I was an on-again off-again casual player for 6th and 7th edition, but I haven't played at all since 8th edition dropped. I liked some of the ideas that they were floating around, but looking at the new codexes, I'm not sure that 8th addressed any of the issues that turned me off from 7th. Basically, I felt like the game's rules regularly got in the way of fun game-play by enabling gimmickry and exploits, lacking intra/inter-army balance, and just generally having an overly complicated rule-set. So what is the verdict on 8th edition, has it improved your gameplay experience?
If your casual and you play with causal you will for sure like it more than 6-7th ed.
Its (when not power gaming) actually very well balanced, there will always be better units than other, but if neither are spamming those units its a very close and fun game.
Edit: The game has been made simpler but it still has a lot of strategy to it, just b.c the rules are easier doesnt mean there are less combo's and shenanigans.
It is certainly very imperfect and with many major issues. But compared to the unholy broken abomination of invisibility deathstars that was 7th edition, it is pure bliss.
The broken issue's arent worst than any other editions bad rules (Old Skimmers only being hit on 6's in melee, 35pt Rhinos taking 5 Las cannons without dying, MC blocking all LoS, etc...) Each edition has its flaws.
Many dont like the Cover rules (i agree to a point but its still easy to gain cover just harder to gain lots of cover) and the other thing is the way the rules are, infantry is favored for sure (lack of Blasts/templates and cover is easy to get on infantry).
Thus far it doesn't seem that bad, to play most armies all you need is the core book and either the index or the codex. If you've got some real old stuff you may need the index as well even with the codex, but most of that is rather old. Aside from intra-faction armies like ynarri or genestealer cult there's not the massive profusion of books.
General game sequence, scenarios and concepts are in the main book and spelled out reasonably well. From there, you've got two kinds of rules that matter per unit, the army wide special rules specified at the start of the index/code or the rules on the unit itself. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better than cross referencing across who knows how many books. Only workable complaint is that points are sitting in an index at the end of the book rather than with the units. The rest is relatively solid.
Can't speak too much to balance, but with commissars getting a swift kick in the nuts today most of what's out there is on a relatively even keel, particularly compared to last edition.
Yeah with IG nerf, only SM and CSM are the odd ones that is very strong. AT least you can counter some of the CSM stuff, SM re-roll everything is just hard to deal with no matter what.
The biggest thing also is, Chapter Approve will help as well, they already are changing Core rules to help the game. if they are willing to keep doing that, the game will for sure be more balanced and fun. They are listening and they are making changes. This is what makes me like 8th the most so far.
Games flow much faster, feels better balanced and in general its more fun.
I miss some stuff from 7th, like formation army compositions who were really fluffy, or the way directions mattered for vehicles, but the gains far outweigh the losses.
Strongly prefer 7th over 8th. For all the horribly bloated and poorly designed rules that made up 7th, the gameplay was at least interesting and had some depth to it. 8th took away the depth and complexity to replaced it with blandness in the name of balance and simplicity. Problem is that GW is still bad at rules writing so we have boring clunky rules with all the imbalance issues continuing to rear its ugly head.
You know its bad when 7th edition Orks was more fun than playing Orks now.
Vankraken wrote: Strongly prefer 7th over 8th. For all the horribly bloated and poorly designed rules that made up 7th, the gameplay was at least interesting and had some depth to it. 8th took away the depth and complexity to replaced it with blandness in the name of balance and simplicity. Problem is that GW is still bad at rules writing so we have boring clunky rules with all the imbalance issues continuing to rear its ugly head.
You know its bad when 7th edition Orks was more fun than playing Orks now.
Counter point: 7th edition had 0 strategy and the only complexity was 'what order of impossible to fail psychic abilities should I use to get my 2++ rerollable invisible hammerhand deathstar' And the entire strategy with Orkz was 'hope their deathstar is worse than my nob bike star :(.
I understand that Orkz are in a rough place right now but that doesn't make 8th as a whole bland or lacking strategy, especially compared to 7th which was ultimately 'faceroll a deathstar and hope for the best' edition.
You know 7th was bad when only about 20% of the rules/units/formations in the game were good enough to matter.
The current edition is certainly better than the previous one, but at the moment some armies have a codex and some others don't. Playing with the index rather than the codex is significantly different, so at the moment the game could be a bit unbalanced. But in the following months this issue will be fixed and we will have an appropriate response about 8th edition.
