I've thought that GW should have adopted the mission style from Risk, where the players are assigned specific objectives to take before the game starts, and those are hidden information from the other player.
Table gets set up with 6 objectives on it, players then draw a card or roll on a table to determine what their victory objectives are (so, player A needs to control objective 1, 3 and 6 while B needs 5, 3 and 2). At the end of the game, if one player controls their mission objectives and the other doesn't, then the player who does wins. If both control or neither do, it goes to secondary win conditions, 1 point for controlling an objective in your DZ, 2 for in no mans land, 3 for in opponents DZ for an example off the top of my head.
The fact that you don't know what exact mission your opponent is on allows for tactical play, trying to feint for objectives you don't need to draw forces away from elsewhere, for example.
Streamline the game systems so it takes less time per turn, up the number of turns, and introduce meaningful psychology and pinning systems to make it so there are is a viable role for weaponry and wargear that isn't pure lethality or protection against said lethality.
But if you play 9th, you know that EVERY faction is going to have bespoke subfaction traits, WL traits, Relics, Strategems, Battle Honours, Agendas, and campaign goals.
It's nice that every faction gets those options . . .
WL traits are an option for one model.
Relics are an option for one model.
Stratagems often seem like something that should just be an inherent ability of a unit (looking at you, Auto Launchers).
Were you loading up your characters with 4-5 items from the list?
Can you explain why bionics and spiky bits should be upgrades available to a Chaos Lord? I'm considering writing 9th edition fandexes and I'd be very minimalist. I think the relic and WL trait combination achieves so much in terms of customization potential with incredibly few broken or useless options and combos. I can see a bionics and spiky bits relic having a place, but those dinky 5 pt upgrades I don't see why we need, part of why I'm okay with free relics, it means that every relic is the same 25ish pts. I'd add smoke launchers, melta bombs and mounts but almost certainly not veteran skills.
9th edition also had marks if I recall correctly and tonnes of psychic powers, like the list for a Thousand Sons Sorcerer in 3,5 vs 9th should be an easy 9th ed win.
Bionics should be available because Iron Warriors exist, and if Bionics are available to a random IG sergeant, then they absolutely should be available to a Chaos Lord.
Spikey Bits are a way to make your Chaos Lord better at combat than other Chaos Lords - it's +1 attack, the rough equivalent (though not identical) to loyalist SM with Terminator Honors. Flavor wise, not all Chaos forces were of the "spikey bit" variety (e.g., again, Iron Warriors who actively despise Chaos).
I'm still not understanding about the spikes and I'm not sure what will make me understand. Would you take an Iron Warriors Chaos Lord with a lightning claw and then not give him spikes because you felt it out was out of flavour to add it despite it making mathematical sense to add the upgrade when you're already spending 25 on the claw? Would you add the spikes to a World Eaters Chaos Lord with a chainsword even though the extra attack with the chainsword didn't add much?
Yes to both questions.
If I don't think an option fits whatever I'm making? Then regardless of the math/benefits I don't include it.
If I think it does fit? Then, depending upon how iconic I view it, I'll either use it or at least consider it.
If I don't end up using it it's pretty much because I've run out of pts.
I'm still not understanding about the spikes and I'm not sure what will make me understand. Would you take an Iron Warriors Chaos Lord with a lightning claw and then not give him spikes because you felt it out was out of flavour to add it despite it making mathematical sense to add the upgrade when you're already spending 25 on the claw? Would you add the spikes to a World Eaters Chaos Lord with a chainsword even though the extra attack with the chainsword didn't add much?
Speaking as someone who has taken mathematically worse options far more recently, yes I would absolutely make that sort of choice.
Also, I could be missing something but wasn't there a limit of 100pts of wargear or something like that? So taking spikes would also mean you'd have fewer points to spend on other choices (and I don't know how the others compete).
I believe a lot of people take options that are not mathematically the best, as long as they are workable and fit with what they like. Be it wargear or units.
To be honest I don't understand what is even the point about spikey bits. While having options is great, some options should be entirely cosmetic and spikey bits is one of such options.
On the other hand some should simply be built in like grenades. They are so cheap that they should be standard because what idiot goes to war without grenades?
There is also the whole WYSIWYG issue. It creates the expectation everything needs to be visually represented which was kinda silly with large upgrade lists.
A Town Called Malus wrote: I've thought that GW should have adopted the mission style from Risk, where the players are assigned specific objectives to take before the game starts, and those are hidden information from the other player.
Table gets set up with 6 objectives on it, players then draw a card or roll on a table to determine what their victory objectives are (so, player A needs to control objective 1, 3 and 6 while B needs 5, 3 and 2). At the end of the game, if one player controls their mission objectives and the other doesn't, then the player who does wins. If both control or neither do, it goes to secondary win conditions, 1 point for controlling an objective in your DZ, 2 for in no mans land, 3 for in opponents DZ for an example off the top of my head.
The fact that you don't know what exact mission your opponent is on allows for tactical play, trying to feint for objectives you don't need to draw forces away from elsewhere, for example.
Streamline the game systems so it takes less time per turn, up the number of turns, and introduce meaningful psychology and pinning systems to make it so there are is a viable role for weaponry and wargear that isn't pure lethality or protection against said lethality.
2nd edition had mission cards, where you picked yours in secret and I think you didn't reveal it until the end maybe, I don't recall. I thought that was a great idea, way better than everything being objective based.
I watched a game of Necromunda for the first time yesterday. It reminded me of this thread. That game has that highly randomized, narrative-focused flavor that people here really love. GW still clearly understands how to make that sort of game. They're just not doing it for 40k. They're doing it for just about every other game - Necromunda, Titanicus, Heresy, almost certainly Legions Imperialis - everything but 40k. And unfortunately 40k is their most important game, the one that everyone is really invested in.
Crusade was ostensibly the version of 40k meant for narrative players. But it doesn't quite scratch that same itch. Why?
VladimirHerzog wrote: honestly, as much as i like customisation, thats too many options for the current scale of 40k. The game needs to scale back down if i'm gonna have a RPG player sheet for every unit.
That wargear list covered multiple different armies. I don't see how it's too many, and it's nothing at all like an RPG player sheet.
Was there restrictions on how many things of each categories you could bring? And which armies did that cover? Because this all seems very CSM-specific
Just a points limit you can see in the bottom left and I seem to think there was a limit on number of 1h and 2h weapons although that maybe came later? My memory from 20 years ago isn't great. It looks very CSM-Specific because it is really. The book served to cover all chaos legions, marked and undivided warbands and daemons. But the upgrades shown there were only for the characters and champions iirc. So 1 army that can be played many ways with no loss of character is the best way to look at it and that's the reason this book is considered the peak of codex design for chaos.
Amen. What made the 3.5 book so great was that it let you completely customize your force. Word Bearers played differently to Night Lords who played differently to Alpha Legion who played differently to Your Dudes Renegades. Nothing before or since has ever captured that feeling.
I'm still not understanding about the spikes and I'm not sure what will make me understand. Would you take an Iron Warriors Chaos Lord with a lightning claw and then not give him spikes because you felt it out was out of flavour to add it despite it making mathematical sense to add the upgrade when you're already spending 25 on the claw? Would you add the spikes to a World Eaters Chaos Lord with a chainsword even though the extra attack with the chainsword didn't add much?
according to the overall tone of this thread, yes and yes. I think the main issue with 10th people on here have is the loss of fluff support in options, they're not the kind of player that focuses on making the "mathematically correct" choice
Mathematically correct has never once entered my mind in anything having to do with Warhammer(unless it's figuring out how much $ something costs in relation to budgetary concerns)
Crusade is still linked to the tourney set of rules in that you were supposed to be able to play a crusade army against a regular matched play army. Can't do that when unit profiles would be different or the army plays in a fluffier way then during tourneys.
But if you play 9th, you know that EVERY faction is going to have bespoke subfaction traits, WL traits, Relics, Strategems, Battle Honours, Agendas, and campaign goals.
It's nice that every faction gets those options . . .
WL traits are an option for one model.
Relics are an option for one model.
Stratagems often seem like something that should just be an inherent ability of a unit (looking at you, Auto Launchers).
Were you loading up your characters with 4-5 items from the list?
Can you explain why bionics and spiky bits should be upgrades available to a Chaos Lord? I'm considering writing 9th edition fandexes and I'd be very minimalist. I think the relic and WL trait combination achieves so much in terms of customization potential with incredibly few broken or useless options and combos. I can see a bionics and spiky bits relic having a place, but those dinky 5 pt upgrades I don't see why we need, part of why I'm okay with free relics, it means that every relic is the same 25ish pts. I'd add smoke launchers, melta bombs and mounts but almost certainly not veteran skills.
9th edition also had marks if I recall correctly and tonnes of psychic powers, like the list for a Thousand Sons Sorcerer in 3,5 vs 9th should be an easy 9th ed win.
Bionics should be available because Iron Warriors exist, and if Bionics are available to a random IG sergeant, then they absolutely should be available to a Chaos Lord.
Spikey Bits are a way to make your Chaos Lord better at combat than other Chaos Lords - it's +1 attack, the rough equivalent (though not identical) to loyalist SM with Terminator Honors. Flavor wise, not all Chaos forces were of the "spikey bit" variety (e.g., again, Iron Warriors who actively despise Chaos).
I'm still not understanding about the spikes and I'm not sure what will make me understand. Would you take an Iron Warriors Chaos Lord with a lightning claw and then not give him spikes because you felt it out was out of flavour to add it despite it making mathematical sense to add the upgrade when you're already spending 25 on the claw? Would you add the spikes to a World Eaters Chaos Lord with a chainsword even though the extra attack with the chainsword didn't add much?
I think we can assume you have not read the 3.5 Chaos Codex. You really should if not.
The reason you might not pay the 5 points for spikey bits is because there was a limit to how many upgrades you could take before your Chaos Lord became a Daemon Prince. You were expected (via the rules) to use a larger, more intimidating model if you passed that point threshold.
Becoming a Demon Prince had positives and negatives for the model. Being "demonic" was a thing. If you were a demon you had an invulnerable save baked in and thus didn't need to buy an invul save. So you didn't need terminator armor if that was your plan. Terminator armor was 2+/5++ in those days. A demon prince in artificer armor is also 2+/5++. The demon prince is a monstrous creature and gained all the associated rules and was not too fond of engaging Grey Knights in a fist fight.
This was also the same era where you could.make your Tyranids incredibly specific to your own tastes. There were charts of genes and evolutionary paths that made for various hive fleet mutations.
That's why flying ripper swarms existed. Ever seen the ripper swarms conversions with venomcannons? Hormogaunts with a warrior head? Hive node mutation!
I'm still not understanding about the spikes and I'm not sure what will make me understand. Would you take an Iron Warriors Chaos Lord with a lightning claw and then not give him spikes because you felt it out was out of flavour to add it despite it making mathematical sense to add the upgrade when you're already spending 25 on the claw? Would you add the spikes to a World Eaters Chaos Lord with a chainsword even though the extra attack with the chainsword didn't add much?
Speaking as someone who has taken mathematically worse options far more recently, yes I would absolutely make that sort of choice.
I have taken mathematically inferior options often, but it's usually more complicated than +1A, like taking a bad mobile melee unit instead of a good one because it works with this other unit I brought and I think that's neat even if it's still bad or simply I like the model/rules for an overcosted unit or option. I feel like +1A could represent anything and isn't fun to take, like maybe my Iron Hands Chaos Lord was the pre-eminent duelist of the Iron Hands Legion so he deserves an extra attack. Now my opponent might get pissy because I didn't model it on my character and there was that one game 2 months ago where my Chaos Lord didn't have spikes because I didn't have the points for it. But a relic and a WL trait is a big thing so I'm more likely to pay attention to which one of two Chaos Lords have it, it doesn't need to be modelled (although cool if it is). I don't think you need to go "5<3/25=>spikes are the mathematically correct option beep boop" but you might go "I want this Chaos Lord to really smash I'll give him a lightning claw, might as well give him the spikes so he smashes even harder muahaha". Compare that to the different narratives you can brew into the rules of two different relics, one providing supreme offence at the cost of allies and the other providing supreme offence at the cost of the bearer, much more significant than taking or not taking spikes, the spikes only gain narrative weight through their name, fluff text and CSM players actually caring about those. The moment it just becomes "Chaos Lord with lightning claw and +1 A" instead of "Chaos Lord who is such a devout worshipper of the dark gods that he has spikes on his armour see here on his pauldrons which grants him +1A" spikes lose their meaning for existing and just become a mathematical question. I think well-written relics and WL traits are resistant to becoming math questions because their rules are more fun and inherently narrative, but these kinds of micro upgrades are always going to tend towards simplicity and therefore becoming math questions rather than narrative questions.
Gibblets wrote: Crusade is still linked to the tourney set of rules in that you were supposed to be able to play a crusade army against a regular matched play army. Can't do that when unit profiles would be different or the army plays in a fluffier way then during tourneys.
So the problem with Crusade is it's not different enough from the baseline tourney ruleset?
If all Crusade needs is more narrative-oriented tweaks to the core rules, then I think that's actually achievable. I could see a version of 40k where the datasheets are shared between narrative/tourney but the core rules are totally different. Maybe in a future edition if the community shows enough interest.
I think one of the issues is, GW thinks its solving the 'soul' issue for narrative players with Crusade, when it's really not. The player base will need to communicate to GW that Crusade isn't quite doing what they want it to do. I think if GW understood this they would definitely have the capability to design a completely different Crusade ruleset, one that would have the same narrative-centric flavor of their other games but shares the same datasheets with the tourney ruleset.
Gibblets wrote: Crusade is still linked to the tourney set of rules in that you were supposed to be able to play a crusade army against a regular matched play army. Can't do that when unit profiles would be different or the army plays in a fluffier way then during tourneys.
So the problem with Crusade is it's not different enough from the baseline tourney ruleset?
If all Crusade needs is more narrative-oriented tweaks to the core rules, then I think that's actually achievable. I could see a version of 40k where the datasheets are shared between narrative/tourney but the core rules are totally different. Maybe in a future edition if the community shows enough interest.
I think one of the issues is, GW thinks its solving the 'soul' issue for narrative players with Crusade, when it's really not. The player base will need to communicate to GW that Crusade isn't quite doing what they want it to do. I think if GW understood this they would definitely have the capability to design a completely different Crusade ruleset, one that would have the same narrative-centric flavor of their other games but shares the same datasheets with the tourney ruleset.
Ideally the "best" way IMHO would be to have a more detailed (think like HH) set of rules for everything BUT tournament play, and then a stripped down but streamlined set of rules for tournaments. Basically remove all the weird shenanigans. Almost like how they (tried) to do Combat Patrol, where it uses a subset of the rules.
The issue though would be it's likely everyone just gravitates to the tournament rules, and the other set of rules languishes and may as well not exist. Basically exactly what we already saw in 8th with chapter approved and AOS 1.0 and 2.0 with the GHB: The parts not matched play (read: "balanced") were just completely ignored.
Gibblets wrote:Crusade is still linked to the tourney set of rules in that you were supposed to be able to play a crusade army against a regular matched play army. Can't do that when unit profiles would be different or the army plays in a fluffier way then during tourneys.
Yes, kinda hard to play fluffy Salamanders when they're functionally Ultramarines painted green.
Gibblets wrote:Crusade is still linked to the tourney set of rules in that you were supposed to be able to play a crusade army against a regular matched play army. Can't do that when unit profiles would be different or the army plays in a fluffier way then during tourneys.
Yes, kinda hard to play fluffy Salamanders when they're functionally Ultramarines painted green.
Crusade is just Tourney progression.
I think this sort of sentiment is where I feel the "soul" (at least what I consider it) has been drained since I began playing in 5th edition.
The newer concept that fluff NEEDS to be represented by a special rule applied to your paint job. It's not enough to take flamers, heavy flamers, melta guns, master-crafted weapons and artificer armor (going back to 5th ed for those last 2) to be fluffy with Salamanders. No, you need +1 To Wound rolls with flamers and heavy flamers to be fluffy with them!
vict0988 wrote: How did 3,5 make more of a difference than Chapter Tactics and Chapter Stratagems?
I read the 3,5 CSM codex for research, but it was before my time so I never played with or against it.
This is back in a time with a fixed force organisation, before you could take unlimited amounts of any slot or have allies. It was a book that, without touching on the books of chaos, gave you methods to revolutionary change any characters form and function. Possessed and aspiring champs also had this feature built in. There were upgrades and some perks locked behind the marks and there were rules on the marks interacting with each other.
The "chapter tactics" for some legions were one of the first places that force orgs happened that I can recall, including introducing units that otherwise didn't exist or were brought in from other books. It shifted how that army played more than chapter tactics have in recent years. The books of chaos at back for mono god legions/warbands introduced yet more god specific goodness and special rules such as the blessed numbers for free champ upgrades and more extreme force org limitations imposed to get the rewards.
It was about 2 editions ahead of its time and felt like it had immense impact based on your choices.
The issue though would be it's likely everyone just gravitates to the tournament rules, and the other set of rules languishes and may as well not exist. Basically exactly what we already saw in 8th with chapter approved and AOS 1.0 and 2.0 with the GHB: The parts not matched play (read: "balanced") were just completely ignored.
Why did that happen? Is it simply because tournament rules in general are more popular?
I have taken mathematically inferior options often, but it's usually more complicated than +1A, like taking a bad mobile melee unit instead of a good one because it works with this other unit I brought and I think that's neat even if it's still bad or simply I like the model/rules for an overcosted unit or option. I feel like +1A could represent anything and isn't fun to take, like maybe my Iron Hands Chaos Lord was the pre-eminent duelist of the Iron Hands Legion so he deserves an extra attack. Now my opponent might get pissy because I didn't model it on my character and there was that one game 2 months ago where my Chaos Lord didn't have spikes because I didn't have the points for it. But a relic and a WL trait is a big thing so I'm more likely to pay attention to which one of two Chaos Lords have it, it doesn't need to be modelled (although cool if it is). I don't think you need to go "5<3/25=>spikes are the mathematically correct option beep boop" but you might go "I want this Chaos Lord to really smash I'll give him a lightning claw, might as well give him the spikes so he smashes even harder muahaha". Compare that to the different narratives you can brew into the rules of two different relics, one providing supreme offence at the cost of allies and the other providing supreme offence at the cost of the bearer, much more significant than taking or not taking spikes, the spikes only gain narrative weight through their name, fluff text and CSM players actually caring about those. The moment it just becomes "Chaos Lord with lightning claw and +1 A" instead of "Chaos Lord who is such a devout worshipper of the dark gods that he has spikes on his armour see here on his pauldrons which grants him +1A" spikes lose their meaning for existing and just become a mathematical question. I think well-written relics and WL traits are resistant to becoming math questions because their rules are more fun and inherently narrative, but these kinds of micro upgrades are always going to tend towards simplicity and therefore becoming math questions rather than narrative questions.
On the point of relics, I would suggest that you are perhaps missing the forest for the trees. Yes, a relic will potentially have more of an impact than Spikey Bits. But the 3.5 book had many more non-weapon options than just spikey bits. Thus, the presence or absence of Spikey Bits would be just one small factor in how you built a Chaos character. They (for the most part) might not have had the same individual weight as modern Relics, but they more than made up for it in flexibility.
If you don't see why this is an issue, let me try to explain with an example from a different army (one I have much more experience with). Take for a moment the DE Archon in 9th edition. He's a lacklustre character who doesn't shine in any area. He is supposed to support a ranged subfaction but his ranged options are nonexistant. His melee is similarly pitiful, struggling to kill even a single Tactical Marine. His defence is unreliable and evaporates entirely the first time he fails a save. Lastly, his aura is supposed to support units that want to shoot from transports but it doesn't work unless they get out. Improving any of these even to the level of 'mediocre' or 'passable' requires at least one artefact or WLT. Sometimes both. e.g. it takes an artefact just to get him a gun with a range beyond 12". And if you want that gun to do anything, it will cost you your warlord trait as well. Armour that other HQs get as standard costs a relic. A decent melee weapon costs a relic. Thus, merely getting him to the level of a functional HQ costs your entire allotment of customisation.
Meanwhile, a system more akin to the old version would give you far more flexibility in terms of fine-tuning and improving aspects, without having to drop all your customisation into just 2 big choices.
Anyway, to return to the matter of why you'd choose (or not choose) minor options, I'd suggest one of the main reasons would be to make HQsfeel different on the table. Again, Spikey Bits alone won't make this happen. But the point would be to combine it with other options to expand the differences. e.g. you might have one Lord with Daemon Armour, Daemonic Resilience, Spikey Bits and a Chainfist as a heavily-armoured behemoth, and then another with Daemonic Aura, Daemonic Flight, and Daemonic Claws to create a sleeker, faster (perhaps more mutated) Lord. Obviously these are just some quick examples, but my point is that Spikey Bits, whilst minor in and of itself, can work together with other options to help flesh out and distinguish characters.
Though, of course, you might just give both Spikey Bits. Maybe one Lord has Wings and another has a Daemon Weapon? Maybe you want twins with identical or near-identical builds? The nice thing about the 3.5 book (and others like it) is that you have the full freedom to choose. You can make your HQs as similar or dissimilar as you like.
The issue though would be it's likely everyone just gravitates to the tournament rules, and the other set of rules languishes and may as well not exist. Basically exactly what we already saw in 8th with chapter approved and AOS 1.0 and 2.0 with the GHB: The parts not matched play (read: "balanced") were just completely ignored.
Why did that happen? Is it simply because tournament rules in general are more popular?
Honestly? I think it's due to huge amounts of misinformation being peddled and fearmongering that if it's not tournament rules, things *could* be unbalanced and *could* be unfun, and you don't want that right so ignore all this other stuff.
I saw lots of "But what if your opponent did <insert OP/bad thing>" kind of crap being peddled to basically disparage Open/Narrative play in favor of matched play, and even against things like the regular Matched Play missions versus say ITC missions. Just a lot of what was basically trash mainstream media style pandering and spreading fear on everything else to push the narrative (ha) that Matched Play = good, Open/Narrative = bad, and if you don't think that then you must not want a balanced or fun game.
Which I'd probably add is why it's such a bs example to use to contrast against a 9th ed wargear section, you won't find a bigger contrast and it shouldn't be played off that this is a normal comparison as was the case. Whilst options have been reduced, they've not been hit as heavily for other armies as a whole in comparison. That's ignoring that codex is now actually 5 fully fledged separate books now.
I will freely admit that the comparison doesn't take into account WL traits and Relics. But AFAIK the max number of Relics for a character is one. The maximum number of WL traits is one. And the usual maximum number of either in an army is one of each.
The wargear section I posted is not only for your Lord but for literally any character, and characters could keep adding upgrades until they ran out of points. TBH saying "But WL Traits and Relics" itself is disingenuous, because they're so limited in comparison. Not to mention that they're "free" upgrades with no value attached other than opportunity cost, which is arguably another downside because it limits design space.
Were you loading up your characters with 4-5 items from the list?
Sometimes you were, yeah absolutely. In fact if you took a squad of Chosen you could upgrade any model to a Aspiring Champion, which could choose options from the list. My brother ran a squad of Chosen, each a character, each mounted on a Juggernaut and with a pet Chaos Spawn, with various upgrades (probably Daemonic Strength and other CC oriented buffs). Also note the Veteran Skills section, which could also be used to upgrade whole squads of guys.
vict0988 wrote: Can you explain why bionics and spiky bits should be upgrades available to a Chaos Lord? I'm considering writing 9th edition fandexes and I'd be very minimalist. I think the relic and WL trait combination achieves so much in terms of customization potential with incredibly few broken or useless options and combos. I can see a bionics and spiky bits relic having a place, but those dinky 5 pt upgrades I don't see why we need, part of why I'm okay with free relics, it means that every relic is the same 25ish pts. I'd add smoke launchers, melta bombs and mounts but almost certainly not veteran skills.
As others have mentioned, Spiky Bits was just +1 Attack. Bionics was an upgrade available to a number of armies that gave and extra save against a wound iirc. Why is it there? Rule of cool + thematic for certain armies or aesthetics.
vict0988 wrote: 9th edition also had marks if I recall correctly and tonnes of psychic powers, like the list for a Thousand Sons Sorcerer in 3,5 vs 9th should be an easy 9th ed win.
I don't know what the 9th ed Tzeentch powers looked like but in the 3.5 book each (psychic) god-fealty has their own table of minor psychic powers in addition to at least one major one.
But if you play 9th, you know that EVERY faction is going to have bespoke subfaction traits, WL traits, Relics, Strategems, Battle Honours, Agendas, and campaign goals.
It's nice that every faction gets those options . . .
WL traits are an option for one model.
Relics are an option for one model.
Stratagems often seem like something that should just be an inherent ability of a unit (looking at you, Auto Launchers).
and then I compare that to a legendary old set of options:
And I think, yeah, there was a lot more 'soul' back then.
Right, but as per the part of my post you quoted, look at all the other dexes from the same edition and tell me they had a consistent number of options. They didn't. If an edition has an option-rich dex for chaos, marines and guard, but every other dex screws the pooch or even just doesn't hold to the standard, that does not make it a good edition- it means the edition was good for those factions. There's a difference.
You have to remember, my primary army is sisters; they had good dexes in 2, 3, late 8, and 9. From a Sisters point of view, EVERY OTHER EDITION SUCKED. My secondary army is GSC... You see where I'm going with this?
Different codexes from the era had different options, it's true. . . but they had different types of options. Tyranids had their Biomorphs systems. Imperial Guard had Doctrines. Space Marines had Chapter traits. Some codexes were newer to the game, and arguably initially underserved, such as Tau and Dark Eldar. Those armies got an increased number of options through White Dwarf, Tau got a Kroot army option and also a new sniper unit (I think?), DE got additional wargear for characters and vehicles, iirc. Sisters and Daemonhunters were not fully fledged armies, but that was recognized by giving the rules for allying in units from other codexes. And everybody got the Vehicle Design Rules, except for Tyranids, who instead got the Tyranid Monstrous Creature design system, as well as a Seeding Swarm army list, iirc. Orks was one of the first codexes out of the gate in 3rd and really got stripped down and modified for 3rd ed (ouch), they did later receive optional builds for Speed Freaks and Feral Orks, however. Eldar got their Craftworlds expansion. The Necrons were limited in scope, which I always read as part of their design tbh, but they also got a separate batch of upgrades for custom vehicle design and it was amazing.
3rd was a hard reset on 40k, but once it got going it just kept adding and adding. No model? Who cares! Build your own! I's also say that the way those custom upgrades worked was different per army, matching their character more. Six different biofleets is fine, but customizing your own Nids feels more appropriate.
So sure, there was some disparity in the army lists, but options just kept getting added.
The issue though would be it's likely everyone just gravitates to the tournament rules, and the other set of rules languishes and may as well not exist. Basically exactly what we already saw in 8th with chapter approved and AOS 1.0 and 2.0 with the GHB: The parts not matched play (read: "balanced") were just completely ignored.
Why did that happen? Is it simply because tournament rules in general are more popular?
Honestly? I think it's due to huge amounts of misinformation being peddled and fearmongering that if it's not tournament rules, things *could* be unbalanced and *could* be unfun, and you don't want that right so ignore all this other stuff.
I saw lots of "But what if your opponent did <insert OP/bad thing>" kind of crap being peddled to basically disparage Open/Narrative play in favor of matched play, and even against things like the regular Matched Play missions versus say ITC missions. Just a lot of what was basically trash mainstream media style pandering and spreading fear on everything else to push the narrative (ha) that Matched Play = good, Open/Narrative = bad, and if you don't think that then you must not want a balanced or fun game.
That sort of garbage.
I see. I suppose balance will always be a top concern because fairness is always a top concern, and no one wants to play a game they feel is unfair. This means for a new player who doesn't yet know what style of game they like (whether it's more narrative or more competitive), when choosing which style to play, they will most likely go with the one sold as more "fair". In other words new players are more likely to get funneled into matched play because fairness is something that is easy to understand for someone that doesn't know anything about tabletop. It's certainly a lot easier to understand than something as nebulous as "lack of narrative flavor", which won't really mean anything to them until they've gained more experience. But by then it's too late - they're already locked into matched play as the default game mode, and anything else would be considered secondary.
Yeah, the struggle with designing characters in 4e was pretty awesome actually.
There was a tendency to fill up to max wargear points (a 35 pt inquisitor with 100 points of wargear was pretty funny). But it was usually actually a bad buy.
The old example from Imperial Guard was a fully kitted Heroic Senior Officer. He would cost as much as 2 infantry squads - up to 3 or 4 even depending on his Command Squad upgrades too.
These overkitted officers, though, were a major points problem - more often than not, "boys before toys" was the actually useful option. S when considering how to build your characters, you needed to balance max wargear limitation, what would be useful for the role and price you intend for him, and what is narrative.
Generally, if you had a clear narrative vision, the core rules were deep enough that your vision could be translated to the tabletop in a useful way. However, this required a whole litany of options - the narrative role played by a mutated self-loathing Sons of Malice daemon prince is very different to a stoic, disciplined, command-from-afar warsmith.
You can reflect the behavior and capabilities of both in 3.5. In 10th, you may be able to get the Warsmith-ish thing, but no servo arms (or no chaos lord abilities if you run a Warpsmith). But the Malal DP is just gone.
The issue though would be it's likely everyone just gravitates to the tournament rules, and the other set of rules languishes and may as well not exist. Basically exactly what we already saw in 8th with chapter approved and AOS 1.0 and 2.0 with the GHB: The parts not matched play (read: "balanced") were just completely ignored.
Why did that happen? Is it simply because tournament rules in general are more popular?
Honestly? I think it's due to huge amounts of misinformation being peddled and fearmongering that if it's not tournament rules, things *could* be unbalanced and *could* be unfun, and you don't want that right so ignore all this other stuff.
I saw lots of "But what if your opponent did <insert OP/bad thing>" kind of crap being peddled to basically disparage Open/Narrative play in favor of matched play, and even against things like the regular Matched Play missions versus say ITC missions. Just a lot of what was basically trash mainstream media style pandering and spreading fear on everything else to push the narrative (ha) that Matched Play = good, Open/Narrative = bad, and if you don't think that then you must not want a balanced or fun game.
That sort of garbage.
I see. I suppose balance will always be a top concern because fairness is always a top concern, and no one wants to play a game they feel is unfair. This means for a new player who doesn't yet know what style of game they like (whether it's more narrative or more competitive), when choosing which style to play, they will most likely go with the one sold as more "fair". In other words new players are more likely to get funneled into matched play because fairness is something that is easy to understand for someone that doesn't know anything about tabletop. It's certainly a lot easier to understand than something as nebulous as "lack of narrative flavor", which won't really mean anything to them until they've gained more experience. But by then it's too late - they're already locked into matched play as the default game mode, and anything else would be considered secondary.
I think there's a little more to it than that. In my experience everyone likes the idea of narrative play, but it rarely lives up to people's expectations. Like when a player has to defend a stronghold against siege its easy to describe that in a really exciting way, but when it actually happens it often turns into a lot of standing still and rolling attacks for the defending player. Leveling characters sounds exciting, but the actual process of playing games with bland characters to earn the ability to make them cool maybe isn't as enthralling as it sounds.
That's not to say narrative play is bad, just that its hard to get right and takes a lot of work to craft a unique experience that plays out the way everyone (both players and the designer) hope. It takes real work and quite a bit of experience to make compelling campaign where you know what side is supposed to win. Pulling it off competitively is a feat that even the games that have pulled it off have only managed in a fraction of their total content. Match play is popular because its focus is generally on being fun. I think players get turned away from narrative play simply because more often than not, the compelling fantasy it offers doesn't translate into as much fun in reality.
Which I'd probably add is why it's such a bs example to use to contrast against a 9th ed wargear section, you won't find a bigger contrast and it shouldn't be played off that this is a normal comparison as was the case. Whilst options have been reduced, they've not been hit as heavily for other armies as a whole in comparison. That's ignoring that codex is now actually 5 fully fledged separate books now.
I will freely admit that the comparison doesn't take into account WL traits and Relics. But AFAIK the max number of Relics for a character is one. The maximum number of WL traits is one. And the usual maximum number of either in an army is one of each.
The wargear section I posted is not only for your Lord but for literally any character, and characters could keep adding upgrades until they ran out of points. TBH saying "But WL Traits and Relics" itself is disingenuous, because they're so limited in comparison. Not to mention that they're "free" upgrades with no value attached other than opportunity cost, which is arguably another downside because it limits design space.
It was fairly common to have strats for extra relics or extra warlord traits, most "smash captains" had 2 warlord traits and a relic. For example:
A Salamanders captain with forged in battle and rites of battle successor traits. Jump pack, thunder hammer and storm shield (3 wargear items no less). Then the imperium sword WT, anvil of strength WT and drake smiter relic. So you get a list of stuff comparable to what a chaos lord would have bought.
GW should just redo Crusade so that it is a completely different ruleset from matched play. Give it the flavor of games like Necromunda or Heresy, or even just any edition of 40k between 2nd and 5th. It won't require nearly as many ongoing balance updates as matched play but it can use the same basic datasheets.
Narrative players don't just want campaigns and RPG mechanics. What they want is narrative choice. They want tons of fine-grained narrative control over their army construction, including things like detachment choice, wargear selection, enhancements, doctrines, psychic disciplines, and whatever other roleplay-oriented systems you can think of. They want narratively detailed game mechanics that describe all of the strange, wacky micro-stories that play out during a battle. They want thematic, flavorful missions that use interesting terrain setups and bespoke mechanics.
I think players get turned away from narrative play simply because more often than not, the compelling fantasy it offers doesn't translate into as much fun in reality.
Completely agree. Successful narrative play is difficult as it requires all participants to come in with a shared understanding of the experience they're aiming for. Unfortunately, even among self-described hardcore narrative players, not everyone can agree on exactly what that entails.
By comparison, matched play is significantly more one-size-fits-all. I can walk into a pick-up game with any random person and have almost 100% certainty on exactly the type of fun I will get out of the experience. Both conceptually and in practical terms, matched play is just a lot more accessible than narrative.
Which I'd probably add is why it's such a bs example to use to contrast against a 9th ed wargear section, you won't find a bigger contrast and it shouldn't be played off that this is a normal comparison as was the case. Whilst options have been reduced, they've not been hit as heavily for other armies as a whole in comparison. That's ignoring that codex is now actually 5 fully fledged separate books now.
I will freely admit that the comparison doesn't take into account WL traits and Relics. But AFAIK the max number of Relics for a character is one. The maximum number of WL traits is one. And the usual maximum number of either in an army is one of each.
The wargear section I posted is not only for your Lord but for literally any character, and characters could keep adding upgrades until they ran out of points. TBH saying "But WL Traits and Relics" itself is disingenuous, because they're so limited in comparison. Not to mention that they're "free" upgrades with no value attached other than opportunity cost, which is arguably another downside because it limits design space.
It was fairly common to have strats for extra relics or extra warlord traits, most "smash captains" had 2 warlord traits and a relic. For example:
A Salamanders captain with forged in battle and rites of battle successor traits. Jump pack, thunder hammer and storm shield (3 wargear items no less). Then the imperium sword WT, anvil of strength WT and drake smiter relic. So you get a list of stuff comparable to what a chaos lord would have bought.
Ok, for one guy. As opposed to multiple independent chatacters and champions.
Also, can a Chaos Lord even have a Jump Pack anymore?
Matched play is the standardized sport that you can play anywhere, with anyone, in any country or culture, while narrative is the one where you and your friend get together to tell a cool story together, except not everyone has friends to do this with, and even when you do you're not sure if the guy on the other end is really your friend, or if they even define fun in the same way that you do.
Pros of matched play:
- Easier to find games
- Easier to reach a common understanding of the kind of experience you want
- Balance is not the responsibility of the player
Cons:
- Lacks flavor
Pros of narrative play
- Flavor
- Storytelling
Cons:
- Hard to play with randos
- Balance is the responsibility of the player
Neither is better or worse than the other. They are just different products for difference audiences. All GW needs to do is redesign Crusade to better address the needs of the narrative audience,
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Wayniac wrote: If they made crusade a completely different set of rules chances are you would see it not be touched at all and essentially be a waste of paper
You don't think people in this thread would be interested in an officially supported version of modern 40k that was more like 3rd, 4th, or 5th?
artific3r wrote: You don't think people in this thread would be interested in an officially supported version of modern 40k that was more like 3rd, 4th, or 5th?
I don't think the majority of people would, because I've seen the majority of people become completely indoctrinated in Matched/Competitive play, and once the seeds of that take hold it never lets go. I've seen it over 25 years. once a place goes full into tournament mode, it stays forever.
I think they're scared of fragmenting their audience. But the audience is already fragmented. They actually just need to develop two different games that use the same models. Narrative play getting formalized in 8th and Crusade in 9th/10th both represent steps in the right direction, but they need to take it further. Make Crusade a modernized version of the 5e ruleset instead of a bunch of bookkeeping between rounds of matched play.
artific3r wrote: You don't think people in this thread would be interested in an officially supported version of modern 40k that was more like 3rd, 4th, or 5th?
I don't think the majority of people would, because I've seen the majority of people become completely indoctrinated in Matched/Competitive play, and once the seeds of that take hold it never lets go. I've seen it over 25 years. once a place goes full into tournament mode, it stays forever.
If by majority you mean the majority of players in general, then yeah. I don't think the average newbie tabletop gamer would ever bother touching narrative play, for the reasons I mentioned in my posts above. It's just not very accessible. People in this thread will have to accept that the classic narrative-focused vision of tabletop wargaming is always going to be somewhat niche compared to matched play. But honestly, that's ok. GW still wants to serve you, as evidenced by all of the other games they make. Narrative 40k players just need to better communicate what they want.
