Alpharius and I were having a conversation yesterday and he encouraged me to post something that was said in order to gauge the opinions of everyone else here:

Does it concern you that new Codices breed a sense of dread, and that conversations are dominated about what we're going to lose and what will be nerfed. I remember when the conversations were with people looking forward to a new Codex, rather than those wishing it would take longer.

There are exceptions, everyone wanted a new Eldar/Ork Codex, as they were armies that simply didn't work any more, and Dark Eldar players want a new Codex so they can get a half-way decent set of new models, and I suspect Necron players want the same so that they can see how GW expands the line, but everyone else is dreading their new Codex. Wolf players are scared that it'll be like the Dark Angel/Chaos Codices. Tyranid players are wondering what parts of their list ('Fexes, 'Stealers or both) are about to be nerfed. I know Daemon players won't like their next revision (assuming they ever get one) as we're bound to see Special Characters removed and things like Blood Crushers get kicked to the curb.

This is why I hate the 40K Codices and love things like Planetstrike. Planetstrike affects the way you play 40K, not how you're allowed to use your army. I despise the Guard Codex because it is boring, bland, and changed every rule (every rule) for no apparent (or good) reason, but didn't add any flavour nor fix any problems (in some cases - Stormies and Ogryn - it made them worse). Planetstrike though opens up a whole new avenue for games, and takes us away from the monotony of Kill Points and Victory Points which, IMO, are dull and boring ways to play the game.

This game needs to have a story behind it otherwise it risks becoming a mathhammer hell where you number-crunch your single killer build from your Codex (Lash/Oblits, Nob Bikers, Vulcan/AssTermy, Fateweaver/Bloodcrushers, MechVet/ValkVet/Executioners) and then play games to score points, where outcomes are unrealistic (ha! I killed heaps of your tiny Guard squads and beat you even though I have 1 model left!) and games are unbalanced where they should be balanced.

More Apoc and PS-like expansions, less Codex redesign. Codices just piss people off. Planetstrike can't 'hurt' anyone.



So what are everyone else's opinions on this? When Planetstrike and things like it come out, there are two camps usually - those that think its great and can't wait to dive in (like me), and those who aren't fussed and probably won't play it. But no one complains about it. There's no one lamenting the end of time or threatening to quit the game because there's an expansion with buildings in it, or a set way of playing mega-games. Yet for Codices... how many Chaos players are no longer Chaos players because of the current mess of a Codex? How many Guard players let out a collective 'uhhgh...' when they saw that the Codex was no better or worse than the last one and had every rule changed for no reason. Or the Wolf players talking about the Russ Exterminators being taken away, the LatD players who lost their armies, the Marines players who are sick of Vulcan and so on and so forth?

I'm interested to hear what y'all think.

I'm still waiting for your IG codex review. Do you really think it's worse than the Spiky Marines one?


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And allow me to add that yes, fluffy armies need to be more viable and powergaming of the obscene level we have now should be toned down a lot. Look at the old codicies; some of them were ridiculously cheesy in their day, but they were fun and fluffy. How do I justify a Khorne army being led by Slaaneshi Lash DPs? Do they scare people into going where they want them to?

With any luck, this is just GW's hitting-a-brick-wall phase. D&D's had it recently with the release of 4th edition, which is basically World of Warcraft without a computer.

Not as bad as the 'Chaos' one, no. But that's a subject for another thread.


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On that line of Slaanesh-leading-Khorne, there's a thread in army lists for an 'Iron Warrior' army that consists of a Nurgle Lord leading a Tzeentchian force. What's 'Iron Warriors' about that???

When I read it my heart just sank.

That's what you said three months ago when it came out.

I haven't seen that thread yet.


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Some damage to the fluff is just plain stupid and laps over into the game. Havocs with the Mark of Khorne? Ok, so he used to have Havocs and big cannons, but after the last codex where World Eaters were a purely close combat army, it's just silly.

And I miss Blood Frenzy. It was annoying, but it was fun and what's more, it made sense.


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Something I really worry about is the 6th edition Space Marine codex. There is no emoticon for what I would feel if BA, DA, BT and SW became like the Mark of Chaos.

But then, we can have Black Templar Devastators and Space Wolves with Death Company.

I think you're way off-base with your Guard codex thoughts; by and large its a significant improvement and I'm willing to bet that most IG players prefer it to any other IG codex beforehand. Nearly everything negative you wrote about the new codex I can readily apply to the old one (boring, bland, etc); units like the Valkyrie, Penal Legion, Vet Squads, Marbo, and the lumbering behemoth rule added a lot more fun to Guard lists that they simply did not have before. And never before has there been more of an opportunity to field a wide range of diverse lists especially since this is the first book where IG can pick and choose different HQ's and troops as opposed to having to field a company HQ squad and platoons.

Both expansions and codices potentially 'piss people off' but people in general don't like to change as we're creatures of habit and not to mention we have to buy new stuff like bastions and Valks to really exercise the coolness of the new content. But I don't think this is a problem since having the same ten year old army gets dull; if anything people are just tired of waiting and not knowing what to expect via GW's horrible marketing. You can always convert and proxy the new stuff also.

If anything, not having updates and new rulebooks on a consistent and timely basis is more annoying than waiting over a decade for a proper rules update like what the IG was and how DE still is.

Fluff wise thats entirely up to the players involved but its going to be constantly changing and retconned since its really not all that important to GW; or at least not as important as it is to fluff nutters. As a Star Wars fan who saw just about all of his Expanded Universe reading get retconned once the prequels arrived; I fully understand that fluff is malleable and not set in stone (Tau, Necrons, etc). GW fluff is pretty overrated imo anyway and could use some changes; sure its cool but at its core its just senseless epic sci-fi war designed to sell toys and written at a 12 year old level.

Who the hell wants to wait in this day and age for new stuff? If anything people dread that it takes so damn long for GW to update and introduce new rules especially in terms of FAQs that all new rulebooks inevitably need (cough IG FAQ) - they're just PDF files after all.

I somewhat agree, and somewhat disagree with your original post.

I've run an online game for the last 12 years. It is not at all easy to 'balance' games with this many variables. And, no one is ever happy about what they get, they're only ever upset about what they lose. One guiding principle for game design should be "don't take things away". Change what they cost, but don't ever take something away - that's what pisses people off. On my game, I made this mistake once, and lost a good portion of the playerbase. Even though I firmly believe that what I took away made the game better in the long run, I wouldn't do it again - the loss of players is just too great.

I think this is the first place where new codexes have failed. Rather than reprice options, they have taken things away. And, our human response is to be upset about what we have lost, rather than evaluating what we have gained. In some cases, entire armies have been removed (LatD, Kroot Mercs), and countless options invalidated under the new codexes and design approach.

Furthermore, they've made some really schizophrenic decisions. On one hand, they cancelled 'Chapter Approved', under the pretense that having new options come out regularly would make it too hard for competitive gamers to have balanced tournaments. On the other hand, they have released codexes that clearly lacked playtesting and that yield some options that are just outright better than others.

But, excluding a handful of mistakes that got through, I think the new codexes work well, especially those written with 5th edition in mind (I believe that this started after the Eldar codex - if that makes it Dark Angels, or Orks, or Chaos Marines, well, whichever of those three was next).

I think that, more than anything, the codexes need proper QA. Not "playtesting", because that implies that they're playing. QA should be methodical. It should be process-based. It should involve established baselines, and unit testing as well as playing whole games. But I'm sure that these things go against GW's business model of making new stuff good - a business model that has failed as much as it has succeeded (cases: Beasts of Nurgle, Possessed Marines, Chaos Spawn, Ork Tankbustas, Vanguard, and so on). Even if the goal was to make the new units 'better' by some amount, obviously some additional QA could have improved the odds of succeeding at this.

I agree that expansions like planetstrike and apocalypse are good, because they give without taking anything away. But, I don't know if they're that good, because they're not the base game. They take more prep time, or more stuff to play. While 40k as a whole is lacking some balance, I think that the stratagems in these systems are even worse - to the point where some (Flank March) tend to get banned entirely. If you have a group of friends who game together regularly, having the expansions is a good addition. If you're going to game stores for pick-up games, I think they're not as good as playing the base game.

Redbeard wrote:One guiding principle for game design should be "don't take things away".

When GW has overreached with armies having too much, I think this is a proper response. As 3rd showed, there is a tendency to give players far too much freedom and options, to the point that armies have no proper focus or useful differentiation from other armies. So the real lesson for GW's designers should be "don't make new things" - that way, there won't be a need to take things away later.

I disagree very strongly about the newer Codices lacking playtesting. I would submit that that things like Possessed, Chaos Spawn, Vanguard, Stormtroopers, and Ogryns were carefully playtested and made into overpriced units *intentionally*. None of the above are "core" to the armies in question, but all of them exist as related "flavor" units. So GW basically put their foot down on Chaos Marines and decreed that basic and Cult Marines would be good, and thus are Scoring Troops at reasonable prices, whereas Possessed are somewhat overpriced and non-Scoring Elites. Similarly, GW decided that IG Platoons and Veterans would be good Scoring Troops, while Stormtroopers and Ogryns would be overpriced, non-Scoring Elites. By slapping a 15-25+% points penalty and making a unit non-Scoring, with no potential to become Scoring (see Sternguard vs Vanguard), GW does a better job of defining what each army army does well than if they made each choice equally playable.

The flip side of this is why SM Rhinos, Razorbacks, and Drop Pods are so very cheap points-wise, especially compared to the Chimera. GW *wants* SM players to be full-transport (and not just because of the model sales). Cutting points costs by 15-25% and making them broadly available does an good job here as well.

I think the goodness of Apoc, PS, and PE depends entirely on the group using them in a reasonable, cooperative way. They're not intended for competitive stranger play, so shouldn't be used that way.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

Redbeard wrote:One guiding principle for game design should be "don't take things away".

When GW has overreached with armies having too much, I think this is a proper response. As 3rd showed, there is a tendency to give players far too much freedom and options, to the point that armies have no proper focus or useful differentiation from other armies. So the real lesson for GW's designers should be "don't make new things" - that way, there won't be a need to take things away later.

There's a difference - in my mind at least - between taking away wargear options (not a big deal) and taking away an entire set of models. LatD and Kroot Mercs, as big examples, Chaos legions as another.

In a game where weapons are required to by WYSIWYG, invalidating weapon layouts means people are left with unusable models. I agree that sometimes a game designer realizes that they went too far, or that they want to pursue a new direction. The more you can do this without impacting player's stuff (in this case, collections) the better a designer you are. Outright invalidating armies is the exact opposite of that.

I disagree very strongly about the newer Codices lacking playtesting. I would submit that that things like Possessed, Chaos Spawn, Vanguard, Stormtroopers, and Ogryns were carefully playtested and made into overpriced units *intentionally*.

I don't buy this, at all. Either it shows a complete lack of understanding of point-based game systems, or faulty playtesting. I'd rather think that they erred on the side of the latter.

If you're selling a game that says that it uses points to ensure that the sides are fair, and then you deliberately make stupidly weak units, you're undermining the whole concept.

By slapping a 15-25+% points penalty and making a unit non-Scoring, with no potential to become Scoring (see Sternguard vs Vanguard), GW does a better job of defining what each army army does well than if they made each choice equally playable.

No, what they do is ensure that the bad stuff doesn't get played, and therefore, doesn't sell well. This is neither good game design, nor good market strategy.

If you want to define what an army doesn't do well, you don't do it by providing units that do it at elevated prices, you do it by providing units that do it badly at prices appropriate for doing it badly. Look at Kroot as a good example of this. Tau don't do assault. Kroot are the best assault units that the Tau get, and they're pretty bad at it - and yet they're still a decent option in the army, because they don't cost much. Crappy troops should be cheap.

Vanguard are a mistake. You cannot even try to justify such great new models, with fluff describing how these veteran marines do this cool stuff, only to make them bad at the cool stuff they can do.

Furthermore, it's not always that the army in question isn't meant to do what the bad unit does. Flash Gitz are a great example of this. You could claim that orks aren't meant to be shooty, but that answer ignores the fact that ork shooting is really good, overall. Shootas and Lootas are amazing shooty units. Flash gitz aren't a bad shooty unit in a codex that's not meant to be shooty, they're supposed to be the best shooters in an army that's actually decently shooty, and they fail at it.

Forcing a view of 'what an army should be' based on point cost, instead of available options, is just outright poor game design. If points are really used to ensure that when two players agree to play a game their forces are equal, then applying point penalties just hamstrings that whole concept. In an ideal world, I should be able to pick my units entirely based on what models and fluff I like, and put them on the field and have an even chance of winning against an equally skilled opponent. We'll never have that ideal world, but good game design strives towards it.


Besides, your argument falls apart the moment you try to tell someone that the reason Vanguard suck is because GW wants to define that veteran marines aren't good at launching assaults... it's a flimsy argument.

H.B.M.C. wrote:Alpharius and I were having a conversation yesterday and he encouraged me to post something that was said in order to gauge the opinions of everyone else here:

Does it concern you that new Codices breed a sense of dread, and that conversations are dominated about what we're going to lose and what will be nerfed. I remember when the conversations were with people looking forward to a new Codex, rather than those wishing it would take longer.

Here I have to say "Yes, I agree."

And until H.B.M.C. wrote it, I didn't even realize it!

JohnHwangDD wrote: As 3rd showed, there is a tendency to give players far too much freedom and options, to the point that armies have no proper focus or useful differentiation from other armies. So the real lesson for GW's designers should be "don't make new things" - that way, there won't be a need to take things away later.

I disagree very strongly about the newer Codices lacking playtesting. I would submit that that things like Possessed, Chaos Spawn, Vanguard, Stormtroopers, and Ogryns were carefully playtested and made into overpriced units *intentionally*. None of the above are "core" to the armies in question, but all of them exist as related "flavor" units. So GW basically put their foot down on Chaos Marines and decreed that basic and Cult Marines would be good, and thus are Scoring Troops at reasonable prices, whereas Possessed are somewhat overpriced and non-Scoring Elites. Similarly, GW decided that IG Platoons and Veterans would be good Scoring Troops, while Stormtroopers and Ogryns would be overpriced, non-Scoring Elites. By slapping a 15-25+% points penalty and making a unit non-Scoring, with no potential to become Scoring (see Sternguard vs Vanguard), GW does a better job of defining what each army army does well than if they made each choice equally playable.

Come on John!

That's just crazy talk, and some rather convoluted 'logic' to boot!

I don't think GW planned it that way at all.

I mean, roll on a random table for a power, after deployment, and you could end up with something you can't use?

Planetstrike affects everyone. Therefore it is more well received.

Codices affect only a particular player-base either well or horribly. Therefore leaving one particular group screwed or the rest of the groups screwed.

I for one am looking forward to a new Tau codex.

ObiFett wrote:I for one am looking forward to a new Tau codex.

Because it can't get any worse?

Because if the Tau get the same boost as the Guard they'll be unstoppable. Which will becoming boring.

Seriously though,

Have you ever considered that boring and bland is their style. That a ground pounder grunt, artillery, and slow Tank army are going to be boring because they are not special ops. If you want exitement then you need an army that runs a higher risk of getting completely tabled. A special ops army. An army of specialists.