Casual and semi-competitive games are amazing IMHO, but of course tournaments are still full of dull-boring-toxic-overpowered lists. Ignore that environment and 8th edition will be a lot of fun.
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Vankraken wrote: Strongly prefer 7th over 8th. For all the horribly bloated and poorly designed rules that made up 7th, the gameplay was at least interesting and had some depth to it. 8th took away the depth and complexity to replaced it with blandness in the name of balance and simplicity. Problem is that GW is still bad at rules writing so we have boring clunky rules with all the imbalance issues continuing to rear its ugly head.
You know its bad when 7th edition Orks was more fun than playing Orks now.
I too consider orks better in 7th edition than now. But IMHO the new mechanics are better, the game overall is better. Let's wait for the codex, maybe our beloved greenskins will receive some love.
It's like one of those free online games where the only "tactics" are finding OP skill combos and rules exploits instead of any meaningful decisions on the battlefield.
I have no idea when the Necrons will have a Codex to use so I think 8th sucks right now. At least in 6th Edition I had a 5th Edition Codex to use.
The game is bland and boring now with different but just as significant issues as before. 8th edition feels controlled so it seems better on the surface but it has all the effervescence of warm beer.
Better then 7th but hardly to be called the best edition ever.
It lacks dept and is more of a beer and peanut game when played casual and played competitve it is a who can play his A'bomb first and incapacitate his opponent (usually the player that goes first)
Not to speak of the balance issues...
When reaching a certain power level, objectives do not matter as almost all games will end in just wiping your opponent or be wiped. (or quickly taking out 60% of his army making it impossible for your opponent to take objectives)
I was very enthusiastic at the start, now only a couple of codexes have been released and I am already bored with the matched play version of the game and casual play is okay once in a while but gets boring quickly if you play to often.
It only lacks dept if you play mono shooting army/style., and honestly any game where 70% of your play time is in 1 phase out of 6 phase shouldnt be as fun as someone that plays in all 6.
My Harlequins are stupidly fun and has insane amounts of strategies compare to 7th DE and Harlequins combined.
lord_blackfang wrote: It's like one of those free online games where the only "tactics" are finding OP skill combos and rules exploits instead of any meaningful decisions on the battlefield.
This will always be the case while the game is IGOUGO. When the best possible result is piling up as much damage as possible so the enemy has the least possible attacks to send back to you the whole experience degrades into swinging clubs at each other.
If 40k went to other activation methods the game would have significantly more tactical nuance.
That being said 8th normalized the unit types and bought vehicles and monsters in line with the rest of the game making the whole thing much more enjoyable and easier to play.
lord_blackfang wrote: It's like one of those free online games where the only "tactics" are finding OP skill combos and rules exploits instead of any meaningful decisions on the battlefield.
This will always be the case while the game is IGOUGO. When the best possible result is piling up as much damage as possible so the enemy has the least possible attacks to send back to you the whole experience degrades into swinging clubs at each other.
If 40k went to other activation methods the game would have significantly more tactical nuance.
IMHO that's not the problem. Tactics sometimes don't matter at all because some codexes are way better than other ones. Simple.
If you play friendly games with lists well balanced, even tailoring them in order to have a fair match, tactics really matter in 40k. It's the TAC approach in a game in which some armies are way better than other ones that makes the impression that tactics don't matter.
Since I mostly play with same people over and over again and don't realy do pick-up games "stock" 8th ed severly lacks "interesting replayability" when compared to even "stock" 7th. In such small environment, what others considered to be "rules bloat" in 7th, gave much needed depth to explore or tailor to suit specific needs. 8th ed factions "sameness" and pretty much non-existing terrain rules, combined with "everything dies instantly" power level makes for very "shallow board game with expensive pieces" feel to it... I run out of initial interest in 8th very quickly, and even new codices do not make the game better for me.
But there are some very nice ideas in 8th, that expand the gameplay possibilities nicely - when ported onto more complex nature of 5th-7th "core rules engine". I'm thinking narrative "way to play" ideas, stratagems and subfaction traits.
All those reasons combined result in me playing "ourhammer house ed" at this point, as tournaments and pick-up "universal language" are not a concern for me.
I would say simply: an excellent chassis upon which the players can build a very good/fun game.
It's as breakable as always (meta/netlisting, etc.) but if you play with likeminded players and don't mind creating your own scenarios or house-ruling some stuff...it can be a very good time. There's still the very prominent GW-gamer fear of adjusting rules to have more fun.
lord_blackfang wrote: It's like one of those free online games where the only "tactics" are finding OP skill combos and rules exploits instead of any meaningful decisions on the battlefield.
