overly granular point systems - they make people believe, that it is possible to pinpoint the cost of a model/weapon/wargear to +/- 1 point, when the real in-game value of an item swings at least an order of magnitude higher than this depending on mission and matchup context.
Sure, but how does making them all free fix this issue rather than exacerbating it?
overly granular point systems - they make people believe, that it is possible to pinpoint the cost of a model/weapon/wargear to +/- 1 point, when the real in-game value of an item swings at least an order of magnitude higher than this depending on mission and matchup context.
Sure, but how does making them all free fix this issue rather than exacerbating it?
Blackie wrote: I did my math based on percentages rather than the actual PL/points conversion. 95 points compared to 135 and 6 PL compared to 8-9 PL. The increase is the same percentages. And +2PL (the jump from 6PL to 8PL) would match the +40points hike that the big mek gets when maxing out his upgrades.
Ah. That's wrongheaded - the MegaMek is given PL *assuming* you take the KFF (and that the KFF is worth taking in 9th).
Blackie wrote: I know that PL are less accurate though, to the point that most of the points costs are based assuming the unit did take most of, if not all, the expensive gear. There is a significant difference between a big mek with TP (the 95 points one) and a big mek with KFF (the 6PL or 115 points one) in terms of gameplay and also price, by using points.
Yes, but there are people in this thread who are arguing that PL is more or as accurate as points, so I'm arguing against them.
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Dolnikan wrote: If you assume that the points costs of units overall are correct, then indeed, a MegaMek should be 5 PL. But the thing is, most points costs just aren't correct and they never will be.
Yes, but in this example, that makes PL *even less* accurate than points while being even less granular.
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nou wrote: This right here, what Voss wrote, is a perfect illustration of the biggest flaw of overly granular point systems - they make people believe, that it is possible to pinpoint the cost of a model/weapon/wargear to +/- 1 point, when the real in-game value of an item swings at least an order of magnitude higher than this depending on mission and matchup context.
No, people don't believe this. They just know it's a better approximation than PL.
Still faster than even no-stratagem, no-doctrine 8th/9th. I mean, feel free to have a look at the core rules and [url=https://webapp.onepagerules.com/game-systems/grimdark-future]army lists[url]. The rules reference sheet with USRs is one page, double-sided, with reasonably normal sized text, and the army lists are one page double-sided as well. Gameplay involves a lot less rolling than 40K and general resolution is faster. It does slow down a bit due to analysis paralysis in the AA system, but a game is four turns, so it ends up going pretty quickly.
1000pts of GDF is 500-750pts of 40K, and takes under an hour in my experience. It's not a super deep game, but it feels like a wargame and keeps both players involved.
Oh I didn't realize it was AA as well. Thanks we'll have to check it out one day.
aphyon wrote:We prefer using the 4th ed codex for nids as it better represent their adaptability. we just reverse "import" newer bugs into the old codex framework. I.E. using the new points cost for the new units but the rules for the gear/upgrades from the core 4th ed book. It is very cross compatible as with many codexes through GWs history often saw use halfway through the next editions because of GWs release policy
I might give that a shot. Though in some cases I may end up homebrewing new rules- eg Tyrannofexes being AP4 never sat right with me.
It is hard to use the 4th ed codex for nids because a) half of my nid army doesn't have 4th ed rules and b) even the 4th ed codex struggles to work in the 5th ruleset. Good luck facing a vehicle list when the venom cannon is unable to make pens and it is nearly impossible to kill vehicles with glancing hits.
Personally if I had to play using 5th rules, I would prefer to reverse engineer the new 9th ed datasheets to work in 5th.
Except that is not true. i have been playing hybrid 5th ed since 8th edition dropped. when i run nids i have zero trouble killing vehicles. just a couple weeks ago i blew up a land raider with a brood lord. just because one weapon (venom cannon) can never pen, doesn't mean other units/weapons cannot. also glancing hits still effect the performance of vehicles. they are not supposed to destroy them directly (with the possibility of doing it through cumulative damage). it is part of the immersion and the reason why 5th ed vehicle damage is my favorite take on the damage chart.
As for rules, yes if you are using new units from 8th or 9th ed they do not work because they are not cross compatible. 8th and 9th are a completely different game. however 3rd-7th are absolutely cross compatible.
overly granular point systems - they make people believe, that it is possible to pinpoint the cost of a model/weapon/wargear to +/- 1 point, when the real in-game value of an item swings at least an order of magnitude higher than this depending on mission and matchup context.
Sure, but how does making them all free fix this issue rather than exacerbating it?
For the hundredth time - all my posts about adequate granularity are NOT in defence of GW's implementation of low granularity point system. And if you remember my POV from various similar threads, I'm strongly against treating point system as end all, be all balance tools, because they do not work in this role at all.
So, to reiterate one last time - because point systems of any kind can only ever put very rough brackets on real, effective match time value of units, keeping the precision of measurement close to the real accuracy of said measurement prevents people from believing, that points matter as much as they think they do. Then, on top of a general structure of rough point measurement, other, more adequate balancing tools should be utilised to ensure a fair game.
I've recently realised something funny - some time ago, Deadnight mentioned how Warcaster approaches balance. And it's the same process everybody knows from their childhood if they ever played spontaneous soccer/basketball game - the most intuitive approach of "draw players one by one from the common pool" is the best one that anybody implemented in a wargame
Except that is not true. i have been playing hybrid 5th ed since 8th edition dropped. when i run nids i have zero trouble killing vehicles. just a couple weeks ago i blew up a land raider with a brood lord. just because one weapon (venom cannon) can never pen, doesn't mean other units/weapons cannot. also glancing hits still effect the performance of vehicles. they are not supposed to destroy them directly (with the possibility of doing it through cumulative damage). it is part of the immersion and the reason why 5th ed vehicle damage is my favorite take on the damage chart.
As for rules, yes if you are using new units from 8th or 9th ed they do not work because they are not cross compatible. 8th and 9th are a completely different game. however 3rd-7th are absolutely cross compatible.
Considering that a 4th edition broodlord with toxin sacs needs to roll 6s to rend and then roll 5-6 to pen a Land Raider, and then 5-6 for destroyed result, nice rolls but not exactly a convincing argument.
And I don't think a 5th edition broodlord can even hope to accomplish that.
As for rules, yes if you are using new units from 8th or 9th ed they do not work because they are not cross compatible. 8th and 9th are a completely different game. however 3rd-7th are absolutely cross compatible.
Hence I said "reverse engineer". General rules would be halving infantry wounds and reducing monster wounds to a third and toughness values by 1. For AP, simply add 6, so e.g AP -1 + 6 = AP 5. Weapons with a strength value over 10 are reduced to 10 but get a bonus AP (so Rupture Cannons would be S10 AP1).
More weird weapons and abilities would need more thought, but I'm not playing a Tyrannofex with the extremely subpar rules it had in 5th and 6th ed codexes.
I've recently realised something funny - some time ago, Deadnight mentioned how Warcaster approaches balance. And it's the same process everybody knows from their childhood if they ever played spontaneous soccer/basketball game - the most intuitive approach of "draw players one by one from the common pool" is the best one that anybody implemented in a wargame
To my expiriance this generally ends with one team being 2/3 of the local SKS club members and the rest being 1-3 good players and a ton of randoms getting smashed everytime.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Deadnight 804585 11349119 wrote:
Can it even be fixed?
And if it can't?
Lets assume this is true, is this the reason to make stuff even worse?
Except that is not true. i have been playing hybrid 5th ed since 8th edition dropped. when i run nids i have zero trouble killing vehicles. just a couple weeks ago i blew up a land raider with a brood lord. just because one weapon (venom cannon) can never pen, doesn't mean other units/weapons cannot. also glancing hits still effect the performance of vehicles. they are not supposed to destroy them directly (with the possibility of doing it through cumulative damage). it is part of the immersion and the reason why 5th ed vehicle damage is my favorite take on the damage chart.
As for rules, yes if you are using new units from 8th or 9th ed they do not work because they are not cross compatible. 8th and 9th are a completely different game. however 3rd-7th are absolutely cross compatible.
Considering that a 4th edition broodlord with toxin sacs needs to roll 6s to rend and then roll 5-6 to pen a Land Raider, and then 5-6 for destroyed result, nice rolls but not exactly a convincing argument.
And I don't think a 5th edition broodlord can even hope to accomplish that.
As for rules, yes if you are using new units from 8th or 9th ed they do not work because they are not cross compatible. 8th and 9th are a completely different game. however 3rd-7th are absolutely cross compatible.
Hence I said "reverse engineer". General rules would be halving infantry wounds and reducing monster wounds to a third and toughness values by 1. For AP, simply add 6, so e.g AP -1 + 6 = AP 5. Weapons with a strength value over 10 are reduced to 10 but get a bonus AP (so Rupture Cannons would be S10 AP1).
More weird weapons and abilities would need more thought, but I'm not playing a Tyrannofex with the extremely subpar rules it had in 5th and 6th ed codexes.
Methinks you have forgotten the 4th edition rules:
rending in close combat was on 6s TO HIT (much easier than 6s to wound since you roll more dice) and gave you 6+d6 armor penetration. With a strength of 5 (?) he would need a 3 to glance a Land Raider and kill it on a 6, or a 4+ to pen and kill it on a 4+.
If he's strength 4, he would need a 4 to glance and kill on a 6, and a 5+ to pen and kill on a 4+.
Methinks you have forgotten the 4th edition rules:
rending in close combat was on 6s TO HIT (much easier than 6s to wound since you roll more dice) and gave you 6+d6 armor penetration. With a strength of 5 (?) he would need a 3 to glance a Land Raider and kill it on a 6, or a 4+ to pen and kill it on a 4+.
If he's strength 4, he would need a 4 to glance and kill on a 6, and a 5+ to pen and kill on a 4+.
But I thought we were talking about 5th in which vehicles were exponentially tougher (with glances being unable to kill vehicles and pens needing 5+) and rending was much weaker as it worked on To Wound rolls and was 6+D3 penetration.
4th ed Tyranids had little issue killing vehicles in 4th edition, but struggled in 5th edition (and were screwed if they ran into an IG leaf blower list)
I have to say, this arguement over purposeful difficulty as some form of barrier to the casuals smacks of the same argument used against 5th, from the 3rd ed. Grognards. Who gives a crap if it's easier or harder to build a list? You all act like you aren't extremely entitled rich white adult males playing with fething dolls. Which is the point. I want MORE people in this game, not less. I want it to be easy to make a quick game happen, and I want it easier to make 3rd party list building apps to replace the gak that GW puts out.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Who gives a crap if it's easier or harder to build a list? You all act like you aren't extremely entitled rich white adult males playing with fething dolls.
Woah, y'know many of us aren't (who knows about the subjective "extremely entitled" part) those things, what a weird assumption about class/sex/race for someone looking for more people to be involved. I and the people I play fit at most one of those categories each and are fine nerds, thanks.
But, most people aren't saying anything about intentional barriers, just the value of granularity, and I would be surprised if there were a very large demographic who enjoyed 40k but couldn't add to 4-digit numbers with a calculator. It's kind of weirdly insulting though that you think that that barrier is what excludes people outside your accused group from enjoying the game.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: I have to say, this arguement over purposeful difficulty as some form of barrier to the casuals smacks of the same argument used against 5th, from the 3rd ed. Grognards. Who gives a crap if it's easier or harder to build a list? You all act like you aren't extremely entitled rich white adult males playing with fething dolls. Which is the point. I want MORE people in this game, not less. I want it to be easy to make a quick game happen, and I want it easier to make 3rd party list building apps to replace the gak that GW puts out.
There are nonwhite people who are good at math, too, you idiot.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: I have to say, this arguement over purposeful difficulty as some form of barrier to the casuals smacks of the same argument used against 5th, from the 3rd ed. Grognards. Who gives a crap if it's easier or harder to build a list? You all act like you aren't extremely entitled rich white adult males playing with fething dolls. Which is the point. I want MORE people in this game, not less. I want it to be easy to make a quick game happen, and I want it easier to make 3rd party list building apps to replace the gak that GW puts out.
You want Tindr or Humpr or Grindr or Tik-Tok 40K? Why level everything down to a lowest common denominator in the name of inclusivity? Why not be exclusive, with a cognitive barrier to entry alongside the other barriers in the forms of monetary investment, time, hobby skill development, and so on?
This thread wasn't really on the rails to start with but holy crap I leave for a few hours to work on an introduction to narrative play and come back to some of the most insane back and forth nonsense I've witnessed on this site.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: I have to say, this arguement over purposeful difficulty as some form of barrier to the casuals smacks of the same argument used against 5th, from the 3rd ed. Grognards. Who gives a crap if it's easier or harder to build a list? You all act like you aren't extremely entitled rich white adult males playing with fething dolls. Which is the point. I want MORE people in this game, not less. I want it to be easy to make a quick game happen, and I want it easier to make 3rd party list building apps to replace the gak that GW puts out.
So you’re saying we have to dumb things down for minorities?, that’s kind of very not good. I would reconsider what you’re saying.
I'd prefer less people in the game if it meant it were a more quality game. Keeping in mind even if you cut the entire player base in half you'd STILL easily find a game in any state barring Alaska
Methinks you have forgotten the 4th edition rules:
rending in close combat was on 6s TO HIT (much easier than 6s to wound since you roll more dice) and gave you 6+d6 armor penetration. With a strength of 5 (?) he would need a 3 to glance a Land Raider and kill it on a 6, or a 4+ to pen and kill it on a 4+.
If he's strength 4, he would need a 4 to glance and kill on a 6, and a 5+ to pen and kill on a 4+.
But I thought we were talking about 5th in which vehicles were exponentially tougher (with glances being unable to kill vehicles and pens needing 5+) and rending was much weaker as it worked on To Wound rolls and was 6+D3 penetration.
4th ed Tyranids had little issue killing vehicles in 4th edition, but struggled in 5th edition (and were screwed if they ran into an IG leaf blower list)
Unit1126PLL wrote:Ahh true true, forgive me.
I play 4th currently.
Yes we are using 5th ed rules so rending is only a 6 + a d3 VS armor, however for a vehicle that didn't move you auto hit....so a brood lord gets 5 hits on the charge at S6 with rending.
Now that aside and my good dice rolls, we use AV14 as the gold standard, however not many vehicles in the game are AV14, or not AV14 all around like a land raider or a monolith. when it comes to vehicle smashing nids with the 4th ed codex even with the downtuned rending(it really needed it after 4th) there are still plenty of things that can hurt heavy armor. zoanthropes S10 AP1 lance, carnifexes with S8 barbed stranglers, any big bug in melee combat and of course the humble outflanking gene stealer/broodlord combos. if you start reverse importing the new bugs from 5th-7th into the 4th ed codex you have hive guard with assault 2 S8 indirect fire guns, tyrano fex, trygons, mawlocks etc
The last list i ran was thematically focused on melee combat, however more shooting themed lists are still just as viable.
The point for catbarf is he still can enjoy playing 40K, even if it isn't the current edition, from the sounds of it his friends playing the FW campaign they seem to have figured this out.
Voss wrote: No, I'm arguing against what you did say: Yes, it is 'more to it,' there are a lot of complications. And part of that is having more moving parts. In a system where you only take units 'as is,' you can get away with simple and low points. When each unit can have 0-15 options, and they have a wildly varied effect on the game, you can't do that.
Also, with smaller point values, each mistake by the devs in costing units has a larger effect on the game. As much as people like to quibble, if a single space marine is 20 or 22 points rather 21, the over all effect on a 1500 or 2000 point game is pretty minor. If heavy warjack is 7 but really should be 10, it matters a lot.
Well, costing a warjack at 7 when it should be 10 is like costing a Marine at 20pts when it should be 28pts, or costing the warjack at 70 when it should be 100. That's a proportionality issue that holds true regardless of where you set the granularity.
I'm inclined to think that you could easily reduce all points costs by a factor of 5, and do an end run around the reduced granularity by: -Assigning costs of units based on increments of some number of models (smaller than PL does), -Giving unit-wide wargear costs based on the same increments, and -Rounding one-off upgrades as needed.
So maybe a unit of Tyranid Warriors costs 5pts apiece, you can give them all Adrenal Glands at 1pt for every 3 models, and a Venom Cannon upgrade is 1pt. Tempestus Scions can be 9pts for every 5 models, with flamers/GLs/HSVGs costing 1pt apiece and melta/plasma costing 2pts.
Granularity of per-model costs is preserved by tying the points cost to multiple models, and upgrades are essentially rounded to the nearest 5pts (which seems about as granular as GW has been able to effectively do). Pretty simple.
This right here, what Voss wrote, is a perfect illustration of the biggest flaw of overly granular point systems - they make people believe, that it is possible to pinpoint the cost of a model/weapon/wargear to +/- 1 point, when the real in-game value of an item swings at least an order of magnitude higher than this depending on mission and matchup context. The more universal the item is, the less swing there is, the more specialised the item is, the more swing there is. And no, "pinpointing to the average" is not possible either, because the boundaries you are calculating such average for change with "the meta", which in turn change with "the average" you assign to items.
@ catbarf: As I've wrote it above, granularity of around 100-200 units is perfectly workable in 40k and even currently, the real granularity of large swathes of the point system in 40k is 400 units, not 2000 units - 5pts increments are a standard since many editions ago and in many, many cases upgrades that are 1-2 pts per model must be taken for all models in the squad, so you still pay multiples of 5pts for them.
So a Leman Russ is worth 10-1000 pts and a Guardsman is worth 1-100 pts? That's as close as you can get to balance? That's two orders of magnitude. If balance was as loose as you suggest we wouldn't see changes in the meta when GW adjusts points by 20%. A bolt pistol is better than a laspistol, it shouldn't be 5 points or 0 pts. Going from 235 to 237 pts is too granular, going from 5 to 7 pts is not.
EviscerationPlague wrote: I'd prefer less people in the game if it meant it were a more quality game. Keeping in mind even if you cut the entire player base in half you'd STILL easily find a game in any state barring Alaska
EviscerationPlague wrote: I'd prefer less people in the game if it meant it were a more quality game. Keeping in mind even if you cut the entire player base in half you'd STILL easily find a game in any state barring Alaska
Ah yes, 40k, the US of A native game.
I'm talking for myself in that instance. If I lived elsewhere I'd use elsewhere in my sentence. Your point is what?
When I lived in a relatively small town in the UK I still had two clubs playing 40k within a short walk of my house. That was even before the huge covid-boom.
The 40k player base is plenty large enough for what it is imo, there's no need pressing need to grow it and I would happily sacrifice some numbers for a better quality game.
EviscerationPlague wrote: I'd prefer less people in the game if it meant it were a more quality game. Keeping in mind even if you cut the entire player base in half you'd STILL easily find a game in any state barring Alaska
Good for you, but how about the people that don't live in countries with populations over 400 milion? If you cut store populations outside of UK or US, you get dead stores and then no one gets to play there at all.
US and EU are very different here, less people in the US because of changes to the game, does not mean less people in the EU as well
People like different styles of games and a lot of games that are well received in EU are not that popular in USA and vice versa
current version of 40k sells more in the USA and the market share is larger than for EU in the last years
it also has a larger potential to grow, so GW won't change something as long as the larger potential market likes the game
Good for you, but how about the people that don't live in countries with populations over 400 milion? If you cut store populations outside of UK or US, you get dead stores and then no one gets to play there at all.
Thats true anywhere you live.
I Iive about an hour away from my game shop. there are some more rural areas of the country that have almost no gamers.
Building a strong gaming community is key to having people to play with rather or not the games played are related to GW. i play every weekend for over 12 hours and i have not had a GW related game in the store for a month, however i have gotten loads of classic battletech and warmachine games in. other players have been playing flames of war, specter operations, MTG and other systems. the loss of GW games isn't the end of the world.
Voss wrote: No, I'm arguing against what you did say: Yes, it is 'more to it,' there are a lot of complications. And part of that is having more moving parts. In a system where you only take units 'as is,' you can get away with simple and low points. When each unit can have 0-15 options, and they have a wildly varied effect on the game, you can't do that.
Also, with smaller point values, each mistake by the devs in costing units has a larger effect on the game. As much as people like to quibble, if a single space marine is 20 or 22 points rather 21, the over all effect on a 1500 or 2000 point game is pretty minor. If heavy warjack is 7 but really should be 10, it matters a lot.
Well, costing a warjack at 7 when it should be 10 is like costing a Marine at 20pts when it should be 28pts, or costing the warjack at 70 when it should be 100. That's a proportionality issue that holds true regardless of where you set the granularity.
I'm inclined to think that you could easily reduce all points costs by a factor of 5, and do an end run around the reduced granularity by:
-Assigning costs of units based on increments of some number of models (smaller than PL does),
-Giving unit-wide wargear costs based on the same increments, and
-Rounding one-off upgrades as needed.
So maybe a unit of Tyranid Warriors costs 5pts apiece, you can give them all Adrenal Glands at 1pt for every 3 models, and a Venom Cannon upgrade is 1pt. Tempestus Scions can be 9pts for every 5 models, with flamers/GLs/HSVGs costing 1pt apiece and melta/plasma costing 2pts.
Granularity of per-model costs is preserved by tying the points cost to multiple models, and upgrades are essentially rounded to the nearest 5pts (which seems about as granular as GW has been able to effectively do). Pretty simple.
This right here, what Voss wrote, is a perfect illustration of the biggest flaw of overly granular point systems - they make people believe, that it is possible to pinpoint the cost of a model/weapon/wargear to +/- 1 point, when the real in-game value of an item swings at least an order of magnitude higher than this depending on mission and matchup context. The more universal the item is, the less swing there is, the more specialised the item is, the more swing there is. And no, "pinpointing to the average" is not possible either, because the boundaries you are calculating such average for change with "the meta", which in turn change with "the average" you assign to items.
@ catbarf: As I've wrote it above, granularity of around 100-200 units is perfectly workable in 40k and even currently, the real granularity of large swathes of the point system in 40k is 400 units, not 2000 units - 5pts increments are a standard since many editions ago and in many, many cases upgrades that are 1-2 pts per model must be taken for all models in the squad, so you still pay multiples of 5pts for them.
So a Leman Russ is worth 10-1000 pts and a Guardsman is worth 1-100 pts? That's as close as you can get to balance? That's two orders of magnitude. If balance was as loose as you suggest we wouldn't see changes in the meta when GW adjusts points by 20%. A bolt pistol is better than a laspistol, it shouldn't be 5 points or 0 pts. Going from 235 to 237 pts is too granular, going from 5 to 7 pts is not.
Where did you got those two orders of magnitude from? I wrote about one. There are cases of weapons/rules however, that swing down to 0 value, the old poison against an armoured company for example, or highwire against an all infantry list.
And the meta will change with any wide enough change (with the caveat, that „wide enough” means affect enough players, not enough units). That is the whole point of the „meta is a dynamic system and as such follows chaotic math, not simple algebrae” argument.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Your laspistol vs bolt pistol example is a good one though, but for the exact opposite reason you wrote. I think everyone will agree, that upgrading a single character to bolt pistol doesn’t influence the outcome of the game anyhow. But if you upgrade a large enough squad from las to bolt, it will have an impact. So, a treshold exists, a minimal number of points spent on las to bolt upgrades, that becomes influential. That threshold is the adequate granularity for the system, and for 40k it is somewhere between 20 and 50pts. This gives a workable granularity between 40 and 100 units. Current real granularity of 400 units is still an overkill, and perceived granularity of 2000 units is a meaninglessly inflated one. 200 units gives enough room for micromanagent on model level and it looks like GW is aiming at something between 200 and 400 real units for future editions.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: I have to say, this arguement over purposeful difficulty as some form of barrier to the casuals smacks of the same argument used against 5th, from the 3rd ed. Grognards. Who gives a crap if it's easier or harder to build a list? You all act like you aren't extremely entitled rich white adult males playing with fething dolls. Which is the point. I want MORE people in this game, not less. I want it to be easy to make a quick game happen, and I want it easier to make 3rd party list building apps to replace the gak that GW puts out.
Oh, so you're actually an idiot, now that explains all your past posts. Thanks for clearing that out for me
Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote: I’d say that 5th at least was more balanced, and also promoted casual play which most players find more fun.
It promoted casual play, but it wasn't balanced at all.
Maybe 5th edition core book with 4th edition codexes could be considered more balanced, but 5th quickly broke its own balance with the 5th ed IG codex.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: You all act like you aren't extremely entitled rich white adult males playing with fething dolls.
If I wanted to read that kind of nonsense, I would go to reddit. I always put up with your ridiculous takes because of sheer entertainment value but at this point it's an easy choice to add to ignore list.
EviscerationPlague wrote: I'd prefer less people in the game if it meant it were a more quality game. Keeping in mind even if you cut the entire player base in half you'd STILL easily find a game in any state barring Alaska
I feel like it's worth pointing out that the larger the player base, the more likely that player base is to enjoy the sort of game you're looking for. Want to play a series of narrative games with thematic armies? You're more likely to find a partner in a group of 10 than a group of 5. Want to play cutthroat competitive games against players with a high level of skill? The more players you have, the higher the number of players that will take an interest in that style of play and increase their skill level through experience.
Saying that better game balance/design = a smaller player base seems false, but also there are merits to a larger player base even if we did assume that using PL instead of points made the game more approachable or whatever.
Yeah, but that is only true if the community is really big. Such a split can work to create two paralel communities if a town or city has 50+ players. If the the town or city has 20 or 30 players, then trying to cut it up in to a matched play, open/narrative group and people that play tournament will not generate the results.
Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote: I’d say that 5th at least was more balanced, and also promoted casual play which most players find more fun.
It promoted casual play, but it wasn't balanced at all.