Or could be familiarity breeds contempt and you've just become overly familiar with said army. Not saying this is what has happened, just putting out ideas for why your feeling negative on the subject of a codices but positive about things that put your army in a new enviroment.

To put it more clearly. A codex changes "your" army where planet strike changes just the scenario. One forces a change on something that you've become possessive of where the other doesn't.

Just an Idea

focusedfire wrote:
Seriously though,

Have you ever considered that boring and bland is their style. That a ground pounder grunt, artillery, and slow Tank army are going to be boring because they are not special ops. If you want exitement then you need an army that runs a higher risk of getting completely tabled. A special ops army. An army of specialists.

I fail to see how a massive army of average Joes with nothing more than lasguns and flak armour charging across a battlefield supported by hugeass tanks isn't exciting.

Guard = Topic for another thread.

Stay on target people.

What I'm really stunned by is the fact that GW doesn't release all five SM codicies to keep them consistent with each other. That way, BA, BT, DA, and SW players get their 3+ Storm Shields and can stop whining.

I have to say I always get excited when new expansions come out because it usually means new models get released and I always enjoy seeing what they're releasing next. Also, the expansions just sound really fun and interesting. I have to say that Planetary Empires has me pitching a tent in anticipation.

As far as codexes go, I generally look forward to them. I used to play Orks so the build up to their release was positive for me. I do agree though that GW takes a little too long to put out new stuff.
I

Redbeard wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:

Redbeard wrote:One guiding principle for game design should be "don't take things away".

When GW has overreached with armies having too much, I think this is a proper response.

There's a difference - in my mind at least - between taking away wargear options (not a big deal) and taking away an entire set of models. LatD and Kroot Mercs, as big examples, Chaos legions as another.

LatD has the most legitimate complpaint, and is actually worthy of a proper Codex - you'll get relatively little argument from me there.

Kroot Mercs was a WD list, so it's fine to go away, although adding a few more Kroot options in the next Tau Codex would be sufficient to capture the gist of the army.

Legions were an abomination, and complaints of "losing an army" are largely unfounded as well as falling on deaf ears. They lost unbalancing rules that resulted in broken, unimaginative armies. I think if you were to ask the GW designers what they think their worst Codex was, CSM Legions would probably rise to the top of the heap in a hurry.

Redbeard wrote:The more you can do this without impacting player's stuff (in this case, collections) the better a designer you are.

I completely agree that it's better not to invalidate stuff, when possible. But if they need to clean house, then they should do so unabashedly.

Redbeard wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:I disagree very strongly about the newer Codices lacking playtesting. I would submit that that things like Possessed, Chaos Spawn, Vanguard, Stormtroopers, and Ogryns were carefully playtested and made into overpriced units *intentionally*.

I don't buy this, at all. Either it shows a complete lack of understanding of point-based game systems, or faulty playtesting. I'd rather think that they erred on the side of the latter.

If you're selling a game that says that it uses points to ensure that the sides are fair, and then you deliberately make stupidly weak units, you're undermining the whole concept.

No way. The balance is so far off, there is NO way that GW designers did not recognize that Possessed, Spawn, Vangaurd, Stormtroopers, and Ogryns were horrible for the points. Especially when the rest of the stuff is so tight. The idea that it just so happened that these non-core concept units "just happened" to be very inefficient is not possible when the rest of the books are so tight.; If it were up to chane as incompetence, then you'd see huge swings in the other Troops choices, along with some for the non-core units being hugely efficient/overpowered. Ergo, the only sensible conclusion is that GW actually does jnow what they';re doing and that the imbalance is ntentional.

Redbeard wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote: By slapping a 15-25+% points penalty and making a unit non-Scoring, with no potential to become Scoring (see Sternguard vs Vanguard), GW does a better job of defining what each army army does well than if they made each choice equally playable.

No, what they do is ensure that the bad stuff doesn't get played, and therefore, doesn't sell well. This is neither good game design, nor good market strategy.

If you want to define what an army doesn't do well, you don't do it by providing units that do it at elevated prices, you do it by providing units that do it badly at prices appropriate for doing it badly.

Apparently, you and GW disagree :p
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more...

The "bad" stuff won't be played in tournaments, and probably isn't intended to be played there. Some have claimed that GW is prebuilding tournament army lists with the way they bias points costs, and I wouldn't doubt it. But the stuff is passably OK for casual play against other "soft" lists, and that's probably what was intended.

If something is overcosted, that's essentially the same as doing something badly at a good cost. Yeah, you're trying to split a hair, but I see it as the other face of the same coin.

Redbeard wrote: Look at Kroot as a good example of this. Tau don't do assault. Kroot are the best assault units that the Tau get, and they're pretty bad at it - and yet they're still a decent option in the army, because they don't cost much.

Vanguard are a mistake. You cannot even try to justify such great new models, with fluff describing how these veteran marines do this cool stuff, only to make them bad at the cool stuff they can do.

Forcing a view of 'what an army should be' based on point cost, instead of available options, is just outright poor game design. If points are really used to ensure that when two players agree to play a game their forces are equal, then applying point penalties just hamstrings that whole concept.

In an ideal world, I should be able to pick my units entirely based on what models and fluff I like, and put them on the field and have an even chance of winning against an equally skilled opponent.

Besides, your argument falls apart the moment you try to tell someone that the reason Vanguard suck is because GW wants to define that veteran marines aren't good at launching assaults... it's a flimsy argument.

Kroot are decently playable and Troops. Now compare with Vespids, which are non-Scoring Fast and crappy.

This is NOT a mistake, this is a design decision. Frankly, AM have always been less than efficient in SM. You take them because you need PA HtH for countercharge, not because they're awesomely efficient. Just compare Vanguard with BA VAS and you have to conclude this is deliberate.

(No comment on Orks)

As I've said elsewhere, GW breaks army elements into three categories:
1. core, which are well-costed and effective
2. non-core, which are somewhat over-costed or somewhat ineffective
3. not allowed, which don't appear in the army book
Most game designers strive for balance based on categories 1 & 3 only. GW adds the intermediate step entirely for flavor purposes. This is why "flavor" units are non-core things that appear in the Fluff or army history. I think this is the one conceptual innovation that GW has made in points cost that is actually ahead of conventional games design understanding.

That's a rather naive approach, precisely because it presumes that all points should be equal, and in reality it isn't. For example, look at Formula 1. The rules are supposed to be "even", yet Ferrari wins an awful lot. For the same money spent, and the same number of cars fielded, Ferrari outperforms the competition. Also, because nobody randomly selects an army.

GW defines Space Marines as 10-man Bolter squads, not Jump-Pack BP&CCW squads. Vanguard are good at what they do, and are the ultimate counterchargers with their Heroic Intervention. But they aren't core to a C:SM army, and never will be. That's why they aren't Troops, and never Score. And to drive that point home, they're a bit overpriced for competitive play.

Cheese Elemental wrote:What I'm really stunned by is the fact that GW doesn't release all five SM codicies to keep them consistent with each other. That way, BA, BT, DA, and SW players get their 3+ Storm Shields and can stop whining.

That's more to do with GW's inability to have a coherent and consistent design ethos across all their books. I've said before that they change horses multiple times during a race, and this can be seen just by looking at each Codex since the 4th Ed Marines.

And it filters down through everything, not just the rules. We all know the 'joy' of the current way they layout Codices. Guard Codex is the best example of this, with more than half of the 'Vehicle Upgrades' section being located elsewhere in the Codex, and that part of the Codex filled with nothing but page references. Or in the Marine Sternguard entry where 3 of their four ammo types are in their own entry, but the other one has to be found elsewhere, meaning you need 3 pages in that book for the rules to one unit. Why even have a Wargear section if all the rules are going to be scattered at random throughout the book?


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I shouldn't do this... but... uhh... suffer not the moron to live. *makes sign of the Aquila*

Here we go:

*dives in*

JohnHwangDD wrote:LatD has the most legitimate complpaint, and is actually worthy of a proper Codex - you'll get relatively little argument from me there.

This from the guy who argued with me for pages about how LatD hadn't lost their list and Counts As was fine for representing them (and also someone who was so quick to twist the knife when the LatD Datasheet came out). I should be revelling in the ironic nature of your post John, but somehow I just can't find the energy.

JohnHwangDD wrote:Kroot Mercs was a WD list, so it's fine to go away...

Based on what? What arbitrary standards do you base that comment on?

JohnHwangDD wrote:Legions were an abomination, and complaints of "losing an army" are largely unfounded as well as falling on deaf ears.

You are just wilfully ignorant, aren't you? We had a whole thread, a fairly substantial thread, about the Chaos Codex recently and we got post after post after post about how people had stopped playing Chaos because of the loss of Legions, or had sold armies, or had had their armies reduced to pale shadows of their former selves.

And not all those posts were mine either.

So your claim that Legions were an abomination is out and out STUPID.
Your claim that the complaints being unfounded is a LIE.

JohnHwangDD wrote:They lost unbalancing rules that resulted in broken, unimaginative armies.

You act like the Chaos list doesn't have broken elements now, or that the Legions were somehow responsible for Chaos being broken then, or that no other list has any broken items and that it was only the Legions that did this.

Unimaginative? God... you say that the new Codex has more options and the old one was less imaginative despite the actual truth of that being the complete opposite.

You're mad. Completely mad.

JohnHwangDD wrote:I think if you were to ask the GW designers what they think their worst Codex was, CSM Legions would probably rise to the top of the heap in a hurry.

Based on? Where are you pulling this bull gak from John, really?

JohnHwangDD wrote:Ergo, the only sensible conclusion is that GW actually does jnow what they';re doing and that the imbalance is ntentional.

That's a conclusion, yes. 'Sensible' might be a bit of a stretch though. The other conclusion, sensible or otherwise, is that GW simply don't care. Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to a lack of intelligence, or, in this case, never attribute to malice what can be attributed to apathy.

JohnHwangDD wrote:Apparently, you and GW disagree :p

Just like you and reality and common sense tend to disagree so often.

I sometimes wonder if you ever realise just how off base you are. Do you sit there, reading your White Dwarf, covered in plastic glue and think "Man... I am so freakin' wrong!".*

*cookie for the reference

JohnHwangDD wrote:Legions were an abomination, and complaints of "losing an army" are largely unfounded as well as falling on deaf ears. They lost unbalancing rules that resulted in broken, unimaginative armies. I think if you were to ask the GW designers what they think their worst Codex was, CSM Legions would probably rise to the top of the heap in a hurry.

Please tell me you're being sarcastic. Yes, the rules weren't that balanced, but they didn't have to have a fit and get rid of them. They were colourful. An Iron Warriors army should rightly include Basilisks and have no fast attack, and Alpha Legion should be able to infiltrate most of their army. Word Bearers should be able to use a lot of marked Daemons, and Night Lords should have lots of fast attack units and leadership-reducing abilities.

They just needed balancing, which could have been achieved easily. Look at their WHFB counterpart, Warriors of Chaos. Now THAT is a good book. Mono-god armies are actually both fun and strong, unlike this rubbish we have for CSM. Why should Khornate Daemon Princes get a measly +1 attack? Why aren't they better at fighting? Why are Khorne Berzerkers calm warriors?

Alpharius wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote: I disagree very strongly about the newer Codices lacking playtesting. I would submit that that things like Possessed, Chaos Spawn, Vanguard, Stormtroopers, and Ogryns were carefully playtested and made into overpriced units *intentionally*. None of the above are "core" to the armies in question, but all of them exist as related "flavor" units.

Come on John!

That's just crazy talk, and some rather convoluted 'logic' to boot!

I don't think GW planned it that way at all.

Crazy. Like a fox.

If it's unplanned, then what's the alternative, given the precision and sheer coincidence / convenience of what turned out? I look at it, and see that everything lines up just far too neatly for this to have been left to chance. What are the odds that *all* of the IG & CSM Troops are perfectly good, but not broken, *and* the Elites are tournament bad, but not casually unplayable?

I've seen some random things in my life, but to expect that the CSM, SM, and IG Codices all turned out like this defies mere happenstance.

Alpharius wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote: So GW basically put their foot down on Chaos Marines and decreed that basic and Cult Marines would be good, and thus are Scoring Troops at reasonable prices, whereas Possessed are somewhat overpriced and non-Scoring Elites.

I mean, roll on a random table for a power, after deployment, and you could end up with something you can't use?

What Possessed powers can't be used? All of them either accelerate Possessed into Assault, or help them once they get there.

John, are you approaching this from the angle that GW is a multi-national corp. and regardless of their image they actually do things just like every other multi- national corp.?

That they apply Tsung Tsu's(sorry for the americanied spelling) principle of warfare to business?

That GW like most other corporations have a business plan that is down right Machiavellian in its scope and application.

Say it isn't so.


H.B.M.C.-I may have started my last post a little off-topic but it was in reply to your own word in the original post.

The rest of the post was attempt to answer your question in a way that you might not have intended.

I was pointing out that it may not be so much what GW at the root of your problem as much as it might be you yourself by way of being overly invested.

That you don't look upon your favorite army as GWs army to do what they want with but rather that they are tinkering with"your"army. If that is the case it happens to most over time. In this situation you eventually sit back and think it over and get a different perspective and find the thing that originally got you into the hobby in the forst place.

Not saying this is the case. Just offering a different perspective.

Personally, I look forward to my next Tau Codex. Will it be everything that I want? Probably not even close. But it will be a new learning curve that will kick start the brain and there will be a pleasant surprise in their somewhere.

If I strongly enough about wanting a Codex that has everything that I feel is right, then I can always write one......Oh wait a minute....I am. Never mind.

JohnHwangDD wrote:Legions were an abomination, and complaints of "losing an army" are largely unfounded as well as falling on deaf ears. They lost unbalancing rules that resulted in broken, unimaginative armies. I think if you were to ask the GW designers what they think their worst Codex was, CSM Legions would probably rise to the top of the heap in a hurry.

According to Games Workshop HQ, the current Chaos Codex is supposed to represent Renegade Space Marines. If you think about it a little, it actually does an excellent job of this. There is only one, no, two small problems: 1) their existing player base all played Chaos Legions, 2) no one wants to play Renegade Space Marines. They have stated on more than one occasion that there will be a fifth edition Chaos Legions Codex (or Codecies --- they have not ruled out splitting them, like they have done with the Loyalists), so clearly they did not see the Legions as their worst idea --- hell, they are more talkative about Chaos Legions than Space Wolves or Skaven!

As for the main topic of the thread, I am split. Largely, I look at the update as a positive. Then again, as a Sisters player, I know some things (especially Repentia) cannot possibly get worse. I do, however, have an underlying feeling of dread about an update. I am resigned to the likely fact that my army will lose its primary mechanic (Acts of Faith), because it does not fit with the current design. I am certain my army will lose a lot of flavour in the update, and I would not be surprised if the update presents me with a completely different army from the one I originally wanted to play. Ultimately, I am hopeful that the good outweighs the bad, but there is that spectre of fear hanging over it.

