This thread is mainly directed to SM and CSM players, but I suppose it also applies to other codices.
It seems like a big point of complaint with 8th edition is the homogenization of SM chapters and CSM legions. Chapter Tactics and Legion Rules are gone.
At least some people are hoping that they come back in a later codex, perhaps in the form of passive buffs.
Do you want "greater" complexity back? Why or why not?
Personally, I don't, for a few reasons:
1. Greater complexity by definition is harder to balance, and it was poorly balanced in 7th edition. Not all chapter tactics and legion tactics were created equal, but this wasn't properly reflected in the points costs. Ravenguard devastators cost exactly the same number of points as IF devastators. And do I really need to mention ravenwing chapter tactics? You'll find the same thing in 7th edition legion rules. Death guard legion rules were, in my view, straight up OP.
2. But let's suppose we got passive chapter tactics and legion tactics back, and they were perfectly balanced. That would mean one of two things. Either space marines would cost more points, or else, everything else would get buffed too. Neither of these alternatives is desirable to me.
The first alternative would mean that I likely couldn't run a battle company at 2000 points.
The second alternative means a tendency to power creep and an arms race....again.
3. I don't think it's necessary. The people who are saying that key words are useless are simply mistaken. HQs have AoE buffs which are keyword specific. I don't have IF chapter tactics any more...but captains now confer rerolls of 1 when rolling to hit for units with x chapter-specific keyword. So it actually works out even better for me much of the time, because it means that my heavy and/or special weapons also get to reroll.
To be clear, I do hope to see "chapter tactics" and "legion tactics" come back in the form of keyword specific stratagems, and "bland" ones at that. I hope that we don't see cheap stratagems that confer army wide buffs.
But frankly, I embrace the death of chapter tactics and legion specific rules. Game balance is better off because of it.
This. Complexity is the price you pay for things you want. Depth is the thing that we want. Merely increasing the complexity of the rules without changing the fact that 8th (like 7th before it) is a very shallow game would just mean increasing the rules bloat problem, not improving the game. And, as other games have demonstrated, you can have a deep and interesting game without having absurdly complex rules. 8th edition just isn't that game.
I completely agree with you, and I think that, in at least certain respects, we have greater depth in 8th edition than in 7th edition.
The switch from passive chapter tactics and legion rules to HQ AoE buffs and stratagems actually means that in-game decisions matter. Do I put the captain with a line of infantry in the backfield? Or do I stick him in a rhino? If I do put him in a rhino, where does that rhino need to go?
jeff white wrote: Yes. Sufficient to better simulate battle at the scale of the game.
Shouldn't take much...
What I really want is a truly scalable rules system...
I completely agree with you, and I think that, in at least certain respects, we have greater depth in 8th edition than in 7th edition.
The switch from passive chapter tactics and legion rules to HQ AoE buffs and stratagems actually means that in-game decisions matter. Do I put the captain with a line of infantry in the backfield? Or do I stick him in a rhino? If I do put him in a rhino, where does that rhino need to go?
You're right that some of the rule changes added depth.
Tho plenty of core rule changes also reduced depth.
Believe it or not, but excessive mobility often serves to destroy a lot of a games potential strategy.
Strategy that would give the game more depth as it forces you to make more tactical choices.
8th Edition has had probably the largest mobility creep of all the editions so far.
A lot of people like to say...
Strategy is List Building, Tactics is playing on the table.
There is some truth to that, but I want to emphasize that there is strategy on the table top.
Strategy is big picture. Where you plan your units, and where will they go to be able to adept to a changing battlefield is Strategy.
Again, Strategy creates Depth.
If your units can be anywhere on the battlefield at any point. You just destroyed that potential Strategy. You just destroyed that potential Depth.
jeff white wrote: Yes. Sufficient to better simulate battle at the scale of the game.
Shouldn't take much...
What I really want is a truly scalable rules system...
I don't even know what the bolded means.
What do you mean by that?
What he means is that if you were to scale the points the time factor wouldn't matter.
This means that you can finish an apocalyptic style game (5k+ pts) in the same time frame as a 2k pts game because of a streamlined rule set
Personally. There is still a lot of depth in 8th edition. People just haven't experimented enough yet.
Verviedi wrote: 8th is about as deep as the leftovers at the bottom of a glass.
Why do you think this?
Mostly the ridiculous homogenization of everything. For example, look at heavy weapons. In previous editions you had to choose between moving or shooting, in exchange for having the most powerful guns. In 8th there's no more tradeoff, a heavy weapon is just a better gun. Your devastator squad full of missile launchers can move and even charge just like a tactical squad, so why take the tactical squad? And it's no longer a big deal if you deploy your devastator squad in a bad spot, just move them to a better one without losing much firepower. Just throw some stuff on the table and roll some dice and it's going to be about as effective as the best strategy.
Do you think that 7th edition had more depth?
Don't know, don't care. Both were about as deep as the leftovers at the bottom of the glass, and arguing over whether the absurd balance problems of 7th or the dumbed-down rules of 8th are slightly shallower isn't all that interesting. They're both bad, just in different ways.
Verviedi wrote: 8th is about as deep as the leftovers at the bottom of a glass.
Why do you think this?
Do you think that 7th edition had more depth?
Why or why not?
What Peregrine said, pretty much.
Also, the over-randomness. Timmy can't win games because he's bad with strategy, so GW added a million dice rolls to the game so he can always feel like a winner by moving the outcome to almost solely random results instead of actual skill.
Verviedi wrote:Also, the over-randomness. Timmy can't win games because he's bad with strategy, so GW added a million dice rolls to the game so he can always feel like a winner by moving the outcome to almost solely random results instead of actual skill.
7th had the same issue, but 8th is worse.
Can you provide specific examples?
I'm finding that 8th edition has much less randomness. You technically can roll for warlord traits and psychic powers, but the rules also give you the choice to pick the ones you want rather than rolling for them. Likewise, instead of random deployment zones, you can pick what kind of deployment zones you want. There's even less randomness in terms of actual deployment. Alternating deployment means greater tactical depth and meaningful strategic player interaction.
One thing that I really like about 8th edition is that much more depends on player skill rather than sheer luck or having the most OP rules.
BrianDavion wrote: Yes Tradio, everyone wants Chapter/Legion tactics back
Everyone?
I certainly don't. I prefer the HQ AoE buffs over the passive chapter tactics and legion rules.
Also, the over-randomness. Timmy can't win games because he's bad with strategy, so GW added a million dice rolls to the game so he can always feel like a winner by moving the outcome to almost solely random results instead of actual skill.
Yes, because there was so much strategy involved with bringing a WarConvocation, Tidewing, Beast Hunter Shell Vanquishers, etc etc.
7th had the same issue, but 8th is worse.
The sad part is I know you think you're right on this.
Have you seen the weapon stat lines lately? Roll to see how many shots, then roll to see if you hit, then roll to see if you wound, then roll to see how many wounds you inflict. Combine that with the homogenization of everything and the game is becoming more and more about who rolls better dice.
Likewise, instead of random deployment zones, you can pick what kind of deployment zones you want.
No you can't, and thank god. That was a misreading of the rules, one player determines which deployment zone to use but the way they determine it is by a random roll. It's just telling one player to roll the die (as if it matters), not giving them control over the deployment type.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Kanluwen wrote: Yes, because there was so much strategy involved with bringing a WarConvocation, Tidewing, Beast Hunter Shell Vanquishers, etc etc.
There wasn't, but that was a problem with individual units/formations, not the core rules. Now the core rules have been homogenized and stripped of their strategic depth, on top of whatever dominant lists emerge and reduce the game to "my dice are better than your dice".
Have you seen the weapon stat lines lately? Roll to see how many shots, then roll to see if you hit, then roll to see if you wound, then roll to see how many wounds you inflict. Combine that with the homogenization of everything and the game is becoming more and more about who rolls better dice.
Heavens forbid there be weapons that require you to roll a D6 for shots...we've never heard of such a thing!
Oh right...
Kanluwen wrote: Yes, because there was so much strategy involved with bringing a WarConvocation, Tidewing, Beast Hunter Shell Vanquishers, etc etc.
There wasn't, but that was a problem with individual units/formations, not the core rules. Now the core rules have been homogenized and stripped of their strategic depth, on top of whatever dominant lists emerge and reduce the game to "my dice are better than your dice".
Peregrine wrote:Have you seen the weapon stat lines lately? Roll to see how many shots, then roll to see if you hit, then roll to see if you wound, then roll to see how many wounds you inflict. Combine that with the homogenization of everything and the game is becoming more and more about who rolls better dice.
I think that you've overstating the scope of this.
1. The randomness in determining the number of hits is largely relegated to former template and blast weapons, and blast weapons were already more or less mostly random. Rolling 1d6 to determine the number of hits is qualitatively no more random than placing a blast template and then rolling a scatter die. If anything, rolling 1d6 hits is actually less random.
Furthermore, the fact that blast weapons now have a random number of hits actually means less homogenization, not more. Now space marines can fire blast weapons much more accurately than orks.
2. Though I will agree that it would have made just as much sense, and would have been much less random, had they given these kinds of weapons static values (e.g., krak missiles dealing 3 damage, krak grenades dealing 2 damage, lascannons dealing 4 damage, flamers automatically getting 4 hits, frag grenades automatically getting 3 hits)...
3. ...I don't think that this really matters in the grand scheme of things, since when we are talking about large numbers of rolls, it's going to tend to approach the statistical average anyway.
Randomness hurts the most when we are talking about making a relatively few number of rolls (e.g., like determining warlord traits or psychic powers).
4. How does homogenization increase randomness?
No you can't, and thank god. That was a misreading of the rules, one player determines which deployment zone to use but the way they determine it is by a random roll. It's just telling one player to roll the die (as if it matters), not giving them control over the deployment type.
Check again on that, because I believe that you are mistaken.
The way it works is that there's a roll off, and then the person who loses the roll off (or wins the roll off, depending upon your perspective) then decides the kind of deployment zones to be used.
Furthermore, there's even less randomness because of the addition of the stratagem that allows you to reroll dice. Now instead of having a 1/6 chance of rolling to seize, any player with a reasonably constructed army now has a 1/3 chance to seize which, by definition, is less random.
I really fail to see where people find the tactical dept of the core rules of 3rd to 7th edition.
Warhammer40k has always been a shallow game but people just refused to accept that reality. Now he is still a shallow game, at least compared with the competition, but with much more coherent (Yeah yeah homogeneization. Thats what it is for you, to me is a more coherent ruleset) rules and player interaction in all of the game phases. From deployment to movement to shooting and, surprisingly, to meele.
Yeah, they have made the boring as f*ck meele phase that was 100% auto mode since 3rd to a engagin and interactive experience between the players.
But God forbid us for analizing with objetivy the ups and downs of 8th edition. Or is the best thing evah or is just crap.
8th is a better 2nd edition in my mind. So... I'll have fun playing the s**t out of it before they broke it releasing Codex full of special snowflake rules that people can't live without!
Verviedi wrote:Also, the over-randomness. Timmy can't win games because he's bad with strategy, so GW added a million dice rolls to the game so he can always feel like a winner by moving the outcome to almost solely random results instead of actual skill.
7th had the same issue, but 8th is worse.
Can you provide specific examples?
I'm finding that 8th edition has much less randomness. You technically can roll for warlord traits and psychic powers, but the rules also give you the choice to pick the ones you want rather than rolling for them. Likewise, instead of random deployment zones, you can pick what kind of deployment zones you want. There's even less randomness in terms of actual deployment. Alternating deployment means greater tactical depth and meaningful strategic player interaction.
One thing that I really like about 8th edition is that much more depends on player skill rather than sheer luck or having the most OP rules.
BrianDavion wrote: Yes Tradio, everyone wants Chapter/Legion tactics back
Everyone?
I certainly don't. I prefer the HQ AoE buffs over the passive chapter tactics and legion rules.
There's a lot of random shot weapons, random damage rolls, and random effects on weapons. The alternate deployment and warlord trait tables being fixed are good, yes, but in general the amount of dice being rolled went up, not down.
Verviedi wrote:Also, the over-randomness. Timmy can't win games because he's bad with strategy, so GW added a million dice rolls to the game so he can always feel like a winner by moving the outcome to almost solely random results instead of actual skill.
7th had the same issue, but 8th is worse.
Can you provide specific examples?