Maybe 5th edition core book with 4th edition codexes could be considered more balanced, but 5th quickly broke its own balance with the 5th ed IG codex.
The GK book made the IG book look like the Sister's white dwarf book.
Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote: I’d say that 5th at least was more balanced, and also promoted casual play which most players find more fun.
It promoted casual play, but it wasn't balanced at all.
Maybe 5th edition core book with 4th edition codexes could be considered more balanced, but 5th quickly broke its own balance with the 5th ed IG codex.
The GK book made the IG book look like the Sister's white dwarf book.
And also the rules stupidty that was Jaws of the Wolf World.
Make an initiative test for all models in a line and immediately die with no saves of any kind allowed if failed, and there were entire armies with universally low initiative stats.
It’s funny because all the data back then showed 55% winrate grey knights, even if that’s like cherry picked 60% is better than what we’re reaching now.
nou wrote: Where did you got those two orders of magnitude from? I wrote about one. There are cases of weapons/rules however, that swing down to 0 value, the old poison against an armoured company for example, or highwire against an all infantry list.
And the meta will change with any wide enough change (with the caveat, that „wide enough” means affect enough players, not enough units). That is the whole point of the „meta is a dynamic system and as such follows chaotic math, not simple algebrae” argument.
Two orders of magnitude is a small step from at least an order of magnitude. If you meant 1000%-2000% you should have said a factor of 10 instead of an order of magnitude.
I don't know why you think that just because there are humans involved math becomes useless, you can model how consumers will react to price changes in goods and services. GW just needs to make sensible math and meta-based changes and gradually improve the game instead of nerfing Ogryn when Bullgryn are meta and Ogryn are garbage.
Spoiler:
The Richter earthquake scale is silly by the way, I'd move on to a DBZ earthquake scale, with a power level of 1 being a Richter 1 and power level 1.000.000.000 being a Richter 10.
Your laspistol vs bolt pistol example is a good one though, but for the exact opposite reason you wrote. I think everyone will agree, that upgrading a single character to bolt pistol doesn’t influence the outcome of the game anyhow. But if you upgrade a large enough squad from las to bolt, it will have an impact. So, a treshold exists, a minimal number of points spent on las to bolt upgrades, that becomes influential. That threshold is the adequate granularity for the system, and for 40k it is somewhere between 20 and 50pts. This gives a workable granularity between 40 and 100 units. Current real granularity of 400 units is still an overkill, and perceived granularity of 2000 units is a meaninglessly inflated one. 200 units gives enough room for micromanagent on model level and it looks like GW is aiming at something between 200 and 400 real units for future editions.
The problem isn't that you win by taking a free bolt pistol, the problem is you're forcing people to rip their minis apart for advantage every time you're removing the points incentive to take the lesser option. Whether a bolt pistol is free or 5 pts or 1 deci-pt is going change from edition to edition, so people will have to rip their models apart regularly. 200 deci-pts lets slip a bunch of free upgrades that people will be forced to take because the system will be too rough to account for these little things, which could add up to a meaningful difference in overall list effectiveness. In addition, you'll have to design around the system by forcing units like Necron Warriors to only switch out all their RF guns for Assault guns (instead of replacing any number) and only include additional Brimstone Horrors in batches of 5 so your balancing system can keep up.
I don't see a real downside to 20x increase in costs and game size, that way you also have 10k, 20k and 40k games. Most of the time units and options would have a cost that ends with 00 or 50 but that'd be fine, at the very least we should have half-points. Not having models that cost less than 5 points is already a problem that has lead to a huge and unloreful creep in the damage output and durability of cheap units like Gretchin and Conscripts and Brimstones really struggle. Laspistols would have to see a similar creep in output to match bolt pistols if you only had 200 deci-pts to move around and wanted both options to be viable.
Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote: I’d say that 5th at least was more balanced, and also promoted casual play which most players find more fun.
It promoted casual play, but it wasn't balanced at all.
Maybe 5th edition core book with 4th edition codexes could be considered more balanced, but 5th quickly broke its own balance with the 5th ed IG codex.
The GK book made the IG book look like the Sister's white dwarf book.
Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote: I’d say that 5th at least was more balanced, and also promoted casual play which most players find more fun.
It promoted casual play, but it wasn't balanced at all.
Maybe 5th edition core book with 4th edition codexes could be considered more balanced, but 5th quickly broke its own balance with the 5th ed IG codex.
The GK book made the IG book look like the Sister's white dwarf book.
And also the rules stupidty that was Jaws of the Wolf World.
Make an initiative test for all models in a line and immediately die with no saves of any kind allowed if failed, and there were entire armies with universally low initiative stats.
The 5th ed GK book was a terrible thing. the GKs were never meant to be a stand alone marine chapter. they were an order militant of the inquisition best represented by their 3rd ed codex(the one we prefer to use). specialized at one job-killing chaos aligned forces and demons.
The 5th ed IG book is great, it lost the doctrines of the previous book, but that was the only downside. many of the kits from FW showed up in this codex. it allowed so many great thematic build ideas aside from the tournament cliché lists.
JOWW wasn't nearly as scary as most people make it out to be. it was VERY situational, in fact i hardly ever saw it used. although Njal was the best psyker in the imperium being literally storm from the X-men.
Our group uses quite a few 4th and 3rd ed codexes in our 5th ed games. the only 5th codexes i think we use are
.space wolves
.blood angels
.necrons
.imperial guard
.dark eldar
.space marines (although some players prefer the trait system from the 4th ed codex)
We have had no issues mixing them together in the 5th ed rules.
Trying not to be too much of a broken record, 5th edition was really frustrating as an eldar player. Our troops were squishy, and our good anti-tank was limited to a handful of units. So it felt like you had to keep your troops cheap and hidden in tanks all game, and you had to build your lists around taking a bunch of fire dragons, wraith guard, or a seer council deathstar.
That said, GK were never that big a problem for me in 5th. Maybe because their low model count made them really susceptible to fire dragons, banshees, and bladestorming dire avengers. I definitely preferred facing them over Space Wolves with their Njal + Runic Weapon + Wolf Tail Talisman power denial and las-plas razorback spam.
The 5th edition dark eldar 'dex was fun. Man I miss those juicy pain tokens.
Wyldhunt wrote: Trying not to be too much of a broken record, 5th edition was really frustrating as an eldar player. Our troops were squishy, and our good anti-tank was limited to a handful of units. So it felt like you had to keep your troops cheap and hidden in tanks all game, and you had to build your lists around taking a bunch of fire dragons, wraith guard, or a seer council deathstar.
That said, GK were never that big a problem for me in 5th. Maybe because their low model count made them really susceptible to fire dragons, banshees, and bladestorming dire avengers. I definitely preferred facing them over Space Wolves with their Njal + Runic Weapon + Wolf Tail Talisman power denial and las-plas razorback spam.
The 5th edition dark eldar 'dex was fun. Man I miss those juicy pain tokens.
The most common list i fought in 5th for eldar was the FW corsair list one of the regulars played...it was very strong in 5th between hornets, warp hunters etc...
However we find the 4th ed eldar codex to be far superior to the 5th ed dex for regular eldar, as it allows all the craft world themed builds.
Aside from wraith guard/lords, eldar were always squishy they were just very fast and very specialized as one would expect from their lore.
I used TTS to run a game with the 4th ed eldar list VS a 5th ed blood angles list just a few weeks ago. iyanden of course since it was my favorite craftworld-
The 5th ed GK book was a terrible thing. the GKs were never meant to be a stand alone marine chapter. they were an order militant of the inquisition best represented by their 3rd ed codex(the one we prefer to use). specialized at one job-killing chaos aligned forces and demons.
The 5th edition Grey Knights wasn't just a standalone Grey Knights book, it was also the home of all the Inquisition stuff too, so I'm not sure where this is coming from.
The 5th ed GK book was a terrible thing. the GKs were never meant to be a stand alone marine chapter. they were an order militant of the inquisition best represented by their 3rd ed codex(the one we prefer to use). specialized at one job-killing chaos aligned forces and demons.
The 5th edition Grey Knights wasn't just a standalone Grey Knights book, it was also the home of all the Inquisition stuff too, so I'm not sure where this is coming from.
Yes it had inquisition stuff in it, but the layout and presentation was all about the grey knights as the focus of the book, expanding them to stupid levels. not just a part of the inquisitions chamber militant.
In doing so. the original demon hunters book was more focused on presenting the ordo malleus organization that could if it wanted to use grey knights. however it did not need to. as it could ally with any imperial force.
The 5th ed GK book was a terrible thing. the GKs were never meant to be a stand alone marine chapter. they were an order militant of the inquisition best represented by their 3rd ed codex(the one we prefer to use). specialized at one job-killing chaos aligned forces and demons.
The 5th edition Grey Knights wasn't just a standalone Grey Knights book, it was also the home of all the Inquisition stuff too, so I'm not sure where this is coming from.
Yes it had inquisition stuff in it, but the layout and presentation was all about the grey knights as the focus of the book, expanding them to stupid levels. not just a part of the inquisitions chamber militant.
In doing so. the original demon hunters book was more focused on presenting the ordo malleus organization that could if it wanted to use grey knights. however it did not need to. as it could ally with any imperial force.
I mean Deathwatch is the militant arm of the Ordo Xenos and Sisters of Battle the Ordo Hereticus, but they do stuff outside of just being under the Inquisition, even back in Codex Daemon Hunters they were a separate force that worked with the Inquisition, not solely under it.
The 5th ed GK book was a terrible thing. the GKs were never meant to be a stand alone marine chapter. they were an order militant of the inquisition best represented by their 3rd ed codex(the one we prefer to use). specialized at one job-killing chaos aligned forces and demons.
The 5th edition Grey Knights wasn't just a standalone Grey Knights book, it was also the home of all the Inquisition stuff too, so I'm not sure where this is coming from.
Yes it had inquisition stuff in it, but the layout and presentation was all about the grey knights as the focus of the book, expanding them to stupid levels. not just a part of the inquisitions chamber militant.
In doing so. the original demon hunters book was more focused on presenting the ordo malleus organization that could if it wanted to use grey knights. however it did not need to. as it could ally with any imperial force.
I mean Deathwatch is the militant arm of the Ordo Xenos and Sisters of Battle the Ordo Hereticus, but they do stuff outside of just being under the Inquisition, even back in Codex Daemon Hunters they were a separate force that worked with the Inquisition, not solely under it.
It is a great shame that the DeathWatch/SoB/Grey knights book didn't have entries for inquisitors to lead/accompany their forces.
Also It saddens me we don't have a completed Imperial agents series in WD only some of it. For me a completed one would cover Assassins, Inquisitors, Inquisitorial stormtroopers and Miltia...
I think War of the Spider has the current rules for Assassins, Octarius I the current rules for Inquisition and Octarius II the current rules for Rogue Traders (Including Crusade content).
What I miss are the custom henchman that used to be available in the "x Hunter" books of 3rd ed.
Regarding those Hunter books- I loved them, but the fact that GW hit the reset button on the edition before they got to "alien hunters" leaves that era feeling less complete for me than the current era. My hiatus from the game didn't officially begin until part way through 5th... But if I'm being honest, it really started when 3rd ended- GW and I were already on shaky ground because they had killed GSC, but Witch Hunters were enough to keep me around. Then they blew that edition up before we got our 3rd Ordo and they took Sisters into a fifteen year downward spiral.
Every once in a while somebody will make the comment that one or another of the chambers militant was never meant to be a stand alone faction, or they shouldn't be a faction. I think the only people who are qualified to talk about who was meant to be a stand alone faction are the game designers- and even they would be unlikely to have such an oversimplified, binary, either or approach. They'd probably say something like:
"At various points within the History of the Imperium of Man, the power various threats aligned against humanity will wax and wane. During the peaks in power, it is common for the Inquisition to assume control of their Chambers Militant for extended periods of time. While those powers are at low ebb, these Chambers Militant can be redirected to provide support to other Imperial forces as needed."
Because it is true- Even in the Hunter dexes it was absolutely possible to run stand alone sister or GK. I actually did it- I had a 1500 pt sister army and a 1500 pt Hereticus army; both followed the rules for the FOC, and the two armies could unite in times of great need. In most of our games, one or the other was sufficient. This is why I love the detachment system as much as I do- in a sense, I've been using it since before there were rules for it.
I still think there is hope for the Inquisition. Interrogator is a good sign, as is the store anniversary model for this year, as is the Eisenhorn series on the horizon. The WH+ Loremasters episode about the Inquisition really restored my faith that GW might still get it right.
Among other things, the episode mentioned each of the Chambers Militant by name when speaking of their respective Ordos, though it did stop short of using the term Chamber Militant. It also talked about Interrogators as if they were a unit choice, and it clarified that there is still a distinction between Inquisitors and Inquisitor Lords even if the current rules do not reflect this.
The great tragedy of the Inquisition is that just a handful of small changes could make Inquisitorial detachments more viable- what we have is a solid foundation. Add Interrogator as a unit, create a costed power-up to make an Inquisitor into an Inquisitor Lord, change the unit size of Acolytes to 10 and make them troops, add vehicles, Priests, Engineseers and Servitors and you've improved the Inquisition by leaps and bounds.
Have the Lord Upgrade unlock a rule called Chamber Militant, which allows the Lord's Inquisition detachment to be exempted from breaking purity rules for Inquisition and Chamber units, as well as allowing the Lord to bestow his quarry power on one Militant unit within range like an aura. So easy I could do it in a weekend.
Then create crusade content for each of the three Ordos and you're golden. That would take a bit longer, but once you had a done for one Ordo, it would get easier to build something for the remaining Ordos.
Wyldhunt wrote: Trying not to be too much of a broken record, 5th edition was really frustrating as an eldar player. Our troops were squishy, and our good anti-tank was limited to a handful of units. So it felt like you had to keep your troops cheap and hidden in tanks all game, and you had to build your lists around taking a bunch of fire dragons, wraith guard, or a seer council deathstar.
Well, I'm the other broken record because, as we've discussed before, 5th ed 40k with 4th ed Eldar codex was peak 40k for me. I think our different experiences in 5th come down to the fact that you were experienced and I was not. I did not play Eldar in 4th so I started from scratch in 5th with no models and more importantly no old habits or favorite list types. This meant I was able to grow into a footdar style army naturally and without reservations.
It wasn't perfect by any stretch. Every list had to have Eldrad to cast Fortune twice and guide once. Fortuned guardians with conceal warlocks were actually quite durable in the mech meta back then. Many units just weren't suited to the 5th environment. I was never able to incorporate Banshees or Scorpions effectively, for example.
Compared to what came before and after, Eldar was quite limited in 5th. For those who enjoyed them in 4th, 5th must have been a big letdown, but for guys like me who simply didn't know any better it was a great time.
Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote: It’s funny because all the data back then showed 55% winrate grey knights, even if that’s like cherry picked 60% is better than what we’re reaching now.
That's the thing about army selection rates. If everyone plays GK then the win rate is 50%. Is the game then balanced?
In the Ard Boyz I played back then it was over 80% GK.
aphyon wrote:The most common list i fought in 5th for eldar was the FW corsair list one of the regulars played...it was very strong in 5th between hornets, warp hunters etc...
Alas! I was only vaguely aware of the Forge World stuff until late 5th or maybe 6th edition. And I definitely didn't have the budget for it at the time.
However we find the 4th ed eldar codex to be far superior to the 5th ed dex for regular eldar, as it allows all the craft world themed builds.
I used TTS to run a game with the 4th ed eldar list VS a 5th ed blood angles list just a few weeks ago. iyanden of course since it was my favorite craftworld-
Think you mean 3rd and 4th, but yeah. I've always wished I'd been in the hobby the old Craftworlds book was a thing. Ranger disruption tables and oldschool seer councils sound like a blast. Glad to hear you had fun dusting off the old content.
vipoid wrote:
Wyldhunt wrote: The 5th edition dark eldar 'dex was fun. Man I miss those juicy pain tokens.
Ah, I loved that book so much.
It's sad looking back and seeing just how much has been stripped out of Dark Eldar over the years.
To this day, the 5e Dark Eldar codex remains one of my most satisfying purchases from GW. Cheers to the special characters, the haemonculus ancients, the pain tokens, and all those flavorful wargear options.
Arschbombe wrote:
Well, I'm the other broken record because, as we've discussed before, 5th ed 40k with 4th ed Eldar codex was peak 40k for me. I think our different experiences in 5th come down to the fact that you were experienced and I was not. I did not play Eldar in 4th so I started from scratch in 5th with no models and more importantly no old habits or favorite list types. This meant I was able to grow into a footdar style army naturally and without reservations.
Once again, very happy for you that you got so much fun out of that edition. 5th was actually my first edition, so I was neither experienced nor committed to a build at the time. I just kept running into parking lots and finding BS 4+ troops with 5+ saves and no anti-tank guns (outside of the warlock's singing spear which couldn't split fire) made for a rough time. Dire Avengers definitely outperformed the other troops for me, but they still lacked AT. And once you start fielding 5th edition dire avengers, it's really hard to resist the urge to just run DAVU skimmers.
It wasn't perfect by any stretch. Every list had to have Eldrad to cast Fortune twice and guide once. Fortuned guardians with conceal warlocks were actually quite durable in the mech meta back then. Many units just weren't suited to the 5th environment. I was never able to incorporate Banshees or Scorpions effectively, for example.
Oh man. I forgot about the Eldrad + Yriel power couple. I did use counts-as Eldrad sometimes, but knowing I was running the "cheesy" auto-take character made me itchy. Definitely miss those always-on warlock powers, though I'm pretty okay with warlocks now that they aren't prone to exploding and killing their friends. Banshees actually worked pretty well for me back in 5th. They weren't an especially competitive choice, but Doom + power swords was sooooo satisfying. Plus, you normally didn't regret taking them when you happened to be facing marines. (And everyone ends up facing marines.)
Compared to what came before and after, Eldar was quite limited in 5th. For those who enjoyed them in 4th, 5th must have been a big letdown, but for guys like me who simply didn't know any better it was a great time.
Again, I started in 5th too. ^_^; I really wanted to run a variety of different units (especially aspect warriors). But S5 reapers, expensive spears, S3 banshees, and BS4+ vehicles meant that big chunks of the codex were a little bit of a liability. Hawks could stunlock vehicles for days, but they and scorpions mostly had to glance tanks to death. Warp Spiders could do a deepstrike sucker punch but weren't very good at running away afterward meaning they tended to die after shooting. So I ended up gravitating towards things like dragon spam and DAVU vehicles just to avoid being left without any anti-tank or troops in the late game. (Yuck. Troops-only scoring was such a pain.)
I even remember fielding a list of dragons, fusion + spear storm guardians, and bright lance tanks lead by Fuegan and a Doom + Eldritch Storm farseer that was intended to make people regret fielding vehicles in a vain hope of shifting the meta to something less tank-heavy. And even in that list, I recall being compelled to ram my serpents into enemy tanks because I didn't have enough anti-tank to stay afloat. :S
Tbf, it's entirely possible that I just sucked at the game.
Think you mean 3rd and 4th, but yeah. I've always wished I'd been in the hobby the old Craftworlds book was a thing. Ranger disruption tables and oldschool seer councils sound like a blast. Glad to hear you had fun dusting off the old content.
^Yes the latter is much more interesting to use, and fixes a few oversights to the 3rd ed one, such as a nerf to Starcannons, and upgrading to Dark Reaper armor to 3+ rather than 4+.
Karol wrote: Yeah, but that is only true if the community is really big. Such a split can work to create two paralel communities if a town or city has 50+ players. If the the town or city has 20 or 30 players, then trying to cut it up in to a matched play, open/narrative group and people that play tournament will not generate the results.
Yeah, because people can't enjoy multiple game modes. It's verboten, eh?
ERJAK wrote: The GK book made the IG book look like the Sister's white dwarf book.
People still repeat this ridiculous 4chan nonsense?
GK book was easily beatable by virtually any 5th edition book if you turned your brain on and played to GK weaknesses, not their strengths (I would know, I repeatedly beaten my ""OP"" army with stuff my opponents brought when they claimed they have no chance after reading salt online and I offered them reverse play, LOL). Even weakest book of 5th edition, SM, could deal with GK easily enough unless all you had were C-tier units.
The army had literally no ++ saves, little long range shooting, no anti-chaff melee, few and usually light vehicles, freeing your AT weapons to target their elite units, was slow, weak to anti-psychic mechanisms, had low volume of attacks (and little S8+) per points, etc, etc, GK book was epitome of good rules writing that gave both players both strengths and weaknesses to exploit. Of course, 4chan morons whined because of author (and the fact they tried to charge tactical squad into all-falchion purifier squad then cried OP) but the fact it's still repeated as gospel is just sad...
Tyran wrote: And also the rules stupidty that was Jaws of the Wolf World.
JotWW was A) Space Wolves power, not GK B) it was Phil Kelly's book so of course it had broken/stupid mechanics. Still, the fact that worst thing people can say about 5th is the fact there were a handful of problematic stuff in two books written by two worst GW authors (*cough* Cruddace *cough*) says volumes. Especially seeing SW, instead of being SM+ like today, also had lots of weaknesses you could exploit (lack of a lot of SM units and other units they typically don't use being priced higher, offering you openings and counterplays, unlike modern books).
GKs were never meant to be a stand alone marine chapter
Nonsense. Not only they operate that way in 99% of their fluff, but if anything, it's the 'chamber militant' gak of all three Ordos from 3rd edition that was breaking the fluff into a pretzel and 5th edition went back to roots of both armies. Also, 5th edition GK book was so well written you could have done the inane 'chamber militant' stuff if you wished, but you could also play multiple viable pure GK armies. This is the thing I miss about 5th the most, most books had 3-5 ways of making viable, completely different armies, as opposed to one, maybe two viable builds most books of past 4 editions sport...
That's a good point, Irbis... after 5th you saw a lot of unification of what a specific army could do... but a diversification of what detachments could comprise your army.
As that "diversity" waned with 9th, I think it may be exposing how "one trick" a lot of the books have become. Granted, I didn't like the blending of different armies just because of how horribly it treated certain factions in favor of others that didn't need any more bonuses.
I don't have a firm stance on the matter, just thought pointing out the timing of inner-army variance coinciding with allying with external forces was of interest.
Once again, very happy for you that you got so much fun out of that edition. 5th was actually my first edition, so I was neither experienced nor committed to a build at the time. I just kept running into parking lots and finding BS 4+ troops with 5+ saves and no anti-tank guns (outside of the warlock's singing spear which couldn't split fire) made for a rough time. Dire Avengers definitely outperformed the other troops for me, but they still lacked AT. And once you start fielding 5th edition dire avengers, it's really hard to resist the urge to just run DAVU skimmers.
Ok. I knew you had run skimmers so I had assumed that came from 4th. I couldn't bring myself to go that route because I thought the serpents were just too expensive. I played BA (4th ed WD codex) before and I thought the 50 point Razorbacks were already expensive. So I used Rangers, Guardians, and Avengers on foot. 5th edition cover rules made it viable. Antitank came from Wraithlords and sometimes War Walkers. Avatar was always part of the mix. Spiders were great at tackling the Razorbacks and Rhinos.
Oh man. I forgot about the Eldrad + Yriel power couple. I did use counts-as Eldrad sometimes, but knowing I was running the "cheesy" auto-take character made me itchy. Definitely miss those always-on warlock powers, though I'm pretty okay with warlocks now that they aren't prone to exploding and killing their friends. Banshees actually worked pretty well for me back in 5th. They weren't an especially competitive choice, but Doom + power swords was sooooo satisfying. Plus, you normally didn't regret taking them when you happened to be facing marines. (And everyone ends up facing marines.)
I felt a little bad about leaning on Eldrad so hard, but he was necessary. I never ran Yriel or any other Autarch. I just couldn't fit him in. I needed the Avatar for the fearless bubble. I had great fun, but it was really quite limited in what you could do. I always wanted to run 2 serpents with Banshees, but I never got to it before 6th ed dropped.
ClockworkZion wrote: Speaking of 5th ed GK I used to table Draigowing with Sisters. Turns out GK don't like Instant Death from massed meltas.
Draigowing was T5.
Paladins are T4 with 2W in 5th and had a FnP via Apothecary.
Only Draigo himself had T5 and was immune to Instant Death via Eternal Warrior.
The gimmick of the list had to do with wound allocation by having different wargwar on every model and making it hard to wound models normally. S8 bypassed that on the Paladins themselves as it denied them a FnP and they instant died if they failed their invul save.
ClockworkZion wrote: Speaking of 5th ed GK I used to table Draigowing with Sisters. Turns out GK don't like Instant Death from massed meltas.
Draigowing was T5.
Paladins are T4 with 2W in 5th and had a FnP via Apothecary.
Only Draigo himself had T5 and was immune to Instant Death via Eternal Warrior.
The gimmick of the list had to do with wound allocation by having different wargwar on every model and making it hard to wound models normally. S8 bypassed that on the Paladins themselves as it denied them a FnP and they instant died if they failed their invul save.
Sisters always used to have weird super favourable matchups against certain meta lists just because we were the only army that ran any meaningful amount of melta. And that meaningful amount was 'all of it'.
Sisters actually had a better shot at killing a CABAL STAR than the gladius strike force did just because of the T4 instant death interaction + Grav only wounding on 6s. If, for even one turn, your opponent failed invis and didn't bump his invul up higher than 4, you could have absolutely killed his whole star with Sisters melta fire.
I mean...if he failed first turn. By turn two you'd usually be tabled so...
I do remember 5th edition GKs being a very nasty matchup for tyranids.
Unless the nid player tailored heavily, he'd struggle to outshoot the GKs.