So... like every edition of warhammer fantasy and 40k ever?
Like with any game, it's the people you play it with that make the game.
If GW wanted an actual semblance of balance they would have to totally abandon IGOUGO which is never going to happen because their target demographic (at least nowadays) sadly can't handle that level of "complexity".
As long as you play with friends, or enjoy going to cuthroat cheddarfest tournaments (each to their own), then 8th is the best the game has been for a long time, on the level or better than 5th imho.
I like the edition more than 7th. The ease outweighs the "but that doesn't make sense!!!" Removing vehicle facing and firing arcs alone. As much as I wish I could still use blasts because they were satisfying, I am grateful they were gone, so many "no, it goes that way" arguments.
You say the early edition exploits are ruining the game, but if you played when 6th and 7th came out, they had the same issues. Heck, just about every year 7th edition had another shenanigans style exploit. As BaconCatBug said, it's about the people you play.
I COULD run 12 malefic lords in a chimera. I have the models and it would be absolutely disgusting to run. I don't because I am not an donkey-cave and know how terrible it would be to fight against.
8th has greatly improved my gameplay experience. I no longer have to worry about playing against that tank shock abusing dude (who I found out has almost stopped playing since tank shock was removed) I don't have to worry that I'll face an all knights list and only be able to hurt them with 2 of my units. The things that "that guy" can whine about have been drastically reduced, making less anxiety about pick up games.
I will add that I feel 8th edition has removed some of the feeling of uniqueness from models. AV v T was a big selling point for vehicles. I don't mind that it is gone from gameplay, but list building, and this might sound weird, it's super easy to compare units and think "wow, this isn't all that hot". Same goes for purchasing new models.
This is easiest to see with the heavy bolter VS autocannon discussion. The AC doesn't seem to measure up with the new AP and dmg with the wound chart. I know every edition has it's spam weapons, but its very easy to see them in this edition.
I don't know if that should be a complaint, but it's an odd feeling.
I went to get back into the game at 7th edition, looked at the rules, and decided that nearly 100 pages of rules was a bit much and noped on out.
8th is much simpler and easier to play. Less charts to look at. Less referencing. Most of the issues of 8th taking longer than it should revolve around people not being familiar with armies and units. Once all the codices come out toward next year, the game will be far more fleshed out.
There are issues with 8th, like in every single edition that will ever be, but it's one of the best balanced editions where you don't auto lose based on picking a unit or going against a certain army.
H.B.M.C. wrote: And Mortal Wounds as far as the eye can see.
.
Aside from Death Guard where are you seeing all these mortal wounds in the IG and Eldar books?
In any case 8th is a big plus for me. Last local tournament of 25 people saw the first and last place separated by only 12 points.
Eldar have some nasty mortal wounds coming. They have a psychic ability that lets them inflict d3 mortal wounds on a unit, then if a model dies, the unit takes another d3 mortal wounds. Then you can smite the unit on top of that. I am not saying mortal wounds are bad, in fact I enjoy having them. They create a situation where you can't put all of your trust into a single suped up unit to kill everything. Obviously there are downsides, especially with low count elite style armies but overall I like having them.
Maybe is because I have been traumatized by AoS Skyfire spam, Thunderstuks and Stormfiends, but W40K doesn't seems to have even a fraction of the Mortal Wound problem AoS has.
And in GW, they are needed, because is much easier to have higher saves, both armour and invulnerables.
lord_blackfang wrote: It's like one of those free online games where the only "tactics" are finding OP skill combos and rules exploits instead of any meaningful decisions on the battlefield.
So... like every edition of warhammer fantasy and 40k ever?
This is true only to an extent. I did not play 6th edition WHFB (I will not speak about 5th because it was a different game again) like I played 8th. I found 6th way more strategic, especially with the tourney limitations we used (maximum X of spell dice, no spam special units, 0-1 rare).
40k too lost stuff like.. I think in english is "Crossfire" and is becoming more and more gimmicky every edition.
Hoodwink wrote: in fact I enjoy having [mortal wounds]. They create a situation where you can't put all of your trust into a single suped up unit to kill everything. Obviously there are downsides, especially with low count elite style armies but overall I like having them.
This is a more than legitimate point of view, but it creates imbalances toward hordes IMHO.
Truth to be told, GW seems to intervene in balancing stuff quickly so who knows.