Looking at the future release plans, my main dread is in the dullness of the future. In 18 months of fifth edition, we have had two armies updated. Games Workshop are clearly in no hurry to bring the armies in line. The current rumours also put a MEQ-heavy spin on the majority of updates in the next two years, which ultimately creates a dull meta-game. When Space Wolves come out, I anticipate them to be the most powerful MEQ army in the game, but at the cost of much of the flavour in their current book. When Dark Eldar come out, they will be a completely different army... but that is a good thing! Necron? They cannot possibly get worse! There is a definite pessimism around my views of future releases, but I still seem to have enough optimism around thing ultimately getting better.

@focused:

GW is a multi-national, and they're slowly taking advantage of that, but not strongly.

I highly doubt GW applies Sun Tzu's Art of War to their business - that's more of a Japanese / Chinese thing, not a British thing.

I don't think GW is so well-organized to be properly Machiavellian. But they sure do their darndest to squeeze every penny from their ever-shrinking pool of customers.

Does anyone, anyone at all, have even the slightest clue what he's ^ talking about? Is he even on topic? Does he know what the topic is?

Anyway, Focused:

focusedfire wrote:H.B.M.C.-I may have started my last post a little off-topic but it was in reply to your own word in the original post.

The rest of the post was attempt to answer your question in a way that you might not have intended.

Sorry, it got lost in all the Hwangerry going on in this thread.

But, yes, as to what you said, I can see where you're coming from. Thing is, it's not just Guard (and that's the reason why I don't want to keep coming back to Guard as an example). My first thought with the hint of a new Codex isn't "What are they going to do" but rather "What are they going to take away." Sometimes its obvious - I knew Doctrines were going when Guard came around as I knew Traits would vanish when the Marine Codex came around. Those sorts of things you just accept. But shouldn't I/we be looking forward to a new Codex? I said there were exceptions, but those exceptions are usually from armies that are so old (Orks, Space Wolves) or so unworkable (Eldar then, Necrons now) that I think it's less a case of "We're looking forward to this!" and more a case of "We'll take anything over what we've got now!".

Elric said it just below me:

"Ultimately, I am hopeful that the good outweighs the bad, but there is that spectre of fear hanging over it."

I also think that GW's unwillingness to tell us anything about upcoming releases until they're just about to hit also exacerbates this problem. We don't know what's coming, we're relying on rumour and Chinese Whispers (50% of which will turn out to be wrong), and from the people in charge we get nothing. We, then, can only look at precedent and the precedent isn't good.

And then, there's the other side of it. Say you're a Chaos or Dark Angel player, and you've got your stinking turd of a Codex. Now you're stuck with it for 4-10 years. When they announce they're going to re-do it 4-10 years down the track, do you get excited? Did you get excited last time only to get shat on? Or do you fear more gak being slung your way?

As a chaos player, I hope that a new codex will bring some flavor back, but doubt it, I just hope my emperor's children will remain different from a khorne army in more than just color scheme. I pity alpha legion and Iron warriors players, those poor sods.

As a sisters player, I need a new freaking codex.

As a Tau player, I need a new freaking codex.

So yeah, as much as I dread what could happen to my current army, I pretty much have nothing to lose with 2/3 of my armies, and not much to lose with the other.

Canonness Rory wrote:As a sisters player, I need a new freaking codex.

Are you sure about that? Your Acts of Faith will (probably) go. Your Wargear list will go. No more Book, no more Cloak, no more whatever the other thing Sisters players take. Your Exorcist will be plastic and/or nerfed. Your squad sizes will be changed. Your ability to take special weapons will be curbed too, so, like Orks and Chaos, you'll have to stick to the Codex Astartes to get your Multi-Meltas and Heavy Flamers. You might get Repentia that don't suck, maybe. But what else?

Now from my perspective. I'm not a Sisters player, but I am a Witch Hunters player. As I've said in a number of threads I am a DH/WH player who plays only Inquisitorial, no GK or SOB, and use the Rogue's Gallery of really crappy units that they have. But that's fine, I like playing that army because it's colourful and characterful and great in Apoc games/story based campaigns and so on. Doesn't have to win as long as I can tell a good story with it. Now, a while back we get a comment from High Lord Jervis up in his ivory tower that they're going to cut back the Inquisitorial stuff because they 'got a bit carried away'. Ok... so he's telling me that an army I play was 'over the top', and they're going to cut away at it.

Should I be getting excited about the prospect of a new Daemonhunter or Witch Hunter Codex?

Ok, well, before we jump to conclusions let's take a look at history. History gives us a good indication of what mistakes GW is going to make despite how often they change what their design ethos is, and let's look at all the recent Codices:

Generic unit entries.
Loss of options.
Codex Astartes upgrade schemas.

Hmm... so chances are my Inquisitors are going to lost all their Wargear, and just get a list of weapons they can have. Not a good start. Their retinues will be generic with maybe a few 'Advisor' style singles (but bye-bye Mystics and Sages). My Storm Troopers will become 16 points wastes of space (as if they weren't bad enough already) and there's a decent chance that my Daemonhosts, Acho's and other similar units won't even be in there, with the Codices focusing more on Grey Knights and Sobs.

So, again, should I be getting excited about the prospect of a new Daemonhunter or Witch Hunter Codex? Or would it be more prudent to put them on the shelf now alongside my Lost & The Damned. And my Deathguard. And my Iron Warriors. And my Alpha Legion. And my World Eaters. And my Word Bearers. And my $1500+ worth of Daemons?

Elric of Grans wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:Legions were an abomination, and complaints of "losing an army" are largely unfounded as well as falling on deaf ears. They lost unbalancing rules that resulted in broken, unimaginative armies. I think if you were to ask the GW designers what they think their worst Codex was, CSM Legions would probably rise to the top of the heap in a hurry.

According to Games Workshop HQ, the current Chaos Codex is supposed to represent Renegade Space Marines.

1) their existing player base all played Chaos Legions, 2) no one wants to play Renegade Space Marines.

They have stated on more than one occasion that there will be a fifth edition Chaos Legions Codex (or Codecies --- they have not ruled out splitting them, like they have done with the Loyalists), so clearly they did not see the Legions as their worst idea --- hell, they are more talkative about Chaos Legions than Space Wolves or Skaven!

as a Sisters player, I know some things (especially Repentia) cannot possibly get worse. I do, however, have an underlying feeling of dread about an update. I am resigned to the likely fact that my army will lose its primary mechanic (Acts of Faith), because it does not fit with the current design.

The current rumours also put a MEQ-heavy spin on the majority of updates in the next two years, which ultimately creates a dull meta-game.

When Space Wolves come out, I anticipate them to be the most powerful MEQ army in the game, but at the cost of much of the flavour in their current book. When Dark Eldar come out, they will be a completely different army... but that is a good thing! Necron? They cannot possibly get worse! There is a definite pessimism around my views of future releases, but I still seem to have enough optimism around thing ultimately getting better.

@Elric, you're aware that all Chaos Marines are Renegade, just that some turned from the Emperor's light before others. Also, time in the Eye isn't the same outside the eye - for some CSM, the Heresy isn't that long ago.

I started CSM as nominally Fallen Angels in 3rd, I never played CSM in 4th, I never wanted to play as a Heresy-era Traitor Legion, and I am very happy with a non-Legion CSM army.

IMO, the only reason that Legions gets so much talk is because the players ask about it. And the answer is becoming rote: GW would like to do Legions (eventually), but there are no plans they can speak of at this time. It's very similar to the current DE answer and the Squats answer before that. If GW really did like the notion of Legions, they could have used the Special Characters very differently, like DA or even SM. Or reworked the FOC rules like Eldar. Instead, we got a rehash of the first 3E CSM book.

As a fellow Sisters player, I'm looking forward for the notional focus shifting away from WH Inquisition back to Sisters. I think Acts will stay in some form, but perhaps work more like Psychic Powers. Faith points will, of course, go away, and I'm OK with that as long as Sisters stay BS4. Hopefully, Sisters become Stubborn / Fearless.

If you look at releases:
2008 = Orks, Daemons & SM
2009 = IG (& SW)
2010 = Nids & BA
That's one MEQ and one non-MEQ per year, with Daemons added as a bonus last year. GW's really not so MEQ heavy as the non-MEQ players would claim.

Given GW's recent Codices, I highly doubt SW will be uber. I know DE and Necrons are what a lot of fans want, but we'll have to see what happens, given how tight-lipped GW is nowadays.

JohnHwangDD wrote:I started CSM as nominally Fallen Angels in 3rd, I never played CSM in 4th, I never wanted to play as a Heresy-era Traitor Legion, and I am very happy with a non-Legion CSM army.

Way to shoot yourself in the foot. You can't possibly know what you missed if you didn't use the last CSM codex.

Not really. I tried playing as IW, once, but it didn't do anything for me. I sold my FA and considered rebuilding a couple different ways, but the basic 0-1 restrictions and Legion restrictions made the whole thing unworkable. It wasn't until the current CSM book came out the everything gelled and I could make the CSM army I wanted.

Instead, I played Drop Guard through 4th and had a great time. With the new IG book, they're going back on the shelf, and I'll probably play Eldar and/or some MEQ variant.

I agree with what focusedFire said about it being that the players are so heavily invested. I came after the switch to 5th and was brought in only knowing this 5th Edition Chaos dex (although I've looked up the 4th edition dex). Entire armies were invalidated, and it was infinitely cruel for a company to do that to its faithful patrons. I've observed that most of the hate for the new CSM codex comes from people who's armies were invalidated or misrepresented. It doesn't let them see the codex for what it is really worth, and makes it easier for them to believe the codex must only have one power build and can't possibly be any good except for that, and all the other negative things the Internet People have come up with.

What do I think? I'd like Legions to represented correctly, but I don't want to lose my Renegades to do it. If they swing the pendulum too hard towards the Legions my dual culted Renegades are going to be torn in half and I might end up like one of the angry people from the last codex. Chaos is so diverse, I think there needs to be a seperation of codicies so that the flavour of one type doesn't smother another, but at the same time they need to be able to ally like the Loyalists because putting a huge schism between the forces of Chaos when there is so little of an actual gap doesn't make sense. In conclusion, if Chaos Space Marines were to become only about playing one of the Big Nine I'd probably quit and go work on my Orks.

DarkHound wrote:I agree with what focusedFire said about it being that the players are so heavily invested.

That in itself begs a question then:

Shouldn't we be?

We put all this time, effort and, yes, lots of money into this so is it therefore wrong to be heavily invested in this? Wouldn't we want our investment to be protected in some manner? 'Cause when that train wreck of a Chaos Codex came out, my investment wasn't protected - my stocks went south. Extending the metaphor, waiting for a new Codex to come out would be like market speculation, yet the trend seems to be an optimistic yet increasingly pragmatic group of investors that usually assume the worst, and are sadly so often right.

We should be. We are. At the same time though, it makes it hard to let go and step back. You get used to an idea of how things 'should be' and can't see anything else being adequite. The Chaos issues are different, because as you stated your armies were invalidated. Chaos needs the 3 virtues: The Big Nine, Renegades (LatD) and Daemons, and they need to be connected. We are currently running on just bearly one, and only because I am counting the current CSM dex and Daemons dex as each half of one. Do I think that CSM is all that it should be? No. I do think it portrays a particular aspect well, but it needs to do more. There are signs that they can do things right though. The Ork dex is great. So is the Space Marine codex, even if Vulkan gets pegged as the flavour of the month. They can do it, they just have to do it. Have a little faith.

Just as an aside, does WHFB suffer from the same problems (I havent played it for donkey's years so I am out of the loop) and if not, why not?

How can GW have one system that 'works' and manage to screw another one up?

I don't know actually.

This site is mainly geared towards 40K (obviously), so Fantasy stuff tends to get shunted into the background, but from what little I've seen I'd say that there isn't that overwhelming sense of dread. In most cases the only complaints are about specific combinations or units being overpowered, not long multi-page threads about how someone's High Elf army has been destroyed by one of the lobotomised monkeys in the Dev team.

But for the people who play Fantasy, if they could chime in, that would be good.

H.B.M.C. wrote:I don't know actually.

This site is mainly geared towards 40K (obviously), so Fantasy stuff tends to get shunted into the background, but from what little I've seen I'd say that there isn't that overwhelming sense of dread. In most cases the only complaints are about specific combinations or units being overpowered, not long multi-page threads about how someone's High Elf army has been destroyed by one of the lobotomised monkeys in the Dev team.

But for the people who play Fantasy, if they could chime in, that would be good.

That's what I thought to be honest. Before the demise of my local gaming club, some of the guys there were fantasy bods as well but I always got the impression that the game was much more 'stable' than 40K and expansions / revisions felt like an iteration rather than a ground up rewrite.

edit: Not sure why that is so though. It doesnt really make much sense beyond the fact that fantasy is a little older as a game. Maybe it is something core?

The theory about GW nerfing their own elites may be true, but I doubt it's intentional. They want to make money by selling stuff. You don't sell stuff by releasing a nice new model and nerfing it.

So my theory is that they merely have a mindset for troops (cheap, core of army) and ignore the scoring issue. They then look at elites and see powerful squads, so they accidentally overprice them.

If they consciously were manipulating the values, you'd find the most expensive models being most competitive.

H.B.M.C. wrote:I don't know actually.

This site is mainly geared towards 40K (obviously), so Fantasy stuff tends to get shunted into the background, but from what little I've seen I'd say that there isn't that overwhelming sense of dread. In most cases the only complaints are about specific combinations or units being overpowered, not long multi-page threads about how someone's High Elf army has been destroyed by one of the lobotomised monkeys in the Dev team.

But for the people who play Fantasy, if they could chime in, that would be good.

I have a theory that because Fantasy army books don't get as much coverage as 40k codicies, the GW developers don't all come together in one big orgy like they do with 40k codicies, and instead a few people just work quitely on the book instead, leading to much more structured and well-planned army books. People don't pull them this way and that, trying to force their ideas in.

filbert wrote:Just as an aside, does WHFB suffer from the same problems (I havent played it for donkey's years so I am out of the loop) and if not, why not?

The current trend in Fantasy Battle seems to be minor rebalancing (mostly just making everything cheaper so you buy more) and bringing back units/characters they had previously removed. Most people seem to be happy with the way their own armies come out, though sometimes there are cases where someone had intentionally built a bad list and the new book ended up turning it into the power-gamer list. That seems to be the worst I have seen, though I am not as attentive to Fantasy Battle as I am 40K.

The only really bad thing about WHFB's army books is the fact that the Daemon one is so ridiculously powerful it's not funny. I'm not kidding when I say you have to really try hard to lose. There are countless slowed things in the book, and Mat Ward was probably high when he wrote it.

The Tzeentch magic, for example, is just unfair. So are Bloodthirsters, the most undercosted thing in the game; you know how in 40k, 350pts is a lot to spend on one unit? Well, since WHFB has larger battles than 40k, 350pts is fairly cheap; it's about how much I spend on my Chaos Lord. For example, Archaon, the Fantasy version of Abbadon, is a staggering 685 pts or something like that, while the Incompetent Warmaster of Chaos is only 275.

This is because in Fantasy, characters are generally a lot more powerful and important, as they provide leadership bonuses to your army and ones like Dark Elf Dreadlords and Chaos Heroes are really, really powerful. Chaos Lords are 210 pts base for a WS 9, S/T 5 model with three wounds, a base 4+ save, lots of attacks, high leadership, and a massive array of equipment to choose from.

