikari87 wrote: Marines are gonna suck even harder because everyone will be taking gobs of high ap
Why take low strength low AP weapons anymore if all the basic troops are getting price increases (Ork boyz to 7ppm). Every tournament list for Orkz I have seen recently has gone from 180-240 Boyz to 60-90 with 90 being rare. So we are getting away from TAC lists and getting more into skew lists across the board and at the moment that means Anti-armor is going to get a priority in place as opposed to high ROF low AP weapons.
I'm sorry, how is 180-240 boyz NOT a skew list? 180-240 is not only a HARDCORE skew list, it is also THE most bullgak army to play against ever. Oh yes, I super love to spend 40 minutes in your first movement phase another 20 in your first shooting phase and another 35 in your first combat phase. Screw horde skew lists, I'd rather go against 10 Castellans.
Show me on this miniture where idex orks touched you
Ork lists don't have enough time to do any touching. By the time they're done with their second movement phase the tournament has been over for a week and everyone declared them the winner out of pity.
gendoikari87 wrote: Marines are gonna suck even harder because everyone will be taking gobs of high ap
Why take low strength low AP weapons anymore if all the basic troops are getting price increases (Ork boyz to 7ppm). Every tournament list for Orkz I have seen recently has gone from 180-240 Boyz to 60-90 with 90 being rare. So we are getting away from TAC lists and getting more into skew lists across the board and at the moment that means Anti-armor is going to get a priority in place as opposed to high ROF low AP weapons.
I'm sorry, how is 180-240 boyz NOT a skew list? 180-240 is not only a HARDCORE skew list, it is also THE most bullgak army to play against ever. Oh yes, I super love to spend 40 minutes in your first movement phase another 20 in your first shooting phase and another 35 in your first combat phase. Screw horde skew lists, I'd rather go against 10 Castellans.
I guess the point alluded you. Horde armies have been a thing since...forever. Sorry that some dillweed slow played you into this much anger but that isn't how most people played. But getting back to the point, if all basic troops are getting nerfed with point increases than you can expect more expensive stuff with better saves/toughness which means more anti-armor weapons.
Everybody loses a bunch of models, even if they're expensive. That's par for the course. I swear half the issue is people are more precious about their marines than they are about other models, regardless of expense. Genestealers are 12 ppm, but you don't hear Tyranid players crying about them dying.
Everybody loses a bunch of models, even if they're expensive. That's par for the course. I swear half the issue is people are more precious about their marines than they are about other models, regardless of expense. Genestealers are 12 ppm, but you don't hear Tyranid players crying about them dying.
I wouldn't mind if they did anything before dying. I honestly have no problem with marines dying if their Ballistic skill or weaponry meant they could actually do some damage before they bought the farm.
Everybody loses a bunch of models, even if they're expensive. That's par for the course. I swear half the issue is people are more precious about their marines than they are about other models, regardless of expense. Genestealers are 12 ppm, but you don't hear Tyranid players crying about them dying.
Diffrence between a tac marine at 13 and a genestealer at 12 is a genestealer has a purpose.
Also it's not really 13 point models it avarages out at 16 or 18 by the time you add special or combi weapons.
Everybody loses a bunch of models, even if they're expensive. That's par for the course. I swear half the issue is people are more precious about their marines than they are about other models, regardless of expense. Genestealers are 12 ppm, but you don't hear Tyranid players crying about them dying.
That’s because Tyranid players know they’re getting a capable unit with a good balance of value vs potential. Marines pay +1 point for a model that will do nothing by comparison. Stealers give a nid player strategic value. Tactical marines give SM players ablative wounds for a heavy weapon.
I kind of what space marines to be super expensive but also super elite... like their 20pts each but their standard gun is -4 and bypasses invlun saves or something stupid. XD Make them less models that do stupid good damage. Just lore wise it makes no sense how 1 ork is basically the same strength and toughness as a space marine... But at the same time an Ork should be S4 and T4.... But a Marine should be like S7 T7. XD
lolman1c wrote: I kind of what space marines to be super expensive but also super elite... like their 20pts each but their standard gun is -4 and bypasses invlun saves or something stupid. XD Make them less models that do stupid good damage. Just lore wise it makes no sense how 1 ork is basically the same strength and toughness as a space marine... But at the same time an Ork should be S4 and T4.... But a Marine should be like S7 T7. XD
lolman1c wrote: I kind of what space marines to be super expensive but also super elite... like their 20pts each but their standard gun is -4 and bypasses invlun saves or something stupid. XD Make them less models that do stupid good damage. Just lore wise it makes no sense how 1 ork is basically the same strength and toughness as a space marine... But at the same time an Ork should be S4 and T4.... But a Marine should be like S7 T7. XD
Just make them rapid fire 2 and 2 attacks and they will be fine.
lolman1c wrote: I kind of what space marines to be super expensive but also super elite... like their 20pts each but their standard gun is -4 and bypasses invlun saves or something stupid. XD Make them less models that do stupid good damage. Just lore wise it makes no sense how 1 ork is basically the same strength and toughness as a space marine... But at the same time an Ork should be S4 and T4.... But a Marine should be like S7 T7. XD
So essentially you want to break the game?
if you point anything correctly then it doesn't break the game. XD 1 marine could be 2000 points and has a 2+ invlun 50 shots each. XD But seriously, watched a game where every space marine had the stats of a captain and they still got their asses handed to them. XD
Because the Wound stat, unless accompanied with a high inv with re-roll and high T, doesn't meen much. Vs a ton of armies being 1W is better then being 2W, because 1W models don't pay for that extra wound , why both die just as easy.