Wayniac wrote: If they made crusade a completely different set of rules chances are you would see it not be touched at all and essentially be a waste of paper
GW should actually have pretty good numbers on how successful these could be as 9th edition had several Crusade only books as well as narrative only books (IIRC the Vigilus II books didn't have any matched play content, right? ).
artific3r wrote: Matched play is the standardized sport that you can play anywhere, with anyone, in any country or culture, while narrative is the one where you and your friend get together to tell a cool story together, except not everyone has friends to do this with, and even when you do you're not sure if the guy on the other end is really your friend, or if they even define fun in the same way that you do.
There's a pretty easy way to tell if they define fun the same way as you do.
Spoiler:
It's called having a conversation. Maybe several conversations. You know, talking with them....
artific3r wrote: Matched play is the standardized sport that you can play anywhere, with anyone, in any country or culture, while narrative is the one where you and your friend get together to tell a cool story together, except not everyone has friends to do this with, and even when you do you're not sure if the guy on the other end is really your friend, or if they even define fun in the same way that you do.
There's a pretty easy way to tell if they define fun the same way as you do.
Spoiler:
It's called having a conversation. Maybe several conversations. You know, talking with them....
In theory it's easy. In practice nobody does it. We must design games around how people behave, not how we wish they behave.
Going back to the point about wargear, I have a question - how would people feel about having a universal wargear table in the core rulebook? (Could maybe limit it to Infantry characters or somesuch if you're worried about possible abuse.)
Idea is that even in older editions there were some items that were available across multiple armies (e.g. bionics). Moreover, there are many pieces of wargear that confer identical or near-identical effects (an extra attack, an invulnerable save, FNP etc.).
Thus, this would give all factions a pool of wargear to pick from for their characters (which, as the descriptions would indicate, would represent different things in different armies).
This would help limit bloat and would allow faction-specific wargear to have more flavourful and unique abilities.
A Town Called Malus wrote: I've thought that GW should have adopted the mission style from Risk, where the players are assigned specific objectives to take before the game starts, and those are hidden information from the other player.
Table gets set up with 6 objectives on it, players then draw a card or roll on a table to determine what their victory objectives are (so, player A needs to control objective 1, 3 and 6 while B needs 5, 3 and 2). At the end of the game, if one player controls their mission objectives and the other doesn't, then the player who does wins. If both control or neither do, it goes to secondary win conditions, 1 point for controlling an objective in your DZ, 2 for in no mans land, 3 for in opponents DZ for an example off the top of my head.
The fact that you don't know what exact mission your opponent is on allows for tactical play, trying to feint for objectives you don't need to draw forces away from elsewhere, for example.
Streamline the game systems so it takes less time per turn, up the number of turns, and introduce meaningful psychology and pinning systems to make it so there are is a viable role for weaponry and wargear that isn't pure lethality or protection against said lethality.
The "argument" against this approach is that it creates conditions where the scenarios are not balanced for both parties. If player A's objective draw requires them to hold the objectives that are mostly on their side of the board, but player B's objective draw forces them to have to slog across the table to take and hold their opponents objectives, then that gives player A an advantage of being able to play defensively to hold their objective while B has to play offensively to seize them from their opponent, instead of creating a situation where both players objective requirements are equally challenging.
There are ways to avoid this issue of course with careful scenario/objective/mission design such that all possible objectives/goals that a player can be assigned are approximately proportional/equal in difficulty provided both players field a reasonably balanced list to account for the risks associated with any given mission draw, I just don't trust GW to be intelligent about how they go about it to ensure that that is what happens.
Its not perfect, but I think Malifaux kind of gets it right with creating fun fluffy narrative asymmetric yet still mostly balanced scenario design via its Strategy and Schemes system. The design of the various strategies and schemes, as well as the way they are generated and selected, allows for some pretty interesting encounters that give both sides a decently equal chance of winning. Schemes in particular are interesting, as they are secret objectives which rely on the use of scheme markers that get placed over the course of the game, this allows you to create some fog of war as to what you are doing and which schemes you are pursuing, as your scheme marker placement could possibly allude to multiple different schemes, and you can even place what are essentially bonus scheme markers that don't really do anything for you to trick your opponent into thinking you're going for a different win altogether. Malifaux does have the unfortunate side effect of often generating ties as a result however. My understanding is that on the whole Americans are not culturally fond of tied outcomes (which is why American major league sports are often structured in such a way to reduce/eliminate/prevent/disallow tied outcomes), which is why some editions ago (I want to say 4th into 5th or 5th into 6th) GW reworked the scoring system to eliminate or significantly reduce tied game outcomes (and with it elimated the degrees of loss/victory scaling that they used to use. Now a win is a win and a loss is a loss, as opposed to draw/minor/major,etc. which IIRCAoS still uses, interestingly enough). IIRC the last 2 or 3 editions have basically made it statistically improbable if not outright impossible for a game to result in a tie as well. I'm sure theres ways to adress the tied game scenario otehrwise if thats a real deal-breaker, though I think my fellow countrymen should just put their big boy pants on and accept that outcomes aren't always binary.
Wayniac wrote: If they made crusade a completely different set of rules chances are you would see it not be touched at all and essentially be a waste of paper
Only way to avoid that is to pump narrative 40k full of flavor and make matched 40k as bland as possible for the sake of balance. In that case though, instead of having narrative 40k wither on the vine and die in favor of matched 40k, you run other risks:
-competitive community dies out when they realize their super-balanced but sterile game isn't fun to play
-narrative community dies out when they realize their super-flavorful game isn't really all that balanced
-both narrative and competitive communities die out and search for another game that strikes a better middle ground between these two ends of the spectrum
-both narrative and competitive communities join together to force the game back towards a unified ruleset that makes neither party truly happy, but sucks less than the separate skewed rulesets
-one of the two communities hijacks the others community and bastardizes it into something its not intended for (which is what the competitive community has already done with 40k to begin with, basically), which brings us right back to where we started
Realistically though, I agree with the assessment that matched is the default way of play and the community at large is fully indoctrinated into that mindset. I unfortunately know many more people who turn up their nose at anything that deviates from the competitive 40k template than I do people willing to play non-competitive 40k formats. Even though I would prefer playing using narrative rules myself, I basically haven't found an opponent willing to do so and regard all the non-matched segments of the various rulebooks and codecies to basically be a waste of time, money, ink, and paper which is being published for an audience that doesn't really exist at the scale needed to justify the effort put into supporting it. Even the other likeminded casuals seem to have a stockholm syndrome type complex where the suggestion of playing crusade or a narrative play type format engenders a response to the effect of "why would I do that, so some kid can come in and harsh the vibe with a cheesy list? No thanks, I'll stick to matched play points and the latest scenarios, they are more balanced" - even though they bitch constantly about the competitive community and power gamer mentality. Its a complete no-win for me.
I am, and will always be, a strong advocate of that being determined after lists have been written.
Get the missions right in terms of variety of Win Conditions, and you encourage lists which have a bit of everything, as you’ll never really know what’s ahead of you.
Determining Mission then writing or adapting your army list just doesn’t sit right with me. In my mind, it’s closer in terms of overall sportsmanship to my opponent waiting to see what I’m fielding before writing their own list (yes, I’ve had that happen. No it’s not fun, even when you beat them).
And hey. Skill with a “take all comers” list seems a greater achievement than cheesing the meta. At least in my opinion.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Just use Chain of Command's scenario design outlined above:
1) Let the players determine their own deployment via a mini-wargame patrol phase at the beginning AFTER they determine the scenario.
2) let the players finish their listbuilding AFTER they see the map and scenario.
Point 1 is too sophisticated a mechanical design for GW and doesn't cater to the level of predictability that competitive gamers want from the game. It would never survive as a concept for the same reason that symmetric terrain is now the default - competitive gamers won't stand for any rules or systems which could potentially call into question their self-assured belief that they are the second coming of Erwin Rommel (who was a loser anyway, but thats besides the point). That type of deployment minigame could easily create conditions which essentially determine the game in the deployment phase if you play it wrong, before the game even really starts (much like asymmetric terrain could if you didn't know what you were doing). Adults in the room would say that its part of the game and is just as much a measure of your skill as building your list or anything else and thus has its place in tournaments, but to an all too large segment of the competitive community would say that the minigame isn't "real 40k" and uses different skills and has too much of an impact on the games outcome, etc. and therefore is bad and ruining the sanctity of the competitive experience by not placing both players on as equal ground as possible. Modern 40k feels bland and soulless in large part because the competitive community has caused GW to filter out any and all mechanisms, rules, systems, and gameplay elements that deviate noticeably from what competitive gamers deem to be part of the core gameplay loop or introduce skills which they deem to be accessory to that core play experience, and likewise anything which they have determined to result in unbalance through their own uninterrogated misapplications of logic. Asymmetric terrain is gone because on the surface symmetric terrain appears to give both players an equal chance of success, even though interrogating and logic-ing that out would reveal that isn't even remotely true and in fact it likely disadvantages one player over the other in actuality. Blast and flamer templates are gone because placing your minis to minimize their impact and placing templates to maximize their impact were deemed to be non-core skills (and to be fair I kind of agree with that) that skewed game outcomes by giving players who had better spatial reasoning skills an advantage over players who were otherwise better generals, etc.
Point 2 is just a non-starter unless that system involves a "progressive deployment" type system (i.e. at the start of each turn you can deploy 500 points worth of army from your collection, decided then and there rather than in advance). Of course the problem with that is that it skews in the direction of the player with the larger collection will be the winner. Nobody, not even casual gamers, wants to sit there for an hour while your opponent tries to min-max and optimize their army list. I pre-write lists for my armies to standard points levels in advance so I can pick-up and go if someone asks me for a casual game, no need to keep anyone waiting while I crunch numbers to figure out my list. I find players who don't have their lists written in advance to be rude and extremely inconsiderate of *my* time by making me wait while they figure things out, and I simply refuse to play with them as a result. This is even more true in a competitive environment, and I don't think anyone will get much enjoyment from turning listbuilding into a timed exercise to prevent the problems that can otherwise arise.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
artific3r wrote: There is no reason why there can't simply be two games. They're already halfway there with Crusade.
splitting the playerbase is a good reason for it. compare the size of the community that plays regular 40k to the size of the community that plays almost anything else that GW produces. Theres a stark difference in size there - even with other games that use the same models as 40k. Kill Team and Apocalypse might as well not exist for how little play they get.
If you are not willing to split the playerbase (and to be fair GW is definitely not willing to do so) then matched play will continue to be the only real way to play.
The elephant in the room is that matched play will always be the more popular way to play. Call it indoctrination, call it ease of play, it doesn't really matter. There is either two games or there is one matched play game.
vipoid wrote: Going back to the point about wargear, I have a question - how would people feel about having a universal wargear table in the core rulebook? (Could maybe limit it to Infantry characters or somesuch if you're worried about possible abuse.)
Idea is that even in older editions there were some items that were available across multiple armies (e.g. bionics). Moreover, there are many pieces of wargear that confer identical or near-identical effects (an extra attack, an invulnerable save, FNP etc.).
Thus, this would give all factions a pool of wargear to pick from for their characters (which, as the descriptions would indicate, would represent different things in different armies).
This would help limit bloat and would allow faction-specific wargear to have more flavourful and unique abilities.
I think that works fine for pretty generic stuff. You'd probably still want to keep the points values separated for factions though.
Even Tyranids had access to force fields in the past with the Voltage Field upgrade, and that could be on Monstrous Creatures.
The playerbase is already split. Narrative players don't want to play the 10e tourney style ruleset. Competitive players don't want to play an easily-cheesed narrative style game.
Meanwhile casual players don't really care whether its narrative or competitive, but tend to default to competitive because its more universal and ubiquitous. So competitive is always going to be a lot bigger, not because of marketing or design support or anything, but because it's intrinsically easier to have fun with for the average player (when taking into account how easy it is to find games, how easy it is to reach an understanding of the kind of experience you want, how much self-balancing it requires, etc).
Dudeface wrote: Whilst options have been reduced, they've not been hit as heavily for other armies as a whole in comparison. That's ignoring that codex is now actually 5 fully fledged separate books now.
You wanna retry that? Those separate books have invalidated entire armies and swathes of models. Even basic things like jump packs on our Lords have been removed.
Haven't been hit as heavily? Chaos has been the hardest hit. The only comparable army is Dark Eldar, who have systematically had all their options removed as they slowly revert back to OG 3rd Ed standards.
Matched Play is a solid base. The focus on that, and seeking ever greater balance is, for me, An Objectively Good Thing.
As I’ve said elsewhere many times, as a Sad Old Git, I’m well used to GW’s rules and the need for home made fixes and patches. But I’d always take a base set of rules which need fewer fixes and patches.
I love my narrative gaming. I want my games to tell a story. And I don’t mind asymmetric missions, even if one side’s Win Condition is simply “try not to get everyone ded”. And to my mind, there’s nothing better than a finely crafted narrative tree campaign, where the person running it has to adapt things on the fly as games are won and lost, affecting the wider picture of the war zone.
But a decently balanced base set of rules doesn’t stop me deliberately applying my own wonk in such missions. Indeed in many respects? It makes it’s so much easier to apply said Deliberate Wonk, because putting your thumb on the scales works better when the scales are properly balanced in the first place.
And I’m quite capable of creating my own progression rules. I’ll lift from there, borrow from there and cobble something together.
So the focus on Matched Play doesn’t, when you stop and think about it, limit my weirdness and oddity gaming one jot. If anything it increases my opportunities, because I’m spending less time setting House Rules for really basic stuff.
Dudeface wrote: Whilst options have been reduced, they've not been hit as heavily for other armies as a whole in comparison. That's ignoring that codex is now actually 5 fully fledged separate books now.
You wanna retry that? Those separate books have invalidated entire armies and swathes of models. Even basic things like jump packs on our Lords have been removed.
Haven't been hit as heavily? Chaos has been the hardest hit. The only comparable army is Dark Eldar, who have systematically had all their options removed as they slowly revert back to OG 3rd Ed standards.
I am sure the actual WE playerbase would have his skull.
And lets not forget that codex tzangoor is also ...magnificent.
While the csm codex absorbs lost & the damned like a too dry plant water ... and turning into codex cultists and whatever is underpriced/easy to stack buffs ontop.
Frankly, the average person just isn't very creative, and competitive play is great for that. Narrative play requires effort. Worse, it requires creative effort, and that's not something everyone has. This loss of player-driven narrative creativity is at the core of what makes recent editions feel so soulless for people who really enjoyed older editions. Unfortunately the number of not-so-creative people that play the game vastly outweighs the number of creative people. The roleplay-focused audience is just kind of niche. But like I said, that's ok. GW does care deeply about that audience. If they didn't we wouldn't have things like Necromunda or AT.
I’m not claiming to be competent at it, but I’ve run more than a few narrative campaigns. All the participants need do is get on board that this isn’t about just roflstomping your opponent, but weaving a narrative all our own.
It’s like running an RPG. Get folks on broadly the same wavelength, and you’re gonna have a great time. You just need to be prepared to boot anyone who won’t embrace the narrative side of it, and maintain some semblance of control/authority as the GM.
Your LGS is very lucky to have guys like you. It's always a treat playing in a well-run narrative campaign. I wish it were more common. I'd prefer it to be the default honestly. But we're in the minority now. Narrative players were probably always destined to be the minority. GW just never realized it until they actually tried courting competitive players in recent editions.
artific3r wrote: Matched play is the standardized sport that you can play anywhere, with anyone, in any country or culture, while narrative is the one where you and your friend get together to tell a cool story together, except not everyone has friends to do this with, and even when you do you're not sure if the guy on the other end is really your friend, or if they even define fun in the same way that you do.
There's a pretty easy way to tell if they define fun the same way as you do.
Spoiler:
It's called having a conversation. Maybe several conversations. You know, talking with them....
In theory it's easy. In practice nobody does it.
And I think we just learned what happened to the "soul" of the game.....
Happens with everything that becomes huge and successful. Well almost. There are exceptions. With some adjustments, I think GW has a fair shot at becoming one of those exceptions. They have the talent for it.
That's not really fair IMO.
Running a campaign takes a lot of time and effort. The more people there are the more competing ideas about what they want to happen show up and if people aren't satisfied they'll just not bother.
When you throw in the issues of real life like work, families and the such, a lot more pressure gets put on both the GM and the players to make it work so nobody wastes their precious time.
A GM has to keep the momentum going which isn't always possible and a campaign will naturally taper off when live inevitably gets in the way.
The GM has to tread a very thin line between fairness and being viewed as heavy handed as well. The last event I attended had some problem players who took extremely powerful lists that also happened to be very narrative driven but the EOs didn't push for a change in those lists despite the issues being well known in advance. For my friends who played against these lists it almost ruined their weekend and nobody wants that.
I really don't see how GW could make it more attractive to specifically play narrative over basic matched play (not tournament, matched) when narrative has more barriers to keep things enjoyable.
A Town Called Malus wrote: the mission style from Risk, where the players are assigned specific objectives to take before the game starts, and those are hidden information from the other player.
ome editions ago (I want to say 4th into 5th or 5th into 6th) GW reworked the scoring system to eliminate or significantly reduce tied game outcomes (and with it elimated the degrees of loss/victory scaling that they used to use. Now a win is a win and a loss is a loss, as opposed to draw/minor/major,etc. which IIRCAoS still uses, interestingly enough). IIRC the last 2 or 3 editions have basically made it statistically improbable if not outright impossible for a game to result in a tie as well.
Players love it when the challenge is to meet all objectives to clear the stage with S rank, in single player vidya games. You can have this in a two player table top game too: make it the goal of each player to get S rank
Easily this can mean specific super heavies and characters must be alive at the end of the the game, or you don’t win. It’s not a tie, you, individually, failed the win condition. You get at best an A rank.
Potentially you can have player 1 get S rank (4 units reach opponent’s table edge?) and player 2 get S rank (destroy all enemy battleline units?)
Maybe it sounds like participation trophies for sissies
As for US pro sports, MLB has had huge jumps in attendance and TV numbers, subsequent to some rule changes. This is something wargames could benefit from but maybe not GW
Having been going on a review of 2nd ed for a while, it really strikes me that the modern 10th ed (and from probably 8th onward) and 2nd ed approach how they apply rules to units differently.
In 2nd ed, you had a lot of relatively similar units, and characters profilewise and you chose your wargear to customise them. But they were each designed to reflect their fluff descriptions.
Modern 40k is very much a rulesforward approach, where HOW you decide what mechanics to give a unit is based on how much utility it will have and less on what it is supposed to be.
Simulationist vs gamist perhaps (not a new idea, it's just more obvious looking back at 2nd where the emphasis was).
artific3r wrote: The playerbase is already split. Narrative players don't want to play the 10e tourney style ruleset. Competitive players don't want to play an easily-cheesed narrative style game.
Meanwhile casual players don't really care whether its narrative or competitive, but tend to default to competitive because its more universal and ubiquitous. So competitive is always going to be a lot bigger, not because of marketing or design support or anything, but because it's intrinsically easier to have fun with for the average player (when taking into account how easy it is to find games, how easy it is to reach an understanding of the kind of experience you want, how much self-balancing it requires, etc).
Thing is that there aren't many players that will truly define themselves as "narrative players", and based on my experience even those that don't like competitive stylings of the ruleset (such as myself) will still play it, at least until it makes them miserable enough that they quit, or they do what Grotsnik does and house rule and adapt the rules. Point is, the playerbase is not as split as what you imagine it to look like, but formalizing the split by releasing "Rogue Trader 2nd Edition" as the narrative counterpart to "Warhammer 40,000 10th Edition" will result in a much broader split (or render one of those two games basically an also-ran that gets no support like Apocalypse). Part of GWs market dominance is driven by its ubiquity - walk into just about any hobby shop or miniature gaming club and you will find people to play with. Splitting that playerbase makes it harder, because now you're potentially walking into a shop looking to play 40k 10th and only finding RT2 players, or vice versa. I know plenty of people who only bother with 40k because they are basically guaranteed being able to find games, if you split that playerbase in two then you're going to start losing people to other games that are no more or less accessible than whatever flavor of 40k is not accessible to people in someones local community....
...on second thought, GW should do it.
artific3r wrote: Frankly, the average person just isn't very creative, and competitive play is great for that. Narrative play requires effort. Worse, it requires creative effort, and that's not something everyone has. This loss of player-driven narrative creativity is at the core of what makes recent editions feel so soulless for people who really enjoyed older editions. Unfortunately the number of not-so-creative people that play the game vastly outweighs the number of creative people. The roleplay-focused audience is just kind of niche. But like I said, that's ok. GW does care deeply about that audience. If they didn't we wouldn't have things like Necromunda or AT.
I would argue that the problem is that life is just moving at an increasingly faster pace for many people and time is a precious resource. Setting up a proper narrative game takes more time and effort. You can't just show up at the shop and ask a rando for a narrative game and expect to have a solid narrative experience with it. Yes, you can set up a basic narrative story with a quick custom scenario and basic terrain layout in a pinch but for the most part that will give you a game that is more like a casual pickup game iwth less balance and extra steps than it will a truly narrative-driven experience. A lot of the onus for that lies with GW though, as they do not provide players an adequate toolset to rapidly set up an engaging narrative game. The scenarios they provide you are relatively bland, and not really connected to a true narrative experience- they require the players to do a lot of work forging the narrative for themselves instead of providing players with enough material and structure that it creates a basis for them to build on with the players only needing to fill in some blanks. Likewise theres not a lot of rules in modern 40k that actually contribute to narrative flavor, and kind of for good reason as they often meant that game outcomes were skewed as a result of dice rolls that had consequential random effects, like a sorceror turning himself into a chaos spawn or an ork tank that blows itself up because it dakkadakka'd too hard.
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Hellebore wrote: Having been going on a review of 2nd ed for a while, it really strikes me that the modern 10th ed (and from probably 8th onward) and 2nd ed approach how they apply rules to units differently.
In 2nd ed, you had a lot of relatively similar units, and characters profilewise and you chose your wargear to customise them. But they were each designed to reflect their fluff descriptions.
Modern 40k is very much a rulesforward approach, where HOW you decide what mechanics to give a unit is based on how much utility it will have and less on what it is supposed to be.
Simulationist vs gamist perhaps (not a new idea, it's just more obvious looking back at 2nd where the emphasis was).
Good observation. Theres certainly dangers in going too far down the simulationist rabbit-hole, but GW has put too many layers of abstraction into the game over the past few editions and disconnected a lot of gameplay and tabletop happenings from any semblance of verisimilitude with the lore.
Wow man... Since my last post, I've agreed with so much of what I've read that I had to doublecheck I was still on Dakka!
I want to reply to everybody, but I took a lot of work home with me tonight and I'm only on a short break... Like WAY too short to multiqoute the ten or so posts to which I want to reply.
Good food for thought though; thanks for the all-too brief distraction.
Yeah, I've had some real positive vibes on dakka ever since the big pie thread happened. Seems like we're all getting along much better, almost like one big happy family lol.
chaos0xomega wrote: Yeah, I've had some real positive vibes on dakka ever since the big pie thread happened. Seems like we're all getting along much better, almost like one big happy family lol.
chaos0xomega wrote: Yeah, I've had some real positive vibes on dakka ever since the big pie thread happened. Seems like we're all getting along much better, almost like one big happy family lol.
It started as a debate in another thread about what is and isn't a Shepherds pie (after arguing about whether a pie in a rumor engine photo was in fact a pie or a pie-shaped sandbag), and then Mod Doc Grotsnik created a separate thread to discuss it instead of continuing to derail the thread we were in.
Dudeface wrote: Whilst options have been reduced, they've not been hit as heavily for other armies as a whole in comparison. That's ignoring that codex is now actually 5 fully fledged separate books now.
You wanna retry that? Those separate books have invalidated entire armies and swathes of models. Even basic things like jump packs on our Lords have been removed.
Haven't been hit as heavily? Chaos has been the hardest hit. The only comparable army is Dark Eldar, who have systematically had all their options removed as they slowly revert back to OG 3rd Ed standards.
Do you want to retry that?
Whilst options have been reduced, they've not been hit as heavily for other armies as a whole in comparison.
You've misread it completely. I'm stating other armies have lost less.
Chaos and Dark Eldar can at least still be played. Marines had entire armies made illegal. No army got that treatment and they are suppose to be the army that GW puts extra care of. While after 3 editions I think that GW just milks marines players hard hard. Oblits, cultists etc were and are good, if not every edition then at least in the last few ones. Dark Eldar are the dudes in boats faction. What is the dude who bought intercessors in 8th suppose to do now, or in 9th. The Sang Guard BA player. The WS or RW "the faction is about bikes, so I picked them, because I like bikes" player.
A tyranid player could be using stealers, guants and monsters from 2ed, a marine player can't, not just because the load outs on units are different, the bases or similar stuff. No marines stuff is just gone. Even the supposed still legal legends doesn't have rules on the GW app, that is how much GW cares about marine stuff.
Not saying that losing crucial upgrades or models that existed for decades isn't a feels bad moment for other factions it is. But when was it the last time that GW invalided an entire army of an eldar player, with zero chance of it ever being reverted.
Karol wrote: Chaos and Dark Eldar can at least still be played. Marines had entire armies made illegal. No army got that treatment and they are suppose to be the army that GW puts extra care of. While after 3 editions I think that GW just milks marines players hard hard. Oblits, cultists etc were and are good, if not every edition then at least in the last few ones. Dark Eldar are the dudes in boats faction. What is the dude who bought intercessors in 8th suppose to do now, or in 9th. The Sang Guard BA player. The WS or RW "the faction is about bikes, so I picked them, because I like bikes" player.
A tyranid player could be using stealers, guants and monsters from 2ed, a marine player can't, not just because the load outs on units are different, the bases or similar stuff. No marines stuff is just gone. Even the supposed still legal legends doesn't have rules on the GW app, that is how much GW cares about marine stuff.
Not saying that losing crucial upgrades or models that existed for decades isn't a feels bad moment for other factions it is. But when was it the last time that GW invalided an entire army of an eldar player, with zero chance of it ever being reverted.
I mean that's factually wrong on a lot of levels. Albeit wrongly in response to my post but H.B.M.C. is correct that most chaos armies lot far more than they gained on the journey to stand alone books. Alpha legion cultists existed in 3rd, but not in 4th/5th then came back in 6th as a general chaos marine unit. Renegade guardsmen existed in 3rd (eye of terror?) then became renegades and heretics via FW in 4th and 7th onwards iirc. before becoming a unit again in 9th. The chaos range is.... chaosistent with it's availability. You'll find many death guard obliterators, world eaters vindicators and terminator lords etc. out there.
There's always been changes to the army list, some more drastic, some less. But we haven't really seen this level of gameplay changes as with 8/9/10th editions, all of which seem to be more and more bland and pickup game focused rather than more interesting but not always completely balanced missions that might actually require talking to an opponent for more than a minute to say "2k matched play", god forbid.
On that note, the reluctance of 40k players to even have a conversation before a game that consists of more than how many points is... disturbing for a social game. It doesn't have to go to RT levels of needing a GM to come up with a scenario, but still. It's a social game, the expectation should NOT be just to roll up to the game store, ask if anyone wants a game and then how many points, and start setting up.
I actually don't remember how tournaments went in 3rd, but I remember that some missions were strange (Breakout/Breakthrough?) and some were stupidly bland (Cleanse), and I think that style held out through at least a few editions just fine. I honestly don't get what the issue was with those types of missions, other than ITC wanted to put more emphasis on list building (shocker) and we got their garbage secondaries which were for some reason (Brandt?) adopted to be the main style of play.
If playing a tourney based mission pack is bland try some narrative scenarios. The rules are great fun, so just change your scenario! Have been plundering the 8th narrative missions lately and they adapt well (bin any Strats), and looking further back through time at other classics.
I’m now wondering if there’s been a shift in the DIY ethos which was part and parcel of WHFB and 40k’s early days.
Even into 2nd Ed, commercially available terrain was quite basic. Not bad as such, just basic. Vehicles too often needed conversion or scratch building. 4th (I think?) had much abused Vehicle Design Rules meant to encourage projects.
Since then GW’s offerings have considerably expanded. Books, Kits, Terrain, Boards, Paint. The whole kit and kaboodle.
And so, there’s a reduced need for homemade stuff. The reduced need means conversions and scratch builds are less often seen.
I don’t think GW are actively discouraging it. We do see heavily converted and kitbashed stuff in WD and Warhammer Community.
Karol wrote: Chaos and Dark Eldar can at least still be played. Marines had entire armies made illegal. No army got that treatment and they are suppose to be the army that GW puts extra care of. While after 3 editions I think that GW just milks marines players hard hard. Oblits, cultists etc were and are good, if not every edition then at least in the last few ones. Dark Eldar are the dudes in boats faction. What is the dude who bought intercessors in 8th suppose to do now, or in 9th. The Sang Guard BA player. The WS or RW "the faction is about bikes, so I picked them, because I like bikes" player.
A tyranid player could be using stealers, guants and monsters from 2ed, a marine player can't, not just because the load outs on units are different, the bases or similar stuff. No marines stuff is just gone. Even the supposed still legal legends doesn't have rules on the GW app, that is how much GW cares about marine stuff.
Not saying that losing crucial upgrades or models that existed for decades isn't a feels bad moment for other factions it is. But when was it the last time that GW invalided an entire army of an eldar player, with zero chance of it ever being reverted.
Short answer: eldar Corsairs in 9th edition, no army (especially not Marines!) has been handled as badly, not even renegade Guard.
Meanwhile Marines are the best supported army in every edition, I don’t even know what you're getting at here. What's up with Intercessors and Sanguinary Guard, they're still there?
Yes, if you went full White Scars Bikers in 7th I guess you're left with 18 bikers(I'm assuming they come in squads of up to 6) now if you're taking them as Outriders, or 78 bikers if you take Outriders, bikers and scout bikers.
Meanwhile my DG bikers, raptors and obliterators can't even be allied with my Death Guard anymore since 9th edition without losing all faction rules. (Since 10th I can’t ally them at all I think).
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I’m now wondering if there’s been a shift in the DIY ethos which was part and parcel of WHFB and 40k’s early days.
Even into 2nd Ed, commercially available terrain was quite basic. Not bad as such, just basic. Vehicles too often needed conversion or scratch building. 4th (I think?) had much abused Vehicle Design Rules meant to encourage projects.
Since then GW’s offerings have considerably expanded. Books, Kits, Terrain, Boards, Paint. The whole kit and kaboodle.
And so, there’s a reduced need for homemade stuff. The reduced need means conversions and scratch builds are less often seen.
I don’t think GW are actively discouraging it. We do see heavily converted and kitbashed stuff in WD and Warhammer Community.
I think this is one of the big things. In the early years, GW encouraged a bunch of things because they had to. All these years later, GW has stopped encouraging those things.
Early 40k: You'll need to get some terrain. Here's a bunch of rules for the sorts of terrain you can make, and various articles showing you stuff to do.
Modern 40k: You'll need terrain. Here are boxes of terrain, and the rules for those terrain pieces.
Early 40k: Here are your unit options. We can't make all of the things for these options, so here's some encouragement and (because it was expected at the time) a bits store to help kit bashing.
Modern 40k: Here's your box of models, the rules for everything in the box and that's all you need.
Remember when the Defiler came out for Chaos and GW had a contest for kit bashing it, and ended up putting the parts lists online? Classic early 40k philosophy. That's no longer necessary and thus no longer encouraged.
Look at the Warhammer Community pages. You'll see a few pages a month about "Look at how people are painting this model!" because people still have to paint models. And pages showing off how to use the modular terrain. Because those are still necessary and thus need encouragement.
I spoke with someone about the statistics stuff and from his 2 minute analysis knowing nothing about 40k what you'd want to analyze is false positives between the different game modes. Like how often does the game data from competitive give false results for casual play and how often does casual play produce false positives for casual play. Competitive play could have fewer false positives for casual play than casual does if things other than unit cost-effectiveness played a relatively larger impact in casual play.
vict0988 wrote: How did 3,5 make more of a difference than Chapter Tactics and Chapter Stratagems?
I read the 3,5 CSM codex for research, but it was before my time so I never played with or against it.
This is back in a time with a fixed force organisation, before you could take unlimited amounts of any slot or have allies. It was a book that, without touching on the books of chaos, gave you methods to revolutionary change any characters form and function. Possessed and aspiring champs also had this feature built in. There were upgrades and some perks locked behind the marks and there were rules on the marks interacting with each other.
The "chapter tactics" for some legions were one of the first places that force orgs happened that I can recall, including introducing units that otherwise didn't exist or were brought in from other books. It shifted how that army played more than chapter tactics have in recent years. The books of chaos at back for mono god legions/warbands introduced yet more god specific goodness and special rules such as the blessed numbers for free champ upgrades and more extreme force org limitations imposed to get the rewards.
It was about 2 editions ahead of its time and felt like it had immense impact based on your choices.
Right, the CSM 3,5 codex broadened an otherwise restrictive ruleset but CSM 9th added flavour to a permissive ruleset and seems to add up to way more flavour.
Like CSM 3,5 had Basilisks and daemonic mounts, but 9th edition Thousand Sons has Tzaangor, a variety of unique Death Guard weapons and a couple of unique units, 9th has the primarchs. Thousand Sons definitely had a lot more stuff when they had 18 psychic powers and 9 or so cabalistic rituals.
I have taken mathematically inferior options often, but it's usually more complicated than +1A, like taking a bad mobile melee unit instead of a good one because it works with this other unit I brought and I think that's neat even if it's still bad or simply I like the model/rules for an overcosted unit or option. I feel like +1A could represent anything and isn't fun to take, like maybe my Iron Hands Chaos Lord was the pre-eminent duelist of the Iron Hands Legion so he deserves an extra attack. Now my opponent might get pissy because I didn't model it on my character and there was that one game 2 months ago where my Chaos Lord didn't have spikes because I didn't have the points for it. But a relic and a WL trait is a big thing so I'm more likely to pay attention to which one of two Chaos Lords have it, it doesn't need to be modelled (although cool if it is). I don't think you need to go "5<3/25=>spikes are the mathematically correct option beep boop" but you might go "I want this Chaos Lord to really smash I'll give him a lightning claw, might as well give him the spikes so he smashes even harder muahaha". Compare that to the different narratives you can brew into the rules of two different relics, one providing supreme offence at the cost of allies and the other providing supreme offence at the cost of the bearer, much more significant than taking or not taking spikes, the spikes only gain narrative weight through their name, fluff text and CSM players actually caring about those. The moment it just becomes "Chaos Lord with lightning claw and +1 A" instead of "Chaos Lord who is such a devout worshipper of the dark gods that he has spikes on his armour see here on his pauldrons which grants him +1A" spikes lose their meaning for existing and just become a mathematical question. I think well-written relics and WL traits are resistant to becoming math questions because their rules are more fun and inherently narrative, but these kinds of micro upgrades are always going to tend towards simplicity and therefore becoming math questions rather than narrative questions.
On the point of relics, I would suggest that you are perhaps missing the forest for the trees. Yes, a relic will potentially have more of an impact than Spikey Bits. But the 3.5 book had many more non-weapon options than just spikey bits. Thus, the presence or absence of Spikey Bits would be just one small factor in how you built a Chaos character. They (for the most part) might not have had the same individual weight as modern Relics, but they more than made up for it in flexibility.
If you don't see why this is an issue, let me try to explain with an example from a different army (one I have much more experience with). Take for a moment the DE Archon in 9th edition. He's a lacklustre character who doesn't shine in any area. He is supposed to support a ranged subfaction but his ranged options are nonexistant. His melee is similarly pitiful, struggling to kill even a single Tactical Marine. His defence is unreliable and evaporates entirely the first time he fails a save. Lastly, his aura is supposed to support units that want to shoot from transports but it doesn't work unless they get out. Improving any of these even to the level of 'mediocre' or 'passable' requires at least one artefact or WLT. Sometimes both. e.g. it takes an artefact just to get him a gun with a range beyond 12". And if you want that gun to do anything, it will cost you your warlord trait as well. Armour that other HQs get as standard costs a relic. A decent melee weapon costs a relic. Thus, merely getting him to the level of a functional HQ costs your entire allotment of customisation.
Meanwhile, a system more akin to the old version would give you far more flexibility in terms of fine-tuning and improving aspects, without having to drop all your customisation into just 2 big choices.
Anyway, to return to the matter of why you'd choose (or not choose) minor options, I'd suggest one of the main reasons would be to make HQsfeel different on the table. Again, Spikey Bits alone won't make this happen. But the point would be to combine it with other options to expand the differences. e.g. you might have one Lord with Daemon Armour, Daemonic Resilience, Spikey Bits and a Chainfist as a heavily-armoured behemoth, and then another with Daemonic Aura, Daemonic Flight, and Daemonic Claws to create a sleeker, faster (perhaps more mutated) Lord. Obviously these are just some quick examples, but my point is that Spikey Bits, whilst minor in and of itself, can work together with other options to help flesh out and distinguish characters.
Though, of course, you might just give both Spikey Bits. Maybe one Lord has Wings and another has a Daemon Weapon? Maybe you want twins with identical or near-identical builds? The nice thing about the 3.5 book (and others like it) is that you have the full freedom to choose. You can make your HQs as similar or dissimilar as you like.
What the Drukhari Archon is missing is a half dozen meaningfully different but viable basic loudouts, not a page worth of spikes, soul traps, drugs and Aeldarianiai trophies in my opinion, things that wouldn't fix the issues with unfitting abilities and stats you listed. Or let's say that instead of a relic being mandatory for Archons to do stuff in melee, it was drugs, why not just bake the drugs into the Archon if everyone is going to take them anyway?