Oh, and WHFB still has 'shopping list' style armouries, where characters have a budget for magic weapons/armour and arcane items, but they have the new 'may exchange x for y' when it comes to basic things like shields and non-magical weapons. I preferred it when 40k had this as well.

I cannot believe that anyone thinks GW plans out their Codex/Army book development the way J.H.D.D. thinks they do.

They is no way GW thinks that far ahead...

GW is trying to sell miniatures. ALL of the miniatures in the book, and especially the new ones.

Obviously, THIS is what drives their 'decision making process' (such as it is) above all else.

If this invalidates your squad/allies/entire army, too bad for you.

But please, by all means, buy another 2000 point force plus options.

It can't happen again.

Can it?

H.B.M.C. wrote:Guard = Topic for another thread.

Stay on target people.

OT but now I've officially seen everything. Turn off the lights and break out the rum. The end of the Dog is nigh.

But to the topic: yes. As a former Nid player I dread to think what thyey'll do it. I dreaded to think, and was right on target, to see what they did to vanilla marines. IG have some nice additions, but frankly it just looks like the V3 list with two new units. The loss of doctrines vexes me as much as the positives that hjave been put into play.

Eldar I think will be fine. The cycle will be complete by then and the new eldar dex will have more options than ever seen and starcannon/spiders will again be brutal...

I don't get why people are crying about Doctrines being gone (and honestly this is the first I've heard about it). Is it because of what they represented? There were only 5 or 6 worth taking for 5 slots, and everything else was either outdated and non-functional or useless.

DarkHound wrote:I don't get why people are crying about Doctrines being gone (and honestly this is the first I've heard about it). Is it because of what they represented? There were only 5 or 6 worth taking for 5 slots, and everything else was either outdated and non-functional or useless.

Yeah, but they could have re-written them to make them all viable instead of dropping them completely.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

Redbeard wrote:One guiding principle for game design should be "don't take things away".

I would submit that that things like Possessed, Chaos Spawn, Vanguard, Stormtroopers, and Ogryns were carefully playtested and made into overpriced units *intentionally*. None of the above are "core" to the armies in question, but all of them exist as related "flavor" units. So GW basically put their foot down on Chaos Marines and decreed that basic and Cult Marines would be good, and thus are Scoring Troops at reasonable prices, whereas Possessed are somewhat overpriced and non-Scoring Elites. Similarly, GW decided that IG Platoons and Veterans would be good Scoring Troops, while Stormtroopers and Ogryns would be overpriced, non-Scoring Elites. By slapping a 15-25+% points penalty and making a unit non-Scoring, with no potential to become Scoring (see Sternguard vs Vanguard), GW does a better job of defining what each army army does well than if they made each choice equally playable.

So you're basically saying that GW has decided for the player base what their armies should consist of, should they wish to optimise their lists for competitive play. I am not which outcome I feel better about: HBMC's assertion that the writers of the codecies are idiots, or your assertion that the writers are not, but consider the player base idiots.

JohnHwangDD wrote:
No way. The balance is so far off, there is NO way that GW designers did not recognize that Possessed, Spawn, Vangaurd, Stormtroopers, and Ogryns were horrible for the points. Especially when the rest of the stuff is so tight.

The rest of the stuff is so tight. Ha Ha Ha.

The idea that it just so happened that these non-core concept units "just happened" to be very inefficient is not possible when the rest of the books are so tight.; If it were up to chane as incompetence, then you'd see huge swings in the other Troops choices, along with some for the non-core units being hugely efficient/overpowered.

You do though. You totally see swings in Troop choices, and other non-core units.

Eldar: Guardians are utter crap (and yet they're the core unit choice - by your theory, shouldn't they be good?)
Guard: Platoons and Veterans are good (troops), Penal Legion is iffy. Rough Riders are quite good in CC for their cost - isn't that not supposed to happen in your world?
Chaos Daemons: If you're not playing fluffy slaanesh, no one runs daemonettes. They're a core troop choice.

Going further back:
Witchhunters: Who in their right mind takes stormtroopers when for one point more, you get a sister with +1 weapon strength, +1 Armour, faith, better squad upgrades, and so on. Again - core choices.

This isn't a new problem, it's a systemic problem, due to a lack of process in QA. They eyeball things, make guesses, and hope that it works out, and because they playtest instead of applying a thorough QA process, things slip through. And then, they go and make further changes based on what the minis end up looking like. (I actually talked to Graham McNeil, who wrote the Witchhunter codex, at a Games Day. I asked why Repentia are so bad when they have such nice new models. His answer was that they were initially designed to be a witchhunter terminator equivalent (hence the strike-last/double strength weapons), and had initially had a terminator type save. The got dropped to a 4+ save very late in the development process because they couldn't justify a 2+ save on naked women.

Yeah, that's intentional game design...

If you want to define what an army doesn't do well, you don't do it by providing units that do it at elevated prices, you do it by providing units that do it badly at prices appropriate for doing it badly.

Apparently, you and GW disagree :p

Not if you read what they claim. This is right up there on page viii of the rulebook, "Warhammer 40,000 uses a system of points values that allow players to fight evenly matched battles. Each model is given a points cost that reflects its value in the game."

Note, the point cost is supposed to reflect the value in the game. That's the published definition of the point system. It's not meant to punish players who run non-standard armies. It's not supposed to ensure that players make their armies the right way. It's meant to ensure that when you play a game, you have an even match.

If something is overcosted, that's essentially the same as doing something badly at a good cost. Yeah, you're trying to split a hair, but I see it as the other face of the same coin.

Not at all. If something is overpriced, it doesn't do enough to justify its point cost. If something does something badly at a good cost, then it is justifying its cost, and you can make up for the lack of quality with numbers.

Take the basic guardsman as the ideal example of this. He's not much use in melee, and he's not much good at shooting, hitting only half the time, and generally not hurting anything when he hits. But, he's priced well, so that when you face 300 points of basic guardsmen, you end up facing sixty of them. Sixty lasguns can drop a lot of things, and can accomplish a lot of battlefield roles.

If those guardsmen were eight points each, and given an 12" S4 assault 2 gun instead of their lasgun, you'd have guardians. Guardians are overpriced. You cannot mass them effectively, because they're priced too high. You end up with about 36 instead of 60, with no added survivability, and a loss of ranged firepower to boot. Make a guardian the same price as a guardsman, or even as an ork, and they're now a decent troop choice. They're no better than they were before, but because they're priced less, you can get more of them, and that adds up.

This is NOT a mistake, this is a design decision. Frankly, AM have always been less than efficient in SM. You take them because you need PA HtH for countercharge, not because they're awesomely efficient. Just compare Vanguard with BA VAS and you have to conclude this is deliberate.

No, you don't have to conclude that at all. What you could also conclude is that GW has really poor rules writers - I think there's more evidence that supports that conclusion. Compare Dark Angels and Space Marines, two PA codexes released within a couple of years from each other, and note that Space Marines get just about everything for 5-10 points cheaper than Dark Angels. Does this mean you have to conclude that Dark Angels were deliberately designed to suck? I think not.

(No comment on Orks)

Clearly - ignore evidence that goes against your claim.

As I've said elsewhere, GW breaks army elements into three categories:
1. core, which are well-costed and effective

Like guardians, daemonettes, and inquisitorial stormtroopers, and for that matter, firewarriors and necron warriors.

2. non-core, which are somewhat over-costed or somewhat ineffective

Like Nobs, Lootas, Bloodcrushers, Vulkan, Eldrad, TH/SS termies, Obliterators, Carnifexes, or.... I mean, seriously, you actually believe this? Every single codex has non-core units that are under-costed.

Most game designers strive for balance based on categories 1 & 3 only. GW adds the intermediate step entirely for flavor purposes. This is why "flavor" units are non-core things that appear in the Fluff or army history. I think this is the one conceptual innovation that GW has made in points cost that is actually ahead of conventional games design understanding.

That's because it's not intentional, because if it was, it would be stupid. You don't say "we're going to make a system to ensure that players have an even match" and then turn around and deliberately hamstring units for flavor.

My concerns with the new Tyranid codex aren't about losing things, per se. I'm resigned to the fact that elite Carnifexes either won't be available or will be very different in their execution. I'm an old-timer, and was never a pure Nidzilla guy anyway.

What I worry about is whether GW will properly gear the army to 5th edition. In a mech-heavy environment, swarm Tyranids really need some help to stay competitive. And I'm not sure if they'll break the eggs they need to to make that happen.

It's interesting to note that with the 4th edition Tyranid codex, some of Phil Kelly's mistakes were with things he didn't change *enough*...mainly the medium bugs' abilities and pricing. As I've said countless times here, if you fix Warriors -- really fix them -- swarm armies will get a big boost even if you don't touch another thing.

I think that the problems with the release cycle for 40K and WFB at this point in time are pretty different for each other. For me (and it seems a few others here) 40K's problem is that no one has any clue of what's going on from codex to codex. There doesn't seem to be a cohesive plan on the direction of 40K, besides crap organization of the codex's content and limiting of options.

WFB does seem to have a clear plan. Most of the newer army books have any army wide special rule (or rules) that go against the standard. HE have ASF, DE have hatred, DoC all cause fear are ItP etc., Vampires crumble, Lizzies cold blooded, etc. etc. On top of this, there is a re-emphasis on the magic phase and more powerful characters. There also seems to be a a lot of newer armies that ignore or circumvent psychology. The thing is, most players I know don't like the direction WFB is going, even though they can see a clear direction is present.

To top it off, WFB is far more unbalanced than 40K. That is, while there are a few clear front runners based on tournament results, it is nowhere near as skewed as WFB with the DoC, VC, and DE trio.

This is entirely based off my observations, and only thought of this morning right when I got up, so I could be totally off here.

DarkHound wrote:I don't get why people are crying about Doctrines being gone (and honestly this is the first I've heard about it). Is it because of what they represented? There were only 5 or 6 worth taking for 5 slots, and everything else was either outdated and non-functional or useless.

The concept of Doctrines is a wonderful thing that brings life to an otherwise quite stale army. The ability to tailor your force to match either the fluff of your regiment or your own play style is a great ability to have. Of course, that's the concept of Doctrines (and Traits for that matter). GW's execution of that concept left a lot to be desired. I was not sad to see Doctrines go, not because I disliked Doctrines but because I disliked the Doctrine system as it stood. 2 no-brainers, 4-6 others that were quite viable, and all the rest were junk. Plus there's the whole 'illusion of choice' thing with the restricted units that I won't go into here unless asked.

Would I have preferred Doctrines to be re-written into a workable system (ie. based on platoons rather than army wide, losing the 'restricted' units malarkey), yes, of course. Do I think GW could have done that? Not at all.

So good riddance to the Doctrine System we had, but shed a tear for a fantastic idea left to drift off into the ether in favour of Jervis' Generic Wonderland.

DarkHound wrote:I don't get why people are crying about Doctrines being gone (and honestly this is the first I've heard about it). Is it because of what they represented? There were only 5 or 6 worth taking for 5 slots, and everything else was either outdated and non-functional or useless.

Agreed. Not to mention that there is far more diversity in this new dex than ever before. The 3.5 IG codex was one of the worst examples of GW's infamous codex cycle since it was just the third edition codex with a page or two of doctrines added to it. The new 'dex is far better (yes this is on topic, deals with the OP). The doctrines system seemed like an afterthought and really only limits the player (hell all this talk about Ogryns and Stormtroopers throughout the thread....you couldn't even use them if you didn't have the right doctrines for it -- players tend to forget this IIRC). The 5th edition codex didn't take any unit away and made the IG more customizable, diverse, competitive, and more importantly fun; qualities all codices should be. As for a fluffy list, thats always been in the hands of the players involved but just about anything can be justified and explained in the vast epic grimdark that is 40k.

---

I'm not sure how this fits in the thread but I'll throw it in there anyway; Apoc datasheets. For IG you can field stuff like all Stormtrooper and all Rough Rider armies although the content rivals the Steel Legion's Armageddon codex entry than an actual codex (meaning its only half a page or so long), but I'm sure most opponents wouldn't mind using those lists in a casual game. However what the lists lack in content they make up for in price (free) and lets players field armies that they never could before although you'll run into problems fast on the tabletop.

And there's nothing to stop people from using HOUSE rules if there are parts of a codex or rulebook that could use some sprucing up.

So we (yes, we) want more options. Any army has the 'option' to be played with literally any style you want (Guardian Horde anyone?). We want more flavor options, and not entire rewrites of the codex every update so that we can count on the options to remain. Without random flavor options, the codex is off to a bad start (although the ork dex doesn't have many flavor options, but it is fun and functional). Am I getting all of this (as if it actually mattered)?

40k's codex updates tend to reinvent the wheel instead of refinning what was done before.

This is their greatest failure as each new version removes the old errors and imbalance and replaces them with completely new errors and new imbalance.

That there is truely the root of the problem Keezus, regardless of strange schedules and any flavor options.

keezus wrote:40k's codex updates tend to reinvent the wheel instead of refinning what was done before.

This is their greatest failure as each new version removes the old errors and imbalance and replaces them with completely new errors and new imbalance.

And this is what happens when a specialty games company 1) goes public, and 2) realizes the real money is with selling products that support the game rather than the game itself.

GW isn't much of a games company anymore. They're a miniatures manufacturer. As such, their motivation isn't to advance their games toward some state of perfection. Their motivation is to change games just enough so that we are forced to buy more miniatures but remain in the hobby.

While Jervis and Jes and co. are presented as the face of GW, what's behind the mask is a fairly soulless amalgam of accountants, sales organizations and plastics manufacturing machinery.

keezus wrote:40k's codex updates tend to reinvent the wheel instead of refinning what was done before.

This is their greatest failure as each new version removes the old errors and imbalance and replaces them with completely new errors and new imbalance.

keezus wrote:40k's codex updates tend to reinvent the wheel instead of refinning what was done before.

This is their greatest failure as each new version removes the old errors and imbalance and replaces them with completely new errors and new imbalance.

DarkHound wrote:That there is truely the root of the problem Keezus, regardless of strange schedules and any flavor options.

At this point, I'd like to share my experience of writing a Fan-dex.

I am currently working on a rewrite of the Tau. Went in with the intention of just tweeking markerlights, a shifting a unit in the foc to make room for another, and writing rules that actually have meaning(Seriously, battlesuit wargear is that bad). What ended up happening is that every correction and tweek forced adjustments elsewhere. Then these adjustments forced further adjustments and so on, and so on, ect....By the time I get done it will have been easier to trash the entire thing and start from fresh.

There are those that complain that GW does good on original releases but fails in the up date department. Personal experience tells me that the updates are in many ways more difficult.
It is because your working with in a much more confining enviroment.
First, People have preconcieved expectations of what the army and specific units should do.
Second, Existing model line affects army design due to physical design(You cant have X unit do that because there is no firing point,Guard excluded of course ).
Third, Existing model design due to financial reasons(We paid X for those molds, no way were dropping that unit).
Fourth, Limiting fluff saddles you with a rank and promotion track that just doesn't work. Player expectation that each promotion will show an improvement in stats.
Fifth, Territorialism about existing "Franchise" units. The reason that Vespids are less than optimal is that if you make them any better, or move them to elites, then they would be tresspassing on Crisis Battlesuit turf. Even if in different FOC slots they would steal thunder from the Tau trademark unit.