Mortal Wounds are basically "Not-D" that trade deathblows for ignoring invulnerables. Given that vehicles and monsters get more wounds, that's fine and dandy,
(arguably not, but that's another issue) but for "elite infantry" with bad wound-to-point ratios, it leaves them out to dry.
Likewise, making TL "double shots" instead of reroll means more anti-infantry dakka (especially since it can stack with reroll auras), and likewise, the flatlined AP rules reduce the advantage of having a good save versus being cheap.
Blacksails wrote: Better than 6th/7th, worse than 5th is where I'd slot it.
I would agree with this except as a Nid player 5th sucked as well (terrible codex in comparison to those around it). If the Nid dex had got the same treatment as IG, SW, BA, DE, etc 5th would have been a good edition for me.
I hated 5th...... IMO the worst one for me so far.
"I vehicle, i moved you hit me on 4+ OH i skimmer you hit me on 6+"
"Me 35pt Rhino, you 200pt unit takes 5 turns to kill Rhino b.c you didnt roll a 6+"
"Oh you a Bike? Want to go over this white picket fence that weighs 5lbs? Rolled a 1 "You died!"
"Oh a skimmer with transport? Want to land on this terrain? Its random, oh you miss, You DIED!"
"Oh instead of AT guns that cost my unit 180pts, i will just use this 60pt unit of girls to kill your tank in 1 go"
"You want to shoot me with a blast?" you have to guess!"
"Want to charge? You have to Guess!"
Blacksails wrote: Better than 6th/7th, worse than 5th is where I'd slot it.
I would agree with this except as a Nid player 5th sucked as well (terrible codex in comparison to those around it). If the Nid dex had got the same treatment as IG, SW, BA, DE, etc 5th would have been a good edition for me.
To be fair, Tyranids have consistently suffered from the problem that "small units kill infantry, big units kill everything." This wasn't as noticeable in 3rd and 4th when vehicles were deathtraps (Ordnance Penetrating Hits, anyone?) but 5th really stretched 4E Tyranids thin afterwards. That said, the fact that Rune Priests (especially Njal) could shut down Tyranids hard didn't help.
Heck, I don't remember too many people griping about how a Psychic Hood/Rune Staff in 5e could be used infinite times in a 24" radius, and from the safety of a Rhino. Which sucks when your Elite AT becomes "Zoanthropes or Hive Guard?"
Amishprn86 wrote: I hated 5th...... IMO the worst one for me so far.
"I vehicle, i moved you hit me on 4+ OH i skimmer you hit me on 6+"
"Me 35pt Rhino, you 200pt unit takes 5 turns to kill Rhino b.c you didnt roll a 6+"
"Oh you a Bike? Want to go over this white picket fence that weighs 5lbs? Rolled a 1 "You died!"
"Oh a skimmer with transport? Want to land on this terrain? Its random, oh you miss, You DIED!"
"Oh instead of AT guns that cost my unit 180pts, i will just use this 60pt unit of girls to kill your tank in 1 go"
"You want to shoot me with a blast?" you have to guess!"
"Want to charge? You have to Guess!"
Maybe I'm weird, but I kinda liked the range guessing in older editions. It ended up being a skill all in its own.
Amishprn86 wrote: I hated 5th...... IMO the worst one for me so far.
"I vehicle, i moved you hit me on 4+ OH i skimmer you hit me on 6+"
"Me 35pt Rhino, you 200pt unit takes 5 turns to kill Rhino b.c you didnt roll a 6+"
"Oh you a Bike? Want to go over this white picket fence that weighs 5lbs? Rolled a 1 "You died!"
"Oh a skimmer with transport? Want to land on this terrain? Its random, oh you miss, You DIED!"
"Oh instead of AT guns that cost my unit 180pts, i will just use this 60pt unit of girls to kill your tank in 1 go"
"You want to shoot me with a blast?" you have to guess!"
"Want to charge? You have to Guess!"
Maybe I'm weird, but I kinda liked the range guessing in older editions. It ended up being a skill all in its own.
If by "skill" you mean a scrappy mechanic that encouraged slow-play as people ran mental math extrapolation with regards to ensuring their units were within squad coherency, just to extrapolate the range to their opponents...
I just didn't play games with people who were cheese mongers. It's really no different than doom and gloom of Smite spam. I just don't play people who run the max Malefic Lords they can as a cheese FotM army.
Blacksails wrote: Better than 6th/7th, worse than 5th is where I'd slot it.