I'm always going to want that extra attack on any sufficiently scary melee weapon. If there's no reason not to take on the scary weapons then you might as well build it into the profile of the scarier weapons, like 30 pt lightning claws that add +1A. What I'm missing is feeling like there's a downside, you couldn't have multiple relics on the same character in most cases which is an instant pick one or the other that a weigh your own upgrades options list doesn't do. I've been thinking quite a bit about luckstones lately, a 5 pt upgrade that let you re-roll your first failed armour save, on a model with a 1+ Sv and with only 2 wounds, it was quite good, even after modifiers you'd probably get a 3+ Sv, but that luckstone didn't convey anything narratively because it wasn't a priority that you avoided filling up your upgrade budget for.
Daemon weapons? Relics. Wings? That's just a jump pack conversion in my book (an option Chaos Lords should obviously have regardless of their weapon choices).
5th Edition Dark Eldar codex was peak for options. A lot of the units were removed in the subsequent 7th edition codex due to the fallout of chapterhouse lawsuit...
The Archon specifically in the 5th edition codex had a war gear list that is larger than the entire current Drukari army combined. (bit of an exaggeration, but you understand)
What the Drukhari Archon is missing is a half dozen meaningfully different but viable basic loudouts, not a page worth of spikes, soul traps, drugs and Aeldarianiai trophies in my opinion, things that wouldn't fix the issues with unfitting abilities and stats you listed. Or let's say that instead of a relic being mandatory for Archons to do stuff in melee, it was drugs, why not just bake the drugs into the Archon if everyone is going to take them anyway?
Again, you're looking at this in a purely on/off way.
The whole point is that having an expanded list of options would allow characters to improve capabilities without needing to go all-in on just one or two big items.
Thus, it would be less a question of whether you want your melee character to be good in combat at all, but rather how good you want them to be.
I'm always going to want that extra attack on any sufficiently scary melee weapon. If there's no reason not to take on the scary weapons then you might as well build it into the profile of the scarier weapons, like 30 pt lightning claws that add +1A. What I'm missing is feeling like there's a downside, you couldn't have multiple relics on the same character in most cases which is an instant pick one or the other that a weigh your own upgrades options list doesn't do. I've been thinking quite a bit about luckstones lately, a 5 pt upgrade that let you re-roll your first failed armour save, on a model with a 1+ Sv and with only 2 wounds, it was quite good, even after modifiers you'd probably get a 3+ Sv, but that luckstone didn't convey anything narratively because it wasn't a priority that you avoided filling up your upgrade budget for.
I'm not opposed to having some sort of downside or restriction (beyond the raw point cost). Off the top of my head, there are a few routes you could go down.
One would be bringing back the points limits on wargear so you have to start making choices regarding what wargear you really need. Paying 10pts for +1A might seem an easy choice in a vacuum, but you may find yourself reconsidering if it then means you can't take other options you also want.
A variation on this would be to make you choose between specific options. e.g. an Autarch can have a Banshee Mask or Mandiblasters but never both. Again, it could give you pause for thought as an otherwise obvious upgrade could lock you out of other useful upgrades.
The latter option could also be heavily tied to flavour. Perhaps Armour Spikes mean you can't have wings or a Jump Pack? Or that you can't have some other armour upgrade because the spikes take up space.
Again, just some ideas off the top of my head, but there are definitely ways you can make choices a little more meaningful.
Hmmm. I sort of agree with Vipoid but dont. People like the freedom to make their dude their dude.
But you always run into the optimality problem. Something is worth it or it isn't.
I dont think for example giving Haemis a dozen weapon choices is meaningful if they all end mathing out to the same. There's perhaps some variety in target - but given the difficulties of getting into combat good assault has to chop everything.
So you end up with choppy or buff-bot characters. There can be variations on this (good shooting/good assault, buffs to your units, debuffs to enemy units etc) but its hard to break out of that.
Having say 3 good/desirable variants is probably enough.
Yeah. The only major flaw in the more flexible unit customization of previous editions was that there tended to be "trap" options that were just purely less cost-effective than other options. So if you wanted to take a suboptimal option just to be different or because you liked the look of a bit (or if you were just bad at crunching numbers), then you were functionally playing at a disadvantage compared to people who took the mathematically optimal options that rendered others redundant.
In theory, GW could potentially just create a different datasheet for each "build" they want to support, which would potentially have the upside of letting them do things like add special rules to that build.
So maybe the archon gets broken up into a beatstick datasheet and a sit-in-the-boat-buffing-stuff datasheet, and the latter could get a bespoke rule that actually works from inside a raider. Maybe we get a Kruellagh/Soul Trap type datasheet that hits less hard than the beatstick (at first) but heals during the game and potentially hits harder than the beatstick in later turns. Similarly, you could haemonculi that choose between being poisoners, healers, or monster makers and succubi who favor dueling/monster hunting/squad tactics.
This also has the advantage of avoiding unintentionally powerful combos. The cool weapon that's only OP if you combine it with wargear X can simply not be available to datasheets that also have access to wargear X.
But I think I prefer the idea of limiting how many points you can spend on wargear. Your character gets to be awesome, but is he awesome because he took auspex upgrades that let him buff the shooting of your long-ranged weapons, or is he awesome because he's the wielder of a legendary thunder hammer?
(For my own personal tastes, I also like the idea of characters having to choose their niche rather than being good at everything. Having an archon who is specifically good at dueling or at scheming is more interesting than an archon who is the best schemer with the best dueling skills and also he has quirky weapons and also he's on a jetbike.)
I encourage everyone to check the Horus Heresy Militia List, available as a *free* PDF (so you have no reason not to) and explain how you could get that degree of flavor in 9th edition.
And I encourage people to remember that this free PDF from GW is for a secondary "npc" army in a game ostensibly focused around Marines.
I can make a far far more narrative force there than I could in 40k - if mortal humans were my jam (Imperial Guard, Squats, and Chaos mortals are all covered in ONE LIST and it has *more* customizability than any of those lists at the end of 9th or here in 10th, even including Crusade.
I could reflect my IG army's lore better in 30k than I can in 40k, across the board, despite the IG codex being ostensibly representative of the IG in 40k.
A Town Called Malus wrote: I mean, trap options still exist today wherever you have actual choices, so that point is a kind of a wash.
yeah. Just instead of Pts you pay CP. And instead of being bad equipment there's no equipment at all.
So even having removed "trap" options there's somehow on the most barebones of profiles still trap options. Also the colour of your model now also matters so got the wrong type you got nothing ...
Unit1126PLL wrote: I encourage everyone to check the Horus Heresy Militia List, available as a *free* PDF (so you have no reason not to) and explain how you could get that degree of flavor in 9th edition.
And I encourage people to remember that this free PDF from GW is for a secondary "npc" army in a game ostensibly focused around Marines.
I can make a far far more narrative force there than I could in 40k - if mortal humans were my jam (Imperial Guard, Squats, and Chaos mortals are all covered in ONE LIST and it has *more* customizability than any of those lists at the end of 9th or here in 10th, even including Crusade.
I could reflect my IG army's lore better in 30k than I can in 40k, across the board, despite the IG codex being ostensibly representative of the IG in 40k.
HH also outright stated that their Ruinstorm Daemons list is not balanced nor meant to be used for competitive play (which they defined as "matched play against strangers or at more competitive events") because "it is very different from Marines".
Which is part of the issue here, you cannot have the options and flavour of HH, the faction diversity of 40k and competitive balance. It is a pick 2 discard the third scenario.
Which is why some people are arguing for 2 different rulesets.
Karol wrote: Chaos and Dark Eldar can at least still be played. Marines had entire armies made illegal. No army got that treatment and they are suppose to be the army that GW puts extra care of. While after 3 editions I think that GW just milks marines players hard hard. Oblits, cultists etc were and are good, if not every edition then at least in the last few ones. Dark Eldar are the dudes in boats faction. What is the dude who bought intercessors in 8th suppose to do now, or in 9th. The Sang Guard BA player. The WS or RW "the faction is about bikes, so I picked them, because I like bikes" player.
A tyranid player could be using stealers, guants and monsters from 2ed, a marine player can't, not just because the load outs on units are different, the bases or similar stuff. No marines stuff is just gone. Even the supposed still legal legends doesn't have rules on the GW app, that is how much GW cares about marine stuff.
Not saying that losing crucial upgrades or models that existed for decades isn't a feels bad moment for other factions it is. But when was it the last time that GW invalided an entire army of an eldar player, with zero chance of it ever being reverted.
Oh good God....
GW did not make all of our old school SM armies illegal.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I encourage everyone to check the Horus Heresy Militia List, available as a *free* PDF (so you have no reason not to) and explain how you could get that degree of flavor in 9th edition.
And I encourage people to remember that this free PDF from GW is for a secondary "npc" army in a game ostensibly focused around Marines.
I can make a far far more narrative force there than I could in 40k - if mortal humans were my jam (Imperial Guard, Squats, and Chaos mortals are all covered in ONE LIST and it has *more* customizability than any of those lists at the end of 9th or here in 10th, even including Crusade.
I could reflect my IG army's lore better in 30k than I can in 40k, across the board, despite the IG codex being ostensibly representative of the IG in 40k.
As much as I love the militia list, its important to remember that GW pretty much massacred it in its latest iteration. It has easily half as many options as it did in the previous edition, if not list. They removed quite a few units, removed a lot of weapon options, etc. and severely hamstrung it to a shadow of its former glory.
JNAProductions wrote: How would you go about gathering data from non-tournament games?
Genuine question.
You wouldn't - you couldn't trust them based on people under/over reporting their likes and dislikes in order to rig the system plus even when people do report them straight - you can't really adjust for play style, and skill. Realistically it comes down to play testing, and GW does it poorly. They need to do it with people who want to break the system and do it during Alpha/Beta not post release for a tournament.
Also I'm doubtfull a Tyranid player can use models from 2nd, if only because 2nd ed Tyrants and Fexes are much smaller and thus have a blatant LOS advantage over modern iterations.
Also regarding HH, does anyone else wish it had a wahapedia version? I'm skimming through the HH Militia list and it has a lot of USR I have no idea what they do.
As much as I love the militia list, its important to remember that GW pretty much massacred it in its latest iteration. It has easily half as many options as it did in the previous edition, if not list. They removed quite a few units, removed a lot of weapon options, etc. and severely hamstrung it to a shadow of its former glory.
More or less the same in Ruinstorm daemons.
While its a valid complaint that so much left the game this edition - comparing 9th Ed Army X vs 10th Ed Army X as evidence 10th ed Army X is relatively weak doesn't work because Army Y, and Z also lost a ton of their options.
I will say, in my own experience, I've been having fun with my homebrew SM in my own games and coming up with lore for them. Now that there are proper Primaris replacements for much of the default SM range, things...
*snaps fingers*
Come together for an Ultima Founding Chapter? Click? Function like a well-oiled machine?
I've gotten a number of games under my belt, even won some, and I feel like things are coming together.
It's very satisfying. But to acknowledge the views and experiences of others, I can understand the turmoil that comes with having a lot of your army be useless in the current, official ruleset. There's personal value and, dare I say, history to your SM collections that you have built up over time. That's your personal experience, just as valid as everyone else's, and it's being -
*snaps some more*
Not adulterated or diminished. But those words come close. Made bitter in hindsight, perhaps.
All this is to say that 'soul' is, in my opinion, a subjective thing. Our enjoyment is contingent on a number of things, and not everyone is going to enjoy things forever. If I wish to impart anything, try to enjoy what you can, when you can. A simple message, but one worth remembering.
GW does no systematic playtesting, or does it so badly as to make it the equivalent of not doing it at all.
Like, the game design equivalent of unit testing where you take out a single specific thing and test that alone to see if it works.
For example, the fact that assault and pistol weapons did not do what they were meant to do when played RAW in 8th edition. Because they applied on the model level, whereas eligibility to shoot was made on the unit level and didn't care what weapons, the unit was equipped with in its criteria of determining eligibility to shoot.
Or in 10th edition, the fact that core rules errata are in the "rules commentary" document rather than updated in the actual rules PDF. For example, the rule that units are no longer eligible to shoot after shooting is nowhere in the core rules. Literally never mentioned, at all. It is in the "commentary" on the rules? That's not commentary, that's an errata! And the core rules pdf should be updated with that!
Or in 10th edition, the fact that core rules errata are in the "rules commentary" document rather than updated in the actual rules PDF. For example, the rule that units are no longer eligible to shoot after shooting is nowhere in the core rules. Literally never mentioned, at all. It is in the "commentary" on the rules? That's not commentary, that's an errata! And the core rules pdf should be updated with that!
To be fair, GW's rules commentary is an amendment to the rulebook.
Both an errata and a FAQ (or commentary) change what a document means.
- An errata changes the text of the document.
- A FAQ doesn't change the text of the document.
Same thing applies whether it's a game rulebook or the cards for a game.
That's true for both GW and other game companies. The big reason for not doing an errata: Having to figure out a concise change to the original text wording, and then redo the page layout.
Karol wrote: Chaos and Dark Eldar can at least still be played. Marines had entire armies made illegal. No army got that treatment and they are suppose to be the army that GW puts extra care of. While after 3 editions I think that GW just milks marines players hard hard. Oblits, cultists etc were and are good, if not every edition then at least in the last few ones. Dark Eldar are the dudes in boats faction. What is the dude who bought intercessors in 8th suppose to do now, or in 9th. The Sang Guard BA player. The WS or RW "the faction is about bikes, so I picked them, because I like bikes" player.
A tyranid player could be using stealers, guants and monsters from 2ed, a marine player can't, not just because the load outs on units are different, the bases or similar stuff. No marines stuff is just gone. Even the supposed still legal legends doesn't have rules on the GW app, that is how much GW cares about marine stuff.
Not saying that losing crucial upgrades or models that existed for decades isn't a feels bad moment for other factions it is. But when was it the last time that GW invalided an entire army of an eldar player, with zero chance of it ever being reverted.
Oh good God....
GW did not make all of our old school SM armies illegal.
There are only 4 official firstborn infantry units left in the game that will still get a balance pass and rules update to conform with GWs current game setup.
tacs, devs, sternguard and vanguard. everything else has been replaced by a primaris variant.
While you can still use all the "legends" units as the game goes on all the current meta/matched play players will be less and less ok with you bringing units without current rules updates to go with the constant churn.
As an old gamer who has built up and supported a large active group of players at the FLGS who are there for the fun of playing various games/systems. i feel very lucky i am not on the GW train anymore or that it isn't my only game. play what you want as often as you want in any manner you want, but chasing current 40K to me seems to be an exercise in frustration and not why i play wargames. 40K specifically doesn't feel like it lost it's soul to me, it is worse because it doesn't even feel like 40K or a wargame anymore.
The only thing i can recommend is to do what our group did-build a community of like minded gamers and encourage others to join. it will be hard and take time but the best things in life often do. the results speak for themselves in my experience.
I dont think for example giving Haemis a dozen weapon choices is meaningful if they all end mathing out to the same. There's perhaps some variety in target - but given the difficulties of getting into combat good assault has to chop everything.
This is fair. Though I would argue it isn't helped by the desire to flatten everything out and remove all rules that could be considered remotely interesting.
Thus, rather than serving different purposes, you end up with 12 variations of 'Poisoned weapon' and 'another poisoned weapon'.
Put simply, I don't mind some consolidation. However, I do think a decent effort should be made to actually improve and vary the existing weapons, rather than just keeping the worse one and deleting the other eleven.
I dont think for example giving Haemis a dozen weapon choices is meaningful if they all end mathing out to the same. There's perhaps some variety in target - but given the difficulties of getting into combat good assault has to chop everything.
This is fair. Though I would argue it isn't helped by the desire to flatten everything out and remove all rules that could be considered remotely interesting.
Thus, rather than serving different purposes, you end up with 12 variations of 'Poisoned weapon' and 'another poisoned weapon'.
Put simply, I don't mind some consolidation. However, I do think a decent effort should be made to actually improve and vary the existing weapons, rather than just keeping the worse one and deleting the other eleven.
Yeah. I don't really mind a reasonable amount of consolidation, but I do mind having essentially (or literally) no customization options. So using haemis as an example, maybe we boil down most of the poisoned weapons into a generic "Evenomed Weapon" profile that's statted out to be effective. But then we could also have something like ye olde mindphase gauntlet that's worse at killing things but good at debuffing the enemy (thus turning the haemi into a better melee support character that relies on allies to kill things). And then maybe something like a hex rifle as a third option. And then give them an "arcane talisman" slot that lets them choose between a single-use special attack or an anti-psyker crucible of malediction effect or single-use pain token provider, etc.
Similarly, I'm okay with sybarite weapons getting consolidated down to just "sybarite weapons" instead of various other options. But also Sybarite Weapons are too ineffective to really matter, so they just become an extra thing to track. Whereas ye olde power sword sybarite with I5 and furious charge could potentially do enough damage to warrant paying points for and tracking (even if it was more cost effective to not take the sword.)
Tyran wrote: ... you cannot have the options and flavour of HH, the faction diversity of 40k and competitive balance.
I don't think that's true at all.
aphyon wrote: There are only 4 official firstborn infantry units left in the game that will still get a balance pass and rules update to conform with GWs current game setup. tacs, devs, sternguard and vanguard. everything else has been replaced by a primaris variant.
Tyran wrote: ... you cannot have the options and flavour of HH, the faction diversity of 40k and competitive balance.
I don't think that's true at all.
aphyon wrote: There are only 4 official firstborn infantry units left in the game that will still get a balance pass and rules update to conform with GWs current game setup.
tacs, devs, sternguard and vanguard. everything else has been replaced by a primaris variant.
I said years ago there was no point in buying into the primaris line when, giving it a few years, everything will be primaris and therefore any space marine you put on the table will be a primaris marine by default...
All we need to do is wait for a primaris tactical squad and that will be complete...
GW have done most of the hardwork for you by reducing the difference down to one keyword.
If you deployed a squad of original marines with just bolters, people are going to tell you they can't be primaris intercessors? They've already folded 3 different gun designs into the one profile, trying to say that a boltgun isn't boltrifly enough is pretty funny.
I have no problem whatsoever with that, nor with someone building intercessors with a tactical load and using that datasheet.
The definition of primaris vs original design (i refuse to use the phrase first born, it's overly dramatic) will have 0 impact when there literally aren't any original units and you can then just use your original marines as whatever the latest marine squad is. Which is no different to using RT era beakies as 5th ed tacticals, they look almost nothing alike and they are completely out of scale, but people don't have a problem with them being space marines.
GW got people too wound up over the design of a gorget, or tassets, or the length of a boltgun and whether it's magazine was a box or not.
The part where the Primaris and First Born miniature ranges are quite a bit different to one another. You can't wait out the Primaris releases and hope that eventually all your First Born miniatures will become relevant again, because there are heaps of Primairs units that have no First Born equivalents. You can't just put your First Born Inceptors or Aggressors on the table... as there are no equivalents.
There are certainly parallels - Assault Intercessors/Jump Pack Intercessors and some of the character models aren't all that different from their Firs Born counterparts - but there's no First Born Repulsor, Stormstrike or Interceptor Squad that you will eventually able to sub in once all First Borns have been replaced.
Hellebore wrote: GW have done most of the hardwork for you by reducing the difference down to one keyword.
Keywords don't mean a whole hell of a lot. The removal of "Primaris" from the recent Marine 'Dex wasn't done to unify the model ranges. It was part of removing First Born's from the game almost completely. If Tactical and Devastator Squads weren't selling, they'd've been out the door alongside Bikers and Assault Squads.
Hellebore wrote: If you deployed a squad of original marines with just bolters, people are going to tell you they can't be primaris intercessors? They've already folded 3 different gun designs into the one profile, trying to say that a boltgun isn't boltrifly enough is pretty funny.
How are you going to field Heavy Intercessors then? They don't have an equivalent model.
Hellebore wrote: IfThe definition of primaris vs original design will have 0 impact when there literally aren't any original units and you can then just use your original marines as whatever the latest marine squad is.
That's a big assumption. I mean, most of us believe that we'll eventually get an Intercessor Tactical Squad, but right now the Primaris and First Born ranges have no real crossover outside of characters and a couple of units (the aforementioned Assault/JP Intercessors, and even there there are gaps - what good is a JP Flamer or Eviscerator dude when the JP Intercessors never had that option to begin with?).
Hellebore wrote: Which is no different to using RT era beakies as 5th ed tacticals, they look almost nothing alike and they are completely out of scale, but people don't have a problem with them being space marines.
It's very different when we're talking about units that have no equivalent.
Hellebore wrote: I said years ago there was no point in buying into the primaris line when, giving it a few years, everything will be primaris and therefore any space marine you put on the table will be a primaris marine by default...
All we need to do is wait for a primaris tactical squad and that will be complete...
Yeah, judging by that new Sternguard veterans kit, they've now mixed Mk.VII and Mk."X" helmets in it. Not surprising since they are veterans, but I see this as a sign that GW is loosing on the helmet front so in time they will just conflate the two. Not removing the boundaries between vanilla and primaris, I don't think they'd go so far with that, but mixing in Corvus and VII helmets in regular multiple part kits, or at least make them available in upgrade kits going forward.
Sadly I just don't like the new Primaris Heavy Bolters' looks, I preferred that belt-fed aethestics and have opted for kit-bashing my vanilla devastor torsos with cut-off primaris legs instead.
I've been OOTL so what's this with scouts being removed? I guess they are now just gonna throw them into the Kill Team bin, is it?
I think Hellebore is basically right on this one. I suspect that we'll eventually see rules for putting hellblasters and whatever the primaris flamer and missile launcher guys are called into intercessor squads, and that will be one of the last steps of finally making primaris totally interchangeable with firstborn.
Gravis units probably remain their own thing, which admittedly throws a wrench in my prediction.
Wyldhunt wrote: I think Hellebore is basically right on this one. I suspect that we'll eventually see rules for putting hellblasters and whatever the primaris flamer and missile launcher guys are called into intercessor squads, and that will be one of the last steps of finally making primaris totally interchangeable with firstborn.
Gravis units probably remain their own thing, which admittedly throws a wrench in my prediction.
Having a few totally unique units isn’t really a new thing for space marine ether, so I think it’s a solid prediction to work on.
catbarf wrote: I actually agree with Hellebore. The reason tournament rules are commonly taken as the de facto standard is because the entire game is currently written around Matched Play.
But if you make competitive play its own, unique thing with highly restrictive (but balanced) rules, then maybe players will start to really think about whether they're really looking for a Balanced Competitive Game™, or something with a bit more room for personal freedom, particularly if the tradeoff is losing the ability to customize your list. Competitive players get a more balanced and constrained experience to test their skills, casual players don't have the influence of tournament gaming breathing down their necks, win-win.
It does mean that listbuilding to exploit imbalance would no longer be an essential skill in competitive play, but feth it.
Except it doesn't work in practice.
Every time something is made specifically for tournament play...It becomes de facto standard EVERYWHERE.
People don't want to hash terms for game for every game so go with one standard only.
Or in 10th edition, the fact that core rules errata are in the "rules commentary" document rather than updated in the actual rules PDF. For example, the rule that units are no longer eligible to shoot after shooting is nowhere in the core rules. Literally never mentioned, at all. It is in the "commentary" on the rules? That's not commentary, that's an errata! And the core rules pdf should be updated with that!
Appendixes for rules is common in games...So you are saying every other company can use it but GW can't?
Why GW is forbidden? What's the justification? Go on. Try and explain why GW can't use what others can?
Tyran wrote: Also I'm doubtfull a Tyranid player can use models from 2nd, if only because 2nd ed Tyrants and Fexes are much smaller and thus have a blatant LOS advantage over modern iterations.
Also regarding HH, does anyone else wish it had a wahapedia version? I'm skimming through the HH Militia list and it has a lot of USR I have no idea what they do.
Honestly , i wish gw would release the rules for free period, if only for its own sake,considering we have multiple differing rulessources now in HH, including weapons profiles...
Anyways if you have a question just PM me. But take above into Account since i only own german sources beyond pdf.
Or in 10th edition, the fact that core rules errata are in the "rules commentary" document rather than updated in the actual rules PDF. For example, the rule that units are no longer eligible to shoot after shooting is nowhere in the core rules. Literally never mentioned, at all. It is in the "commentary" on the rules? That's not commentary, that's an errata! And the core rules pdf should be updated with that!
Appendixes for rules is common in games...So you are saying every other company can use it but GW can't?
Why GW is forbidden? What's the justification? Go on. Try and explain why GW can't use what others can?
Other companies generally put all the errata in their errata documents.
GW? Nooo.... you've got seperate rules, faqs, erratta,, 3 separate pts docs, and then this thi g called the commentary.....
The criticism isn't that they do it, it's how they do it.
Or in 10th edition, the fact that core rules errata are in the "rules commentary" document rather than updated in the actual rules PDF. For example, the rule that units are no longer eligible to shoot after shooting is nowhere in the core rules. Literally never mentioned, at all. It is in the "commentary" on the rules? That's not commentary, that's an errata! And the core rules pdf should be updated with that!
Appendixes for rules is common in games...So you are saying every other company can use it but GW can't?
Why GW is forbidden? What's the justification? Go on. Try and explain why GW can't use what others can?
You don't put a core rules change in the appendix or the "rules commentary", you put it in a clearly labelled errata for people who have physical copies and update the relevant section where it is making the change in digital copies. In the case I highlighted, you add an extra bullet point to the list of what makes a unit ineligible to shoot. This is basic editorial standards, that GW fails at.
Or in 10th edition, the fact that core rules errata are in the "rules commentary" document rather than updated in the actual rules PDF. For example, the rule that units are no longer eligible to shoot after shooting is nowhere in the core rules. Literally never mentioned, at all. It is in the "commentary" on the rules? That's not commentary, that's an errata! And the core rules pdf should be updated with that!
Appendixes for rules is common in games...So you are saying every other company can use it but GW can't?
Why GW is forbidden? What's the justification? Go on. Try and explain why GW can't use what others can?
You don't put a core rules change in the appendix or the "rules commentary", you put it in a clearly labelled errata for people who have physical copies and update the relevant section where it is making the change in digital copies. In the case I highlighted, you add an extra bullet point to the list of what makes a unit ineligible to shoot. This is basic editorial standards, that GW fails at.
100% this. GW's complete failure to even make their frequent rules changes easy to find/understand is completely mind-boggling. This isn't new ground, there are established ways of doing updates, commentary, and errata and GW repeatedly shows they don't "get" it.
Wyldhunt wrote: Yeah. I don't really mind a reasonable amount of consolidation, but I do mind having essentially (or literally) no customization options. So using haemis as an example, maybe we boil down most of the poisoned weapons into a generic "Evenomed Weapon" profile that's statted out to be effective. But then we could also have something like ye olde mindphase gauntlet that's worse at killing things but good at debuffing the enemy (thus turning the haemi into a better melee support character that relies on allies to kill things). And then maybe something like a hex rifle as a third option. And then give them an "arcane talisman" slot that lets them choose between a single-use special attack or an anti-psyker crucible of malediction effect or single-use pain token provider, etc.
I think the answer is as you say. There should be Haemi builds to be a poisoner, a healer or a monster maker. Whether you do this via datasheets, gear options or relics can be debated. But I feel you have to walk backwards from "this is a thing you could want in your army". It does its job at a suitable level of efficiency compared to everything else in 40k.
Rather than a more RPG system of "here are a dozen (or many more) options - have fun". And you find that a huge percentage of choices are bad - and most people just run the cookie cutter build because why wouldn't you?
I kind of think the same with D&D/Pathfinder - or computer games etc. In some ways I'm envious of people who can just go "this feels fluffy/cool, I'm doing it", with no regard for the efficiency. But it feels like once you are through that veil its very hard to go back.
I have a lot of love for my memories of 2nd and 3rd edition because I was in that innocent state and playing with similar minded people. By 5th it was much more competitive and doing so would just see me get ruthlessly tabled. Efficiency was no longer an optional extra. In some ways I think that innocence is the real "soul" of 40k. That's how GW play themselves.
But its never really been there. I think every GW game has collapsed once you start crunching the maths.
40k has always been broken. It’s great when you find like minded people to play with. Pair of casual/fluff players? Great time. Tournament with no slack in the list, all killer, no filler? GG. Mix the two? Nobody is having fun.
Remember when the Defiler came out for Chaos and GW had a contest for kit bashing it, and ended up putting the parts lists online? Classic early 40k philosophy. That's no longer necessary and thus no longer encouraged.
You may want to check WD 493's Tale of four Warlords- three of the four armies are significantly converted- World Eaters have a breakout box called Khorneversion corner, with the Lord and 2 Terminator bodyguards; the Votan have Sagitaur kitbashed with the SM Warsuits to make Transformers and all six IG Chimeras are six-wheeled kitbashes with Cargo 8 Hauler parts.
In the last four years, I haven't completed a single kitbashed model square in hobby bingo, but there's been one every year, and the WD Bunker has Kitbash challenges from time to time.
I won't argue that previous editions provided MORE support for conversions- expansive equipment lists do more to encourage conversion than any WD could, so I do see your point. But damn there are still REALLY good conversions most issues.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I encourage everyone to check the Horus Heresy Militia List, available as a *free* PDF (so you have no reason not to) and explain how you could get that degree of flavor in 9th edition.
I know nothing about the Horus Heresy game- from my perspective if the game doesn't include Sisters or Xenos, it isn't worth one minute of my time or one thin dime of my cash, so I can't say for sure, but I've got three 9th ed armies that have a fighting chance to win your challenge:
Torchbearer Fleets (WD), Armies of Faith (Nachmund I) and Armis of Chaos Undivided (Nachmund II) all have more options.
In the first, you can include ANY unit in the Custodes, Admech, or Marine dex, as well as any of the Marine supplements in single detachment. In the second, it's any unit from the Guard, Sisters or Marines (including supplements) and the third, you can include any unit that has the Chaos Keyword.
The first two can be further augmented by Imperial Agents; the latter two can be augmented with bespoke Crusade content from WD 472, 73. 74, and 75 and the last can be augmented by Agents of Chaos.
Every unit retains access to the bespoke Crusade Content from its own dex.
And these construction rules are per detachment; in a 3k game you can take four detachments, and in Crusade each detachment can use different subfactions, so a 3k force could teoretically include up to 16 subfactions (4 from each of 3 factions) for Imperial armies or 20 subfactions for Chaos armies, as each detachment can freely blend Daemons.
I think there might be more Crusade options alone for any of these three armies than there are for your list, but I can't assert that for sure, because I know nothing about Heresy, and BTW, don't feel obligated to reply with complex explanations for HH, because I have zero interest in learning more about any Heresy game. I personally consider the production of any Heresy era game as a waste of resources, though I do like many of the plastic Heresy era models that can be used in 40k (even if they are Legends).
I could reflect my IG army's lore better in 30k than I can in 40k, across the board, despite the IG codex being ostensibly representative of the IG in 40k.
This true 100%.
In Crusade, you don't make up the fluff for your army on paper and then build it as an army list. Instead, you start with a rough cut, somewhat generic green force and you EARN your fluff through game play.
I get that putting together a highly customized army at the list building stage and playing it through a series of linked games in a structured campaign with narrative missions is your definition of narrative gaming, and it is certainly one version of narrative gaming, and I agree that it is both valid and fun. I used to do it all the time when it was the only option, and I enjoyed every minute of it.
But for me, building a small, generic starting force and then letting it grow into a massive, highly customized army over a period of years as a direct result of table-top in-game and between-game choices across several campaigns and even the occasional stand-alone feels more narrative to me- again, not because it's superior, but because this approach better suits my personal preferences.
Heh, I recently had a friend who is a newer player (when I say newer I mean he joined during 8th edition, so he's been around for a while) ask me what "conversion" and "kitbash" meant. It was a weird moment because those are terms that have been in my lexicon for 20 years now and were some of the first concepts I learned as I was getting into the hobby. It says a lot about how the approach and mentality of the customers has changed.
PenitentJake wrote:You may want to check WD 493's Tale of four Warlords- three of the four armies are significantly converted- World Eaters have a breakout box called Khorneversion corner, with the Lord and 2 Terminator bodyguards; the Votan have Sagitaur kitbashed with the SM Warsuits to make Transformers and all six IG Chimeras are six-wheeled kitbashes with Cargo 8 Hauler parts.
GW's attitude to conversions nowadays seems to be something along the lines of encouraging them for your personal models that you buy for no reason other than to put on a shelf, but as soon as you want to actually play with them then their rules create phrases like 'modeling for advantage', and NMNR means they tacitly discourage conversion for the sake of personalizing wargear.
You can counts-as so long as you don't really change the visual profile of a unit. That's it.
PenitentJake wrote:but I've got three 9th ed armies that have a fighting chance to win your challenge:
Torchbearer Fleets (WD), Armies of Faith (Nachmund I) and Armis of Chaos Undivided (Nachmund II) all have more options.
Absolutely not.
You said you don't want to get into the weeds with the HH rules, so the tl;dr is that the Cults & Militia list is chock-full of transformative options that change how the entire army works, and then on top of that the individual units have a ton of options.
Being able to take units from multiple lists is nowhere close, even with Crusade content. It's not even in the same ballpark.
Meanwhile, if Allies are on the table, those C&M can be readily allied with any of the other factions to further expand options.
So, I'm curious. Armies of Chaos Undivided, for 9th, from Nachmund. I'll be ignoring R&H and the BIG Titans, but I'll include everything else. Not counting modifiable unit sizes as an option as well.
*These options are free and straight upgrades, meaning realistically it's 0 Options, 1 Potential Builds
**Two of the three options are free and straight upgrades, meaning realistically it's 1 Option, 2 Potential Builds
Across the Daemons 'Dex, you have...
43 Options (ignoring upgrades that cost nothing, 57 with Icons and Instruments being options)
Let's compare that Codex to a Militia from 30k.
Militia
Spoiler:
Imperialis Militia Force Commander, 16 Wargear Options, 16 Muster Options (some of which unlock more Wargear options, 4 more in total), and a total of:
9 weapon options, taken up to twice, for 100 builds there
Take one or both from 2 bonus options, multiplying by 4
Amour, 2 extra options, multiplying by 3
Refractor Field can be upgraded once, multiplying by 2
Can upgrade to a Mount, multiplying by 2
4,800 builds on wargear alone.
And then, the Muster! Hoo baby, the Muster.
16 options, pick 2, but some of which are mutually exclusive.
There's -1 for Cyber and Gene-Crafted.
-1 for Kinfolk and Ogryns.
-1 for Abhuman and Ogryns
-1 for Debased and Survivors Of The Dark Age
-4 for Tainted Flesh
-4 for Industrial Stronghold
For a total of 16*16-12 Muster builds, or 244 of them.
Multiplying that by the Wargear builds, that's over a million potential builds from ONE UNIT.
Yeah. It's not even close to close. The very first Militia unit (which is, admittedly, a little bit more option-heavy than some others) has more than 2/3rds the options of the entire Daemons' 9th Edition Codex in numbers. Daemon Princes top the chart of the Daemons Codex in potential unique builds, with 24. (4 from Allegiance times 3 for weapon choices times 2 for Wings or not.)
The Force Commander has over a million potential builds. I will freely admit that not every build will see play-but then again, neither did all Daemon Prince builds.
vict0988 wrote: You forgot relics, traits, psychic powers and crusade.
No he did not. Crusade is directly inadequat beeing a special modus and not representative of the basegame and the relics are potentially 6, the traits are 6 however the militia force commander has what 4-5 to himself aswell.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
catbarf 811846 11604193 wrote:
Absolutely not.
You said you don't want to get into the weeds with the HH rules, so the tl;dr is that the Cults & Militia list is chock-full of transformative options that change how the entire army works, and then on top of that the individual units have a ton of options.
Being able to take units from multiple lists is nowhere close, even with Crusade content. It's not even in the same ballpark.
Meanwhile, if Allies are on the table, those C&M can be readily allied with any of the other factions to further expand options.
Further funny because summoning daemons is also a thing for miltia or traitor legions and directly including them into your force org.
I don't know how you could convince anyone of anything with this. Why do you and why should I care about whether a Company Commander has 4+ or 5+ when the model isn't different like it is when it has a plasma pistol instead of a las pistol?
What would giving Heralds of Khorne an option to upgrade their weapons to etherblades for +1AP for 5 pts or firestorm blades for +1S for 10 pts add to the game?
How about adding pts costs for all Crusade options and letting them be used in regular games? That's way too much bloat for pickup games.
vict0988 wrote: I don't know how you could convince anyone of anything with this. Why do you and why should I care about whether a Company Commander has 4+ or 5+ when the model isn't different like it is when it has a plasma pistol instead of a las pistol?
What would giving Heralds of Khorne an option to upgrade their weapons to etherblades for +1AP for 5 pts or firestorm blades for +1S for 10 pts add to the game?
How about adding pts costs for all Crusade options and letting them be used in regular games? That's way too much bloat for pickup games.
And yet the local HH community manages to play with Militia armies.
vict0988 wrote: I don't know how you could convince anyone of anything with this. Why do you and why should I care about whether a Company Commander has 4+ or 5+ when the model isn't different like it is when it has a plasma pistol instead of a las pistol?
What would giving Heralds of Khorne an option to upgrade their weapons to etherblades for +1AP for 5 pts or firestorm blades for +1S for 10 pts add to the game?
How about adding pts costs for all Crusade options and letting them be used in regular games? That's way too much bloat for pickup games.
And yet the local HH community manages to play with Militia armies.
I did not say you couldn't play with a bloated codex, it just subtracts from the experience of a pickup game. Could you answer the ether/firestorm question?
What would giving Heralds of Khorne an option to upgrade their weapons to etherblades for +1AP for 5 pts or firestorm blades for +1S for 10 pts add to the game?
I agree. If something doesn't affect player's decisions during the game one bit, it is pointless bloat and belongs on the chopping block.
But of course in this industry you need such meaningless "content" to fill the superfluous supplements you want your customers to buy.
You potentially lose the modelling flexibility that abstract options provide.