I could give a few more examples but I think this enough to get my point across. I seriously feel that this may be why so many game systems completely revamp their systems as opposed to "simple updates".





Off-Topic - And Mods I'm not trying to start anything but in case the thread derails from this...Mea Culpa.
Hey John, In reply to your reply. Are you sure that GW hasn't taken on the full role of the Multi-national Corp. and doesn't use the philosophy of Tsung Tsu?

One of Tsung Tsu's first lessons is that in order to be effective, "appear" to be ineffective or incompetent. GW has done a great job of cultivating this little cottage, "Brit's tinkering around in an antique factory with lots of steam and copper", image but all the while they managed to get some of forgeworld production shifted to China before anyone knew. This speaks to me of a company much better organised than their image implies. Also pls consider that I'm offering this up in support of your stance that GW does send out their product with a plan.

On Topic- Any one wondering where this is leading and how it applies to the thread. It is this:

GW doesn't have to do anything to support an army after it's initial release. I actually find it amazing that a Multi-National goes as far as it does to support outdated platforms. Think about windows and how long before a specific edition is no longer supported. How long do auto manufactures support discontinued models? In the US they are supposed to stock up certain key parts for about 5-7 years but this is only because of a law in the us and they only have to stock for "Projected" need.

What I'm getting at is that the only thing that I really dread or fear is that GW will start truly behaving like a Multi-national Corporation and casually squat various army lines just to make room for the next new thing.

focusedfire wrote:At this point, I'd like to share my experience of writing a Fan-dex.

I am currently working on a rewrite of the Tau. Went in with the intention of just tweeking markerlights, a shifting a unit in the foc to make room for another, and writing rules that actually have meaning(Seriously, battlesuit wargear is that bad). What ended up happening is that every correction and tweek forced adjustments elsewhere. Then these adjustments forced further adjustments and so on, and so on, ect....By the time I get done it will have been easier to trash the entire thing and start from fresh.

I am not surprised you are having trouble based on that description. IMO, to write a codex properly, you need the following progression:

1. A world view on how the army is going to function.
In the case of the Tau, that would be: Mobile Firepower, Weak in assault.

2. The second task is to determine how the desired function can be achieved based on the core ruleset. This is where interactions between units should be hammered out in an abstract sense.
This can be achieved through: Shooting strength is determined by weapon strength/quantity/availability/accuracy. Mobility is based on movement and vehicles. Making the Tau worthless in assault is easy, so no thought needs to be given to this. This is the step where one would determine how markerlights would actually function as they modify weapon accuracy. Additional rules such as jump-shoot-jump and any specialized movement rules should also be determined in this step, as would any behavioral modifiers such as Ethereals and bonding.

3. Once the interactions are determined, wargear and statistics can be assigned. The next step is to playtest various configurations to determine the relative effectiveness of each unit in its intended role.

4. Then, and only then, should points values be assigned.

EXAMPLE:

1. Tau are good at shooting and mobility.
2. Devilfish -should- to be able to better support the troops. Troops can already fire when disembarking, but what can help them from being assaulted.
IDEA: Suppresing fire of some sort.
EXAMINE RULESET: Make hits from burst cannons cause pin checks.
APPLY TO EXISTING FRAMEWORK, EXAMINE ARMORY: Does making burst cannons pinning change the roles of other units that can take them: Not really. Does it overpower them: Not apparently, but playtesting will bear this out.
PLAYTEST

It is painfully obvious that GW does not look at the army as a whole and designs single units in isolation. This is why Crisis suits are such turkeys. They have no defined purpose, but are overpriced jacks of all trades. Vespid are another example of a unit was designed without a clear picture of how the unit is supposed to work.

Off-topic: @Keezus-I went in with that very world veiw and with the intention of making it fit. But, You also left out their quick tech adv and several others defining paramenters of that should be in the world view. It isn't as simple as you think. You go in trying to take an overly simplistic view and it turns into a mess very quickly.

The point I was getting at is that You can have a very deep understanding of an army and how it works. You can go in with a good idea of what they are supposed to be with the intention of making just a tweek and it creates a domino effect. I knew what I was getting into when I started but have still been suprised by some of the secondary adjustments.

Case in point. Drones are for all intents and purposes troops. They have all of the negatives and none of the benefits. So I made them troops and made the ones on transports part of the squad that purchased. They load and unload at the same time.
Now what about shield drones?
I had already changed them to where the shielding is only good for ranged attacks and has an area bubble of effect.
How do they work when on the vehicle?
Its a little thing but still something you have to consider lest you over-power the army. In this case the shield drones give the Dev fish an inv save on its front armour.
But what about when a shot gets through?
No longer automatcically destroys the drone. But does require a special note in their entry that drones mounted are subject to weapon destroyed results.

Over all nice but not over powering.This is just an example of how one shift can cause a cascade effect.


My Fan-dex is coming along nicely and even people that don't play or even care for Tau like how it is shaping up. I invite you to go over to the How would you Fix the Tau in 5th ed thread and take a look. Let me know what you think. The more feed back the better.


On Topic: My experience has lead me to believe that GW does try to think things through but that dead-lines may be the real culprit when you find something that seems to be an obvious error.

I think they play test to some extent just to a realistic level as opposed to a detailed level. The point here is that years after the BRB and a codex come out people will still find wording issues that can cause problems in game.(Tau ASS and drones on Broadsides being an example)

H.B.M.C. wrote:

ObiFett wrote:I for one am looking forward to a new Tau codex.

Because it can't get any worse?

Yeah, basically.

Well, the sad fact of the matter is that for many the imminent release of a new Codex for their favorite army is probably accompanied by a greater sense of fear than anything else.

Well, other than current Dark Angel players...

In my case:

IG -- GW just redid this, and I was sufficiently annoyed that my IG project stopped dead in its tracks. I wanted Light Infantry Platoons and more Platoon coolness and got none of it. Bastards.

BA -- I'm somewhat hopeful, as GW seems to have decided down that BA will be the JP Assault Chapter. As long as that moves forward in a reasonably competitive way, I'll be OK. That said, all BA rebuilding is on "hold" until the Codex comes out. Hopefully, BA AM can be like SM AM / CSM Raptors and take more than just Plasma Pistols...

Eldar -- No real fear, as my model base and bitz collection makes me largely immune to any nerfing or rebalancing that I could envision. As with the last Codices, a new Codex means a big chunk of what I'm currently playing goes on the shelf, and clean the dust off an equal chunk of stuff. Most likely, I'll have to buy Jetbikes & Vypers, but I've been planning on that for years. I think any new Codex would be a non-event, although I would like to see Aspects moved back to Troops.

CSM -- GW is pretty schizo on CSM, so it's hard to predict what they might do. It's hard to imagine what sorts of changes are even possible, based on where CSM currently sit. Short of screwing the whole thing up, that is...

SoB -- This is one of my smallest armies, and it's all canonical Sisters stuff going back to the original 2E / 3E forces, so I'm not too worried here. Short of Squatting the Sisters, I think I'm immune to what GW might do.

Inq -- I really hope GW doesn't do something stupid here, but after the IG Codex, I think Inquisition has the potential for a royal cluster fick of the highest order. With any luck, GW never gets around to updating Daemonhunters.

keezus wrote:It is painfully obvious that GW does not look at the army as a whole and designs single units in isolation

This is even more obvious when you look at things like Inquisitorial Storm Troopers vs Sisters of Battle. 1 point more for all that extra stuff? Did GW not read their own Codex? Or how things like Ogryn and NuStorm Troopers can even exist. Unless you subscribe to Jonnyboy's lunatic "they do it on purpose" theory, which is utterly insane for all the reasons Redbeard has already stated, we're only left with that conclusion - they look at each unit, and look at it in a vacuum. That would also explain Forge World rules...

Our group, as a lot of you know, has been designing our own version of 40K since 4th Ed came out. It started a bit before that with a small project - as these things often do - with a re-write of the Eldar Codex. At the time we were in 3rd Ed with the TAR and TVR and the Eldar had been reduced to Codex: Vypers. Virtually nothing in their list worked and every army list was the same. We decided that we could do a better job so started writing a patch. By the time the patch was half-way done 4th Ed came about, and so disgusted were we with the infantile rules changes that we came to a consensus to redo the whole thing.

We have since, over the past however many years it is, designed a fully working rulebook that is kind've a half-way point between 3rd and 4th, but adds in a little more of the interesting detail from 2nd Ed plus some more 'common sense' things. We have also re-written most of the Codices, with the Eldar and Space Marine ones all but 100% complete. That's important to note because that's two Codices in development for over 5 years. Virtually every game we play is a playtest, and before playtests come hours of list-testing, number crunching and comparisons between units within the Codex, and units outside of the Codex.

We have the luxury of not having to sell shiny new model kits, so we can have a defined role for every unit. Doesn't mean we've been successful yet - my attempts to write a Guard Codex have hit a wall more times than I can count, and I'm only just beginning to 'get it' with how they should work within our framework - and we've had versions of each Codex where they things were just impossibly powerful (Tyranids have gone through more paradigm shifts than anyone else) to completely pathetic (a number of Tau changes). It's not easy, nor should it be really, but having gone through all this I can respect that while writing a Codex is easy, getting it right is very hard and you have to try to make it work.

GW doesn't try, and this is why we all live in fear of what they're going to feth up next when they release a new Codex, and why I prefer expansions because they can't hurt anyone or take anything from the players.

JohnHwangDD wrote:With any luck, GW never gets around to updating Daemonhunters.

And there we have it. Another voice alongside the rest of ours.

It really worried me when everyone comes together so quickly on a topic that is so bad (from a hobby perspective). We're the paying customers, and we actually don't look forward to new Codex releases because we're dreading what we're going to lose more than celebrating what we're going to gain. The only Codex in recent memory that I can remember actually being excited about was the current Marine Codex. As I've said in the past, that book was a celebration of all things 'pendulum' with bad units made good, good units made bad, new units being awesome, things being invented out of thin air to sell new models, and so on - it was a great Codex filled with stuff. We only really lost Traits, but, as before, the Trait system, whilst a great concept, was done in a gakky manner, so losing it was no loss.

Everything else (bar Orks, which existed under the "We'll take anything over what we have now!" banner) has been "What are they going to change? What's going to be removed? What will I have to buy?" I foresee Tyranids being the next big "reinvent the wheel" Codex, with a lot of 'Nid players either dropping the army or breaking out the super-glue and breaking apart their models whilst buying more Gaunts and Warriors (who will be buffed in the new 'Dex no doubt as no one really uses them now).

I personally am looking forward to Witch Hunter codex (or Inquisition codex, as I'm hoping). A lot will probably change, but who knows... maybe those units that got somewhat gimped by new rules will be fixed... Maybe repentias will have a chance to reach their target, survive the first half of assault and actually do some damage...

On the other hand, things like planetstrike don't do much for me. Mostly because I'm more of a skirmish/cityfighting type. So Cities of Death is something I might get... but I'm not specially thrilled with Apocalypse and Planetstrike.. though they do look good, from a less personal point of view.

gw just plain fails with codex's of late.
i'm an orc player and bar the 2 exceptions (tank bustas cause they are fail and nob bikers cause people think they are op'd... but points wise i dont see them like that)
everythings turned out great.
and it's ironic. they tryed so hard with the "serious" armys but then give us a unit that has a 1/5 chance to fire is fire-er at the enemy rather than amunition and the army turns out fine.

I am unhappy with GW's choice to shaft librarians in the SM codex. The rest of the codex is alright, but why! oh why?did librarians lose a wound, and exchange their awesome psychic powers for the eldar-wannabe ones? I still miss Fury of the Ancients, where I may run a line through my opponent's entire army while he's hugging a rock.
GW needs to smarten up and fix the neccessary, rather than kill all the stuff which we had going so well...

Post deleted because typed into wrong thread.

DOH

I play Chaos and hate the codex for one specific reason. All fluff has been cast aside. I have always hated the idea of a Tzeench lord leading Khorne troops. Or a more pertain ant example of a Slaneesh lord leading Nurgle troops. I believe that the mark of the lord should "unlock" a specific type of troop and maybe the corresponding daemon. If not they are elites. Maybe the mark of chaos glory could give some benefit to those who choose otherwise or allow Iron Warriors, Word Bearers, or Alpha Leagon. Either way this would make for more interesting armies that would make exponentially more sense. This would also encourage some variety as well.

The current codex is boring. How many lists just use the standard Lash, PM, Oblit spam?. It is because these options are the best bang for the buck so to speak. Sure, by making different leagon rules some ways to make more unbalanced lists will happen. As long as there are power gamer douches this is inevitable. I'd gladly accept this cost and the benefit of variety and fluff.

On to another aspect of codices that I dislike: the wait. Why does it take so long? I know that GW likes to release new models, but two a year is far too slow for a multi million dollar business. There obviously isn't an insane amount of playtesting so what's the holdup? I'd like to see one per 3 months. As others have stated a legitimate FAQ wouldn't be much to ask either.

@JGrand: If you don't like it, don't field it. Nothing in the CSM book forces anybody to play any of those sorts of forces. And for the record, I own no Oblits.

As for the WFB side -

There are less chances of units being invalidated, as WYSIWYG is less adamant and there aren't as many weapon options for individual troops.

In 40k, you have a Space Marine squad that has a Sergeant with weapon options, a heavy weapon trooper with weapon options and a special weapon trooper with weapon options. All of these options have to be represented on the individual model. If one of those weapon options goes away, models are invalidated and can't be used, especially since 40k is more WYSIWYG dependant.

In WFB, units have upgrades (Bows, shield, etc). If a unit can't take that upgrade any more, you just ignore that they have it. WYSIWYG only really matters for base size as the individual models aren't as important. Plus, GW has not been in the 'take away unit options' for Fantasy like they do in 40k. They also generally don't take away units or they can easily be used as something else.

Changes in WFB tends to be of the 'more options' when coming out with a new book and most of the changes are in magic, which does not in any way have to be represented on the model. When units get 'nerfed' in fantasy, they can usually do the same job as before, just not as well.

A good example of this is my skinks. I have old skinks with Short Bows (Which are not a usable unit option any more). I use them as either blowpipe or jav skinks and no one bats an eye. I just let them know what the unit has (And if I have multiple units of skinks in my army, all of them are one way or another).

I guess GW doesn't do this sort of thing anymore... but how about releasing PUBLIC trial rules for new codices? Either online, or to their stores/affiliated stores (which would, btw, be a pretty sweet way of getting people to want to visit them).

Every game beta tests stuff these days, sometimes they even have beta-tests for patches (which is the closest thing to a codex I guess), like WC3 or DoW2.