I would agree with this except as a Nid player 5th sucked as well (terrible codex in comparison to those around it). If the Nid dex had got the same treatment as IG, SW, BA, DE, etc 5th would have been a good edition for me.
To be fair, Tyranids have consistently suffered from the problem that "small units kill infantry, big units kill everything." This wasn't as noticeable in 3rd and 4th when vehicles were deathtraps (Ordnance Penetrating Hits, anyone?) but 5th really stretched 4E Tyranids thin afterwards. That said, the fact that Rune Priests (especially Njal) could shut down Tyranids hard didn't help.
Heck, I don't remember too many people griping about how a Psychic Hood/Rune Staff in 5e could be used infinite times in a 24" radius, and from the safety of a Rhino. Which sucks when your Elite AT becomes "Zoanthropes or Hive Guard?"
In 4th CC was too brutal vs some armies. I wasn't a fan of Nidzilla myself (carnifex put in elite slots was too much). But 4th had a fantastic ability to customize your nids and I wished that concept had been kept in the later editions - mutable/adaptable tyranids. Since then 5th ed onwards GW has not IMO known what to do with nids and have messed up much of the army. I haven't played enough 8th to make a good verdict though it seems too much was removed. I will wait to see what the 8th ed tyranid codex brings to see if I enjoy playing tyranids again.
Blacksails wrote: Better than 6th/7th, worse than 5th is where I'd slot it.
I would agree with this except as a Nid player 5th sucked as well (terrible codex in comparison to those around it). If the Nid dex had got the same treatment as IG, SW, BA, DE, etc 5th would have been a good edition for me.
To be fair, Tyranids have consistently suffered from the problem that "small units kill infantry, big units kill everything." This wasn't as noticeable in 3rd and 4th when vehicles were deathtraps (Ordnance Penetrating Hits, anyone?) but 5th really stretched 4E Tyranids thin afterwards. That said, the fact that Rune Priests (especially Njal) could shut down Tyranids hard didn't help.
Heck, I don't remember too many people griping about how a Psychic Hood/Rune Staff in 5e could be used infinite times in a 24" radius, and from the safety of a Rhino. Which sucks when your Elite AT becomes "Zoanthropes or Hive Guard?"
In 4th CC was too brutal vs some armies. I wasn't a fan of Nidzilla myself (carnifex put in elite slots was too much). But 4th had a fantastic ability to customize your nids and I wished that concept had been kept in the later editions - mutable/adaptable tyranids. Since then %th ed onwards GW has not IMO known what to do with nids and have messed up much of the army. I haven't played enough 8th to make a good verdict though it seems too much was removed. I will wait to see what the 8th ed tyranid codex brings to see if I enjoy playing tyranids again.
Nids really need a "Combat Drugs" type of mechanic. They are supposedly learning from every encounter and adapting. You would think there would be some way of showing this in the game like slightly altering stats before you start a game.
Blacksails wrote: Better than 6th/7th, worse than 5th is where I'd slot it.
I would agree with this except as a Nid player 5th sucked as well (terrible codex in comparison to those around it). If the Nid dex had got the same treatment as IG, SW, BA, DE, etc 5th would have been a good edition for me.
To be fair, Tyranids have consistently suffered from the problem that "small units kill infantry, big units kill everything." This wasn't as noticeable in 3rd and 4th when vehicles were deathtraps (Ordnance Penetrating Hits, anyone?) but 5th really stretched 4E Tyranids thin afterwards. That said, the fact that Rune Priests (especially Njal) could shut down Tyranids hard didn't help.
Heck, I don't remember too many people griping about how a Psychic Hood/Rune Staff in 5e could be used infinite times in a 24" radius, and from the safety of a Rhino. Which sucks when your Elite AT becomes "Zoanthropes or Hive Guard?"
In 4th CC was too brutal vs some armies. I wasn't a fan of Nidzilla myself (carnifex put in elite slots was too much). But 4th had a fantastic ability to customize your nids and I wished that concept had been kept in the later editions - mutable/adaptable tyranids. Since then %th ed onwards GW has not IMO known what to do with nids and have messed up much of the army. I haven't played enough 8th to make a good verdict though it seems too much was removed. I will wait to see what the 8th ed tyranid codex brings to see if I enjoy playing tyranids again.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy customization as much as the next guy, but only when the options are relevant. It's one thing to be able to load out a Carnifex with all sorts of cool mutations, but when the majority of builds have the Heavy Support as "3 Carnifexen with Venom Cannon and Barbed Strangler, and defensive upgrades", then is that really variety?