For example, if my guy can take a 'Power Weapon' then I can model it however I like. It could be a sword, axe, spear, claw, whatever. But if I have a list where every one of those has a unique set of rules, suddenly there is an expectation that my guy will be using them even if they're sub-standard.
Classic example would be when Power Axes were made AP2/Unwieldy in 6E, and suddenly became the best option for sergeants while also becoming useless for characters. Every sergeant wanted to pull off their old swords because they were built for aesthetics rather than rules.
A more recent example would be Chaos Accursed Weapons, which have recombined all manner of melee weapons back into a single profile. While I don't think this should encompass Lightning Claws, it is very nice not to arbitrarily throw away half the bits because they are 10% less effective into MEQs.
Wayniac wrote: I mean, what would be WRONG with adding options like that? What's lost by not having them? Variety in list building. What's gained? Options.
Options don't necessarily need to have a physical representation to be good.
I wouldn't say they are really "options" if they don't affect the way you play. They are meaningless memory load of hardly any relevance for the game state.
What is lost? Elegance of design. The game is too shallow for how big it is. As designers are unable to make the game's basic concepts result in deep gameplay, they try to obfuscate how shallow it is and create an illusion of interesting complexity by making it bigger.
A quote that applies here would be:
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex... It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
It's this obsession of abstraction that really makes more and more apathetic to the system with each passing day, ngl. It might not add to your game, it does mine.
I am not against options. I love meaningful options that result in interesting and impactful decisions. The more, the better, I love complex games!
I am against meaningless options that don't affect the game but still take up time and memory and I am also against using them to bury the basic mechanics of the game under a pile of bloat so that maybe some people wont see how shallow and outdated they are.
Cyel wrote: I am not against options. I love meaningful options that result in interesting and impactful decisions. The more, the better, I love complex games!
I am against meaningless options that don't affect the game but still take up time and memory and I am also against using them to bury the basic mechanics of the game under a pile of bloat so that maybe some people wont see how shallow and outdated they are.
Fair point here. While i personally do like those little things to tweak characters to make them mine, there's a point where it's either too much and just becomes huge bloat (as much as I love the Chaos 3.5 dex it had this in spades), or it turns into the normal "6 choices but 4 are garbage, one is useful in specific situations, and one is good 99% of the time" crap we already get tons of.
Cyel wrote: I love meaningful options that result in interesting and impactful decisions. ... I am against meaningless options that don't affect the game but still take up time and memory...
What do you consider to be examples of both of these?
vict0988 wrote: I don't know how you could convince anyone of anything with this. Why do you and why should I care about whether a Company Commander has 4+ or 5+ when the model isn't different like it is when it has a plasma pistol instead of a las pistol?
What would giving Heralds of Khorne an option to upgrade their weapons to etherblades for +1AP for 5 pts or firestorm blades for +1S for 10 pts add to the game?
How about adding pts costs for all Crusade options and letting them be used in regular games? That's way too much bloat for pickup games.
And yet the local HH community manages to play with Militia armies.
I did not say you couldn't play with a bloated codex, it just subtracts from the experience of a pickup game. Could you answer the ether/firestorm question?
Funny that, the militia list is about half the size of the miles upon miles of books common since 8th edition onwards. So you may want to retry. No don't need to, because it's a false equivalent. For one Crusade rules are not realistically implementable as rules / pts basis. For two, one is better sword, and?
For a milita commander you get your choice if you pick a "power weapon". Alas.
Mozzamanx wrote: You potentially lose the modelling flexibility that abstract options provide.
For example, if my guy can take a 'Power Weapon' then I can model it however I like. It could be a sword, axe, spear, claw, whatever. But if I have a list where every one of those has a unique set of rules, suddenly there is an expectation that my guy will be using them even if they're sub-standard.
Classic example would be when Power Axes were made AP2/Unwieldy in 6E, and suddenly became the best option for sergeants while also becoming useless for characters. Every sergeant wanted to pull off their old swords because they were built for aesthetics rather than rules.
A more recent example would be Chaos Accursed Weapons, which have recombined all manner of melee weapons back into a single profile. While I don't think this should encompass Lightning Claws, it is very nice not to arbitrarily throw away half the bits because they are 10% less effective into MEQs.
This is true to an extent.
However, I would argue that the issue is less a matter of reducing abstraction and more a matter of GW dramatically changing how weapons (or other items) perform between editions.
In 3rd-5th, power weapons of all kinds were de facto AP2 and struck at the model's initiative. Then in 6th-7th Axes became mini power-fists (AP2 but no longer striking at initiative), swords dropped to AP3 (striking at initiative but no longer being effective against all armour types), and Mauls became Big Choppas.
Then in 8th things changed yet again. Axes kept their strength but were only AP-2, but also no longer encumbered the model (either in terms of initiative or in terms of the -1 to hit that Power Fists changed to). Swords, previously had been average against armour but now became the best at penetrating armour with AP3. Only Mauls remained more or less as they had been (though even then not quite as AP-1 was vastly better than AP4).
My point is, the issue is not merely that power weapons were split, it's that they are so inconsistent in how they behave between editions. Even after they were given defined roles, GW couldn't manage to stick to those roles, hence axes and swords literally switching which one is the best against armour.
This is what causes the real issues because there's no guarantee that a weapon will behave consistently between editions.
It's the same reason people don't like the change to vehicles and meltaguns. Because weapons that have always been specifically designed to penetrate and destroy vehicles now struggle to reliably wound vehicles and are apparently meant to be used against heavy infantry instead.
I believe Catbarf made a similar point some pages ago regarding units, wherein a great many units have drastically changed in functionality between editions.
On the point about adding/removing options. One thing the rework of 8th (which new 40k is roughly based on) is that new system of weapons and defense went away from certain weapons having niches that they were optional at and being to various degrees less ideal for. Instead it went to a system where it's much easier to have optimal weapons that do most things well and having far fewer niches for weapons to occupy.
Using the old AP and cover system. A weapon like a hot shot las rifle or volley gun was designed to beat MEQs due to their AP3 negating the armor of power armor. The shots plinked off Terminator armor while it was sorta overkill against units with t shirt and cardboard armor but it still bypasses their armor. Put the crap armor models in cover and the AP of the weapon didn't matter because you used the cover save instead. Weapons like flamers that ignored cover and had rather meh AP could slaughter those weak armor infantry while power armored units didn't care that much. The super good AP weapons were usually some combination of high strength / low volume of attacks, risky to use (gets hot), and high points cost which while they could kill most things, were rather cost ineffective against those previously mentioned cheap low armor infantry who used numbers to offset their fragility and cover as their primary means of defense. All of this, while not always the most realistic, created a lot of niches and edge cases were each weapon had a useful place on the battlefield without automatically becoming the default "does it all" weapon. It created both hard and soft counters to various unit stats and defenses. Pile onto that the area of effect weapons which made localized model concentration of an area (and not just how many models at under the template but in the nearby area in case of scatter) play heavily into the effectiveness of a weapon and the decision making that went into target selection.
Post rework weapons, armor, removal of proper area of effect attacks, and the gutting of the cover system makes it so more AP is better because it eats through both armor and cover. It's just weapons that deal multiple damage per wound that end up being overkill against single wound models but even then it's not a total waste if they have a FNP style save. All the edge cases and niches that existed before don't have a place because the math doesn't work out. You end up with a lot of fairly redundant weapons that mostly boil down to killing power for point cost. So having a lot of options might not seem very useful now because the game system was built in a way that made the various combinations of stats differ less.
That's an interesting take. I usually see the opposite take, that 3rd-7th encouraged "does it all weapons" like plasma and autocannons and 8th+ started the introduction of more variety, especially as they expanded the defensive profiles in the game.
edit: re-thinking this the diversification of both weapons and defensive profiles may not have actually occurred until 9th edition
vipoid wrote: It's the same reason people don't like the change to vehicles and meltaguns. Because weapons that have always been specifically designed to penetrate and destroy vehicles now struggle to reliably wound vehicles and are apparently meant to be used against heavy infantry instead.
This keeps being said but I don't think its true.
I feel Meltas are still "meant" to be used against vehicles (as much as anything is meant to be used against anything). They just aren't as effective as they were in 9th. Because in 9th they were incredibly powerful - and therefore a significant reason why vehicles died in seconds. Which is something GW was trying to change in this edition.
Its much like how in 8th Plasma was anti-MEQ but really anti-everything weapon because it was so cheap and easy to stack rerolls. GW has then tried in various ways (including points) to cut it back. This isn't I feel a change through the editions - its "this was too good, so we nerfed it".
A possible answer could be buffing melta strength so you are wounding vehicles on 3s or 4s again - but you cap its damage. But I suspect there would be similar complaints about that.
By contrast I think the power maul/power axe/power sword split was an experiment that failed. Trying to have micro-differences in close combat weapons doesn't work because its hard enough to get into combat. Getting across the table and charging - having potentially faced shooting phases, overwatch, being charged in turn etc - has to do lots of damage. The vagaries of S6 AP-1, S5 AP-2 and S4 AP-3 disappear into that opportunity cost. Have them all be S5 AP-2 - on the grounds that this should be an okay stat line into most 40k unit stat lines. The idea that mauls would be slightly better into T5 6+ Orks but the Sword is better into T3 3+ Eldar (if they didn't have invuls) is sort of meaningless.
I suspect theres no one-size-fits-all conclusion to draw about that, as both perspectives are reasonably accurate and fairly valid. I think it mostly comes down to ones personal preferences and how a given individual believes armor penetration is best abstracted and represented within the context of the setting.
A reasonably lore accurate take of the representation of power armor and terminator armor is that its reasonably immune to the effects of weapons not designed specifically to defeat it. Bolter rounds and lasgun fire for example are typically represented as basically glancing or exploding harmlessly against it, and typically only results in injury if a lucky hit is scored against a weak spot such as a joint between armor plates or an unprotected head, etc. On that basis, yeah I kind of think that the all-or-nothing model of pre-8th is more appropriate than the current modifier system where relatively minor weapons that should be shrugged off easily have a slightly improved chance of penetrating the armor.
But then you have guardsmen with flak armor, which is more often than not just a vest, shoulder pads, and a ballistic helmet - theres a lot of exposed unarmored body to hit, so the all-or-nothing approach never entirely made sense - a lasgun or a shoota fired at the face were saved on a 5+, but a bolter went right through and blew a hole out the other side. For something like this I'd argue that the modifier system makes more sense as it better depicts the varying levels of lethality of weapons vs "lesser" armor.
Personally, in the past I've suggested that armor saves should be represented as two values - the actual save itself and a "shrug" value, with the shrug indicating how many points of AP the armor can negate. A guardsmen in flak armor would be Sv 5+ with a Shrug of 0. A Space Marine in Power Armor would be a Sv 3+ with a Shrug of say 1 - so it would only suffer a -1 against a weapon with AP-2, -2 against AP-3, etc. Terminators might be Sv2+ with a Shrug of 2, which allows them to negate the first 2 points of AP a weapon might have, so an AP-4 weapon like a meltagun puts them down to a 4+ save. It seems a good midway point between the two systems, where certain armors can just negate the AP effects of certain weapons, but still degrade against other weapons. It also helps the situation with vehicles, as adding a shrug value to tank armor allows you to limit the armor penetration ability of small arms. I think for a lot of people it probably doesn't sit right that bhot-shot lasguns degrade a leman russ's armor save just as effectively as an autocannon does, which is otherwise a purpose-built light anti tank weapon. The alternative way of managing the shrug would be to make that your all or nothing threshold and you suffer full degradation beyond that. I.E. Space Marine with Shrug 2 gets its full 3+ save against weapons with AP-1 and AP-2, but gets a 6+ save against Ap-3 and no save against AP-4. Thats a little truer to how the old system used to work, but might be too much of an overreaction to the current system. Either way, that two-part system allows you to configure weapons and armor that have a way more meaningful set of possible interactions and design spaces than what we have now. You can make certain weapons more capable against infantry without consequently making them more lethal against tanks at the very least.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Adding points for options is now "adding bloat"?
My my, how the Overton Window has shifted...
You'd be happy if I brought 3 units of Lokhust Destroyers with:
One with Each time a model in this unit makes an attack, on an unmodified wound roll of 6, add 1 to the Damage characteristic of that attack and When a model in this unit makes an attack, you can re-roll the hit roll. In your Shooting phase, each time this unit is selected to shoot, models in this unit can only target the closest eligible enemy unit. In your Charge phase, each time this unit declares a charge, you can only select the closest enemy unit (excluding AIRCRAFT) as the target of that charge.
A second with Each time you make a Reanimation Protocol roll for this unit, you can change a single dice result to a 6 and This unit cannot perform any actions or psychic actions.
And a third with If an enemy model is destroyed as a result of an attack made with this weapon, until the end of the turn, that model's unit is treated as being at below Half-strength and You cannot use any Stratagems to affect this unit, nor can you use the Command Re-roll Stratagem to affect any dice rolls made for it.
On top of their original rules assuming a paid a fair price? I unfortunately still haven't gotten into Crusade in part because to me this seems like too much even if those 6 changes across 3 units is all your list had from Crusade.
What would giving Heralds of Khorne an option to upgrade their weapons to etherblades for +1AP for 5 pts or firestorm blades for +1S for 10 pts add to the game?
I agree. If something doesn't affect player's decisions during the game one bit, it is pointless bloat and belongs on the chopping block.
But of course in this industry you need such meaningless "content" to fill the superfluous supplements you want your customers to buy.
That's my opinion at the moment as well, although we probably differ on where we each think the cutoff should be. My DoC fandex had 1 trillion builds for each Herald so it's not like I can't change my mind back to what most current posters in the thread say they would prefer 40k to look like.
Wayniac wrote: I mean, what would be WRONG with adding options like that? What's lost by not having them? Variety in list building. What's gained? Options.
Options don't necessarily need to have a physical representation to be good.
The concerns are bogging down pre-game discussions with pointless information, unclear game states as players fail to remember what has what and making balancing the game harder as it's basically impossible to brute force test so many combos and mathing out combos on paper is a hassle. If Crusade options are broken it's not that big a deal, it's expected I'd say and you're expected to tune things down and not bring out the triple Skatachh Wraithknight.
Vankraken wrote: On the point about adding/removing options. One thing the rework of 8th (which new 40k is roughly based on) is that new system of weapons and defense went away from certain weapons having niches that they were optional at and being to various degrees less ideal for. Instead it went to a system where it's much easier to have optimal weapons that do most things well and having far fewer niches for weapons to occupy.
Yes, but it's kind of gamey when an AP3 power sword offers no benefit against a 2+ Sv Terminator and we all know how AP4 tended to be looked down upon because 3+Sv was such a common thing in the game. I'm all for gamey things so I I'd be ambivalent about going back, although I think the best thing would be going back to old cover saves. Factions would probably need some work to make this work I think, the current system is really forgiving towards bad game design I'd say, but if you messed up a faction's old-school AP values then their anti-tank could be real useless depending on the damage tables of the edition.
vict0988 wrote: I don't know how you could convince anyone of anything with this. Why do you and why should I care about whether a Company Commander has 4+ or 5+ when the model isn't different like it is when it has a plasma pistol instead of a las pistol?
What would giving Heralds of Khorne an option to upgrade their weapons to etherblades for +1AP for 5 pts or firestorm blades for +1S for 10 pts add to the game?
Imo this ia all about implementation. The old Guard Doctrines were about Regimental level Upgrades, so you weren't looking at differences between models trying to see who had a 4+ save.
And to your example, are Relics modeled? Is that an Astartes Chainsword or the Teeth of Terra? A Plasma Pistol or a Master Crafted weapon? There are often not any clear visual distinctions within the current system either.
As for Bloodletters upgrading their weapons, those upgrades may synergise with other abilities, interactions with core rules, or specific targets.
Alright this thread has stalled into city mouse/country mouse. The soul people feel there's an extreme limiting of options for terrain, missions, characters and unique army builds. The math crunching, power gamers don't understand why you would want an option that seemingly is only fluffy. Because frankly when they see a large list of wargear they get intimidated with all the number crunching they're going to have to do to be able to sleep at night knowing they squeezed the extra 0.2% efficiency out of their character.
Rihgu wrote: That's an interesting take. I usually see the opposite take, that 3rd-7th encouraged "does it all weapons" like plasma and autocannons and 8th+ started the introduction of more variety, especially as they expanded the defensive profiles in the game.
edit: re-thinking this the diversification of both weapons and defensive profiles may not have actually occurred until 9th edition
I don't think plasma was spammed all that much, sure Guard/Scions used it a fair amount but Space Marines spammed grav because it was basically OP against most things. High strength volume of fire weapons like the autocannon equivalents were useful against vehicles because of glancing hits chipped hull points and vehicles didn't have armor saves so they tended to yield better results than the actual heavy hitting anti tank weapons like Lascannons and Railguns. Melta was the exception due to how cheap and reliable they were at damaging/blowing up vehicles. The "does it all" situation wasn't encouraged by the game mechanics and more to do with GW generally being bad at game balance. Selecting the best weapons for their battlefield role was something that mattered quite a bit when doing things like Tau Crisis Suit loadouts and you didn't just default to spamming Riptides.
As much as I’ve (not entirely unjustifiably) slagged off 3rd-whateverTh vehicle rules?
They were so straight forward, they allowed for evocatively hard weapons and vehicles.
For instance, anything Melta or Lance tended to be well deadly in the right circumstances. But, something like a Monolith outright ignoring those boons made the beneficiary a near meta shifting threat.
And in terms of “well that’s a bit good” and “oh Lawks, I’ve no reliable to knack that monstrosity” the later editions just haven’t quite measured up.
Whether that’s to the benefit or detriment of the game, is one for the individual. I’d argue it remains situational. Certainly despite a significant model based glow-up? The Monolith remains something of a Big Girl’s Blouse. Or indeed if we want to use our Big Words? A sizeable lady’s chemise.
vict0988 wrote: You forgot relics, traits, psychic powers and crusade.
No he did not. Crusade is directly inadequat beeing a special modus and not representative of the basegame and the relics are potentially 6, the traits are 6 however the militia force commander has what 4-5 to himself aswell.
Unit started this particular line of the conversation, and he specifically invoked Crusade- two or three times in his post, I think. If he hadn't, I wouldn't have even responded, and merely continued to lurk. Just because YOU don't want to include Crusade options in the discusion, that doesn't give you the right to move Unit's goal posts for him. If Unit himself wants to modify his original challenge and remove Crusade from the discussion, that's fine... Because without Crusade, Unit is right, and I'll be the first to admit it.
It is worth noting though that named characters can't really engage with Crusade, they can't take relics and their WL traits are assigned. This also interferes with their ability to use requisition strats, as those usually impact the use of relics and WL Traits, so there is some fairness to the post that lists the comparative options- if it ain't a on named character's data slate, they aren't getting it. (With the exception of the 9 Great Game rewards in the in the Daemon dex, though these are so narrative that you don't just earn them, you also have to continue to be worthy of them or they go away).
However, in that comparative list of daemons and their options, any non-named character unit from the 9th list needs to add at least 10 options. For example, the poster lists the Contorted Epitome as having Zero options, but it's got 6 psychic powers to choose from, three Crusade Psychic Fortitudes, 11 Crusade Relics and two Requisition strats in the Daemon dex alone. It will also qualify for most if not all of the Crusade upgrades in the BRB, a handful from each of the campaign settings and a bunch from the four White Dwarf articles that I mention in my post. And virtually every non-named character in that list qualifies for a similar number of options that are not credited in his list.
To be fair to my opposition, there are far, far more dataslate options for units in HH than there are in 9th- I don't need read HH books to know that... It's never been in dispute. But the big mistake that those who prefer previous editions tend to make is confusing Options with Equipment Options. No one is denying that 9th has fewer equipment options, and that 10th has fewer still. What we're saying is that almost every unit in 9th gained 10-30 non-equipment options in 9th, a great many of which did not exist in previous editions of the game, or other versions of it (HH).
There was another post to indicate that the options in HH were more transformative, and they might be- but that isn't what Unit was arguing either, so it wasn't a part of the challenge I was responding to; even if it was, choosing to use one of these armies itself is a transformative change. Other options that exist for players with the same collection of models include simply using allied detachments straight from their dexes, using them to fill up armies of renoun or simply mono-dexing your way through. Non of those provide as many options as the three lists I've selected, which is the challenge I was responding to... but if you want to open it up to transformative change, heck even choosing to play Crusade vs. Matched is a transformative option.
And finally, for many of you who have mentioned the word allies: these three armies (Torchbearers, Army of Faith, and Chaos Undivided) are NOT armies that use allies- all of the units from the combined dexes are a part of the army list. The differences between these two things are significant. Using one of these three armies does limit some of the options that would otherwise be available to subsets of the army built as mono-factions, or mono-subfaction lists.
I think the difficulty with this conversation is that the people difending different and older systems haven't actually explored the three armies I'm talking about even as an intellectual exercise, much less actually tried them out on the table. And to be fair to them, they can say the same thing about me and HH, 7th ed or 6th ed.
The thing about HH, even if the people who prefer it are right about the number of options it includes for the few factions that are a part of the game (which they are if we exclude Crusade), there are so few of these factions that most versions of 40k have more options game wide, just by virtue of having more factions. This is especially true of 9th, where subfactions for each included faction actually make a huge difference.
from the discussion.
And the second someone says "I'm too poor for Forgeworld" or "I only want plastic" which are both valid points of view, HH looks even less attractive.
chaos0xomega wrote: But then you have guardsmen with flak armor, which is more often than not just a vest, shoulder pads, and a ballistic helmet - theres a lot of exposed unarmored body to hit, so the all-or-nothing approach never entirely made sense - a lasgun or a shoota fired at the face were saved on a 5+, but a bolter went right through and blew a hole out the other side. For something like this I'd argue that the modifier system makes more sense as it better depicts the varying levels of lethality of weapons vs "lesser" armor.
Personally, in the past I've suggested that armor saves should be represented as two values - the actual save itself and a "shrug" value, with the shrug indicating how many points of AP the armor can negate. A guardsmen in flak armor would be Sv 5+ with a Shrug of 0. A Space Marine in Power Armor would be a Sv 3+ with a Shrug of say 1 - so it would only suffer a -1 against a weapon with AP-2, -2 against AP-3, etc. Terminators might be Sv2+ with a Shrug of 2, which allows them to negate the first 2 points of AP a weapon might have, so an AP-4 weapon…
For a few games I was able to use a rule suggested on dakka that made this idea of “shrug” compatible with the GW army lists at the time:
Haravikk wrote: 1. Armour Saves are only negated if AP is less than the armour value, if AP is equal it's a -2 penalty to the save, and if the AP is one worse (higher) then it's a -1. This means that AP4 weapons reduce marines to 4+, while AP3 reduces them to 5+, and AP2 or better punches straight through. It makes weapons with an AP value that's close a bit more useful, particularly AP4 weapons which are currently pretty underwhelming thanks to the large amounts of 3+ armour out there.
I think you have enough sense that having both shrugs and pen in a game with >60 models per side is Too Many Numbers. This especially since I think it was just in this thread that a lot of people agreed that three rolls plus a damage value is too many
And some terrible things happened to the actual background and model range due to ap4 being so useless in an all-marine game. The short-range griffon mortar is very true to real life and to the background for infantry support, but it’s almost completely gone from the table and we have the ludicrous situation of earth shakers right there next to their target.
I think HH2's use of the Breaching keyword (plasma guns are AP4, but on a 4+ to wound they're AP2, so they're ignoring your armor some of the time but not all the time) makes for an interesting approach to making armor a little more granular, as well as reducing the amount of AP2 spam available.
While it definitely tones down lethality and overall improves AP granularity, it does little to change the issue that AP was a massive lethality threshold and that put 4+ saves and AP 4 in a very awkward place.
vict0988 wrote: I don't know how you could convince anyone of anything with this. Why do you and why should I care about whether a Company Commander has 4+ or 5+ when the model isn't different like it is when it has a plasma pistol instead of a las pistol?
What would giving Heralds of Khorne an option to upgrade their weapons to etherblades for +1AP for 5 pts or firestorm blades for +1S for 10 pts add to the game?
Imo this ia all about implementation. The old Guard Doctrines were about Regimental level Upgrades, so you weren't looking at differences between models trying to see who had a 4+ save.
And to your example, are Relics modeled? Is that an Astartes Chainsword or the Teeth of Terra? A Plasma Pistol or a Master Crafted weapon? There are often not any clear visual distinctions within the current system either.
As for Bloodletters upgrading their weapons, those upgrades may synergise with other abilities, interactions with core rules, or specific targets.
Relics are very important and few in number, there aren't a dozen of them scattered across an army, so it's not important that they are modelled, but one unit of Lokhust Destroyers having one rule and another unit having a different rule, seems to me like a different thing. Do you think having 15 invisible upgrades and 2 is the same because you already get relics mixed up now and the added mixups coming from more wouldn't be so bad or do you think you could easily remember all 15 invisible upgrades?
Gibblets wrote: Alright this thread has stalled into city mouse/country mouse. The soul people feel there's an extreme limiting of options for terrain, missions, characters and unique army builds. The math crunching, power gamers don't understand why you would want an option that seemingly is only fluffy. Because frankly when they see a large list of wargear they get intimidated with all the number crunching they're going to have to do to be able to sleep at night knowing they squeezed the extra 0.2% efficiency out of their character.
I think I'm failing to see how a 4+ Sv on a Company Commander, +1A on a Chaos Lord or +1S on a Herald of Khorne are fluffy roleplaying things and not just tactical math upgrades. I think it's simple to see how Vanguard Veterans are narratively different from an Assault Squad and it's no wonder if a player prefers one or the other despite math being in favour of the alternative. I'd extend that to Relics and WL traits which I think can have enough rules to provide fluff, but +1A is such a little rule that it doesn't say anything and therefore is bereft of fluff, while something like a bolt pistol that shoots 6 shots with dangerous ammo has a narrative throughline in the rules. I do think the Destroyer upgrades I listed are narrative, I can understand wanting to play with them, it seems kind of cool to have different upsides and downsides to each of 3 different Lokhust Destroyer units as their systems have deteriorated down different paths, but I think those kinds of upgrades should be limited to Titanic and character units because I personally have a bad memory so I'm liable to forget things if the game has too many things going on and I've experienced plenty of players forgetting this or that. I don't think it's actually easy to define how many rules is the right amount, GW just added a unique rule to most of their units, unit upgrades like night vision have been added and removed from different factions across the game.
vict0988 wrote: You forgot relics, traits, psychic powers and crusade.
No he did not. Crusade is directly inadequat beeing a special modus and not representative of the basegame and the relics are potentially 6, the traits are 6 however the militia force commander has what 4-5 to himself aswell.
Unit started this particular line of the conversation, and he specifically invoked Crusade- two or three times in his post, I think. If he hadn't, I wouldn't have even responded, and merely continued to lurk. Just because YOU don't want to include Crusade options in the discusion, that doesn't give you the right to move Unit's goal posts for him. If Unit himself wants to modify his original challenge and remove Crusade from the discussion, that's fine... Because without Crusade, Unit is right, and I'll be the first to admit it.
even with crusade unit is right but that is a whole other debate entirely. Fact is, Crusade is not courrant normal for 40k, and even IF we regard crusade as valid it still get's beat by 30k.
It is worth noting though that named characters can't really engage with Crusade, they can't take relics and their WL traits are assigned. This also interferes with their ability to use requisition strats, as those usually impact the use of relics and WL Traits, so there is some fairness to the post that lists the comparative options- if it ain't a on named character's data slate, they aren't getting it. (With the exception of the 9 Great Game rewards in the in the Daemon dex, though these are so narrative that you don't just earn them, you also have to continue to be worthy of them or they go away).
However, in that comparative list of daemons and their options, any non-named character unit from the 9th list needs to add at least 10 options. For example, the poster lists the Contorted Epitome as having Zero options, but it's got 6 psychic powers to choose from, three Crusade Psychic Fortitudes, 11 Crusade Relics and two Requisition strats in the Daemon dex alone. It will also qualify for most if not all of the Crusade upgrades in the BRB, a handful from each of the campaign settings and a bunch from the four White Dwarf articles that I mention in my post. And virtually every non-named character in that list qualifies for a similar number of options that are not credited in his list.
And? Do i need to get the praetor, consuls or etc. transformative options that are far more far reaching in consequence and they are in the basegame, and are far more plentiful to boot.
To be fair to my opposition, there are far, far more dataslate options for units in HH than there are in 9th- I don't need read HH books to know that... It's never been in dispute. But the big mistake that those who prefer previous editions tend to make is confusing Options with Equipment Options. No one is denying that 9th has fewer equipment options, and that 10th has fewer still. What we're saying is that almost every unit in 9th gained 10-30 non-equipment options in 9th, a great many of which did not exist in previous editions of the game, or other versions of it (HH).
yeah, let's go back and look at the provenance system affects the whole army, what was it, 244 possible ways to form your army for a non niche way. Including equipment, and then theres the fact that these non equipment options you tout are frankly often horrendously lackluster compared to equipment options which change unit types and the whole army. Further they are also including non-equipment and equipment access. So the only thing you got are relics in 40k regardless of if you play crusade or baseline.
There was another post to indicate that the options in HH were more transformative, and they might be- but that isn't what Unit was arguing either, so it wasn't a part of the challenge I was responding to; even if it was, choosing to use one of these armies itself is a transformative change. Other options that exist for players with the same collection of models include simply using allied detachments straight from their dexes, using them to fill up armies of renoun or simply mono-dexing your way through. Non of those provide as many options as the three lists I've selected, which is the challenge I was responding to... but if you want to open it up to transformative change, heck even choosing to play Crusade vs. Matched is a transformative option.
changeing the gamemode is not transformative, it's changing the gamemode. And HH has with the black books better sources for narrative play and campaigns than crusade material due to crusade material being squished into baseline dexes and ammount mostly to as someone described unjustly but still in sentiment apptly, bookkeeping entirely separete from your opponent in a narrative sense.
And finally, for many of you who have mentioned the word allies: these three armies (Torchbearers, Army of Faith, and Chaos Undivided) are NOT armies that use allies- all of the units from the combined dexes are a part of the army list. The differences between these two things are significant. Using one of these three armies does limit some of the options that would otherwise be available to subsets of the army built as mono-factions, or mono-subfaction lists.
i am sorry but these armies reek of an attempt at selling more books by GW more than consideration of balance and lore. And yes whilest it is good that you can field chaos armies as one, one can do the same in HH by merely picking the right consul, and funnily enough via allies that actually can enter into squads , if one picks close enough allies.
I think the difficulty with this conversation is that the people difending different and older systems haven't actually explored the three armies I'm talking about even as an intellectual exercise, much less actually tried them out on the table. And to be fair to them, they can say the same thing about me and HH, 7th ed or 6th ed.
The thing about HH, even if the people who prefer it are right about the number of options it includes for the few factions that are a part of the game (which they are if we exclude Crusade), there are so few of these factions that most versions of 40k have more options game wide, just by virtue of having more factions. This is especially true of 9th, where subfactions for each included faction actually make a huge difference.
Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle, that is what 40k has become, even with crusade. I am sorry but quantity of models by looks doesn't make an enticing game, and mechanically 40k has been so far stripped down, that xenos don't even feel like xeno forces anymore, take a look at DE and poison or morale and or debuff shenanigans they had in the past... I am at a that stage i can represent an Ork list better with the right militia provenances in HH than in 40k, that is where we are at for many xenos factions.
from the discussion.
And the second someone says "I'm too poor for Forgeworld" or "I only want plastic" which are both valid points of view, HH looks even less attractive.
considering some of the newer plastic prices its a GW issue overall. That and the incessant insistence of selling rules in book form and other books often of dubious quality...
"Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle, that is what 40k has become"
Isnt' that exactly what you are advocating for with options that don't impact the game like a 4+ Sv for Company Commanders, those don't add depth. Relics that change the way you play add depth without adding tonnes of width to the game. A trillion builds for each Herald mean nothing if they all do the same thing more or less well. You could probably scrape together 10 really different builds out of that trillion combinations, the rest is only there for the illusion of choosing between a trillion builds the infinite complexity of the Neverborn.
Isn't list building a lot deeper now that units have unique abilities instead of being able to combine axes, maces and swords in a trillion combinations?
I think also the boring terrain layouts that nearly everyone uses because "tournament standard" has helped contribute to the soul being gone. It's all the same layout with ruins being turned 90 degrees sometimes and that also has made list building stagnant I feel since it limits what can maneuver around. WTC or whatever aren't any better just variations on the same 10 L-shaped ruins with footprints style.
That used to be fine for the occasional game if you were doing like Cityfight or something, but every game?
I’ve played 10th more than 9th mostly because it plays so much better. I’m very casual and don’t get to play a lot and all the bloat of ninth just made it pretty much unplayable to me and my mates. 8th wasn’t much better.
10th allows us to get the most out of armies, quickly and easily build lists, develop fun narratives to our games, it’s pretty much ticking all our boxes now and is the most fun I’ve had playing for a long time.
vict0988 wrote: "Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle, that is what 40k has become"
Isnt' that exactly what you are advocating for with options that don't impact the game like a 4+ Sv for Company Commanders, those don't add depth. Relics that change the way you play add depth without adding tonnes of width to the game. A trillion builds for each Herald mean nothing if they all do the same thing more or less well. You could probably scrape together 10 really different builds out of that trillion combinations, the rest is only there for the illusion of choosing between a trillion builds the infinite complexity of the Neverborn.
Isn't list building a lot deeper now that units have unique abilities instead of being able to combine axes, maces and swords in a trillion combinations?
? No?, When was the last time you actually saw an unique regiment on the table of guardsmen? A Mounted company? Admech conscript labour? And unlike 40k the binary SV system with breaching is far more granular aswell.
Au contraire, the bespoke rules spam is far more contraproductive, doubly so because not only have you lost potential options that could've made the unit worth a consideration in a multitude of ways, but also because bespoke rules representing USR-but-not-quite quickly turn it, due to GW's generally shoddy writing capabilities into a haves and haves-not situation.
An exemple on how equipment ties in, Miltia has "cav" units that can scout. They canget multiple weapons, general and special. You can run the unit cheap as a melee unit, you can give it a melta and take advantage of scout and the flanking attack rule tied to it, to get on the field from an advantaged position and blow open a tank. You can run it as a dragoon type unit. You can turn it into "line"- troops, allowing for a full cav army. You can turn it into madmax type of biker horde swinging chainaxes, turning your army even into a potential count as "waaghbika" horde.
I'll retreat from the discussion, because I can't deny or validate anything you say without buying or illegally downloading a game which, for me is utterly worthless due to its exclusion of Xenos and Sisters.
Have fun building fluffy lists with a handful of factions and relying on houserules or "counts as" to play factions that GW couldn't be bothered to include. As I said in a previous post, putting all the fluff into an army by list-building isn't what I'm after so much as creating fluff by playing. I don't know if HH has a progression system or not, but if it doesn't, that's just another thing that makes it inadequate.
Well, also you're fighting in an era whose history is written.
Spoiler alert: enjoy your battles, chaos players. No matter how well you play, your team loses the war.
I mean that's not true because Chaos won the Heresy. Horus himself lost.
The Gods got exactly what they were looking for, a deadish Emperor, millions of mortal servants and a rotting carcas of an Imperium that would net them even more morsels than ever before.
Wayniacs post gave me major warmachine vibes. 40k is on the same competitively induced stagnation track that eventually strangled warmachine. Not good.
I'll retreat from the discussion, because I can't deny or validate anything you say without buying or illegally downloading a game which, for me is utterly worthless due to its exclusion of Xenos and Sisters.
Now that is just not necessery, because fundamentally i think you and i want the same thing, a system which has place for narratives. The issue to me is that the quality on one side is due to better mechanics and baseline list building capacity just at the baseline better. Incidentally that was why 40k had such a mass appeal. I miss doctrine guard, i miss Ork nobs that were not cut-out copies. I miss warbosses with more entires in it's sheet and wasn't being split in a hundred diffrent entires that are all smaller and have less content in it. I miss propper drukhari archons that actually could have a tangible background and toolset coming from the hoverboard gangs, or being a ex biker. All things we just don't get anymore.
Have fun building fluffy lists with a handful of factions and relying on houserules or "counts as" to play factions that GW couldn't be bothered to include. As I said in a previous post, putting all the fluff into an army by list-building isn't what I'm after so much as creating fluff by playing. I don't know if HH has a progression system or not, but if it doesn't, that's just another thing that makes it inadequate.
? Pardon but what? One doesn't discount the other. One facilitates the other just far more.
Well, also you're fighting in an era whose history is written.
Spoiler alert: enjoy your battles, chaos players. No matter how well you play, your team loses the war.
Spoiler alert: enjoy your battles, chaos players. No matter how well you play, your team loses the war.
Aka 'it doest matter'.
For someone who claims to prioritise the narrative, this is an incredibly shortsighted point of view.
Horus heresy is very similar to other historical games - it just happens to be a fictional 'historical' era of a fictional setting- playing hh is no different to folks playing a ww2 era game, a pike and shotte game, a ranks, files and muskets game or whatever.
And Just like these historical games where 'the story is written' for the 'big picture', in the sense that the Germans lost ww2, gauls lost against caesar, and royalists lost to the parliamentarians in the English civil war etc., that is not the whole story. In any of these wars, individuals groups could and did win individual battles all the war up to the final day of their wars. And people enjoy their games bringing these eras to life.
Dismissing hh is akin to dismissing out of hand every historical wargame that's just been rude.
I wouldn't spend to much time arguing against PenitentJake on taht, its not really an argument that was made in good faith to begin with. As you noted, it completely discounts any form of historical wargaming, but also completely ignores the concept of "its the journey, not the destination" that matters.