However, in melee, the GKs could strike at the same speed as Genestealers (thanks to halberds), and their force weapons made quick work of monstrous creatures. In fact, given that Daemons all had invulnerable saves and eternal warrior, whilst Tyranids rarely had either of those things, one could argue that GKs seemed far better suited to killing Tyranids than they did Daemons.
ClockworkZion wrote: Speaking of 5th ed GK I used to table Draigowing with Sisters. Turns out GK don't like Instant Death from massed meltas.
Draigowing was T5.
Paladins are T4 with 2W in 5th and had a FnP via Apothecary.
Only Draigo himself had T5 and was immune to Instant Death via Eternal Warrior.
The gimmick of the list had to do with wound allocation by having different wargwar on every model and making it hard to wound models normally. S8 bypassed that on the Paladins themselves as it denied them a FnP and they instant died if they failed their invul save.
Sisters always used to have weird super favourable matchups against certain meta lists just because we were the only army that ran any meaningful amount of melta. And that meaningful amount was 'all of it'.
Sisters actually had a better shot at killing a CABAL STAR than the gladius strike force did just because of the T4 instant death interaction + Grav only wounding on 6s. If, for even one turn, your opponent failed invis and didn't bump his invul up higher than 4, you could have absolutely killed his whole star with Sisters melta fire.
I mean...if he failed first turn. By turn two you'd usually be tabled so...
Yeah, where I struggled was usually into hordes because I didn't play Immo spam for the extra heavy flamer templates.
Yeah, where I struggled was usually into hordes because I didn't play Immo spam for the extra heavy flamer templates.
I was never a fan of the immo, i was quite happy with the FW repressor. it had a pintle heavy flamer (and storm bolter) and the sisters inside could pop the top for another along with the 6 fire points for bolters. not bad for a transport that doesn't take up a heavy slot.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Can someone call it? We have zero clue where GW is going now. IG squads are basically the same cost no matter what you put into them, Custodes are getting a "once per game" special rule that only effects specific units anyhow, Harlequins are barely touched, but Tau are nerfed, in that a SMS now has less accuracy than a HWT Mortar, a Tactical Marine is now somehow More durable than a Terminator, and DE are basically untouched.
We're already seeing people calling it quits in the Tactica threads over this "balance" patch. You can't balance your way out of 9th now. Just cut the life support and call the remaining codexes the start of 10th.
Only problem now is you can't artificially delay their release "due to COVID" or "Brexit" since the world has had 3 years to get that under control. Well except for the British, but they think Boris Johnson is still a capable leader of a nation, so I guess they can get a pass. They did it to themselves.
Oh wait, we now have WW3 for them to say is hurting shipping.
You know what? Just screw this all. Screw 10th. A new paid CA is coming out in two months anyway, where I'm sure everything will be fixed, and Trajann will now cost 110 points, but Voidreavers will cost 165 points per model. Because this game is a dead horse, that keeps popping it's pustules and farting out corpse gas in the form of "balance updates", and we keep paying to give it another kick.
I'm not sure if Guard is just in that spot, because the rules aren't enough or because people with enough experience haven't decided to champion them. Either way HoE hasn't blown the scene up yet. Custodes aren't dead. Harlies took a pretty big hit.
I guess the one thing that is right is DE got by without much trouble and are doing well again.
Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote: I’d say that 5th at least was more balanced, and also promoted casual play which most players find more fun.
It promoted casual play, but it wasn't balanced at all.
Maybe 5th edition core book with 4th edition codexes could be considered more balanced, but 5th quickly broke its own balance with the 5th ed IG codex.
Eldar too. Wave Serpents were filthy. Grey Knights and Blood Angels were "meta" picks as well, iirc.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Can someone call it? We have zero clue where GW is going now. IG squads are basically the same cost no matter what you put into them, Custodes are getting a "once per game" special rule that only effects specific units anyhow, Harlequins are barely touched, but Tau are nerfed, in that a SMS now has less accuracy than a HWT Mortar, a Tactical Marine is now somehow More durable than a Terminator, and DE are basically untouched.
We're already seeing people calling it quits in the Tactica threads over this "balance" patch. You can't balance your way out of 9th now. Just cut the life support and call the remaining codexes the start of 10th.
Only problem now is you can't artificially delay their release "due to COVID" or "Brexit" since the world has had 3 years to get that under control. Well except for the British, but they think Boris Johnson is still a capable leader of a nation, so I guess they can get a pass. They did it to themselves.
Oh wait, we now have WW3 for them to say is hurting shipping.
You know what? Just screw this all. Screw 10th. A new paid CA is coming out in two months anyway, where I'm sure everything will be fixed, and Trajann will now cost 110 points, but Voidreavers will cost 165 points per model. Because this game is a dead horse, that keeps popping it's pustules and farting out corpse gas in the form of "balance updates", and we keep paying to give it another kick.
I'm not sure if Guard is just in that spot, because the rules aren't enough or because people with enough experience haven't decided to champion them. Either way HoE hasn't blown the scene up yet. Custodes aren't dead. Harlies took a pretty big hit.
I guess the one thing that is right is DE got by without much trouble and are doing well again.
So, one week in and Custodes, Tau, and Harlequins are down in the 50-55% sweet spot, while CWE, Nids, and Dark Eldar continue to reign. And it looks like neither HoE or AoC did much for their respective factions. Question: Where are the Heretic Astartes? No one was playing Death Guard, Thousand Sons, or CSM?
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Can someone call it? We have zero clue where GW is going now. IG squads are basically the same cost no matter what you put into them, Custodes are getting a "once per game" special rule that only effects specific units anyhow, Harlequins are barely touched, but Tau are nerfed, in that a SMS now has less accuracy than a HWT Mortar, a Tactical Marine is now somehow More durable than a Terminator, and DE are basically untouched.
We're already seeing people calling it quits in the Tactica threads over this "balance" patch. You can't balance your way out of 9th now. Just cut the life support and call the remaining codexes the start of 10th.
Only problem now is you can't artificially delay their release "due to COVID" or "Brexit" since the world has had 3 years to get that under control. Well except for the British, but they think Boris Johnson is still a capable leader of a nation, so I guess they can get a pass. They did it to themselves.
Oh wait, we now have WW3 for them to say is hurting shipping.
You know what? Just screw this all. Screw 10th. A new paid CA is coming out in two months anyway, where I'm sure everything will be fixed, and Trajann will now cost 110 points, but Voidreavers will cost 165 points per model. Because this game is a dead horse, that keeps popping it's pustules and farting out corpse gas in the form of "balance updates", and we keep paying to give it another kick.
I'm not sure if Guard is just in that spot, because the rules aren't enough or because people with enough experience haven't decided to champion them. Either way HoE hasn't blown the scene up yet. Custodes aren't dead. Harlies took a pretty big hit.
I guess the one thing that is right is DE got by without much trouble and are doing well again.
So, one week in and Custodes, Tau, and Harlequins are down in the 50-55% sweet spot, while CWE, Nids, and Dark Eldar continue to reign. And it looks like neither HoE or AoC did much for their respective factions. Question: Where are the Heretic Astartes? No one was playing Death Guard, Thousand Sons, or CSM?
Necrons and Orks are missing too. Are they trash now?
CSM 44%, Thousand Sons 44%, Death Guard 41%. Thousand Sons did however have two players finish in the top 4 of tournaments.
Necrons 47%. Orks 42%. GSC 45%. Grey Knights 56%. Sisters 51%. Dark Angels 49%, Space Wolves 48% (most other Marines worse - but with a tiny number of players).
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Can someone call it? We have zero clue where GW is going now. IG squads are basically the same cost no matter what you put into them, Custodes are getting a "once per game" special rule that only effects specific units anyhow, Harlequins are barely touched, but Tau are nerfed, in that a SMS now has less accuracy than a HWT Mortar, a Tactical Marine is now somehow More durable than a Terminator, and DE are basically untouched.
We're already seeing people calling it quits in the Tactica threads over this "balance" patch. You can't balance your way out of 9th now. Just cut the life support and call the remaining codexes the start of 10th.
Only problem now is you can't artificially delay their release "due to COVID" or "Brexit" since the world has had 3 years to get that under control. Well except for the British, but they think Boris Johnson is still a capable leader of a nation, so I guess they can get a pass. They did it to themselves.
Oh wait, we now have WW3 for them to say is hurting shipping.
You know what? Just screw this all. Screw 10th. A new paid CA is coming out in two months anyway, where I'm sure everything will be fixed, and Trajann will now cost 110 points, but Voidreavers will cost 165 points per model. Because this game is a dead horse, that keeps popping it's pustules and farting out corpse gas in the form of "balance updates", and we keep paying to give it another kick.
I'm not sure if Guard is just in that spot, because the rules aren't enough or because people with enough experience haven't decided to champion them. Either way HoE hasn't blown the scene up yet. Custodes aren't dead. Harlies took a pretty big hit.
I guess the one thing that is right is DE got by without much trouble and are doing well again.
What is your criteria for these #s again? Have any ork data? Keep up the good work.
I still find it interesting that people look at overall stats despite them being massively skewed towards 50% by non-random matchmaking after round 1. Should really just be looking at win rates from round 1 only, since those are randomized.
NinthMusketeer wrote: I still find it interesting that people look at overall stats despite them being massively skewed towards 50% by non-random matchmaking after round 1. Should really just be looking at win rates from round 1 only, since those are randomized.
Feel like this would really exaggerate the selection biases of the better players. Might still be interesting I guess - but still.
Something to keep in mind though about Win rates, they don't tell the entire story since the data can be skewed by inexperienced players relatively easily.
I think the absolute most surprising thing here is that Grey Knights are now winning a substantial amount, while Nidz/Eldar/Tau are about where they should be. I won't at al be surprised if this numbers changes and more Marines place now that the rules have changed.
I do imagine as more people come out of the woodwork the numbers are going to shift. AM could very well do better and it is just going to take more interest in using the army though I do feel the idea of IS murdering the field is way overstated.
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ERJAK wrote: That's encouraging, but it's also far too small of a sample size to draw any kind of concrete opinion on.
I agree. I'm just here for the "9th is dead" sentiment.
You know I disagree with the entire notion that because tournament numbers say something then it proves that 9th isn't that bad.
I just played a game where I got exactly one turn playing as Nids vs IG which everyone would say should be an easy win for the bugs. I was effectively tabled at the top of turn 2 and didn't even get a chance at a second turn. This game is dead to me because this is even at all possible. You can tell me all about how if I play certain skew list or if I abuse a certain unit I too can compete and I just wont care. Every game of 9th that I have played has been one sided due to the lethality of the game. There is no coming back when the opponent can remove just about 50-60% of your army a turn.
We play with a ton of LOS blocking terrain, we do not play tournament list and we try to keep things fairly level in the list building but none of that seems to matter when you have a Demolisher that gets max shots, autowounding on tohit of 6's rerolling 1's tohit and the other Demolisher get's tohit of 6's that explode into 3 hits against monsters, both of which get 2D6 shots at S10 Ap-3 and Dd6. Then I get to turn around and shoot with my Hive Tyrant that is hitting on 2's with rerolls with a 3 shot S12 Ap-5 D5 weapon that because my favored Hive Fleet is Gorgon I also get a reroll to wound. These things are absolutely bonkers, both of these things. I long for the days when I could expect any given monster to last for a couple of turns unless it was heavily focused down. I've played since 3rd and I enjoyed 7th more than I am enjoying 9th at this point, because at least in 7th it was pretty easy to see the OP crap before you even put down models. In 9th I don't think that anyone is looking at Leman Russes as OP and in comparison they are absolutely not but they are easily getting 100% returns per turn on shooting.
Daedalus81 wrote: You may not like tournament data and certainly it isn't perfect, but it's better than anecdotes.
Also I am not sure what rule this is referencing:
6's that explode into 3 hits against monsters
I am not aware of anything that explodes into 3 hits on LRBTs.
Load, Fire, Reload stratagem. Blast weapons on a Guard vehicle score an additional hit on a roll of 6, or 2 additional hits against vehicles/monsters on a roll of 6. 1 command point.
JNAProductions wrote: If you get extra hits from rolling a 6, they don’t auto-wound.
No, I know they don't but still if you get even 2 6's you get two automatic wounds at four more to wound on 3+.
Again, by no means do I feel that Guard are OP or even a top tier army. I am railing against the lethality of the edition and how much worse it is getting with every update that GW releases. I play almost every army except for all flavors of Eldar and I have a problem when I do the same thing to my opponents. It is trivial how easy it is to take out 50% or more of an opponents army in one turn.
You may not like tournament data and certainly it isn't perfect, but it's better than anecdotes.
The problem I have is you are presenting and manipulating the data to support your opinion. As NinthMusketerr said, when you account for the match ups towards the top things start to hit the 50% mark or close to it because not everyone can go every round with a win. While first round only would provide equally skewed results I think that a more complete picture lays somewhere in between. Possibly looking at round three in a five round tournament or looking at factions results against each other.
Even still in the grand scheme of statistics the sample size is so small and so easily unbalanced by fringe results that any amount of statistical work with 40k is going to be imperfect and easy to manipulate.
Your experience with losing 50% of your army turn 1 is not shared among a significant number of tournament games. You can lose what you expose. If you expose without taking an advantage then I'm not sure what to say.
Also this concept doesn't really make sense unless the army's ass is hanging out turn 1 and they win the roll off. That's why flyers got kicked in the nuts.
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Arbiter_Shade wrote: The problem I have is you are presenting and manipulating the data to support your opinion. As NinthMusketerr said, when you account for the match ups towards the top things start to hit the 50% mark or close to it because not everyone can go every round with a win. While first round only would provide equally skewed results I think that a more complete picture lays somewhere in between. Possibly looking at round three in a five round tournament or looking at factions results against each other.
Even still in the grand scheme of statistics the sample size is so small and so easily unbalanced by fringe results that any amount of statistical work with 40k is going to be imperfect and easy to manipulate.
I'm not manipulating anything - just providing one aspect of information. NM made a supposition that is ( as of yet ) unsupported by data and is fraught with it's own logical issues.
I have a lot of sympathy for 9th being too lethal - but I feel "we played with lots of terrain" and "a guard list killed 50% of my stuff turn 1" is sort of a contradiction in terms.
On the whole I'm cautiously optimistic. CWE & Tyranids are too good and I fear that's going to be the meta for the next 6 months (I mean before knights destroy everything etc). DE may still continue their reign of just being too fundamentally good at trading without the other factions oppressing them (sort of matched the game I played at the weekend - I really need to start playing a new army with more fluff than crunch). But at least for now there seems to be more variety than there was. Orks clearly need help. If we are going to pretend each Marine chapter is comparable to a faction they may need a balance pass - but I suspect BT & Dark Angels have legs.
I agree. I'm just here for the "9th is dead" sentiment.
Double agree. I had a 1000pt game of my CSM vs. AdMech this weekend. And between the high volume of AP0 and well-placed shots of AP-3 all while denying me cover most of the game, I felt Armor of Contempt allowed me to hold on for a very close game. I had the lead most of the game, but was tabled during Turn 4, which allowed my opponent to rack up as many points as his 3 remaining units could. A much better result than the last time I played AdMech (when they were strongest) being tabled Turn 3, barely getting points anywhere and hardly killing any of the AdMech army.
I still think 9th is too lethal, but at least with Armor of Contempt factions, it has been blunted some. I still have to bring my A-game playing CSM, but if my opponent makes too many mistakes or my dice get really hot at the right times, I certainly have a shot at winning games.
Tyel wrote: I have a lot of sympathy for 9th being too lethal - but I feel "we played with lots of terrain" and "a guard list killed 50% of my stuff turn 1" is sort of a contradiction in terms.
On the whole I'm cautiously optimistic. CWE & Tyranids are too good and I fear that's going to be the meta for the next 6 months (I mean before knights destroy everything etc). DE may still continue their reign of just being too fundamentally good at trading without the other factions oppressing them (sort of matched the game I played at the weekend - I really need to start playing a new army with more fluff than crunch). But at least for now there seems to be more variety than there was. Orks clearly need help. If we are going to pretend each Marine chapter is comparable to a faction they may need a balance pass - but I suspect BT & Dark Angels have legs.
As Ninth once again put it, how the hell do you suggest hiding a Toxicrene? Not only that, for the sake of my personal example, a Leman Russ can move 10" or 5" if it wants to shoot twice. They can easily get an angle and now that Guardsmen can take Lascannons for free they can cover a large area with some random pot shots. Manticores with Full Payload don't need LOS either.
Point isn't that guard are great, point is that even with a bunch of LOS blocking terrain it is still easy enough to get LOS on a large model.
NinthMusketeer wrote: You just have to see one bit of a limb to blast a monster off the table, so terrain may not be all that helpful.
It's extraordinarily helpful. If I risk overflow based on loose terrain or squished deployment I'll go into reserves. I absolutely never have to expose my models if I don't really want to. The only things breaking that were flyers and ooLOS, which were both nerfed.
Tyel wrote: I have a lot of sympathy for 9th being too lethal - but I feel "we played with lots of terrain" and "a guard list killed 50% of my stuff turn 1" is sort of a contradiction in terms.
On the whole I'm cautiously optimistic. CWE & Tyranids are too good and I fear that's going to be the meta for the next 6 months (I mean before knights destroy everything etc). DE may still continue their reign of just being too fundamentally good at trading without the other factions oppressing them (sort of matched the game I played at the weekend - I really need to start playing a new army with more fluff than crunch). But at least for now there seems to be more variety than there was. Orks clearly need help. If we are going to pretend each Marine chapter is comparable to a faction they may need a balance pass - but I suspect BT & Dark Angels have legs.
As Ninth once again put it, how the hell do you suggest hiding a Toxicrene? Not only that, for the sake of my personal example, a Leman Russ can move 10" or 5" if it wants to shoot twice. They can easily get an angle and now that Guardsmen can take Lascannons for free they can cover a large area with some random pot shots. Manticores with Full Payload don't need LOS either.
Point isn't that guard are great, point is that even with a bunch of LOS blocking terrain it is still easy enough to get LOS on a large model.
A model != 50% of your army. 5" is a terribly short distance with the firing angles I see on tournament tables. 10% will halve that LRBT. Manticores suffer from the ooLOS nerf.
Daedalus81 wrote: Your experience with losing 50% of your army turn 1 is not shared among a significant number of tournament games.
Which are, what, 2-3% of 40k games played?
2-3% still represents thousands of games. Specifically WAY more cutthroat games than your average PUG. Circumstantial evidence suggests that the problem in this case is a statistical anomaly and that it's likely down to player skill disparity.
NinthMusketeer wrote: You just have to see one bit of a limb to blast a monster off the table, so terrain may not be all that helpful.
It's extraordinarily helpful. If I risk overflow based on loose terrain or squished deployment I'll go into reserves. I absolutely never have to expose my models if I don't really want to. The only things breaking that were flyers and ooLOS, which were both nerfed.
Tyel wrote: I have a lot of sympathy for 9th being too lethal - but I feel "we played with lots of terrain" and "a guard list killed 50% of my stuff turn 1" is sort of a contradiction in terms.
On the whole I'm cautiously optimistic. CWE & Tyranids are too good and I fear that's going to be the meta for the next 6 months (I mean before knights destroy everything etc). DE may still continue their reign of just being too fundamentally good at trading without the other factions oppressing them (sort of matched the game I played at the weekend - I really need to start playing a new army with more fluff than crunch). But at least for now there seems to be more variety than there was. Orks clearly need help. If we are going to pretend each Marine chapter is comparable to a faction they may need a balance pass - but I suspect BT & Dark Angels have legs.
As Ninth once again put it, how the hell do you suggest hiding a Toxicrene? Not only that, for the sake of my personal example, a Leman Russ can move 10" or 5" if it wants to shoot twice. They can easily get an angle and now that Guardsmen can take Lascannons for free they can cover a large area with some random pot shots. Manticores with Full Payload don't need LOS either.
Point isn't that guard are great, point is that even with a bunch of LOS blocking terrain it is still easy enough to get LOS on a large model.
A model != 50% of your army. 5" is a terribly short distance with the firing angles I see on tournament tables. 10% will halve that LRBT. Manticores suffer from the ooLOS nerf.
5" is more than enough to get an angle when first turn you can move the full 10" to get into position. In my anecdote I did not lose 50% of my army turn one, never said I did but I get the point you are trying to make. But after turn one when I've had to move my stuff up in order for it to do anything it means I have even less places to hide. I hate to get bogged down in specific nit picking because it does nothing for the conversation but I said I was effectively table at the top of turn two, my opponent got 2 turns to my one and between those two turns, the second turn doing significantly more damage to me, I was effectively tabled. Yes, I had a squad of 25 hormagaunts in his deployment eating gak but they weren't about to turn the tide of battle against Leman Russes.
Arbiter_Shade wrote: In my anecdote I did not lose 50% of my army turn one, never said I did but I get the point you are trying to make.
But you did allude to it. Twice. You don't see that as being dishonest? I agree that 9th is too lethal, but I am not about to state that it is easy in a casual game to lose half your army turn 1 if that hasn't been my experience. Exaggeration just leads to others discarding your opinions in the future as overblown.
In my game this weekend, I lost more than a third of my army Turn 1. I lost 5 Raptors (with 2 Plasmaguns) and 5 CSM (with a Combi-bolter and plasmagun) to a single squad of like 15 Skitarii Rangers in a 1000pt game. All I did to the AdMech as 4 damage to a Robot (which they healed some) and killed/CA about 10-12 Vanguard Skitarii. I didn't let that affect me, and while I still was tabled Turn 4 and lost; I kept the score really close and had my opponent down to 3 models (biggish models, but 3 models) themselves.
Perhaps more than ever before, 40k is all about trades. You are going to lose models/units during the game. Probably faster than slower. This trick is to try and make those losses count. Maybe (quite possibly) you were outgunned, but the way to say it, sound more like you gave up practically before the game started. 40k it is what it is, and you either negotiate with your opponent, make due with how things are or don't play.
Hey, I get it. I have been mostly playing CSM all 9th edition long, and only using the 2017 codex and the Daemonkin supplement from Shadowspear. I've been on the losing side most games. The few games I have won were through luck, capitalizing on my opponent's mistakes and playing the best I possibly could. I feel like I had to play twice as hard to even have a chance at winning. What I don't do is throw in the towel the moment things go bad for me. If I did, I think I'd lose all my games. And yeah, I get crushed a lot. But most of my opponent's respected my ability to take 66 cents and turn into 75 cents. However, I needed a dollar to win. That's unfiltered 40k for you.
Daedalus81 wrote: Your experience with losing 50% of your army turn 1 is not shared among a significant number of tournament games.
Which are, what, 2-3% of 40k games played?
Regardless of their numbers, those are the games in which the lists are fully optmized to max up lethality. People that play with random collections of models or agree in advance to play with toned down lists don't lose 50% (or even more than 20-25% typicallly) of their army in turn 1.
If tournament players don't lose 50% of their armies in turn 1, on average, the casual players definitely don't do it either, also on average. The one sided game in which everything is decided turn 1 can always happen, this is a dice game after all, and always could have happened in previous editions. But it's irrelevant considering the whole pool of games played.
That was sixth when they could fire their serpent shields with 60" range S7 Ap- Assault D6+1 pinning, ignores cover. They murdered IG parking lots.
Here, GW should have used "narrative" and context to justify points changes.
Updating on ongoing narrative or focus on "battlezone" for instance, they should issue points changes in the way of updates with reasoning such as "BATTLEZONE UPDATE # ELDAR # : Wave serpent units have seen heavy usage recently with many units in need of repair, and with deployable units increasingly rare. Wave serpents of all variants incur additional points cost as indicated in the current points adjustments updated and available online, here: www/warhammer40k/points_adjustments/eldar/yada.html and the entire points adjustment list can be downoaded as a PDF here: yada.com
Then price them up, and perhaps work into the narrative that Eldar players can field a wave serpent without a functioning shield for the original points cost, and one with a finctioning shiled with an additional cost of 50points per model unit.
Daedalus81 wrote: Your experience with losing 50% of your army turn 1 is not shared among a significant number of tournament games.
Which are, what, 2-3% of 40k games played?
To be fair, those are still tens of thousands of games on record, and they include the dudes who just bring the same list since 4th edition to their local RTT.
9th edition also de facto doesn't really have a "casual mode" right now, it's essentially tournament play or crusade. The open war deck tried to fill that role, but has too many issues to feel like "real" 40k. Hopefully the tempest of war deck changes that.
Therefore making assumption based on that data(assuming it actually supports daed's point, didn't check) is perfectly valid for any game that was supposed to be a fair and balanced fight.
Arbiter_Shade wrote: In my anecdote I did not lose 50% of my army turn one, never said I did but I get the point you are trying to make.
But you did allude to it. Twice. You don't see that as being dishonest? I agree that 9th is too lethal, but I am not about to state that it is easy in a casual game to lose half your army turn 1 if that hasn't been my experience. Exaggeration just leads to others discarding your opinions in the future as overblown.
In my game this weekend, I lost more than a third of my army Turn 1. I lost 5 Raptors (with 2 Plasmaguns) and 5 CSM (with a Combi-bolter and plasmagun) to a single squad of like 15 Skitarii Rangers in a 1000pt game. All I did to the AdMech as 4 damage to a Robot (which they healed some) and killed/CA about 10-12 Vanguard Skitarii. I didn't let that affect me, and while I still was tabled Turn 4 and lost; I kept the score really close and had my opponent down to 3 models (biggish models, but 3 models) themselves.
Perhaps more than ever before, 40k is all about trades. You are going to lose models/units during the game. Probably faster than slower. This trick is to try and make those losses count. Maybe (quite possibly) you were outgunned, but the way to say it, sound more like you gave up practically before the game started. 40k it is what it is, and you either negotiate with your opponent, make due with how things are or don't play.