Galas wrote: Maybe because Tyranids have cheaper models and the 11-13ppm isnt his cheaper infantry option.
Well the fact that 13 point models are dying would hardly be an issue then. Even in a Tyranid army you can shoot the expensive models instead of the cheap ones.
I wouldn't mind if they did anything before dying. I honestly have no problem with marines dying if their Ballistic skill or weaponry meant they could actually do some damage before they bought the farm.
How much damage are we talking about? I think thats an interesting question. What's the threshold of damage potential per unit/squad that you're looking for?
That’s because Tyranid players know they’re getting a capable unit with a good balance of value vs potential. Marines pay +1 point for a model that will do nothing by comparison. Stealers give a nid player strategic value. Tactical marines give SM players ablative wounds for a heavy weapon.
Diffrence between a tac marine at 13 and a genestealer at 12 is a genestealer has a purpose.
Also it's not really 13 point models it avarages out at 16 or 18 by the time you add special or combi weapons.
How does a Tac marine not have a purpose? It's not a specialist like the Genestealer, if that's what you mean. Generalist doesn't mean lacking purpose though.
You might mean "not good at any particular task for It's points, compared to other choices in the codex" but that's still not "no purpose".
lolman1c wrote: I kind of what space marines to be super expensive but also super elite... like their 20pts each but their standard gun is -4 and bypasses invlun saves or something stupid. XD Make them less models that do stupid good damage. Just lore wise it makes no sense how 1 ork is basically the same strength and toughness as a space marine... But at the same time an Ork should be S4 and T4.... But a Marine should be like S7 T7. XD
So essentially you want to break the game?
if you point anything correctly then it doesn't break the game. XD 1 marine could be 2000 points and has a 2+ invlun 50 shots each. XD But seriously, watched a game where every space marine had the stats of a captain and they still got their asses handed to them. XD
Ok.. buy your suggestion was specifically to make Marines 20pts with T7 and S7 and make Bolters AP -4, and ignore Invulns.
You can't balance it with points if you've already set the points
All that said, simplest way to run "movie marines" is just as counts-as Custodes.
Armor isn't worth what GW charges for it. 13 points, all else equal, should buy a 4++ or so, not a 3+. Hence a 9 point model gets a 4 point surcharge that is just free points for the opponent. All armies have this on some units, but not on base troops.
JimOnMars wrote: Armor isn't worth what GW charges for it. 13 points, all else equal, should buy a 4++ or so, not a 3+. Hence a 9 point model gets a 4 point surcharge that is just free points for the opponent. All armies have this on some units, but not on base troops.
13 points for a 4++ would make guardsmen even better against marines.
You can get into really weird design spaces with invuln saves.
The tac marine statline is dead. It tries to live in an almost non-existent balancing space between a battle sister and an intercessor and fails miserably.
gendoikari87 wrote: Marines are gonna suck even harder because everyone will be taking gobs of high ap
Why take low strength low AP weapons anymore if all the basic troops are getting price increases (Ork boyz to 7ppm). Every tournament list for Orkz I have seen recently has gone from 180-240 Boyz to 60-90 with 90 being rare. So we are getting away from TAC lists and getting more into skew lists across the board and at the moment that means Anti-armor is going to get a priority in place as opposed to high ROF low AP weapons.
I'm sorry, how is 180-240 boyz NOT a skew list? 180-240 is not only a HARDCORE skew list, it is also THE most bullgak army to play against ever. Oh yes, I super love to spend 40 minutes in your first movement phase another 20 in your first shooting phase and another 35 in your first combat phase. Screw horde skew lists, I'd rather go against 10 Castellans.
I guess the point alluded you. Horde armies have been a thing since...forever. Sorry that some dillweed slow played you into this much anger but that isn't how most people played. But getting back to the point, if all basic troops are getting nerfed with point increases than you can expect more expensive stuff with better saves/toughness which means more anti-armor weapons.
And I guess my point alluded you, which is weird considering how much more I emphasized it than you did. Horde lists are unhealthy skew lists in the exact same way that every other type of 'spam' list is. They are not in ANY way TAC lists and force armies to skew their responses towards anti-infantry the same way Knight lists push people toward anti-vehicle. Them existing for 'forever' doesn't make them any less awful. The only difference between them and the 'leafblower' lists is that leafblower lists are far kinder. At least those games are over quickly. The 'point' you reiterated in the second comment isn't really even worth addressing, it's just stating something exceptionally obvious. The sky is blue also, if you were curious.
w1zard wrote: The tac marine statline is dead. It tries to live in an almost non-existent balancing space between a battle sister and an intercessor and fails miserably.
Stux wrote: All that said, simplest way to run "movie marines" is just as counts-as Custodes.
If this CA doesn't drop Marine points far enough that's probably going to be the best use for marines in general until 9th comes out. It will certainly cut down on the volume of models I have to take to the LGS if all my Marines are pretending to be Custodes. I'm still hopeful it won't come to that though.
w1zard wrote: The tac marine statline is dead. It tries to live in an almost non-existent balancing space between a battle sister and an intercessor and fails miserably.