I don't even think it's necessarily that GW doesn't care, it could just be that they simply aren't capable of ensuring perfect balance when all the testing they can do is internal. Look at WC3 or SC - how many patches did it take to reach the balanced states these games are in today? SC is at patch 1.16, WC3 at patch 1.24 - and this is not accounting for the dozens of beta versions, then the dozens of beta versions of their respective expansions.
Granted, there have not been any balance changes made to either game for a good number of years (last SC balance patch was 1.07 I believe, the rest are bug fixes or feature updates), WC3 I'm not sure about, but a few years back as well, so the number isn't as big as it seems. But still - it takes iteration, even with the feedback of MILLIONS of players. Blizzard, being a computer game company, also has the luxury of being able to make lots of experimenting more freely (ie they are fond of taking a bad unit and making it drastically more powerful, just to make sure players start using it, then toning it down until it's a viable but not overpowered unit), which doesn't work as well when you release new rules for an army once every 5-10 years, but could be done if you had a beta test!

skyth wrote:As for the WFB side -

There are less chances of units being invalidated,

You mean like the Albion units? Or Fimir?

Or are you ignoring the loss of entire armies like Dogs of War, Chaos Dwarves, the various Storm of Chaos armies, and the War of the Beard armies?

Not to mention an entire host of pre WFB-5 Regiments of Renown. For example, "Scarlock" might ring a bell to some old-timers.

Just use 'Counts As', John.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I have to bring this up, because I find the inconsistency of it all so wonderfully hilarious.

JohnHwangDD wrote:LatD has the most legitimate complpaint, and is actually worthy of a proper Codex - you'll get relatively little argument from me there.

He said that in this thread.

When the Chaos Codex came out, he said the following:

LatD is now and forever merely Imperial Guard, no more, no less.

*That* is your list

And, and this is just amazing:

I might suggest that the bulk of the blame might be laid squarely at the feet of the LatD players themselves, as to why their list got canceled.

It's all here for those who are interested. Makes entertaining reading. Even Stelek makes an appearance!

I think as far as the releases themselves go, I'm a very happy camper. I play Orks mainly, but I have a small force of Plague Marines. Orks, well, I was delighted with the codex. It lets me try a lot of fun builds, all of them pretty viable. I've done truck heavy KOS, battlewagon rush, mega-horde, elite orks...and I've still got a lot of stuff I want to try. For someone playing the old codex since it came out, that was a real shot in the arm for my enthusiasm for 40K. And they're FINALLY filling out the model range! So, yeah, estatic, like most ork players.

The chaos codex makes me more of an odd one out. I'm pretty happy with it. I think the changes to plague marines make them work much better and also make them very interesting to play. I enjoy the tactical flexibility of being able to take bikes and raptors and "weenie" plague marines if I want. I feel like the book works pretty well for a plague marine player. I do with Lash hadn't been put in, and you could mark generic daemons to make them somewhat fluffy, but on the whole I'm quite happy with the way it works. (I use Zombies for my Daemons, I think it works nicely with them clawing their way out of the ground etc )
I must be one of the only chaos players who feels that way ! (I should point out that my plague marines were a corrupted Loyalist chapter, not Deathgaurd, so it makes a bit more sense for them to have the extra options.)

The only other things I have models for are Blood Angels and a small amount of Crimson Fists I got from AOBR. I'm pretty happy with the space marine codex too, I think it makes for very interesting play and I enjoy the variety of builds. I especially like Combat Tactics, I find it makes games with my Horde orks very cinematic and close fought, which I love. I'm a big fan of podding marines ever since DoW (the game that made me want to collect space marines for the first time since I turned 14).

So all the actual releases have made me happy. But if you check my posting history, you can see that I was an angry, angry player back before the orks were released. I was really despondant after waiting so long for a release. THAT is the worst thing about the release schedule, it takes so bloody long! It shouldn't either, with half the codices being variations on an MEQ theme. It's a damn travesty, and I reckon it's the single worst thing about GW. If PP go the same way, I'll be very dissapointed.

JGrand wrote:I play Chaos and hate the codex for one specific reason. All fluff has been cast aside. I have always hated the idea of a Tzeench lord leading Khorne troops. Or a more pertain ant example of a Slaneesh lord leading Nurgle troops. I believe that the mark of the lord should "unlock" a specific type of troop and maybe the corresponding daemon. If not they are elites. Maybe the mark of chaos glory could give some benefit to those who choose otherwise or allow Iron Warriors, Word Bearers, or Alpha Leagon. Either way this would make for more interesting armies that would make exponentially more sense. This would also encourage some variety as well.

I don't understand. You said you're all in favor of restricting unit choices based on what Chaos God the army generally worships, then you say it would encourage variety?

My own personal "what's not fun" would be having to wait years before generic items of your armory are brought in line with the same items from another codex for your army. A storm shield is a storm shield is a storm sheild. I could see a chapter with lore explaining a higher level of craftsmanship like the Salamanders or Ironhands having better stuff but that's another discussion. Standard equipment for an army should be updated in the FAQ for that army if it's changed in another codex. That's not the case though so players are left to wait until their codex is released again before the equipment is brought in line with the updated gear.

I hear a lot of complaints about Chaos and how they don't feel right in the new dex. The complaints that I've heard seem to be mostly that themed armies aren't as strong or viable anymore.

Themed armies have taken that hit across the GW product line. Could this be a part of everyones problem?

Could the sense of dread a lot of you are feeling be that you feel the flavor of your armies is becoming vanilla?


PS. I must admit that I find the concept of chaos following a strict organized theme "Ironic".

H.B.M.C. wrote:... Planetstrike though opens up a whole new avenue for games, and takes us away from the monotony of Kill Points and Victory Points which, IMO, are dull and boring ways to play the game. ...

Seriously? You have a huge number of combinations you can make with the basic 40k rules. Three kinds of deployment, three kinds of victory conditions, and infinitely variable ways to set up terrain. Do you think Chess needs an update because "take the king" is boring? The fun of 40k is not from adding scores of new rules that turn the game upside down, IMO. The fun of 40k is that every game is a different challenge with different parameters. Maybe if you play the same opponents all the time I could see where you're coming from, but honestly I don't think it's justified to say that normal 40k is boring. IMO, the only way a game like this is boring is when it's not a challenge, and as long as you have good opponents, it's always a challenge.

focusedfire wrote:I hear a lot of complaints about Chaos and how they don't feel right in the new dex. The complaints that I've heard seem to be mostly that themed armies aren't as strong or viable anymore.

Themed armies have taken that hit across the GW product line. Could this be a part of everyones problem?

Could the sense of dread a lot of you are feeling be that you feel the flavor of your armies is becoming vanilla?


PS. I must admit that I find the concept of chaos following a strict organized theme "Ironic".

Look at it from this point of view,say hypotheticly that when the new Spezz Woofs codex is released ,players that have spent considerable time/money find that Ragnar Blackmane,Login Grimnor etc,are all now generic HQs,Long Fangs are gone,Blood Claws are ST 2,Grey Hunters are the same,Leman Russes can no longer be taken and the best HQ you can take for your army is Lion'el.
I'd belive this would irk SW players just a bit,and it should,just as the neutralization of Legion armies has irked many Chaos players.
I do feel that there is a distinct leaning towards "vanilla/WAaC "builds,with theme,flavor and substance being left behind.

Ixe wrote:Are you serious? You have a huge number of combinations you can make with the basic 40k rules. Three kinds of deployment, three kinds of victory conditions,

So by "huge" you mean 27, most of which are just minor vatiations of the same 3 missions, a third of which will be unbalanced and idiotic KP games?

So yes - I'm serious.

Ixe wrote:Do you think Chess needs an update because "take the king" is boring?

No, I think Chess needs an update because Queens are broken.

Ixe wrote:The fun of 40k is not from adding scores of new rules that turn the game upside down, IMO. The fun of 40k is that every game is a different challenge with different parameters.

To you perhaps. Don't presume to tell me what the fun of 40K is. Everyone plays this game for different reasons.

I don't understand. You said you're all in favor of restricting unit choices based on what Chaos God the army generally worships, then you say it would encourage variety?

I'm in favor of ending the ability to take stupid unfluffy armies and encouraging people to build ones that use other units based on incentives. How many Choas builds do you see running the old standard Lash, PM, Oblit spam? It's because there is no reason not to. What if by taking a Slanessh prince a player couldn't use plague marines as a troop choice and had to take them as elites though? Wouldn't that put an interesting trade off that would spawn different armies? What about those who want Berzerker troops? Wouldn't we see more of this if there was some incentive to running a World Eaters army? Maybe some new wargear or different options to make up for losing some units. Or the ability to take a squad of Bloodletters or a Bloodthirster? How many people who are getting into the game now look at becoming cool legions like Iron Warriors or Alpha legion only to find out there is no reason to be them? What if there was still the four heavy support choices for Iron warriors and some cool servo arm and wargear for lords to make up for a lack of mark? Or the ability to infiltrate all alpha legion? I feel that these would prompt people to actually use different factions and tactics. Sure, you couldn't just "go crazy" and take whatever you like, however as we have seen this mentality just leads to people picking the best option at each FOC and going with it, no matter how stupid it looks.

@JGrand: If you don't like it, don't field it. Nothing in the CSM book forces anybody to play any of those sorts of forces. And for the record, I own no Oblits.

I don't play them. Look at my sig, I take no lash or no Obliterators. There is no way I'd have a differently marked Daemon Prince leading my Plague Marines just because it's better. I wouldn't spam Oblits because their models are hideous and because they are boring and decently overpowered; not to mention they don't fit into a Death Guard army. Still, I don't like seeing it. And it can easily be avoided by having incentives for being certain legions. Allow for a basic unnammed chaos army to be made still, just don't allow the garbage of Khorne leading 2k sons with Nurgle marked terminators. It's just lame.

It's worse in Daemon armies - Legions of Nurgle-led Tzeentch Daemons, or Slaanesh-led Khornate Daemons. Uhhgh... horrible.

It's worse in Daemon armies - Legions of Nurgle-led Tzeentch Daemons, or Slaanesh-led Khornate Daemons. Uhhgh... horrible.

Yeah, it's really bad there as well. I understand why people do it, it just doesn't seem right to me to sacrifice the rich back story of the game. To me the fluff and models of 40k and the interesting races and factions are the reason to play it over playing a different tabletop game. It just doesn't seem right to play armies that make no sense in the confines of the game just to win. Again, I understand why people do it, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Full customization is an amazing aspect of the game, but if there were some incentives for maintaining the context of the back story on the battlefield I think everyone would win. More variety makes the game much cooler and more fun.

Well, folks, I'm going to drop 2 pence/pennies of ugly reality into this discussion.

GW doesn't give a Skaven's butt about any of this. HONEST. They are a publically traded company, which means they are driven to appease stockholders who, for the most part, don't play any GW games!

GW is in the business of moving product, and you can break all of us down, thusly:

80% - Churn. Buy an army, fool around, leave.
15% - Stay. Buy an army, maybe a second army. And that's it.
5% - Burn. Go through armies like a hot knife through butter.

GW is only interested in the 85%, which are new players and pure tourney knights. They buy a bunch, and GW makes a heap of profit from them. Codex changes are made by people sitting in ivory towers, and those changes are made a year before release, and locked into the printers SIX MONTHS before the release date. Which means, yes, anything you say about a new Codex in the six months before release means nothing, because it has already been put to bed, sent to the printers, printed, boxed, and put into containers on big cargo ships.

GW eliminates an entire army (Legions) or messes up a Codex (Dark Angels)? They don't care. New codex, new models, more money.

All they care about, first, is what the 80% Churn wants. Easy to pickup rules and codexes with FIXED OPTIONS. Got it? So new players can put together an army easily, by playing a short game of obvious mix-and-max. All those extra options, wargear choices, and such? TOO CONFUSING.

After the new players, it is the Tournament Players whom GW cares about, because they pay money (not as much as the Burn group). That's the bottom 5%, by the way.

Codexes are going to continue to become simpler and simpler, and you will have less and less options. Can't wait for the pre-painted GW 'squad paks' that are, assuredly, on the horizon.

--Brian.

I fear he maybe correct in those assumptions. (Briancj that is.)

As to myself, after CSM and the grand annoyance of Icons, I've been a lot less excited for changes. New plastics still probably excite me.

Although with the talk in the reports indicating GW now reckons plastic should be priced like metal, maybe that will fade as well.

I think the only armies I am really looking forward to atm, are Tyranids for my wife, because right now, they seriously can't get any worse.

She plays a balanced force by her own choice, no Nidzilla, no Genestealer spam, yeah you can guess how well that goes atm. Don't think her nids have won a game in 3yrs. Although she has just moved into her Space Marines army as I'm using Orks. It occured to us that if facing CSM with her Tyranids was bad, Orks would be a pointless excersise.

The second being Dark Eldar, also for the other half, although partially the excitement is there as Jes is redesigning them.
She waited 10yrs for Wood Elves as well, although on noting that. The new Book for Wood Elves didn't turn out too good either, she disliked the spirits. Wouldn't field a treeman, one unit of Dryads and as my main army was Druchii.

We discovered real quick that a Wood Elf army with hardly any spirits isn't that hot against an army that can almost out shoot it and Asrai then have virtually no armour saves to fall back on.

She's still hopeful though.

Oh and going back to CSM for a second, I've shelved mine for the time being. Had enough of Icons, and feeling the need to take a DP everytime to have any kind of chance against my main Ork opponent.

Gone back to Orks myself (mainly as I had some figs lying about and it was the cheapest jump in army I could create.) Orks v's Orks though is pretty fun.

@Brian: I'm not quite sure that's the right customer model, because it kind of ignores the whole Apoc / PS thing which seems to cater mostly to the players who hang around long enough to buy large armies.

N00bs are just getting in, so they won't be able to play Apoc because they just won't have enough stuff.

Pure tournament players don't grow or keep armies to reach Apoc size, nor do they play Apoc or PS in the first place.

So, if your customer model is correct, GW is wasting time with all of the cool stuff that seems to drive actual sales.

Perhaps there is a larger long-term player base that doesn't appear to play at the FLGS? Say, adults who have their own spaces that they can host their own games at without having to deal with newbie kids or tournament play? Maybe?

JohnHwangDD wrote:@Brian: I'm not quite sure that's the right customer model, because it kind of ignores the whole Apoc / PS thing which seems to cater mostly to the players who hang around long enough to buy large armies.

Apoc/PS is interesting, because, yes, it aims at the 'high end player' who can roll out a decade of collection, Forge World, etc. However, that is still the 'bottom 5%'. These folks are burning through product, and Apoc/PS is aimed squarely at them. So, my estimates stand.

While we're on it, Apoc/PS also appeals to 2nd edition style players.

--B.

Alright I'll go against the opposition here and say I look forward to every new codex that comes out. Honestly, after having the same book for 8 years I want a change in the army.

This may be colored by the fact that I have an army out of every codex so if something is really just not going to work I can just hop to a different dex.

I actually don't have an issue with the codex rules or anything like that. The only thing I have an issue with is when they reduce fluff. My main example there is why did they get rid of the sacred numbers. I don't care if there is an in-game buff, at least just mention it in the fluff. Also keep the old rivalries in there. Or I'll even go back to the original black legion fluff, who the f** is abaddon, and why aren't my black legion still running around on a space hulk avoiding imperial and other chaos marines.

I see when every codex comes out some people say units are Op others say some options suck, its a never ending thing like the IG codex everyone thought tanking 3 tanks was Op except for the squadron rules, the hydra seem the perfect way to kill those pesky nob bikers or eldar skimmers. People said that you shouldn't even think of fielding rough riders. I just don't take an interest anymore.