The 5th codex "did" (I say this with strong reservation) add some variety to how the core list was built, by allowing for "Null" nids, a semi-viable Stealer Shock (with proper support, of course), or so. Plus, it "did" give Warriors proper Power Weapons...shame they couldn't actually get into melee.
Of course, with both the 5e and 6e books, it's obvious Cruddace is a hack writer. The Pyrovore is the most infamous example, with the 6e RAW being particularly hilarious:
If a Pyrovore is slain by a wound that inflicted Instant Death, every unit suffers a S3 AP - hit for each model (excluding other Pyrovores) within D6" of the slain Pyrovore.
Even then, there were so many shoddy options. If you took TL Deathspitters instead of Brainleech Devourers, if you have your Carnifexen Bioplasma, etc. Imagine: "Gee, I could spend 140 points on a model to fire a 12" small blast. Or for 30 points more, I get an extra wound, extra BS, and the ability to fire a large blast or 6 single shots. Hmmmmm". Now, if the base meleefex was cheaper, and Bioplasma was a Template, things get somewhat more interesting...
Amishprn86 wrote: I hated 5th...... IMO the worst one for me so far.
"I vehicle, i moved you hit me on 4+ OH i skimmer you hit me on 6+"
"Me 35pt Rhino, you 200pt unit takes 5 turns to kill Rhino b.c you didnt roll a 6+"
"Oh you a Bike? Want to go over this white picket fence that weighs 5lbs? Rolled a 1 "You died!"
"Oh a skimmer with transport? Want to land on this terrain? Its random, oh you miss, You DIED!"
"Oh instead of AT guns that cost my unit 180pts, i will just use this 60pt unit of girls to kill your tank in 1 go"
"You want to shoot me with a blast?" you have to guess!"
"Want to charge? You have to Guess!"
you're mixing elements of 3 editions here. Actual guessing for blast weapons was 3E only (they just carried on the name for a while). Skimmers only being hit on 6's was 3E and 4E.
To be fair, with respect to the rest of it, you can find similarly awkward things in every edition.
5th was not a perfect edition. I find myself continually surprised that its the one I keep wanting to go back to, but at its most basic, it was probably the best (before we get into codex issues at least). Kill Points, Wound Allocation, vehicle defensive weapons shooting rules, etc and more were all garbage, but overall it was probably the *least bad* edition.
Blacksails wrote: Better than 6th/7th, worse than 5th is where I'd slot it.
I would agree with this except as a Nid player 5th sucked as well (terrible codex in comparison to those around it). If the Nid dex had got the same treatment as IG, SW, BA, DE, etc 5th would have been a good edition for me.
Definitely, Nids were in a rut then. I can definitely see how that would take the edge off the enjoyment for that edition. I'm an IG player, so Guard were pretty solid all the way through, even after the likes of GK and Crons dropped.
Plus I could run powerblobs back then.
I still that 5th with some tweaks would provide the best edition. Fix wound allocation for multi-wound models, merge the vehicles and MCs like in 8th, but add in a little more depth to their interactions, and obviously a balance pass.
This edition feels very strongly of one step forward, one step back, maybe even one and a half steps back. I like the changes GW are doing as a company, but its the usual good intentions marred by poor execution.
thekingofkings wrote: after a couple more games, I am convinced its not just the worst edition of 40k, but the worst miniature game currently on the market.
thekingofkings wrote: after a couple more games, I am convinced its not just the worst edition of 40k, but the worst miniature game currently on the market.
That's quite the indictment.
there may be some games out there that i havent played yet, but out of the dozens i have, yeah its that bad. made worse by the fact that gw is more than capable of putting out far better.
To be fair 40k was never that deep of a game. You really can't be when the core system relies on so many dice rolls. Fantasy (at least in it's earlier incarnation) had to put in a lot of chance mitigation and still it was just about one or two steps up from a glorified board game.
TheSilo wrote: I was an on-again off-again casual player for 6th and 7th edition, but I haven't played at all since 8th edition dropped. I liked some of the ideas that they were floating around, but looking at the new codexes, I'm not sure that 8th addressed any of the issues that turned me off from 7th. Basically, I felt like the game's rules regularly got in the way of fun game-play by enabling gimmickry and exploits, lacking intra/inter-army balance, and just generally having an overly complicated rule-set. So what is the verdict on 8th edition, has it improved your gameplay experience?