Yeah, and Intercessors aren't even good
They need some pro active rule to be ok. If they had exploding somethin on +6 to hit for example, or being able to shot twice if they don't move
w1zard wrote: The tac marine statline is dead. It tries to live in an almost non-existent balancing space between a battle sister and an intercessor and fails miserably.
Yeah, and Intercessors aren't even good
They need some pro active rule to be ok. If they had exploding somethin on +6 to hit for example, or being able to shot twice if they don't move
Shoot twice? That is basically every faction got by certain ways. The only factions who don't get any of those is marines and Custodes, because the GW think Marine hitting on 3s / 2s is "worth more than they pay for 13ppm (marines) or 40ppm (Custodes)"
Despite the fact that the generally low volume of shots and suffering negative modifiers kills off the marine shooting. The only thing that would make marine shoot twice OP is Guilliman, and GW assumes that all marine lists will have every unit enjoy the maximum buff of this OP Primarch when they design marines codexes.
hmm so it is only points costs. I am happy, because I am using paladins and termintors. I wonder what the strike players are going to do though, if their stuff didn't go down in points.
Am also not sure about eldar getting more usable models, they are already too good to begin with, and now GW is giving them access to 100pts drops on big walkers. The GM NDK better cost 200pts or less, if the WK costs 300pts.
Karol wrote: Am also not sure about eldar getting more usable models, they are already too good to begin with, and now GW is giving them access to 100pts drops on big walkers. The GM NDK better cost 200pts or less, if the WK costs 300pts.
Don't think of it like Eldar getting more usable models. Think of it as a few Eldar player getting tricking into swapping out SEVERAL better units to field an WK that wasn't in their list at all before, but is still just as easy to take down as it was before. Because that is what might happen. Even at ~400 after weapons, there are better things an Eldar list can take. This points drop just makes them viable for less-competitive games. It's a win-win for all involved.
With a huge point chop, the Wraithknight becomes vaguely interesting...but it's still woeful compared to a Knight so you won't see them show up on many tables.
I hope they're cheap enough for me to try in narrative games, but I'm not sold yet.
Elbows wrote: With a huge point chop, the Wraithknight becomes vaguely interesting...but it's still woeful compared to a Knight so you won't see them show up on many tables.
I hope they're cheap enough for me to try in narrative games, but I'm not sold yet.
If I get the chance, I want to try out a 3 WK list. Should give a good idea as to whether they're worth anything.
Might also be interesting if Alaitoc becomes cover. Cheaper WKs with 2+ armour could be quite interesting.
Yeah, I don't see Wraithknights going very far with Knights doing a "similar-but-better" job. Without the strong invulnerable save of the Imperial Knight, I don't see them being popular. Especially with the subpar weaponry ontop of that.
Darsath wrote: Yeah, I don't see Wraithknights going very far with Knights doing a "similar-but-better" job. Without the strong invulnerable save of the Imperial Knight, I don't see them being popular. Especially with the subpar weaponry ontop of that.
Knights don't really have psyker support though. Take things for the army that they're in.
Darsath wrote: Yeah, I don't see Wraithknights going very far with Knights doing a "similar-but-better" job. Without the strong invulnerable save of the Imperial Knight, I don't see them being popular. Especially with the subpar weaponry ontop of that.
Knights don't really have psyker support though. Take things for the army that they're in.
Knights can easily have Psycher support. You don't play Knights as your only army. Thought that kind of went without question though, as I'm mostly comparing the roles of the models.
Karol wrote: Am also not sure about eldar getting more usable models, they are already too good to begin with, and now GW is giving them access to 100pts drops on big walkers. The GM NDK better cost 200pts or less, if the WK costs 300pts.
Don't think of it like Eldar getting more usable models. Think of it as a few Eldar player getting tricking into swapping out SEVERAL better units to field an WK that wasn't in their list at all before, but is still just as easy to take down as it was before.
Because that is what might happen. Even at ~400 after weapons, there are better things an Eldar list can take. This points drop just makes them viable for less-competitive games.
It's a win-win for all involved.
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It is much better then an NDK and it is suppose to cost ~300pts, an NDK costs around 250pts and the GK unit has to support in form of doom or soul burst. From my GK perspective a 300pts WK is very playable. I understand that it is not 10 reapers, but not being 10 reapers can be said about many units in the game. No idea why eldar players would want their WK to be equal to an imperial knight. That would be as if marine players asked for a ultramarine castellan.
Darsath wrote: Yeah, I don't see Wraithknights going very far with Knights doing a "similar-but-better" job. Without the strong invulnerable save of the Imperial Knight, I don't see them being popular. Especially with the subpar weaponry ontop of that.
Knights don't really have psyker support though. Take things for the army that they're in.
Knights can easily have Psycher support. You don't play Knights as your only army. Thought that kind of went without question though, as I'm mostly comparing the roles of the models.
Can have and will have 100% of time, is a big difference. Plus you can't really compare eldar psychic powers to anything other factions have.
Darsath wrote: Yeah, I don't see Wraithknights going very far with Knights doing a "similar-but-better" job. Without the strong invulnerable save of the Imperial Knight, I don't see them being popular. Especially with the subpar weaponry ontop of that.
Knights don't really have psyker support though. Take things for the army that they're in.
Knights can easily have Psycher support. You don't play Knights as your only army. Thought that kind of went without question though, as I'm mostly comparing the roles of the models.
The keywords aren’t really there to Prescience or Nightshroud a Knight. There aren’t all that many debuffs that ignore the keyword problem.