Gibblets wrote: Alright this thread has stalled into city mouse/country mouse. The soul people feel there's an extreme limiting of options for terrain, missions, characters and unique army builds. The math crunching, power gamers don't understand why you would want an option that seemingly is only fluffy. Because frankly when they see a large list of wargear they get intimidated with all the number crunching they're going to have to do to be able to sleep at night knowing they squeezed the extra 0.2% efficiency out of their character.
"Power gamers intimidated by large list of wargear".
I'm gonna make the observation that wargear in terms of weapons ballooned to an absurd level in comparisson to earlier editions.
4th ed:
9th ed:
So like, the "too many wargear stats" argument doesn't really fly.
I'll also make the argument that individual units were more customizeable in the old days, and re-optimizing your list was often more a matter of managing upgrades. These days the optimization is more about buying a new kit. That's something the Primaris line is particularly guilty of. I wonder if GW looked at those competetive Eldar purchasing habits and said "Let's expand that to the most popular faction so we can crank a huge playerbase around from edition to edition."
vict0988 wrote: I don't know how you could convince anyone of anything with this. Why do you and why should I care about whether a Company Commander has 4+ or 5+ when the model isn't different like it is when it has a plasma pistol instead of a las pistol?
What would giving Heralds of Khorne an option to upgrade their weapons to etherblades for +1AP for 5 pts or firestorm blades for +1S for 10 pts add to the game?
Imo this ia all about implementation. The old Guard Doctrines were about Regimental level Upgrades, so you weren't looking at differences between models trying to see who had a 4+ save.
And to your example, are Relics modeled? Is that an Astartes Chainsword or the Teeth of Terra? A Plasma Pistol or a Master Crafted weapon? There are often not any clear visual distinctions within the current system either.
As for Bloodletters upgrading their weapons, those upgrades may synergise with other abilities, interactions with core rules, or specific targets.
Relics are very important and few in number, there aren't a dozen of them scattered across an army, so it's not important that they are modelled, but one unit of Lokhust Destroyers having one rule and another unit having a different rule, seems to me like a different thing. Do you think having 15 invisible upgrades and 2 is the same because you already get relics mixed up now and the added mixups coming from more wouldn't be so bad or do you think you could easily remember all 15 invisible upgrades?
As opposed to the invisible Stratagems, Warlord Traits and Detatchment variables that are also present? There's plenty of invisible stuff to keep track of in the new game, in addition to greatly expanded list of weapons that are visible.
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Gert wrote: I mean that's not true because Chaos won the Heresy. Horus himself lost.
The Gods got exactly what they were looking for, a deadish Emperor, millions of mortal servants and a rotting carcas of an Imperium that would net them even more morsels than ever before.
The gods might have won, but the Chaos Legions sure didn't.
Yeah, the expansion of weapon types in 9th edition is also largely unnecessary. Its often minor variation for the sake of minor variation instead of just standardizing broad weapon types. It would be like giving an AR-15, M16, M16A1, M16A2, M16A3, M16A4, M4, M4E1, M4A1, M4E2, HK416, G36, and M27 different rules. Sure there might be minor variations in performance between these weapons, but fundamentally at the level of detail we are discussing those differences are insignificant, yet GWs designers have seen fit to try to differentiate them. In the past having a "bolter" or a "heavy bolter" would be encompassing of several different models, patterns, and types of bolters. Now you have a bunch of variations of bolters and heavy bolters with minor differences in range, strength, ap, or damage, etc. even before you account for special ammo types. It seems like 10th is reversing that trend a bit, intercessors or heavy intercessors (forget which, maybe both?) no longer have 3 different variations of bolt rifle/heavy bolt rifle that they can field, and the three profiles have been standardized into one. Likewise hellblasters no longer have 3 different variations of plasma rifle or whatever they were called, now its just a common type.
chaos0xomega wrote:Sure there might be minor variations in performance between these weapons, but fundamentally at the level of detail we are discussing those differences are insignificant, yet GWs designers have seen fit to try to differentiate them.
Insectum7 wrote:There's plenty of invisible stuff to keep track of in the new game, in addition to greatly expanded list of weapons that are visible.
I'm gonna make the observation that wargear in terms of weapons ballooned to an absurd level in comparisson to earlier editions.
Hold on, weren't you both saying how too many options have been reduced 1 page ago, now you're commenting there's too many wargear entries?
Is defining the intercessor bolters differences "too much" but power sword/maul/axe isn't somehow?
there comes a break Off point in regards to equipment. The diffrence between a bolter, heavy bolter and assault bolter are relevant especially in older editions due to further weapon types limitiations.
Same with options of equipment like jetbikes, jumpacks et all. You don't need a diffrence between horse and bike f.e. but certainly between foot, jumppack and Bike.
They greatly fixed the three different guns problem with Intercessors/Heavy Intercessors by giving them Heavy and Assault - an elegant solution that simplifies their use whilst keeping the flavour of all three types of weapons - but left gaps, such as the Gravs Captain with Heavy Bolt Rifle, a gun that doesn't Heavy/Assault. Ditto for the regular Primaris Captain's bolter, which doesn't have Heavy/Assault either. There are still lots of weird bolt-related weapons throughout the Marine book, from Absolver Bolt Pistols, Heavy Bolt Pistols, Instigator Carbines, whatever Reivers have, Incursor guns, Infiltrator guns, the unique bolter in that horrid Company Heroes unit that drives me up the damned wall.
Meanwhile, there's apparently not enough difference to give Combi-Meltas, Combi-Flamers, Combi-Gravs and Combi-Plasmas different rules...
AnomanderRake wrote:I think HH2's use of the Breaching keyword (plasma guns are AP4, but on a 4+ to wound they're AP2, so they're ignoring your armor some of the time but not all the time) makes for an interesting approach to making armor a little more granular, as well as reducing the amount of AP2 spam available.
It's an interesting way to make weapon roles a little more 'fuzzy', but like the keyword that makes a weapon do multiple wounds, it's a special rules fix for a deficiency with a core mechanic.
HH2.0 has a lot of those special rules helping to patch up problems with the core systems. I appreciate them iterating on the game and addressing its issues, but it's a pretty clunky solution.
PenitentJake wrote:Have fun building fluffy lists with a handful of factions and relying on houserules or "counts as" to play factions that GW couldn't be bothered to include. As I said in a previous post, putting all the fluff into an army by list-building isn't what I'm after so much as creating fluff by playing. I don't know if HH has a progression system or not, but if it doesn't, that's just another thing that makes it inadequate.
This is a remarkably bad faith response. You're the one who made the claim about modern 40K offering more options than the 30K Militia list from a position of self-admitted ignorance; why are you throwing a hissy fit because people with experience disagree?
Dudeface wrote:Hold on, weren't you both saying how too many options have been reduced 1 page ago, now you're commenting there's too many wargear entries?
Yes, because giving wider access to the same limited, visually consistent inventory of weapons is a design approach that gives you increased choice and flexibility without increasing cognitive load.
In older editions you can look at a character, see that he has been modeled with a sword, and know that it's a power sword and it does what power swords do. The character could have the option to take a bolter, power fist, bolt pistol, plasma pistol, whatever, and it isn't a problem because these are all coming from the same armory and have the same stats no matter who's carrying them.
In 9th-10th you look at a character, see that he has a sword, and even if that's his only option you're still going to have to look at the datasheet to see how this sword is different from every other sword because GW wants every unit to have bespoke wargear. You can't learn the system because there is no system, and if the unit has multiple options then that just multiplies the complexity.
chaos0xomega wrote:Sure there might be minor variations in performance between these weapons, but fundamentally at the level of detail we are discussing those differences are insignificant, yet GWs designers have seen fit to try to differentiate them.
Insectum7 wrote:There's plenty of invisible stuff to keep track of in the new game, in addition to greatly expanded list of weapons that are visible.
I'm gonna make the observation that wargear in terms of weapons ballooned to an absurd level in comparisson to earlier editions.
Hold on, weren't you both saying how too many options have been reduced 1 page ago, now you're commenting there's too many wargear entries?
Is defining the intercessor bolters differences "too much" but power sword/maul/axe isn't somehow?
That's right. Options for personalizing your units, squads, vehicles have been reduced. What's taken its place is 40 types of bolt weapon. Instead of being able to choose options for the cool HQ model, or upgrade my squads to fit my chosen playstyle, I have new kits to buy. . .
Old style: Command Squad, which can be given (generic/shared) Flamers, Plasmas, Meltas, or any combination. Upgradeable with a generic "skill" from the BRB. Has kit, but also kitbash-able from huge array of interchangeable parts. Weapons and Skills are known by most players because many armies have access to same.
New style: No Command Squad. New flamer marine unit with bespoke flamer weapons, or new plasma unit with bespoke plasma weapons, or new mela unit with bespoke melta weapons. Each variation comes with bespoke, unmutable special rule. Different kit for each. Weapons and abilities more difficult to remember because each is bespoke.
Old version, more permissable options, more ability to personalize, while being easier to remember. New version, less mutable, but also harder to remember. Add strats on top for increased cognitive load and potential for "gotchas".
It's worse than that. There is a new Command Squad, and it's a set 4 models with zero options and they all have completely mismatched wargear.
The models themselves are great, but the unit is perhaps the worst example of NMNR, kit-based limitations and boxed-based restrictions in the entire game.
And if they don't start the battle with a Captain attached... they die.
catbarf wrote: In 9th-10th you look at a character, see that he has a sword, and even if that's his only option you're still going to have to look at the datasheet to see how this sword is different from every other sword because GW wants every unit to have bespoke wargear. You can't learn the system because there is no system, and if the unit has multiple options then that just multiplies the complexity.
I hadn't even considered that. That is bad.
They never should have divorced WS/BS from characteristics to make them part of weapon stats.
H.B.M.C. wrote: It's worse than that. There is a new Command Squad, and it's a set 4 models with zero options and they all have completely mismatched wargear.
The models themselves are great, but the unit is perhaps the worst example of NMNR, kit-based limitations and boxed-based restrictions in the entire game.
And if they don't start the battle with a Captain attached... they die.
catbarf wrote: In 9th-10th you look at a character, see that he has a sword, and even if that's his only option you're still going to have to look at the datasheet to see how this sword is different from every other sword because GW wants every unit to have bespoke wargear. You can't learn the system because there is no system, and if the unit has multiple options then that just multiplies the complexity.
I hadn't even considered that. That is bad.
They never should have divorced WS/BS from characteristics to make them part of weapon stats.
Pros and cons to that one. Mostly, that change feels like an awkward way for them to make heavy weapons and power fists functionally have a -1 to-hit without bumping up against the awkwardness of the to-hit penalty cap. But being able to give certain attacks an expectedly good or bad chance of hitting is an interesting lever to be able to pull. Plus, theoretically you'd be able to more easily set points costs for a weapon option when you know what platform it's going to be on (rather than having to decide whether to price a powersword like it's being held by a sergeants vs being held by a chapter master)... If point costs for wargear were still a thing.
I do mind when two weapons on two different units that look very similar (or are literally the same sculpt) have significant differences in other stats that require me to constantly double-check to make sure I'm not getting them mixed up or forgetting some subtle detail that distinguishes one unit from another.
chaos0xomega wrote: I wouldn't spend to much time arguing against PenitentJake on taht, its not really an argument that was made in good faith to begin with. As you noted, it completely discounts any form of historical wargaming, but also completely ignores the concept of "its the journey, not the destination" that matters.
You are correct sir- I retract those particular statements. Truth is I've just got the Heresy Blues.
I want to look forward to what GW releases- I want to be excited about my hobby. Prior to HH going mainstream and the arrival of Legions Imperialis, a week on Warcom or an issue of White Dwarf used to give me something to be stoked about. But nothing Heresy era will ever be of interest to me, no matter how awesome its rules are. And sure, there are some cool plastic Heresy models that can be used in 40k, but Marines aren't really my thing. I like the Chambers Militant of the Inquisition, so some of those plastic models interest me- I'd take a Spartan for each Chamber... But it's low priority.
So yeah, I am bitter about Heresy, and it is affecting my participation in this thread. If it didn't exclude Sisters and Xenos, I probably wouldn't be barking as loud as I am. I don't doubt it's an excellent game; I don't doubt that it's better than 10th. My most recent comments about the fixed outcomes in Heresy era games are really just an extension of my frustration with the over-exposure of a set of games that have nothing to offer me. If the game included Sisters and Xenos, I certainly wouldn't let the historical nature of the era get in my way. So allow me to put the last nail in the coffin of that argument myself.
As for Not Online!!!'s other responses: yes, I agree, we probably do want the same thing- room for Narrative in our games. And yes, I agree with your second comment as well- a system that let's you express your fluff in the list building stage doesn't prevent, and does actually support, a system that allows you to earn your fluff by playing.
If you took the HH system, let all 40k factions in, and added a Crusade variant with as many tools as the one we've got, might I like that better than 9th ed Crusade? Maybe. But because that has never happened and never will, 9th ed Crusade is the closest I'll ever get. I'm not saying it's objectively better than whatever the rest of you prefer- it's just the best fit for what I am looking for that GW has ever produced.
PS- To add insult to injury: WD 493 contains the first bespoke WD Crusade content of the 10th Edition... And surprising no one, it's for Marines- specifically Tome Keepers. WD 494 will contain not an Index Xenos or an Index Chaotica, but yet another Index Astartes, this time the Raptors.
You know, Space Marines- the guys who came in the starter box, already have their Codex and hence all of their bespoke Crusade content. The guys who had yet another release wave? The guys who have a whole set of Historical games built specifically for them and a limited set of friends?
WD SHOULD BE the life-support system for the rest of us while we wait for our dexes. If I was an editor, I'd release faction specific hold-over content in reverse order of dex releases, allowing the faction with the last dex of the ed to get at least some Crusade content rather than leaving them a mere 3-6 months of playtime before the next fething reset.
I do mind when two weapons on two different units that look very similar (or are literally the same sculpt) have significant differences in other stats that require me to constantly double-check to make sure I'm not getting them mixed up or forgetting some subtle detail that distinguishes one unit from another.
As I understand it, this is intentional. Because a powerfist in the hands of a guardsman should be different than one on a space marine.
The issue isn't the Power Fist on a Guardsmen being different to a Power Fist on a Marine. The issue is Power Fists within the Marine list having different rules depending on who's wielding it.
It also means that we get the inconsistency of some units having organic leaders that have different stats (Nobz, Exarchs), and others that have nothing (Vet Sergeants, Asp Champs), meaning that if you get a squad that can have multiple weapons, that "Sergeant" or "Champion" counts for nothing. Take CSMs, who already lost "Power Fist" as an option, now with generic Heavy Close Combat Weapon, which is the double-handed Chainaxe. You can take two, one on the Champ and one on a regular guy, and if I'm remembering correctly, the Asp Champ gets the same number of attacks as the regular guy as it's one profile for both weapons... and then the power fist gets its own profile in other squads.
Wyldhunt wrote: Pros and cons to that one. Mostly, that change feels like an awkward way for them to make heavy weapons and power fists functionally have a -1 to-hit without bumping up against the awkwardness of the to-hit penalty cap. But being able to give certain attacks an expectedly good or bad chance of hitting is an interesting lever to be able to pull.
Whilst I admit that I am a fan of Heavy being a bonus rather than a penalty as people tend to remember things that help them over things that don't, if it meant shifting WS/BS back to being part of a unit's profile than a weapon's profile, I could live it it going back to being a USR that reduces its To Hit and also did so in a way that cleared the penalty cap.
Wyldhunt wrote: Plus, theoretically you'd be able to more easily set points costs for a weapon option when you know what platform it's going to be on (rather than having to decide whether to price a powersword like it's being held by a sergeants vs being held by a chapter master)... If point costs for wargear were still a thing.
It used to be pretty easy. There were Codices that had two costs for weapons - one for ICs, one for UCs. Why the game has regressed since then I do not know...
PenitentJake wrote: PS- To add insult to injury: WD 493 contains the first bespoke WD Crusade content of the 10th Edition... And surprising no one, it's for Marines- specifically Tome Keepers. WD 494 will contain not an Index Xenos or an Index Chaotica, but yet another Index Astartes, this time the Raptors.
I thought they weren't trying to be Chapter specific in 10th?
I do mind when two weapons on two different units that look very similar (or are literally the same sculpt) have significant differences in other stats that require me to constantly double-check to make sure I'm not getting them mixed up or forgetting some subtle detail that distinguishes one unit from another.
As I understand it, this is intentional. Because a powerfist in the hands of a guardsman should be different than one on a space marine.
Which I get, but it does bog everything down.
H.B.M.C. wrote:The issue isn't the Power Fist on a Guardsmen being different to a Power Fist on a Marine. The issue is Power Fists within the Marine list having different rules depending on who's wielding it.
Simplified and streamlined would be having the minimum number of rules for a thing to work.
Go check out the latest Deathwatch index, updated this week. On the Proteus Killteam datasheet a powerfist can be:
*An actual powerfist (as long as a terminator is holding it)
*A close combat weapon (if a foot vet has anything other than a boltgun)
*A long vigil melee weapon (if you have a boltgun)
*Simultaneously either a close combat weapon or a long vigil melee weapon (if you have a jump pack, one hand holds a CCW, the other a LVMW regardless of whether you modelled any combo of pistols, shield or any melee weapons)
Marines/Guardsmen having standardised profiles (including weapon skill and attacks) and fists having Str x2 / AP -2 / Dam 2 / Unwieldy across the board is objectively better.
And then in the 'Nid Codex, claws, a sword, a talon and a whip are all the same thing.
Most of the time. Sometimes they're different.
Actually I brought this up in 9th, showing that the 9th Tyranid Codex had either 11 or 13 different versions of scything talons, and that it was inconsistent as well (Carnifex had Carnifex Scything Talons, the Screamer Killer had Screamer Killer Scything Talons, and the Thornback had... not Thornback Scything Talons, but also Carnifex Scything Talons).
chaos0xomega wrote: I wouldn't spend to much time arguing against PenitentJake on taht, its not really an argument that was made in good faith to begin with. As you noted, it completely discounts any form of historical wargaming, but also completely ignores the concept of "its the journey, not the destination" that matters.
You are correct sir- I retract those particular statements. Truth is I've just got the Heresy Blues.
I want to look forward to what GW releases- I want to be excited about my hobby. Prior to HH going mainstream and the arrival of Legions Imperialis, a week on Warcom or an issue of White Dwarf used to give me something to be stoked about. But nothing Heresy era will ever be of interest to me, no matter how awesome its rules are. And sure, there are some cool plastic Heresy models that can be used in 40k, but Marines aren't really my thing. I like the Chambers Militant of the Inquisition, so some of those plastic models interest me- I'd take a Spartan for each Chamber... But it's low priority.
So yeah, I am bitter about Heresy, and it is affecting my participation in this thread. If it didn't exclude Sisters and Xenos, I probably wouldn't be barking as loud as I am. I don't doubt it's an excellent game; I don't doubt that it's better than 10th. My most recent comments about the fixed outcomes in Heresy era games are really just an extension of my frustration with the over-exposure of a set of games that have nothing to offer me. If the game included Sisters and Xenos, I certainly wouldn't let the historical nature of the era get in my way. So allow me to put the last nail in the coffin of that argument myself.
As for Not Online!!!'s other responses: yes, I agree, we probably do want the same thing- room for Narrative in our games. And yes, I agree with your second comment as well- a system that let's you express your fluff in the list building stage doesn't prevent, and does actually support, a system that allows you to earn your fluff by playing.
If you took the HH system, let all 40k factions in, and added a Crusade variant with as many tools as the one we've got, might I like that better than 9th ed Crusade? Maybe. But because that has never happened and never will, 9th ed Crusade is the closest I'll ever get. I'm not saying it's objectively better than whatever the rest of you prefer- it's just the best fit for what I am looking for that GW has ever produced.
PS- To add insult to injury: WD 493 contains the first bespoke WD Crusade content of the 10th Edition... And surprising no one, it's for Marines- specifically Tome Keepers. WD 494 will contain not an Index Xenos or an Index Chaotica, but yet another Index Astartes, this time the Raptors.
You know, Space Marines- the guys who came in the starter box, already have their Codex and hence all of their bespoke Crusade content. The guys who had yet another release wave? The guys who have a whole set of Historical games built specifically for them and a limited set of friends?
WD SHOULD BE the life-support system for the rest of us while we wait for our dexes. If I was an editor, I'd release faction specific hold-over content in reverse order of dex releases, allowing the faction with the last dex of the ed to get at least some Crusade content rather than leaving them a mere 3-6 months of playtime before the next fething reset.
Hey, Jake, how are you with "unofficial rules"? Because just like in HH 1.0, we're currently getting "unofficial rules" for factions that are unsupported by gw in 2.0. The Panoptica team has already released an excellent (IMHO) ruleset for Eldar, and more will most likely be on the way. Just saying. Not looking for a fight.
I do mind when two weapons on two different units that look very similar (or are literally the same sculpt) have significant differences in other stats that require me to constantly double-check to make sure I'm not getting them mixed up or forgetting some subtle detail that distinguishes one unit from another.
As I understand it, this is intentional. Because a powerfist in the hands of a guardsman should be different than one on a space marine.
Which I get, but it does bog everything down.
H.B.M.C. wrote:The issue isn't the Power Fist on a Guardsmen being different to a Power Fist on a Marine. The issue is Power Fists within the Marine list having different rules depending on who's wielding it.
Simplified and streamlined would be having the minimum number of rules for a thing to work.
Go check out the latest Deathwatch index, updated this week. On the Proteus Killteam datasheet a powerfist can be:
*An actual powerfist (as long as a terminator is holding it)
*A close combat weapon (if a foot vet has anything other than a boltgun)
*A long vigil melee weapon (if you have a boltgun)
*Simultaneously either a close combat weapon or a long vigil melee weapon (if you have a jump pack, one hand holds a CCW, the other a LVMW regardless of whether you modelled any combo of pistols, shield or any melee weapons)
Marines/Guardsmen having standardised profiles (including weapon skill and attacks) and fists having Str x2 / AP -2 / Dam 2 / Unwieldy across the board is objectively better.
This is a weird argument that seems to be very bad faith?
At this point I'm surprised you aren't saying the power fist could also represent a frag cannon, assault cannon, or cyclone missile launcher. You're just reading options on the data sheet and suggesting, for some reason, that a power fist would be an appropriate bit to represent them, against all logic.
If you took the HH system, let all 40k factions in,
It would only work for some factions given the timeline. marines/chaos marines, demons, imperial guard and mechanicus are already there.
As eldar/dark eldar are effectively immortal most of the named characters were still around in 30K (less so for dark eldar given the way their society works)
We also know orks were definately around but none of the 40K named characters would be.
An odd necron awakening here and there would work as well.
where you run into problems would be
.tau-don't exist
.tyranids-not here yet/ditto for GSC .sisters of battle do not exist, but you do have sisters of silence already filling that role.
.assassins exist but not the inquisition ordos like grey knights
Since HH 1.0 is just a fixed version of 7th ed. you could easily use any of the 3rd-7th ed codexes for necrons, eldar, dark eldar and orks (with some restrictions) in the HH setting without a problem.
I do mind when two weapons on two different units that look very similar (or are literally the same sculpt) have significant differences in other stats that require me to constantly double-check to make sure I'm not getting them mixed up or forgetting some subtle detail that distinguishes one unit from another.
As I understand it, this is intentional. Because a powerfist in the hands of a guardsman should be different than one on a space marine.
Which I get, but it does bog everything down.
But they were different in the era we're comparing to. A powerfist on a Guardsman was S6 and WS3 or 4. A powerfist on a Marine was S8 and WS4 or 5. A powerfist in the hands of a Marine hit more reliably and harder, and was able to inflict Instant Death on heavy infantry.
You just had to remember that a powerfist doubled S and ignored armor at the cost of striking last, and then you could infer how a powerfist works on any platform that could take them. It made sense for the performance of melee weapons to be contingent on the wielder, whereas ranged weapons were more fixed in their capabilities.
The issue is, like HBMC pointed out, you've got the same weapon doing different things on different models, but you also have different weapons all being treated the same on a model, and there's no rhyme or reason to it. You look at the model, you look at the weapons it's armed with, and you know jack gak because that bonesword+lash whip might be a distinct weapon profile (Hive Tyrant, Tyrant Guard) or it might just be a modeling choice with no gameplay significance whatsoever (Tyranid Warriors), and even if it does have a unique profile you don't actually know what it does until you go and check the datasheet.
It's like GW forgot that the whole reason WYSIWYG is a thing is because it's fething confusing when the models don't align to their rules.
H.B.M.C. wrote: And then in the 'Nid Codex, claws, a sword, a talon and a whip are all the same thing.
Most of the time. Sometimes they're different.
Actually I brought this up in 9th, showing that the 9th Tyranid Codex had either 11 or 13 different versions of scything talons, and that it was inconsistent as well (Carnifex had Carnifex Scything Talons, the Screamer Killer had Screamer Killer Scything Talons, and the Thornback had... not Thornback Scything Talons, but also Carnifex Scything Talons).
Well yes, it is Tyranids.
Tyranids have wildly different sizes of creatures, from hormagaunts all the way to Hierophants.
They are pretty much the best example of needing to have considerably different stats for the same kind of weapons because it comes in all possible sizes.
You certainly didn't need separate talons for Warriors, Raveners, Tyrant Guard, Lictors, Carnifexes, Screamer Killers, Hive Tyrants and on and on and on.
You certainly didn't need separate talons for Warriors, Raveners, Tyrant Guard, Lictors, Carnifexes, Screamer Killers, Hive Tyrants and on and on and on.
Tyrant Guard uses the same talons as Warriors, Raveners arguably a point, but Lictor talons are simply much larger than warriors and thus need to be level above. Hierophant Talons also need to be their own thing as they are much larger than even a Hierodule talon. Meanwhile the Hive Tyrant's feet talons are smaller than his monstrous scything talons.
And all that ignores the issue that 10th's design means that WS and A characteristics are on the weapon, and a Trygon definitely has much more attacks than a Carnifex while a Tyrant hits on 2+.
Those are minor differences, especially the Tyrants's claws. They're not worth keeping as entirely separate weapon types. And any variation should be covered by the application of USRs anyway, as that's far simpler and far more consistent.
Moreover, I'm saying that in a world where WS/BS and melee attacks are not part of a weapons profile, but part of the unit's core stats (like it used to be). You don't need a separate weapon for every single creature when you have that, despite the completely unnecessary 13 varieties of Scything Talon we had in 9th.
I don't believe the Lictor's talons are a minor difference considering they are considerably superior by having D2 and AP-2 (over the D1 and AP-1 of Warrior Scything Talons) and are meant to kill multi-wound characters.
And that should go double for the Hierophant that is supposed to be able to kill Titans in melee.
Tyran wrote: I don't believe the Lictor's talons are a minor difference considering they are considerably superior by having D2 and AP-2 (over the D1 and AP-1 of Warrior Scything Talons) and are meant to kill multi-wound characters.
And that should go double for the Hierophant that is supposed to be able to kill Titans in melee.
"Master Crafted/Deadly Scything Talons", where Master Crafted/Deadly is a USR that means +1AP and +1 Damage.
JNAProductions wrote: But why should Carnifexes and Screamer Killers have different Talons?
It was a trick to simplify the steps to determine the number of attacks. Carnifexes made an additional attack for each talon. Scream Killers meanwhile simply had the number of attacks included in their Attack characteristic and thus didn't need the rules for additional attacks on the talons.
Tyran wrote: An USR for a single profile is not an USR.
Who said it would go on a single profile?
It wouldn't even go on the weapon's profile anyway. The weapon's profile would be set - that's the damned point of the profile, to avoid the current mess of inconsistently bespoke and generic weaponry! - but instead be on the unit itself.
And you're the one who said that the Lictor should be extra special in the first place. I'd rather just say that all its weapons are poisonous and therefore Anti-Infantry 2+. *shrugs*
Tyran wrote: An USR for a single profile is not an USR.
Perhaps you didn't understand the exercise then?
The USR gets used all over the place in lieu of a bunch of formerly bespoke weapons. Instead of Bolter Supremus Exterminatus on a few wargear sheets with it's own profile, the weapon is just Master Crafted Bolter using the standard Bolter profile, but with an extra pip of AP and Damage. Instead of Holy Power Sword of Slicing with bespoke stats, it's just Master Crafted Power Sword . . . with an extra pip of AP and Damage. Instead of Special Eldar Exarch Supersword it's a Master Crafted Power Sword with an extra pip of AP and Damage over a standard Power Sword. Instead of Tau Super-Pulse-Blazer it's Master Crafted Pulse Rifle . . . with an extra pip of AP and Damage. Old One Eyes Monstrous Scything Talons becoome not a bespoke set, but Master Crafted Monstrous Scything Talons . . .with an extra pip of AP and Damage.
etc. etc. etc. Instead of making a huge list of bespoke weapons, take a common weapon profile and in such and such cases pump it with a USR that everyone is familiar with because every codex has a few use cases of it.
This was a strength of the setup of earlier editions. Everybody knows what a Power Weapon does, and a term like Daemonic Strength gives a pretty clear indication of what the upgrade is. So Chaos Lord with Daemonic Strength and a Power Weapon is standard Space Marine profile Strength, boosted by +1 for Daemonic Strength, and doing what all Power Weapons did, which was ignore Armor Saves. Opponent sees familiar profile, with familiar weapon, with intuitively understood bonus. Not WTF is a Lictor Talon?!
I do mind when two weapons on two different units that look very similar (or are literally the same sculpt) have significant differences in other stats that require me to constantly double-check to make sure I'm not getting them mixed up or forgetting some subtle detail that distinguishes one unit from another.
As I understand it, this is intentional. Because a powerfist in the hands of a guardsman should be different than one on a space marine.
Which I get, but it does bog everything down.
H.B.M.C. wrote:The issue isn't the Power Fist on a Guardsmen being different to a Power Fist on a Marine. The issue is Power Fists within the Marine list having different rules depending on who's wielding it.
Simplified and streamlined would be having the minimum number of rules for a thing to work.
Go check out the latest Deathwatch index, updated this week. On the Proteus Killteam datasheet a powerfist can be:
*An actual powerfist (as long as a terminator is holding it)
*A close combat weapon (if a foot vet has anything other than a boltgun)
*A long vigil melee weapon (if you have a boltgun)
*Simultaneously either a close combat weapon or a long vigil melee weapon (if you have a jump pack, one hand holds a CCW, the other a LVMW regardless of whether you modelled any combo of pistols, shield or any melee weapons)
Marines/Guardsmen having standardised profiles (including weapon skill and attacks) and fists having Str x2 / AP -2 / Dam 2 / Unwieldy across the board is objectively better.
This is a weird argument that seems to be very bad faith?
At this point I'm surprised you aren't saying the power fist could also represent a frag cannon, assault cannon, or cyclone missile launcher. You're just reading options on the data sheet and suggesting, for some reason, that a power fist would be an appropriate bit to represent them, against all logic.
Rihgu wrote:
Spoiler:
H.B.M.C. wrote: I think he's arguing against that level of abstraction.
Right, right, but it's not an abstraction that exists in the case he's building with the examples presented. A strawman, if you will.
Apologies if I wasn't clear enough - but what point are you trying to make?
Frag cannons, assault cannons and CML's have components and get rules support, while being fairly consistent too. Powerfists have components but don't always get consistent rules and sometimes are not even considered to be powerfists.
The Proteus killteam can include Van Vet models - the kit they come from has a wide variety of bits including fists. All of them are considered at best to be long vigil melee weapons (and their pistols/shields RAW do not exist). This is an abstraction that exists.
It's the same in the Fortis killteam too, all of the Intercessor Sergeant options (normally including a powerfist) are also now condensed into long vigil melee weapons. The same abstraction exists here (the fist is not a fist).
Again - sorry if I wasn't clear, but I personally think that there is too much abstraction going on. One of the stated goals of 10th was to simplify things and I think that in places the abstraction has made things worse; weapon/ballistic skill and attacks are better off on the models statline not the weapons, this would allow you to move all weapon datasheets to an armoury card and for them all to be consistent.
JNAProductions wrote: But why should Carnifexes and Screamer Killers have different Talons?
They didn't for several editions. all a pair of talons did was add +1 attack to the base characteristic of the bug. the type of bug didn't matter.
I don't remember the exact build but one of the classic "elite" carnifexes you could take in 5th ed had to be no more than 115 points. since it was a monsterous creature that ignores armor saves you just gave it a bunch of scything talons to give it extra attacks and a WS boost i don't remember if you could give it the increased armor save or not (extended carapace) within those points limits.
chaos0xomega wrote: I wouldn't spend to much time arguing against PenitentJake on taht, its not really an argument that was made in good faith to begin with. As you noted, it completely discounts any form of historical wargaming, but also completely ignores the concept of "its the journey, not the destination" that matters.
You are correct sir- I retract those particular statements. Truth is I've just got the Heresy Blues.
I want to look forward to what GW releases- I want to be excited about my hobby. Prior to HH going mainstream and the arrival of Legions Imperialis, a week on Warcom or an issue of White Dwarf used to give me something to be stoked about. But nothing Heresy era will ever be of interest to me, no matter how awesome its rules are. And sure, there are some cool plastic Heresy models that can be used in 40k, but Marines aren't really my thing. I like the Chambers Militant of the Inquisition, so some of those plastic models interest me- I'd take a Spartan for each Chamber... But it's low priority.
So yeah, I am bitter about Heresy, and it is affecting my participation in this thread. If it didn't exclude Sisters and Xenos, I probably wouldn't be barking as loud as I am. I don't doubt it's an excellent game; I don't doubt that it's better than 10th. My most recent comments about the fixed outcomes in Heresy era games are really just an extension of my frustration with the over-exposure of a set of games that have nothing to offer me. If the game included Sisters and Xenos, I certainly wouldn't let the historical nature of the era get in my way. So allow me to put the last nail in the coffin of that argument myself.
Maybee you would like to run your SoB as Sisters of silence. They got their own list that can field a full army. Granted a bit low on the armor side of things if you are a lover of tanks but SoS look like fun, if only gw would throw out some more bits necessary to convert but logistics of releases and supply of certain things is just... NoPe atm with gw.
As for Not Online!!!'s other responses: yes, I agree, we probably do want the same thing- room for Narrative in our games. And yes, I agree with your second comment as well- a system that let's you express your fluff in the list building stage doesn't prevent, and does actually support, a system that allows you to earn your fluff by playing.
If you took the HH system, let all 40k factions in, and added a Crusade variant with as many tools as the one we've got, might I like that better than 9th ed Crusade? Maybe. But because that has never happened and never will, 9th ed Crusade is the closest I'll ever get. I'm not saying it's objectively better than whatever the rest of you prefer- it's just the best fit for what I am looking for that GW has ever produced.
PS- To add insult to injury: WD 493 contains the first bespoke WD Crusade content of the 10th Edition... And surprising no one, it's for Marines- specifically Tome Keepers. WD 494 will contain not an Index Xenos or an Index Chaotica, but yet another Index Astartes, this time the Raptors. You know, Space Marines- the guys who came in the starter box, already have their Codex and hence all of their bespoke Crusade content. The guys who had yet another release wave? The guys who have a whole set of Historical games built specifically for them and a limited set of friends?
Marines sell, marines sell even more in 40k than 30k. Though GW has as always not understood why that is the case and refuses to learn, afterall why touch a running system. Sadly that comes with the consequences of chaos playing second fiddle (and also getting more often than not misshandled on a fundamental level but that is another discussion) and xenos ... yeah no.. let's not talk about that.
WD SHOULD BE the life-support system for the rest of us while we wait for our dexes. If I was an editor, I'd release faction specific hold-over content in reverse order of dex releases, allowing the faction with the last dex of the ed to get at least some Crusade content rather than leaving them a mere 3-6 months of playtime before the next fething reset.
GW's release cycle is fethed regardless and it has system. Imagine if GW would update all rules at once in 40k. The real lack of quality some books experience would be laid bare within 1-2 weeks top. And it's not merely rules that are fethed, in HH we are at the stage were we have more of everything else than we have actual troop kits for marines... So basically half the legions can't realistically field an army if they rely on melee tacs as their main building bricks, in a marine centric game...
Then legiones imperialis also get's pushed. ToW is also around the corner. And honestly considering how long out of stock certain products are regardless of system, how artificially stretched out the rules releases already are it's at a point where GW either needs to severly make improvements to their rules distribution and creation and logistics or innevitably make everyone suffer.
Imo, they got a site, clean up their rules and release them there at once, you could even run it as a type of open betatest for rules. But that would sell less books in gw's eyes , including WD's , which from a hobbying perspective also hasn't really improved and turned mostly into further forced rules sales and mere advertisement.
Hey, Jake, how are you with "unofficial rules"? Because just like in HH 1.0, we're currently getting "unofficial rules" for factions that are unsupported by gw in 2.0. The Panoptica team has already released an excellent (IMHO) ruleset for Eldar, and more will most likely be on the way. Just saying. Not looking for a fight.
Thanks for this Gad- I may actually check it out. Drukhari is a strong army for me- I call GSC my secondary, but really, it's kind of a tie between GSC and Drukhari. And I do have a fair bit of Aeldari too.
Since HH 1.0 is just a fixed version of 7th ed. you could easily use any of the 3rd-7th ed codexes for necrons, eldar, dark eldar and orks (with some restrictions) in the HH setting without a problem.
Another decent suggestion- I do have a 7th ed GSC dex.
Maybee you would like to run your SoB as Sisters of silence. They got their own list that can field a full army. Granted a bit low on the armor side of things if you are a lover of tanks but SoS look like fun, if only gw would throw out some more bits necessary to convert but logistics of releases and supply of certain things is just... NoPe atm with gw.
This might actually be the best suggestion- I love SoS, and the Kharon Pattern Acquisitor is one of my favourite vehicles- I've lamented the fact that it doesn't have 40k rules (though I know I could make some up). But playing SoS in 30k would make it worth my while to have one.