I'm finding that 8th edition has much less randomness. You technically can roll for warlord traits and psychic powers, but the rules also give you the choice to pick the ones you want rather than rolling for them. Likewise, instead of random deployment zones, you can pick what kind of deployment zones you want. There's even less randomness in terms of actual deployment. Alternating deployment means greater tactical depth and meaningful strategic player interaction.
One thing that I really like about 8th edition is that much more depends on player skill rather than sheer luck or having the most OP rules.
BrianDavion wrote: Yes Tradio, everyone wants Chapter/Legion tactics back
Everyone?
I certainly don't. I prefer the HQ AoE buffs over the passive chapter tactics and legion rules.
There's a lot of random shot weapons, random damage rolls, and random effects on weapons. The alternate deployment and warlord trait tables being fixed are good, yes, but in general the amount of dice being rolled went up, not down.
The reason random damage and hits exist is to negate the in-game mathhammering. If you have a Rhino with 9 wounds and you enemy has two devastators with lasscanons that do 4 damage each, you are 100% sure that they can't kill you. If each lasscanon does d6 of damage then it becomes a game of playing with the chances of being sucesfull. You can push the limits for a great risk-great reward situation if you wish. Just like the Plasma Guns having two firing modes, one powerfull with overcharge and other normal without the ristk of blowing yourself.
You can call that randomess and a bad mechanic. I can agree that people is totally entitled to not like it. But is a legitimate way to create a gameplay experience and it has is reasons to exist. I like it, so good for me. You don't, bad for you, and I say this in a honest way. For every decision a person making a ruleset takes, theres a group that is gonna like or love it, and other that is gona dislike or hate it.
Verviedi wrote:Also, the over-randomness. Timmy can't win games because he's bad with strategy, so GW added a million dice rolls to the game so he can always feel like a winner by moving the outcome to almost solely random results instead of actual skill.
7th had the same issue, but 8th is worse.
Can you provide specific examples?
I'm finding that 8th edition has much less randomness. You technically can roll for warlord traits and psychic powers, but the rules also give you the choice to pick the ones you want rather than rolling for them. Likewise, instead of random deployment zones, you can pick what kind of deployment zones you want. There's even less randomness in terms of actual deployment. Alternating deployment means greater tactical depth and meaningful strategic player interaction.
One thing that I really like about 8th edition is that much more depends on player skill rather than sheer luck or having the most OP rules.
BrianDavion wrote: Yes Tradio, everyone wants Chapter/Legion tactics back
Everyone?
I certainly don't. I prefer the HQ AoE buffs over the passive chapter tactics and legion rules.
There's a lot of random shot weapons, random damage rolls, and random effects on weapons. The alternate deployment and warlord trait tables being fixed are good, yes, but in general the amount of dice being rolled went up, not down.
The reason random damage and hits exist is to negate the in-game mathhammering. If you have a Rhino with 9 wounds and you enemy has two devastators with lasscanons that do 4 damage each, you are 100% sure that they can't kill you. If each lasscanon does d6 of damage then it becomes a game of playing with the chances of being sucesfull. You can push the limits for a great risk-great reward situation if you wish. Just like the Plasma Guns having two firing modes, one powerfull with overcharge and other normal without the ristk of blowing yourself.
You can call that randomess and a bad mechanic. I can agree that people is totally entitled to not like it. But is a legitimate way to create a gameplay experience and it has is reasons to exist. I like it, so good for me. You don't, bad for you, and I say this in a honest way. For every decision a person making a ruleset takes, theres a group that is gonna like or love it, and other that is gona dislike or hate it.
I certainly agree there, that different people like different things. After all, we're not all infallible robots (note: please fix this).
I'm a fan of that scenario. Being able to arrange things so the constants align and they can't kill you. It allows for tactical play to get the math JUST right so that you can get your Rhino up to where it needs to be.
No, the problem was indisputably the rules. If the rules were well-written and balanced then no amount of player optimization can break the game. Abusive lists can only happen when the rules are garbage.
Elaborate, because I can't even begin to imagine what you could mean by that.
A large part of it came down, in my opinion, to player attitudes.
Some people chose to take what were fluffy formations in a way that was abusive as hell. See War Convocation with Flesh Tearers taxi service early on.
Having written a roleplay sistem from scratch for a server with tens of people every day I have mixed feelings about this.
In one hand, you should look for the loop holes and try to fix them, to avoid people abusing them. Thats just good rulewriting.
In the other hand, it reaches a point where people just bend so much the system that is impossible to avoid all of those things without making the system totally unusable from his primary purpose (Roleplay in mi case)
I have look, because being the administrator of my own server I can say in many cases just "This is a system for roleplay, not to make a munckin character and destroy everybody in pvp)
But Warhammer40k isn't that. Is a competitive game, and as every competitive game people will go for the most efficient and broken option. And thats a given for boardgames, wargames, videogames or even sports. Because thats the nature of competitive gameplay: You go there to win, not to have "fun".
The problem is that for a good balance competitive experience you need restrictions. A TOON of restrictions. But people hate restrictions, even more if they don't allow them to use some broken combo/unit/hero/techniche/wathever. Thats the hipocrisy that I find tiresome.
No, the problem was indisputably the rules. If the rules were well-written and balanced then no amount of player optimization can break the game. Abusive lists can only happen when the rules are garbage.
I agree that GW has had bad rulewriting... from the beginning. But you and every here knows that people is gonna go full aboard with the most broken thing. Even if that just gives them a 5% of advantage.
The problems comes when you just can't win by your skill if you don't use the broken tool. In Warhammer40k you had that. It doesn't matter how good you are playing orks. You can't win against Wraitknights and Scatterbike spam. In other games you can win if you are better even taking sub-optimal choices (Like a less powerfull hero, fighting character, army, etc...)
But that comes down again to the fact that Warhammer40k in any incarnation or edition has puth the weithg of winning first in list-building and second in rolling dice, and third, your choices.
(Obviously if you took absolutely stupid choices is very probably that you lose, but the margin for that if you had a better list that your opponen was very very broad)
I certainly agree there, that different people like different things. After all, we're not all infallible robots (note: please fix this).
I'm a fan of that scenario. Being able to arrange things so the constants align and they can't kill you. It allows for tactical play to get the math JUST right so that you can get your Rhino up to where it needs to be.
This explains why you plain Adeptus Mechanicus I'm more of an Ork mindset!
Traditio wrote: Rolling 1d6 to determine the number of hits is qualitatively no more random than placing a blast template and then rolling a scatter die.
It's very different because the template varies in effectiveness based on player skill and tradeoffs like "do I bunch up my unit to give everyone cover behind this small terrain piece, or do I spread out to mitigate templates". The D6/D3 shot weapons, in addition to being much less effective, are purely random now.
Furthermore, the fact that blast weapons now have a random number of hits actually means less homogenization, not more. Now space marines can fire blast weapons much more accurately than orks.
That isn't the opposite of homogenization because it has no effect on strategy. It changes the math and how point-efficient a unit may be, but how you use the blast weapon remains exactly the same. And now it's homogenized by being the same as other weapons, and model spacing/positioning no longer being a factor.
4. How does homogenization increase randomness?
It doesn't, they're two separate factors. But what homogenization does is increase the relative importance of the dice. When everything is homogenized player skill and decisions matter less, so the random factor becomes proportionally more of what decides the outcome of the game. For example, getting to move and shoot with heavy weapons means that the player who did a better job of positioning their devastator squad has less of an advantage (since their opponent can freely move their heavy weapons into a better spot), and the game becomes more about which devastator squad rolls better even if the random element is not changed.
The way it works is that there's a roll off, and then the person who loses the roll off (or wins the roll off, depending upon your perspective) then decides the kind of deployment zones to be used.
No, read the rule. It says they determine which deployment zone to use, not that they decide. And the rules for determining which deployment zone to use tell you to roll on a random table. This is GW feeling compelled to specify which player rolls the die, not GW handing a massive and borderline game-breaking advantage to one player.
Not that it's a very deep strategic element even if you rules lawyer it to work that way. You obviously choose the deployment that puts the most objectives in/near your deployment zone, with very little thought involved beyond making the obvious correct choice.
Furthermore, there's even less randomness because of the addition of the stratagem that allows you to reroll dice. Now instead of having a 1/6 chance of rolling to seize, any player with a reasonably constructed army now has a 1/3 chance to seize which, by definition, is less random.
You don't understand what "random" means. Changing the roll from 1/6 to 1/3 makes the outcomes over a long period of time more consistent, but it's still making a huge and potentially game-deciding effect depend on a single D6 roll.
Traditio wrote: Rolling 1d6 to determine the number of hits is qualitatively no more random than placing a blast template and then rolling a scatter die.
It's very different because the template varies in effectiveness based on player skill and tradeoffs like "do I bunch up my unit to give everyone cover behind this small terrain piece, or do I spread out to mitigate templates". The D6/D3 shot weapons, in addition to being much less effective, are purely random now.
This is fixed with the Cities of Death advanced rules, where flamers and grenades do the max number of hits to unit camping in cover for that +2 cover save.
A set of "advanced rules" that in my opinion should be default rules because they blend so well with the basic rules and add much tactical dept to the game. And they aren't as "thematic" as the planetary strike rules, etc... so they feel much more natural to any game-type you are playing.
Galas wrote: This is fixed with the Cities of Death advanced rules, where flamers and grenades do the max number of hits to unit camping in cover for that +2 cover save.
That doesn't fix it because it's only one type of terrain, one situation (a unit camping entirely inside, rather than using it to block LOS without being inside it), and a binary choice of "use it or don't" instead of the former tradeoff.
Galas wrote: This is fixed with the Cities of Death advanced rules, where flamers and grenades do the max number of hits to unit camping in cover for that +2 cover save.
That doesn't fix it because it's only one type of terrain, one situation (a unit camping entirely inside, rather than using it to block LOS without being inside it), and a binary choice of "use it or don't" instead of the former tradeoff.
To be honest here, the previous tradeoff was so much time consuming (And playing all the time agains't tyranids thats a BIG problem) for so little... "tactic" that at least to me it wasn't worth it as a gameplay feature.
YMMV, obviously.
(I don't even know if I used this acronym correctly )
Overly competitive gamers are a negative thing in this hobby IMO. The game is too abstract to be properly balanced and the range of options too vast. This isn't chess. I'm looking for the factions to be roughly balanced with each other, with each one being able to counter the other. For it not to be overly complex and most importantly... cinematic, fluffy and fun. 8th looks like it has ticked all of these boxes for me. I'm very happy with the way things are heading.
Hollow wrote: The game is too abstract to be properly balanced and the range of options too vast.
Wrong. Much more complex games have been balanced to a much higher level than 40k, because the creators cared about balance. The problem with 40k is that GW's rule authors are lazy and incompetent, not that the task is impossible.
Casual-At-All-Costs gamers are a negative thing in this hobby IMO. GW is too incompetent to properly balance the game and the range of options too difficult to balance in just one afternoon. This isn't chess. I'm looking for the factions to be competitively balanced with each other, with each one being able to counter the other in some way. For it not to be overly complex and most importantly... cinematic, fluffy and fun. 8th has not ticked any of these boxes for me, due to homogenization, randomness, and "gameiness" ruining all of these requirements. I'm not very happy with the way things are heading.
You see, I find it interesting people think chapter/legion tactics won't come back. We've already seen them start to come back, in the form of unique units. DG (and tsons) basically have an entire mini army with unique rules for half of them. I expect most named chapters/legions will get similar treatment eventually.
I think it is also worth mentioning many armies already have greater complexity than SM/CSM. Currently, SoB, IG, or Mechanicus are more interesting to play, as they have orders, acts of faith or canticles. Ynarri have soulburst and demons have sheer diversity of psychic powers and unique rules. Compared to those options, I feel the SM do feel a bit dull. Not bad, just a bit uninteresting.
Lets be honest here. GW is a multinational that is run by Casual-At-All-Costs gamers, so is obvious what his is target audience.
That mentality appear to change since Roundtree. We can say, with reasonable criticism, that they are at best mediocre at balance... but at least this time, they are trying!
In the past, they just shruged all the criticism about the balance of the game! Is just madness if you think about a multinational doing that...
But in the other hand... Warhammer is made to last, not like videogames or pokemon
jeff white wrote: Yes. Sufficient to better simulate battle at the scale of the game.
Shouldn't take much...