Darsath wrote: Yeah, I don't see Wraithknights going very far with Knights doing a "similar-but-better" job. Without the strong invulnerable save of the Imperial Knight, I don't see them being popular. Especially with the subpar weaponry ontop of that.
Knights don't really have psyker support though. Take things for the army that they're in.
Knights can easily have Psycher support. You don't play Knights as your only army. Thought that kind of went without question though, as I'm mostly comparing the roles of the models.
Yes people do, I really wish people would stop assuming everything should be balanced around always having undercosted Guard stuff around to screen, psychic buff and give CP and etc.
Not everyone is playing power up supreme brigade with flavour of the month bolt on unit to be supercharged by Guard then swapped out when it's nerfed.
Even at 300+ points instead of 400+ points I just struggle to think that two Assault 2 guns is worthwhile, or the 2D6 cannon which is basically a shittier version of a gatling cannon from a normal Knight. Ignoring the somewhat meaningless shoulder guns. Maybe a sword and shield is the way to go, but I hate the idea of combat-centric super-heavies. I just see very little to get excited about.
Its still not worth it, without guide a 2 HWC cant even kill a Rhino on average, you'll have to re-roll dice to insure you will come close to killing it. We are talking about a 400+pts model meant to kill things like Rhinos and it cant even kill 1 72pts model without invuls.
Im more happy that i can take the melee one and Skathach into fun games without being handicap by 400pts, now its only 300pts handicap lol.
Amishprn86 wrote: Its still not worth it, without guide a 2 HWC cant even kill a Rhino on average, you'll have to re-roll dice to insure you will come close to killing it. We are talking about a 400+pts model meant to kill things like Rhinos and it cant even kill 1 72pts model without invuls.
Im more happy that i can take the melee one and Skathach into fun games without being handicap by 400pts, now its only 300pts handicap lol.
And when you shoot a RFBC at a Rhino what happens?
Amishprn86 wrote: Its still not worth it, without guide a 2 HWC cant even kill a Rhino on average, you'll have to re-roll dice to insure you will come close to killing it. We are talking about a 400+pts model meant to kill things like Rhinos and it cant even kill 1 72pts model without invuls.
Im more happy that i can take the melee one and Skathach into fun games without being handicap by 400pts, now its only 300pts handicap lol.
And when you shoot a RFBC at a Rhino what happens?
Sorry, what gun? I just dont recognize the abbreviation.
Amishprn86 wrote: Its still not worth it, without guide a 2 HWC cant even kill a Rhino on average, you'll have to re-roll dice to insure you will come close to killing it. We are talking about a 400+pts model meant to kill things like Rhinos and it cant even kill 1 72pts model without invuls.
Im more happy that i can take the melee one and Skathach into fun games without being handicap by 400pts, now its only 300pts handicap lol.
And when you shoot a RFBC at a Rhino what happens?
Sorry, what gun? I just dont recognize the abbreviation.
Martel732 wrote: It actually stands for regular fire battlecannon now.
Yeah the Rapid Fire version which actually avarages less shots than a cattachan normal Battle Cannon Steroids making your tank shoot faster in the 41st Millennium.
Also dont forget, BC are 72" vs HWC of 36", LRBT also have side guns already priced into what i had, so the Knight would be anorher 20-30pts more for those same extra guns.
But where it matters, WK can have 250pts of HQ"s making it re-roll everything, the LRBT can be Catachan.
Its really close from what i can see, The knight tho can move much easier thats the big advantage.
Even without a sword the Knight can still melee with feet just fine in a pinch.
Just a note from reading more current rules leaks and such, it seems the change to -1 army traits is not going to be first turn blanket cover for the army, but an additional +1 to save for being in cover.
This makes sense as having a blanket cover bonus would invalidate the new stratagem they just release granting cover first turn if your going second.
Now you can pop the strat for a +2 save bonus on most of your army which is statistically much closer to -1 to hit in terms of effectiveness for most models.
Also means you don't get anything for standing out in the open, which is perfectly fine in my opinion as you shouldn't be getting any kind of defensive bonus for being out in the open anyway.
Eradicator nova cannon may be worth considering now. It's just a shame that flamers don't ignore cover anymore. If they did, an advancing fireball tallarn eradicator could be a laugh.
MalfunctBot wrote: Also First Blood effectively went from "Be the first to kill a unit" to "kill a unit in the first battleround", which I think is especially neat.
IMO that's how First Blood should always have been. Give both players the chance to kill a unit turn 1 and actually my group have house ruled it for 2 editions now.
Hopefully they Errata this and replace First Blood in all missions to First Strike.
MalfunctBot wrote: Also First Blood effectively went from "Be the first to kill a unit" to "kill a unit in the first battleround", which I think is especially neat.
IMO that's how First Blood should always have been. Give both players the chance to kill a unit turn 1 and actually my group have house ruled it for 2 editions now.
Hopefully they Errata this and replace First Blood in all missions to First Strike.
I've seen a lot of batreps that have been using this alternative since 8th edition dropped. It's a good way to go.
MalfunctBot wrote: Also First Blood effectively went from "Be the first to kill a unit" to "kill a unit in the first battleround", which I think is especially neat.
IMO that's how First Blood should always have been. Give both players the chance to kill a unit turn 1 and actually my group have house ruled it for 2 editions now.
Hopefully they Errata this and replace First Blood in all missions to First Strike.