Marines sell, marines sell even more in 40k than 30k. Though GW has as always not understood why that is the case and refuses to learn, afterall why touch a running system. Sadly that comes with the consequences of chaos playing second fiddle (and also getting more often than not misshandled on a fundamental level but that is another discussion) and xenos ... yeah no.. let's not talk about that.
Yeah, it's true. Part of me wonders if it's chicken and egg... Like in an edition where a different faction got the kind of attention SM get, would it shift the numbers? I'm not gonna claim it would- I'm just saying it might. The only way we'd know for sure is if GW actually tries it, and I don't think they can afford the risk.
But the Dwarf... That is a thing that could be used to balance the scales. It doesn't prevent the cash cow from dominating the release cycle, it just gives other factions SOMETHING so we aren't feeling constantly neglected. Heck, if I had the time to take a shot at being an "influencer" I'd start a quarterly digital publication myself and call it "Not Marine Magazine." It would include 40k content for everything except Marines, who would not get a single mention over the lifespan of the project... Not because I hate them (I don't), just because they don't really need it.
I think some of the largest divorces in soul via wargear seems to be that a lot of it is segmented out via multiple datagsheets, random rules and consolidated. Which in isolation might not be good or bad per se, but the issue is the player agency element is gone. Even if you knew there was a combination of 7 random items for the best chaos lord, the fact you don't get to make that choice yourself any more and is instead baked in with a singular enhancement to push it in any real direction, removes creative license.
So the end results for the characters ability in game, may he the same now as then possibly, but the fact its chosen for you and there's no "scheming" involved or ability to take weird combos that result in sub-par characters, means some people feel robbed of choices.
Dudeface wrote: I think some of the largest divorces in soul via wargear seems to be that a lot of it is segmented out via multiple datagsheets, random rules and consolidated. Which in isolation might not be good or bad per se, but the issue is the player agency element is gone. Even if you knew there was a combination of 7 random items for the best chaos lord, the fact you don't get to make that choice yourself any more and is instead baked in with a singular enhancement to push it in any real direction, removes creative license.
So the end results for the characters ability in game, may he the same now as then possibly, but the fact its chosen for you and there's no "scheming" involved or ability to take weird combos that result in sub-par characters, means some people feel robbed of choices.
If it were infact 7 sheets, or more realistically foot, terminator, 4 differing Daemonic mounts, bike and jumppack (8) then we may could have a discussion.
As it stands tho, we don't get 6 of those 8 anymore. And that is just the lord.
The USR gets used all over the place in lieu of a bunch of formerly bespoke weapons. Instead of Bolter Supremus Exterminatus on a few wargear sheets with it's own profile, the weapon is just Master Crafted Bolter using the standard Bolter profile, but with an extra pip of AP and Damage. Instead of Holy Power Sword of Slicing with bespoke stats, it's just Master Crafted Power Sword . . . with an extra pip of AP and Damage. Instead of Special Eldar Exarch Supersword it's a Master Crafted Power Sword with an extra pip of AP and Damage over a standard Power Sword. Instead of Tau Super-Pulse-Blazer it's Master Crafted Pulse Rifle . . . with an extra pip of AP and Damage. Old One Eyes Monstrous Scything Talons becoome not a bespoke set, but Master Crafted Monstrous Scything Talons . . .with an extra pip of AP and Damage.
etc. etc. etc. Instead of making a huge list of bespoke weapons, take a common weapon profile and in such and such cases pump it with a USR that everyone is familiar with because every codex has a few use cases of it.
This was a strength of the setup of earlier editions. Everybody knows what a Power Weapon does, and a term like Daemonic Strength gives a pretty clear indication of what the upgrade is. So Chaos Lord with Daemonic Strength and a Power Weapon is standard Space Marine profile Strength, boosted by +1 for Daemonic Strength, and doing what all Power Weapons did, which was ignore Armor Saves. Opponent sees familiar profile, with familiar weapon, with intuitively understood bonus. Not WTF is a Lictor Talon?!
Master-crafted didn't mess with the weapon's stats, it gave rerolls, and I imagine Daemonic Strength gave strength rather than changing weapon stats. More importantly they were mostly used as upgrades rather than inbuilt abilities, and even in the few cases they came as part of the standard profile it was for named characters.
And also I have seen the 7th and HHUSRs lists. They are ridiculous and have many examples of different USRs that do the same thing but slightly different (rending vs breaching, hatred vs zealot, sunder vs armorbane, poison vs fleshbane, reach vs sudden strike, etc). You are simply moving the cognitive load somewhere.
And thematically it makes sense for Space Marine armory to be mostly the same for most models. After all there are only so many ways a bolter can be a bolter. Tyranids though, we don't have standardized sizes and also part of the fun is that Marine players have no idea what our stuff does.
And again a Lictor talon is literally twice the length of a warrior talon, that isn't something you represent with an USR but by simply giving it a profile that matches its size. A heavy bolter is a different profile from a bolter, not just a bolter with the Heavy USR.
Dudeface wrote: I think some of the largest divorces in soul via wargear seems to be that a lot of it is segmented out via multiple datagsheets, random rules and consolidated. Which in isolation might not be good or bad per se, but the issue is the player agency element is gone. Even if you knew there was a combination of 7 random items for the best chaos lord, the fact you don't get to make that choice yourself any more and is instead baked in with a singular enhancement to push it in any real direction, removes creative license.
So the end results for the characters ability in game, may he the same now as then possibly, but the fact its chosen for you and there's no "scheming" involved or ability to take weird combos that result in sub-par characters, means some people feel robbed of choices.
If it were infact 7 sheets, or more realistically foot, terminator, 4 differing Daemonic mounts, bike and jumppack (8) then we may could have a discussion.
As it stands tho, we don't get 6 of those 8 anymore. And that is just the lord.
Oh for sure, some stuff had been lost to the annals of time. I doubt we'd get anyway, likey
Lord
Jump pack
Bike
Daemon mount
Terminator
But never the less, the fact you can't have a long legged mcdaddy lord with 10" or whatever it was strides due to daemon legs and carrying a powerfist and daemon power sword and carrying a telephony homer is more the point. It likely isn't effective in game terms, but the default lord we have now could be representative of the "right" or efficient choice from before.
Dudeface wrote: So the end results for the characters ability in game, may he the same now as then possibly, but the fact its chosen for you and there's no "scheming" involved or ability to take weird combos that result in sub-par characters, means some people feel robbed of choices.
That's just Warlord Traits and Relics though.
I feel robbed of choice when I can't take a Jump Pack on my Chaos Lord anymore. That's a bit more concrete than ever-changing Traits/Relics.
Not being able to take an extra fancy sword is one thing. Losing the option for the sword altogether, or having the profile changed so that a sword and a fist and an axe are all the same thing, that's a problem. And that problem only gets worse when they're the same thing in some units, but separate items in others.
I mean, the Chaos Lord can take two Accursed Weapons, but there's no reason two. Meanwhile the Terminator Chaos Lord can take paired Accursed Weapons and they are different to two Accursed Weapons. And he can get an Exalted Weapon, which can look the same as a Chaos Lord's Accursed Weapon. Chosen can also get paired Accursed Weapons, and Power Fists. Legionnaires can't get Power Fists, but can get a Heavy Melee Weapon (so inventive!) that can just as easily be a giant axe, a power fist, or a 2x4 with a nail stuck through the end. The Aspiring Champ can also take two Accursed Weapons, but not paired Accursed Weapons.
The USR gets used all over the place in lieu of a bunch of formerly bespoke weapons. Instead of Bolter Supremus Exterminatus on a few wargear sheets with it's own profile, the weapon is just Master Crafted Bolter using the standard Bolter profile, but with an extra pip of AP and Damage. Instead of Holy Power Sword of Slicing with bespoke stats, it's just Master Crafted Power Sword . . . with an extra pip of AP and Damage. Instead of Special Eldar Exarch Supersword it's a Master Crafted Power Sword with an extra pip of AP and Damage over a standard Power Sword. Instead of Tau Super-Pulse-Blazer it's Master Crafted Pulse Rifle . . . with an extra pip of AP and Damage. Old One Eyes Monstrous Scything Talons becoome not a bespoke set, but Master Crafted Monstrous Scything Talons . . .with an extra pip of AP and Damage.
etc. etc. etc. Instead of making a huge list of bespoke weapons, take a common weapon profile and in such and such cases pump it with a USR that everyone is familiar with because every codex has a few use cases of it.
This was a strength of the setup of earlier editions. Everybody knows what a Power Weapon does, and a term like Daemonic Strength gives a pretty clear indication of what the upgrade is. So Chaos Lord with Daemonic Strength and a Power Weapon is standard Space Marine profile Strength, boosted by +1 for Daemonic Strength, and doing what all Power Weapons did, which was ignore Armor Saves. Opponent sees familiar profile, with familiar weapon, with intuitively understood bonus. Not WTF is a Lictor Talon?!
Master-crafted didn't mess with the weapon's stats, it gave rerolls,
It's just an example, not a direct lift from 4th.
and I imagine Daemonic Strength gave strength rather than changing weapon stats.
My example assumes unit S is used as the basis for weapons again.
More importantly they were mostly used as upgrades rather than inbuilt abilities, and even in the few cases they came as part of the standard profile it was for named characters.
And also I have seen the 7th and HHUSRs lists. They are ridiculous and have many examples of different USRs that do the same thing but slightly different (rending vs breaching, hatred vs zealot, sunder vs armorbane, poison vs fleshbane, reach vs sudden strike, etc). You are simply moving the cognitive load somewhere.
And thematically it makes sense for Space Marine armory to be mostly the same for most models. After all there are only so many ways a bolter can be a bolter. Tyranids though, we don't have standardized sizes and also part of the fun is that Marine players have no idea what our stuff does.
It's very important to keep a cap on the number of USRs, that's definitely true.
And again a Lictor talon is literally twice the length of a warrior talon, that isn't something you represent with an USR but by simply giving it a profile that matches its size. A heavy bolter is a different profile from a bolter, not just a bolter with the Heavy USR.
If the weapon uses the base strength of the model, you've got the opportunity to make the Scything Talons mich stronger than the Warrior version to begin with. But I don't see any issue with slapping a common USR on it either.
Deciding where the cutoffs in the amount of USRs and their respective use-cases is obviously the part that makes or breaks the system. Implement it well and it can be great. Implement it poorly and you make a mess of things. My argument is that, implemented well, it will be a vast improvement.
Part of the issue is that the strenght isn't the only characteristc, and arguably the less important one.
Although I guess there is an argument Tyranid models could and should also have AP and Damage inbuilt into their model profiles*, but I'm unsure if people would be comfortable with Tyranids having 2 additional model characteristics.
*Assuming of course a pre-10th design. 10th makes it irrelevant as bespoke weaponry is the standard in 10th.
But having an USR directly messing with weapon profile seems an easy way to get out of hand. A lot of weapons in the game are the same weapon downscaled or upscalled and we usually expect those differences to be inbuilt into the profile instead of e.g lasgun and hellguns being the same gun and Tempestus Scions getting Deadly Laser USR to increase the AP.
I mean, really any design paradigm can get out of hand with poor handling. That should be obvious by now.
But assuming what one desires is a reduction in cogitive load and the need to look up everything because everything is bespoke and brings it's own profiles, then a short list of meangful USRs combined with a broad implementation of shared weapon profiles will get you really far.
Just to add, there also used to be special rules for Monstrous Creatures (e.g. their attacks would ignore armour saves because of their sheer size and bulk). This, in addition to their WS and strength stats, meant that the same weapon would perform very differently on them compared with infantry.
Of course that meant that shooty monsters were shooty and still good in melee because MC rules.
That was the reason reason Dakkafexes and Dakkaflyrants tended to dominate the melee versions, there was little downside to taking guns because the important melee rules were baked into the unit rules.
In other words it was such a powerful rule that it was practically impossible to design an internally balanced MC unit around it, which is also why MC rules kept being changed from edition to edition.
Tyran wrote: Of course that meant that shooty monsters were shooty and still good in melee because MC rules.
That was the reason reason Dakkafexes and Dakkaflyrants tended to dominate the melee versions, there was little downside to taking guns because the important melee rules were baked into the unit rules.
In other words it was such a powerful rule that it was practically impossible to design an internally balanced MC unit around it, which is also why MC rules kept being changed from edition to edition.
The MC rules. for CC damage were totally fine. MCs were an issue only because weapons like Lascannons could only inflict single wounds at a time. If any adjustment was needed, it was there.
the instant death rules were IMO lopsided and could have been altered.
Double Toughness in a 10 cap system means anything t6+ can never be one shot.
instead, you could have had 'lethal damage' where the damage table goes to L after the first 2+ (ie T4 vs S5 (5+), S6 (6+), S7 (L) (ie, not poison) inflicts 2 pts of damage on the target. You could even go up incrementally, so S7 against T4 is 2damage, S8 3 damage, etc. By putting it into the table you make it simpler to use.
That gives you a better lethality spread (Strength 3pts or more higher), meaning that only when you get to T8 is it impossible, rather than 6, making it a bit more reasonable.
You could instead have a USR that you apply to weapons individually (more cumbersome) that inflicts additional damage.
^That's a pretty reasonable way to go about it, although that specific implementation would still leave Lascannons at 1 Damage against T 7, which was a pretty common Toughness value iirc.
But it reminds me of the old 2nd ed Save Mod by Strength in CC thing, where S4 was -1, S5 -2 (? or something like that). Which is a mechanic I think back to quite often. It was just a straight bonus rather than the comparative one like you suggested, but just having certain modifiers based on other characteristics, comparative or not, seems like a potentially useful tool in the toolkit.
Yeah there's a couple of ways you could do it - you could just start at the point an attack wounds on a 2+ (so 2pts higher than T), which makes it a bit deadlier for lower T models.
You could also afix a static damage value to a Strength, independent of anything else.
Hellebore wrote: the instant death rules were IMO lopsided and could have been altered.
Double Toughness in a 10 cap system means anything t6+ can never be one shot.
instead, you could have had 'lethal damage' where the damage table goes to L after the first 2+ (ie T4 vs S5 (5+), S6 (6+), S7 (L) (ie, not poison) inflicts 2 pts of damage on the target. You could even go up incrementally, so S7 against T4 is 2damage, S8 3 damage, etc. By putting it into the table you make it simpler to use.
That gives you a better lethality spread (Strength 3pts or more higher), meaning that only when you get to T8 is it impossible, rather than 6, making it a bit more reasonable.
You could instead have a USR that you apply to weapons individually (more cumbersome) that inflicts additional damage.
As i still actively play 5th, i have no problem with the system, sure you cannot one shot a carnifex, but unlike a tank (that is it's equivalence) it can be hurt by small arms. it is a trade off, also instant death is not just from taking wounds from double T weapons. there are many things in the game that can cause it-force weapons, special characters with unique wargear etc.. of course this is also balanced out by the eternal warrior USR available to several special characters and in the case of the 4th ed tyranid codex (the one we use) anything with synapse including some of the bug bugs.
Hell, even just having MCs roll on the Vehicle Damage table would have been enough - it'd still be a bit weird that a T5 multiwound character could walk off a direct hit from a Demolisher Cannon if they rolled well, but at least it'd remove the "I'm you, but better in every conceivable way" thing that MCs were pulling on armored vehicles.
chaos0xomega wrote: To this day I've still never actually seen someone play Crusade, and only know one person irl who has any experience with the format. If not for threads on dakka I'd assume it was not really a successful format.
someone at the local club has mentioned using it for a campaign, seems to be getting a sub zero amount of traction. Have to say I have basically no idea what it is
The problem with Crusade is it's quite a complex and intimidating-looking system if you have no experience with it. Just flick through the Crusade section of any Codex and you'll see it appears like a lot of work and info for questionable improvements to your gaming. That's likely what turns people off.
As far as the general direction this tread has gone in, I agree that tournament play has driven much of what GW has done during 8th-10th. In some ways this is good. Gathering standardised data about army strength is very useful to help balance the game. My problem is GW don't seem to be able to (or want to) interpret the data at all and seem to concentrate far too much on win rate and not enough on other factors like what successful armies look like, what variety there is and how they actually play. I think the ultra standardised approach to tournaments is a massive problem. Randomness is not the great enemy in a tournament setting. The correct amount of randomness is essential in testing the key skills that should be needed in wargaming. I don't know the exact amount of randomness that should be injected but I can tell you it's more than we've had since the ITC/WTC became so prominent.
The problem with crusade, in my own experimenting with it till I quit out of modern 40k altogether, is the fact that it was slapped together without even the barest attempt at establishing some balance control. Units are mostly fine but crusade has worse hero hammer problems than old school warhammer fantasy, we're talking characters getting increased toughness, bull gak 2+/3++/5+++ re rolling statlines on top of wound regeneration each turn. I think I joked here or somewhere else a long time ago when 9th started that it basically turned any marine or toughner character into a bloody primarch by the fifth campaign game. It's just bad. Especially when you look at the unit buffs and it's relatively chill buffs like a 1+ to this stat here or a re-roll here. Meanwhile your random ass marine captain can end up being able to slap Guilliman's cheeks back to Ultramar in a duel.
Oh and almost forgot but Crusade becomes pointless for the opposing player who begins to lose repeatedly. The boons from victory start to cascade fast and if you fall behind in victory ratio it's demoralizing and kind of pointless to keep going.
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Unit1126PLL wrote: My biggest issue with Crusade is it isn't actually a narrative system.
I have played in about 6 crusades so far, and in almost all of them, about three people were making narrative choices, writing narratives after games, and really evolving the story of their characters.
The other twenty were furiously playing games to level up as fast as possible so they could win.
"Why is my Imperial Guard fighting the Space Marines? Why, because it was the only game I could try and my character is only 6XP from the Heroic rank."
Crusade feels like an MMO where the non-narrative "grinding" overwhelms the truly narrative battles. It doubles down on this by playing for progression without a world. My daemons and my buddy's daemons are playing the great game... With themselves. Khorne is winning in his, Slaanesh is winning in mine. He wanted to decouple ours because he didn't like being debuffed - and the rules don't even recommend they should be coupled, so of course he declined my house rule suggestion.
My Imperial guard were sorting and planning logistics on a planet the tau had conquered while the Dark Eldar fought Space Marines to advance their territory in Comorragh - and don't forget it was a Sister of Battle who put that Space Marine chaplain in his Dreadnought after the Blood Angels - wait, sorry, red blood-angel cosplaying Ultramarines - orbitally struck her warlord inquisitor off the table. Don't worry, the Inquisitor was fine though - passed the out of action check, so turns out Space Marine Battle Barge Bombardment Cannons just mean you can get up again.
Actually, maybe it is narrative 40k, in the worst way possible: there's lots of gak going on that makes no sense
I think Crusade's main fault is the brainworms that GW seem to have infected much of the community with, which is the idea that campaign = stuff gets bigger. Heroes get more powerful, units get more and more special, when ultimately this makes zero goddamn sense. You already have the tools at hand to make a character 'better', it's called wargear. Start your commander out with a chainsword, slap a power sword on him later. Guard Squad been through the worst? Replace the unit on the roster with a Veteran squad. etc. People just get it in their heads now, and especially GW at that, that progression means things need to be better and better when it's more the mission structure, scaling of games, or endless spawns that make better sense. Even 8th did campaigns better with Cities of Death missions.
Hellebore wrote: the instant death rules were IMO lopsided and could have been altered.
Double Toughness in a 10 cap system means anything t6+ can never be one shot.
instead, you could have had 'lethal damage' where the damage table goes to L after the first 2+ (ie T4 vs S5 (5+), S6 (6+), S7 (L) (ie, not poison) inflicts 2 pts of damage on the target. You could even go up incrementally, so S7 against T4 is 2damage, S8 3 damage, etc. By putting it into the table you make it simpler to use.
That gives you a better lethality spread (Strength 3pts or more higher), meaning that only when you get to T8 is it impossible, rather than 6, making it a bit more reasonable.
You could instead have a USR that you apply to weapons individually (more cumbersome) that inflicts additional damage.
As i still actively play 5th, i have no problem with the system, sure you cannot one shot a carnifex, but unlike a tank (that is it's equivalence) it can be hurt by small arms. it is a trade off, also instant death is not just from taking wounds from double T weapons. there are many things in the game that can cause it-force weapons, special characters with unique wargear etc.. of course this is also balanced out by the eternal warrior USR available to several special characters and in the case of the 4th ed tyranid codex (the one we use) anything with synapse including some of the bug bugs.
Virtually all tanks in 3rd+ had an AV10 on them somewhere, so S4 small arms could hurt them fine.
The AV system is just a scaled to wound table anyway - 10=6, 11=7, 12=8, 9=13, 10=14, you need a 4+ at those strengths to inflict a glancing blow, and that was all it took to shake a vehicle and stop it doing anything.
And vehicles had no save at all, so they become more vulnerable to small arms.
A S5 heavy bolter needs a 5 to wound a T6 carnifex/hive tyrant, which then gets a 3+ save. A S5 heavy bolter needs a 5 to glance an AV10 vehicle (the equivalent of T6), with no save, or if it rolls a 6 it can instant kill it. I don't see the immunity to small arms you claim, in fact I see the reverse.
The whole vehicle/MC system in 3rd ed was IMO one of the worst aspects of the rules, apart from the inability to balance AP correctly (unless you make a game where all armies are 3+ saves and nerf AP3+ into the ground ala HH...).
I agree with the progression for progressions sake feeling. It's not just GW making units/characters "more" it's that they do degenerate into MOAAAAARRRRRR
8th cities of death was prob one of the better systems GW has done recently.
Vankraken wrote: On the point about adding/removing options. One thing the rework of 8th (which new 40k is roughly based on) is that new system of weapons and defense went away from certain weapons having niches that they were optional at and being to various degrees less ideal for. Instead it went to a system where it's much easier to have optimal weapons that do most things well and having far fewer niches for weapons to occupy.
Using the old AP and cover system. A weapon like a hot shot las rifle or volley gun was designed to beat MEQs due to their AP3 negating the armor of power armor. The shots plinked off Terminator armor while it was sorta overkill against units with t shirt and cardboard armor but it still bypasses their armor. Put the crap armor models in cover and the AP of the weapon didn't matter because you used the cover save instead. Weapons like flamers that ignored cover and had rather meh AP could slaughter those weak armor infantry while power armored units didn't care that much. The super good AP weapons were usually some combination of high strength / low volume of attacks, risky to use (gets hot), and high points cost which while they could kill most things, were rather cost ineffective against those previously mentioned cheap low armor infantry who used numbers to offset their fragility and cover as their primary means of defense. All of this, while not always the most realistic, created a lot of niches and edge cases were each weapon had a useful place on the battlefield without automatically becoming the default "does it all" weapon. It created both hard and soft counters to various unit stats and defenses. Pile onto that the area of effect weapons which made localized model concentration of an area (and not just how many models at under the template but in the nearby area in case of scatter) play heavily into the effectiveness of a weapon and the decision making that went into target selection.
Post rework weapons, armor, removal of proper area of effect attacks, and the gutting of the cover system makes it so more AP is better because it eats through both armor and cover. It's just weapons that deal multiple damage per wound that end up being overkill against single wound models but even then it's not a total waste if they have a FNP style save. All the edge cases and niches that existed before don't have a place because the math doesn't work out. You end up with a lot of fairly redundant weapons that mostly boil down to killing power for point cost. So having a lot of options might not seem very useful now because the game system was built in a way that made the various combinations of stats differ less.
This sums up a lot of my thoughts on how weapons perform now and I can't throw enough exalts at it. Before 8th edition my Dark Angels were focused on using a mixture of plasma or grav because they had pretty significantly different purposes because plasma just went plink plink plink against vehicles while grav would murderize vehicles at a distance a bit further than meltaguns. Even then on infantry or other units there's a serious consideration to maybe use lascannons or grav cannons for anti vehicle or anti heavy infantry work, while plasma cannons are basically a poor man's mortar. Come nuhammer, plasma just is the objective best option, and you've given auras, strats, etc to effectively negate any lack of reliability wholesale. Grav becomes utter garbage, meltaguns range from unreliable to hideously overcompensated depending on FAQ/edition, and lascannons collect dust.
Hellebore wrote: the instant death rules were IMO lopsided and could have been altered.
Double Toughness in a 10 cap system means anything t6+ can never be one shot.
instead, you could have had 'lethal damage' where the damage table goes to L after the first 2+ (ie T4 vs S5 (5+), S6 (6+), S7 (L) (ie, not poison) inflicts 2 pts of damage on the target. You could even go up incrementally, so S7 against T4 is 2damage, S8 3 damage, etc. By putting it into the table you make it simpler to use.
That gives you a better lethality spread (Strength 3pts or more higher), meaning that only when you get to T8 is it impossible, rather than 6, making it a bit more reasonable.
You could instead have a USR that you apply to weapons individually (more cumbersome) that inflicts additional damage.
As i still actively play 5th, i have no problem with the system, sure you cannot one shot a carnifex, but unlike a tank (that is it's equivalence) it can be hurt by small arms. it is a trade off, also instant death is not just from taking wounds from double T weapons. there are many things in the game that can cause it-force weapons, special characters with unique wargear etc.. of course this is also balanced out by the eternal warrior USR available to several special characters and in the case of the 4th ed tyranid codex (the one we use) anything with synapse including some of the bug bugs.
Virtually all tanks in 3rd+ had an AV10 on them somewhere, so S4 small arms could hurt them fine.
The AV system is just a scaled to wound table anyway - 10=6, 11=7, 12=8, 9=13, 10=14, you need a 4+ at those strengths to inflict a glancing blow, and that was all it took to shake a vehicle and stop it doing anything.
And vehicles had no save at all, so they become more vulnerable to small arms.
A S5 heavy bolter needs a 5 to wound a T6 carnifex/hive tyrant, which then gets a 3+ save. A S5 heavy bolter needs a 5 to glance an AV10 vehicle (the equivalent of T6), with no save, or if it rolls a 6 it can instant kill it. I don't see the immunity to small arms you claim, in fact I see the reverse.
The whole vehicle/MC system in 3rd ed was IMO one of the worst aspects of the rules, apart from the inability to balance AP correctly (unless you make a game where all armies are 3+ saves and nerf AP3+ into the ground ala HH...).
Ah i see you miss the entire point of a strategic war game. earlier editions had loads of trade offs where what you did on the table matters as much if not more than just your army build. yes like real world armor many vehicles in 40K have weaker rear or side armor. but to reliably hurt then you need AT weapons. if you use good maneuver and terrain it is possible to get to those armor facing and exploit them, we call that good tactical play. MC could be hurt by small arms from any direction not just from the rear and while you could not "disable" them through cumulative damage this was made up by the fact they had on average 4-6 wounds generally at T6 with a few exceptions like wraith lords with only 3 wounds at T8 with no invulnerable save, so any high strength good AP anti-tank weapon could smoke them. i also find it funny you consider a heavy bolter "small arms" it is a 99mm rocket propelled grenade with a APHE warhead. good against light vehicles and mowing down light/medium infantry. it is also a a heavy weapon so to move it in to place it has to be on a stable platform or you have to snap fire it if the infantry moved with it.
Vehicles also had ways to negate stunned/shaken. eldar had spirit stones, marines had machine spirits, chaos used demonic possession and so on, additionally our group uses the snap fire rules so even stunned vehicles can participate with snap fire on a 6+ specifically to make vehicles somewhat useful in that state. unless they wanted to ram of course, very few vehicles could not take an extra armor equivalent that kept them mobile, save an actual immobilized result.
Additionally everybody has hard saves including vehicles-hard cover saves (once again using tactics terrain and maneuver) and in some cases built in invulnerable saves like contemptor dreadnoughts (5+/6+)
Your comparison also fails to realize the same guns dedicated to killing tanks are the same guns dedicated to killing monsterous creatures all of which are AP1 or 2 meaning outside cover the MCs don't get any kind of save either. the linear comparison is also different-general T6 MC-wounded by las cannon 2+, melta of any kind 2+, plasma 3+(well except weak tau plasma), railgun 2+ etc...
so the field is balanced. even more so since even S3 las guns can wound a T6 creature on a wound roll of a 6+ where as they cannot hurt AV 10 at all.
Remember i still play the game (core 5th ed) regularly, got in 2 games last weekend and watched a 3rd, the system works fine without the need to fiddle with instant death..
I might also add it is nice with only 2 kinds of wounds in the game-causes a wound/causes instant death. and there is only 3 pieces of special wargear used by characters across the entire game that can ever negate an invulnerable save. much better than were they have gone with-wounds, devestating wounds, sustained wounds, mortal wounds etc...
It sounds all nice what you say but in the end(6th/7th edition) you just took scatter lasers/ assault cannons/ auto cannons/ plasma guns that were good against every target. 8th introduced a much higher range of useful weapons because of the improved AP system and the damage stat.
Also I think invuln saves had been multiplying like rabbits by then. I just wouldn't take 6th or 7th as an indication of failure of many of the core rules at that point.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: It sounds all nice what you say but in the end(6th/7th edition) you just took scatter lasers/ assault cannons/ auto cannons/ plasma guns that were good against every target. 8th introduced a much higher range of useful weapons because of the improved AP system and the damage stat.
The hull point system was idiotic and punished vehicles with a double damage system. there were a few good things that came out or should i say came back in 6th and 7th. overwatch, snap fire and grenade throwing, aside from that it was not an improvement over 5th edition.
8th introduced a more abstract system.
5th "introduced" weapons to do a specific job because it was based on a tactical wargame where you brought the right weapon to the right fight. surprisingly AT weapons designed to destroy armor or MCs were actually good at that job, killing hordes of light infantry not so much.
It is also why 5th ed is still considered the best of the 3rd-7th ed core rule sets even with its few well known flaws like wound allocation.
Not that AT weapons WERE any good at killing MCs, except en mass, as was previously discussed...
And I would say that 4th ed was the better edition as it was the only time GW was brave enough to use a superior line of sight system to their idiotic 'look from the eyes of your static model standing on a rock shouting while he's supposed to be hiding in a forest' method...
Sgt. Cortez wrote: It sounds all nice what you say but in the end(6th/7th edition) you just took scatter lasers/ assault cannons/ auto cannons/ plasma guns that were good against every target. 8th introduced a much higher range of useful weapons because of the improved AP system and the damage stat.
The hull point system was idiotic and punished vehicles with a double damage system. there were a few good things that came out or should i say came back in 6th and 7th. overwatch, snap fire and grenade throwing, aside from that it was not an improvement over 5th edition.
8th introduced a more abstract system.
5th "introduced" weapons to do a specific job because it was based on a tactical wargame where you brought the right weapon to the right fight. surprisingly AT weapons designed to destroy armor or MCs were actually good at that job, killing hordes of light infantry not so much.
It is also why 5th ed is still considered the best of the 3rd-7th ed core rule sets even with its few well known flaws like wound allocation.
Not really. Everything was good at killing hordes due to the bad ap system, so weapons like the heavy bolter were basically useless, your Bolter killed guardsmen and Boyz good enough. And Plasma killed everything good enough, you didn't need an AP4 weapon that would plink from a 3+ armour that was worn by most infantry units in the game. It also led to strange situations where a lascannon would autowound a tank but needed a 2+ to wound a grot. Said lascannon also did nothing against monsters, or characters with Toughness 5 or better(yes, in 5th these weren't that common because of the unintuitive 4(5) ruling, but usually these chars would have at least a 4++, and then you also had eternal warrior).
Effectively there were no anti-MC weapons, you'd just drown these in shots or take your plasma, that, as said, worked against everything decently enough.
Compared to that the new system has more variance, it just suffers from the dumb points system in 10th and GW giving too many things damage 2.
Tyran wrote: Of course that meant that shooty monsters were shooty and still good in melee because MC rules.
That was the reason reason Dakkafexes and Dakkaflyrants tended to dominate the melee versions, there was little downside to taking guns because the important melee rules were baked into the unit rules.
I mean, I would argue it makes sense for MCs to still be good in melee.
e.g. a Carnifex is supposed to be a living battering ram. It's supposed to be strong and powerful enough to ram and destroy vehicles and fortifications. Thus, it's a little strange for it to get stuck in a slap-fight with random infantry.
I would argue, too, that (at least in my experience) loadouts have varied quite significantly between editions. I saw an awful lot of Hive Tyrants and Carnifexes that had a mix of melee and ranged weapons. Especially since Devourers/Deathspitters have not been especially impressive in many editions (even the MC versions).
Point being, while it might require a bit of tweaking, I think it's definitely a rule you can work with without making balancing MCs impossible.
Insectum7 wrote: The MC rules. for CC damage were totally fine. MCs were an issue only because weapons like Lascannons could only inflict single wounds at a time. If any adjustment was needed, it was there.
Honestly, I don't think damage was an issue until we saw the rise of units that by all rights should have been vehicles, but which were instead given MC status for extra protection (Riptides and Dreadknights being the biggest offenders)..
Whilst they could (usually) only take 1 damage at a time, MCs rarely had more than 4 wounds (some had as few as 2!). Moreover, few had invulnerable saves and those that did tended to cap out at 5++ (I think a Tzeentch Daemon Prince was one of the very few that could have a 4++). 2+ saves were also very rare, meaning they were vulnerable to AP3 weapons, and also that they could still be ground down by autocannons, poison or other such.
It was only in late-5th/early-6th that we started to see MCs with 2+ saves and 4++ saves (either innately or easily upgradeable with abilities/psychic powers etc.). These were what really broke the MC rules as they ended up being simply too durable, relative to their point costs. Doubly so when compared with vehicles (which, as noted above, had become drastically more vulnerable to damage.
Effectively there were no anti-MC weapons, you'd just drown these in shots or take your plasma, that, as said, worked against everything decently enough.
I'd say the closest thing to anti-MC weapons would be Force weapons. Outside of the Daemons codex*, very few MCs had Eternal Warrior (most relied on being T6+). And few even had invulnerable saves. Thus, they were highly susceptible to Force Weapons.
*which was really stupid because it meant the weapons used by GKs specifically to kill Daemons were all but worthless against actual Daemons.
Before the proliferation of Sv 2+ on MC, I remember relying on Rokkits and Missiles to take them down. Which also weren't as effective against vehicles (pre-HP) since they didn't receive any modifier to the damage table.
Hellebore wrote: Not that AT weapons WERE any good at killing MCs, except en mass, as was previously discussed...
And I would say that 4th ed was the better edition as it was the only time GW was brave enough to use a superior line of sight system to their idiotic 'look from the eyes of your static model standing on a rock shouting while he's supposed to be hiding in a forest' method...
I would generally agree. 4th and 5th had a lot in common, but there were certain things about 4th that were better and certain things about 5th I would port into 4th if I could. LIkewise certain things from subsequent editions that I would bring back into 4th to improve it, but 4th probably had the best "bones" of any edition out there in terms of core gameplay mechanics.
I mean, I would argue it makes sense for MCs to still be good in melee.
e.g. a Carnifex is supposed to be a living battering ram. It's supposed to be strong and powerful enough to ram and destroy vehicles and fortifications. Thus, it's a little strange for it to get stuck in a slap-fight with random infantry.
I would argue, too, that (at least in my experience) loadouts have varied quite significantly between editions. I saw an awful lot of Hive Tyrants and Carnifexes that had a mix of melee and ranged weapons. Especially since Devourers/Deathspitters have not been especially impressive in many editions (even the MC versions).
Point being, while it might require a bit of tweaking, I think it's definitely a rule you can work with without making balancing MCs impossible.
Have you seen a dakkafex model? Its bulk* means it should be able to crush light infantry, but it shouldn't be ignoring Terminator armor or crushing heavy tanks, not without a dedicated melee weapon.
*And it probably would be better represented by giving MCs a tank shock instead of inbuilt ignoring armor and armourbane.
As for loadouts, I didn't start seeing melee Carnifexes until 8th. 4th was kinda (in)famous for dakkafexes and gun-fexes.
The problem with crusade, in my own experimenting with it till I quit out of modern 40k altogether, is the fact that it was slapped together without even the barest attempt at establishing some balance control.
Crusade is not meant to have balance as its priority- the is the entire reason why matched play existed as an ALTERNATIVE to Crusade. If you make balance the priority for all three play modes, you don't actually have three play modes.
Units are mostly fine but crusade has worse hero hammer problems than old school warhammer fantasy, we're talking characters getting increased toughness, bull gak 2+/3++/5+++ re rolling statlines on top of wound regeneration each turn. I think I joked here or somewhere else a long time ago when 9th started that it basically turned any marine or toughner character into a bloody primarch by the fifth campaign game. It's just bad. Especially when you look at the unit buffs and it's relatively chill buffs like a 1+ to this stat here or a re-roll here. Meanwhile your random ass marine captain can end up being able to slap Guilliman's cheeks back to Ultramar in a duel.
There are several things in this quote that indicate you're either exaggerating or mistaken.
1/ You get XP (and therefore battle honours) by achieving Agendas. If your character is trying to get those upgrades, he's not really being killy because he has to focus on Agendas to get the upgrades.
2/ If you give all your upgrades to one unit to power level it, it becomes a bullet magnet, and once it's down, the rest of your army is green easy pickins. Many would say it's better to have 5 units with one upgrade each than one with five.
3/ Being a bullet magnet also makes it more likely you get removed from the game early (and don't complete agendas), and you're more likely to suffer battlescars. And I should note here how much more substantial battlescars are in 10th- WAY more impactful and WAY harder to avoid or get rid of.
4/ Playing with a GM is one way to ensure that "Marked for Greatness" XP actually go to a unit that desrves it, not the unit a powetrgamer most wants to level.
Oh and almost forgot but Crusade becomes pointless for the opposing player who begins to lose repeatedly. The boons from victory start to cascade fast and if you fall behind in victory ratio it's demoralizing and kind of pointless to keep going.
You don't get XP by winning.
I'm going to say this again for the cheap seats because no one ever seems to remember it:
YOU DON'T GET XP FOR WINNING!