What I really want is a truly scalable rules system...
I don't even know what the bolded means.
What do you mean by that?
Gw almost had/has it.
What I am talking about is a system designed to work from RPG through planetary/economic conflict and resolution.
So basically an RPG into a squad/team level RPG into a 40 skirmish into a 40k game with more points and more points until the table gets too small into epic scale and titans into battle fleet Gothic and from there into a multi system trade/economic and resource management sort of game.
The idea is to be able to follow a hobbyist from developing his first few models through the RPG into collecting larger forces and so on.
And to be able to simulate different levels of a narrative campaign for example.
One need not play all games at all levels of organization of course.
40k with 2000 points a side will be played with a certain complexity to reflect the details that the players want to see on the field
And ultimately it is up to the players to decide which rules they will use.
What I am looking for is something like the advanced rules of the current book but with depth, to use the word that people here use when they don't like the word complexity because complexity can be there for no good reason...
For example in the current edition I think that the way that cover is ruled is terrible.
It loses the detail that I want to see on the table, which is that individual models would be judged by their own positions relative terrain. As it is the cover rules apply to whole units. That is fine for larger scale games and should be offered for fast play at the loss of detail.
But I would prefer to use more exacting cover and terrain rules in standard games. Cover rules that reflect more detail.
I want a rules system designed to reflect different levels of complexity or depth on the table and that can to some degree be used sort of plug and play. If someone wanted to use the levelling up RPG type system designed for small campaign style long running games for their entire fifteen thousand point chaos collection the. He or she could do so... It would take a lot of time to play a game let alone keep records of all the models between. But it would be possible. Likewise if some people wanted into play fast games with little cmplxity reflecting less battlefield detail the they could opt for the rules applying to a lower level of detail.
Peregrine wrote:It's very different because the template varies in effectiveness based on player skill and tradeoffs like "do I bunch up my unit to give everyone cover behind this small terrain piece, or do I spread out to mitigate templates". The D6/D3 shot weapons, in addition to being much less effective, are purely random now.
I disagree with you. In 4th edition, what you are saying would have been true. The way that it worked in 4th edition is that you select a target, place the blast marker over a model, and then roll to hit. That's much less random, and that does make model positioning much more important.
In 5th to 7th edition, it's still true that model positioning is important, but it's simply not true to say that what happens is more or less random. No matter how closely I bunch up my models, you could have a BS 5 model fire a blast and have it scatter off of the table. Or worse, it could just as easily scatter onto one of your models.
The reason that I say that 8th edition is less random is because what happens is based on the model's ballistic skill, not a scatter die, and the range of results are much more predicable.
That isn't the opposite of homogenization because it has no effect on strategy. It changes the math and how point-efficient a unit may be, but how you use the blast weapon remains exactly the same. And now it's homogenized by being the same as other weapons, and model spacing/positioning no longer being a factor.
I understand your point. That's true enough, although I'm not sure it's bad thing. Personally, I like the homogenization. It makes for a more streamlined game that has less potential for the endless frustrations that was 6th and 7th edition.
It doesn't, they're two separate factors. But what homogenization does is increase the relative importance of the dice. When everything is homogenized player skill and decisions matter less, so the random factor becomes proportionally more of what decides the outcome of the game. For example, getting to move and shoot with heavy weapons means that the player who did a better job of positioning their devastator squad has less of an advantage (since their opponent can freely move their heavy weapons into a better spot), and the game becomes more about which devastator squad rolls better even if the random element is not changed.
I'm not sure how what you are saying is true.
Would you explain this at greater length?
And I think that you are overstating even the heavy weapons thing. Devastators have a move characteristic of 6 inches. It's not like devastators are flying across the map, shooting at full BS, and then charging.
Literally all that this means is that devastator marines got their effective threat range increased by an additional 6 inches.
And no, that doesn't reduce it to a dice game with no strategy involved. Again, alternating deployments are a thing now. Vehicles are mostly faster now.
And as mild as a -1 penalty to hit sounds, it still provides a massive disincentive to moving and shooting...or shooting at flying vehicles, for that matter.
Besides, how important was any of this in 6th or 7th edition? You played Leman Russ tanks. Many Eldar players used scatbikes. Many SM players likewise spammed bikes.
It's not like 8th edition somehow has less strategic depth because of things like this. 7th edition was no better.
No, read the rule. It says they determine which deployment zone to use, not that they decide. And the rules for determining which deployment zone to use tell you to roll on a random table. This is GW feeling compelled to specify which player rolls the die, not GW handing a massive and borderline game-breaking advantage to one player.
Not that it's a very deep strategic element even if you rules lawyer it to work that way. You obviously choose the deployment that puts the most objectives in/near your deployment zone, with very little thought involved beyond making the obvious correct choice.
You appear to be correct about this.
That makes no sense to me.
The non-random selection of deployment zones in Only War is fine. And I think that you are incorrect about this, Peregrine. It's not a "massive and borderline game-breaking advantage." The way that Only War balances this is by allowing one player to choose the deployment zones, but then allowing the other player to choose which deployment zones he wants.
So if we are playing with a single objective, and it would be in a dawn of war deployment zone...sure, you can choose dawn of war deployment...but chances are, I'm taking the deployment zone with the objective.
Traditio wrote: In 5th to 7th edition, it's still true that model positioning is important, but it's simply not true to say that what happens is more or less random. No matter how closely I bunch up my models, you could have a BS 5 model fire a blast and have it scatter off of the table. Or worse, it could just as easily scatter onto one of your models.
Do you understand what a bell curve of probability is? That BS 5 model's shot could scatter off the table, but the average scatter was only ~2". And what it translated to in real games was that blast weapons would almost always hit something, but rarely hit tons of models unless you packed everything into ideal template formation. Contrast this with 8th, where it's all random and you have equal chances of hitting 1 model or 6 models.
I understand your point. That's true enough, although I'm not sure it's bad thing. Personally, I like the homogenization. It makes for a more streamlined game that has less potential for the endlessly frustrations that was 6th and 7th edition.
No, it makes a bloated mess of a game. The homogenization means that you still have all of the rules for things like flyers, heavy weapons, etc, but they have greatly reduced importance from a strategic point of view. IOW, the game is now much shallower but only lost a small amount of complexity, if any. Maybe that's fine if you want to play a "game" where skill and strategy are irrelevant and all you do is mindlessly roll dice, but for most of us that is not a good thing.
Would you explain this at greater length?
It's simple. Imagine one of those "roll a die and move that many spaces" games for small children. There's no strategy or skill involved, all that matters is your luck with the dice. That's an extreme case, but it's the direction that 40k is moving in with 8th. If all unit types are homogenized and there's little strategic depth it means that proportionally more of the outcome of the game is decided by dice.
And I think that you are overstating even the heavy weapons thing. Devastators have a move characteristic of 6 inches. It's not like devastators are flying across the map, shooting at full BS, and then charging.
It's still a significant difference because now the difference between, say, a bolter and a lascannon completely favors the lascannon. There's no more reason to avoid taking heavy weapons now that they're just like other guns, except better.
It's not a "massive and borderline game-breaking advantage."
Peregrine wrote:No, it makes a bloated mess of a game. The homogenization means that you still have all of the rules for things like flyers, heavy weapons, etc, but they have greatly reduced importance from a strategic point of view. IOW, the game is now much shallower but only lost a small amount of complexity, if any. Maybe that's fine if you want to play a "game" where skill and strategy are irrelevant and all you do is mindlessly roll dice, but for most of us that is not a good thing.
Yes, it's true that taking a landraider no longer completely shuts down S7 or inferior shooting altogether, and it does mean that fliers are no longer practically immune to most weapons in the game, but I don't think that equates to a lessening of strategic depth.
If anything, it increases the strategic depth, because now you actually have to weigh your options. If my devastators can fire krak at your flier and hit on 4s, or if I can fire at a landraider and hit on 3s, that's a real in-game player choice.
Likewise, if my sternguard can fire special issue boltguns either at your landraider or your MEQs, again, that's a real in-game player choice.
You also see this with lasguns and rhinos. Yes, you technically can kill a rhino with lasguns now. But if you are shooting a rhino with lasguns, you probably won't deal much damage, and those are shots that COULD have been directed at something else instead.
It's simple. Imagine one of those "roll a die and move that many spaces" games for small children. There's no strategy or skill involved, all that matters is your luck with the dice. That's an extreme case, but it's the direction that 40k is moving in with 8th. If all unit types are homogenized and there's little strategic depth it means that proportionally more of the outcome of the game is decided by dice.
How was 7th edition any better?
It's still a significant difference because now the difference between, say, a bolter and a lascannon completely favors the lascannon. There's no more reason to avoid taking heavy weapons now that they're just like other guns, except better.
It is a reason to pick a meltagun or a plasma gun over a lascannon, however.
Besides, was lascannon vs. boltgun a real choice even in 7th?
Weren't you the one saying in another thread that running naked tactical squads shouldn't be a real choice?
Verviedi wrote:Also, the over-randomness. Timmy can't win games because he's bad with strategy, so GW added a million dice rolls to the game so he can always feel like a winner by moving the outcome to almost solely random results instead of actual skill.
7th had the same issue, but 8th is worse.
Can you provide specific examples?
I'm finding that 8th edition has much less randomness. You technically can roll for warlord traits and psychic powers, but the rules also give you the choice to pick the ones you want rather than rolling for them. Likewise, instead of random deployment zones, you can pick what kind of deployment zones you want. There's even less randomness in terms of actual deployment. Alternating deployment means greater tactical depth and meaningful strategic player interaction.
One thing that I really like about 8th edition is that much more depends on player skill rather than sheer luck or having the most OP rules.
BrianDavion wrote: Yes Tradio, everyone wants Chapter/Legion tactics back
Everyone?
I certainly don't. I prefer the HQ AoE buffs over the passive chapter tactics and legion rules.
There's a lot of random shot weapons, random damage rolls, and random effects on weapons. The alternate deployment and warlord trait tables being fixed are good, yes, but in general the amount of dice being rolled went up, not down.
The reason random damage and hits exist is to negate the in-game mathhammering. If you have a Rhino with 9 wounds and you enemy has two devastators with lasscanons that do 4 damage each, you are 100% sure that they can't kill you. If each lasscanon does d6 of damage then it becomes a game of playing with the chances of being sucesfull. You can push the limits for a great risk-great reward situation if you wish. Just like the Plasma Guns having two firing modes, one powerfull with overcharge and other normal without the ristk of blowing yourself.
You can call that randomess and a bad mechanic. I can agree that people is totally entitled to not like it. But is a legitimate way to create a gameplay experience and it has is reasons to exist. I like it, so good for me. You don't, bad for you, and I say this in a honest way. For every decision a person making a ruleset takes, theres a group that is gonna like or love it, and other that is gona dislike or hate it.
I certainly agree there, that different people like different things. After all, we're not all infallible robots (note: please fix this).
I'm a fan of that scenario. Being able to arrange things so the constants align and they can't kill you. It allows for tactical play to get the math JUST right so that you can get your Rhino up to where it needs to be.
except randomness is part of what MAKES 40K. I shoot at your unit with my tatical marines, I roll the dice, and maybe my tac Marines hit. or maybe they wipe out your key squad and I win, a key element of the game comes down to who got lucky with the dice. it happens and it can be what makes 40k exciting. the people who keep insisting they remove all random from 40k, we have a table top war game without any randomness. It's called Chess.
No, the problem was indisputably the rules. If the rules were well-written and balanced then no amount of player optimization can break the game. Abusive lists can only happen when the rules are garbage.
Remember Peregrine, it's always easier to blame your equals than your Masters.
Also, count me in on the "we need Depth, no complexity" and the "random shots and random damage per shot is garbage" fields, please.
I don't know why you think not getting Chapter Tactics back is even an option. Do you see the "choose your own" keywords? There's no reason to make those except to leave the door open for future subfactions. So not only will you see Chapter Tactics and Legion Tactics again. Before long you're going to see Sept Tactics, Klan Taktiks, Dynasty Tactics, Forgeworld Tactics, etc. etc.
Traditio wrote: Yes, it's true that taking a landraider no longer completely shuts down S7 or inferior shooting altogether, and it does mean that fliers are no longer practically immune to most weapons in the game, but I don't think that equates to a lessening of strategic depth.