Hey, I get it. I have been mostly playing CSM all 9th edition long, and only using the 2017 codex and the Daemonkin supplement from Shadowspear. I've been on the losing side most games. The few games I have won were through luck, capitalizing on my opponent's mistakes and playing the best I possibly could. I feel like I had to play twice as hard to even have a chance at winning. What I don't do is throw in the towel the moment things go bad for me. If I did, I think I'd lose all my games. And yeah, I get crushed a lot. But most of my opponent's respected my ability to take 66 cents and turn into 75 cents. However, I needed a dollar to win. That's unfiltered 40k for you.
I did not allude to losing 50% of an army first turn but I am not dishonest enough to say that I can't understand why people may have taken what I said in that context.
Back on point, it is not about winning or losing it is about how it feels to play the game right now. It doesn't feel good to be picking up a decent chunk of your army per turn. I don't care if you win while being tabled it just feels gross to me and I want to see less AP across the board, less high damage weapons. I think it would be awesome if both players could end the game just south of 50% of their army still on the table.
Less lethality and less speed, I don't like that I can slingshot a horde of Hormagaunts 19" then let them roll 3d6 drop the lowest on a charge into my opponents face turn 1. I don't like how easy it is for most armies in the game to put bodies on objectives and not have it been a commitment because at any moment they can shoot across the table to another objective or can reach out with their guns to shoot anything they have LOS to because their weapons have such long range.
I don't particularly mind singular units making cross table charges.
There was a point where "bubble wrap" was a common concept for 40K. You can't simply take 100% good stuff and expect to not get messed with. Gaunts help enforce that and it's why I carry cultists and tzaangors in my lists and in games where they don't need to shield I get to do more with them.
40K has also been a lengthy game through its history. In the past there were tons of games that ended where the sentiment was "if I had only gotten one more turn I would have won". Now you can conclusively play a game that still involves a lot of decision making in the late game.
I do not share the concern about having to pick up models and I have difficulty trying to bridge that gap. The point is for me to have fun and not stare at models on the table. If I wanted to admire them I'd do that at my paint station or in between rounds.
I don't think people should be regularly losing 1000 points in a turn. Unfortunately it is very common in today's 40k - unless you play in a fairly cagey manner, with lots of terrain to help you facilitate this. And yes that's going to be difficult if you run 3 Toxicrenes. Which is a shame, because its a great model. And realistically, anyone brave enough to transport it to a FLGS deserves a medal (although I guess magnetising the tendrils is the way to go.)
Equally however I don't really mind people being tabled turn 5.
Tyel wrote: I don't think people should be regularly losing 1000 points in a turn. Unfortunately it is very common in today's 40k - unless you play in a fairly cagey manner, with lots of terrain to help you facilitate this. And yes that's going to be difficult if you run 3 Toxicrenes. Which is a shame, because its a great model. And realistically, anyone brave enough to transport it to a FLGS deserves a medal (although I guess magnetising the tendrils is the way to go.)
Equally however I don't really mind people being tabled turn 5.
Hey, I only roll with two when I run them and the tentacles are surprisingly resilient to travel, where they connect to the body is very stocky.
I think the best way I can boil down my complaint is with a video game analogy, horrible I know.
Call of Duty and Battlefield used to be similar looking games with entirely different rhythms, concepts and tactical considerations. I enjoyed Battlefield because it was slower paced, team oriented and offer a lower TTK which combined for a much more enjoyable experience. Call of Duty was a fast paced, solo viable and arena based shooter that was enjoyable to people looking for that.
To me 40k is falling closer to the Call of Duty end of the spectrum with the game sacrificing complexity for streamlining to keep it moving faster. I understand why the made the game more lethal because they wanted the games to be faster, they wanted something that you could throw down with a friend quickly due to list building being streamlined and the game turns moving faster. I find that as an admirable goal but in the end I feel like I am playing a game that is just unsatisfying. I play so many armies, two of which are Orks and Nids, so picking models up off the table by the handful is not really that foreign a concept to me but it is frustrating that there are units that I never get to see do anything because of the lethality of the game and how easy it is for my opponent to target them.
Case in point is Belakor. Amazing new model, painted it up and just love to see him on the table. Dies so quickly that I often wonder if it is worth it to bring him rather than just throwing more bodies on the table to camp on objectives.
Custodes and Knights routinely loose thousands of points per turn against certain factions. Even more so in 9th, where a SM sgt can theoretically one shot a knight.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Custodes and Knights routinely loose thousands of points per turn against certain factions. Even more so in 9th, where a SM sgt can theoretically one shot a knight.
I really feel like I shouldn't have to say this, but THEORETICALLY killing a knight with a sgt, and ACTUALLY only doing 10-11 damage to it (on average), with all the buffs, is a huge difference.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Custodes and Knights routinely loose thousands of points per turn against certain factions. Even more so in 9th, where a SM sgt can theoretically one shot a knight.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Custodes and Knights routinely loose thousands of points per turn against certain factions. Even more so in 9th, where a SM sgt can theoretically one shot a knight.
I really feel like I shouldn't have to say this, but THEORETICALLY killing a knight with a sgt, and ACTUALLY only doing 10-11 damage to it (on average), with all the buffs, is a huge difference.
=/
That's 5 CP for one maneuver.
There was some insane combo you used to be able to pull with a Terminator Assault Squad in 8th, able to kill 3-4 Gallant Knights in a turn iirc. I don't think the strats are there for it anymore.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: Custodes and Knights routinely loose thousands of points per turn against certain factions. Even more so in 9th, where a SM sgt can theoretically one shot a knight.
I really feel like I shouldn't have to say this, but THEORETICALLY killing a knight with a sgt, and ACTUALLY only doing 10-11 damage to it (on average), with all the buffs, is a huge difference.
=/
That's 5 CP for one maneuver.
There was some insane combo you used to be able to pull with a Terminator Assault Squad in 8th, able to kill 3-4 Gallant Knights in a turn iirc. I don't think the strats are there for it anymore.
One unit of 8 repentia used to be able to overkill a knight by roughly an additional knight.
I disagree, there must be possible to lose half an army if you do particulalry dumb stuff, e.g. placing glasshammer units withing charging distance of a melee units.
What shouldn't be possible is losing half an army if you are playing defensively.
NinthMusketeer wrote: People are missing the point that it shouldn't even be possible to lose half an army in one turn, mistakes or no.
I think that could be a nice rule of thumb. However, I think to accomplish that goal RAW, people also would have to understand it might be very possible to do absolutely no damage Turn 1. And I don't just mean the players that have an all/mostly melee army or everything was hidden. I mean, your shooting/attacks just bounce off for an entire Turn. And this phenomena could happen all game long.
Because to meet the criteria of not possible to lose half army, that does mean on Planet Bowling Ball, both armies line up as close as possible, with the most offensively powerful gets to lay into the most fragile one and still be under 50% casualties.
In no way would 9th meet that. Heck, I don't know if Bolt Action could meet that criteria, and they at least have decent suppression mechanics to allow the player to feel like they accomplished something even if they didn't remove a model. So, is that what we really want with 40k? Or is just an exaggeration of how lethal 9th is?
I don't dislike the idea of losing half my models if I'm being stupid. I don't even mind losing all my models turn 1 if I'm being an idiot. There just need to be mechanics in place so you can actually maintain most of your army if you're not playing stupid, or so you can actually react to what the enemy is doing. Make both turns active turns. While one person is moving and shooting, allow the player who can't do much to react to the enemy. Allow them to bunker up, allow them to retreat when charged. Lots of little things you can do to both up player engagement and reduce lethality.
NinthMusketeer wrote: People are missing the point that it shouldn't even be possible to lose half an army in one turn, mistakes or no.
I think if you gak the bed to an epic degree then yes it should be possible. But it should require a blistering degree of incompetence (like using beginning of game moves to advance into charge range of a melee-focused army like an idiot when they have the first turn) or an actual desire to lose.
NinthMusketeer wrote: People are missing the point that it shouldn't even be possible to lose half an army in one turn, mistakes or no.
...yes...yes it should. I think a lot of the game needs durability boosts to a large extent, the problem as we can see from AoC, is that GW doesn't know how to apply them equally and durability boosts across the board will feth over the low dmg armies pretty badly.
But getting back to losing half your army, yes you should lose half your army if you deploy like a muppet and leave expensive "Soft" targets exposed. If I park 3 blobs of Lootas and 3 blobs of tankbustas in the open turn 1, I should lose all of them without much effort from my opponent because I deployed like an idiot.
At a recent GT, the table next to me had a very similar scenario where one guy parked really expensive glass cannons up front in the open, well turn 1 his opponent killed them all. Guy surrendered turn 1 and was so pissed off he left the tournament afterwards.
Tyran wrote: I disagree, there must be possible to lose half an army if you do particulalry dumb stuff, e.g. placing glasshammer units withing charging distance of a melee units.
What shouldn't be possible is losing half an army if you are playing defensively.
To be honest, I can't think of a single miniatures game where standing in the middle of a field on the midboard with your wang in your hand, you won't lose the bulk of your force.
*sigh* if I meant -literally- impossible to lose half your army in a turn I would have said that. Obviously if someone goes out of their way to be vulnerable or if dice or really crazy unusual stuff can happen. Everyone knows that, bringing it up is a straw man, not a counterargument.
NinthMusketeer wrote: People are missing the point that it shouldn't even be possible to lose half an army in one turn, mistakes or no.
So there should be no player agency? I should be able to just push everything forward and not expect to suffer for it? Sounds kind of dull.
It's pretty damned difficult to lose half your army as it stands right now and it's why Arbiter has had to walk his comment back.
I'm sorry but where exactly have I walked back my comments? It is like people read into post what they want to rather than what is actually said. For example Ninth stated "Half an army in one turn" and took it as first turn. That is not what he said but it sure is easier for people to argue against.
That and it is exhausting with how pedantic this argument is getting because it is a bunch of people going, "Well TECHNICALLY...." which yes, we all understand that things that are said in context of opinions are not 100% fact. That is why I am spending time to explain how the game makes me feel, which is entirely subjective, but everyone is so adamant that their opinions are fact.
NinthMusketeer wrote: *sigh* if I meant -literally- impossible to lose half your army in a turn I would have said that. Obviously if someone goes out of their way to be vulnerable or if dice or really crazy unusual stuff can happen. Everyone knows that, bringing it up is a straw man, not a counterargument.
Against some armies you can do nothing or do a lot, and they still could or still can kill half your army in a turn. Liquifire spam DE, void weavers eldar, the new tyranids. And then there is armies like knights or custodes, where if they play vs something that can kill them can lose half an army easily, what ever they try to lose it or not. Knights especially don't really have the option was fast moving armies that can blow up their big vehicles.
NinthMusketeer wrote: People are missing the point that it shouldn't even be possible to lose half an army in one turn, mistakes or no.
So yeah you said that.
It was followed by examples of people intentionally making themselves vulnerable or standing in the middle of the board with no terrain. For reasonable discussion there is a baseline assumption that people are making a good faith effort to actually play the game and not set up some obscure circumstance that doesn't occur in regular play.
And even that aside, you know what I mean. Everyone here knows what I mean. If my sentiment was really that unreasonable there would be no need to turn to extreme skew situations to form a counterpoint.
Arbiter_Shade wrote: I'm sorry but where exactly have I walked back my comments? It is like people read into post what they want to rather than what is actually said. For example Ninth stated "Half an army in one turn" and took it as first turn. That is not what he said but it sure is easier for people to argue against.
That and it is exhausting with how pedantic this argument is getting because it is a bunch of people going, "Well TECHNICALLY...." which yes, we all understand that things that are said in context of opinions are not 100% fact. That is why I am spending time to explain how the game makes me feel, which is entirely subjective, but everyone is so adamant that their opinions are fact.
It's pretty irrelevant whatever turn it might be, but it was clearly referenced and replied to - moving the goalposts doesn't change that. If you're playing poorly the risk goes up. But if you're trading then their capability to do so goes down. People like to pretend that your army is just a sitting duck and you have no agency to create this narrative that people can run with, and, I'll give you that against Harlies ( and now Nids ), but against the vast majority of the remaining armies it was not - not even Custodes.
Creating a game where "half the armies are on the table turn 5", in this mission set, where the army with the most durable obsec wins by just not dying is not interesting.
Arbiter_Shade wrote: I'm sorry but where exactly have I walked back my comments? It is like people read into post what they want to rather than what is actually said. For example Ninth stated "Half an army in one turn" and took it as first turn. That is not what he said but it sure is easier for people to argue against.
That and it is exhausting with how pedantic this argument is getting because it is a bunch of people going, "Well TECHNICALLY...." which yes, we all understand that things that are said in context of opinions are not 100% fact. That is why I am spending time to explain how the game makes me feel, which is entirely subjective, but everyone is so adamant that their opinions are fact.
It's pretty irrelevant whatever turn it might be, but it was clearly referenced and replied to - moving the goalposts doesn't change that. If you're playing poorly the risk goes up. But if you're trading then their capability to do so goes down. People like to pretend that your army is just a sitting duck and you have no agency to create this narrative that people can run with, and, I'll give you that against Harlies ( and now Nids ), but against the vast majority of the remaining armies it was not - not even Custodes.
Creating a game where "half the armies are on the table turn 5", in this mission set, where the army with the most durable obsec wins by just not dying is not interesting.
What on earth are you even saying here? Yes, people referenced and replied to a comment I did not make. That is not moving the goalpost and you are still inferring that I played poorly in order to take a swipe at me for no reason other than you disagree with my opinions on a game. Your army is absolutely without agency once your opponents turn begins. Your army is static once your turn is over with very few exceptions so your opponent isn't playing against you, they are playing against the board state. I can not move my units once they I end my turn and no matter how hard I want to keep them out of sight it doesn't really make a difference when so many armies can move 10"+ to get an angle on you.
I've been on the other end where I am crushing an opponent and remove most of their army turn 2, it happens and no amount of pseudo-sage advice like "git gud" or "play smarter" is going to change that. I do not play with the extremely sterile tournament tables but generally I play on tables where there are few if any lanes or fire that can reach deployment to deployment. But again, when your opponent can move things first turn it is a trivial thing to get the toenail or a monster or just the barest hint of a track from a tank to get full uninhibited shooting at it.
I can go over every single thing I have done and can do to prevent this from happening and how those things can be counter by an opponent who is reasonably competent but I feel that no matter where this conversation goes it will have no purpose because you are always going to find something to nit pick or generalize away. I wanted to express my frustration with 9th edition and I did. Not a single person here is a lone authority on all things 40k so stop acting like your opinions are any more relevant or important than anyone else's. For a lot of people 9th feels like the death of the game, myself included. I didn't even stop when 7th was at its worse because I still felt like I could get some good games in with people who had the same expectations of the game. I do not feel that way about 9th, the game is so lethal that even if you want a balanced match up one bad turn can remove so much of your army that you can't recover.
NinthMusketeer wrote: People are missing the point that it shouldn't even be possible to lose half an army in one turn, mistakes or no.
So yeah you said that.
It was followed by examples of people intentionally making themselves vulnerable or standing in the middle of the board with no terrain. For reasonable discussion there is a baseline assumption that people are making a good faith effort to actually play the game and not set up some obscure circumstance that doesn't occur in regular play.
And even that aside, you know what I mean. Everyone here knows what I mean. If my sentiment was really that unreasonable there would be no need to turn to extreme skew situations to form a counterpoint.
I didn't know what you meant. That's why created the example I did. I wouldn't put it pass someone, even you, that they want a game that could commonly have only half and army removed at its completion. I'm pretty sure I played some older historicals that had those levels of casualties. So, it wasn't completely far-fetched.
I have encountered just enough players that put their army on the deployment zone line and when they lose initiative got all upset they lost by a single die roll. They didn't and, they knew what they were doing setting up that Alpha Strike. Just like the players that went with all in with glass hammer/cannon units then got angry, they evaporated like Las Vegas rain. Those aren't even mistakes, that's just extreme risk to reward blowing up in one's face.
I occasionally place my stuff out in the open on the line, knowing full well those units aren't going to make it. Units are going to be destroyed, I'm trying to influence my opponent's opinion on which ones. I generally play a more durable faction. Even in 9th, I can generally keep it to a little over a 1/3 my army lost Turn 1.
As Daedalus81 pointed out, it's like we are pretending the players don't have any agency over how much is lost. To some extent we don't, but a lot of times we do. Yeah, 9th is a little too lethal (like a little too much AP and Damage), but at the same time a player really needs to put their army's butt out in the wind (and/or not have enough terrain) to suffer greater than 50% losses in my experience. Especially versus me, I had games where Turn 1 I only removed 3-5 MEQ pointed models. My current armies don't hit very hard, I tend to hold them back expecting losing initiative, and I use Turn 1 more for maneuver than combat. Given most of my games have been with the lower tier 8th ed codices, I think winning only about 1/3 of my games is pretty good. Never once did I table my opponent, though; in many of my games, both sides were certainly on the ropes with only a handful of models left. But yeah, tablings of my army have been common in 9th. Even with Armor of Contempt, my CSM didn't see Turn 5 this past weekend.
I generally don't play on the smaller table sizes, as I see minimum recommended size equal to: any smaller of table and the game starts to break down. However, if players want to shrink the battlefield down, they do have to be aware they are creating a meat grinder unto itself. This, like a number of other aspects, are all well in control of the player base. If they chose to not use them, then they reap what they sow. The game still favors offensive to defense (so I understand why players go for glass units), but at least it is generally less concentrated on a 6'x4' or larger table.
Tyran wrote: I disagree, there must be possible to lose half an army if you do particulalry dumb stuff, e.g. placing glasshammer units withing charging distance of a melee units.
What shouldn't be possible is losing half an army if you are playing defensively.
Except sometimes your just on the wrong end of the probability curve no matter what your doing.....
Like tonight. Statistics & probability said one thing. Odds were in my favor.
Yet every time I picked up the dice to make any sort of defensive roll? Reality laughed at all 3 of them.
I definitely lost 1/2 an army in one turn.
And then I lost the rest the next.
I lost a whole army top of turn one without having any kind of significant positioning mistakes once, but that was a squishy Eldar army fighting against indirect-fire heavy Guard in 8th and it took some pretty extreme rolling to make it happen.
NinthMusketeer wrote: People are missing the point that it shouldn't even be possible to lose half an army in one turn, mistakes or no.
Like it or not it's still a dice game in which players skills, other than listbuilding, do matter, my friend.
Take Chess, it's possible to win in just two moves. It's called Fool's Mate. Being possible doesn't mean it actually happens. Too many people here make their arguments by theory and math hammering with no links to how the game in real life works.
AnomanderRake wrote: I lost a whole army top of turn one without having any kind of significant positioning mistakes once, but that was a squishy Eldar army fighting against indirect-fire heavy Guard in 8th and it took some pretty extreme rolling to make it happen.
Well i lost a revenant titan for my iyanden craftwork in turn one of a game of epic 40K, but it took the entire DKOK artillery battery and tanks to do it. but it was more of a big shiny distraction since i had 3 vampire hunter heavy fighters with titan class weapons on them as well.
Sometimes weird losses happen or as we like to say-dice happen
Seeing all the crying about the cluster Feth 9th has become and GWs inability get their gak together (or their just plain incompetence). it makes me very happy i walked away after 8th and went back to playing 5th ed style thematic games.
I can proudly say i have not bought a single new GW model since the Aeronautica valkyries came out new ,that i bought for my epic elysian force 2 years ago. And for 28mm even longer
Not convinced it would require core rule changes, just the relative probability behind damage.
I mean you can offer examples of people putting "soft" units out in the open and being crushed - but I'm sure most people here - and plenty of quasi-professional players - have seen their army just disappear when they were at least trying to keep it alive. The issue is opponents surge across the table, shoot and charge things.
And I think this is just rooted in numbers. If a unit expected to do about 25% of its points worth of damage by shooting, the odds of it doing 50% are low. If however the expectation (after all bonuses etc) is near 60-70%, then you are going to do 50% most of the time - and may hit 100% some times. Which you can then sort of contribute to the other units that didn't/couldn't do as well that turn to get these turns where half an army dies.
I think the second turn (or sometimes the bottom of turn 1) is often especially lethal because you (usually) have to contest objectives and so get into the table. There was some suggestion the Nachmund objectives would make the primary less important (I think due to giving more variety, reducing the odds of 15-0 turns etc) - but I don't think there is much evidence for that. I think the numbers suggested the player who wins on primary is overwhelmingly likely to win the game. With that said, the fact everyone has to fight rather than just castle up in the corner isn't a bad thing. The issue is just how lethal it is, because offensive stats and bonuses are stacked up compared with most armies defensive options.
But equally I think everyone hates having a turn where everything bounces (which minuses to hit, transhuman, AoC, invuls and FNPs + rerolls etc make likely) - so you don't want the probability of that happening being too high either.
I liked 8th, and I like 9th even more, but in order to indulge the folks who aren't happy with the current game, I do occasionally talk about things that could be improved- nothing is perfect after all.
People have written a lot about some of the limitations that used to exist which no longer do- limitations on rapid fire and heavy weapons for example. I actually prefer the game without those limitations- I found them to be too restrictive; I never seemed to be able to actually do most of the things the army was supposed to be able to do.
But one thing that a lot of folks don't write about is target splitting. If I remember correctly, in days gone by, you picked a unit to shoot, and your unit fired ALL of its shots on that one unit. This is a restriction I never minded- in fact it always made sense to me.
As with everything, its a nuanced argument. Fire splitting in the modern era is one of the places where there is still something that feels closer to a conventional, table-top wargaming strategy that doesn't come from a card. And it's something that has the potential to blow back on you when you get it wrong- failing to allocate enough shots to kill the first unit can really mess you up in some situations.
Because of that, I'm not sure it's something that should or even could be changed. But as far as limitations go, I'd rather see that than move or fire heavies and the rapid fire rules being dialed back to one shot at max range or two at half but only when stationary.
These days, most players are MSU anyway, so I'm not sure how much the elimination of fire splitting would even impact the game.
I think the fire splitting is something that increased damage, but taking it away won't solve the problem. Many units like aspect warriors, ork specialists and primaris have weaponry focused to one task anyways, so it really only hurts jack of all trades units which tend to be on weak side of the "killyness" spectrum.
Personally, I would love much more hindering terrain rules. Playing kill team 2.0 a couple of times really was an eye opener in that regard - essentially stuff is super hard to kill unless you put it out in the open or your opponent flanks or sneaks up on you.
Jidmah wrote: ...but taking it away won't solve the problem. Many units like aspect warriors, ork specialists and primaris have weaponry focused to one task anyways, so it really only hurts jack of all trades units which tend to be on weak side of the "killyness" spectrum...
This, and it also meant that generalist units never ended up getting taken as generalists anyways - no point in adding a Lascannon to your Infantry Squad if it's either vaporizing grots or so awing the rest of the squad with it's firepower that they forget to shoot things for a turn.
Blackie wrote: dice game in which players skills, other than listbuilding, do matter, my friend.
Take Chess, it's possible to win in just two moves. It's called Fool's Mate. Being possible doesn't mean it actually happens. Too many people here make their arguments by theory and math hammering with no links to how the game in real life works.
DE Liquifires and harlequins were killing 1/3 or more of an opposing army end of turn 2, no matter who started. And if they didn't, it ment the opponent castled up, which again ment that unless they were tau, they may have not lost as many models, but they just lost the game, because they haven't been scoring for 2 turns and their opponent did.
The new nids are the same or even worse then harlequins are. It would be interesting to hear people from the design team explain to us all non designer types why monsters with t8, and multiple defences cost less then 200pts. It is one of the things I miss from w40k new army releases, there is a ton of talk about, awesome models, painting them and almost never someone explain what they were thinking designing the rules. And when they do it is something wierd like "we designed them, so people would have fun", only to change the core rule sets in 3 to 6 months .
Jidmah wrote: ...but taking it away won't solve the problem. Many units like aspect warriors, ork specialists and primaris have weaponry focused to one task anyways, so it really only hurts jack of all trades units which tend to be on weak side of the "killyness" spectrum...
This, and it also meant that generalist units never ended up getting taken as generalists anyways - no point in adding a Lascannon to your Infantry Squad if it's either vaporizing grots or so awing the rest of the squad with it's firepower that they forget to shoot things for a turn.
Yeah, I have a lot of issues with the latest couple editions, but I sure don't miss the choices around sticking an anti-tank weapon in an infantry squad, tactical squad, etc.
Restricting it significantly, even to only one model splitting fire off, might work, but wholly back to single-target will definitely make some units/builds really boring to field again, even those that perform okay.
Karol wrote: It would be interesting to hear people from the design team explain to us all non designer types why monsters with t8, and multiple defences cost less then 200pts.
Jidmah wrote: I think the fire splitting is something that increased damage, but taking it away won't solve the problem.
No split fire is just one example of a constraint on firepower. Older editions had lots of those constraints, 9th doesn't.
In, say, 4th Ed:
-You couldn't shoot most weapon types if you wanted to assault.
-You couldn't move and shoot Heavy.
-You couldn't move a vehicle much and shoot all its guns.
-You couldn't shoot Ordnance as well as other weapon types.
-You couldn't shoot Rapid Fire at full range if you moved.
-You couldn't shoot if you wanted to use Fleet (Advance).
-And yes, you couldn't shoot all your weapons at different targets.
Without those restrictions, armies are able to output their full firepower every turn. There's no more having to give up a unit's shooting to get it onto an objective, or only firing some of a tank's guns because you need it to relocate away from meltabomb-carrying troops, or forgoing shooting because you intend to charge, or not getting to shoot at all because it's turn 1 and you only get 24" range if you're stationary.