The point of First blood was only 1 player could get it, it was meant to stop ties.
The problem is in most of the book missions going first is a big advantage. Classic First Blood only adds to the problem. Almost every major tournament packet uses the alternate version, which I think is the right call.
MalfunctBot wrote: Also First Blood effectively went from "Be the first to kill a unit" to "kill a unit in the first battleround", which I think is especially neat.
IMO that's how First Blood should always have been. Give both players the chance to kill a unit turn 1 and actually my group have house ruled it for 2 editions now.
Hopefully they Errata this and replace First Blood in all missions to First Strike.
The point of First blood was only 1 player could get it, it was meant to stop ties.
That might have been the intention but in all reality most of the time it meant that whoever got first turn was up 1 VP with no way to stop it.
MalfunctBot wrote: Also First Blood effectively went from "Be the first to kill a unit" to "kill a unit in the first battleround", which I think is especially neat.
IMO that's how First Blood should always have been. Give both players the chance to kill a unit turn 1 and actually my group have house ruled it for 2 editions now.
Hopefully they Errata this and replace First Blood in all missions to First Strike.
The point of First blood was only 1 player could get it, it was meant to stop ties.
Just because it was operating by design doesn’t mean the design wasn’t dumb in the first place.
Only flyers and huge stuff like knights have problems being in cover, and that's how it should be.
Anything predator sized can claim cover really easily.
What this actually means though is the end of the Alaitoc flying wings. Flyers will become the absolute worst models for Alaitoc, those things will never claim cover except with the stratagem.
That Tau sept trait of "always in cover if you never moved" still looking real bad, lol. Figure Tau got that because GW realized that minus to hit was obscene, now minus to hit armies still get a better fixed trait.
If the Cover rumour is true then Raven Guard, Stygies VIII and Alpha Legion still stay pretty good. I'm glad my opponents won't be grumbling about the -1 while I still can have a durability bonus. Turn one, I still pop Shroudpsalm as usual and my whole army gets +2 to its save across the board for one round. Giving my Skitarii a 2+ in the open and a 1+ to my heavy vehicles. Kastelan Robots ignore cover with their dakka loadout so still nice.
Raven Guard Scouts with camo cloaks get a 1+ armor save in cover after 12" though, that's really stealthy Scouts.
I'm wondering what SW are going to get for that new series of boosts to factions. I'm really hoping it isn't centric to any type of unit.
The 'Stalker' part of it kinda scares me into thinking it involves our Scouts or Reivers though. Seeing both of those units are terrible in terms of other things we can bring.
Hoping for maybe something that boosts our charge distances or such.
Outflanked Wulfen with a bonus to their charge and a reroll? That'd be a spanking.
Aaranis wrote: If the Cover rumour is true then Raven Guard, Stygies VIII and Alpha Legion still stay pretty good. I'm glad my opponents won't be grumbling about the -1 while I still can have a durability bonus. Turn one, I still pop Shroudpsalm as usual and my whole army gets +2 to its save across the board for one round. Giving my Skitarii a 2+ in the open and a 1+ to my heavy vehicles. Kastelan Robots ignore cover with their dakka loadout so still nice.
Raven Guard Scouts with camo cloaks get a 1+ armor save in cover after 12" though, that's really stealthy Scouts.
For me, it entirely depends on the wording, as this change could pan out in one of 3 different ways:
A) your units only get +1 cover while actually in cover (so +2 total). This would be the absolute worst as it would basically not apply to larger models that currently can't get cover easily B) your units count as always being in cover. Better than A, but still not ideal because it really only gives large models the bonus, as smaller models can already get cover easily enough. This is also the lazier option as actually being in cover would not matter for this trait at all, and thus would make Prepared Positions pointless. C) both A & B. I really hope it is this as it would benefit units regardless of size, while still encouraging units to attempt to be in cover
CatGotYourLas wrote: I'm wondering what SW are going to get for that new series of boosts to factions. I'm really hoping it isn't centric to any type of unit.
The 'Stalker' part of it kinda scares me into thinking it involves our Scouts or Reivers though. Seeing both of those units are terrible in terms of other things we can bring.
Hoping for maybe something that boosts our charge distances or such.
Outflanked Wulfen with a bonus to their charge and a reroll? That'd be a spanking.
Aaranis wrote: If the Cover rumour is true then Raven Guard, Stygies VIII and Alpha Legion still stay pretty good. I'm glad my opponents won't be grumbling about the -1 while I still can have a durability bonus. Turn one, I still pop Shroudpsalm as usual and my whole army gets +2 to its save across the board for one round. Giving my Skitarii a 2+ in the open and a 1+ to my heavy vehicles. Kastelan Robots ignore cover with their dakka loadout so still nice.
Raven Guard Scouts with camo cloaks get a 1+ armor save in cover after 12" though, that's really stealthy Scouts.
For me, it entirely depends on the wording, as this change could pan out in one of 3 different ways:
A) your units only get +1 cover while actually in cover (so +2 total). This would be the absolute worst as it would basically not apply to larger models that currently can't get cover easily
B) your units count as always being in cover. Better than A, but still not ideal because it really only gives large models the bonus, as smaller models can already get cover easily enough. This is also the lazier option as actually being in cover would not matter for this trait at all, and thus would make Prepared Positions pointless.