It absolutely means that strategic depth is reduced, because there are harsher consequences for failure. Did you neglect to take AA or high-strength weapons? Did you deploy your anti-LR/flyer threats poorly? You aren't killing those targets. But in 8th those consequences are removed. Sure, your AA specialist might be a bit better at killing flyers, but even if you botch your use of the AA specialist (or don't bother to bring it at all) your other weapons are almost as good. The difference between a good strategy and a bad one is reduced to a 25% damage penalty, and that's a significant reduction in depth.
If my devastators can fire krak at your flier and hit on 4s, or if I can fire at a landraider and hit on 3s, that's a real in-game player choice.
Except now there is no longer any downside to taking the krak missile devastators. You don't need to take AA specialists and figure out a way to use them effectively, you just take a bunch of missile launchers and know that you can roll dice at all possible targets no matter what you do. The fact that you can throw krak missiles freely at pretty much any possible target is a really bad thing! In fact, it's the same reason people hated scatter laser spam for being too mindlessly effective.
How was 7th edition any better?
Have you even read anything I've been posting here? I've been giving you examples. And, as I said, 7th edition had its issues with strategic depth, but relative to 8th those issues had more to do with specific overpowered units/formations than the core rules. 8th edition strips depth from the core rules, and it remains to be seen whether balance can hold up in the long run or if we'll end up back at 7th edition levels of power creep and poor design on top of the shallower core rules.
Besides, was lascannon vs. boltgun a real choice even in 7th?
Yes, assuming the squad wanted to move. I regularly leave off the heavy weapons on my veteran squads because they'll never get to shoot (or at least shoot effectively, but snap shots were a bad idea).
Weren't you the one saying in another thread that running naked tactical squads shouldn't be a real choice?
There's a difference between "naked" and "taking every possible upgrade". And there's a difference between taking a bolter tactical squad for a specific purpose and taking an army of nothing but naked tactical squads, and I only rejected the second option.
Verviedi wrote:Also, the over-randomness. Timmy can't win games because he's bad with strategy, so GW added a million dice rolls to the game so he can always feel like a winner by moving the outcome to almost solely random results instead of actual skill.
7th had the same issue, but 8th is worse.
Can you provide specific examples?
I'm finding that 8th edition has much less randomness. You technically can roll for warlord traits and psychic powers, but the rules also give you the choice to pick the ones you want rather than rolling for them. Likewise, instead of random deployment zones, you can pick what kind of deployment zones you want. There's even less randomness in terms of actual deployment. Alternating deployment means greater tactical depth and meaningful strategic player interaction.
One thing that I really like about 8th edition is that much more depends on player skill rather than sheer luck or having the most OP rules.
BrianDavion wrote: Yes Tradio, everyone wants Chapter/Legion tactics back
Everyone?
I certainly don't. I prefer the HQ AoE buffs over the passive chapter tactics and legion rules.
There's a lot of random shot weapons, random damage rolls, and random effects on weapons. The alternate deployment and warlord trait tables being fixed are good, yes, but in general the amount of dice being rolled went up, not down.
The reason random damage and hits exist is to negate the in-game mathhammering. If you have a Rhino with 9 wounds and you enemy has two devastators with lasscanons that do 4 damage each, you are 100% sure that they can't kill you. If each lasscanon does d6 of damage then it becomes a game of playing with the chances of being sucesfull. You can push the limits for a great risk-great reward situation if you wish. Just like the Plasma Guns having two firing modes, one powerfull with overcharge and other normal without the ristk of blowing yourself.
You can call that randomess and a bad mechanic. I can agree that people is totally entitled to not like it. But is a legitimate way to create a gameplay experience and it has is reasons to exist. I like it, so good for me. You don't, bad for you, and I say this in a honest way. For every decision a person making a ruleset takes, theres a group that is gonna like or love it, and other that is gona dislike or hate it.
I certainly agree there, that different people like different things. After all, we're not all infallible robots (note: please fix this).
I'm a fan of that scenario. Being able to arrange things so the constants align and they can't kill you. It allows for tactical play to get the math JUST right so that you can get your Rhino up to where it needs to be.
except randomness is part of what MAKES 40K. I shoot at your unit with my tatical marines, I roll the dice, and maybe my tac Marines hit. or maybe they wipe out your key squad and I win, a key element of the game comes down to who got lucky with the dice. it happens and it can be what makes 40k exciting. the people who keep insisting they remove all random from 40k, we have a table top war game without any randomness. It's called Chess.
The problem is when we are getting to the point of:
- rolling dice to see how many shots you take;
- rolling dice to see if they hit;
- rolling to see if they wound;
- rolling to see if the armour saves or not;
- rolling to see how many wounds they cause per shot.
And this is for one weapon. And then you have rules (like the Ven dread's "shrug off wounds" one) that add in yet one more roll to this bunch.
That's too much randomness even for 40k.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hollow wrote: Overly competitive gamers are a negative thing in this hobby IMO. The game is too abstract to be properly balanced and the range of options too vast. This isn't chess. I'm looking for the factions to be roughly balanced with each other, with each one being able to counter the other. For it not to be overly complex and most importantly... cinematic, fluffy and fun. 8th looks like it has ticked all of these boxes for me. I'm very happy with the way things are heading.
Stop blaming the player base. Seriously. Overly competitive gamers exist everywhere, in every game. They were not the bane of 7th ed. Sloppy, bloated rule making was.
Peregrine wrote:It absolutely means that strategic depth is reduced, because there are harsher consequences for failure.
In what sense?
In 7th edition, lasguns couldn't hurt a rhino, so you wouldn't even bother wasting the lasgun shots. You'd target something else.
Now lasguns can potentially (though mostly will not) damage a rhino.
That means that the IG player might actually waste a round of shooting on a rhino when he could have shot something else to much greater effect.
The result of this is not that less player skill and fewer in-game decisions are required. The result of this is that greater player skill and more in-game decisions are required. That's a good thing, not a bad thing.
The result of this is that list composition alone normally won't win you games.. in most circumstances, you actually have to be good at the game once dice actually start rolling.
I'm aware, based on previous comments by you, that you may not like this. But I'm loving this.
Did you neglect to take AA or high-strength weapons? Did you deploy your anti-LR/flyer threats poorly? You aren't killing those targets. But in 8th those consequences are removed. Sure, your AA specialist might be a bit better at killing flyers, but even if you botch your use of the AA specialist (or don't bother to bring it at all) your other weapons are almost as good. The difference between a good strategy and a bad one is reduced to a 25% damage penalty, and that's a significant reduction in depth.
The consequences aren't removed, and other weapons aren't "almost as good." Boltguns are not reliably going to take down flying vehicles in 8th edition.
Again, yes, it means that you normally aren't forced into auto-lose situations simply because of list composition, but it certainly doesn't mean that anything is more or less as good as anything against more or less anything.
If you have a list composed entirely of tactical marines with boltguns, you are likely to struggle to take down Imperial Knights.
And again, in practice, in game, you are simply overstating the effects of "homogenization." That -1 to hit for a flier, in practice, means that it is much less likely to get shot at.
Except now there is no longer any downside to taking the krak missile devastators. You don't need to take AA specialists and figure out a way to use them effectively, you just take a bunch of missile launchers and know that you can roll dice at all possible targets no matter what you do. The fact that you can throw krak missiles freely at pretty much any possible target is a really bad thing! In fact, it's the same reason people hated scatter laser spam for being too mindlessly effective.
I am surprised that you actually would compare krak missiles to scatter lasers.
People didn't hate scatter laser spam because it was effective against most targets. People hated scatter lasers on windrider jetbikes because it was far too effective compared to the points investment required to take them.
If scatbikes were to have cost 100 ppm, nobody would have complained about them being OP.
Yes, MLs are effective against any target. That said, they are optimal against almost NO target, and an ML costs as much as a lascannon.
Yes, spamming missile launchers now seems to be a viable strategy.
But it's not an automatic win button, and it's not an optimal strategy.
Yes, a krak missile can kill a terminator. But grav cannons will kill them better. Yes, a krak missile can wound a landraider. But a lascannon can do it better. Yes, frag missiles can take down boyz. But heavy bolters are better for the job.
It's funny that you even mention missile launchers.
At the end of the day, I agree that MLs are the best weapon in the SM armory, but only because of their versatility. MLs in 8th edition function exactly as they should: they are more an automatic "not lose" button than an automatic win button.
I have to ask, Peregrine, have you played a game of 8th edition yet?
I do think that LRBT spam is probably one of the worst lists that you can take now.
But if you take a combined arms army, I think you'll find that 8th isn't as bad as you think it is, and that the homogenization hasn't reduced everything to essentially a giant game of Yahtzee.
I swear, 'homogenization' is the new buzzword everyone likes to just throw around these days.
In all seriousness, chapter tactics and legion rules haven't gone anywhere. They're coming in their codices. The only reason every single army was released from the start was because literally every single army was incompatible with 8th edition, so they had to bunch up a lot of band aid compendiums, otherwise 8th edition would have no armies that were playable and only 1 army at a time who got the codex would be able to play, which would be a business practice that not even GW would be dumb enough to pull off.
So even though we actually have the rules for each army in 8th, you actually have to consider the game completely reset and with no codices released. That's why we don't have relics, army specific stratagems, chapter tactics, warlord traits and more. So don't make threads about 'chapter tactics are gone from 8th', no they are temporally gone on release date, nothing else.
Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:Careful there - you're making claims that this edition can't produce the same kind of issues that 7th did without the edition even being out yet.
The very existence of the Conscripts situation alone should tell you otherwise.
Of course the possibility of overpowered and underpowered units/options still exist.
In fact, however, I think that they are now much less common.
If you ask most people who have familiarized themselves with 8th edition, 8th is currently much more balanced than 7th was. Yes, this does come at the price of greater "homogenization," but what does that mean in practice? It means that you usually won't win based simply on list construction.
Peregrine mentioned missile launchers, but no, missile launchers won't win you games. They'll keep you from losing games, but they won't, in and of themselves, win you games.
The exceptions, so far as I can see, are tyrranids and IG. Otherwise, 8th edition is far more "fair," by a mile, than 7th edition ever was.
The danger, imho, is GW re-introducing more complexity back into 8th. If they re-introduce chapter tactics, legion rules, etc., that would be a bad thing.
You very well may like the fact that, prior to 8th edition, games could be won or lost depending solely upon list composition.
Now they mostly can't.
I'm sorry if that's too "homogenizing" for you. But I like it, and most people seem to like it.
I'm also sorry if you were depending upon the ability to shut down some lists entirely based simply on the models you brought to the table.
Now you mostly can't.
Sad day for you if you were.
And I'm also sorry that LRBTs seem to be terrible right now.
And I mean that in all sincerity.
I wish that LRBTs were better (I don't think that a 2+ armor save for LRBTs would be unreasonable) and commissars and conscripts were worse.
But, as of now, they aren't.
Careful there - you're making claims that this edition can't produce the same kind of issues that 7th did without the edition even being out yet.
The very existence of the Conscripts situation alone should tell you otherwise.
Kek! Say what? Conscripts are not even close to being broken. People haven't played with scions plasma spam then, holy moly you're in for a horrible surprise then.
You very well may like the fact that, prior to 8th edition, games could be won or lost depending solely upon list composition.
Now they mostly can't.
I'm sorry if that's too "homogenizing" for you. But I like it, and most people seem to like it.
I'm also sorry if you were depending upon the ability to shut down some lists entirely based simply on the models you brought to the table.
Now you mostly can't.
Sad day for you if you were.
And I'm also sorry that LRBTs seem to be terrible right now.
And I mean that in all sincerity.
I wish that LRBTs were better (I don't think that a 2+ armor save for LRBTs would be unreasonable) and commissars and conscripts were worse.
But, as of now, they aren't.
Careful there - you're making claims that this edition can't produce the same kind of issues that 7th did without the edition even being out yet.
The very existence of the Conscripts situation alone should tell you otherwise.
Kek! Say what? Conscripts are not even close to being broken. People haven't played with scions plasma spam then, holy moly you're in for a horrible surprise then.
Haven't had the opportunity to see that in action yet, no. Will need to see if I can convince the IG player to bring that up this weekend.
Traditio wrote: I'm also sorry if you were depending upon the ability to shut down some lists entirely based simply on the models you brought to the table.
That has nothing to do with it, so please stop with the ridiculous straw man arguments.
Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:Careful there - you're making claims that this edition can't produce the same kind of issues that 7th did without the edition even being out yet.
The very existence of the Conscripts situation alone should tell you otherwise.
Of course the possibility of overpowered and underpowered units/options still exist.
In fact, however, I think that they are now much less common.
If you ask most people who have familiarized themselves with 8th edition, 8th is currently much more balanced than 7th was. Yes, this does come at the price of greater "homogenization," but what does that mean in practice? It means that you usually won't win based simply on list construction.
Peregrine mentioned missile launchers, but no, missile launchers won't win you games. They'll keep you from losing games, but they won't, in and of themselves, win you games.
The exceptions, so far as I can see, are tyrranids and IG. Otherwise, 8th edition is far more "fair," by a mile, than 7th edition ever was.
The danger, imho, is GW re-introducing more complexity back into 8th. If they re-introduce chapter tactics, legion rules, etc., that would be a bad thing.
I won't dispute the fact that 8th so far seems more balanced than 7th - the games I've played so far point to that, and I understand what achieving this balance cost us. However we do not have an exact grasp of what we will see on a hyper competitive environment yet - the exact tiers, builds, matchups and all that jazz. The autowin/lose extremes will soon manifest there.
We will have to wait and see. I don't expect we will wait long, though.
Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:I won't dispute the fact that 8th so far seems more balanced than 7th - the games I've played so far point to that, and I understand what achieving this balance cost us. However we do not have an exact grasp of what we will see on a hyper competitive environment yet - the exact tiers, builds, matchups and all that jazz. The autowin/lose extremes will soon manifest there.
We will have to wait and see. I don't expect we will wait long, though.
I think that you are being too pessimistic about the player base's ability to discover the OP stuff at short notice.
People were complaining about scat bikes well in advance of the official release of the 7th edition eldar codex.
Of course, I agree with you that we'll have to wait and see to confirm what is and is not OP and underpowered, given extensive playtesting.
But I think that we can already see the broad outlines already.
Conscripts and commissars are OP.
The entire tyrranid codex is OP.
Missile launchers are good, but only in the same sense that Soldier 76 is good in Overwatch.
Zewrath wrote:Conscripts are not even close to being broken.
Conscripts + commissars are one of the most broken things of 8th edition.
I have great confidence that it will be nerfed in a reasonable time frame.
No they're not. Not even close.
Have you honestly played more than 2 games of 8th? Me and my 2 friends have almost constantly since the rules leaked. Turn 1 charges from Tyranids shreds through conscripts like there's no tomorrow. 2 pack of genestealers and a fairly sized hormogaunt unit chewed through the entire blob in charge, meanwhile the hormogaunts have such a stupid long pile-in that after the combat that new units were almost immediately engaged.
To suggest that their huge amount of lasgun fire from a unit that hits on 5+ and wounds on 90% of all targets on 5+ is simply laughable. Bear in mind that I always brought a priest for +1 attack and a commissar.
Multiple Baneblades in CC however, is broken AF. Scions spam is broken AF. Mortar spam is arguably the cheapest and most abusable spam of huge amounts of S4 shots one can get in this game.
Zewrath wrote: 2 pack of genestealers and a fairly sized hormogaunt unit chewed through the entire blob in charge, meanwhile the hormogaunts have such a stupid long pile-in that after the combat that new units were almost immediately engaged.
To counter my claim that conscripts + commissars are OP, you had to appeal to the tyrranids codex, which I also claimed was OP.
To suggest that their huge amount of lasgun fire from a unit that hits on 5+ and wounds on 90% of all targets on 5+ is simply laughable. Bear in mind that I always brought a priest for +1 attack and a commissar.
Multiple Baneblades in CC however, is broken AF. Scions spam is broken AF. Mortar spam is arguably the cheapest and most abusable spam of huge amounts of S4 shots one can get in this game.
All of what you are mentioning are from IG and Tyrranids.
This only strengthens my point. IG and Tyrranids are OP. Most other things are more or less middle of the road.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:I said this the moment I saw the Battlecannon.
All that LRBTs need, imho, are a 2+ armor save. Make that one change, and LRBTs would shift from trash to mid tier.
Zewrath wrote: 2 pack of genestealers and a fairly sized hormogaunt unit chewed through the entire blob in charge, meanwhile the hormogaunts have such a stupid long pile-in that after the combat that new units were almost immediately engaged.
To counter my claim that conscripts + commissars are OP, you had to appeal to the tyrranids codex, which I also claimed was OP.
To suggest that their huge amount of lasgun fire from a unit that hits on 5+ and wounds on 90% of all targets on 5+ is simply laughable. Bear in mind that I always brought a priest for +1 attack and a commissar.
Multiple Baneblades in CC however, is broken AF. Scions spam is broken AF. Mortar spam is arguably the cheapest and most abusable spam of huge amounts of S4 shots one can get in this game.
All of what you are mentioning are from IG and Tyrranids.
This only strengthens my point. IG and Tyrranids are OP. Most other things are more or less middle of the road.
You want me tell you what happened to my conscripts that got charged by Khorne Berzerkers? Ynari?
All that LRBTs need, imho, are a 2+ armor save. Make that one change, and LRBTs would shift from trash to mid tier.
This is why it's hard for me to take any "OP" claims seriously from you. The Russ is not really squishy and sitting in cover they are absurdly hard to remove. What we universally saw on the entire forum that made the russ crap tier, like huge turd tier, is the fact that the battlecanon does way less than 2 wounds on it's average target. Yet here you are, thinking the only thing wrong with the LRBT is the actual saves.. I'm out of this thread. Sorry.
Zewrath wrote:You want me tell you what happened to my conscripts that got charged by Khorne Berzerkers? Ynari?
I don't doubt that Khorne Berzerkers or Ynari were able to kill your conscripts.
That's not the point. The fact is that a 30 man blob of conscripts only costs 90 points.
Those khorne berserkers probably cost a lot more than your conscript blob, and they probably got shot to bits on the next turn, didn't they?
This argument doesn't even make sense. You have lost the plot man. Your counter argument is that a cheap unit died hard to a more expensive unit, that is somehow argument for the cheap unit that died to the more expensive unit that the cheap unit = OP??
I suspect with the keywords for each faction - <clan>, <ordo>, <regiment> and the like, that EVERY race is going to have a chapter tactics equivalent.
It adds more fun options, but it's a bit of a problem when some will always be stronger than others - particularly for certain roles. (for example, why would you run a detachment of mostly space marine vehicles as anything that wasn't iron hands in the old system...)
Zewrath wrote:This is why it's hard for me to take any "OP" claims seriously from you. The Russ is not really squishy and sitting in cover they are absurdly hard to remove. What we universally saw on the entire forum that made the russ crap tier, like huge turd tier, is the fact that the battlecanon does way less than 2 wounds on it's average target. Yet here you are, thinking the only thing wrong with the LRBT is the actual saves.. I'm out of this thread. Sorry.
Cover? In order to take advantage of cover, a LRBT has to meet two conditions:
1. It must be either touching or entirely on the base of a terrain piece
and
2. It must be 50% obsured or more.
LRBTs normally will not receive the benefit of cover.
That means that my krak missiles are wounding on 4s and bypassing saves on 4s or less.
Meanwhile, LRBTs have subpar offensive capabilities.
If you switch the 3+ to a 2+, they still lack substantial offensive capabilities, but at least they get a 4+ save against krak missiles.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Zewrath wrote:This argument doesn't even make sense. You have lost the plot man. Your counter argument is that a cheap unit died hard to a more expensive unit, that is somehow argument for the cheap unit that died to the more expensive unit that the cheap unit = OP??
Traditio wrote: If you switch the 3+ to a 2+, they still lack substantial offensive capabilities, but at least they get a 4+ save against krak missiles.
IOW, they're still trash. A very durable unit with minimal offensive power is a unit that you ignore because it can't hurt you. You can make the LRBT literally have a special rule that it can't be wounded, period, and it would still be a bad unit simply because of how limited its firepower is. Maybe you could exploit its invulnerability as a weird tarpit unit in melee, but it certainly wouldn't be earning its points back with its guns. The fact that you think that making the LRBT more durable is the right answer just demonstrates how limited your understanding of game design is.
Peregrine wrote:IOW, they're still trash. A very durable unit with minimal offensive power is a unit that you ignore because it can't hurt you. You can make the LRBT literally have a special rule that it can't be wounded, period, and it would still be a bad unit simply because of how limited its firepower is. Maybe you could exploit its invulnerability as a weird tarpit unit in melee, but it certainly wouldn't be earning its points back with its guns. The fact that you think that making the LRBT more durable is the right answer just demonstrates how limited your understanding of game design is.
I don't think that they would be trash with a 2+ armor save.
One LRBT variant has a gun that fires 20 S5, AP 0 shots at a time.
If you combine that with a 2+ armor save, I think that you would be looking at a real mid tier option.
Obviously, the offensive capabilities of other variants might need a boost.
But I do think that a boost from 3+ to 2+ would help enormously.
I've tried both, and actually I think the second bubblewrap tactic I've been toying around with is stronger. A large line of bullgryns, accompanied by a Priest and a Ministorum Auxilia Commander tend to actually survive the alpha strike against most things and then murder them on their own.
It's about 100 points more expensive than the double blob+Commissar+Priest I was working with before, but the fact of the matter was those conscripts were almost always dying to significant alpha strike stuff (Blood angels drop assault, genestealer trygon rush, da jump boyz) and then I had to devote most of my shooting resources to taking them down. The bullgryns live through almost anything that drops in (the one time they've died was a big squad of TH/SS termies that made the 9" charge) and then they can usually deal with whatever it is with a return round+Fix Bayonets+my first activation.
Only reason they stink against the termies is that you really want to be punching them with the Maul bullgryns, but you also want to use those invulns to save your bacon.
So, how many test games with Guard have you run now, to make your claim that conscripts and commissars is definitively OP? Have you tried any different unit combinations? I'm only about 6 games in, so if you've got data, please share.
- I don't see the point in removing initiative. If anything, the new method seems far more unintuitive and just generally irritating.
- I don't see why WS needs to be a flat to-hit rate, rather than comparing to the enemy WS.
- There's so little difference between the weapon types, I don't know why they bothered giving them types at all.
- Also, it's really weird to me that you can fire an Assault weapon after Advancing, but not a Pistol.
- The difference between movement values seems excessive, to say the least. What does it matter if my infantry move 7" instead of 6", when stuff like bikes run circles round them regardless?
- Is there a reason that some vehicles and MCs get worse as they take wounds, whilst others remain at full power until they did? It just seems very arbitrary.
- Preventing characters from joining units is moronic. Characters joining units was never the issue. The issues were:
- A bloody stupid mess of a wound-allocation system that allowed characters to play hot-potato with incoming fire.
- The ally system.
- Psychic powers like Invisibility that made units nigh-on invincible.
- Why is damage random? Is it really so hard to settle on a value and save us some unnecessary rolling?
- Why do (former) blast and template weapons have to have random numbers of shots? It's not fun it's just irritating and a waste of time. Again, could they not just decide on a value? Hell, they could have a base value (e.g. 2 for small blasts) and then increase it if the unit has 5+ or 10+ models in it.
- Why must units get out of transports before the transport moves? That seems to defeat the point of taking a transport in the first place.
I can appreciate some of what GW did but I think a lot of their attempted fixes either went too far or went in completely the wrong direction. If they were a new company I'd probably be more forgiving, but they're one of the oldest gaming companies and this is the 8th iteration of this sodding game.
At least AoS had the excuse that its abysmal rules were free. GW fully expects people to pay for these rules. And then pay for them again down the line when they begrudgingly release the 'proper' rules for each faction.
As long as everyone gets the flavour - there is no reason that Marines should get new FREE rules in the form of Chapter Tactics if all the other factions don't get them at the same time.
If Marines have to pay for being boosted - that's fine.
MagicJuggler wrote: Complexity without bloat, depth without obfuscation. Things like armor facings, fire arcs and flanking=yay, things like Soul Blaze=nay.
Exactly.
For the first time in nearly 2 decades I have glimmers of interest in 40k again. Burying everything in special rule after special rule would kill what interest I have. The 'aura' abilities that already exist along with some stat and weapon options/changes are more than sufficient to differentiate chapter X from chapter Y.
8th may well be more streamlined that I would like, I haven't played it, but 40k has been a horrific mess for years.