And that's not even getting into increased ranges combined with decreased table size.
So not only has the maximum damage units can do crept upwards, but what percentage of that potential they're reliably able to achieve on any given turn has gone up too. There are a lot of games out there with higher theoretical lethality, but far lower practical lethality, because it's much harder to bring all that firepower to bear.
Wasn't 4th the edition where eldar had falcons taking shoting from 2000pts of opposing army without any substential damage, and harlequins killing marine units, only to consolidate in to another unit, and never be a valid target for shoting and similar crazy stuff?
Karol wrote: It would be interesting to hear people from the design team explain to us all non designer types why monsters with t8, and multiple defences cost less then 200pts.
Their resilience isnt the problem, its their damage output combined with the resilience that is. We need more Monsters and Vehicles to be T8 with a 2+
So true. The funny thing is, with the way the To-Wound chart is, T8 is ridiculously durable to S4 (Intercessor bolt rifle), but toilet paper to dedicated anti-tank (S8+), and cardboard to S5-7. So Guard pay a premium for T8 LRBTs, but still have no durability because of all the S5-8 weapons, and the sheer volume of fire of those weapons.
So, the big bugs get bonuses to durability to counter the S5-8 stuff, so the bugs are where they need to be in terms of durability, but the codex writers can't assign points values to save their lives.
Personally, I would love much more hindering terrain rules. Playing kill team 2.0 a couple of times really was an eye opener in that regard - essentially stuff is super hard to kill unless you put it out in the open or your opponent flanks or sneaks up on you.
Agreed.
I also really like the choice in KT 2.0 of going into conceal orders.
Narratively speaking, I love the concept of Base of Operations/ Assets in KT 2.0 and I wish there was something similar in KT. Because I tend to combine KT and Crusade using a common roster, I do this in my own games to an extent, but the BoO and Assets only impact KT games (I like to try and keep house-rules to a minimum; using a single roster to feed two different games and running gestalt Battle Honours for units who do double duty doesn't actually involve as many HRs is it may seem, but alter the BoO/ Asset rules to impact 40k would be some heavy lifting, relatively speaking).
I hope we never ever go back to no being able to split fire, it's nonsensical and makes so many loadouts completely useless (any single big gun in a squad with basic guns)
no point in adding a Lascannon to your Infantry Squad if it's either vaporizing grots or so awing the rest of the squad with it's firepower that they forget to shoot things for a turn.
{shrugs} I put such AT weapons in my infantry squads all the time if allowed. Back then & now. The reason I do it is so that:
A) the squad can do whatever's needed throughout the battle. I'd rather have overkilled a grot or something than needed to take on a tank/monster & not have had the weapon.... And in editions where I couldn't split fire? Many guns scattered throughout meant I had more targeting options. Remember, in 3-7th even the toughest vehicles could be taken out by a single good roll on the damage chart.
B) the opponent cannot easily run me out of heavy weapons. Sure, it looks cool to have a heavy weapons platoon or a Dev squad or whatever all bristling with big guns. And I'll certainly use them. But I am NOT going to rely upon them being there. They WILL draw fire. They WILL die. That will be inconvenient. And I will be sad. What won't happen though is me losing my heavy weapon capability. This has worked well for me decades & continues to work well today. I won't be changing my play style. But if you have some formulae that works for you? Keep doing that.
Gw is imo not a huge fan of integrated heavy weapons at the moment, at least from new kits they’ve designed like Primaris and their encouragement of heavy weapon squads.
Karol wrote: It would be interesting to hear people from the design team explain to us all non designer types why monsters with t8, and multiple defences cost less then 200pts.
Their resilience isnt the problem, its their damage output combined with the resilience that is. We need more Monsters and Vehicles to be T8 with a 2+
So true. The funny thing is, with the way the To-Wound chart is, T8 is ridiculously durable to S4 (Intercessor bolt rifle), but toilet paper to dedicated anti-tank (S8+), and cardboard to S5-7. So Guard pay a premium for T8 LRBTs, but still have no durability because of all the S5-8 weapons, and the sheer volume of fire of those weapons.
So, the big bugs get bonuses to durability to counter the S5-8 stuff, so the bugs are where they need to be in terms of durability, but the codex writers can't assign points values to save their lives.
Am I missing something or now that Crusher Stampede is no longer a thing what "multiple defences" do Nids monsters get that you can't get on a Leman Russ? You have a one turn a game invul save from Zoanthropes, -1 tohit from Venomthropes, a 4++ on one monster per army, Catalyst can give you a 5++ and Carnifexs have a native -1D just like dreadnoughts. The only monsters with an innate invul are Hive Tyrants and Malceptors and the Haruspex can regen wounds natively but I really fail to see why anything they have to offer makes them that tough to crack.
Now they are absolutely better than Leman Russes due to typically having a better WS/BS and more wounds, the weapons are more consistent but about as powerful as Leman Russes but really if you can kill a Leman Russ you can kill Tyranid monsters. Again, I am not saying that Tyranid monsters are equal to Leman Russes at all - Tyranids monsters are almost universally better.
Also, Karol you play Grey Knights right? With mortal wound spam and S5 AP -3 D2 attacks you are in a better position than most to combat bugs. Now - again, Grey Knights are in a bit of a bad way competitively but I don't think that Tyranids are worse than Custodes or Harlequins in that regard.
NinthMusketeer wrote: *sigh* if I meant -literally- impossible to lose half your army in a turn I would have said that. Obviously if someone goes out of their way to be vulnerable or if dice or really crazy unusual stuff can happen. Everyone knows that, bringing it up is a straw man, not a counterargument.
I don't think it's a counterargument, but it's good to clarify that we're all on the same page. My comment was meant to be taken as "I understand what you're saying and agree for the most part, but technically I disagree."
no point in adding a Lascannon to your Infantry Squad if it's either vaporizing grots or so awing the rest of the squad with it's firepower that they forget to shoot things for a turn.
{shrugs} I put such AT weapons in my infantry squads all the time if allowed. Back then & now. The reason I do it is so that:
A) the squad can do whatever's needed throughout the battle. I'd rather have overkilled a grot or something than needed to take on a tank/monster & not have had the weapon.... And in editions where I couldn't split fire? Many guns scattered throughout meant I had more targeting options. Remember, in 3-7th even the toughest vehicles could be taken out by a single good roll on the damage chart.
B) the opponent cannot easily run me out of heavy weapons. Sure, it looks cool to have a heavy weapons platoon or a Dev squad or whatever all bristling with big guns. And I'll certainly use them. But I am NOT going to rely upon them being there. They WILL draw fire. They WILL die. That will be inconvenient. And I will be sad. What won't happen though is me losing my heavy weapon capability. This has worked well for me decades & continues to work well today. I won't be changing my play style. But if you have some formulae that works for you? Keep doing that.
Indeed tac squads specifically were swiss army knives. unlike aspect warriors for eldar who were dedicated by the lore to do one job and do it very well. however they struggle against anything else. the game was more about what you did on the tabletop. dice and list building were always parts of the game but tactical positioning and bringing the right weapon for the job were a huge part of the game. the humble tac squad could be focused on an anti-infantry role by taking a flamer and a heavy bolter with the sgt. sporting a power weapon of some sort. they could also be generalist with a missile launcher and a plasma gun or more dedicated to anti armor/big things by bringing a las/melta combo with a sgt rocking a power fist.
Also las cannons can kill infantry so i do not consider it a waste to shoot at them if that is what needs to be dealt with at the moment.
The ability to split fire was a privilege in previous edition and you paid a premium to do it. much of it was for game balance. some games splitting fire or splitting fire with penalties works well within the rules. however i never feel handicapped when i play 5th ed rules 40K when i cannot normally split fire, because aside from the few special units that can, nobody else in the game can either.
no point in adding a Lascannon to your Infantry Squad if it's either vaporizing grots or so awing the rest of the squad with it's firepower that they forget to shoot things for a turn.
{shrugs} I put such AT weapons in my infantry squads all the time if allowed. Back then & now. The reason I do it is so that:
A) the squad can do whatever's needed throughout the battle. I'd rather have overkilled a grot or something than needed to take on a tank/monster & not have had the weapon.... And in editions where I couldn't split fire? Many guns scattered throughout meant I had more targeting options. Remember, in 3-7th even the toughest vehicles could be taken out by a single good roll on the damage chart.
B) the opponent cannot easily run me out of heavy weapons. Sure, it looks cool to have a heavy weapons platoon or a Dev squad or whatever all bristling with big guns. And I'll certainly use them. But I am NOT going to rely upon them being there. They WILL draw fire. They WILL die. That will be inconvenient. And I will be sad. What won't happen though is me losing my heavy weapon capability. This has worked well for me decades & continues to work well today. I won't be changing my play style. But if you have some formulae that works for you? Keep doing that.
In practice, at least at the tournament level, this usually results in too little shooting to win on attrition and too few bodies to win on objectives. Specialization is usually more efficient, especially when you have a finite and fairly restrictive budget for your force.
I don't believe split fire is a big issue as far as game balance is concerned, as even in previous editions any competitive army was mostly made of specialists that even today do not really make use of split fire.
Tyran wrote: I don't believe split fire is a big issue as far as game balance is concerned, as even in previous editions any competitive army was mostly made of specialists that even today do not really make use of split fire.
I feel like there were a lot of limiting rules in the older editions - and the competitive thing was to just take lists that got around them, or had special rules to ignore them.
So they just ended up as traps for people who didn't know any better.
The idea that 40k is ONLY played at 2k is entirely too entrenched in this forum. Has no one ever considered the fact that some people play below 2k? It's fairly clear that GW has been desperately trying to shift to under 2k, what with the lessening of table sizes, and the renewed focus on Kill Team.
no point in adding a Lascannon to your Infantry Squad if it's either vaporizing grots or so awing the rest of the squad with it's firepower that they forget to shoot things for a turn.
{shrugs} I put such AT weapons in my infantry squads all the time if allowed. Back then & now. The reason I do it is so that:
A) the squad can do whatever's needed throughout the battle. I'd rather have overkilled a grot or something than needed to take on a tank/monster & not have had the weapon.... And in editions where I couldn't split fire? Many guns scattered throughout meant I had more targeting options. Remember, in 3-7th even the toughest vehicles could be taken out by a single good roll on the damage chart.
B) the opponent cannot easily run me out of heavy weapons. Sure, it looks cool to have a heavy weapons platoon or a Dev squad or whatever all bristling with big guns. And I'll certainly use them. But I am NOT going to rely upon them being there. They WILL draw fire. They WILL die. That will be inconvenient. And I will be sad. What won't happen though is me losing my heavy weapon capability. This has worked well for me decades & continues to work well today. I won't be changing my play style. But if you have some formulae that works for you? Keep doing that.
In practice, at least at the tournament level, this usually results in too little shooting to win on attrition and too few bodies to win on objectives. Specialization is usually more efficient, especially when you have a finite and fairly restrictive budget for your force.
No always, but often.
Back in the days I played in tourneys (3rd -5th) that was never my experience. What I did see a lot of were people often not bringing enough heavy weapons, clumping what they did bring up into convenient to kill Dev squads or such that couldn't split their fire. And then losing said squad(s) in short order. Had to do with some poo about comp scores.
It's also not my experience that I lose games of modern 40k because I invest in a heavy weapons vs another body per squad.
But like I said, you do whatever works for you & I'll keep doing it my way.
ccs wrote: ...A) the squad can do whatever's needed throughout the battle...
And that was always my problem with it. Your squad can do whatever is needed...so long as you never need to shoot a vehicle/MC and an infantry unit at the same time. The AT is there to put hurt on the big fish, the lasguns/bolters/shootas/whatever are there to keep the small fry at bay. If it's all cultists within 24", cool, the AT can pop a head real good and the small arms aren't wasted (literally or figuratively). If there's only vehicles/MCs within 24", great, the AT can do what it's supposed to do and the small arms (while unlikely to do anything) don't have anything better to shoot at so what the hell, why not? If there's both a cultist unit and a vehicle/MC within 24"...suddenly you're being forced to effectively waste the AT or the small arms for what feels like purely game-y reasons. To me at least, it feels pretty similar to the gripes re: Command Points/Stratagems these days - I've got smoke launchers on all my Rhinos, but I can't use that smoke on more than one Rhino at a time for purely artificial reasons. Balanced or not, it just feels wrong to me.
I wouldn't want split firing to go away, if for no other reason; it is one of the few decision points the game actually has the player make at the table. And it often backfires spectacularly when a player expect average results and get a less than stellar return. That's why the saying, "Never split fire" exists. Even when obviously there are times it is a good idea.
no point in adding a Lascannon to your Infantry Squad if it's either vaporizing grots or so awing the rest of the squad with it's firepower that they forget to shoot things for a turn.
{shrugs} I put such AT weapons in my infantry squads all the time if allowed. Back then & now. The reason I do it is so that:
A) the squad can do whatever's needed throughout the battle. I'd rather have overkilled a grot or something than needed to take on a tank/monster & not have had the weapon.... And in editions where I couldn't split fire? Many guns scattered throughout meant I had more targeting options. Remember, in 3-7th even the toughest vehicles could be taken out by a single good roll on the damage chart.
B) the opponent cannot easily run me out of heavy weapons. Sure, it looks cool to have a heavy weapons platoon or a Dev squad or whatever all bristling with big guns. And I'll certainly use them. But I am NOT going to rely upon them being there. They WILL draw fire. They WILL die. That will be inconvenient. And I will be sad. What won't happen though is me losing my heavy weapon capability. This has worked well for me decades & continues to work well today. I won't be changing my play style. But if you have some formulae that works for you? Keep doing that.
100%. Always took Tacs with Heavy/Specials, and always got great use out of them. Having extra Lascannons around to fish for better Penetration results or to threaten flanked Armor was very useful. For a long time in 3rd/4th my Squads were Las/Flamer for max versatility. Las for harder targets while the Flamers really butchered lighter infantry up close.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: The idea that 40k is ONLY played at 2k is entirely too entrenched in this forum. Has no one ever considered the fact that some people play below 2k? It's fairly clear that GW has been desperately trying to shift to under 2k, what with the lessening of table sizes, and the renewed focus on Kill Team.
I don't always agree with you Fez, but I agree with this for sure. I spend a lot of time on Dakka encouraging people who are dissatisfied with 2k Matched to explore outside that mode of play.
The standard response to this suggestion is "2k matched is the only way I can find an opponent."
I do believe that in some cases, this is genuinely true. But I also believe that there are many people who just don't want to put the effort into engineering a situation that veers from the path of least resistance. I often wonder if everyone who says they can only find 2k Matched games has only played against people who are happy with the current state of the game. Because if YOU don't like the state of the game, and your opponent doesn't like the state of the game, I'm not sure why it's hard to say "Hey man, you seem to dislike some of these recent changes as much as I do; if you're here next week, do you want to try a smaller game, or maybe use the Tempest of War deck?"
And hearing some people talk about how their whole scene has faded because the rules are bad... How does that happen? Like how does anyone invest the time and money to play 2k Matched, decide they don't like that experience... And immediately jump ship for another game, requiring additional expenditures of both money and time, rather than trying an alternative way of playing the game for which they already own painted models.
Eventually, I had to try and dial down my tone, because I was encouraging people to explore other play options that people actually started to get offended by it- like I was telling them they were playing the game "wrong."
And you know, whatever.
Some people have responded that they've tried smaller games, or that they've tried other modes- Crusade, Open or one of the deck-based options- and they still didn't like the game. And that's fine: we all have different preferences. Many have observed that if you really, really like wargames, you may be somewhat less likely to enjoy 40k in any of its modes, because it has too many battlefield states created by special rules rather than working with more conventional table-top tactics that would be common to all armies- things like suppressive fire, positioning, facings, morale, etc. I think there is something to this. There's a whole war in another thread (or maybe this one? they all blend together after a while) about whether or not 9th is like a CCG. Wherever you happen to fall on that spectrum, I think the question really is "Does liking CCGs and RPGs in addition to table top wargames make it more likely that you will enjoy 9th edition?"
I can't speculate about other people's motives and preferences, but I believe the reason the I personally like 9th so much as that I appreciate the elements of the game that seem to me to be reminiscent of CCG's and RPG's, while most other table-top games, which rely more on the common pool of conventional wargame tactics are far less interesting to me. And it isn't that I can't have fun playing those games every now and again- I can... I just don't find it interesting enough to invest time and money in it and obsess about.
Quick final thought, tangentially related: I just got my new WD today, and the Nachmund Flashpoint has the last set in a series of Faith-based that they've been developing through the entire Flashpoint. These ones deal with the Apex of Faith- where you gain the trait PURITANICAL. And what's cool about these rules is that they aren't all positive things that make you tougher. If a unit is Puritanical, its buffs and abilities can only affect other Puritanical units and it can only be affected by the buffs and rules of other Puritanical units. Which I think is awesome: if you increase your supply limit and add a green unit, they haven't proven themselves to be believers yet, and so they can't perform the same kind of battlefield Miracles that more faithful units can.
And people who don't like the game will call that bloat, and they will actually cite something like this as a REASON why they DON'T like the game... Which is crazy to me, because I can't wait to play those stories out on the battlefield.
ccs wrote: ...A) the squad can do whatever's needed throughout the battle...
And that was always my problem with it. Your squad can do whatever is needed...so long as you never need to shoot a vehicle/MC and an infantry unit at the same time. The AT is there to put hurt on the big fish, the lasguns/bolters/shootas/whatever are there to keep the small fry at bay. If it's all cultists within 24", cool, the AT can pop a head real good and the small arms aren't wasted (literally or figuratively). If there's only vehicles/MCs within 24", great, the AT can do what it's supposed to do and the small arms (while unlikely to do anything) don't have anything better to shoot at so what the hell, why not? If there's both a cultist unit and a vehicle/MC within 24"...suddenly you're being forced to effectively waste the AT or the small arms for what feels like purely game-y reasons. To me at least, it feels pretty similar to the gripes re: Command Points/Stratagems these days - I've got smoke launchers on all my Rhinos, but I can't use that smoke on more than one Rhino at a time for purely artificial reasons. Balanced or not, it just feels wrong to me.
Well, having to occasionally make that choice of what to shoot in previous editions was a helluva lot better than not being able to choose at all.
And here in 8th/9th? I will happily split my fire.
And hearing some people talk about how their whole scene has faded because the rules are bad... How does that happen? Like how does anyone invest the time and money to play 2k Matched, decide they don't like that experience... And immediately jump ship for another game, requiring additional expenditures of both money and time, rather than trying an alternative way of playing the game for which they already own painted models.
Probably because you can use the models with rules for a better game.
40k fething sucks, man. Units and ENTIRE armies are terribly imbalanced and it's stuck in the ancient IGOUGO turn method. Inertia is literally all it has. You would NOT play this game without the IP you remember fondly a decade or two back. That's just a fact.
Me and my friend started playing Infinity with 40k models. He used Skitarii, and I used Necrons. I eventually bought some Infinity models, and he kept using Skitarii. It's really easy to play with models from 40k for other systems.
And hearing some people talk about how their whole scene has faded because the rules are bad... How does that happen? Like how does anyone invest the time and money to play 2k Matched, decide they don't like that experience... And immediately jump ship for another game, requiring additional expenditures of both money and time, rather than trying an alternative way of playing the game for which they already own painted models.
Because some of us understand sunk cost fallacy and remove it from the equation when making decisions on what to do with our time and money. You might as well ask me why I traded in my old car that needed random repairs constantly for a new Tacoma when I had spent so much time and money replacing parts on the old car. Well I did it because my future time and money would be more wisely spent on a better vehicle, just like my future hobby time and money could be more wisely spent on a better game even if I have $10k worth of GW product in my hobby room.
It's pretty telling that one of the main reasons people keep playing 40k is sunk cost fallacy rather than it actually being a better game than anything else on the market...
I know for myself the theme/narrative matters as much if not more than the quality of the rules. I know I'm not the only one. And there is no fallacious thinking in that; many people really do enjoy flawed rules in a setting they like than decent rules in a setting they don't.
And before someone says 'just adapt xyz rules for this setting' it isn't the same. You know it isn't the same. Another factor is the other systems people raise have problems of their own, 40k is so popular that faults and exploits are found immediately. Trust me, they exist in other systems too. Often not nearly as bad, but they are there.
Perhaps one of the biggest barriers is that most players don't want to write their own rules/house rules, and the majority of players who do think they are qualified to do such are very much not. Just look at how many people talk about IGOUO being inherently inferior to AA, with the latter as some magic bullet that fixes everything. It doesn't. It has just as many problems, they are just different problems.
Jidmah wrote: I think the fire splitting is something that increased damage, but taking it away won't solve the problem.
No split fire is just one example of a constraint on firepower. Older editions had lots of those constraints, 9th doesn't.
In, say, 4th Ed:
-You couldn't shoot most weapon types if you wanted to assault.
-You couldn't move and shoot Heavy.
-You couldn't move a vehicle much and shoot all its guns.
-You couldn't shoot Ordnance as well as other weapon types.
-You couldn't shoot Rapid Fire at full range if you moved.
-You couldn't shoot if you wanted to use Fleet (Advance).
-And yes, you couldn't shoot all your weapons at different targets.
I remember those days and how annoying I found some of those rules at the time. Ah, the benefits of hindsight.
And hearing some people talk about how their whole scene has faded because the rules are bad... How does that happen? Like how does anyone invest the time and money to play 2k Matched, decide they don't like that experience... And immediately jump ship for another game, requiring additional expenditures of both money and time, rather than trying an alternative way of playing the game for which they already own painted models.
Because some of us understand sunk cost fallacy and remove it from the equation when making decisions on what to do with our time and money. You might as well ask me why I traded in my old car that needed random repairs constantly for a new Tacoma when I had spent so much time and money replacing parts on the old car. Well I did it because my future time and money would be more wisely spent on a better vehicle, just like my future hobby time and money could be more wisely spent on a better game even if I have $10k worth of GW product in my hobby room.
It's pretty telling that one of the main reasons people keep playing 40k is sunk cost fallacy rather than it actually being a better game than anything else on the market...
Sunk cost is pretty much the only thing keeping me around at this point...I've gone edition to edition thinking that maybe next edition will be better, what a foolish optimism. 8th actually gave me hope, it was new, it was interesting and in the beginning it was decently balanced!
9th has just been as bad as any other edition so really I am not sure if it is worth sticking around. I have over 10k worth of GW as well and off loading it seems like a monumental task but...it might be the best way forward at this point. I just can't even bring myself to build models or paint because what is the point if I don't enjoy the game?
And hearing some people talk about how their whole scene has faded because the rules are bad... How does that happen? Like how does anyone invest the time and money to play 2k Matched, decide they don't like that experience... And immediately jump ship for another game, requiring additional expenditures of both money and time, rather than trying an alternative way of playing the game for which they already own painted models.
Probably because you can use the models with rules for a better game.
40k fething sucks, man. Units and ENTIRE armies are terribly imbalanced and it's stuck in the ancient IGOUGO turn method. Inertia is literally all it has. You would NOT play this game without the IP you remember fondly a decade or two back. That's just a fact.
A fact is that you can't tell me what I would or would not do in any situation because you do not know me.
I have said before, many times that the IGOUGO format is one of the many things that I like about 40k. And you might have trouble understanding that it is possible for people to like different things than you, but I assure you, I like long, slow rhythms more than fast jumpy ones in games, books, music and movies. To me, the ability to coordinate the action between all of the units in my army is more exciting than the potential to disrupt my opponent's ability to do so. Some people have ADD; I have the opposite condition- that which does not require an extended period of attention from me is just not enough for me to sink me teeth into and comes across as boring. You say the phrase "One page rules" and I can tell you without reading it that it will bore me to tears. Note that I'm not saying One Page Rules is a bad game- it probably is a great game... But that doesn't mean I'm going to like it.
Balance is probably about number four on my list of priorities in a game. I "care" about it- games are better with it than they are without it, for sure.
But Dust? Couldn't care less about it, even though it's more balanced than 40k ever will be or has ever been. Ditto on Chain of Command. X-wing and Battletech have a better chance of appealing to me, but honestly? It's still a real longshot for someone with my particular set of preferences. Notice again how I didn't say any of those are bad games either? It's because I recognize that there is no such thing as an objectively "good" or an objectively "bad" game- it's all about either how well a game does or does not conform to specified set of parameters, and in the absence of a specified set of parameters, it's about how well a game conforms to one's own preferences.
To me, it is far more important that every faction has distinct subfactions which perform differently enough from the others than it is to be balanced. The only editions of 40k that have ever offered this are 8th and 9th. And before anyone pipes up about the editions that had awesome Chaos subfactions, kick ass Tyranid biomorphs or wicked guard regimental traits, let me state that I've played Sisters since 2nd and an OoOML and a Bloody Rose sister have performed identically on the battlefield in every edition until 8th. And it never mattered how diverse Chaos, or Tyranids or Guard were when I played sisters.
To me it is more important that the game includes a progression system with built in escalation mechanics than it is for a game to be balanced.
To me it is more important that the progression system includes faction specific elements that are only available to that faction... And quite frankly, 40k would be even closer to suiting my particular tastes if there were subfaction specific elements of the progression system that were only available to those subfactions- the Eldar dex comes closest to this ideal, though even it doesn't go as far as it could.
To me, it is more important that there is ongoing narrative support for an evolving, shared story than it is that the game be balanced.
If you took any of these four things away from 9th ed and spit it back to me perfectly balanced, I personally would like it less.