C) both A & B. I really hope it is this as it would benefit units regardless of size, while still encouraging units to attempt to be in cover
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I actually hope in many ways it is B as that already is what one of the Tau sept tenants is. Well technically it's actually an even weaker version as they have to stay still to get cover.
BoomWolf wrote: Pretty sure its A, and that's actually the best case for AL and RG, as unlike eldar and admech-they dont get CT bonus to the big stuff anyway.
RIP Stygies, then. Mars gets 2 canticles, so it gets the Stygies bonus just from having Shroudpsalm (almost guaranteed with Cawl), plus another bonus.
BoomWolf wrote: Pretty sure its A, and that's actually the best case for AL and RG, as unlike eldar and admech-they dont get CT bonus to the big stuff anyway.
Unfortunately, I think you are right. It makes sense for the bonus to apply only if you actually have cover already. It also jives well with Prepared Positions and RG/AL as you mention. But unfortunately it would kill Alaitoc as an army trait (not to mention any hopes that my non-Shining Spear bikes would ever see the board again). Would have much preferred it to be B or C.
BoomWolf wrote: Pretty sure its A, and that's actually the best case for AL and RG, as unlike eldar and admech-they dont get CT bonus to the big stuff anyway.
RIP Stygies, then. Mars gets 2 canticles, so it gets the Stygies bonus just from having Shroudpsalm (almost guaranteed with Cawl), plus another bonus.
RIP? You get a +2 armor 1st round even on your vehicles...With lucky rolls/strats you get it again...
BoomWolf wrote: Pretty sure its A, and that's actually the best case for AL and RG, as unlike eldar and admech-they dont get CT bonus to the big stuff anyway.
RIP Stygies, then. Mars gets 2 canticles, so it gets the Stygies bonus just from having Shroudpsalm (almost guaranteed with Cawl), plus another bonus.
RIP? You get a +2 armor 1st round even on your vehicles...With lucky rolls/strats you get it again...
Cover doesn't stack, right? So you'd at best get +2 once, ever (on the big stuff)...
Oh wait, A is proposing that it does stack; sorry. For some reason I thought Option A was "always count as being in cover" basically. My b!
BoomWolf wrote: Pretty sure its A, and that's actually the best case for AL and RG, as unlike eldar and admech-they dont get CT bonus to the big stuff anyway.
RIP Stygies, then. Mars gets 2 canticles, so it gets the Stygies bonus just from having Shroudpsalm (almost guaranteed with Cawl), plus another bonus.
RIP? You get a +2 armor 1st round even on your vehicles...With lucky rolls/strats you get it again...
Cover doesn't stack, right? So you'd at best get +2 once, ever (on the big stuff)...
Oh wait, A is proposing that it does stack; sorry. For some reason I thought Option A was "always count as being in cover" basically. My b!
Thats what I thought...I mean ye you get it for only one round but one round of 1+/4++ robots or 2+ armor 8point models...That sounds VERY strong to me...
Especially since im playing Necrons and I dont know what to do other than spam even more Destroyers/DDAs which is just boring...
Already the +cover strat was a big „F you“ to Necron players as everyone got the special rule of 6s always wound, necrons got a „-1AP“ on Gauss...Now with armor stacking Necrons are EVEN MORE fcked than all the others...
Only flyers and huge stuff like knights have problems being in cover, and that's how it should be.
Anything predator sized can claim cover really easily.
What this actually means though is the end of the Alaitoc flying wings. Flyers will become the absolute worst models for Alaitoc, those things will never claim cover except with the stratagem.
You're playing the cover rules wrong. You should check the FAQs and the BRB before you play again. It's almost impossible for and vehicle bigger than a dreadnought to get cover unless you have terrain speifically designed for that purpose.
I am a big proponent of some of the negatives to hit being shuffled over to cover. Which honestly makes sense from a gameplay perspective anyway. Modifiers to hit should be linked to psychic powers and maybe stratagems (whether they be positive or negative).
Also anyway one who plays Iron Warriors, Emperor's Children, or Imperial Fists is looking at the increased prevalence of cover and licking their chops. I know my boys are eagerly polishing the ol' blast masters
akaean wrote: I am a big proponent of some of the negatives to hit being shuffled over to cover. Which honestly makes sense from a gameplay perspective anyway. Modifiers to hit should be linked to psychic powers and maybe stratagems (whether they be positive or negative).
Also anyway one who plays Iron Warriors, Emperor's Children, or Imperial Fists is looking at the increased prevalence of cover and licking their chops. I know my boys are eagerly polishing the ol' blast masters
I agree that Alaitoc, RG and AL traits make more sense as some kind of cover bonus both in fluff and gameplay.
But I guarantee you that your Noise Marines were eagerly "polishing" their "blast masters" long before this change was rumoured.
I agree that Alaitoc, RG and AL traits make more sense as some kind of cover bonus both in fluff and gameplay. But I guarantee you that your Noise Marines were eagerly "polishing" their "blast masters" long before this change was rumoured.
ahah... that is a fair assessment. But now they are polishing the long smooth shaft of their blast masters even more feverishly and with more intensity. While their depravity may have known no bounds before, their depravity now knows even fewer bounds!
jaxor1983 wrote: Any unit is granted cover by a ruin, as long as every model within the unit is within the cover (toe in) and 50% obscured.
Nope. ENTIRELY on or in. Whole model has to be inside the base of the ruin. You been playin wrong brosef, gotta keep up on your FAQs. BRB Errata for pg 248.
jaxor1983 wrote: Any unit is granted cover by a ruin, as long as every model within the unit is within the cover (toe in) and 50% obscured.