Ok so most people don't like complexity, but have you thought about this? What if we remove all complexity from all things, our children will turn out to be as smart as rocks. Maybe complexity isn't fun, but it serves a purpose, an educational one. Its super good, indirect education, while you do what you love. Its the complexities of this world that made us intelligent, if we remove it we might devolve into drooling troglodytes.
You might argue that people will simply not play then, and not get their dose of complexity anyway. This is true, but at least there would be an option. You might also argue that people will find complexity elsewhere, and that entertainment should not be complex. It might work today, but what about in 100 years? Maybe the simplicity creep has spread to all parts of life and our decent into ignoramusdom is steady at pace.
FudgeDumper wrote: Ok so most people don't like complexity, but have you thought about this? What if we remove all complexity from all things, our children will turn out to be as smart as rocks. Maybe complexity isn't fun, but it serves a purpose, an educational one. Its super good, indirect education, while you do what you love. Its the complexities of this world that made us intelligent, if we remove it we might devolve into drooling troglodytes.
You might argue that people will simply not play then, and not get their dose of complexity anyway. This is true, but at least there would be an option. You might also argue that people will find complexity elsewhere, and that entertainment should not be complex. It might work today, but what about in 100 years? Maybe the simplicity creep has spread to all parts of life and our decent into ignoramusdom is steady at pace.
There's a huge difference between complexity and depth. Complexity in this case refers to things that just make the game take longer for no good reason (such as soul blaze, rolling on tables to roll on more tables, or a lot of 7th ed), while depth refers to things that add tactical options/strategy to the game (such as deepstriking, choosing targets well, maneuvering to advantageous positions, or controlling objectives).
FudgeDumper wrote: Ok so most people don't like complexity, but have you thought about this? What if we remove all complexity from all things, our children will turn out to be as smart as rocks. Maybe complexity isn't fun, but it serves a purpose, an educational one. Its super good, indirect education, while you do what you love. Its the complexities of this world that made us intelligent, if we remove it we might devolve into drooling troglodytes.
You might argue that people will simply not play then, and not get their dose of complexity anyway. This is true, but at least there would be an option. You might also argue that people will find complexity elsewhere, and that entertainment should not be complex. It might work today, but what about in 100 years? Maybe the simplicity creep has spread to all parts of life and our decent into ignoramusdom is steady at pace.
There's a huge difference between complexity and depth. Complexity in this case refers to things that just make the game take longer for no good reason (such as soul blaze, rolling on tables to roll on more tables, or a lot of 7th ed), while depth refers to things that add tactical options/strategy to the game (such as deepstriking, choosing targets well, maneuvering to advantageous positions, or controlling objectives).
I know perfectly well the difference. What I am arguing is that complexity is important, not because it will make a great game (it wont) but because it make us smarter.
FudgeDumper wrote: Ok so most people don't like complexity, but have you thought about this? What if we remove all complexity from all things, our children will turn out to be as smart as rocks. Maybe complexity isn't fun, but it serves a purpose, an educational one. Its super good, indirect education, while you do what you love. Its the complexities of this world that made us intelligent, if we remove it we might devolve into drooling troglodytes.
You might argue that people will simply not play then, and not get their dose of complexity anyway. This is true, but at least there would be an option. You might also argue that people will find complexity elsewhere, and that entertainment should not be complex. It might work today, but what about in 100 years? Maybe the simplicity creep has spread to all parts of life and our decent into ignoramusdom is steady at pace.
There's a huge difference between complexity and depth. Complexity in this case refers to things that just make the game take longer for no good reason (such as soul blaze, rolling on tables to roll on more tables, or a lot of 7th ed), while depth refers to things that add tactical options/strategy to the game (such as deepstriking, choosing targets well, maneuvering to advantageous positions, or controlling objectives).
I know perfectly well the difference. What I am arguing is that complexity is important, not because it will make a great game (it wont) but because it make us smarter.
So does a rather simple game that isn't complex at all - in the end it's your opponent that truly provides the challenge.
You grow better, smarter, by challenging yourself and your equals. The level of complexity in the rules has little to do with it. It only means you got to memorize more.
the_scotsman wrote: So, how many test games with Guard have you run now, to make your claim that conscripts and commissars is definitively OP? Have you tried any different unit combinations? I'm only about 6 games in, so if you've got data, please share.
Well, this is one of the interesting things with this edition, the lack of complexity means we can easily compare things. For example, a lord com and a few groups of conscripts/normal guardsman are more resilient and damaging than any other infantry in the game. There aren't that many special rules, so it's pretty easy to compare.
It isn't hard to see that yes one normal tactical space marine isn't worth more than three normal guardsman or four conscripts. The only potential balancing factor is morale, but that's a non issue for IG as they can make their troops fearless for less than a point each. Backups probably put the price right at a point each, but that's still absurdly cheap. Tyranids at least have to pay reasonable rates for it and the majority can be targeted without needing a sniper.
Even your example is discussing how a unit worth 100 points more does a similar job better. Yes, and I imagine having another additional thirty conscripts might have made a difference.
Honestly, I'm amused by the idea of blood angels drop assault being a threat to 30 man unit of conscripts. Was an average of 3 kills (60 points) from just your overwatch not doing it? If they flub the charge, you've made that units points back and then some.
If you want to go into detail, please do. I am sure many of us will be happy to explain what you did wrong.
FudgeDumper wrote: Ok so most people don't like complexity, but have you thought about this? What if we remove all complexity from all things, our children will turn out to be as smart as rocks. Maybe complexity isn't fun, but it serves a purpose, an educational one. Its super good, indirect education, while you do what you love. Its the complexities of this world that made us intelligent, if we remove it we might devolve into drooling troglodytes.
You might argue that people will simply not play then, and not get their dose of complexity anyway. This is true, but at least there would be an option. You might also argue that people will find complexity elsewhere, and that entertainment should not be complex. It might work today, but what about in 100 years? Maybe the simplicity creep has spread to all parts of life and our decent into ignoramusdom is steady at pace.
There's a huge difference between complexity and depth. Complexity in this case refers to things that just make the game take longer for no good reason (such as soul blaze, rolling on tables to roll on more tables, or a lot of 7th ed), while depth refers to things that add tactical options/strategy to the game (such as deepstriking, choosing targets well, maneuvering to advantageous positions, or controlling objectives).
I know perfectly well the difference. What I am arguing is that complexity is important, not because it will make a great game (it wont) but because it make us smarter.
So does a rather simple game that isn't complex at all - in the end it's your opponent that truly provides the challenge.
You grow better, smarter, by challenging yourself and your equals. The level of complexity in the rules has little to do with it. It only means you got to memorize more.
Exactly. And if this continues we might one day not even have enough working memory to be able to play age of sigmar.
FudgeDumper wrote: Ok so most people don't like complexity, but have you thought about this? What if we remove all complexity from all things, our children will turn out to be as smart as rocks. Maybe complexity isn't fun, but it serves a purpose, an educational one. Its super good, indirect education, while you do what you love. Its the complexities of this world that made us intelligent, if we remove it we might devolve into drooling troglodytes.
You might argue that people will simply not play then, and not get their dose of complexity anyway. This is true, but at least there would be an option. You might also argue that people will find complexity elsewhere, and that entertainment should not be complex. It might work today, but what about in 100 years? Maybe the simplicity creep has spread to all parts of life and our decent into ignoramusdom is steady at pace.
There's a huge difference between complexity and depth. Complexity in this case refers to things that just make the game take longer for no good reason (such as soul blaze, rolling on tables to roll on more tables, or a lot of 7th ed), while depth refers to things that add tactical options/strategy to the game (such as deepstriking, choosing targets well, maneuvering to advantageous positions, or controlling objectives).
I know perfectly well the difference. What I am arguing is that complexity is important, not because it will make a great game (it wont) but because it make us smarter.
So does a rather simple game that isn't complex at all - in the end it's your opponent that truly provides the challenge.
You grow better, smarter, by challenging yourself and your equals. The level of complexity in the rules has little to do with it. It only means you got to memorize more.
A game that is too simple has little depth, regardless of the skill of the opponent.
This is because a game that is too simple has a low skill ceiling.
So, complexity is needed. The question becomes how much complexity.
You want any additional complexity you add to the game to give you the maximum amount of new options as possible.
If you find an additional complexity isn't creating additional options, then it's unneeded complexity that should be removed.
So... you're both correct in a sense.
Complexity is important, but your opponent is what provides the true challenge.
Tho without sufficient Complexity then your opponent won't be given enough options or chances to be able to display the limit of his potential.
It's incredibly dangerous to dismiss something as only having to memorize more.
A huge percentage of human intelligence is nothing more than memorization.
Being an eloquent speaker is little more than memorization.
Being an artist, a rocket science, a doctor, are also mainly memorization.
At the highest levels chess devolves from being a tactical game into being a memorization game.
So, I would personally avoid dismissing things as merely memorization.
FudgeDumper wrote: Ok so most people don't like complexity, but have you thought about this? What if we remove all complexity from all things, our children will turn out to be as smart as rocks. Maybe complexity isn't fun, but it serves a purpose, an educational one. Its super good, indirect education, while you do what you love. Its the complexities of this world that made us intelligent, if we remove it we might devolve into drooling troglodytes.
You might argue that people will simply not play then, and not get their dose of complexity anyway. This is true, but at least there would be an option. You might also argue that people will find complexity elsewhere, and that entertainment should not be complex. It might work today, but what about in 100 years? Maybe the simplicity creep has spread to all parts of life and our decent into ignoramusdom is steady at pace.
There's a huge difference between complexity and depth. Complexity in this case refers to things that just make the game take longer for no good reason (such as soul blaze, rolling on tables to roll on more tables, or a lot of 7th ed), while depth refers to things that add tactical options/strategy to the game (such as deepstriking, choosing targets well, maneuvering to advantageous positions, or controlling objectives).
I know perfectly well the difference. What I am arguing is that complexity is important, not because it will make a great game (it wont) but because it make us smarter.
So does a rather simple game that isn't complex at all - in the end it's your opponent that truly provides the challenge.
You grow better, smarter, by challenging yourself and your equals. The level of complexity in the rules has little to do with it. It only means you got to memorize more.
Exactly. And if this continues we might one day not even have enough working memory to be able to play age of sigmar.
Can we quit it with this weird social crusade stuff? Seems more suited for a blog and doesn't really work here. A game can be overly complex, but not challenging and the opposite can be true (I.e. chess). Most of the challenge comes from a good opponent and has nothing to do with how complex the rules are.
We all know that simplicity can provide depth, and that complexity can still be rewarding. But the scale of 40K does not lend itself well towards a more complex rules set at the game sizes we see on the table.
I played Warmahordes back in the day (Mark 2) and that had a good measure of depth and complexity when playing against opponents of equal skill and playstyles. In those days, a 25 to 35 point game would take a couple hours, and it was good fun (against certain opponents). Moving it up to 50 points made the game take much longer to complete, as the complexity of model facings, control area, and lack of pre-measuring meant that each action had to be meticulously planned and thought out. Works fine in smaller scales, but larger games get bogged down.
In 40K, at 2000 points, we will see dozens of Space Marine models on the field. For horde armies like Orks, Tyranids, and Conscript-blob Guard, we can see hundreds of basic infantry models.
The issue isn't whether complexity is better or worse than simplicity (that's another subjective opinion for everyone to decide on their own if they like or not), but whether or not we want to spend a couple hours playing a game or an entire afternoon. 40K has basically turned into 28mm scale Epic 40K (with some exceptions, I never got a chance to play Epic). To remove, for example, scatter dice, armor facings, and TLOS from weapon hardpoints was not done out of malice, but a desire to make the game more streamlined and abstracted in order to 1) decrease game time, 2) simplify scenarios and limit arguments over specificity, and 3) make the game easier for more and newer players to hop in and enjoy.
If we want complexity, we need to look to smaller scale games like SW:A/Necromunda, Warmahordes, or even various boardgames (Betrayal at House on the Hill comes to mind).
MagicJuggler wrote: Does the complexity encourage thoughtful decision-making or is it rolling just for the sake of rolling?
Does having a random number of shots give the player any meaningful choice they have to make? If not then that mechanic serves no purpose in adding depth to the system.