However, when every codex comes out people can look forward for cool new models and such

JGrand wrote:I play Chaos and hate the codex for one specific reason. All fluff has been cast aside. I have always hated the idea of a Tzeench lord leading Khorne troops. Or a more pertain ant example of a Slaneesh lord leading Nurgle troops. I believe that the mark of the lord should "unlock" a specific type of troop and maybe the corresponding daemon. If not they are elites. Maybe the mark of chaos glory could give some benefit to those who choose otherwise or allow Iron Warriors, Word Bearers, or Alpha Leagon. Either way this would make for more interesting armies that would make exponentially more sense. This would also encourage some variety as well.

The current codex is boring. How many lists just use the standard Lash, PM, Oblit spam?. It is because these options are the best bang for the buck so to speak. Sure, by making different leagon rules some ways to make more unbalanced lists will happen. As long as there are power gamer douches this is inevitable. I'd gladly accept this cost and the benefit of variety and fluff.

A-Freakin'-men! That, in a nutshell, is the biggest problem with the new C:CSM to me. Sacred numbers? What's that? Rivalry between the Chaos gods? Gone...

And it's not even that you can "chose not to field unfluffy combos if you don't want to". It's that the entire corpus of fluff is gone. I've talked with new players about sacred numbers and the rivalry between the chaos gods and got blank stares. No wonder Lash/PM/Oblit spam is so common. The fact that there was ever a reason not to do it is being lost. As long as there's no effort to show people a reason to take "fluffy" lists, you end up driving down the road of everything being driven by raw effectiveness whether you want it or not.

'Course I'm a grumpy old grognard who read the Realms of Chaos books cover-to-cover. But for me, and (naturally) I can't speak for anyone else, the fluff is about the most important part of the game.

And, to get back on thread, yes... I do, now, fear new Codicies coming out because of what they're losing...

Vale,

JohnS

So how about you take your fluffy army and don't tell other players what they can and can't do? I love building fluffy armies and if I ever make a CSM or Daemons force it will be pure Slaanesh but what about a guy who wants to tell the story of a Champion of Khorne killing a Nurgle Champion and incorporating his units into his warband? Or a Slaanesh sorcerer tricking an Iron Warriors Lord into assaulting an enemy fortification? A broad codex allows the fluff bunnies to make their own armies without placing restrictions on what other people can take.

So did the other one (exceptions being Khorne/Slaanesh & Nurgle/Tzeentch). The basic Chaos list allowed for any combination of units except for those that blatantly went against the fluff (K/S, T/N).

What about a Khorne Champion who killed a slaanesh champ and forced the members of the Slaanesh warband to fight for him?

Restrictions are restrictions. Some are arbitrary and some are based on arbitrary fluff.

Arbitrary fluff? Oh give me a break. If you're going to claim that then all fluff is arbitrary.

The current Chaos Codex is an unfluffy boring mess with a hodge podge of utterly useless units and a few pure gold ones that has lead to a single list - Lash/Oblits - dominating almost everywhere.

The previous Chaos Codex was no more balanced, but at least you could do lots of things with it (and just about everything you can do now). Those claiming that the current Chaos Codex has more options or is more flexible are stupid. Pure and simple.

Oh, and one other thing:

Generic Daemons.

Go fish...

Restrictions based on fluff is as arbitrary as anything else (yes, I hated it that all of a sudden my Dark Angels couldn't ally with Imperial Agents for fluff reasons). The 40k universe is big enough to not restrict things for fluff reasons. Fortunately, GW seems to agree and a lot of those have been dropped.

And HBMC, I've stated numerous times (usually to you no less) that I don't like generic daemons. Especially when all they had to do was allow you to buy marks for Daemons and it would have solved it entirely. That being said, generic daemons doesn't mean I can't use certain models anymore. It just means that my daemonette models aren't as good as a Daemon Codex players daemonette models.

Ozymandias wrote:So how about you take your fluffy army and don't tell other players what they can and can't do? I love building fluffy armies and if I ever make a CSM or Daemons force it will be pure Slaanesh but what about a guy who wants to tell the story of a Champion of Khorne killing a Nurgle Champion and incorporating his units into his warband? Or a Slaanesh sorcerer tricking an Iron Warriors Lord into assaulting an enemy fortification? A broad codex allows the fluff bunnies to make their own armies without placing restrictions on what other people can take.

I think you missed the point there Ozy... The new C:CSM is killing the Chaos fluff. New players to the game, who hadn't read the older stuff will simply have no idea what was there. Your examples above all derive from knowledge of the background to the game, although they really don't make sense as some great dramatic story... Why would followers of Nurgle follow a Khorne Champion just because their leader was killed? And a Tzeentchian Sorcerer tricking Iron Warriors into assaulting an enemy fortification would make much more sense. That said, there's no "fluffy" objection to either of your cases as Nurgle and Khorne are not direct rivals, nor are the followers of Slaanesh and the (undivided) Iron Warriors. But again, the new C:CSM has stripped a significant chunk of that out. It's very hard to "tell stories" when whole sections of the universe the story is putatively being told in have been stripped away and lost.

Is "fluff" arbitrary? Of course, and so is literally every single aspect of a tabletop miniatures game. But the background and good sculpts, for my money, are all GW has going for them in 40k. Well, that and -for all intents and purposes- market lock-in anyway. The rules are mediocre, at best, but the background is among the most richly developed out there.

I will always build a "fluffy" army, and I'll readily recognize that what I see as "fluffy" often will not synch with what others might want to do. But at least I'll have the ability to draw upon the full history of the 40k universe to set my stories. Newcomers very often won't. And that's a shame. Losing the ability to "tell stories" with your armies and games means you see more and more spam lists. Quite simply, there are fewer and fewer reasons not to do it...

Vale,

JohnS

I don't see the big deal about them streamlining codexes and removing restrictions. Do any other codexes have these arbitrary restrictions? Are you forbidden from taking a dreadnought because you have a chaplain in your army, and chaplains detest the machine god worshiping techmarines? Are eldar forbidden to take scorpions if they use banshees as they're rival aspect shrines?

Sacred numbers?? Because Khorne is so interested in counting his followers rather than shedding blood. It was a stupid concept to begin with.

The animosities don't make sense either. Maybe they come from the dark ages of game design, but slaanesh/khorne and tzeentch/nurgle? Shouldn't Khorne hate the magic god? Slaanesh hate the ugly god?

It isn't like the new codexes forbid people from making lone-god armies (I should know...) or that you're forced into mixing and matching. They just took out needless restrictions.

I do agree that the new chaos marine codex is lacking in options, theme, and just plain fun. I agree that generic daemons are a horrible idea, and that the lack of legions sucks donkey balls. And I'd be all in favour of putting fluff god-based restrictions into a legion-based framework. But I just don't think that having those restrictions hang around just because - especially in a traitor-marine concept - is a big deal.

I'm going to back off on the topic of the gakky Chaos Codex. It's not what this thread is about (at least, not directly), so I'm going to drop it for now.

H.B.M.C. wrote:I'm going to back off on the topic of the gakky Chaos Codex. It's not what this thread is about (at least, not directly), so I'm going to drop it for now.

True enough... Although it is tangentially relevant since, at least for me, it hits home for the overall question of, "Are you looking forward to, or dreading, the next time GW 'updates' your Codex". But you're probably right. It has gone a bit off thread.

Vale,

JohnS

I, for one, am looking forward to the eventuality of a 5th ed Tau codex.

Primarily, I'm fairly sure there will be a drop in Devilfish costs (since SM and IG both got fairly good discounts in their transport costs, particularly IG). Plus, seeing as troop costs went down in IG v5, cheaper Firewarriors would be nice.

Some new Hammerhead variants would be cool. Or new varieties of seeker missiles and cheaper markerlights to use them with.

Honestly, the only downside to a new Tau codex that I can think of is the surety of a nerfed disruption pod (they'll either be 5-10 points more, or their function will be worse).

Markerlights better be cheaper though (they really can't make them much more expensive).

H.B.M.C. wrote:Does it concern you that new Codices breed a sense of dread, and that conversations are dominated about what we're going to lose and what will be nerfed. I remember when the conversations were with people looking forward to a new Codex, rather than those wishing it would take longer.

It would concern me, but I'm not entirely convinced that it's actually occurring in the manner that you so baldly state as fact, H.B.
M.C.

In fact I'd be so bold as to say that those are the exceptions rather than the rule. Of the four recent Codices I'm aware of (Orks, Chaos Space Marines, Space Marines & Imperial Guard) the only complaints I've heard are about the CSM codex, which I'll admit is a terrible product and a huge misfire. As well as you and Agammenon2 complaining about IG, but the two of you seem to complain about damn near everything GW publishes. I think negative views of the various codices are magnified here as DakkaDakka acts as something of an echo chamber, with many posters who are good at ruthlessly tuning lists for optimal efficiency in a tournament environment, which quickly leeads to complaints about only one playable list as they hit upon the combo that defeats the current uber-list/metagame. (Like the explosion of Melta guard to deal with Mech that's currently occurring.

We also don't get many posts saying xxx product is great and has loads of options as those typoe of posters get quickly derided as fan boys or refugees from USE TACTICS-land. I would say that frequently they have a point. Again, the Chaos codex is a glaring, glaring exception to the rule. That is clear unmitigated crap from start to finish and people defending it deserve any derision they get.

H.B.M.C wrote:There are exceptions, everyone wanted a new Eldar/Ork Codex, as they were armies that simply didn't work any more, and Dark Eldar players want a new Codex so they can get a half-way decent set of new models, and I suspect Necron players want the same so that they can see how GW expands the line, but everyone else is dreading their new Codex.

So everyone dreads new 'dexes except
Eldar
Orks
Dark Eldar
Necrons
Tau (mentioned later in the thread as currently having a poor codex.

Aren't those the majority of non-Marine players? That's a rather sizable chunk of exceptions being somewhere of the order of half the currently recognized races. Maybe I'm strange but if around 50% of something are exceptions I'm not sure it can truly said to be a rule.

H.B.M.C. wrote: Wolf players are scared that it'll be like the Dark Angel/Chaos Codices.

Around my gaming community most Wolf players are just happy that GW's gotten around to them after a decade in the shadows. There is some concern about nerfing but it seems offset by these Saga rumours.

H.B.M.C wrote: Tyranid players are wondering what parts of their list ('Fexes, 'Stealers or both) are about to be nerfed. I know Daemon players won't like their next revision (assuming they ever get one) as we're bound to see Special Characters removed and things like Blood Crushers get kicked to the curb.

Well, I think the Tyranid thing is a worry about GW's pendulum of over-compensating weakening the big bugs more than is needed in the current ruleset. But the pendulum approach has been evident since at least the release of Dark Millennium for 2nd Edition and during most of that time, most players have been optimistic about new codices. I'm imagining that Nidzilla WILL be reigned in slightly now that GW has sold enough plastic 'fex kits to pay for their initial investment. I guess I'm crazy in wanting the Tyranids to play more like the hordes of bugs depicted in the fluff, especially now the metagame appears to have shifted to favour either hordes or mechanized armies. And I imagine GW will address the glaring Anti-Tank weakness Tyranids have (is there a reason Venom Cannons can't penetrate except as a hold over from second edition?). Not familiar enough with the Daemon 'dex to be able to comment (it should be part of CSM anyway, or at least should be able to field a decent approximation of itself in a revised combine chaos list whenever that happens. I think even GW must be aware of the general dissatisfaction with Chaos as it currently is and will probably go too far the other way with a plethora of different, often redundant list options available closer to the second 3rd edition codex)

H.B.M.C wrote:This is why I hate the 40K Codices and love things like Planetstrike. Planetstrike affects the way you play 40K, not how you're allowed to use your army.

I'm more the other way way. I have no particular care for Apocalypse, Planetstrike or Cities of Death as they seem more like gimmicks shoe-horned onto a framework where they're really not needed. Plus as someone who mostly plays store or pick-up games, I'm more likely to have standard 40k list available than one for those more esoteric variants. YMMV, obviously but the only supplements for 40K I've enjoyed have been codices. Mostly because I love making army lists for the different races and forces. Indeed if I didn't restrain myself I could start at least a dozen threads in army lists every day. I love list making and Apocalypse (with it's extremely dull Tau datasheet options) and it's ilk just don't inspire me the same way.

H.B.M.C wrote:I despise the Guard Codex because it is boring, bland, and changed every rule (every rule) for no apparent (or good) reason, but didn't add any flavour nor fix any problems (in some cases - Stormies and Ogryn - it made them worse). Planetstrike though opens up a whole new avenue for games, and takes us away from the monotony of Kill Points and Victory Points which, IMO, are dull and boring ways to play the game.

I'm still working through it and the changes. I knew Doctrines were disappearing and this alone meant a major overhaul to just about everything, so I have no problem with huge changes made to the list as it doesn't make swathes and swathes of models invalid. I assumed Stormies would be weakened a little as they seemed almost ubiquitous in IG listsa (a problem exacerbated by the old Grenadiers doctrine) as for the Ogryns, I'll concede your point there, but abhumnans have always been crap.

H.B.M.C wrote:This game needs to have a story behind it otherwise it risks becoming a mathhammer hell where you number-crunch your single killer build from your Codex (Lash/Oblits, Nob Bikers, Vulcan/AssTermy, Fateweaver/Bloodcrushers, MechVet/ValkVet/Executioners) and then play games to score points, where outcomes are unrealistic (ha! I killed heaps of your tiny Guard squads and beat you even though I have 1 model left!) and games are unbalanced where they should be balanced.

As you self-admittedly don't play 5th Edition, I think you overstate the case a little bit. (Again a product of the Dakka 'echo chamber' effect.) Yes there ae obvious power-builds when new 'dexes come out, but these are usually countered by a new build and that's more of a tournament thing anyway to me.

As for story, I think the fluff in the 40K5 rulebook, the SM codex and the IG codex is uniformly excellent for generating ideas for campaigns and individual skirmishes, especially the timelines and maps. I already have a story written and a campaign mapped out based on a couple of entries in those time-lines, so if you want a story, it can be done, even in the confines of math-hammered lists.

H.B.M.C wrote: less Codex redesign. Codices just piss people off.

Spoken like someone whose primary army just got a new 'dex. I'd wager that Dark Eldar, Necron and Daemonhunter players would like more Codex redesign than "every three months..."

Cane wrote:
If anything, not having updates and new rulebooks on a consistent and timely basis is more annoying than waiting over a decade for a proper rules update like what the IG was and how DE still is. ... Who the hell wants to wait in this day and age for new stuff? If anything people dread that it takes so damn long for GW to update and introduce new rules especially in terms of FAQs that all new rulebooks inevitably need (cough IG FAQ) - they're just PDF files after all.

A much shorter way of phrasing my earlier points.

Redbeard wrote:One guiding principle for game design should be "don't take things away". Change what they cost, but don't ever take something away - that's what pisses people off.