Nope. ENTIRELY on or in. Whole model has to be inside the base of the ruin. You been playin wrong brosef, gotta keep up on your FAQs. BRB Errata for pg 248.
That's the UNIT entirely in, as in every model needs to be in cover. Not the individual models' bases needs to be entirely contained within the cover.
jaxor1983 wrote: Any unit is granted cover by a ruin, as long as every model within the unit is within the cover (toe in) and 50% obscured.
Nope. ENTIRELY on or in. Whole model has to be inside the base of the ruin. You been playin wrong brosef, gotta keep up on your FAQs. BRB Errata for pg 248.
That's the UNIT entirely in, as in every model needs to be in cover. Not the individual models' bases needs to be entirely contained within the cover.
jaxor1983 wrote: Any unit is granted cover by a ruin, as long as every model within the unit is within the cover (toe in) and 50% obscured.
Nope. ENTIRELY on or in. Whole model has to be inside the base of the ruin. You been playin wrong brosef, gotta keep up on your FAQs. BRB Errata for pg 248.
That's the UNIT entirely in, as in every model needs to be in cover. Not the individual models' bases needs to be entirely contained within the cover.
I think these two quotes from the BRBFAQ say it Pretty Clearly:
"Q: Do units that are not Infantry (Vehicles, Monsters,
etc.) gain the benefit of cover from woods, ruins etc. if they are at
least 50% obscured by that piece of terrain but are not actually
on or within it?
A: No. Unless they are Infantry, such a unit must meet
the two following conditions to gain the benefit of cover:
• All of its models must be either on or within
the terrain.
• The unit must be at least 50% obscured from the point
of view of the firer (note that it doesn’t matter what is
obscuring the target, only that it is obscured)."
And
"Q: Can you clarify what the difference is between ‘wholly within’
and ‘within’ for rules purposes?
A: If a rule says it affects units/models that are ‘wholly
within’ then it only applies if the entire unit/model is
within. If it just says ‘within’, however, then it applies so
long as any part of the unit/model is within. "
So I believe the BRBFAQ agrees with your assessment that as long as any part of the vehicle is in the ruin and it is at least 50% obscured you get the cover bonus.
McGibs wrote: A: If a rule says it affects units/models that are ‘wholly
within’ then it only applies if the entire unit/model is within
This literally says the entire model has to be within. Not a toe. Not a milimeter of the base. The entire model.
But the quoted FAQ just said:
"Q: Do units that are not Infantry (Vehicles, Monsters, etc.) gain the benefit of cover from woods, ruins etc. if they are at least 50% obscured by that piece of terrain but are not actually on or within it?
A: No. Unless they are Infantry, such a unit must meet the two following conditions to gain the benefit of cover:
• All of its models must be either on or within the terrain.
• The unit must be at least 50% obscured from the point of view of the firer (note that it doesn’t matter what is obscuring the target, only that it is obscured)."
ie, to get cover, the model has to be within (not "wholly within"). therefore, a toe is enough.
Terrain and Cover
.......
If a unit is entirely on or within any terrain
feature, add 1 to its models’ saving throws
against shooting attacks to represent the
cover received from the terrain (invulnerable
saves are unaffected). Units gain no benefit
from cover in the Fight phase.
Now re-reading it, and the Faq that someone posted im on the side of "Toe in counts" as long as every model in the unit has a toe in, single unit models will count as toes in as well.
Unless they mean within in as in there are 4 walls with 0 bases and you are within those walls.
Indeed a single model *unit* is ENTIRELY within as long as only part of it is in/on cover. Because the 1 model of the *unit* is in/on, therefore the entire *unit* is. The rules for non-Infantry do not say WHOLLY within, per the FAQ, therefore single model units do not need to be WHOLLY within to be ENTIRELY within.
The confusion comes from GW using both words I've used in all CAPS above. Entirely and Wholly can be synonymous, but in this case, GW has specified they have subtle, but very different uses.
But at any rate, it is still very difficult to achieve these conditions on many tables in many different areas. Some stores just do not have enough Ruins with tall enough "rubble" to cover 50% of even a Rhino. In my experience, it's either all or nothing, meaning the terrain isn't tall enough to cover 50%, or it's so tall that it outright blocks LoS entirely (thus making cover pointless)
That is why I am biased towards hoping the -1 to be hit traits become automatic cover outside 12", with the added +1 if you are actually in cover (so +2 total) If it is just the added cover if actually in cover, it basically does nothing for most big models.
jaxor1983 wrote: Any unit is granted cover by a ruin, as long as every model within the unit is within the cover (toe in) and 50% obscured.
Nope. ENTIRELY on or in. Whole model has to be inside the base of the ruin. You been playin wrong brosef, gotta keep up on your FAQs. BRB Errata for pg 248.
That's the UNIT entirely in, as in every model needs to be in cover. Not the individual models' bases needs to be entirely contained within the cover.
Yeah it's a subtle but important distinction.
If the single model unit isn't on the base, the unit isn't entirely in either. Of course there's no way to prove that. This is another case of GWfaqs making things worse rather than better.
Regardless, it still ends up the same. Cover is almost impossible to get on most tables for anything bigger than a dreadnought. Even being toe-in, being 50% obscured is very difficult with most ruins. Especially if the enemy can move and shoot. It would be easier than wholly within, but not by much.