New rules, same people playing. So it is not any better than it was in that sense.
I really like 8th. I feel 7th was the worst edition I've ever played from a mechanics point of view. All the of the convoluted rules of 2nd, but without any of it's soul. 8th plays better and is much more enjoyable to play to me. Now, I'm looking for a fun experience and spending time with my friends. I'm not looking to test my manhood, or take the game too seriously. Find people that want the same kind of game you do, and you'll have a good time.
While I have only played a few games of 8th, those and the games I have watched in person or watched as video batreps or talked with friends about - the game seems very brutal now - especially shooting. So many games are decided turn 1/2.
While I agree with others comments that the game has never been balanced and it is difficult to do so, having the game decided on turn 1/2 is over the top. Yes it is a dice game and yes 40k will never be a serious wargame but that seems a little much for me. Someone with a strong shooty army who goes first can seriously destroy a large amount of the opposing force before they ever get to go.
So while I will play more and await the tyranid codex in November to get a better feel for 8th - the way the game seems to play does give me pause.
The First Turn Problem is the worst thing about 8th in my opinion. It can be mitigated with LoS-blocking terrain, but it'd be a better game if massive amounts of terrain were optional, not required.
That said, the game flows much better than 7th, and you can get more games in during a day of gaming. I feel the balance is better than in 7th, not that that's high praise. It's a fairly fun casual game, especially if you work together with your opponent to make it a pleasurable experience.
Cream Tea wrote: The First Turn Problem is the worst thing about 8th in my opinion. It can be mitigated with LoS-blocking terrain, but it'd be a better game if massive amounts of terrain were optional, not required.
That said, the game flows much better than 7th, and you can get more games in during a day of gaming. I feel the balance is better than in 7th, not that that's high praise. It's a fairly fun casual game, especially if you work together with your opponent to make it a pleasurable experience.
That's a bummer about the 1st turn win. That was one of the things that turned me off, as IG I would roflstomp most marine army back lines on turn one and then tarpit their deep-strikers. Eldar and Tau would obliterate everything I had and that would be it.
I hate to sound like a broken record on these forums, but I really do feel like 3rd was the best edition among the ones I played (3, 6, 7). The force org chart would limit any shenanigans, since there were no carnifex squadrons, basilisk squadrons, or whatever else, you'd max out at 3 and that was it. Options were limited, but meaningful. And the missions were designed so that you needed a balanced list. If you rolled the wrong mission then suddenly your OP heavy support units are stuck in reserves until turn 4, or you would have no infantry to actually C4 the objective, things like that. Just fundamental rules that required you to take more balanced army lists.
TheSilo wrote: I was an on-again off-again casual player for 6th and 7th edition, but I haven't played at all since 8th edition dropped. I liked some of the ideas that they were floating around, but looking at the new codexes, I'm not sure that 8th addressed any of the issues that turned me off from 7th. Basically, I felt like the game's rules regularly got in the way of fun game-play by enabling gimmickry and exploits, lacking intra/inter-army balance, and just generally having an overly complicated rule-set. So what is the verdict on 8th edition, has it improved your gameplay experience?
New rules, same people playing. So it is not any better than it was in that sense.
I really like 8th. I feel 7th was the worst edition I've ever played from a mechanics point of view. All the of the convoluted rules of 2nd, but without any of it's soul. 8th plays better and is much more enjoyable to play to me. Now, I'm looking for a fun experience and spending time with my friends. I'm not looking to test my manhood, or take the game too seriously. Find people that want the same kind of game you do, and you'll have a good time.
Good post!
I started in 2nd and walked away from 7th. Now, 8th has me having the most tabletop fun since the 90s. I like big-smash up games and I like tournaments. So far for me, 8th is working great!
I have played all sorts of wargames and use them in my professional life (where they are plenty less fun), and 40K is just fine as a wargame.
It's a much faster game - 5th and 6th had a problem with certain units being to hard to kill but in 8th - things die real quick. Most games are over by turn 3 as a result of tableing. I think it's a better game for sure. Worth getting into.
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Cream Tea wrote: The First Turn Problem is the worst thing about 8th in my opinion. It can be mitigated with LoS-blocking terrain, but it'd be a better game if massive amounts of terrain were optional, not required.
That said, the game flows much better than 7th, and you can get more games in during a day of gaming. I feel the balance is better than in 7th, not that that's high praise. It's a fairly fun casual game, especially if you work together with your opponent to make it a pleasurable experience.