In fact, pusuing maximum Agenda completion will often cause you to lose.
Also: 10th's Crusade Blessings are a better balancing mechanism for high-Crusade point armies than the 9th ed system.
Crusade feels like an MMO where the non-narrative "grinding" overwhelms the truly narrative battles.
Just like MMO's only feel that way when you play them that way, Crusade only is that way when you play it that way. Just as this is not the MMO's fault, it is not Crusade's fault either.
I think Crusade's main fault is the brainworms that GW seem to have infected much of the community with, which is the idea that campaign = stuff gets bigger. Heroes get more powerful, units get more and more special, when ultimately this makes zero goddamn sense.
GW didn't put that brainworm there- TSR did with D&D in the 70's, and the overwhelmingly vast majority of RPGs since have followed suit- all susequent versions of D&D, all the White Wolf Storyteller series in all of their editions, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, Legend of the Five Rings, GURPS, Deadlands, Kult, Star Wars, Pathfinder... Pretty much all of them. Traveller had no progression system, and someone threw out Paranoia too. There may have been one or two others. Point is, progression was associated with narrative gaming before GW produce it's first game, and progression will continue to be associated with narrative gaming for a very long time because it makes sense to the vast majority of people playing those games, regardless of whether or not YOU think it makes sense.
What GW did was BRING that element to their wargame. Like "Hey, I betcha people who like D&D and White Wolf Games would like Warhammer more if we added a progression system to our games." And surprise, they were right!
Now people who are wargame purists, who don't really like RPGs, don't like the effect that this element has on their Wargame- and that's fine. Those people aren't forced to play Crusade.
Regarding whether or not progression makes sense:
Why do you go to high school before university if progression doesn't make sense? Is it possible to bench 200 lbs before you can bench 40? Can a yellow belt take a black belt in a fight? Do I have more seniority than my coworkers on the first day of my new job? Funny, it kinda seems like living in the post industrial age is kinda built on progression systems, eh?
Now look, I get it: Wargamer wants to build a list and think "Yeah, my tactical squad are veterans of a 100 battles by the time I build my list." That's not the story that Crusade's system was designed to reflect. If that's the story you want to tell, pitch it to your GM. Most armies have a requisition that allows a unit to be added to the roster with XP already on their profile.
The problem with crusade, in my own experimenting with it till I quit out of modern 40k altogether, is the fact that it was slapped together without even the barest attempt at establishing some balance control.
Crusade is not meant to have balance as its priority- the is the entire reason why matched play existed as an ALTERNATIVE to Crusade. If you make balance the priority for all three play modes, you don't actually have three play modes.
Yes you do, because the issue is the approach of the formats, not that all need to be balance. Ridiculous combinations still need to be sorted out to ensure you can't just sweep over the match. Matched play exists for peer to peer armies yes, but for narrative there's still a need for balance - the narrative comes from scenarios, not the idea that any semblance of balance can be thrown out.
There are several things in this quote that indicate you're either exaggerating or mistaken.
1/ You get XP (and therefore battle honours) by achieving Agendas. If your character is trying to get those upgrades, he's not really being killy because he has to focus on Agendas to get the upgrades.
2/ If you give all your upgrades to one unit to power level it, it becomes a bullet magnet, and once it's down, the rest of your army is green easy pickins. Many would say it's better to have 5 units with one upgrade each than one with five.
3/ Being a bullet magnet also makes it more likely you get removed from the game early (and don't complete agendas), and you're more likely to suffer battlescars. And I should note here how much more substantial battlescars are in 10th- WAY more impactful and WAY harder to avoid or get rid of.
4/ Playing with a GM is one way to ensure that "Marked for Greatness" XP actually go to a unit that desrves it, not the unit a powetrgamer most wants to level.
You would be correct were it not for that you can easily complete agendas by killing the enemy which becomes further achievable with upgrades increasing the performance of powerful lists. Or the idea that somehow the rest of the army is vulnerable because you put all of the points into a character - a list of killer marines or eldar is still that. Moreover I'd honestly wish anyone good luck killing the monsters I had come out of a couple crusade attempts with friends during 9th's launch, a deathwing character buddied up with a protective, already seriously durable squad is a bloody nightmare.
You don't get XP by winning.
I'm going to say this again for the cheap seats because no one ever seems to remember it:
YOU DON'T GET XP FOR WINNING!
In fact, pusuing maximum Agenda completion will often cause you to lose.
Also: 10th's Crusade Blessings are a better balancing mechanism for high-Crusade point armies than the 9th ed system.
This feels to again, purposefully focus on the fact that maybe in a vacuum agendas don't equate to victory but in reality it's hard to score anything than the basic xp you get on defeat once one party is able to establish reliable dominance. Complete these agendas... while also trying to not get shot or punched off the board by the enemy who are now even deadlier than in the first two games.
GW didn't put that brainworm there- TSR did with D&D in the 70's, and the overwhelmingly vast majority of RPGs since have followed suit- all susequent versions of D&D, all the White Wolf Storyteller series in all of their editions, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, Legend of the Five Rings, GURPS, Deadlands, Kult, Star Wars, Pathfinder... Pretty much all of them. Traveller had no progression system, and someone threw out Paranoia too. There may have been one or two others. Point is, progression was associated with narrative gaming before GW produce it's first game, and progression will continue to be associated with narrative gaming for a very long time because it makes sense to the vast majority of people playing those games, regardless of whether or not YOU think it makes sense.
What GW did was BRING that element to their wargame. Like "Hey, I betcha people who like D&D and White Wolf Games would like Warhammer more if we added a progression system to our games." And surprise, they were right!
Now people who are wargame purists, who don't really like RPGs, don't like the effect that this element has on their Wargame- and that's fine. Those people aren't forced to play Crusade.
Regarding whether or not progression makes sense:
Why do you go to high school before university if progression doesn't make sense? Is it possible to bench 200 lbs before you can bench 40? Can a yellow belt take a black belt in a fight? Do I have more seniority than my coworkers on the first day of my new job? Funny, it kinda seems like living in the post industrial age is kinda built on progression systems, eh?
Now look, I get it: Wargamer wants to build a list and think "Yeah, my tactical squad are veterans of a 100 battles by the time I build my list." That's not the story that Crusade's system was designed to reflect. If that's the story you want to tell, pitch it to your GM. Most armies have a requisition that allows a unit to be added to the roster with XP already on their profile.
No you're not applying common sense. It doesn't matter if the squad has X or Y experience, they have their stats because their stats are made on a d6 system where the leap from WS 3+ to WS 2+ is massive in its abstraction, which is why 40k as an adaption of a d100 Reaper system introduced various things such as toughness to try to account for this total lack of granularity. Upgrades don't work with 40k outside of just outright 'upgrading' to a new unit because the system falls apart very quickly when you start handing out buffs. RPG's have their systems of advancement not because progression is associated with increasing power, but because their systems are based on 3d6, 1d100, d10's, etc which are able to accommodate progression in the first place. The kind of upgrades 40k experiences under Crusade is, in D&D analogy akin to leaping from level 1 to level 8 or so out the gate in such an example of a doubled attack stat on a marine squad. And that's without considering situational buffs so in reality that squad or that tank is actually now possessing a BS of 1+ because of potential auras, spells, or stats getting taken into account. What seems harmless swiftly can turn into a snowball that buries another player. Not terribly surprising campaigns so often just fizzle out in 40k.
The RPG comparison is missing that the 'character' in a 40K campaign is your entire army, not every single model within the entire army. Progression, if you need it, ought to be applied to the army as a whole.
The examples given of wargear changes, a unit being replaced with a veteran equivalent, or just the army getting bigger are all typical progression mechanics for wargame campaigns.
It's treating every individual unit like an RPG character that levels up and gets new and unique abilities that adds a lot to keep track of and breaks the balance.
And, personally at least, I find the idea of every unit that just got killed to a man dusting themselves off and coming back to try again (with new abilities) is ridiculous, along with the implication that my entire 'army' is really just a reinforced platoon or two, rather than the units I field being a subset of a larger force. It actively breaks my immersion in the campaign.
Historical wargames have had campaign systems for decades. I've never seen one that works like Crusade.
The problem with crusade, in my own experimenting with it till I quit out of modern 40k altogether, is the fact that it was slapped together without even the barest attempt at establishing some balance control.
Crusade is not meant to have balance as its priority- the is the entire reason why matched play existed as an ALTERNATIVE to Crusade. If you make balance the priority for all three play modes, you don't actually have three play modes.
Yes you do, because the issue is the approach of the formats, not that all need to be balance. Ridiculous combinations still need to be sorted out to ensure you can't just sweep over the match. Matched play exists for peer to peer armies yes, but for narrative there's still a need for balance - the narrative comes from scenarios, not the idea that any semblance of balance can be thrown out.
There are several things in this quote that indicate you're either exaggerating or mistaken.
1/ You get XP (and therefore battle honours) by achieving Agendas. If your character is trying to get those upgrades, he's not really being killy because he has to focus on Agendas to get the upgrades.
2/ If you give all your upgrades to one unit to power level it, it becomes a bullet magnet, and once it's down, the rest of your army is green easy pickins. Many would say it's better to have 5 units with one upgrade each than one with five.
3/ Being a bullet magnet also makes it more likely you get removed from the game early (and don't complete agendas), and you're more likely to suffer battlescars. And I should note here how much more substantial battlescars are in 10th- WAY more impactful and WAY harder to avoid or get rid of.
4/ Playing with a GM is one way to ensure that "Marked for Greatness" XP actually go to a unit that desrves it, not the unit a powetrgamer most wants to level.
You would be correct were it not for that you can easily complete agendas by killing the enemy which becomes further achievable with upgrades increasing the performance of powerful lists. Or the idea that somehow the rest of the army is vulnerable because you put all of the points into a character - a list of killer marines or eldar is still that. Moreover I'd honestly wish anyone good luck killing the monsters I had come out of a couple crusade attempts with friends during 9th's launch, a deathwing character buddied up with a protective, already seriously durable squad is a bloody nightmare.
You don't get XP by winning.
I'm going to say this again for the cheap seats because no one ever seems to remember it:
YOU DON'T GET XP FOR WINNING!
In fact, pusuing maximum Agenda completion will often cause you to lose.
Also: 10th's Crusade Blessings are a better balancing mechanism for high-Crusade point armies than the 9th ed system.
This feels to again, purposefully focus on the fact that maybe in a vacuum agendas don't equate to victory but in reality it's hard to score anything than the basic xp you get on defeat once one party is able to establish reliable dominance. Complete these agendas... while also trying to not get shot or punched off the board by the enemy who are now even deadlier than in the first two games.
GW didn't put that brainworm there- TSR did with D&D in the 70's, and the overwhelmingly vast majority of RPGs since have followed suit- all susequent versions of D&D, all the White Wolf Storyteller series in all of their editions, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, Legend of the Five Rings, GURPS, Deadlands, Kult, Star Wars, Pathfinder... Pretty much all of them. Traveller had no progression system, and someone threw out Paranoia too. There may have been one or two others. Point is, progression was associated with narrative gaming before GW produce it's first game, and progression will continue to be associated with narrative gaming for a very long time because it makes sense to the vast majority of people playing those games, regardless of whether or not YOU think it makes sense.
What GW did was BRING that element to their wargame. Like "Hey, I betcha people who like D&D and White Wolf Games would like Warhammer more if we added a progression system to our games." And surprise, they were right!
Now people who are wargame purists, who don't really like RPGs, don't like the effect that this element has on their Wargame- and that's fine. Those people aren't forced to play Crusade.
Regarding whether or not progression makes sense:
Why do you go to high school before university if progression doesn't make sense? Is it possible to bench 200 lbs before you can bench 40? Can a yellow belt take a black belt in a fight? Do I have more seniority than my coworkers on the first day of my new job? Funny, it kinda seems like living in the post industrial age is kinda built on progression systems, eh?
Now look, I get it: Wargamer wants to build a list and think "Yeah, my tactical squad are veterans of a 100 battles by the time I build my list." That's not the story that Crusade's system was designed to reflect. If that's the story you want to tell, pitch it to your GM. Most armies have a requisition that allows a unit to be added to the roster with XP already on their profile.
No you're not applying common sense. It doesn't matter if the squad has X or Y experience, they have their stats because their stats are made on a d6 system where the leap from WS 3+ to WS 2+ is massive in its abstraction, which is why 40k as an adaption of a d100 Reaper system introduced various things such as toughness to try to account for this total lack of granularity. Upgrades don't work with 40k outside of just outright 'upgrading' to a new unit because the system falls apart very quickly when you start handing out buffs. RPG's have their systems of advancement not because progression is associated with increasing power, but because their systems are based on 3d6, 1d100, d10's, etc which are able to accommodate progression in the first place. The kind of upgrades 40k experiences under Crusade is, in D&D analogy akin to leaping from level 1 to level 8 or so out the gate in such an example of a doubled attack stat on a marine squad. And that's without considering situational buffs so in reality that squad or that tank is actually now possessing a BS of 1+ because of potential auras, spells, or stats getting taken into account. What seems harmless swiftly can turn into a snowball that buries another player. Not terribly surprising campaigns so often just fizzle out in 40k.
Ok, we get it. You hate Crusade because you & yours weren't able to make it work.
Historical wargames have had campaign systems for decades. I've never seen one that works like Crusade.
For some reason, it's very difficult for 40k players (and GW proper post, like, 1999) to understand that in order for a wargaming campaign to be narratively and mechanically engaging, the majority of that campaign's ruleset needs to be about decisions made and what happens off the table, rather than on the table.
A good campaign system is primarily an off-table game, where the on-table battle is more akin to resolving a contested dice roll to decide the outcome of decisions. A battle where your character gets to use a magic sword is not engaging. A battle to decide a pivotal maneuver you've made at the operational or strategic level, even if its just a standard game of 40k, is far more likely to hold narrative weight.
The reason is obvious, GW sells models, 40k players spend thousands on models. So people want stuff to be about those models instead of a strategic scope that goes far beyond the tabletop.
Tyran wrote: The reason is obvious, GW sells models, 40k players spend thousands on models. So people want stuff to be about those models instead of a strategic scope that goes far beyond the tabletop.
Oh, you're absolutely right. The end result though is that Crusade will never be a major mode of play for 40k. It's too much book keeping for too little entertainment value. You'd have a more engaging 40k campaign experience if you played a game of Warhammer 40,000: Risk and used 2000pt games rather than dice rolls to resolve battles.
Historical wargames have had campaign systems for decades. I've never seen one that works like Crusade.
For some reason, it's very difficult for 40k players (and GW proper post, like, 1999) to understand that in order for a wargaming campaign to be narratively and mechanically engaging, the majority of that campaign's ruleset needs to be about decisions made and what happens off the table, rather than on the table.
A good campaign system is primarily an off-table game, where the on-table battle is more akin to resolving a contested dice roll to decide the outcome of decisions. A battle where your character gets to use a magic sword is not engaging. A battle to decide a pivotal maneuver you've made at the operational or strategic level, even if its just a standard game of 40k, is far more likely to hold narrative weight.
GW had some narrative campaigns in WD in the 00s that were like that. Campaign maps, full armies from which the forces for each battle would be selected, territory gain and loss and working towards an overarching objective. In other words, battles that contributed to a strategic narrative, AKA a campaign. They also had campaigns for two players that used a flowchart system, where who won a battle would determine which one you play next, eventually leading to a story conclusion. Different system, but still the same idea of each battle determining what the next battle will look like, ultimately leading to victory or defeat.
Crusade is more akin to a sports league. You show up for your weekly match with your fixed roster of players, playing against whomever else is in the league, and while the players themselves may grow or suffer injuries, the outcome of the game itself has no significance besides the win/loss tally.
For that purpose I think it's fine as a structure for regular get-togethers at the local club- at least until someone accumulates enough advancement to break it. I just don't find it particularly interesting as a campaign system, let alone the sole or natural way that a wargame campaign system ought to work.
See, I think Crusade works pretty well on the whole. My main gripes with it are:
* I want more reasons to swap out units between games. As-is, there's almost no reason to add new units to your roster after a certain point, and you end up fielding your leveled-up units every game to the exclusion of alternatives.
* I want more reasons to *not* focus all my xp on a small number of units so that they level up faster.
* I want more crusade variants. Give me rules for a force that starts strong (with low XP) but then permanently loses units over time. Give me rules for a scenario where parts of my roster are commmitted to specific theatres of battle and thus my options for list building are more limited. Give me rules for unlocking my drukhari units as I claim relevant parts of Commorragh.
Basically, Crusade feels like a decent starting point, but it's under-utilized.
Historical wargames have had campaign systems for decades. I've never seen one that works like Crusade.
For some reason, it's very difficult for 40k players (and GW proper post, like, 1999) to understand that in order for a wargaming campaign to be narratively and mechanically engaging, the majority of that campaign's ruleset needs to be about decisions made and what happens off the table, rather than on the table.
A good campaign system is primarily an off-table game, where the on-table battle is more akin to resolving a contested dice roll to decide the outcome of decisions. A battle where your character gets to use a magic sword is not engaging. A battle to decide a pivotal maneuver you've made at the operational or strategic level, even if its just a standard game of 40k, is far more likely to hold narrative weight.
I feel like there should be a GW game that represents an abstracted planet-level campaign. That is, a game where instead of putting armies on the table and rolling to-hit rolls, you're using your faction's preferred tactics and quirks to seize control of critical locations, make planetfall, etc. I guess the Fantasy Flight Conquest card game was sort of this?
They used to have the planetary empires or whatever it was called system that was a map based game and you fought actual games of 40K to resolve it.
But part of the problem is I don't think they have ever really put out interesting campaign rules. It's either basic stuff that's more like a league, like crusade, or it's just bogged down with extraneous stuff that makes people lose interest. For example I would never want to play in a map-based campaign because I've never seen one run successfully; they always break down because people don't want to move things around a map they want to actually play 40K.
What's interesting is AOS seems to get this at least a little better although path to glory still has problems. Ultimately though I think what people really want is to have an interesting narrative backdrop for their games and not have to keep records or notes or other sort of bookkeeping or have to play out a tactical game on a map before actually engaging on the battlefield
Wayniac wrote: They used to have the planetary empires or whatever it was called system that was a map based game and you fought actual games of 40K to resolve it.
But part of the problem is I don't think they have ever really put out interesting campaign rules. It's either basic stuff that's more like a league, like crusade, or it's just bogged down with extraneous stuff that makes people lose interest. For example I would never want to play in a map-based campaign because I've never seen one run successfully; they always break down because people don't want to move things around a map they want to actually play 40K.
What's interesting is AOS seems to get this at least a little better although path to glory still has problems. Ultimately though I think what people really want is to have an interesting narrative backdrop for their games and not have to keep records or notes or other sort of bookkeeping or have to play out a tactical game on a map before actually engaging on the battlefield
I think part of it is the barrier to entry. Planetary empires wanted you to buy and paint a bunch of resin miniatures.
Now imagine something like that translated into the 40k app, where a gaming club could play a static strategic level game asynchronously. Like an email based game of diplomacy but for the 21st century, right from the app. And then use their tabletop games to resolve actions.
It'll never happen, but I might even pay a subscription for something like that if it had semi-regular updates and new additions.
I believe there is some confusion with crusade ruleset in this forum. Crusade rule-set is designed for 4 game scenarios between two growing armies. They even give the example how to run one in one of the early publishing of the system. It's not intended to be this long open-ended perpetual growth enabler that many wish it was.
When you take into consideration that the intended goal is 4 game series, then the rate of XP growth makes a lot more sense.
The series is:
-Scenario 1
-Scenario 2 if player A wins, Scenario 3 if player B wins
-Scenario 4 if player A wins, Scenario 5 if player B wins
-Scenario 6 finale
EDIT: I may be conflating a different GW campaign publication with the Crusade rules, I will have to dig. Leaving it up in case someone finds this type of scenario play useful.
Tittliewinks22 wrote: I believe there is some confusion with crusade ruleset in this forum. Crusade rule-set is designed for 4 game scenarios between two growing armies. They even give the example how to run one in one of the early publishing of the system. It's not intended to be this long open-ended perpetual growth enabler that many wish it was.
When you take into consideration that the intended goal is 4 game series, then the rate of XP growth makes a lot more sense.
The series is:
-Scenario 1
-Scenario 2 if player A wins, Scenario 3 if player B wins
-Scenario 4 if player A wins, Scenario 5 if player B wins
-Scenario 6 finale
I think you're confusing crusade with one of their other campaign systems from days of yore Because crusade is absolutely intended to be open-ended from what I've seen both in the previous edition and in 10th edition, And it didn't exist before that.
I think you're confusing crusade with one of their other campaign systems from days of yore Because crusade is absolutely intended to be open-ended from what I've seen both in the previous edition and in 10th edition.
I will have to dig through my documents to verify if I am crazy or not. Either way, every successful iteration of crusade rules that we've used had these short distinct scenario structures, so the book keeping bloat doesn't get out of hand.
Tyran wrote: The reason is obvious, GW sells models, 40k players spend thousands on models. So people want stuff to be about those models instead of a strategic scope that goes far beyond the tabletop.
You can have it be about the models.
The last (9e) Crusade my Rebel Grots fought in? What happened, Win or Lose, influenced wich models/units I'd use in the next game. It affected what upgrades I gave the units (this was not always the best & {gasp!}sometimes I simply rolled randomly). I also rarely ever paid pts to remove battle scars. So the force was showing some wear & tear by the end of the campaign.
What I fought and won against (or at least completed Agendas for) also influenced what future models I'd build & how I'd kitbash them. I fought a lot of Knights & Tau. So alot of units that I added to the roster as the campaign progressed incorporated Knights & Tau bitz. Existing units also got some of those bitz. Ex: My warboss in Mega-armor? He's now got himself a nice, if slightly krumped up, suit of Abandon's termie armor. Sometimes my wanting to build something also influenced what units I specifically tried to kill. It didn't matter if that was tactically sound, wouldn't help with the mission or agendas.... The moment my one Knight foe opened up on my grots with that named relic gatling cannon? My Grots had to have it. All that Dakka!. That Knights fate was sealed. It was marked for death, killed, & looted. The Meks are busy prepping the cannon for the forces next Crusade & assure the Red Gobbo the thing will be ready in time.
The shop loved this! My Rebel Grots were very successful so their victories meant I was spending $ on kits just for bitz.
I'd also type up a battle report for each battle. From the grots PoV of course.
The result is I have a customized force with a history.
Of course MOST people playing Crusade don't actually do this. They approach it as an upgradable tourney roster. And then they wonder why "it didn't work".
Yeah, Crusade definitely works better when you use it as a framing device for your army's narrative. I fluffed my longest-running crusade army (in 9th) around a craftworld fleet that got separated from each other in the webway and had their safe route home blocked off. So as I played the campaign, I fluffed my agendas as being actions needed to help my seers find a safe path home. Every time I added units to my roster, I wrote a paragraph or two about how the new units were rescued by/able to reconnect with my fleet. My plan (that I never ended up doing) was to occassionally give myself the opportunity to try to "go home" (conclude my roster's crusade) and to give myself an overall campaign victory rating based on how many points worth of eldar I made it home with.
Wyldhunt wrote: Basically, Crusade feels like a decent starting point, but it's under-utilized.
This post is slightly ninjaed by the one you've immediately just made...
But surely the issue is that if your friends agree, you can do anything you like?
I don't think GW meant for Crusade to serve as the be-all and end-all of narrative play. Its more a starting point. The narrative for each of the factions is fairly fluffy and free-flow if you want to adjust it a bit.
Its not a map campaign - which, I would agree with some above, I've never really seen work.
Its not a system of "starter battle, scenario A/Scenario B, Scenario X/Scenario Y, Final". Those can work - but often some of the scenarios are horrendously designed and consequently not that fun to play unless you can really embrace not playing for the rules.
Which I feel is the issue of narrative in general. Saying its a system armies get better until they become overpowered seems kind of "well... yeah?" I mean Necromunda, Mordheim, Bloodbowl etc kind of go the same way. If you play with people with that mentality its probably not going to be that fun. People have to sort of suspend their urge to optimise and thinking this the LVO finals.
I think that was Tyran's point, CCS. 40K players want systems that have to do with their 40K models on their 40K boards, and not what's happening in the greater conflict behind the scenes.
But I don't think it's fair to imply that players are 'doing it wrong' by just playing Crusade as written. It sounds like Crusade provided you the bare-bones escalation league framework, and you then did a significant amount of work with some personally imposed handicaps to forge the narrative out of what would otherwise just be a dry escalation league.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: It sounds all nice what you say but in the end(6th/7th edition) you just took scatter lasers/ assault cannons/ auto cannons/ plasma guns that were good against every target. 8th introduced a much higher range of useful weapons because of the improved AP system and the damage stat.
The hull point system was idiotic and punished vehicles with a double damage system. there were a few good things that came out or should i say came back in 6th and 7th. overwatch, snap fire and grenade throwing, aside from that it was not an improvement over 5th edition.
8th introduced a more abstract system.
5th "introduced" weapons to do a specific job because it was based on a tactical wargame where you brought the right weapon to the right fight. surprisingly AT weapons designed to destroy armor or MCs were actually good at that job, killing hordes of light infantry not so much.
It is also why 5th ed is still considered the best of the 3rd-7th ed core rule sets even with its few well known flaws like wound allocation.
Not really. Everything was good at killing hordes due to the bad ap system, so weapons like the heavy bolter were basically useless, your Bolter killed guardsmen and Boyz good enough. And Plasma killed everything good enough, you didn't need an AP4 weapon that would plink from a 3+ armour that was worn by most infantry units in the game. It also led to strange situations where a lascannon would autowound a tank but needed a 2+ to wound a grot. Said lascannon also did nothing against monsters, or characters with Toughness 5 or better(yes, in 5th these weren't that common because of the unintuitive 4(5) ruling, but usually these chars would have at least a 4++, and then you also had eternal warrior).
Effectively there were no anti-MC weapons, you'd just drown these in shots or take your plasma, that, as said, worked against everything decently enough.
Compared to that the new system has more variance, it just suffers from the dumb points system in 10th and GW giving too many things damage 2.
Heavy bolters were very good as were many AP4 weapons, because of your focus on MEQ armies that was limited to 3 -marines of both flavors, sisters of battle (that were also T3 meaning HBs wounded them on 2+) and necron immortals, you ignore that almost no other army in the game had better than a 4+ save for 90% of its force-guard, orks, tau, tyranids, eldar of both flavors etc...
Additionally when there was far less volume of fire in the game a 3 shot weapon was a big deal when it had a 36" range.
Saying las cannons did "nothing" is also disingenuous, they absolutely did damage and did so easily against MCs as did every other high strength low APAT weapon.
The new system isn't a new system it is an old import from WHFBs done poorly. the damage reduction system is a terrible mechanic that has led to an arms race of increased toughness and wounds. compared to when you paid for that 2+ or 3+ save in high points values but you all still had a single wound aside from characters and MCs. it also breaks immersion. when a ballistic plate gets hit by a round it doesn't get less effective by the AP of said round, it either stops the round or it doesn't-all or nothing. the older editions balanced this out via hard cover saves and blocking LOS terrain. forcing players to use more maneuver and tactical play.
chaos0xomega wrote:
Hellebore wrote: Not that AT weapons WERE any good at killing MCs, except en mass, as was previously discussed...
And I would say that 4th ed was the better edition as it was the only time GW was brave enough to use a superior line of sight system to their idiotic 'look from the eyes of your static model standing on a rock shouting while he's supposed to be hiding in a forest' method...
I would generally agree. 4th and 5th had a lot in common, but there were certain things about 4th that were better and certain things about 5th I would port into 4th if I could. Likewise certain things from subsequent editions that I would bring back into 4th to improve it, but 4th probably had the best "bones" of any edition out there in terms of core gameplay mechanics.
Look up the poll we did here on dakka a couple years ago, as far as older editions go 5th won hands down by a large margin for core mechanics. anybody who played through the editions at the time could see the slow progression of improvements from 3rd-5th untill they just tossed it all in 6th, incidentally after almost all the original design team had left the company.
Heavy bolters were very good as were many AP4 weapons, because of your focus on MEQ armies that was limited to 3 -marines of both flavors, sisters of battle (that were also T3 meaning HBs wounded them on 2+) and necron immortals, you ignore that almost no other army in the game had better than a 4+ save for 90% of its force-guard, orks, tau, tyranids, eldar of both flavors etc...
Additionally when there was far less volume of fire in the game a 3 shot weapon was a big deal when it had a 36" range.
Heavy bolters were fine thanks to wounding T3 on 2+ and T4 on a respectable 3+ and because, as you said, a 3 shot weapon with good range was pretty solid at the time. AP4 was kind of a sore spot though. Having a "focus on MEQ" is fair given how likely you are to run into a meq army in a pickup game. So AP4 was in this awkward place where it may as well have been AP5 against most squishy targets, was good enough to invalidate the armor moderately expensive units paid for, but then did absolutely nothing against marines. (Other than scouts.) So it felt like you were (presumably) paying points for the ability to ignore the save of a fire warrior or howling banshee, but those points were kind of wasted against marines. Plus, it felt weird that a heavy flamer (AP4) could wipe out my entire squad of avengers without giving them a save, but the striking scorpions standing next to them in ever-so-slightly thicker armor could shrug off the majority of its damage output.
The current AP system has the upside that, if your gun pays for AP, you benefit from that AP regardless of whether your target has a 5+ save or a 2+ save.
Look up the poll we did here on dakka a couple years ago, as far as older editions go 5th won hands down by a large margin for core mechanics. anybody who played through the editions at the time could see the slow progression of improvements from 3rd-5th untill they just tossed it all in 6th, incidentally after almost all the original design team had left the company.
I know I'm in the minority here, but I was really sick of 5th by the end of it. The game revolved around transports and punished factions that had lacklustre troops or troops who didn't want to stand around on objectives. Plus the missions were pretty repetitive and included a version of kill points that was pretty brutal for squishy armies. I suspect I'd enjoy 4th edition quite a bit, but I'm not sure if I could enjoy a return to 5th.
The idea I have often heard is that 5th is best core rules but 4th has better codexes (because 5th codexes kinda broke the edition).
EDIT: Regarding the old AP system, it is also tricky to cost.
Weapons need to be costed so they are at their most effective against their respective save. In practice their cost exponentially increasing with AP and thus their efficency decreases against anything else.
E.g a bolter needs to be less efficient than a lasgun to counter the issue the bolter ignores 5+ saves. A heavy bolter needs to be priced against Fire Warriors and Scouts, but somewhat inefficient against GEQ.
It is also tricky to define how much a unit needs to pay for their armor. A 2+ save needs to be expensive because it counters anything that isn't a AP2 or 1. But at the same time if it is too expensive then it becomes a dice game to bypass with weight of dice.
Tyran wrote: The idea I have often heard is that 5th is best core rules but 4th has better codexes (because 5th codexes kinda broke the edition).
I think a mix of 4th and 5th rules would probably be ideal.
5th definitely had a lot of good rules, but it also brought some less desirable ones (e.g. TLoS). IIRC, cover saves were also a bit too generous.
Regardless, I'd put it out there as being by far the best starting point.
Codices are a tricky one because 5th had a lot of great books, but also (as you note) some that had terrible external balance. I've also heard that 4th-5th was when options started to decline, but that might depend somewhat on the army in question.
EDIT: Regarding the old AP system, it is also tricky to cost.
Weapons need to be costed so they are at their most effective against their respective save. In practice it means their efficency is logaritmical, with their cost exponentially increasing with AP.
E.g a bolter needs to be less efficient than a lasgun to counter the issue the bolter ignores 5+ saves. In a similar if counterintuitive way, saves need to be more efficient the better they are. A Terminator Unit needs to be tougher (points wise) against lasguns compared to a Marine unit.
And that is a tricky balance to hit.
I think both have their difficulties.
One thing I'll say is that it was a colossal mistake to try and just import saves (including invulnerable saves) and convert flat AP values into equivalent modifiers between editions. Because the two systems behave very differently and this really needed to be taken into account.
To give just a couple of examples:
- Invulnerable saves in prior editions existed either to give models a (usually worse) save when their armour was outright ignored, or (more rarely) for models like daemons/harlequins that have a weak-but-unmodifiable save in place of any normal save. However, when saves are based on modifiers, a model's armour save can (for the most part) also act as its own invulnerable save. For example, a Terminator hit by a plasmagun in 5th would have had no armour save. However, a terminator hit by a plasmagun in 8th would still have a 5+ armour save (i.e. the same as its invulnerable save). Obviously AP-4 and AP-5 weapons exist, but it's questionable whether an invulnerable save is needed just for those weapons (given the model is going to be paying for it but will rarely get much use out of it). Especially when we get to...
- The implementation of vehicles (and some MCs as well) was to give them average armour saves and often invulnerable saves. This was antithetical to the design of anti-vehicle weapons having AP-4 or AP-5, as those AP values were often unnecessary. Hence why (at least until their damage was upped in 9th) they were generally eshewed in favour of weapons with AP-2 or AP-3 but more shots. In essence, we ended up with an entire category of weapons that served very little purpose because the game was still trying to use the save and AP paradigm from the previous system.
Something I've kicked around off and on is the idea of getting rid of saves (or at least armor saves) entirely. Instead, we could just give models more wounds based on how durable we want them to be and maybe turn Strength/Toughness/AP/Armor into modifiers to the attacker's roll(s). And play around with Damage values, of course.
So in effect, there would be fewer outright failure points for an attack, but two lasgun shots would never be enough to kill a marine with (for example) 5 Wounds.
You'd still want to represent other defenses (evasion, cover, daemon weirdness, etc.) in some fashion, but we'd be sidestepping the problems of the current/previous AP systems.
Wyldhunt wrote: Something I've kicked around off and on is the idea of getting rid of saves (or at least armor saves) entirely. Instead, we could just give models more wounds based on how durable we want them to be and maybe turn Strength/Toughness/AP/Armor into modifiers to the attacker's roll(s). And play around with Damage values, of course.
So in effect, there would be fewer outright failure points for an attack, but two lasgun shots would never be enough to kill a marine with (for example) 5 Wounds.
You'd still want to represent other defenses (evasion, cover, daemon weirdness, etc.) in some fashion, but we'd be sidestepping the problems of the current/previous AP systems.
The way I've seen it commonly done is to just have roll to hit -> roll to damage -> record damage. That means combining armor protection with toughness as a single 'how hard is it to inflict damage' stat, with wounds remaining the 'how much damage can this take' stat. On weapons, S and AP usually correlate pretty well so not a huge lift to combine, but you'd have to do some work with the comparative stats to avoid unintuitive breakpoints.
I'd be wary of anything that dramatically increases bookkeeping- Marines at 5 wounds is manageable with D6s, but if heavier infantry and vehicles get dramatically more, then that gets a lot harder to track.
Wyldhunt wrote: Something I've kicked around off and on is the idea of getting rid of saves (or at least armor saves) entirely. Instead, we could just give models more wounds based on how durable we want them to be and maybe turn Strength/Toughness/AP/Armor into modifiers to the attacker's roll(s). And play around with Damage values, of course.
So in effect, there would be fewer outright failure points for an attack, but two lasgun shots would never be enough to kill a marine with (for example) 5 Wounds.
You'd still want to represent other defenses (evasion, cover, daemon weirdness, etc.) in some fashion, but we'd be sidestepping the problems of the current/previous AP systems.
You could probably do a lot by giving models an evasion stat and doing WS/BS vs. Evasion and then Strength vs. Toughness. High evasion would help to make units like Eldar more durable without having to up their armour or give them invulnerable saves (and would also mean that BS is no longer a flat roll most of the time), whilst higher toughness would largely take the place of saves. Could still have invulnerable/FNP saves (maybe make them one and the same, akin to the Ward saves in AoS?), but ideally these would be pretty rare.
I recall a post a while back (different forum, I think) where somone pointed out that you can replicate most of the current outcomes with just 2 rolls (and if the odds are so low that the result requires three rolls to achieve, something has probably gone wrong anyway ).
Wyldhunt wrote: Something I've kicked around off and on is the idea of getting rid of saves (or at least armor saves) entirely. Instead, we could just give models more wounds based on how durable we want them to be and maybe turn Strength/Toughness/AP/Armor into modifiers to the attacker's roll(s). And play around with Damage values, of course.
So in effect, there would be fewer outright failure points for an attack, but two lasgun shots would never be enough to kill a marine with (for example) 5 Wounds.
You'd still want to represent other defenses (evasion, cover, daemon weirdness, etc.) in some fashion, but we'd be sidestepping the problems of the current/previous AP systems.
The way I've seen it commonly done is to just have roll to hit -> roll to damage -> record damage. That means combining armor protection with toughness as a single 'how hard is it to inflict damage' stat, with wounds remaining the 'how much damage can this take' stat. On weapons, S and AP usually correlate pretty well so not a huge lift to combine, but you'd have to do some work with the comparative stats to avoid unintuitive breakpoints.
I'd be wary of anything that dramatically increases bookkeeping- Marines at 5 wounds is manageable with D6s, but if heavier infantry and vehicles get dramatically more, then that gets a lot harder to track.
Personally, I use counter or d10s to track wounds on things. A pair of d10s lets you track up to 100 wounds pretty painless, so I think the level of bookkeeping involved would probably be reasonable assuming d10s or counters are considered easy to obtain.
But I am open to being mistaken about that.
vipoid wrote:
You could probably do a lot by giving models an evasion stat and doing WS/BS vs. Evasion and then Strength vs. Toughness. High evasion would help to make units like Eldar more durable without having to up their armour or give them invulnerable saves (and would also mean that BS is no longer a flat roll most of the time), whilst higher toughness would largely take the place of saves. Could still have invulnerable/FNP saves (maybe make them one and the same, akin to the Ward saves in AoS?), but ideally these would be pretty rare.