Can I also point out how irritating it is that the example given in the FAQ doesn't use or address the word 'entirely' at all? So either way you're pretty much guessing what they mean by 'entirely' when that question would have been a perfect place to spell it out. Is 'entirely' synonymous with 'wholly'? If it's not why include it at all when your definition of 'within' would then make the qualifier 'entirely' pointlessly redundant.
Bharring wrote: Well, to be fair, a freaking huge Titan should't get cover hiding behind a barn that covers it's ankle.
Well no, but if you can see the Titan's toe only and the rest of it is behind a building (but not in the building itself) it should get cover. The 50% obscured vehicle rule was a good one, and I don't like how vehicles basically can't ever get cover now.
Wibe wrote: I really jope they don't lower the keeper of secrets to 150pts.. I agree that they are not great, but cheaper than a prince is a bit much...
Rumors have the LoC at 235 or so. Good chance the KoS is in the same ratio of point descrease.
Reemule wrote: A lot of ambiguity would have been cleared up if GW has labeled Ruins as buildings... Not ruins, and made that clear that a ruin was still a building.
gendoikari87 wrote: How long till the whole brb is replaced by faqs and errata and is totally useless
I was considering this earlier, and it is already the case. I can't read the rules and trust them because I don't know if they are true or not, at least without checking faqs.
jaxor1983 wrote: Any unit is granted cover by a ruin, as long as every model within the unit is within the cover (toe in) and 50% obscured.
Nope. ENTIRELY on or in. Whole model has to be inside the base of the ruin. You been playin wrong brosef, gotta keep up on your FAQs. BRB Errata for pg 248.
That's the UNIT entirely in, as in every model needs to be in cover. Not the individual models' bases needs to be entirely contained within the cover.
Yeah it's a subtle but important distinction.
If the single model unit isn't on the base, the unit isn't entirely in either. Of course there's no way to prove that. This is another case of GWfaqs making things worse rather than better.
Regardless, it still ends up the same. Cover is almost impossible to get on most tables for anything bigger than a dreadnought. Even being toe-in, being 50% obscured is very difficult with most ruins. Especially if the enemy can move and shoot. It would be easier than wholly within, but not by much.
Can I also point out how irritating it is that the example given in the FAQ doesn't use or address the word 'entirely' at all? So either way you're pretty much guessing what they mean by 'entirely' when that question would have been a perfect place to spell it out. Is 'entirely' synonymous with 'wholly'? If it's not why include it at all when your definition of 'within' would then make the qualifier 'entirely' pointlessly redundant.
Every time I think they're starting to get it...
It's extremely easy actually. I always have all my monsters in cover first turn with my nids and my brother always manages to put all his vehicles in cover first turn (except for flyers).
Reread the FAQ, you don't need to cover it with the ruin, anything counts. If i put the toe of my fex in cover and then i have a neurothrope in front of it, that's a fex in cover.
If my predator has a toe in cover and a couple of intercessors in front, that predator is in cover. If you are really good a this, you can even use enemy models to obscure your models.
It's a bit more difficult with guards since leman russes are big and guards small, but not nearly as difficult as covering a wave serpent.
However if they follow Jormungandr, it will not apply to models with FLY keyword. So, no 2+ Hemlocks. Would be my guess.
This would make Alaitoc worthless as jet bikes, grav tanks, etc all have fly. If that happens, Everyone will play Ulthwe for the free 6+++
Not entirely true.
Wraithguards, Wraithblades, Dark Reapers, Wraithknights, Guardians, etc. all do not have fly.
Silly knee-jerk reactions aside, this would make the trait balanced in that you actually consider what trait is best for your army.
I made an Alaitoc Windrider Host themed army in 7th edition when the codex came out. I have 12 x jet bikes, 3x vypers, and a full seer council on bikes in addition to my Skyrunner Autarch. Alaitoc would do nothing for that portion of my Army, so why would I use that trait other than the fact that its how my army is painted and it matches the fluff?
The other CWE traits (assuming they are not adjusted in any manner) would all continue to affect the entire Army in some way.
Saim-Hann: Reroll charges across the army + bonus to bikers for moving with heavy weapons
Iyanden: Can't lose more than 1 to morale + bonus to damage chart models
Biel-tan: Shuriken Weapons reroll 1's + bonus LD to aspects
Ulthwe: Army wide 6+++
Alaitoc: Non-flyers get +1 cover (although it remains to be seen whether this cover would be applied always or as a bonus when in cover)
You're absolutely correct in that it would make CWE players think about the best trait for their Army, but it would make the Alaitoc train pretty tough to take over other choices (especially if the cover save is just a bonus when already in cover)
I could see Alaitoc not applying to units with the FLYER battlefield role, but to deny it from applying to units with the FLY keyword takes it away fro half the army (or in my personal case 95% of my army)
I hope CA makes Windriders less than 20ppm (even upgraded) if they plan to remove all decent traits for them. Saim-Hann is a joke for them as they do NOT wish to charge, nor do you want Scatter lasers on them (Shuricannon benefits from BF and statistically kills more models) Iyanden does nothing for them Biel-tan is an offensive bonus only (and they NEED a defensive bonus at their current price point) Ulthwe is a joke (seriously 6+++ does nothing to keep them alive) and If Alaitoc only grants additional cover to non-Fly models, WRs will officially be dead