Since I know me better than you know me, I'm gonna say that one more time for the cheap seats:
IF YOU TOOK ANY OF THESE FOUR THINGS AWAY FROM 9TH ED AND SPIT IT BACK TO ME PERFECTLY BALANCED, I PERSONALLY WOULD LIKE IT LESS.
Does that mean that 9th ed as is would be better than your ideal version? No. Because again, objectively "good" and objectively "bad" are things that don't exist.
And hearing some people talk about how their whole scene has faded because the rules are bad... How does that happen? Like how does anyone invest the time and money to play 2k Matched, decide they don't like that experience... And immediately jump ship for another game, requiring additional expenditures of both money and time, rather than trying an alternative way of playing the game for which they already own painted models.
Because some of us understand sunk cost fallacy and remove it from the equation when making decisions on what to do with our time and money. You might as well ask me why I traded in my old car that needed random repairs constantly for a new Tacoma when I had spent so much time and money replacing parts on the old car. Well I did it because my future time and money would be more wisely spent on a better vehicle, just like my future hobby time and money could be more wisely spent on a better game even if I have $10k worth of GW product in my hobby room.
It's pretty telling that one of the main reasons people keep playing 40k is sunk cost fallacy rather than it actually being a better game than anything else on the market...
It's a more diverse game with a lot more freedom than any game on the market at a scale that few match. You can even sell your army for about what you paid for it so I'm not sure sunk cost is a thing with this particular hobby.
But, sure, we're just rubes beholden to sunk cost and don't play anything else either.
Funny i never have seen an army sell for as much as you paid for it unless it is some pro-painted overpriced work of art.
Prior to the coming of re-casting or 3d printing every 40K player i ever knew was looking for a deal or for bits to make something. especially if you had to re-paint the force to match your faction colors.
I also do not see it as diverse or with freedom especially now where the meta has forced players into obvious choices than any other system out there.
As PenitentJake pointed out though different things appeal to different people i despise CCGs, and while i love D&D 3.5 i do not want it in my war game.
I do not want 40K to be a balanced game for tournament play. i like it better when things behaved as they would in universe with wonky builds and restrictions that make them better or worse because that is how they behave. it was designed as a parody for the flagship GW game at the time WHFB. that is why i went back to playing older editions. the journey for some of us is more important that the W/L, or rather a unit is "worth it's points" or "earns it's points back". it doesn't matter to me if i am playing a 250 point game or a 10K point game. i play with the models i like and the forces i like because i like them, not because it is the best options/performer. fortunately i have a large like minded group of veteran players who like a good match and a bit of silly fun along the way. to most of us 9th ed isn't even close to that. i understand he has a personal issue with SOB, and i understand for a very long time they got ignored by GW. if they had the same level of unique army builds like the ones marines got in the index astartes books of the same era he would have felt different about it. fleshing out the different orders is a nice idea that i would agree with if the core edition it finally appeared in wasn't a flaming pile of GAK in my book.
I also love the idea of a campaign or narrative, but i do not need GW to do that for me, we as the players always did that on our own, just like the many classic battletech campaigns i have taken part in over the years.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: The idea that 40k is ONLY played at 2k is entirely too entrenched in this forum. Has no one ever considered the fact that some people play below 2k? It's fairly clear that GW has been desperately trying to shift to under 2k, what with the lessening of table sizes, and the renewed focus on Kill Team.
Because for a lot of players, including several posters on dakka and including several posters who don't even play, the only 40k that exists is the 40k that can be tracked with data. And data are all about 2000 points games.
So as long as tournaments enforce the 2000 points formats, for them 40k is only acceptable at 2000 points.
And hearing some people talk about how their whole scene has faded because the rules are bad... How does that happen? Like how does anyone invest the time and money to play 2k Matched, decide they don't like that experience... And immediately jump ship for another game, requiring additional expenditures of both money and time, rather than trying an alternative way of playing the game for which they already own painted models.
Probably because you can use the models with rules for a better game.
40k fething sucks, man. Units and ENTIRE armies are terribly imbalanced and it's stuck in the ancient IGOUGO turn method. Inertia is literally all it has. You would NOT play this game without the IP you remember fondly a decade or two back. That's just a fact.
PenitentJake wrote: And hearing some people talk about how their whole scene has faded because the rules are bad... How does that happen? Like how does anyone invest the time and money to play 2k Matched, decide they don't like that experience... And immediately jump ship for another game, requiring additional expenditures of both money and time, rather than trying an alternative way of playing the game for which they already own painted models.
I think you overestimate the attachment people have to playing with their models. During 7th the game simply died here - people either retired their armies to display cases, put them in storage, sold them or even gave them away. To most people 40k is just one hobby of many and when it stops being fun, it gets less and less time until they stop bothering with it.
40k also isn't seen as an investment by most people I know. A hobby is something where you burn money in order to enjoy your time. To them the money and time spent is not considered to be any different from the money and time spent to go to a concert, on vacation, for a video game or a MMORPG subscription. When you consider all money to be lost the second you pay for your models, books and paints, it doesn't really matter how much you have sunk into the hobby. You just stop doing it when it stops being fun.
aphyon wrote: I do not want 40K to be a balanced game for tournament play.
Why not? It being so wouldn't mean the game would be any worse for narrative play.
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PenitentJake wrote: And hearing some people talk about how their whole scene has faded because the rules are bad... How does that happen? Like how does anyone invest the time and money to play 2k Matched, decide they don't like that experience... And immediately jump ship for another game, requiring additional expenditures of both money and time, rather than trying an alternative way of playing the game for which they already own painted models.
Eventually, I had to try and dial down my tone, because I was encouraging people to explore other play options that people actually started to get offended by it- like I was telling them they were playing the game "wrong."
I'm taking this to mean that your later comment about the things you find important about 40k isn't really accurate; top of the list, and more important by an order of magnitude than anything else is SUNK COST FALLACY, and specifically the manifestation where you get upset or stressed when other people don't experience the same angst over their sunk cost, and leave to find better things to do with their time.
Why not? It being so wouldn't mean the game would be any worse for narrative play.
Because it was never meant to be, it was purposely unbalanced to fit the universe. each faction was strong and weak in different ways that gave it character, as the player it is up to you to figure out how to use those attributes to enjoy the setting. the real slide for me started in late 3rd ed when GW started pushing rogue traders and GTs to promote the game. It drew in some of the worst aspects of the gaming community and started this drive towards the elusive "balance" everybody currently talks about.
I swore off that entire tournament scene in 5th ed and just played fun games with the local crowd at the FLGS. now i have gone back to that when we feel like a romp in the setting. playing with the models i like because i like them or the feel of the faction. when silly stuff happens like a big mek shooting himself through the shokk attack gun or khorne berserkers running the wrong way because they blood frenzied etc.., it makes it that much more entertaining. we have a good laugh, talk gak move models and roll dice.
The mind set is everything. as a casual game 40K can be loads of fun as shown by the fact we are pitting 3rd through 7th ed codexes against each other in our local gaming community with zero problems. however as a tournament system it is a terrible game system. trying to do something it was never meant to be, until the current edition(and failing pretty hard at it even so).
ccs wrote: ...A) the squad can do whatever's needed throughout the battle...
And that was always my problem with it. Your squad can do whatever is needed...so long as you never need to shoot a vehicle/MC and an infantry unit at the same time. The AT is there to put hurt on the big fish, the lasguns/bolters/shootas/whatever are there to keep the small fry at bay. If it's all cultists within 24", cool, the AT can pop a head real good and the small arms aren't wasted (literally or figuratively). If there's only vehicles/MCs within 24", great, the AT can do what it's supposed to do and the small arms (while unlikely to do anything) don't have anything better to shoot at so what the hell, why not? If there's both a cultist unit and a vehicle/MC within 24"...suddenly you're being forced to effectively waste the AT or the small arms for what feels like purely game-y reasons. To me at least, it feels pretty similar to the gripes re: Command Points/Stratagems these days - I've got smoke launchers on all my Rhinos, but I can't use that smoke on more than one Rhino at a time for purely artificial reasons. Balanced or not, it just feels wrong to me.
Well, having to occasionally make that choice of what to shoot in previous editions was a helluva lot better than not being able to choose at all.
And here in 8th/9th? I will happily split my fire.
I wonder why GW doesn't work it into a squad upgrade such that in paying for the upgrade to this squad, one pays for both the weapon as well as the extra training necessary to 'split fire' when targets of opportunity present themselves e.g. tanks with lascannons or kommandoz with the heavy bolter? Somthing like "Heavy weapons specialists have a dual role, to add weight of fire to the unit directly, and to identify when to split fire away from the unit toward targets of opportunity which take advantage of the extra firepower that heavy weapons represent."
In prior editions they did price heavy weapons in tac squads lower, to reflect how they were not as efficient.
Didn’t change the fact that a dev squad wanted to have all it’s guns able to fill the same role. Taking the one of everything WD special was just shooting yourself in the foot. Unless you were long fangs and got split fire before everyone else.
aphyon wrote: I do not want 40K to be a balanced game for tournament play.
Why not? It being so wouldn't mean the game would be any worse for narrative play.
I think the issue stems from how40K is balanced for tournament play, which often seems at the cost of narrative.
AoC might be fine for propping up winrates of Marines, but the the Eldar players who JUST got their Shuriken Catapults upgraded to where they should be, it's a slap in the face. It also goes against a long heritage of Dire Avengers being roughly on-par with Space Marines in a firefight, hurting the narrative.
Autowound on 6s might help IG winrates, but why are Lasguns outperforming Boltguns against Orks? Winrates more balanced, but narrative eroded.
The wrong decisions are being made because of an over-emphasis on tourney winrates to the exclusion of other factors. Or just stupidity.
it is just that tournament play does not care of something is balanced or not because you just take the strongest list anyway
it does not matter if there is just 1 faction with 1 list that is playable or 100 different lists
some tournament players even prefer of not having to many good factions as this would mean more rules to learn (so just having always the same 3 factions to deal with is easier)
if 40k would be a balanced game, narrative would gain more from it than tournament play
if the game is balanced for tournaments, this just no one cares if it is balanced or not, you just need random changed from time to time so that the meta keeps changing
it is just that tournament play does not care of something is balanced or not because you just take the strongest list anyway
This is not true. Don't mistake "tournament play" with what the most hardcore meta chasers (who are a minority) bring to tournaments. Even at major events there are tons of players bringing mid or even low tier armies. And also tons of players who don't bring the most common (and powerful) lists when they use the top tier armies.
Most of the players, including those who regularly go to tournaments, take the strongest list considering what they have. Not the strongest list that can be created on paper. And sometimes even if they can field the strongest list they don't do since they want to be counter meta and surprise the other players.
Blackie wrote: Even at major events there are tons of players bringing mid or even low tier armies. And also tons of players who don't bring the most common (and powerful) lists when they use the top tier armies.
Most of the players, including those who regularly go to tournaments, take the strongest list considering what they have. Not the strongest list that can be created on paper. And sometimes even if they can field the strongest list they don't do since they want to be counter meta and surprise the other players.
this is why you call those people usually competitive players and not tournament players, yet if the game is balanced for tournaments it means exactly that, written for the hardcore meta chasers
being a balanced game, and being balanced for tournaments is not the same thing
PenitentJake wrote: And hearing some people talk about how their whole scene has faded because the rules are bad... How does that happen? Like how does anyone invest the time and money to play 2k Matched, decide they don't like that experience... And immediately jump ship for another game, requiring additional expenditures of both money and time, rather than trying an alternative way of playing the game for which they already own painted models.
I'm taking this to mean that your later comment about the things you find important about 40k isn't really accurate; top of the list, and more important by an order of magnitude than anything else is SUNK COST FALLACY, and specifically the manifestation where you get upset or stressed when other people don't experience the same angst over their sunk cost, and leave to find better things to do with their time.
That is fair, and I could see how my choice of words would support that conclusion; also, Sunk Cost Fallacy is certainly part of what keeps me in 40k, but it is a small part.
What I meant in the piece that you quoted though is that people have written on Dakka about FLGS groups who only ever tried 2k GT Mission Pack Matched, didn't like it and immediately went to a different game without ever trying any of the other options before switching. That's the thing that I find odd- that an entire group of people (not just one dude, but an entire scene) is so hung up about playing with 2k army and so hung up about playing the same way it's done at tournaments that they would rather buy a new game and spend the time painting the new minis than trying something different.
I don't understand the mentality. It feels like cutting off your nose to spite your face.
For the people that DO explore the game beyond 2k GT Mission Pack Matched and still don't like it? All the power to them- they've tried the alternatives, and they're still not satisfied, then for sure, they should definitely move on, and that's totally cool.
The people I don't understand are the ones who say "Well, if 2k matched sucks, I guess everything must suck. Time to sell all of my stuff, by some Infinity and paint it all before I can play another game." It just doesn't make sense to me. And Sunk Cost may be a small part of why i can't relate to these folks, but it's not the whole story.
Jidmah wrote: You just stop doing it when it stops being fun.
Or you light it on fire like that Dark Elf guy did.
I relate to how someone might enjoy setting models on fire more than 7th edition
I actually did burn the 7th edition knock off witch hunters codex that included literally no updates for Sisters in it AT ALL once the indexes dropped.
aphyon wrote: Because it was never meant to be, it was purposely unbalanced to fit the universe. each faction was strong and weak in different ways that gave it character, as the player it is up to you to figure out how to use those attributes to enjoy the setting. the real slide for me started in late 3rd ed when GW started pushing rogue traders and GTs to promote the game. It drew in some of the worst aspects of the gaming community and started this drive towards the elusive "balance" everybody currently talks about.
Nah, I'm not interested in a game where Space Marines win everything forever, and nobody should be.
aphyon wrote: I swore off that entire tournament scene in 5th ed and just played fun games with the local crowd at the FLGS. now i have gone back to that when we feel like a romp in the setting. playing with the models i like because i like them or the feel of the faction. when silly stuff happens like a big mek shooting himself through the shokk attack gun or khorne berserkers running the wrong way because they blood frenzied etc.., it makes it that much more entertaining. we have a good laugh, talk gak move models and roll dice.
Eventually the "latest broken codex wins all the time" joke gets old.
aphyon wrote: The mind set is everything. as a casual game 40K can be loads of fun as shown by the fact we are pitting 3rd through 7th ed codexes against each other in our local gaming community with zero problems. however as a tournament system it is a terrible game system. trying to do something it was never meant to be, until the current edition(and failing pretty hard at it even so).
To be frank, I don't believe there were "zero problems." The balance is horrible in a lot of that material too. A certain degree of balance is needed to be able to have a meaningful game.
aphyon wrote: Because it was never meant to be, it was purposely unbalanced to fit the universe. each faction was strong and weak in different ways that gave it character, as the player it is up to you to figure out how to use those attributes to enjoy the setting. the real slide for me started in late 3rd ed when GW started pushing rogue traders and GTs to promote the game. It drew in some of the worst aspects of the gaming community and started this drive towards the elusive "balance" everybody currently talks about.
Different armies having different strengths and weaknesses is fine.
One army just being another army but across the board better or worse... That's not fine.
And hearing some people talk about how their whole scene has faded because the rules are bad... How does that happen? Like how does anyone invest the time and money to play 2k Matched, decide they don't like that experience... And immediately jump ship for another game, requiring additional expenditures of both money and time, rather than trying an alternative way of playing the game for which they already own painted models.
Probably because you can use the models with rules for a better game.
40k fething sucks, man. Units and ENTIRE armies are terribly imbalanced and it's stuck in the ancient IGOUGO turn method. Inertia is literally all it has. You would NOT play this game without the IP you remember fondly a decade or two back. That's just a fact.
A fact huh?
Yes a fact. Any other IP for a game with these rules would be laughed at. You give it a pass because 40k.
And hearing some people talk about how their whole scene has faded because the rules are bad... How does that happen? Like how does anyone invest the time and money to play 2k Matched, decide they don't like that experience... And immediately jump ship for another game, requiring additional expenditures of both money and time, rather than trying an alternative way of playing the game for which they already own painted models.
Probably because you can use the models with rules for a better game.
40k fething sucks, man. Units and ENTIRE armies are terribly imbalanced and it's stuck in the ancient IGOUGO turn method. Inertia is literally all it has. You would NOT play this game without the IP you remember fondly a decade or two back. That's just a fact.
A fact is that you can't tell me what I would or would not do in any situation because you do not know me.
I have said before, many times that the IGOUGO format is one of the many things that I like about 40k. And you might have trouble understanding that it is possible for people to like different things than you, but I assure you, I like long, slow rhythms more than fast jumpy ones in games, books, music and movies. To me, the ability to coordinate the action between all of the units in my army is more exciting than the potential to disrupt my opponent's ability to do so. Some people have ADD; I have the opposite condition- that which does not require an extended period of attention from me is just not enough for me to sink me teeth into and comes across as boring. You say the phrase "One page rules" and I can tell you without reading it that it will bore me to tears. Note that I'm not saying One Page Rules is a bad game- it probably is a great game... But that doesn't mean I'm going to like it.
Balance is probably about number four on my list of priorities in a game. I "care" about it- games are better with it than they are without it, for sure.
But Dust? Couldn't care less about it, even though it's more balanced than 40k ever will be or has ever been. Ditto on Chain of Command. X-wing and Battletech have a better chance of appealing to me, but honestly? It's still a real longshot for someone with my particular set of preferences. Notice again how I didn't say any of those are bad games either? It's because I recognize that there is no such thing as an objectively "good" or an objectively "bad" game- it's all about either how well a game does or does not conform to specified set of parameters, and in the absence of a specified set of parameters, it's about how well a game conforms to one's own preferences.
To me, it is far more important that every faction has distinct subfactions which perform differently enough from the others than it is to be balanced. The only editions of 40k that have ever offered this are 8th and 9th. And before anyone pipes up about the editions that had awesome Chaos subfactions, kick ass Tyranid biomorphs or wicked guard regimental traits, let me state that I've played Sisters since 2nd and an OoOML and a Bloody Rose sister have performed identically on the battlefield in every edition until 8th. And it never mattered how diverse Chaos, or Tyranids or Guard were when I played sisters.
To me it is more important that the game includes a progression system with built in escalation mechanics than it is for a game to be balanced.
To me it is more important that the progression system includes faction specific elements that are only available to that faction... And quite frankly, 40k would be even closer to suiting my particular tastes if there were subfaction specific elements of the progression system that were only available to those subfactions- the Eldar dex comes closest to this ideal, though even it doesn't go as far as it could.
To me, it is more important that there is ongoing narrative support for an evolving, shared story than it is that the game be balanced.
If you took any of these four things away from 9th ed and spit it back to me perfectly balanced, I personally would like it less.
Since I know me better than you know me, I'm gonna say that one more time for the cheap seats:
IF YOU TOOK ANY OF THESE FOUR THINGS AWAY FROM 9TH ED AND SPIT IT BACK TO ME PERFECTLY BALANCED, I PERSONALLY WOULD LIKE IT LESS.
Does that mean that 9th ed as is would be better than your ideal version? No. Because again, objectively "good" and objectively "bad" are things that don't exist.
Are we getting this yet?
So no, you wouldn't buy into another game with these rules.
Well that is important. But the strenght vs weaknesses thing is not something GW balances well. Probably can't. They do it over and over again, where they claim to make eldar faction the precision glass hammer type armies, when in reality they are both a hammer and super resilient through a combination of rules. Or they do stuff like, make scoring objective crucial to an edition.Then don't that something like knights, can't play the objective game for what 2 years of an edition?
Yes a fact. Any other IP for a game with these rules would be laughed at. You give it a pass because 40k.
If a game came out today, and it didn't have a monopoly on players, but cost 1000$ to enter, had rules set as good as w40k and was updated the way w40k gets updated aka you wait for 2-3 years to get something, and you may get nothing, and then it is back to waiting another 2-3 years. Then a game like that would just crash and burn. It probably wouldn't last an edition.
kodos wrote: it is just that tournament play does not care of something is balanced or not because you just take the strongest list anyway
it does not matter if there is just 1 faction with 1 list that is playable or 100 different lists
some tournament players even prefer of not having to many good factions as this would mean more rules to learn (so just having always the same 3 factions to deal with is easier)
No, if there was only one viable list in one faction for any length of time the tournament scene would suffer. More balance means more people are interested in tournaments.
GK use the same list that was considered optimal in 8th ed. maxed NDKs, minimal strikes, maximum interceptors and nothing else. If someone bought a "tournament" GK lists at the start of 8th, they will be playing with the same army right now.
Insectum7 wrote: I think the issue stems from how40K is balanced for tournament play, which often seems at the cost of narrative.
They don't have to do it that way, though. So putting that blame on "balance" is wrongheaded.
You're right, they don't have to. But the two are intrinsically linked as far as GW is concerned. So unless you throw the baby out with the bathwater... it isn't wrongheaded or if it is, that's on GW. Good luck getting them to change.
I don't understand why people can't take charge of their own fun, rather than relying on a clearly incapable entity to do so for you. But I guess some people like being TOLD what to do instead of thinking for themselves.
Insectum7 wrote: I think the issue stems from how40K is balanced for tournament play, which often seems at the cost of narrative.
They don't have to do it that way, though. So putting that blame on "balance" is wrongheaded.
You're right, they don't have to. But the two are intrinsically linked as far as GW is concerned. So unless you throw the baby out with the bathwater... it isn't wrongheaded or if it is, that's on GW. Good luck getting them to change.
I don't understand why people can't take charge of their own fun, rather than relying on a clearly incapable entity to do so for you. But I guess some people like being TOLD what to do instead of thinking for themselves.
Yes, how dare people expect the product they pay hundreds of dollars for work out of the box!
Racerguy180 wrote: I don't understand why people can't take charge of their own fun, rather than relying on a clearly incapable entity to do so for you. But I guess some people like being TOLD what to do instead of thinking for themselves.
I mean, I have. I've been playing 4th edition at every opportunity.
BUT
Don't you think people who pay a bunch of money for rules ought to get their money's worth?
You're right, they don't have to. But the two are intrinsically linked as far as GW is concerned. So unless you throw the baby out with the bathwater... it isn't wrongheaded or if it is, that's on GW. Good luck getting them to change.
People should demand more of them.
Racerguy180 wrote: I don't understand why people can't take charge of their own fun, rather than relying on a clearly incapable entity to do so for you. But I guess some people like being TOLD what to do instead of thinking for themselves.
Yeah, shove it up your patronizing ass. I'd rather support companies that put more and better effort into rules design. You insisting on supporting GW even though they don't is doing exactly what GW's telling you to do... so don't give me that crap.
I don't understand why people can't take charge of their own fun, rather than relying on a clearly incapable entity to do so for you. But I guess some people like being TOLD what to do instead of thinking for themselves.
I know where I came from, taking charge of my own fun led to a lot of drama from the community for deviating from standard.
Its all well and good to take charge of your own fun if you dont mind playing with yourself, but if you are after playing with others that is not always feasible and you have to rely on the official entity to create those standards and rules that everyone uses.
GW charges mint for their product. I expect a mint-level product, not the smoking garbage fire that they are fine shoveling out because the community is fine opening up and saying ahhh.
Hecaton wrote: No, if there was only one viable list in one faction for any length of time the tournament scene would suffer. More balance means more people are interested in tournaments.
you mean like chess?
but than, the tournament scene is bigger than it ever was, and there are less viable tournament lists in total than in previous editions
so there must be something else that compensates for the suffering than
please tell me the hidden secret that makes 40k tournaments being so popular now although they should be much less than in the past
kodos wrote: but than, the tournament scene is bigger than it ever was, and there are less viable tournament lists in total than in previous editions
so there must be something else that compensates for the suffering than
please tell me the hidden secret that makes 40k tournaments being so popular now although they should be much less than in the past
There are other factors. Increased popularity of nerd hobbies in general, the pandemic giving a lot of people time to finally finish that army, and so on.
I haven't bought rules in decades, I buy the models I like. Seems pretty simple to me. The minute GW makes rules that are worth more than the paper they're written on, I'll buy them. Till then, I'm gonna keep on keepin on.
If you like the current setup and find value in the books/rules, keep buying and consume mass quantities. Cuz GW will supply you with as much worthless stuff as you'll throw $€£¥ at them.
STOP PAYING THEM FOR STUFF THAT IS WORTHLESS. If you continue to pay for rules that you don't like I really dont know what to tell you. If the models sucked you can be sure as gak I wouldn't buy them.
Hecaton wrote: No, if there was only one viable list in one faction for any length of time the tournament scene would suffer. More balance means more people are interested in tournaments.
you mean like chess?
but than, the tournament scene is bigger than it ever was, and there are less viable tournament lists in total than in previous editions
so there must be something else that compensates for the suffering than
please tell me the hidden secret that makes 40k tournaments being so popular now although they should be much less than in the past
I think you are massively overestimating the number of viable tournament lists in previous editions.
PenitentJake wrote: And hearing some people talk about how their whole scene has faded because the rules are bad... How does that happen? Like how does anyone invest the time and money to play 2k Matched, decide they don't like that experience... And immediately jump ship for another game, requiring additional expenditures of both money and time, rather than trying an alternative way of playing the game for which they already own painted models.
I'm taking this to mean that your later comment about the things you find important about 40k isn't really accurate; top of the list, and more important by an order of magnitude than anything else is SUNK COST FALLACY, and specifically the manifestation where you get upset or stressed when other people don't experience the same angst over their sunk cost, and leave to find better things to do with their time.
That is fair, and I could see how my choice of words would support that conclusion; also, Sunk Cost Fallacy is certainly part of what keeps me in 40k, but it is a small part.