Does having a randomised charge range add a meaningful player choice? No it does not as the result is random, the choice of the player has no impact. It doesn't matter whether they choose to charge the unit 9" away or the unit 5" away if they roll 3" for their charge distance. It is like snakes and ladders, you get no say if you land on a snake or a ladder, it is entirely down to the luck of the die.
Consider an alternate system where a unit can charge up to 6" with no penalty or up to 12" at the expense of the enemy getting +1 to hit as the enemy unit has had enough time to prepare themselves to receive the charge. Now the player has meaningful choices to make in different scenarios. If they are charging a weaker enemy then the +1 enemy to hit bonus is not too bad but lets say there is a weak unit 6" away from them and a strong melee unit 9" away. If they charge the weaker unit then they will definitely be able to do a lot of damage to it but could potentially leave themselves open for a counter charge from the stronger unit, possibly at reduced effectiveness from casualties. If they charge the stronger unit then they could deal some damage but the enemy unit will be striking back at them more effectively.
"Random" Charge - you assess the risk and reward based on the distance and the likely roll with 7 being average - you then decide if you want to attempt the charge - you make an informed choice.
Mr Morden wrote: "Random" Charge - you assess the risk and reward based on the distance and the likely roll with 7 being average - you then decide if you want to attempt the charge - you make an informed choice.
Whats the issue?
The fact that whilst it appears you have a choice, you do not have a meaningful choice as even if you know the odds of rolling either result, you have zero impact on the actual end result. If the player has no actual agency in affecting the result then it was not a meaningful choice, merely the illusion of one. It is exactly like Snakes and Ladders, as I said before. There's a ladder 7 spaces away and a snake 5 spaces away, I know the odds of each result but I have no meaningful choice which result I actually get.
So lets say you're Rain Man and know all the possible results and their probabilities and know you have an X% better chance of reaching combat with unit Y over unit Z. You then roll snake eyes and fail. Even having complete knowledge of the relative probabilities gives you no actual benefit as you are simply not rolling enough iterations to get the normal distribution bell curve.
People need to realize that theres room for different games for different needs of depth and complexity.
Theres not a "This is the PERFECT level of depth and complexity" for a game. The complexity and depth needed is the one the creators want to their game.
Years ago I tried a Roleplay gaming system that was the most "complete roleplaying sistem ever created". To put an example: To resolve a single shoot from a pistol you could spend 1 hour doing math, because that system taked in account your position, the position of the enemy, your skills, their skills, the strenght of the wind, and hundreds of variables to calculate where the shoot lands, what damages causes, etc...
Is that complexity unnecesary? No for that game system. Is a system made for people that like all of that.
So, the answer is... whats the level of depth and complexity that the creators of 40k want to their game?
What they try to acomplish?
Based in the answers to those questions we can then know how much depth and complexity to the game is needed, in base of what it tries to accomplish.
Mr Morden wrote: "Random" Charge - you assess the risk and reward based on the distance and the likely roll with 7 being average - you then decide if you want to attempt the charge - you make an informed choice.
Whats the issue?
The fact that whilst it appears you have a choice, you do not have a meaningful choice as even if you know the odds of rolling either result, you have zero impact on the actual end result. If the player has no actual agency in affecting the result then it was not a meaningful choice, merely the illusion of one. It is exactly like Snakes and Ladders, as I said before. There's a ladder 7 spaces away and a snake 5 spaces away, I know the odds of each result but I have no meaningful choice which result I actually get.
So lets say you're Rain Man and know all the possible results and their probabilities and know you have an X% better chance of reaching combat with unit Y over unit Z. You then roll snake eyes and fail. Even having complete knowledge of the relative probabilities gives you no actual benefit as you are simply not rolling enough iterations to get the normal distribution bell curve.
There is a small error in the assumption.
There is a meaningful choice, but it's not because you can affect the roll...
but because you're choosing if it's worth suffering Overwatch for the chance of reaching melee.
You don't need agency in affecting the result for it to be a meaningful choice.
Mr Morden wrote: "Random" Charge - you assess the risk and reward based on the distance and the likely roll with 7 being average - you then decide if you want to attempt the charge - you make an informed choice.
Whats the issue?
The fact that whilst it appears you have a choice, you do not have a meaningful choice as even if you know the odds of rolling either result, you have zero impact on the actual end result. If the player has no actual agency in affecting the result then it was not a meaningful choice, merely the illusion of one. It is exactly like Snakes and Ladders, as I said before. There's a ladder 7 spaces away and a snake 5 spaces away, I know the odds of each result but I have no meaningful choice which result I actually get.
So lets say you're Rain Man and know all the possible results and their probabilities and know you have an X% better chance of reaching combat with unit Y over unit Z. You then roll snake eyes and fail. Even having complete knowledge of the relative probabilities gives you no actual benefit as you are simply not rolling enough iterations to get the normal distribution bell curve.
There is a small error in the assumption.
There is a meaningful choice, but it's not because you can affect the roll...
but because you're choosing if it's worth suffering Overwatch for the chance of reaching melee.
You don't need agency in affecting the result for it to be a meaningful choice.
But that overwatch effect is there regardless of which unit you choose to attempt to charge. And "charge and be shot or not charge and be shot worse" is not an interesting decision for the player.
Mr Morden wrote: "Random" Charge - you assess the risk and reward based on the distance and the likely roll with 7 being average - you then decide if you want to attempt the charge - you make an informed choice.
Whats the issue?
The fact that whilst it appears you have a choice, you do not have a meaningful choice as even if you know the odds of rolling either result, you have zero impact on the actual end result. If the player has no actual agency in affecting the result then it was not a meaningful choice, merely the illusion of one. It is exactly like Snakes and Ladders, as I said before. There's a ladder 7 spaces away and a snake 5 spaces away, I know the odds of each result but I have no meaningful choice which result I actually get.
So lets say you're Rain Man and know all the possible results and their probabilities and know you have an X% better chance of reaching combat with unit Y over unit Z. You then roll snake eyes and fail. Even having complete knowledge of the relative probabilities gives you no actual benefit as you are simply not rolling enough iterations to get the normal distribution bell curve.
There is a small error in the assumption.
There is a meaningful choice, but it's not because you can affect the roll...
but because you're choosing if it's worth suffering Overwatch for the chance of reaching melee.
You don't need agency in affecting the result for it to be a meaningful choice.
But that overwatch effect is there regardless of which unit you choose to attempt to charge. And "charge and be shot or not charge and be shot worse" is not an interesting decision for the player.
You can choose to charge or not - thats the meaningful choice - you assess the situation and decide if you like the odds - thats why we have dice in games!
Charge and be shot on ovewatch - hitting on 6's and much less effective or use cover, move out of LOS, back into a transport - dependng on what unit you are running - there is loads of choice - its just normal risk management.
3.5 Chaos Codex (Night Lords): All infantry units had access to Stealth and the Raptor units had Furious Charge & Fear. Their usual opponents were Dark Angels and the battlefield was a city.
Well, in all those battles the Night Lords had a tremendous advantage. The Loyalists were shooting with a lot of plasma weapons but their high-tech advantage was cancelled out by the Traitor´s Stealth USR ( 3+ cover save in ruins & buildings vs. AP3 or better). Another great perk for Curze´s sons were the Raptor Champions. These were just brutal on the charge (S6 I5 A4; Spikes, Daemonic Strength: S+1, Power Sword). All their buffs & equipment boni meant that they usually striked first in hth and wounded the emperor´s finest on a 2+. One missed attack could be rerolled due to Spikes equipment. Their foes break test was also modified by 2 due to Fear (Daemonic Gift).
So, in the end my Night Lords were often victorious in those cityfights and I should be glad that it turned out that way. But in retrospect, the victories just felt cheap with all these advantages heaped upon them.
Meanwhile, GW rules department sensed my bad conscience and hit the spiky marines really hard with the nerf bat. The force of that blow sent ripples through the Empyrean which can be felt to this day. The servants of the dark gods shall never recover from that blow and will be tormented with lacklustre codices for all eternity due to the sins they perpetrated with their blasphemous 3.5 Chaos Codex.
I like chunk. As a general rule, I like a rules set I can get waist-deep in. However, those rules should be legible, easy to understand, and pertinent to the purpose of the game. GW has never written rules like that. I (and most of us, if we're honest) play the game because the rules are just good enough and the models are cool - and loads of people play. No one ever picked up a GW rulebook, read through it and thought "Wow...genius!".
I'm fine with rules expecting more of the player. Game going to last 2-3 hours? Suck it up. You're going to have to do some math or modifiers? Cool, suck it up.
If you look at 40K, most of its editions have had some terrible issues. My favourite edition, 2nd, is only playable if you gut and re-do the Psyker phase and close combat...the resolution methods were pretty crap. 7th is a god damn nightmare of garbage. There's no complexity, there's just massed confusion.
While I was initially intrigued by 8th, the reports I've seen are rapidly turning me off of it. That said, I'd play it in a heartbeat over 7th (having watched plenty and played enough games...I can say it's one of the worst wargames I've played in 26 years of gaming). The goals of 8th, however, are contradictory to what I enjoy in a game.
-Speeding up play.
-Wiping units of 20-30-40 models out in a single turn
-Getting into close combat by the end of Turn 1 or early in Turn 2
-Sell a ton of models by providing benefits to 20+ squad sizes
Generally that's not something I'm interested in. I don't need a wam-bam-thank-you-mam wargame. That, however, sells. You can see the same ADD/short game methods in PC gaming currently. This is the generation of 45-90 minutes and I want to move on kind of stuff. That's fine, as it's working pretty damn well for GW lately.
I would gladly take a more complex game (not Infinity complex), but complexity does not equate to ridiculous buffs/special rules/immunities/invulnerabilities/re-rolls/etc.
Elaborate, because I can't even begin to imagine what you could mean by that.
A large part of it came down, in my opinion, to player attitudes.
Some people chose to take what were fluffy formations in a way that was abusive as hell. See War Convocation with Flesh Tearers taxi service early on.
Could not agree more.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Elbows wrote: I like chunk. As a general rule, I like a rules set I can get waist-deep in. However, those rules should be legible, easy to understand, and pertinent to the purpose of the game. GW has never written rules like that. I (and most of us, if we're honest) play the game because the rules are just good enough and the models are cool - and loads of people play. No one ever picked up a GW rulebook, read through it and thought "Wow...genius!".
I'm fine with rules expecting more of the player. Game going to last 2-3 hours? Suck it up. You're going to have to do some math or modifiers? Cool, suck it up.
If you look at 40K, most of its editions have had some terrible issues. My favourite edition, 2nd, is only playable if you gut and re-do the Psyker phase and close combat...the resolution methods were pretty crap. 7th is a god damn nightmare of garbage. There's no complexity, there's just massed confusion.
While I was initially intrigued by 8th, the reports I've seen are rapidly turning me off of it. That said, I'd play it in a heartbeat over 7th (having watched plenty and played enough games...I can say it's one of the worst wargames I've played in 26 years of gaming). The goals of 8th, however, are contradictory to what I enjoy in a game.
-Speeding up play.
-Wiping units of 20-30-40 models out in a single turn
-Getting into close combat by the end of Turn 1 or early in Turn 2
-Sell a ton of models by providing benefits to 20+ squad sizes
Generally that's not something I'm interested in. I don't need a wam-bam-thank-you-mam wargame. That, however, sells. You can see the same ADD/short game methods in PC gaming currently. This is the generation of 45-90 minutes and I want to move on kind of stuff. That's fine, as it's working pretty damn well for GW lately.
I would gladly take a more complex game (not Infinity complex), but complexity does not equate to ridiculous buffs/special rules/immunities/invulnerabilities/re-rolls/etc.
I also agree with this.
Though I am still excited to see where nuhammer goes.
I think that there is potential.
Wargames should make you think. At the table and at the desk. A lot. Not less.
Complexity needs to be differentiated from needlessly sodding about, I got three big issues that drive me up the wall.
Terrain - Most organisers I play through set it up themselves and leave a mudmap at the table that labels pieces as di-difficult, da-dangerous or ip-impassable and rather than bothering with the foliage, rubble, building ect give it a flat cover save or LSB - Line of Sight Blocking.
Set up - I blame all needless sodding about in set-up squarely on the Vanguard deployment. Everybody is "Pretty sure" they know how to measure it up correctly.
Templates - Depends on the opponent, most people I played against were pretty cool, offer them the chance to decide how many models are under your first blast and most will give you an honest answer, if you get an honest answer just save time and let them call the blasts. Very few people I bother arguing with over templates.