I recall a post a while back (different forum, I think) where somone pointed out that you can replicate most of the current outcomes with just 2 rolls (and if the odds are so low that the result requires three rolls to achieve, something has probably gone wrong anyway ).
EDIT: Catbarf demonstrates his ninja skills.
There's a lot of merit to introducing an Evasion stat, but I tend to think of that as a semi-separate issue. Adding evasion doesn't really do anything to address the quirks of the current AP system.
Edit: Or you meant both switching to a saveless system and then also introducing an evasion stat. In which case, my apologies for failing to read properly.
catbarf wrote: I think that was Tyran's point, CCS. 40K players want systems that have to do with their 40K models on their 40K boards, and not what's happening in the greater conflict behind the scenes.
But I don't think it's fair to imply that players are 'doing it wrong' by just playing Crusade as written. It sounds like Crusade provided you the bare-bones escalation league framework, and you then did a significant amount of work with some personally imposed handicaps to forge the narrative out of what would otherwise just be a dry escalation league.
I think that it's completely fair to state that the people who don't add anything of their own to their Crusades, turning them into naught but dry escalation leagues, are doing it wrong. I mean Crusade is under the Narrative heading. What do they think "narrative" means?
Ok, maybe they don't need to go buy a Canus Rex Knight kit to turn into salvage/bitz & then build a Grot Mega-Tank from scratch around its gatling gun like I did.... But they need to do some kind of work. Put in some effort to tell a story.
Hellebore wrote: Not that AT weapons WERE any good at killing MCs, except en mass, as was previously discussed...
And I would say that 4th ed was the better edition as it was the only time GW was brave enough to use a superior line of sight system to their idiotic 'look from the eyes of your static model standing on a rock shouting while he's supposed to be hiding in a forest' method...
I would generally agree. 4th and 5th had a lot in common, but there were certain things about 4th that were better and certain things about 5th I would port into 4th if I could. Likewise certain things from subsequent editions that I would bring back into 4th to improve it, but 4th probably had the best "bones" of any edition out there in terms of core gameplay mechanics.
Look up the poll we did here on dakka a couple years ago, as far as older editions go 5th won hands down by a large margin for core mechanics. anybody who played through the editions at the time could see the slow progression of improvements from 3rd-5th untill they just tossed it all in 6th, incidentally after almost all the original design team had left the company.
Personally the LoS rules are far more important for tactical play than the other things 5th had, so that's why I default to 4th.
Also the need to test to shoot at longer distance targets was also a tactical consideration.
Sure, if I was going to fanbash something together, it would take the best bits of 5th and put them into 4th, but that LoS system was just so much better than anything GW have ever done that it put that game far beyond any of their others.
The blatantly untrue term 'true line of sight' is a scourge I'd like to see burned in fire...
But then, it's also ignoring the other issues that the 3rd ed paradigm has that I don't like, namely vehicles and the AP rules.
Tyran wrote: The reason is obvious, GW sells models, 40k players spend thousands on models. So people want stuff to be about those models instead of a strategic scope that goes far beyond the tabletop.
That's a really good point that I hadn't considered until now. GW don't sell strategic scope (well, not anymore anyway...). They sell miniatures.
So their campaign rules are going to be tied to those miniatures.
ccs wrote: I think that it's completely fair to state that the people who don't add anything of their own to their Crusades, turning them into naught but dry escalation leagues, are doing it wrong.
But that's how Crusade's rules are structured. It's set up like an escalation league.
ccs wrote: I mean Crusade is under the Narrative heading. What do they think "narrative" means?
Calling it narrative doesn't make it narrative though. Just repeating it over and over is approaching a style-over-substance fallacy.
ccs wrote: Ok, maybe they don't need to go buy a Canus Rex Knight kit to turn into salvage/bitz & then build a Grot Mega-Tank from scratch around its gatling gun like I did.... But they need to do some kind of work. Put in some effort to tell a story.
Which wasn't Tyran's point. His point was that Crusade is miniature centric, and therefore focuses on the development of the individual units within your army as represented by the miniatures, not on some grand strategic interplay that takes place between games (and without minis!). Carbarf already explained this.
Tyran wrote:The idea I have often heard is that 5th is best core rules but 4th has better codexes (because 5th codexes kinda broke the edition).
EDIT: Regarding the old AP system, it is also tricky to cost.
Weapons need to be costed so they are at their most effective against their respective save. In practice their cost exponentially increasing with AP and thus their efficency decreases against anything else.
E.g a bolter needs to be less efficient than a lasgun to counter the issue the bolter ignores 5+ saves. A heavy bolter needs to be priced against Fire Warriors and Scouts, but somewhat inefficient against GEQ.
It is also tricky to define how much a unit needs to pay for their armor. A 2+ save needs to be expensive because it counters anything that isn't a AP2 or 1. But at the same time if it is too expensive then it becomes a dice game to bypass with weight of dice.
With our group interestingly enough there are many 3rd or 4th ed codexes we prefer to use under the 5th ed rules. witch hunters, demon hunters, tyranids, tau, orks, eldar, chaos space marines, demons, space marines specifically for the trait system or other specialized army lists from index astartes.
There are a few from 5th that make the cut-space marines, imperial guard, blood angels, space wolves, dark eldar and necrons.
There was only one codex that really broke itself in 5th edition-grey knights one can poke fun at Mat Ward for that but he did good work on other codexes.
Personally the LoS rules are far more important for tactical play than the other things 5th had, so that's why I default to 4th
I have never found TLOS to be a problem, but then again we use loads of terrain on our tables and as a friendly group if there is a question of LOS we let the target player call it. it isn't a tournament we are there to have fun. if i want 4th ed style area terrain rules, i can play DUST tactics/1947 since Andy wrote the 3d terrain rules for that as well.
Since we are on the topic i found this recent interview with Andy champers about specialist games, some of his insights in between talking about the games, that was about GW management are interesting.
You're admitting you need to let fiat decide pretty important aspects of the game, which is objectively poor game design.
The 5th ed los rules literally create modelling for advantage and they make it very hard to actually hide (just like modern 40k).
Maybe it's the fact that I started in 2nd where they literally had rules for hiding, but the ability to hide your advance and manoeuvre outside enemy loS is pretty vital to me for an interesting tactically challenging game.
So I much prefer actual true line of sight - true in the more accurate sense that those los rules are better reflections of the intelligence of soldiers taking cover on a battlefield, rather than moving around like a squad of cardboard cutouts all frozen in place.
Also, they allow for beautiful conversions and gamer creativity - jump troops in mid air, crouching snipers, mid flight daemons, counts as craziness etc with 0 negative impact on the quality of the game or the social contract between players because the rules make it impossible to model for advantage.
But isn't that what we get anyway, only just for some armies? Shoting through terrain, LoS being important for some faction (that have the rule) every edition since 8th, Some armies having so high movment and "tricks" that may as well have a rule "ignore terrain and weapon range". Problem is that GW doesn't give such rules to all armies, and doesn't give a balance rule to armies that aren't shoting, which creates a situation where shoting armies, which often have access to strong melee too, have a huge adventage over melee armies. Having armies that can kill everything on sight would actualy be more balanced that the stuff we had over the last 3 editions. But in general GW seems to try have the LoS rules of a skirmish game in what has become a large scale battle system. Elite armies today run 40+ models. Chaog knights have their walk the dog builds which spam the mini knights. It is horrible to balance all those things, especialy the way GW tries to do it, while living the LoS ignoring shoting and similar LoS rule breakers.
Very interesting video. Thank you for posting it Aphyon
With our group interestingly enough there are many 3rd or 4th ed codexes we prefer to use under the 5th ed rules. witch hunters, demon hunters, tyranids, tau, orks, eldar, chaos space marines, demons, space marines specifically for the trait system or other specialized army lists from index astartes.
There are a few from 5th that make the cut-space marines, imperial guard, blood angels, space wolves, dark eldar and necrons.
There was only one codex that really broke itself in 5th edition-grey knights one can poke fun at Mat Ward for that but he did good work on other codexes.
Imperial Guard definitely broke the edition (tank squadrons, aircraft squadrons, large blast high strenght good AP pretty much everywhere, etc.), and the same is true for Space Wolves (cheap heavy weapons spam and JotWW)... and maybe Dark Eldar? admittedly I don't remember much about that codex.
Grey Knights are remembered because they also broke the lore in addition to the rules, but they were just the last of codex power creep.
2 major notes:
1) on the topic of "meaningful options" and "meaningfulness":
There are 2 ways around game design: spoon-feed the players how things "should" work and just let them fool around, or give them a setting/reality to exist in, options to exist in that setting *with*, and let *them* decide how meaningful those options are. Then, let *them* decide whether to choose new/different options or not.
In the second perspective, the game designer's responsibility is to correctly model the setting/reality, and the player's responsibility to decide meaning for the options they are given within it. Balance is achievable by external controls, like points costs and army structure requirements - as well as keeping a tight lid on the playable factions. If your background/setting has a faction called The Unstoppable Doom, then maybe that faction shouldn't be playable on the tabletop - unless the name is a lie of course!
If it matters to me that my Company Commander has Carapace Armor or not, then let him have Carapace Armor. If you think it doesn't matter, then you are welcome to *not* choose that option - but when I save 33% more wounds inflicted on me than you do, maybe you will change your tune. Or maybe you won't, because unlike my army build, your Company Commander is not the lynchpin of your C2 Voxnet, and you have other solutions to the leadership problem built from other options like Trademark Items on your platoon commanders for the Reroll or the Independent Commissars doctrine to help keep your infantry squads in line at the front...
2) if crusade requires a bunch of homebrew add-ons to be a Truly Narrative system, then why publish it at all? I can homebrew rules onto the "default" 40k just as easily, and my fellow group members can accept or reject the homebrew just as easily.
reading through my old Tyranid 5th ed book last night and though 5th was far from perfect it portrays 40k so much better than what we have now, looing in the marine codex and the "first born" look as an army leagues better than anything primaris so far, in fact I had not noticed it previously but seeing a th ed marine army on display in that book brought it into stark contrast.
Marines then looked like an army in 40k, Primaris now look like a product based on marines and very corporate... soulless.
Formosa wrote: reading through my old Tyranid 5th ed book last night and though 5th was far from perfect it portrays 40k so much better than what we have now, looing in the marine codex and the "first born" look as an army leagues better than anything primaris so far, in fact I had not noticed it previously but seeing a th ed marine army on display in that book brought it into stark contrast.
Marines then looked like an army in 40k, Primaris now look like a product based on marines and very corporate... soulless.
How so? Can you elaborate on what specifically makes you feel that way?
Hellebore wrote: You're admitting you need to let fiat decide pretty important aspects of the game, which is objectively poor game design.
The 5th ed los rules literally create modelling for advantage and they make it very hard to actually hide (just like modern 40k).
Maybe it's the fact that I started in 2nd where they literally had rules for hiding, but the ability to hide your advance and manoeuvre outside enemy loS is pretty vital to me for an interesting tactically challenging game.
So I much prefer actual true line of sight - true in the more accurate sense that those los rules are better reflections of the intelligence of soldiers taking cover on a battlefield, rather than moving around like a squad of cardboard cutouts all frozen in place.
Also, they allow for beautiful conversions and gamer creativity - jump troops in mid air, crouching snipers, mid flight daemons, counts as craziness etc with 0 negative impact on the quality of the game or the social contract between players because the rules make it impossible to model for advantage.
No i am admitting i play with good people who aren't GAKholes who actually understand what 40K is-a wargame to simulate epic themed battles in the 40K setting within a basic points frame work structure for army building. not a game made for balanced tournament play. you will find the game to be much more fun as a social experience if everybody understands what 40K is, instead of trying to make it something it was never meant to be like GW has.
Look, I like the primaris minis as display MINIS(i have 6k of them). Gaming wise I find that the repetition in posing obvious and lacking "organic" variety.
So any primaris I buy(haven't in a while) are basically for looky looky.
Look, I like the primaris minis as display MINIS(i have 6k of them). Gaming wise I find that the repetition in posing obvious and lacking "organic" variety.
So any primaris I buy(haven't in a while) are basically for looky looky.
I like to take multiples of the the same model with the same pose, hopefully a very specifc and distinct pose like the intercessor with his gun in one hand pointed straight down from the pushfit 8th edition launch box, and run an entire army of that.
Formosa wrote: reading through my old Tyranid 5th ed book last night and though 5th was far from perfect it portrays 40k so much better than what we have now, looing in the marine codex and the "first born" look as an army leagues better than anything primaris so far, in fact I had not noticed it previously but seeing a th ed marine army on display in that book brought it into stark contrast.
Marines then looked like an army in 40k, Primaris now look like a product based on marines and very corporate... soulless.
How so? Can you elaborate on what specifically makes you feel that way?
It could just be nostalgia at play but since 5th is neither my favourite edition of the one I started with I do not think that is a major factor, its kind of a feeling that is hard to describe, when I look at the images from those 5th ed books (i am going through them all at the moment as a mate wants to play 5th) it gives off a tone, a vibe that simply does not seem to exist in modern 40k for me.
the black and white images, the general tone of the setting being much more.. maybe not serious but grounded (for 40k), modern 40k seems to be moving further and further away from the individuals standing against the dark to angels and gods battling with the faceless masses in the background, the stakes are so high we have lost the personal touch, you can feel this through the loss of options, customisation and the continued homoginisation of the game, its not longer YOUR army, its just an army, its not longer YOUR Guard commander, its just a spreadsheet option.
Like I said its hard to describe as its just a feeling, does not mean I am right, just what I feel is happening, the game has no soul.
How so? Can you elaborate on what specifically makes you feel that way?
Wait wasn't the 5th Ed Space Marine codex the Matt "Spiritual Liege" Ward codex?
And I do recall the 5th Ed Nid codex being garbage, maybe he meant the 4th one?
neither of those things matter to me over a decade on, its the tone, the art, the miniatures, paint schemes, I am not commenting on power or quality of the rules just the general tone.
Hell my favourite codex was 3rd ed necrons because it oozed that tone so much... its basically a pamphlet
Sure, but even lore wise and tone wise 4th was still better. 5th was basically just battle of Macragge retelling #5, battle of Iyanden retelling #3 and a little bit of Leviathan.
4th had the Inquisition losing their collective gak with speculation and graphs, and everyone knows graphs and math are scary.
And also 5th ed codexes had horrible organization with rules being spread over the lore section and the army list section.
Tyran wrote: Sure, but even lore wise and tone wise 4th was still better. 5th was basically just battle of Macragge retelling #5, battle of Iyanden retelling #3 and a little bit of Leviathan.
4th had the Inquisition losing their collective gak with speculation and graphs, and everyone knows graphs and math are scary.
And also 5th ed codexes had horrible organization with rules being spread over the lore section and the army list section.
I sort of recall 5th being when the bigger balance issues came in (looking at grey knights in particular), largely thanks to wound allocation if nothing else, but it felt more of an abusive ruleset in many ways as well because of those changes.
Unit1126PLL wrote: 2 major notes: 1) on the topic of "meaningful options" and "meaningfulness": There are 2 ways around game design: spoon-feed the players how things "should" work and just let them fool around, or give them a setting/reality to exist in, options to exist in that setting *with*, and let *them* decide how meaningful those options are. Then, let *them* decide whether to choose new/different options or not.
In the second perspective, the game designer's responsibility is to correctly model the setting/reality, and the player's responsibility to decide meaning for the options they are given within it. Balance is achievable by external controls, like points costs and army structure requirements - as well as keeping a tight lid on the playable factions. If your background/setting has a faction called The Unstoppable Doom, then maybe that faction shouldn't be playable on the tabletop - unless the name is a lie of course!
If it matters to me that my Company Commander has Carapace Armor or not, then let him have Carapace Armor. If you think it doesn't matter, then you are welcome to *not* choose that option - but when I save 33% more wounds inflicted on me than you do, maybe you will change your tune. Or maybe you won't, because unlike my army build, your Company Commander is not the lynchpin of your C2 Voxnet, and you have other solutions to the leadership problem built from other options like Trademark Items on your platoon commanders for the Reroll or the Independent Commissars doctrine to help keep your infantry squads in line at the front...
2) if crusade requires a bunch of homebrew add-ons to be a Truly Narrative system, then why publish it at all? I can homebrew rules onto the "default" 40k just as easily, and my fellow group members can accept or reject the homebrew just as easily.
Number 2 is both classic 'gamerism'(i.e. if it's not immediately perfect with no changes, alterations, or considerations, it is not only completely without value but creates a zero sum proposition between itself and whatever ephemeral thing you, personally, believe those developmental resources should have been spent on.) and ties directly into Number 1, despite your framing of them making them seem unrelated.
Through the power of 'No True Scotsman' ANY system can be a Not Truly X system. Horus Heresy needs homebrew add-ons to be a True Wargame because it's operational ranges and relative capabilities of different men and material are so heavily abstracted and gamified, that they don't ultimately do anything to represent the battles the players are supposed to be reenacting.
See, easy.
Crusade is simply an alternate method to engage with 40k as a ruleset and as a settings. That it requires 'homebrews' to match the grognard definition of a 'Truly Narrative system' is something that vacillates between irrelevant and actively positive. Players who homebrew their own crusade rules based off of the simple foundation of officially published rules, are engaging in a way that allows them to express creativity and learn basic design principles through trial and error.
aphyon wrote: No i am admitting i play with good people who aren't GAKholes who actually understand what 40K is-a wargame to simulate epic themed battles in the 40K setting within a basic points frame work structure for army building. not a game made for balanced tournament play.
I also enjoy 40K as a social experience, not for tournament play. But I also recognize when the rules are inadequate, and I'm having to invoke houserules or roll off to resolve problems that other games don't experience. The TLOS system has serious issues; you're just assuming the responsibility of managing them through social contracts and houserules. That's fine, sometimes co-creating with the designer is necessary to make a system work for what you want it to do, but it doesn't mean those issues don't exist.
Same deal as CCS on the previous page saying that Crusade is great for narrative, so long as you only pick upgrades relevant to the last battle, come up with personal objectives for yourself in each battle, not use the mechanic of paying off scars, write up elaborate battle reports, and convert models based on what happened in the campaign. You know, just supply all the narrative yourself, and then Crusade makes a great narrative system.
It's like making stone soup and then praising the rock for what a great broth it made.
Wait wasn't the 5th Ed Space Marine codex the Matt "Spiritual Liege" Ward codex?
The fifth edition codex originated sternguard and vanguard veterans, the biker command squad, and all-bike lists, all of which were and are very popular. It also didn’t have the sad lineart template drawings next to the list entries that the ‘04 codex did, it opted for something with any amount of aesthetic instead.
Everything in the world has a golden boy who’s the most successful and powerful. There’s always a Tom Brady, always. Space Marines, who are defined by being the most hierarchical and steroidal, definitely have a rich kid star quarterback, definitely. When people are bothered by Calgar of the time, it’s because they’re weak.
It’s also not just a vibe that someone says 10th edition marines look based-on-marines and not really marines, or corporate. For fifth edition the GW director of product development, who created the Emproer, Marines, the warp, etc, was employed at GW. It could be characterized as one continuous creative effort from 1985-2010. Regardless of whether marines in 2023 “look” corporate, they factually are corporate. No judgement needed.
leopard wrote: must say now individual models have their own card with their own stats the idea of "here is a USR and is +1 on stat x" would be seriously annoying
bake it into the profile, stick a little "*" next to it and have text "profile modified" so it doesn't appear to be an accident and run with it
I would prefer they just go wild with keywords and USR's. The keyword system is so powerful but they criminally underuse it - for starters every unit should have at least one of several category keywords beyond Infantry/Vehicle etc. Biological/Mechanical for things like Haywire/EMP etc.
RaptorusRex wrote: Gotta love how the nostalgia cycle has made people defend the 5th SM codex.
Things change, ya'll.
To go a little Baylan Skoll on things; I think people often like the ideas and potential of something more than the actual experience. The potential, whether its realized or not is where you get a fervor of ideas before the realities on the table grind them away. To be fair, for most people, playing the game represents a fraction of the time they spend engaging with it. For a lot of people this potential entertains them for hundreds of hours between the handful of games they get a year. It's easy to look back on all the fun you had thinking about the game, even if the actual experience on the table wasn't quite as engaging.
pelicaniforce wrote: It also didn’t have the sad lineart template drawings next to the list entries that the ‘04 codex did, it opted for something with any amount of aesthetic instead.
Those line art template drawings were great. And the cover art to the 4th ed book is head and shoulders above the 5th ed one.
RaptorusRex wrote: Gotta love how the nostalgia cycle has made people defend the 5th SM codex.
Things change, ya'll.
The codex/rules themselves were fine. The return of Combat Squads, plus the automatic arming of every Marine with Bolt Pistol, Frag and Krak was great. What people complained about was the Matt Ward storytelling, in particular Calgar punching out an Avatar. Rules-wise though? Solid book.
I never really understood the hate for that. Calgar has a power fist. On tabletop he can, in fact, punch out an Avatar. If you can do it in the game, then is it not technically fluffy storytelling?
chaos0xomega wrote: I never really understood the hate for that. Calgar has a power fist. On tabletop he can, in fact, punch out an Avatar. If you can do it in the game, then is it not technically fluffy storytelling?
In 10th Edition, Calgar is T6 2+/4++ W6.
He has 6 WS2+ S8 AP-3 D3 TwinLinked swings.
The Avatar Of Khaine is T12 2+/4++ W14 Halves Damage.
It has 6 WS2+ S14 AP-4 Dd6+2 swings or 12 WS2+ S7 AP-2 D2 swings.
Calgar does an average of 2.78 damage per combat to the Avatar.
The Avatar does an average of 11.46 (Strike) or 6.67 (Sweep) to Calgar.
Put another way, it takes Calgar an average of five combats to bop the Avatar, and he cannot (even with perfect rolls) kill it in one combat.
The Avatar, meanwhile, consistently bodies Calgar in one phase.
-----------------------------------------
Back in 7th (which I have the rules for, and can't go back to 5th as I lack those rules) Calgar was T4 2+/4++ W4 Eternal Warrior. He had 5 (thanks to two weapons) WS6 S8 AP2 attacks at I5.
The Avatar Of Khaine was T6 3+/5++ W5. It had 5 WS10 S8 AP1 attacks at I10.
Calgar hit on 4s, Avatar hit on 3s, and would strike first even if Calgar charged. So, the Avatar would do 1.39 wounds per combat to Calgar, with Calgar doing the exact same back.
It was actually more likely for Calgar to win back in 7th than he is in 10th, but even then, the odds are NOT in his favor.
-----------------------------------------
Two questions for anyone with the 5th Edition 'Dex:
1) Did Calgar have Eternal Warrior? Because if not, he'd be pasted if he failed even a single save against the Avatar.
2) How is Calgar winning described? Is it a hard-fought, harrowing, and dangerous victory? Or just a footnote of how badass Calgar is?
The Avatar was the jobber back then, getting beaten by everyone.
And I liked the artwork in the 4th Ed book. They all came from the concept art that was made for 4th Ed, some of which was never made into miniature form (like the redesigned Devastators). I had hoped those designs would see the light of day with the Primaris release, but instead we got Compensators...
Two questions for anyone with the 5th Edition 'Dex:
1) Did Calgar have Eternal Warrior? Because if not, he'd be pasted if he failed even a single save against the Avatar.
2) How is Calgar winning described? Is it a hard-fought, harrowing, and dangerous victory? Or just a footnote of how badass Calgar is?
1) Calgar does have Eternal Warrior, but imo that doesn't matter, given the story context.
2) Story goes as follows, Avatar kills a bunch of guys while "shrugging off" heavy weapons, TH/SS Terminators and the like. Calgar comes in at the tail end and barely defeats the Avatar while he himself takes a beating. A reasonable interpretation is that the Avatar is pretty heavily hurt by the time Calgar gets there, and he lands the final blow while fighting alongside surviving Terminators. And that all works fine IMO, the "facts" function fine. It's just a very comic-bookey sort of tale, told poorly. But it's also totally a thing that could happen 'on-table'.
Two questions for anyone with the 5th Edition 'Dex:
1) Did Calgar have Eternal Warrior? Because if not, he'd be pasted if he failed even a single save against the Avatar.
2) How is Calgar winning described? Is it a hard-fought, harrowing, and dangerous victory? Or just a footnote of how badass Calgar is?
1) Calgar does have Eternal Warrior, but imo that doesn't matter, given the story context.
2) Story goes as follows, Avatar kills a bunch of guys while "shrugging off" heavy weapons, TH/SS Terminators and the like. Calgar comes in at the tail end and barely defeats the Avatar while he himself takes a beating. A reasonable interpretation is that the Avatar is pretty heavily hurt by the time Calgar gets there, and he lands the final blow while fighting alongside surviving Terminators. And that all works fine IMO, the "facts" function fine. It's just a very comic-bookey sort of tale, told poorly.
Yeah, that's fair.
If Calgar was lacking Eternal Warrior, then he'd be pretty toast even if he could one-round the Avatar, with an 80% chance of getting killed with five attacks/90% chance if the Avatar charges for +2 attacks.
But with Eternal Warrior, he's less than a 10% chance of dying to 7 attacks/barely over 2% with only 5.
So, with your point number two in mind, seems pretty reasonable.
If Calgar was lacking Eternal Warrior, then he'd be pretty toast even if he could one-round the Avatar, with an 80% chance of getting killed with five attacks/90% chance if the Avatar charges for +2 attacks.
But with Eternal Warrior, he's less than a 10% chance of dying to 7 attacks/barely over 2% with only 5.
So, with your point number two in mind, seems pretty reasonable.
Yeah 'on table' he could have been leading a unit too, I think allowing for bodyguard shennanigans, iirc.
Marines then looked like an army in 40k, Primaris now look like a product based on marines and very corporate... soulless.
I feel the same way. Primaris fluff is dumb and it feels like a weird add-on that makes Marines as a whole seem disjointed.
However, it may just be growing pains. By the next edition, Primaris will probably have completely replaced regular Marines and the armies will at least seem more aesthetically unified.
Insectum7 wrote: What people complained about was the Matt Ward storytelling, in particular Calgar punching out an Avatar. Rules-wise though? Solid book.
And?
I've seen more unlikely things occur during actual pkay.
Insectum7 wrote: What people complained about was the Matt Ward storytelling, in particular Calgar punching out an Avatar. Rules-wise though? Solid book.
And?
I've seen more unlikely things occur during actual pkay.
Yeah, me too. But some people found it distasteful, which is fair to a degree.
And lore is rarely written about that time an autogun brained a Marine either, but we've seen that all the time too.
It was a sign that they were changing how they treated characters in the game. It set the stage for more take downs, especially from Ward. And usually exclusively marine on anything else. You rarely read about badass gobok who killed a chapter master and his retinue, or an exarch that killed an assassin execution squad. No it's always marines getting the cool story.
And we saw exactly that, from Avatars to THE sanguinor (dumbest name of anything ever) flying a bloodthirster into the air all anime style and don't forget that walk of shame wet dream that was first release Draigo. They seem to have done a little walking back on him, but his story is just the worst fanfic.
And when a story about non marines doing cool gak like the harlequins infiltrating terra and killing custodes, well that has to be retconned so the fanbois butts don't hurt too much...
The named characters went from examples of how to create your own characters, to the protagonists of the setting that immediately NPC-ified whoever they were fighting.
EDIT: IMO the soul of 40k was the setting itself being the protagonist, with all these characters being dragged along by the weight of history. The setting revolved around its own inertia, not on the whims of specific characters that had models. The setting chewed up and spat out people with names, because they survived only at its convenience. Any story with a protagonist existed at the mercy of the setting, not the popularity of the character.
I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but it began around the time they retconned Eldrad's death after the 13th black crusade. They kept Tycho dead at Armageddon, but no special character has died that had a model (that I can think of), since then. Characters that were historical (Macharius) have disappeared. It's '12 seconds to midnight attendees only' now.
Now if you want a character to appear in a historical battle, you just have to pick from a growing range of semi-immortals. Rather than expanding the stories with historical characters.
Two questions for anyone with the 5th Edition 'Dex:
1) Did Calgar have Eternal Warrior? Because if not, he'd be pasted if he failed even a single save against the Avatar.
2) How is Calgar winning described? Is it a hard-fought, harrowing, and dangerous victory? Or just a footnote of how badass Calgar is?
1) Calgar does have Eternal Warrior, but imo that doesn't matter, given the story context.
2) Story goes as follows, Avatar kills a bunch of guys while "shrugging off" heavy weapons, TH/SS Terminators and the like. Calgar comes in at the tail end and barely defeats the Avatar while he himself takes a beating. A reasonable interpretation is that the Avatar is pretty heavily hurt by the time Calgar gets there, and he lands the final blow while fighting alongside surviving Terminators. And that all works fine IMO, the "facts" function fine. It's just a very comic-bookey sort of tale, told poorly. But it's also totally a thing that could happen 'on-table'.
Yeah. From what I recall, the story is written in a way that really makes it seem like Calgar was suddenly able to solo the avatar in a duel. Which... Dude is literally just a marine who found a right-handed power fist. Having him solo the avatar just feels really cringe. It's like someone writing fanfic about their OC beating up Thanos with their bare hands.
But most if not all factions have their share of cringe lore. Lore aside, I recall the 5th edition marine book being popular among marines for the way it let you field named characters and thus make your army feel more like the relevant subfaction (ex: Vulkan made your army better with flamers and meltas), and mildly despised by non-marines who ended up on the receiving end of drop pod shenanigans.
(Drop pods were seen as annoying because they both allowed you to alpha strike really hard and also basically ignored all the risks/drawbacks to deepstriking that every other army in the game had to deal with.)
Oh. And I think that was one of the editions where ATSKNF was kind of a feelsbad rule for your opponent. Also, las-plas razorback spam was a thing, though iirc that didn't really hit its stride until the Space Wolves book.
And we saw exactly that, from Avatars to THE sanguinor (dumbest name of anything ever) flying a bloodthirster into the air all anime style and don't forget that walk of shame wet dream that was first release Draigo. They seem to have done a little walking back on him, but his story is just the worst fanfic.
Draigo is like if you took Samurai Jack, and then cut out all the clever or dramatic moments and replaced them with monotonous violence and fireballs.
Also, I'm not sure we can be too upset about anime style bloodthirster executions. After all, 7th edition had that campaign where the white scars popped wheelies while ramping off craters so they could shoo their bolters at planes.
And when a story about non marines doing cool gak like the harlequins infiltrating terra and killing custodes, well that has to be retconned so the fanbois butts don't hurt too much...
I have mixed feels about that story. The harlies did make it look surprisingly easy to get surprisingly close to the emperor. But also, we're talking about the most fast and elite eldar in the setting barring named characters using the element of surprise and a one-time webway trick to launch a desperate, suicidal mission to get in the room with the Emperor... and they still failed in their goal. People got way more testy than I expected considering the story still saw the harlies failing.
The named characters went from examples of how to create your own characters, to the protagonists of the setting that immediately NPC-ified whoever they were fighting.
EDIT: IMO the soul of 40k was the setting itself being the protagonist, with all these characters being dragged along by the weight of history. The setting revolved around its own inertia, not on the whims of specific characters that had models. The setting chewed up and spat out people with names, because they survived only at its convenience. Any story with a protagonist existed at the mercy of the setting, not the popularity of the character.
I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but it began around the time they retconned Eldrad's death after the 13th black crusade. They kept Tycho dead at Armageddon, but no special character has died that had a model (that I can think of), since then. Characters that were historical (Macharius) have disappeared. It's '12 seconds to midnight attendees only' now.
Now if you want a character to appear in a historical battle, you just have to pick from a growing range of semi-immortals. Rather than expanding the stories with historical characters.
See, I always liked named characters when they were used to showcase an interesting little corner of the setting and give you a canon personality to root for on the tabletop. The problem with how they've been used recently, I think, is that they're frequently being presented as movers and shakers that the galaxy revolves around. I don't want to read about how the fate of the galaxy hinges on Guilliman punching Mortarion; I want to see Lukas trolling his wolf lord on Fenris and Yriel being an arrogant smarty pants on Iyanden.
Hellebore wrote: They kept Tycho dead at Armageddon, but no special character has died that had a model (that I can think of), since then.
Yarrick.
And they do dumb stuff, like have a big showdown between Ragnar and Ghaz, and Ghaz loses, being decapitated, but then Markari collects the Dragon Balls and wishes him back the Orks just attach his head to someone else so it was yet another stalemate where nothing happened.
That change is quite a fundamental one to how 40k feels.
Going from a pseudo historical perspective of this massive setting, to the tiny perspective of one character really changes how the game is pitched.
From the very beginning, from that front text piece talking about how vast the galaxy is and how you won't be missed, the setting has been pitched as this massive entity that everyone is doing what they can just to survive in.
The characters were beholden to it. Now, those characters reshape it, and thus shrink it down to something a person can manipulate, rather than an eldritch abomination that hangs over their heads.
Wyldhunt wrote:
I have mixed feels about that story. The harlies did make it look surprisingly easy to get surprisingly close to the emperor. But also, we're talking about the most fast and elite eldar in the setting barring named characters using the element of surprise and a one-time webway trick to launch a desperate, suicidal mission to get in the room with the Emperor... and they still failed in their goal. People got way more testy than I expected considering the story still saw the harlies failing.
Because space marines (and custodes by association) aren't allowed to lose and no one is allowed to have cool stories like marines do that show another army doing cool stuff. That's marine business. you aren't allow to have it. Especially if marines/custodes are the ones losing.
No one else is allowed to have elites that rival them, no one can have warriors that make them lose in the dirt. You have to play the crap team and like it, so everyone else can play the cool team and stomp you. You should feel grateful that you get to be the bad NPC team that the fanboi superheroes stomp all over. Don't even think about assuming you're on an equal footing as one of a range of equally presented factions in a game. It's Space Marine vs NPCs, nothing more.
Hellebore wrote: They kept Tycho dead at Armageddon, but no special character has died that had a model (that I can think of), since then.
Yarrick.
And they do dumb stuff, like have a big showdown between Ragnar and Ghaz, and Ghaz loses, being decapitated, but then Markari collects the Dragon Balls and wishes him back the Orks just attach his head to someone else so it was yet another stalemate where nothing happened.
Ah cool of course. Yarrick is perhaps an easier one to kill, given he was old and came out of retirement specifically for Armageddon 3.
Hellebore wrote: They kept Tycho dead at Armageddon, but no special character has died that had a model (that I can think of), since then.
Yarrick.
And they do dumb stuff, like have a big showdown between Ragnar and Ghaz, and Ghaz loses, being decapitated, but then Markari collects the Dragon Balls and wishes him back the Orks just attach his head to someone else so it was yet another stalemate where nothing happened.
Yeah. I know they were using it as a gimmick to sell boxes, but the named character vs named character stories are kind of inherently flawed. Generally you end up with a stalemate per the Ragnar vs Ghaz thing, and also you end up doing that Star Wars thing where the galaxy feels smaller because the handful of people we already know about keep running into each other. If you're going to use named characters in lore, you should probably have them doing their own thing 99% of the time. Use them as a chance to showcase one specific cool thing that exists in the galaxy.
Hellebore wrote:That change is quite a fundamental one to how 40k feels.
Going from a pseudo historical perspective of this massive setting, to the tiny perspective of one character really changes how the game is pitched.
From the very beginning, from that front text piece talking about how vast the galaxy is and how you won't be missed, the setting has been pitched as this massive entity that everyone is doing what they can just to survive in.
The characters were beholden to it. Now, those characters reshape it, and thus shrink it down to something a person can manipulate, rather than an eldritch abomination that hangs over their heads.
Going to partially push back here. While I don't like the way the galaxy seems to revolve around some of the named characters these days, I also don't love when the setting is actually hopeless. Putting the characters through a bunch of pain and misery is way more fun when there's a sliver of hope. Constant hopelesness removes the stakes. That's why I really like the ynnari being added to the setting. The fact that they're out there angling for a slim chance at a relatively not terrible future suddenly makes every battle involving craftworlders (even non-ynnari ones) feel like it has a point. If your craftworld can hold on for just a few more centuries, maybe they'll actually live to see a better future.
Actually achieving that future probably wouldn't suit the setting, but spending lives against an ork Waagh because you're holding out for the final buzzer is way more interesting than being screwed regardless of the fight's outcome.
RaptorusRex wrote: Gotta love how the nostalgia cycle has made people defend the 5th SM codex.
Things change, ya'll.
To go a little Baylan Skoll on things; I think people often like the ideas and potential of something more than the actual experience. The potential, whether its realized or not is where you get a fervor of ideas before the realities on the table grind them away. To be fair, for most people, playing the game represents a fraction of the time they spend engaging with it. For a lot of people this potential entertains them for hundreds of hours between the handful of games they get a year. It's easy to look back on all the fun you had thinking about the game, even if the actual experience on the table wasn't quite as engaging.
I laugh a little every time i see this point brought up, i know i am not the "normal" 40K gamer but back in 3rd and part way through 4th when i was still single i would spend both Friday after work, usually take a nap in the car, then come back in to the store and play all day Saturday. i got hundreds of games of each edition 3rd-5th before 6th kind of killed things in my area. starting in 2008 i began running late night gaming at the FLGS so it has been an average of 12+ hours of gaming every Saturday for going on 15 years (in that time i think i have missed 3 days due to weather/sickness or other life things). and we still play a version of 5th with some house rules fixes, we still enjoy it and have built a nice community up around it.
In that way i can say it is still engaging and i am enthusiastic about it because it is not just something i rarely did "back in the day"
Last weekend i did two 2K games back to back and then helped out with another 2K game for somebody who was getting a refresher since he hasn't played any games in a long while due to work and family. then i played a game of classic battle tech. got there at the store at around 2pm, left the next morning about 4:30 am
It's just an example, not a direct lift from 4th.
).