What I meant in the piece that you quoted though is that people have written on Dakka about FLGS groups who only ever tried 2k GT Mission Pack Matched, didn't like it and immediately went to a different game without ever trying any of the other options before switching. That's the thing that I find odd- that an entire group of people (not just one dude, but an entire scene) is so hung up about playing with 2k army and so hung up about playing the same way it's done at tournaments that they would rather buy a new game and spend the time painting the new minis than trying something different.
I don't understand the mentality. It feels like cutting off your nose to spite your face.
For the people that DO explore the game beyond 2k GT Mission Pack Matched and still don't like it? All the power to them- they've tried the alternatives, and they're still not satisfied, then for sure, they should definitely move on, and that's totally cool.
The people I don't understand are the ones who say "Well, if 2k matched sucks, I guess everything must suck. Time to sell all of my stuff, by some Infinity and paint it all before I can play another game." It just doesn't make sense to me. And Sunk Cost may be a small part of why i can't relate to these folks, but it's not the whole story.
One problem is you assume that a player that doesn't like 40k anymore just instantly sells their army. It's a lot harder to offload an army for a reasonable price than people give it credit for. Also, most people just mothball their stuff.
The rest is a hierarchy. Most people who play games competitively or semi-competitively are aware they like that type of play and aware that GW games often don't support that type of play (at least not for all factions at the same time) with their poor balance.
Therefore, players who know there are going to be times where they step away from 40k for a bit are highly iikely to have secondary and tertiary games they can jump into at any time. These secondary games are often more enjoyable than an alternate playstyle of 40k, even if that playstyle is generally better than standard matched play 40k.
Example: Let's say Fred really like to play his Deathguard at RTTs. He was getting A+ Level enjoyment out of it, even when he did poorly, until Custodes dropped. The current game makes it really, really hard to get a decent game in for that army. So his overall enjoyment of 40k matched right now is a C-.
If he played Crusade, he generally doesn't enjoy narrative play as much and he doesn't follow the lore all that closely, BUT the games are much more interesting and the crusade rules help spice things up a bit so it bumps 40k up to a B-
Now, let's say he has a Marvel Crisis Protocol force and an Age of Sigmar Stormcast army. Age of Sigmar isn't having the same issues 40k is and Stormcast are a good army, but his local scene isn't great so give that a B.
His Marvel Crisis Protocol force is fun to play and the game is pretty well balanced and he has local tournaments every month with some pretty decent guys so A-.
So in that hierarchy, Crusade is better than RTT play, but still isn't as good as Sigmar or MCP. So naturally if Fred finds he's not having fun with 40k, he just drops into the next best rung on his hierarchy, which in this case is MCP.
Yep, and it falls apart as soon as someone is in a situation when they have or can have only one army. Then having unfun rules means sitting out an edition. And it shows. There weren't many or any, GK players in the game until the NDK/interceptor list became a power house.
Racerguy180 804585 11354269 wrote:
I don't understand why people can't take charge of their own fun, rather than relying on a clearly incapable entity to do so for you. But I guess some people like being TOLD what to do instead of thinking for themselves.
Because this way of playing is a luxury, and people very much think for themselfs saying no. Let people house rule their own rules sets and suddenly you have the biggest group at the store calling the shots, saying how you will play, what you can take, what rules will be added etc And if you are not part of the group the chance that your changes will be accepted is close to zero.
Hecaton wrote: No, if there was only one viable list in one faction for any length of time the tournament scene would suffer. More balance means more people are interested in tournaments.
you mean like chess?
but than, the tournament scene is bigger than it ever was, and there are less viable tournament lists in total than in previous editions
so there must be something else that compensates for the suffering than
please tell me the hidden secret that makes 40k tournaments being so popular now although they should be much less than in the past
I think you are massively overestimating the number of viable tournament lists in previous editions.
Agreed. It's a flawed premise. There's nothing to back up that there were 'more viable lists'. There's actually more anecdotes on this site that suggest the opposite. Most talk about any edition 3rd through 7th generally revolves around 2-5 factions being the be all end all of those eras.
Doesn't it depend on the army? For example GK had 3 tournament armies in 5th ed. Chaos had multiple ones under the good codex, which I don't remember in which edition it came out.
Racerguy180 wrote: I haven't bought rules in decades, I buy the models I like. Seems pretty simple to me. The minute GW makes rules that are worth more than the paper they're written on, I'll buy them. Till then, I'm gonna keep on keepin on.
If you like the current setup and find value in the books/rules, keep buying and consume mass quantities. Cuz GW will supply you with as much worthless stuff as you'll throw $€£¥ at them.
STOP PAYING THEM FOR STUFF THAT IS WORTHLESS. If you continue to pay for rules that you don't like I really dont know what to tell you. If the models sucked you can be sure as gak I wouldn't buy them.
What a novel idea.
You sure do spend a lot of time on stuff that's 'worthless'. Maybe don't spend so much time on 40k rules boards if you don't have at least a tangential interest in the modern game. After all, we'll supply you with as much irrelevant game knowledge as you're willing to throw hours of your day at us.
Have you considered knitting?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Karol wrote: Doesn't it depend on the army? For example GK had 3 tournament armies in 5th ed. Chaos had multiple ones under the good codex, which I don't remember in which edition it came out.
3.5. That number is still a summoning spell for long time CSM players.
Karol wrote: Yep, and it falls apart as soon as someone is in a situation when they have or can have only one army. Then having unfun rules means sitting out an edition. And it shows. There weren't many or any, GK players in the game until the NDK/interceptor list became a power house.
Racerguy180 804585 11354269 wrote:
I don't understand why people can't take charge of their own fun, rather than relying on a clearly incapable entity to do so for you. But I guess some people like being TOLD what to do instead of thinking for themselves.
Because this way of playing is a luxury, and people very much think for themselfs saying no. Let people house rule their own rules sets and suddenly you have the biggest group at the store calling the shots, saying how you will play, what you can take, what rules will be added etc And if you are not part of the group the chance that your changes will be accepted is close to zero.
There's a funny little word called compromise, unknown to the majority of people(apparently) it might as well be a curse upon your children's children.
but than, the tournament scene is bigger than it ever was, and there are less viable tournament lists in total than in previous editions
so there must be something else that compensates for the suffering than
please tell me the hidden secret that makes 40k tournaments being so popular now although they should be much less than in the past
The hidden secret is that your assumptions are incorrect.
One problem is you assume that a player that doesn't like 40k anymore just instantly sells their army. It's a lot harder to offload an army for a reasonable price than people give it credit for. Also, most people just mothball their stuff.
The rest is a hierarchy. Most people who play games competitively or semi-competitively are aware they like that type of play and aware that GW games often don't support that type of play (at least not for all factions at the same time) with their poor balance.
Therefore, players who know there are going to be times where they step away from 40k for a bit are highly iikely to have secondary and tertiary games they can jump into at any time. These secondary games are often more enjoyable than an alternate playstyle of 40k, even if that playstyle is generally better than standard matched play 40k.
Example: Let's say Fred really like to play his Deathguard at RTTs. He was getting A+ Level enjoyment out of it, even when he did poorly, until Custodes dropped. The current game makes it really, really hard to get a decent game in for that army. So his overall enjoyment of 40k matched right now is a C-.
If he played Crusade, he generally doesn't enjoy narrative play as much and he doesn't follow the lore all that closely, BUT the games are much more interesting and the crusade rules help spice things up a bit so it bumps 40k up to a B-
Now, let's say he has a Marvel Crisis Protocol force and an Age of Sigmar Stormcast army. Age of Sigmar isn't having the same issues 40k is and Stormcast are a good army, but his local scene isn't great so give that a B.
His Marvel Crisis Protocol force is fun to play and the game is pretty well balanced and he has local tournaments every month with some pretty decent guys so A-.
So in that hierarchy, Crusade is better than RTT play, but still isn't as good as Sigmar or MCP. So naturally if Fred finds he's not having fun with 40k, he just drops into the next best rung on his hierarchy, which in this case is MCP.
This is a pretty solid post- there's a lot of stuff in here I hadn't considered.
Racerguy180 wrote: I haven't bought rules in decades, I buy the models I like. Seems pretty simple to me. The minute GW makes rules that are worth more than the paper they're written on, I'll buy them. Till then, I'm gonna keep on keepin on.
If you like the current setup and find value in the books/rules, keep buying and consume mass quantities. Cuz GW will supply you with as much worthless stuff as you'll throw $€£¥ at them.
STOP PAYING THEM FOR STUFF THAT IS WORTHLESS. If you continue to pay for rules that you don't like I really dont know what to tell you. If the models sucked you can be sure as gak I wouldn't buy them.
What a novel idea.
You sure do spend a lot of time on stuff that's 'worthless'. Maybe don't spend so much time on 40k rules boards if you don't have at least a tangential interest in the modern game. After all, we'll supply you with as much irrelevant game knowledge as you're willing to throw hours of your day at us.
Have you considered knitting?
.
You will notice that I don't post in the rules section of the board. The 40k section is NOT rules exclusive. Maybe I'm missing something and this forum isn't about discussing 40k...
If you are only concerned with rules then post away in the relevant section. If every time I go down to flgs I hear someone saying how the game isn't balanced/fun/etc, how am I supposed to react? Conciliatory, sympathetic, irritated, etc?
40k as a game/whatever isn't worthless to me, the rules are. We(my group) have realized that GW isn't going to make a game we like and have taken our fun into our own hands.
auticus wrote: Ah yes 3.5. The last time chaos was really decent at anything barring some flash in the pan mortarion/magnus builds lol.
Chaos has had competitive builds beyond just that.
But, from what I know of 3.5, it wasn't "OMG SO POWERFUL!" that people liked. It was "Look at all the customization options!"
The 3.5 codex had two commonly played OP builds. The lash prince and the iron warriors. The iron warriors just because they got an extra heavy slot so they could take more heavy tanks. Today's 40k we call that a Tuesday but back then it was a big deal.
I liked it because I could play my chaos legions like Thousand Sons and not feel like I was being groin stomped the entire time and told to git gud. It did indeed have a bunch of cool customization options that made it feel like it was both chaos and inspired by legions. It was the tastiest chaos codex ever.
3.5 had Siren, a minor Slaaneshi psychic power that allowed your psykers to hide. It was random though, so people would pump 60-ish points into "Minor Psychic Power" to increase their chances of rolling it.
But it was nothing compared to Fzorgle... sorry, Lash of Submission.
[EDIT]: Oh hey look at that, Dakka already has an explanation of "Fzorgle".
Daedalus81 wrote: The hidden secret is that your assumptions are incorrect.
which one?
just because I don't believe Hecaton that the 40k tournament scene would suffer with bad balance?
as I don't think that the current game is balanced in the first place and the tournament scene seems to be very good at ignoring this
yes there is a breaking point were people quit and the scene dies if it is too bad, but going by the current state either the game is balanced, or the tournament scene does not care
Nah, I'm not interested in a game where Space Marines win everything forever, and nobody should be.
I never said or implied anything of the sort. The point was there was a time in 3rd and 4th and part way into 5th where you played armies that felt unique and different even from the same faction and you were encouraged and sometimes rewarded to play them in accordance to the lore even if they lacked in certain roles on the battle field(one of the reasons why chaos 3.5 is still the best chaos codex ever made).
A 3rd ed ravenwing bike based army played very different than a 3rd ed white scars bike based army even though both were marines and both centered around bikes.
Same with eldar using the 4th ed codex an Alaitoc themed army played very different than a Saim Hann or Iyanden list. but they felt like they belonged in the 40K universe.
The sad part is that some factions did not get enough of this love during those editions or had to rely on FW to actually flesh out the lore and rules to make them into something that was right.
Again it comes down to "your dudes" fighting epic battles in the 41st millenium. not which power build was most efficient on points/combos to win tournaments, even though those players existed it was still quite easy to find players who were not like that. i was quite impressed with the guy who played the chapter approved special all kroot list for his "tau" army.
Fortunately, GW walked away from BFG before they took that dynamic of the game away. i still think it is the best game they ever made in the 40K setting.
Daedalus81 wrote: The hidden secret is that your assumptions are incorrect.
which one?
just because I don't believe Hecaton that the 40k tournament scene would suffer with bad balance?
as I don't think that the current game is balanced in the first place and the tournament scene seems to be very good at ignoring this
yes there is a breaking point were people quit and the scene dies if it is too bad, but going by the current state either the game is balanced, or the tournament scene does not care
3.5 was both - yes, narrative legion-specific customisation options was great.
But it also had "yeah, you get aspiring champions free and all their wargear cones off a cheaper list despite them being as powerful as most people's hqs if you give them daenonic stuff" and the infiltrate-and-counts-as-cavalry daemon Prince who could charge turn 1 and wouldn't discernable slow down for a terminator assault squad.
Plus the iron warriors able to take more artillery tanks than a guard army.
Hecaton wrote: No, if there was only one viable list in one faction for any length of time the tournament scene would suffer. More balance means more people are interested in tournaments.
you mean like chess?
but than, the tournament scene is bigger than it ever was, and there are less viable tournament lists in total than in previous editions
so there must be something else that compensates for the suffering than
please tell me the hidden secret that makes 40k tournaments being so popular now although they should be much less than in the past
I think there are countless more viable lists (and more capable armies) now for tournaments than what we had in previous editions.
Hecaton wrote: No, if there was only one viable list in one faction for any length of time the tournament scene would suffer. More balance means more people are interested in tournaments.
you mean like chess?
but than, the tournament scene is bigger than it ever was, and there are less viable tournament lists in total than in previous editions
so there must be something else that compensates for the suffering than
please tell me the hidden secret that makes 40k tournaments being so popular now although they should be much less than in the past
I think you are massively overestimating the number of viable tournament lists in previous editions.
Agreed. It's a flawed premise. There's nothing to back up that there were 'more viable lists'. There's actually more anecdotes on this site that suggest the opposite. Most talk about any edition 3rd through 7th generally revolves around 2-5 factions being the be all end all of those eras.
Just noticed this one-
Please elaborate. i own the best version (IMHO) of every codex from 3rd-7th (including all the FW books) save GSCs, deathwatch and imperial knights (regulars at the store have those as well if need be)including all the index astartes books and the chapter approved army lists. ALL factions were viable and fun to play with the right codex (most from 3rd and 4th).
locarno24 wrote:3.5 was both - yes, narrative legion-specific customisation options was great.
But it also had "yeah, you get aspiring champions free and all their wargear cones off a cheaper list despite them being as powerful as most people's hqs if you give them daenonic stuff" and the infiltrate-and-counts-as-cavalry daemon Prince who could charge turn 1 and wouldn't discernable slow down for a terminator assault squad.
Plus the iron warriors able to take more artillery tanks than a guard army.
Uh...a single vindicator and a single basilisk? unless you are counting a defiler as an artillery tank?
I play against a regular that has that list, it is good, but it is not overpowered.
Please elaborate. i own the best version (IMHO) of every codex from 3rd-7th (including all the FW books) save GSCs, deathwatch and imperial knights (regulars at the store have those as well if need be)including all the index astartes books and the chapter approved army lists. ALL factions were viable and fun to play with the right codex (most from 3rd and 4th).
They were fun to play in their respective best edition, but that still amounts for each edition only having a few best factions.
40k fething sucks, man. Units and ENTIRE armies are terribly imbalanced and it's stuck in the ancient IGOUGO turn method. Inertia is literally all it has. You would NOT play this game without the IP you remember fondly a decade or two back. That's just a fact.
A fact huh?
Yes a fact. Any other IP for a game with these rules would be laughed at. You give it a pass because 40k.
You're wrong. I don't give current 40k a pass because of any nostalgic love of the IP/lore of long ago.
I give it a pass because me & mine find the imperfect rules good enough for our purposes.
And between some if us we've adjusted some parts of the game to better suit us. Others in the group like the game more as written. So how things get done just depends upon who's playing.
As we've got multiple editions of 40k + multiple docs of the changes we've made to each there's no real need to add something like One Page to the collection.
Base line 40k is really only in use when I play a game at the shop with people not in my circle. In those cases I'll just roll my eyes at the stupid bitz & play on.
It was never the ip, lore, or actual rules that drew me to 40k. It was the models. And it continues to be the models.
The lore? Some of its interesting but I can take it or leave it. It means more to some of my friends than it ever has to me.
The rules? Largely acceptable enough. When they aren't we (those I actually play with) can change them if we want.
unpopular opinion but:
if 40k would actually use a real IGoUGo system, this would speed up the game immense
one problem why the game is so slow, is the bad implementation of player interaction
40k uses a I start going with 1 unit, than you interrupt, I continue going, you interrupt again, I finish going with 1 unit and start going with the next unit (and again you interrupt)
break it down to a classic IGoUGo, were the opponent is really doing nothing during my "Go", it would be much faster and the only thing that would slow my "go" down would be me
hence going Alternating Player-Turns, down to Alternating Phases or even Alternating Units, would not change anything as long as player interaction is not changed to after you finished a "Go"
I think you overestimate the attachment people have to playing with their models. During 7th the game simply died here - people either retired their armies to display cases, put them in storage, sold them or even gave them away.
This was my experience too. We had a regular group of 25-30 guys playing 40k. We did leagues and tournaments, playing 2-3 days a week. 7th killed the group. Everyone went to WMH, X Wing, or just quit the hobby altogether.
40k uses a I start going with 1 unit, than you interrupt, I continue going, you interrupt again, I finish going with 1 unit and start going with the next unit (and again you interrupt)
break it down to a classic IGoUGo, were the opponent is really doing nothing during my "Go", it would be much faster and the only thing that would slow my "go" down would be me
hence going Alternating Player-Turns, down to Alternating Phases or even Alternating Units, would not change anything as long as player interaction is not changed to after you finished a "Go"
Onepagerules does AA and its much faster than 40k is (and also gives much more tactical opportunities)
What I meant in the piece that you quoted though is that people have written on Dakka about FLGS groups who only ever tried 2k GT Mission Pack Matched, didn't like it and immediately went to a different game without ever trying any of the other options before switching. That's the thing that I find odd- that an entire group of people (not just one dude, but an entire scene) is so hung up about playing with 2k army and so hung up about playing the same way it's done at tournaments that they would rather buy a new game and spend the time painting the new minis than trying something different.
Because some people want to travel to tournaments and play competitively but 40k in its current state is just not worth it. 40k could be the best beer and pretzels game in the history of the world (it's not because it's extremely expensive, takes months to paint an army, and has an encyclopedic rulebook) but that's totally meaningless to someone whose entire intention when getting into a game is to play it competitively because that's the type of challenge they enjoy. I have a friend who has been traveling the country playing tournaments since Rogue Trader. Now he travels to Infinity tournaments because it's just a more enjoyable game to play in that environment. You don't need to bring 5-7 books with you (for Tyranids players before their new book, they needed BRB, codex, leviathan supplement, a white dwarf, war zone octarius, and chapter approved). You can buy an entire sectorial for the price of those rulebooks I just listed. The game isn't decided by what faction or list you took. You don't just stand around for 20-30 min rolling saves and picking up models during your opponent's turn. You're surprised someone would rather do that than attempt to have a good time with the cluster@#$% of a game 40k has become?
40k fething sucks, man. Units and ENTIRE armies are terribly imbalanced and it's stuck in the ancient IGOUGO turn method. Inertia is literally all it has. You would NOT play this game without the IP you remember fondly a decade or two back. That's just a fact.
A fact huh?
Yes a fact. Any other IP for a game with these rules would be laughed at. You give it a pass because 40k.
You're wrong. I don't give current 40k a pass because of any nostalgic love of the IP/lore of long ago.
I give it a pass because me & mine find the imperfect rules good enough for our purposes.
And between some if us we've adjusted some parts of the game to better suit us. Others in the group like the game more as written. So how things get done just depends upon who's playing.
As we've got multiple editions of 40k + multiple docs of the changes we've made to each there's no real need to add something like One Page to the collection.
Base line 40k is really only in use when I play a game at the shop with people not in my circle. In those cases I'll just roll my eyes at the stupid bitz & play on.
It was never the ip, lore, or actual rules that drew me to 40k. It was the models. And it continues to be the models.
The lore? Some of its interesting but I can take it or leave it. It means more to some of my friends than it ever has to me.
The rules? Largely acceptable enough. When they aren't we (those I actually play with) can change them if we want.
So if you're just changing the rules as you want, what are you trying to defend?
Because some people want to travel to tournaments and play competitively but 40k in its current state is just not worth it. 40k could be the best beer and pretzels game in the history of the world (it's not because it's extremely expensive, takes months to paint an army, and has an encyclopedic rulebook) but that's totally meaningless to someone whose entire intention when getting into a game is to play it competitively because that's the type of challenge they enjoy.
(for Tyranids players before their new book, they needed BRB, codex, leviathan supplement, a white dwarf, war zone octarius, and chapter approved)
Given your playstyle as described above and your preferences, for sure- as I understand it, Leviathan Crusher Stampede was the best Tyranid build, so if the tourney circuit is the only way you like to play, it would pretty much be mandatory.
Good thing the new book is out. Still need BRB, Dex and Mission Pack though, so I feel you.
VladimirHerzog wrote: Onepagerules does AA and its much faster than 40k is (and also gives much more tactical opportunities)
OPR also has IGoUGo in use with AA
the defending player does not interrupt any actions of the active player, any interaction happen after the active player finished his "Go", that the single "Go" is just 1 unit instead of a whole turn does not change it
not really, although it changes nothing for the game who makes the roll (think OPR changed this to the defender rolling in 2nd Edition)
but how Overwatch works, and some other Stratagems that break IGoUGo for more player interaction but only slow the game down without adding much
OPR would be slower as well with a 40k like Interaction/Interruption System instead of IGoUGo
It can be nearly irrelevant depending on matchup. I keep telling this anecdote because it's such a perfect example: players winning decent sized tournaments with Custodes that didn't know basic rules like heroic intervention even existed. That would be impossible in Infinity even if you had the best faction and list possible for a mission. A new player will get his ass kicked by an experienced player in Infinity because player skill is the primary deciding factor in who wins, not dice or matchup.
That is true. I had a guy whose brother played w40k. His first game was a 2000pts event game, he had pice of paper that told him what to do, and his list was pre nerf flock Inari with dark reaper spam. Dude won the event for new players. Playing a writen guide.
Hecaton wrote: No, if there was only one viable list in one faction for any length of time the tournament scene would suffer. More balance means more people are interested in tournaments.
you mean like chess?
but than, the tournament scene is bigger than it ever was, and there are less viable tournament lists in total than in previous editions so there must be something else that compensates for the suffering than
please tell me the hidden secret that makes 40k tournaments being so popular now although they should be much less than in the past
I think you are massively overestimating the number of viable tournament lists in previous editions.
Agreed. It's a flawed premise. There's nothing to back up that there were 'more viable lists'. There's actually more anecdotes on this site that suggest the opposite. Most talk about any edition 3rd through 7th generally revolves around 2-5 factions being the be all end all of those eras.
Just noticed this one-
Please elaborate. i own the best version (IMHO) of every codex from 3rd-7th (including all the FW books) save GSCs, deathwatch and imperial knights (regulars at the store have those as well if need be)including all the index astartes books and the chapter approved army lists. ALL factions were viable and fun to play with the right codex (most from 3rd and 4th).
locarno24 wrote:3.5 was both - yes, narrative legion-specific customisation options was great.
But it also had "yeah, you get aspiring champions free and all their wargear cones off a cheaper list despite them being as powerful as most people's hqs if you give them daenonic stuff" and the infiltrate-and-counts-as-cavalry daemon Prince who could charge turn 1 and wouldn't discernable slow down for a terminator assault squad.
Plus the iron warriors able to take more artillery tanks than a guard army.
Uh...a single vindicator and a single basilisk? unless you are counting a defiler as an artillery tank?
I play against a regular that has that list, it is good, but it is not overpowered.
Your argument here boils down to 'if you cherry pick hard enough, every army was good at some point' (provided you play with friends locally). Which is a doozy, as far as arguments go. Especially considering a 4th ed book being really, really good didn't help that faction in 3rd.
In any given era of 40k, there were a handful of top tier armies with a handful of top tier lists, right up until another top tier army/list comes out OR an edition change happens.
7th is the easiest example. Launch of 7th, daemons were the be all end all, due to the way their 6th rules translated to 7th. Necrons come out and decurion had 3 months of being right there with Chaos Daemons until Eldar ripped every army in the game a new butthole. Space marines then dropped with Gladius and Centurion Star and the Big Three of Daemons, Eldar, and Space Marines ate every other faction alive. There's not that many stats from this era but I would bet money that Eldar had an 90%+ winrate on release and that Orkz through Blood Angels were sitting in the 20s at best.
Tau came out and Triptide wing was a thing for a while, but it never cracked that top 3. Same with the admech list with the free wargear. This continued on until bark bark star became a thing, though that still falls under the umbrella of 'marines'.
THEN Angels of Death and CSM Angels of Death(forgot what it was called) came out with the most busted psychic powers ever, and it became pretty much 'Cabal Star' vs 'Marine Deathstar' until the Magnus book gave Chaos unlimited free pink horrors and it just became Chaos vs Chaos. Nobody really remembers that era because the game was so garbage only like 8 people played it.