Depth and flavour vs necessary and unnecessary complexity.
I don't mind complexity as long as it is necessary to support the depth and flavour.
I haven't played yet but I believe 8th is currently missing the depth and flavour that I want from 40k in some areas.
Though I am still excited to see where nuhammer goes.
I think that there is potential.
Wargames should make you think. At the table and at the desk. A lot. Not less.
It's very much about how people approach the Warhammers, because of how GW approaches making games. As far as I can tell; GW wants to make an epic battle with great mini's among friends. GW give into the demands of the people who insist of playing Warhammer competitively, but their games are not designed in a way that facilitate that.
Titans, exciting turns of fortune and stacking buffs don't help when balancing a game.
I have found Warhammer to be much more enjoyable if not taken very seriously (i.e. seen as a test of your mind).
I do like wargames to make me think, which is why I mainly play other games (KoW and Infinity) and leave Warhammer (either one) for when I want a more relaxed time that is not only about the game, but about the people I do it with too.
DarkBlack wrote: As far as I can tell; GW wants to make an epic battle with great mini's among friends.
No, GW wants to make a game where they invest the minimum resources possible to create the idea of "you can play games with your new toys" and add incentive to buy the models, preferably with nice simple rules and lots of randomness so their target market (kids with their parents' credit cards) don't lose too much and stop buying. This has nothing to do with "casual" or narrative games, and the things that make 40k bad as a competitive game do not make it a better game for anyone else. They're just bad game design from an incompetent company.
DarkBlack wrote: As far as I can tell; GW wants to make an epic battle with great mini's among friends.
No, GW wants to make a game where they invest the minimum resources possible to create the idea of "you can play games with your new toys" and add incentive to buy the models, preferably with nice simple rules and lots of randomness so their target market (kids with their parents' credit cards) don't lose too much and stop buying. This has nothing to do with "casual" or narrative games, and the things that make 40k bad as a competitive game do not make it a better game for anyone else. They're just bad game design from an incompetent company.
Depends on how you interpret things. If you prefer cynicism then you can see it like that.
I don't buy the "kids are the target market" thing though. Just sounds like a dismissive insult.
DarkBlack wrote: Depends on how you interpret things. If you prefer cynicism then you can see it like that.
I prefer to call it realism. None of the things that make 40k bad for competitive tournaments make it better at anything else, except maybe being a mindless game for small children. There's no other viable interpretation here, either GW's game designers are blatantly incompetent or they're deliberately making a game on the level of those silly "games" you see on the back of cereal boxes. Or both.
I don't buy the "kids are the target market" thing though. Just sounds like a dismissive insult.
IIRCGW has stated this openly, no insult required.
DarkBlack wrote: As far as I can tell; GW wants to make an epic battle with great mini's among friends.
No, GW wants to make a game where they invest the minimum resources possible to create the idea of "you can play games with your new toys" and add incentive to buy the models, preferably with nice simple rules and lots of randomness so their target market (kids with their parents' credit cards) don't lose too much and stop buying. This has nothing to do with "casual" or narrative games, and the things that make 40k bad as a competitive game do not make it a better game for anyone else. They're just bad game design from an incompetent company.
Depends on how you interpret things. If you prefer cynicism then you can see it like that.
I don't buy the "kids are the target market" thing though. Just sounds like a dismissive insult.
Can you point to what makes the poor rules writing better for casual games, and why better rules would be worse for casual gaming?
The poll has been up for a while, and thus far, the overwhelming public opinion is that they do not, in fact, want greater complexity reintroduced into the game.
If these people read the OP, I am taking that to mean that most people want passive chapter and legion tactics to stay dead.
Traditio wrote: The poll has been up for a while, and thus far, the overwhelming public opinion is that they do not, in fact, want greater complexity reintroduced into the game.
If these people read the OP, I am taking that to mean that most people want passive chapter and legion tactics to stay dead.
That's not exactly complexity, more of depth. Complexity is again, something like soul blaze. Totally worthless, but in the game anyways and something needed to keep track of. Depth is chapter tactics, something that gives meaningful flavor to an army/unit.
DarkBlack wrote: As far as I can tell; GW wants to make an epic battle with great mini's among friends.
No, GW wants to make a game where they invest the minimum resources possible to create the idea of "you can play games with your new toys" and add incentive to buy the models, preferably with nice simple rules and lots of randomness so their target market (kids with their parents' credit cards) don't lose too much and stop buying. This has nothing to do with "casual" or narrative games, and the things that make 40k bad as a competitive game do not make it a better game for anyone else. They're just bad game design from an incompetent company.
Depends on how you interpret things. If you prefer cynicism then you can see it like that.
I don't buy the "kids are the target market" thing though. Just sounds like a dismissive insult.
I in fact remember back in 2004 when they sent out the directives because that week with no warning vets night was cancelled and we were made unwelcome in the store, two weeks later Tim was begging us to start a gaming club and rent space to play.
We told him to fekke off because we'd lost track of people because this was pre Facebook and not everyone had mobiles he'd destroyed our community so we stopped buying gw stuff for a good five years.
Gws decline started when they went for kids over veterans, mainly because kids have no money compared to a grown working man.
Sigh, the progress of the dumbening down of the english language. Here's my contribution to the thread:
The perennial argument was always complication vs complexity. 40k rules have been growing ever more complicated, but they weren't really complex. They certainly weren't beer and pretzels. You can have a simple game that is complex, but you can't have a simple game that is complicated. Having spent a lot of time recently playing skip-bo, i can tell you that the rules are simple (put down cards) but the execution allows for a fair depth of complexity.
Now we're at the stage where complicated means complex, and complex means depth. Please, carry on. :(
DarkBlack wrote: As far as I can tell; GW wants to make an epic battle with great mini's among friends.
No, GW wants to make a game where they invest the minimum resources possible to create the idea of "you can play games with your new toys" and add incentive to buy the models, preferably with nice simple rules and lots of randomness so their target market (kids with their parents' credit cards) don't lose too much and stop buying. This has nothing to do with "casual" or narrative games, and the things that make 40k bad as a competitive game do not make it a better game for anyone else. They're just bad game design from an incompetent company.
Depends on how you interpret things. If you prefer cynicism then you can see it like that.
I don't buy the "kids are the target market" thing though. Just sounds like a dismissive insult.
Can you point to what makes the poor rules writing better for casual games, and why better rules would be worse for casual gaming?
The way GW writes is inconsistent, unclear and infuriating; but that is not new.
Not quite what was being talked about, here's all of what I said again.
DarkBlack wrote:
It's very much about how people approach the Warhammers, because of how GW approaches making games. As far as I can tell; GW wants to make an epic battle with great mini's among friends. GW give into the demands of the people who insist of playing Warhammer competitively, but their games are not designed in a way that facilitate that.
Titans, exciting turns of fortune and stacking buffs don't help when balancing a game.
I have found Warhammer to be much more enjoyable if not taken very seriously (i.e. seen as a test of your mind).
I do like wargames to make me think, which is why I mainly play other games (KoW and Infinity) and leave Warhammer (either one) for when I want a more relaxed time that is not only about the game, but about the people I do it with too.
Traditio wrote: The poll has been up for a while, and thus far, the overwhelming public opinion is that they do not, in fact, want greater complexity reintroduced into the game.
If these people read the OP, I am taking that to mean that most people want passive chapter and legion tactics to stay dead.
No. As I pointed out on the first page your OP is poorly worded and not asking the question you seem to think it is, and therefore your poll (like every other biased poll you make) is worthless.
Traditio wrote: The poll has been up for a while, and thus far, the overwhelming public opinion is that they do not, in fact, want greater complexity reintroduced into the game.
If these people read the OP, I am taking that to mean that most people want passive chapter and legion tactics to stay dead.
No. As I pointed out on the first page your OP is poorly worded and not asking the question you seem to think it is, and therefore your poll (like every other biased poll you make) is worthless.
It's not worthless...at least, not simply speaking.
Is it perhaps worthless when it comes to determining whether or not people want legion and chapter tactics back? Yes.
Again, as I said, you're confusing complexity and depth. Nobody (or at least nobody who understands game design at all) wants a complex game, because complexity is always a bad thing. You accept a degree of complexity as a necessary price to get the things you actually want, whether it's deep strategy, realism, whatever. The question you need to be asking is "do you want {design element} in 8th, even if it means increasing complexity", but that's not what your poll asks. So of course you're going to get mostly "no" votes, even from people who might want to see things like chapter tactics return.
Again, as I said, you're confusing complexity and depth. Nobody (or at least nobody who understands game design at all) wants a complex game, because complexity is always a bad thing. You accept a degree of complexity as a necessary price to get the things you actually want, whether it's deep strategy, realism, whatever. The question you need to be asking is "do you want {design element} in 8th, even if it means increasing complexity", but that's not what your poll asks. So of course you're going to get mostly "no" votes, even from people who might want to see things like chapter tactics return.
Bird from hell, indeed.
Squawkin' pure troof.
Exalt.
The game was bloated and I'm glad it's be somewhat resolved. You want depth but not complexity, you need to balance the two in a way that works for the system and keeps the tedium down to make the game more enjoyable for the targeted audience otherwise you end up with the bloated corpse of 3rd ed 40k that was just put down.
The game was bloated and I'm glad it's be somewhat resolved. You want depth but not complexity, you need to balance the two in a way that works for the system and keeps the tedium down to make the game more enjoyable for the targeted audience otherwise you end up with the bloated corpse of 3rd ed 40k that was just put down.
(This only really helps if GW doesn't start stacking rules complexity on 8th the way they did on 3rd, so we don't end up with "the bloated corpse of 8th" ten years down the line that needs to be put down.)
The game was bloated and I'm glad it's be somewhat resolved. You want depth but not complexity, you need to balance the two in a way that works for the system and keeps the tedium down to make the game more enjoyable for the targeted audience otherwise you end up with the bloated corpse of 3rd ed 40k that was just put down.
(This only really helps if GW doesn't start stacking rules complexity on 8th the way they did on 3rd, so we don't end up with "the bloated corpse of 8th" ten years down the line that needs to be put down.)
Which we may just end up with depending on how the codex releases go this time around.
I'd support a system like the old 'Chapter Traits' or the 30k Legion Special Rules.
i.e - each Chapter gets a small advantage and a small disadvantage that more or less balance each other out so that other armies don't creep up in power.
Ideally, this would be something that affects the whole army, and isn't bypassed by just avoiding certain units.
FudgeDumper wrote: Ok so most people don't like complexity, but have you thought about this? What if we remove all complexity from all things, our children will turn out to be as smart as rocks. Maybe complexity isn't fun, but it serves a purpose, an educational one. Its super good, indirect education, while you do what you love. Its the complexities of this world that made us intelligent, if we remove it we might devolve into drooling troglodytes.
You might argue that people will simply not play then, and not get their dose of complexity anyway. This is true, but at least there would be an option. You might also argue that people will find complexity elsewhere, and that entertainment should not be complex. It might work today, but what about in 100 years? Maybe the simplicity creep has spread to all parts of life and our decent into ignoramusdom is steady at pace.
Nice strawman.
We are speaking of Depth actually, not complexity. Your kids will be as smart as rocks if their only activity is rote memorization rather than actually thinking, which was how 7th worked.
A game that is too simple has little depth, regardless of the skill of the opponent.
This is because a game that is too simple has a low skill ceiling.
Chess doesn't have half a page in game mechanics, yet it's considered one of the most mentally rewarding games in the world. So no, it's not quintessential.
Chess also has far more "move options" than a lot of other games, and isn't "I move everything, you move everything." Chess actually encourages setting up forks, zugzwangs, etc. and has a large history of openings, plays, etc.
That being said, chess does have a major head start on "contemporary" wargaming, has been internationalized and federated, has Olympic recognition and government backing, and isn't driven by pressure to sell better Queens every 6 months.
There is a lot of mechanical complexity in 40k, but many armies are surprisingly restricted in what they can do. The meme "I move and shoot" has some basis in reality as a lot of 40k has boiled down to "can I statistically survive a beatdown" and "can I play rocket tag for objectives faster?"
It's a dice roll game, so a lot of it to me is gambling and controlling the modifiers of luck. There is other crap but I've been sick recently don'y care, this thread is just some whiny bull crap anyway.
I'm more of an Ork mindset!