I thinks that's fundamentally true of game design, especially in something as WYSIWYG heavy as 40K. If I go out of my way to convert up Alpha Legion cultists from my CSM army or Thunder Hammer Chaplains from my Salamanders army, then these should still be viable to be played if that army is revised, and not just as "counts as" fashion

Redbeard wrote:I think that, more than anything, the codexes need proper QA. Not "playtesting", because that implies that they're playing. QA should be methodical. It should be process-based. It should involve established baselines, and unit testing as well as playing whole games. But I'm sure that these things go against GW's business model of making new stuff good - a business model that has failed as much as it has succeeded (cases: Beasts of Nurgle, Possessed Marines, Chaos Spawn, Ork Tankbustas, Vanguard, and so on). Even if the goal was to make the new units 'better' by some amount, obviously some additional QA could have improved the odds of succeeding at this.

I agree here. If the on-line community can math hammer within a couple of weeks and see that these units are severely out of whack, then someone who's ENTIRE JOB is too make sure that armies are viable should see it earlier in the process than post-release.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

Redbeard wrote:One guiding principle for game design should be "don't take things away".

When GW has overreached with armies having too much, I think this is a proper response.

But who is the arbiter of when things have been over-reached? How was SW 13th Company an over-reach? How were Chaos Cult Teminators an over-reach? If the next Eldar codex came out and there was just one generic Aspect Warrior elite entry with identical stat-lines and equipment (a la generic daemons) would you regard that as fixing an over reach? I wouldn't. I'd consider that an arbitrary restriction of choice that is entirely unnecessary.

focusedfire wrote:Or could be familiarity breeds contempt and you've just become overly familiar with said army.

I think this is true. After playing any army for a length of time there is an element of fatigue that sets in. I jump from army to army like a magpie with a cocaine habit and crazy ADHD, but I think most veterans started their second army (and we know you have one) simply because they got tired of their primary army. They tend to play the same way regardless of scenario and opponents. Guard are always stand around shooty, Orks are always charge in and choppy. Sometimes you want something different. I like shooty armies and gravitate towards them, but when I have my Tau collection at a point where I can say enough, I'm likely to start Tyranids, simply because their play style is so very different, and I'll probably flesh out the two AoBR armies to legal if dull 1500pters so I have ringer armies for introducing new players. So that'll be 4 armies I can flit between to combat fatigue.

Cheese Elemental wrote:What I'm really stunned by is the fact that GW doesn't release all five SM codicies to keep them consistent with each other. That way, BA, BT, DA, and SW players get their 3+ Storm Shields and can stop whining.

This was the only real advantage of the 3rd edition supplementary codex approach. If the core set changed, it kept everything else equal. I'd almost like to see that return as it's absurd that a Storm Shield for Da isn't the same as a Storm shield for SM amongst many, many other examples.

chaplaingrabthar wrote:stuff

Emperor's Unending Wall of Text!

chaplaingrabthar wrote:In fact I'd be so bold as to say that those are the exceptions rather than the rule. Of the four recent Codices I'm aware of (Orks, Chaos Space Marines, Space Marines & Imperial Guard) the only complaints I've heard are about the CSM codex, which I'll admit is a terrible product and a huge misfire. As well as you and Agammenon2 complaining about IG, but the two of you seem to complain about damn near everything GW publishes.

Hey, I also complain about the current IG Codex! And I'm happy with the current CSM Codex. But I guess everybody is OK with Daemons? Wierd.

chaplaingrabthar wrote:So everyone dreads new 'dexes except
Eldar
Orks
Dark Eldar
Necrons
Tau
Aren't those the majority of non-Marine players?

Eldar are OK, except that you can't make a Biel-Tan force at all. Orks & DE should be scared of any changes, because their current Codices are quite good right now, so they're going to be nerfed like IG was. Necrons *should* be scared because most of the tricks & gimmicks that rely on tied to WBB are going to go the way of the dodo. Tau should do OK because they're on an upswing. So I count that is 1 Neutral, 3 Dreading, and 1 Hopeful.

chaplaingrabthar wrote:Well, I think the Tyranid thing is a worry about GW's pendulum of over-compensating weakening the big bugs more than is needed in the current ruleset.

I'm imagining that Nidzilla WILL be reigned in slightly

If, by "reined in slightly", you mean "take a nerf bat up the ass, sideways", I'd completely agree.

If you look at what happened to the Wraithlord, I think you have a good idea of how hard GW is going to come down on the Fexes. WLs weakened due to BRB vehicle buffs, went up in cost, lost out on options, and gained a penalty rule (Wraithsight). So I think it's fair to conclude that Fexes will be nerfed pretty brutally. At a minimum, Nid players can kiss their Elite Fexes goodbye, along with Dakkafex builds, in general.

chaplaingrabthar wrote:I think even GW must be aware of the general dissatisfaction with Chaos as it currently is and will probably go too far the other way with a plethora of different, often redundant list options available closer to the second 3rd edition codex)

GW is equally aware that CSM are playing well, sells well, and a lot of new players jumped in. A little whining against a net sales increase is a net sales increase, and GW will take that choice every time.

GW might do a Chaos Legions book a la the Chaos Daemons book, with focused lists for each of the 4 Ruinous Powers. But that Legions book likely won't see updates for a 6 to 10 years at a stretch, being treated like the BA & SW Codices.

chaplaingrabthar wrote:I assumed Stormies would be weakened a little as they seemed almost ubiquitous in IG listsa (a problem exacerbated by the old Grenadiers doctrine) as for the Ogryns, I'll concede your point there, but abhumnans have always been crap.

Storms were taken because they were the only small points Troops available, due to the Platoon / AF choices each being ~200 pts. Now that there are Veterans as cheap Troops, Storms as Troops are redundant.

chaplaingrabthar wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:

Redbeard wrote:One guiding principle for game design should be "don't take things away".

When GW has overreached with armies having too much, I think this is a proper response.

But who is the arbiter of when things have been over-reached? How was SW 13th Company an over-reach? How were Chaos Cult Teminators an over-reach?

If the next Eldar codex came out and there was just one generic Aspect Warrior elite entry with identical stat-lines and equipment (a la generic daemons) would you regard that as fixing an over reach?

GW decides, of course. When nobody can understand what's going on, that's overreaching. Doctrines, Legions, Nid Mutations are all good examples of overreaching. 13th Co was a splinter, like Kroot and the CJ Harlie lists. 4 flavors of Cult Termies on top of Legion lists with extra entries for each makes for just way too much going on in a single Codex.

What you're saying is that *ALL* CSM entries would go away in favor of a CSM Tactical squad without any Marks or other options, but then we'd have a Codex split with Eldar first, and then Biel-Tan a year later. Actually, I would be quite happy with a dedicated Biel-Tan Codex, especially if I get super-chromey rules in there. Please feel free to suggest that to GW. If GW is going to do a variant Eldar Codex, I'd far rather see Biel-Tan than Comorragh get the book. Biel-Tan can only go up in power. DE can only go down in power.

chaplaingrabthar wrote:when I have my Tau collection at a point where I can say enough, I'm likely to start Tyranids, simply because their play style is so very different, and I'll probably flesh out the two AoBR armies to legal if dull 1500pters so I have ringer armies for introducing new players. So that'll be 4 armies I can flit between to combat fatigue.

Actually, you should do that, and that's what GW wants. At that point, with a new Codex for each of your armies, you'll have new stuff all the time, so no complaining.

chaplaingrabthar wrote: it's absurd that a Storm Shield for Da isn't the same as a Storm shield for SM amongst many, many other examples.

How so? Only the BA have the Baal Pred variant. Only the Space Wolves will have the +1 Lightning Claws. So the UM have the +1 Storm Shield. Minor variations here serve only to better (artificially & semi-arbitrarily) distinguish the character of each SM variant.

JohnHwangDD wrote:But I guess everybody is OK with Daemons?

Not everybody...

JohnHwangDD wrote:

chaplaingrabthar wrote:stuff

Emperor's Unending Wall of Text!

A long thought out post, deserves a long thought out response.

JohnHwangDD wrote:
Hey, I also complain about the current IG Codex! And I'm happy with the current CSM Codex. But I guess everybody is OK with Daemons? Wierd.

Well, seeing as you do appear to be happy with the CSM codex, I'm not sure I should take your views on the IG seriously :-) As for Daemons, I'm not okay with the generic abominations in the CSM 'dex and I'm completely unfamiliar with the Daemon 'dex, so I can't comment on it one way or another.

JohnHwangDD wrote:Eldar are OK, except that you can't make a Biel-Tan force at all.

And Chaos are okay, you just can't make a Night Lords, Iron Warriors, Thousand Sons, Death Guard, World Eaters, Emperor's Children, Word Bearers or Alpha Legion force at all. If you're expression of regret regarding Biel-Tann is accurate, how the hell can you be happy with the CSM codex?

JohnHwangDD wrote: Orks & DE should be scared of any changes, because their current Codices are quite good right now, so they're going to be nerfed like IG was. Necrons *should* be scared because most of the tricks & gimmicks that rely on tied to WBB are going to go the way of the dodo. Tau should do OK because they're on an upswing. So I count that is 1 Neutral, 3 Dreading, and 1 Hopeful.

This basically just seems to say change is bad. I'm a little surprised. I'm also amused by your opinion that Necrons should be scared of changes as I'm pretty damn sure most Necron players would love a change to how the army plays in 5th Edition.

Also Imperial Guard was not nerfed by the new codex. IG drop spam was, but there are several viable builds that are as effective, if not more so that now exist. IG might have moved sideways on the totem pole, or maybe even climbed a couple of rungs (in my opinion anyway) but I don't think you can characterize it as nerfed.

JohnHwangDD wrote:
GW is equally aware that CSM are playing well, sells well, and a lot of new players jumped in. A little whining against a net sales increase is a net sales increase, and GW will take that choice every time.

I think that the current Internet back draft could be classified as more than a little whining. GW does tend to respond to the on-line community when it becomes absolutely deafening and unified. Not alwyas, but that's more the norm. I also think that losing the huge gobbets of negativity that the phrase Codex: Chaos Space Marines brings up might be worth it in overall model sales. I'm thinking that if a lot of the different options were codex legal, people would buy models for them, which would be another sales gain.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

chaplaingrabthar wrote:If the next Eldar codex came out and there was just one generic Aspect Warrior elite entry with identical stat-lines and equipment (a la generic daemons) would you regard that as fixing an over reach?

What you're saying is that *ALL* CSM entries would go away in favor of a CSM Tactical squad without any Marks or other options, but then we'd have a Codex split with Eldar first, and then Biel-Tan a year later.

No, I'm saying what I said in the parts that quoted. I'm not seeing how my comparison isn't valid. Different daemons were a core part of Chaos since RT as were different Eldar Aspect Warriors part of Eldar. If one can go away, then so can the other. It's not the same as the CSM comparison you bring up. And with GW's history there would be no guarantee of another Biel-Tan codex a year later, you might be stuck with Aspects as crappy guardians in mesh armour drag fo a DE like decade.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

chaplaingrabthar wrote: it's absurd that a Storm Shield for Da isn't the same as a Storm shield for SM amongst many, many other examples.

How so? Only the BA have the Baal Pred variant. Only the Space Wolves will have the +1 Lightning Claws. So the UM have the +1 Storm Shield. Minor variations here serve only to better (artificially & semi-arbitrarily) distinguish the character of each SM variant.

IT shouldn't be arbitrary. Also a Baal Predator is not the same as a regular Predator and Wolf Claws are not the same as Lightning Claws they are variants with different names. Stuff like Psychic Hoods, Storm Shields etc. are supposed o representing the SAME thing in each codex and so should have the SAME rules. What's wrong with a little consistency.?

chaplaingrabthar wrote:A long thought out post, deserves a long thought out response.

But then how would John 'win' the argument against you? He has to belittle you and then dismiss your arguments as trivial because he is incapable of forming counter-points of his own.

chaplaingrabthar wrote:If you're expression of regret regarding Biel-Tann is accurate, how the hell can you be happy with the CSM codex?

Because, according to John, all those various army options made things too restrictive and confined, whereas the current Codex, which has no options at all, is more flexible. I don't exactly know how he makes that connection, but I'd advise not thinking about it to much. You might go crosseyed.

For me, the bottom line is this:

Ever since 2nd edition went away, as H.B.M.C. has pointed out, most new Codex releases are largely viewed with dread and not anticipation.

The release of the first few 3rd edition Codices are actually what made me leave the game until the release of 4th edition!

GW really should address this, and I think they've begun to.

Time will tell if they continue to head in the right direction.

Or not.

I was, actually, really looking forwards to the new IG codex. Missing units returned, Primaris Psykers returned, better Commissar rules, new advisers, MASSIVE RETURN OF FLUFF.

And then I actually read the Codex, and died a little inside, for I knew there would be a massive rush to build to this overpowered codex.

*MY* dread is that, for some reason, GW thinks that every Codex must be more powerful than the last, in order to move more product.

Very CCG-minded of them.

--B.

"Ambivalence"

I think that sums up my perspective. I only play Tyranids, so I guess that may influence things.

But I doubt it.

Agree to this: Chaos were pretty much the worst written codex i've ever seen. Wording it differently would have made all the difference in the world, but SOMEONE was too stupid to realise how. And then theres the lash prince issue, the codex may be well balanced, but this one unit entry seems to be just so damn awesome compared to the rest that everyone feels compelled to use it.

Other than that, all i can say is that this "dreadfull feeling" people are getting is simply caus people didnt collect their armies properly, if you realise that you have just about exactly 1500 pts of tyranids, and most of those points are bound to a number of 5-6 fexes and 1-2 tyrants, then youre playing an army based on ONE(1) design and principle. And if the core ruleset behind that design and principle is so much as tweaked, then your army will fall over on itself.
Other examples would be armies that heavily depend on supplementary rules, such as doctrines, whom were guaranteed to change from codex to codex, marine armies that used certain rules to give all of their tactical squads Apothecaries or armies that are designed fit smugly into tournament rules (you wanna play 1500 point tournaments, so you buy 1500 points of units, simple)
When a codex changes then a codex changes, it has some good changes, and other bad changes, just keep in mind that most people overlook the good stuff and obsess on the bad stuff, "the old good will be made bad and the old bad stuff will be good" is just people beign overly dramatic

On the imperial guard codex: They were pretty okay beforehand, but they needed that litle scooch before they could really square up against the new edition codexes, with the changes made in this codex the imperial army can face orks/marines and the rest at very even odds. All we need now is for the rest of the codexes to arrive.

I wouldn't worry about Lash too much. You can bet GW will simply remove the option entirely in the next version of the Codex.

Before I answer, let me state that I'm a Necron-only player.

I look forward to a new codex release with immense anticipation!

Probably not for what you expect, though.

I play in a vacuum. There's a group of 6-7 of us who play regularly against each other. Most of us have a single army, but some have 2-3 they switch around. We play a mixture of "tournaments" and team-Apocalypse games. Now, we just finished a tournament.. And I came in second, almost tied with the first place.. Which was Dark Eldar. So yeah, I don't look forward to a new codex because Necrons are "weak" or anything like that, because in our circle, they aren't. We had to modify PO for team-Apocalypse games, as otherwise it would be nigh unplayable, but even that is no big deal. No, my problem is my total lack of options. There's one basic list I can field, with minor variations here and there. That gets boring quick, for me and my opponents. So yes, I look forward to a codex that will allow me to create more than one army list.