Most editions didn't get as bad as 7th, but they all had their problems. Ask a daemon player what his gameplan was against GK in 5th, and I would bet money his answer would be something along the lines of 'don't even waste time unpacking your models.'
i don't think you understand what Igougo/aa is when it comes to wargames
Don't say wargames if you mean 40k
And I am aware that 40k uses it to describe their turn system introduced in 3rd edition, but the game changed since 3rd and people using IGoUGo because they are used to it
But IGoUGo is not the opposite of Alternating Unit Activation or Alternating Phases
For wargames, the term is mostly used to describe if the active player finish his actions before the opponent can do something, independent on how long this action is (a turn, a phase, a unit)
LaSalle 2nd Edition is a good example for a game that uses interruptions instead (and therefore has no turns at all)
40k has a mix of different systems with the disadvantages of most but not building on the advantages of any, and this causes the problems
Hence switching from alternating turn to alternating activation would fix nothing without changing how player interaction works
Toofast wrote: It can be nearly irrelevant depending on matchup. I keep telling this anecdote because it's such a perfect example: players winning decent sized tournaments with Custodes that didn't know basic rules like heroic intervention even existed. That would be impossible in Infinity even if you had the best faction and list possible for a mission. A new player will get his ass kicked by an experienced player in Infinity because player skill is the primary deciding factor in who wins, not dice or matchup.
Those anecdotes exist alongside people playing copy-paste netlists and getting stomped into the ground.
I'm not saying that player skill doesn't matter more in other games, Marvel Crisis Protocol, for example, has only a very specific handful of scenarios where the matchup is the main deciding factor (attrition skew list vs board control skew list in double board control mission. Vice Versa).
I'm saying that people like to pretend list is 100% the determining factor and it just isn't. List is way more important than it probably should be, but that importance is heavily inflated by people who use going against 'OP cheese' to scapegoat their own poor performance.
i don't think you understand what Igougo/aa is when it comes to wargames
Don't say wargames if you mean 40k
And I am aware that 40k uses it to describe their turn system introduced in 3rd edition, but the game changed since 3rd and people using IGoUGo because they are used to it
But IGoUGo is not the opposite of Alternating Unit Activation or Alternating Phases
For wargames, the term is mostly used to describe if the active player finish his actions before the opponent can do something, independent on how long this action is (a turn, a phase, a unit)
LaSalle 2nd Edition is a good example for a game that uses interruptions instead (and therefore has no turns at all)
40k has a mix of different systems with the disadvantages of most but not building on the advantages of any, and this causes the problems
Hence switching from alternating turn to alternating activation would fix nothing without changing how player interaction works
It also causes a whole host of new problems like 'how do you handle one army having 50 activations going up against an army that has 5?'
Good thing the new book is out. Still need BRB, Dex and Mission Pack though, so I feel you.
That's why I've been liking Infinity so much lately. I take my models and my phone, which I already have on me anyway. No books to carry around.
You should like infinity more than 40k because you need a small case, carrying 10 models rather than an army. A lot of players already bring just the models and the phone in order to play 40k. Others just photcopy the rules they are going to use, in order to travel lighter and avoid damage on the (very expensive) books. I've done this since 5th edition. No books to carry around either way.
VladimirHerzog wrote: In 40k, a brand new player has reasonable odds of winning a game against a regular LGS player once they learn the core rules
[x] doubt
Well it depends on the army. If the regular is an IG player and the noob has custodes or the new tyranids. Then the new player may get the idea that games end by tabling the opponent.
ERJAK wrote: It also causes a whole host of new problems like 'how do you handle one army having 50 activations going up against an army that has 5?'
this could be handled with an Action/Reaction system, like in Starship Troopers, were every action within a certain range will trigger a reaction (which depends on the unit), but I doubt GW would get this right or think about but would just put it on top the current rules rather than doing a re-work from scratch (even with an index like reset we would see some armies needing to wait 2 Editions until they get the necessary reactions)
ERJAK wrote: It also causes a whole host of new problems like 'how do you handle one army having 50 activations going up against an army that has 5?'
this could be handled with an Action/Reaction system, like in Starship Troopers, were every action within a certain range will trigger a reaction (which depends on the unit), but I doubt GW would get this right or think about but would just put it on top the current rules rather than doing a re-work from scratch (even with an index like reset we would see some armies needing to wait 2 Editions until they get the necessary reactions)
Or stagger activations such that both sides finish activations at the same time. If one side A has 10 and the other side B has 3 units, then A plays three times evenly distributed but free to choose on which of the three moves he will move four units. B will move one unit per activation, three times…
I've never seen a 50 activation vs 5 activation in any alt activation game I've played, though I have seen people meltdown in an alt-activation game of sigmar where one side had 12 activations and the other had 15 and the person with 12 got angry that that somehow screwed him over.
I would say that 50 on 5 activations if possible would be something bad and needs adjusted.
15 on 12... I don't see the problem.
It gives weaker chaffe type armies an advantage in that they can out maneuver the more elite smaller forces, but to me thats how it should play out anyway and gives you a reason to not just cherry pick all of the super elite special forces all the time.
However I am also for triggered reactions as said above.
I will never play a pure IGOUGO game like how 40k and sigmar are structured again because sitting through an entire turn doing nothing but removing models is not a fun time, military sandbox style OR just funsies game-game.
I have played several versions of alt activation that I enjoyed.
Battletech is one. Lord of the Rings / Middle Earth another. I like Bolt Action and I like Warlords of Nowhere. I also liked fantasy Conquest's system. Fantasy Conquest's system people do complain that the chaffe armies are not fair because they have more activations but again - I never saw anything too grotesque in that game where I thought it made a huge difference other than as a balancer to not always take super elite small armies.
None of them are perfect, but IMO for my taste all were several steps above the current 40k and sigmar turn structures.
It also causes a whole host of new problems like 'how do you handle one army having 50 activations going up against an army that has 5?'
which is still an improvement over regular 40k since in a theoretical 50 units vs 5 units scenario, you would currently get to activate with 50 in a row instead of a few alternations then 45 in a row.
You can also add a concept of delaying activations if you have less units than the opponent. (OPR does that with their Knights equivalent since lets be honest, the only faction that would reasonably have 5 activations is them)
VladimirHerzog wrote: In 40k, a brand new player has reasonable odds of winning a game against a regular LGS player once they learn the core rules
[x] doubt
Well it depends on the army. If the regular is an IG player and the noob has custodes or the new tyranids. Then the new player may get the idea that games end by tabling the opponent.
Maybe if we were still playing the older missions / editions. gak doesn't work like it used to.
auticus wrote: I've never seen a 50 activation vs 5 activation in any alt activation game I've played, though I have seen people meltdown in an alt-activation game of sigmar where one side had 12 activations and the other had 15 and the person with 12 got angry that that somehow screwed him over.
I would say that 50 on 5 activations if possible would be something bad and needs adjusted.
15 on 12... I don't see the problem.
50 on 5 might be pushing it, but something like IG vs Knights could easily be 20-25 vs. 5 or 6.
auticus wrote: I've never seen a 50 activation vs 5 activation in any alt activation game I've played, though I have seen people meltdown in an alt-activation game of sigmar where one side had 12 activations and the other had 15 and the person with 12 got angry that that somehow screwed him over.
I would say that 50 on 5 activations if possible would be something bad and needs adjusted.
15 on 12... I don't see the problem.
50 on 5 might be pushing it, but something like IG vs Knights could easily be 20-25 vs. 5 or 6.
When taking Titan Lords you may buy units
from other armies or build an army made of
only Titan Lords models. If you do that then
you may choose to pass your turn to your
opponent without activating a unit as long as
he has more non-activated units than you do.
I still think the AA/IGOUGO debate is a sideshow that distracts us from the real issues.
Switching GW's games to AA wouldn't suddenly fix their problems, and I don't necessarily agree that it would make them better games either. The problems with GW's games are far deeper and more all-encompassing than simply the turn structure.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I still think the AA/IGOUGO debate is a sideshow that distracts us from the real issues.
Switching GW's games to AA wouldn't suddenly fix their problems, and I don't necessarily agree that it would make them better games either. The problems with GW's games are far deeper and more all-encompassing than simply the turn structure.
I'd go even further; we have no evidence such a change would make things better but a great deal of evidence it would make things worse.
Switching GW games to AA would certainly not fix their problems, which are always about horrible balance. AA doesn't fix horrible balance. It changes how the game is played.
It would however alleviate standing around for 45 minutes doing nothing but removing models, which for some of us is a massive negative play experience.
auticus wrote: I've never seen a 50 activation vs 5 activation in any alt activation game I've played, though I have seen people meltdown in an alt-activation game of sigmar where one side had 12 activations and the other had 15 and the person with 12 got angry that that somehow screwed him over.
I would say that 50 on 5 activations if possible would be something bad and needs adjusted.
15 on 12... I don't see the problem.
It gives weaker chaffe type armies an advantage in that they can out maneuver the more elite smaller forces, but to me thats how it should play out anyway and gives you a reason to not just cherry pick all of the super elite special forces all the time.
However I am also for triggered reactions as said above.
I will never play a pure IGOUGO game like how 40k and sigmar are structured again because sitting through an entire turn doing nothing but removing models is not a fun time, military sandbox style OR just funsies game-game.
I have played several versions of alt activation that I enjoyed.
Battletech is one. Lord of the Rings / Middle Earth another. I like Bolt Action and I like Warlords of Nowhere. I also liked fantasy Conquest's system. Fantasy Conquest's system people do complain that the chaffe armies are not fair because they have more activations but again - I never saw anything too grotesque in that game where I thought it made a huge difference other than as a balancer to not always take super elite small armies.
None of them are perfect, but IMO for my taste all were several steps above the current 40k and sigmar turn structures.
I prefer the DUST system for AA. every unit gets 2 actions per activation they can be any combination of movement/attack action/special action in any order or the same one twice. they also include an interrupt reaction mechanic that could possibly happen on a dice roll within a set distance.
Infinity doesn't use pure AA, it relies on every model getting a single reaction to any model it observes activating, that occurs simultaneously.
Your argument here boils down to 'if you cherry pick hard enough, every army was good at some point' (provided you play with friends locally). Which is a doozy, as far as arguments go. Especially considering a 4th ed book being really, really good didn't help that faction in 3rd.
In any given era of 40k, there were a handful of top tier armies with a handful of top tier lists, right up until another top tier army/list comes out OR an edition change happens.
As a matter of fact that is exactly what our group does. we play core 5th ed rules but any codex of your choice is allowed from 3rd-7th. so we do get all the best (most lore accurate and flavorful codex) choices for recreational play. all of those editions are very cross compatible as well as the fact that many codexes existed for years across multiple editions given GWs release model.
Quite a few other people here on DAKKA actually found that it works quite well for an enjoyable 40K experience having come to the same place that our group has been at the FLGS for years.
shout out to Mezmorki's prohammer project and his prohammer steam labs mod for TTS.
The last game i played on TT was a 7th ed admech list against a 4th ed dark eldar list and it was a blast. same goes for the one i played on TTS pitting a different version of the 7th ed admech list VS a 5th ed blood angles list.
Maybe if we were still playing the older missions / editions. gak doesn't work like it used to.
How new does the new player have to be? first game in life, probably will not have a 2000pts army, and with the balance , or rather lack of it, at lower points then 2000, I don't think we can count those games as real. Does he have to not know the rules, his own, core rules and his opponents ? then what happens isn't a game, because he would have to be told what to do. But if he knows the rules, has 2000pts, played the list or at least watched something on how to play it etc then the difference of power between lists is so big, that expiriance won't cover for it. When the other army is old orks and your opponent blows up your army from outside of the board, then no amounts of expiriance are going to help you win the game. Now you may lose less, suprise the new player with some slingshot trick etc but that is all. If it end of turn 1 and your noob opponents ad mecha just blew up half your army, then the game is done, bar some wierd dice roll action. And the new rule set doesn't change much, specially when the newer books have secondaries or even primaris that auto complet. Specially the faction ones.
Tyran wrote: Tyranids only have 2 good codexes. 4th edition codex, which has issues under 5th Ed rules.
And the 9th edition codex.
The 3rd ed codex did have some silly fun things in it like biomorphs for ripper swarms, lost a land raider in early 4th to the 3rd ed ripper swarms with rending claws.
Overall the 4th ed codex is the preferred codex and it does not struggle under 5th ed rules. we know because we use it regularly.
You can also reverse import all the new bugs from 5th-7th back under the 4th ed codex set and it works just fine.
2nd Ed was fun.
I never got to experience the xenomorph nids, but i have seen the minis in real life.
auticus wrote: It would however alleviate standing around for 45 minutes doing nothing but removing models, which for some of us is a massive negative play experience.
I am not really sure if AA would solve this problem with GW games
it is not like that they tried to solve the downtime problem in the past by giving the opponent something to do, and each time it was made worse
NinthMusketeer wrote: Oh to bust out the 3rd edition Nids now that I actually know how wargaming works...
3rd Ed 'Nids weren't all that great. 'Shoot the Good Big Ones' was a massive handicap.
4th helped with the rule of needing an LD test to shoot something that wasn't the closest. I know many people hated that rule but I think it was one of the best ways to make LD matter.
aphyon wrote: Overall the 4th ed codex is the preferred codex and it does not struggle under 5th ed rules. we know because we use it regularly.
You can also reverse import all the new bugs from 5th-7th back under the 4th ed codex set and it works just fine.
To be more precise, it struggles with parking lot lists in a competitive setting. Not a lot the 4th Ed codex can do vs an IG list made of dozens of tanks with plenty of plasma and large blast templates.
The 4th Ed codex was designed for an edition in which a glancing hit could still destroy a tank and a pen had a 50% chance of doing the same.
Importing newer units kinda helps because Hive Guard, but the Tyrannofexes and harpies didn't get good until 9th edition (although I admit mixing Harpy rules with 4th ed venom cannons sounds interesting).
There are further issues that 4th also lacks access to some USRs that were introduced in 5th like the thematically appropriate poison. Also no idea how haywire weapons are supposed to work in 5th.
Like sure mixing 3th-7th Ed codexes with 5th BRB does kinda work, but only at the casual thematic level. The moment players start abusing all the nonsense you can find in the upper end of those books, things break fast.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I still think the AA/IGOUGO debate is a sideshow that distracts us from the real issues.
Switching GW's games to AA wouldn't suddenly fix their problems, and I don't necessarily agree that it would make them better games either. The problems with GW's games are far deeper and more all-encompassing than simply the turn structure.
Turn structure is a HUGE part of it. Even in 4th, lethality was still starting to get stupid. People just have their rose tinted glasses on because it wasn't at the level it is now.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Huh, sounds a lot like 9th. Play casually or play broken/FOTM.
It does, hence the point that 40k has always been broken.
The only saving grace of 9th is that whatever is broken tends to rotate every 6 months, while in 3th-7th you were lucky to get a FAQ.
Well, that's either a saving grace or a horrible, fast-growing bloat monster that sucks your money down way faster, is harder to learn-by-doing, and more difficult to come to a casual balance with for people who don't keep on top of every little change.
Whatever the problem of 3rd-7th, at least if you played casually, the group could come to a rules understanding that wasn't upended a month later.
"Easier to find 9th edition games" is probably the real reason.
Well, that's either a saving grace or a horrible, fast-growing bloat monster that sucks your money down way faster,
To be honest I kinda like that I actually have a reason to spend money.
5th to 7th Tyranid releases sucked because the Codexes never really gave you a reason to take your money. New models? their rules sucked. It was great for the wallet that you only had to spend on a very limited selection of decent units, but it pretty much killed the enthusiasm.
9th? the external balance may be broken, but internally the codex really gives you reason to buy 95% of the models because almost all of them do something interesting or cool. I mean, even pyrovores are cool now.
auticus wrote: It would however alleviate standing around for 45 minutes doing nothing but removing models, which for some of us is a massive negative play experience.
I am not really sure if AA would solve this problem with GW games
it is not like that they tried to solve the downtime problem in the past by giving the opponent something to do, and each time it was made worse
I wrote an AA system for both 40k and Fantasy / AOS that we used in campaigns for several seasons. For that experience, it did solve the downtime issue immensely. It was also one of the only houseruled parts of my campaign system that had more positive comments than negative, which is saying something considering I had people wanting to fight in the parking lot (literally) for things like allowing Sudden Death victory conditions (which were part of AOS ruleset just not part of matched play) and for playing warhammer world scenarios (because they were not part of matched play).
Well, that's either a saving grace or a horrible, fast-growing bloat monster that sucks your money down way faster,
To be honest I kinda like that I actually have a reason to spend money.
5th to 7th Tyranid releases sucked because the Codexes never really gave you a reason to take your money. New models? their rules sucked. It was great for the wallet that you only had to spend on a very limited selection of decent units, but it pretty much killed the enthusiasm.
9th? the external balance may be broken, but internally the codex really gives you reason to buy 95% of the models because almost all of them do something interesting or cool. I mean, even pyrovores are cool now.
I guess?
My experience has been that the Sisters dex convinced me to not play Sisters (the Crusade system didn't support my army's lore at all). I haven't sold them but I also haven't unpacked them since moving in January.
The Aeldari codex made me sell my Eldar, because, again, the Crusade system didn't support my army's lore at all ("grav tanks? You idiot, those aren't an aspect. Stop playing Eldar wrong!" - GW)
Daemons and Guard haven't even been released yet - heck, if Guard don't come before October we'll have the longest we have ever seen without an IG codex, even from 7th to 3rd period (5 years).
Daemons have gotten nothing. In PA they got a stratagem to upgrade a regular Daemon unit you probably already owned (the Exalted thing). Slaanesh got a lot of stuff for AoS that I bought, but that hardly counts for 40k.
auticus wrote: It would however alleviate standing around for 45 minutes doing nothing but removing models, which for some of us is a massive negative play experience.
I am not really sure if AA would solve this problem with GW games
it is not like that they tried to solve the downtime problem in the past by giving the opponent something to do, and each time it was made worse
I wrote an AA system for both 40k and Fantasy / AOS that we used in campaigns for several seasons. For that experience, it did solve the downtime issue immensely.
It totally agree that if someone who knows what he is doing, could solve the downtime issue, I am just not sure that GW can do it, no matter what system they are using
auticus wrote: It would however alleviate standing around for 45 minutes doing nothing but removing models, which for some of us is a massive negative play experience.
I am not really sure if AA would solve this problem with GW games
it is not like that they tried to solve the downtime problem in the past by giving the opponent something to do, and each time it was made worse
I wrote an AA system for both 40k and Fantasy / AOS that we used in campaigns for several seasons. For that experience, it did solve the downtime issue immensely.
It totally agree that if someone who knows what he is doing, could solve the downtime issue, I am just not sure that GW can do it, no matter what system they are using
This line of thought boggles my mind. GW, as a company, has used plenty of good AA systems. Just because the main Warhammer paradigm for Fantasy and 40k has not used those for decades doesn't mean they wouldn't be able to.
Titanicus uses straight AA varied by squadroning engines for combined activations.
Middle-Earth uses phased AA that can be altered with heroic actions.
Kill Team uses straight AA varied by group activation values.
Apocalypse uses straight AA of variable detachments.
Many versions of Epic used risk-pushing AA of sustained initiative, time-ordered secret orders etc.
And so on.
GW has used solid, working AA systems for years on end. 40k is easy to shift into that as well, if there is a will to do so within the 40k studio at some point.
Problem, is, all the designers that made the good games do not work for GW any more
Yeah, of the people who made Titanicus, Epic and Middle Earth would have the freedom to change 40k into a better game, they for sure could
but they are not there any more and if those people who are there now can do same, well why haven't they done it by now?
kodos wrote: Problem, is, all the designers that made the good games do not work for GW any more
Yeah, of the people who made Titanicus, Epic and Middle Earth would have the freedom to change 40k into a better game, they for sure could
but they are not there any more and if those people who are there now can do same, well why haven't they done it by now?
Current Titanicus is the best GAME they've ever made. It is totally in their power to fix 40k, it's just not feasible(in their mindset).
So we're basically at "9th is no better than what came before, except it is easier to find a game of it."
Which is something I would agree with.
Yep. The "its easier to find a game of the current edition" is what sticks a lot of people to GW games, and is why GW has no incentive to make good rules.
Also +1 to the Titanicus ruleset. If they put in tanks and infantry and made a proper EPIC I'd buy in 100%.
Karol wrote:How much does an avarge titanicus army cost? Is it a lot cheaper then w40k?
It is much cheaper, being a skirmish game with usually only 4-7 models per side. 125 euros for the starter set gives you rules, game mechanical gizmos and about 1200 points of models (most games being between 1250-1750 points). Official GW terrain can get costly, but one can make a great natural battlefield with cliffs, jungles and such for pocket money and some DIY spirit.
auticus wrote:
Also +1 to the Titanicus ruleset. If they put in tanks and infantry and made a proper EPIC I'd buy in 100%.
Don't wait for that, Titanicus is a game about titans as the rock stars of war and their resource management. It is great at that. Putting combined arms in only weakens the mechanical core. However, Titanicus and Aeronautica models are great for Epic (rules freely available on web) with tanks and infantry available from third party producers and printers.
Don't wait for that, Titanicus is a game about titans as the rock stars of war and their resource management. It is great at that. Putting combined arms in only weakens the mechanical core. However, Titanicus and Aeronautica models are great for Epic (rules freely available on web) with tanks and infantry available from third party producers and printers.
AT should stay a battleship game. I've yet to dip into netepic but I loved the original and really just like the small scale stuff and large formations of troops.
Also no idea how haywire weapons are supposed to work in 5th.
Same as they always did, hit on BS, glance on a 2-5, pen on a 6+ making them incredibly efficient as you are basically guaranteed to do something if you hit (and they fail any applicable cover saves)
Well, that's either a saving grace or a horrible, fast-growing bloat monster that sucks your money down way faster,
To be honest I kinda like that I actually have a reason to spend money.
5th to 7th Tyranid releases sucked because the Codexes never really gave you a reason to take your money. New models? their rules sucked. It was great for the wallet that you only had to spend on a very limited selection of decent units, but it pretty much killed the enthusiasm.
9th? the external balance may be broken, but internally the codex really gives you reason to buy 95% of the models because almost all of them do something interesting or cool. I mean, even pyrovores are cool now.
I guess?
My experience has been that the Sisters dex convinced me to not play Sisters (the Crusade system didn't support my army's lore at all). I haven't sold them but I also haven't unpacked them since moving in January.
The Aeldari codex made me sell my Eldar, because, again, the Crusade system didn't support my army's lore at all ("grav tanks? You idiot, those aren't an aspect. Stop playing Eldar wrong!" - GW)
Daemons and Guard haven't even been released yet - heck, if Guard don't come before October we'll have the longest we have ever seen without an IG codex, even from 7th to 3rd period (5 years).
Daemons have gotten nothing. In PA they got a stratagem to upgrade a regular Daemon unit you probably already owned (the Exalted thing). Slaanesh got a lot of stuff for AoS that I bought, but that hardly counts for 40k.
Again, YMMV.
Yeah i made that mistake. getting pissed at GW in the heat of the moment and selling an army. i still miss my old ravenwing, but i will never rebuild it in full scale. epic however is possible.
VladimirHerzog wrote: In 40k, a brand new player has reasonable odds of winning a game against a regular LGS player once they learn the core rules
[x] doubt
That was me when I started playing again in 9th. Of course I was playing other wargames too. I hadn't played 40k since 4th.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
auticus wrote: I wrote an AA system for both 40k and Fantasy / AOS that we used in campaigns for several seasons. For that experience, it did solve the downtime issue immensely. It was also one of the only houseruled parts of my campaign system that had more positive comments than negative, which is saying something considering I had people wanting to fight in the parking lot (literally) for things like allowing Sudden Death victory conditions (which were part of AOS ruleset just not part of matched play) and for playing warhammer world scenarios (because they were not part of matched play).
Somehow I can't imagine you're representing that story fairly.
Don't wait for that, Titanicus is a game about titans as the rock stars of war and their resource management. It is great at that. Putting combined arms in only weakens the mechanical core. However, Titanicus and Aeronautica models are great for Epic (rules freely available on web) with tanks and infantry available from third party producers and printers.
What you say has merit, but getting people to deviate from "official" rules is difficult and I dont have the steam in me anymore to try to pursue that.
Don't wait for that, Titanicus is a game about titans as the rock stars of war and their resource management. It is great at that. Putting combined arms in only weakens the mechanical core. However, Titanicus and Aeronautica models are great for Epic (rules freely available on web) with tanks and infantry available from third party producers and printers.
What you say has merit, but getting people to deviate from "official" rules is difficult and I dont have the steam in me anymore to try to pursue that.
It's one thing to do homemade scenarios like 2000 points of Marines vs 6000 points of Tyranids. It's another thing to have to adjust points or entire armies because GW can't bother to do things correctly.
VladimirHerzog wrote: In 40k, a brand new player has reasonable odds of winning a game against a regular LGS player once they learn the core rules
[x] doubt
That was me when I started playing again in 9th. Of course I was playing other wargames too. I hadn't played 40k since 4th.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
auticus wrote: I wrote an AA system for both 40k and Fantasy / AOS that we used in campaigns for several seasons. For that experience, it did solve the downtime issue immensely. It was also one of the only houseruled parts of my campaign system that had more positive comments than negative, which is saying something considering I had people wanting to fight in the parking lot (literally) for things like allowing Sudden Death victory conditions (which were part of AOS ruleset just not part of matched play) and for playing warhammer world scenarios (because they were not part of matched play).
Somehow I can't imagine you're representing that story fairly.
Well, that's either a saving grace or a horrible, fast-growing bloat monster that sucks your money down way faster,
To be honest I kinda like that I actually have a reason to spend money.
5th to 7th Tyranid releases sucked because the Codexes never really gave you a reason to take your money. New models? their rules sucked. It was great for the wallet that you only had to spend on a very limited selection of decent units, but it pretty much killed the enthusiasm.
9th? the external balance may be broken, but internally the codex really gives you reason to buy 95% of the models because almost all of them do something interesting or cool. I mean, even pyrovores are cool now.
Depends on the book. Half the Sisters, Necrons, and 3/4ths of the marine books at any given time are paperweights.
they were just very fast and very specialized as one would expect from their lore.