Easily the biggest problem. Terrain also benefits some armies and hurts others. LOS blocking terrain is certainly important though - I'd say each army needs to be able to safely hide half of their army from LOS for a table to be fair.
Cream Tea wrote: The First Turn Problem is the worst thing about 8th in my opinion. It can be mitigated with LoS-blocking terrain, but it'd be a better game if massive amounts of terrain were optional, not required.
That said, the game flows much better than 7th, and you can get more games in during a day of gaming. I feel the balance is better than in 7th, not that that's high praise. It's a fairly fun casual game, especially if you work together with your opponent to make it a pleasurable experience.
That's a bummer about the 1st turn win. That was one of the things that turned me off, as IG I would roflstomp most marine army back lines on turn one and then tarpit their deep-strikers. Eldar and Tau would obliterate everything I had and that would be it.
I hate to sound like a broken record on these forums, but I really do feel like 3rd was the best edition among the ones I played (3, 6, 7). The force org chart would limit any shenanigans, since there were no carnifex squadrons, basilisk squadrons, or whatever else, you'd max out at 3 and that was it. Options were limited, but meaningful. And the missions were designed so that you needed a balanced list. If you rolled the wrong mission then suddenly your OP heavy support units are stuck in reserves until turn 4, or you would have no infantry to actually C4 the objective, things like that. Just fundamental rules that required you to take more balanced army lists.
I have to agree with you on 3rd. I think some way to limit some of this would hinder shenanigans at least.
I think it's biggest improvement is ease of getting into. I have an easier time with new and inexperienced players and I can go without the rules for a single model being on 5-6 different pages in 3 books.
Blacksails wrote: Better than 6th/7th, worse than 5th is where I'd slot it.
Pretty much this.
Except for kill points, I actually enjoyed having several mechanized squads in transports, balancing your choices between movement towards objectives and/or killing.
Cream Tea wrote: The First Turn Problem is the worst thing about 8th in my opinion. It can be mitigated with LoS-blocking terrain, but it'd be a better game if massive amounts of terrain were optional, not required.
That said, the game flows much better than 7th, and you can get more games in during a day of gaming. I feel the balance is better than in 7th, not that that's high praise. It's a fairly fun casual game, especially if you work together with your opponent to make it a pleasurable experience.
That's a bummer about the 1st turn win. That was one of the things that turned me off, as IG I would roflstomp most marine army back lines on turn one and then tarpit their deep-strikers. Eldar and Tau would obliterate everything I had and that would be it.
I hate to sound like a broken record on these forums, but I really do feel like 3rd was the best edition among the ones I played (3, 6, 7). The force org chart would limit any shenanigans, since there were no carnifex squadrons, basilisk squadrons, or whatever else, you'd max out at 3 and that was it. Options were limited, but meaningful. And the missions were designed so that you needed a balanced list. If you rolled the wrong mission then suddenly your OP heavy support units are stuck in reserves until turn 4, or you would have no infantry to actually C4 the objective, things like that. Just fundamental rules that required you to take more balanced army lists.
I have to agree with you on 3rd. I think some way to limit some of this would hinder shenanigans at least.
Except all armies got screwed over, having acces to no shenanigans, only to get anally rushed by shenanigan armies like CSM, Eldars and BA.
Maybe I'm weird, but I kinda liked the range guessing in older editions. It ended up being a skill all in its own.
Me too. Agreed.
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auticus wrote: Its not bad. Its fun. But as a wargame yeah its like AOS... one step removed from a board game and magic the gathering deckbuilding with models.
If you want a wargame, 40k will be a disappointment.
Exactly why I am in no hurry to actually play.
Don't really need to after three decades in the hobby it is easy enough to see the mess.
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MechaEmperor7000 wrote: To be fair 40k was never that deep of a game. You really can't be when the core system relies on so many dice rolls. Fantasy (at least in it's earlier incarnation) had to put in a lot of chance mitigation and still it was just about one or two steps up from a glorified board game.
I don't think that dice rolls preclude 40k from being a deep game. After all, XCOM is one of the best turn-based tactical games of all time and that requires tons of RNG rolls.
One of my issues is that 40k tends to lack tactical depth. In my recent experience, the game is 80% determined before the first move based on who gamed the rules in their army list the best. Unlike XCOM, where a flanking shot will double your chance to hit, there are few rewards in 40k for flanking, taking cover, seizing high ground, etc. In 7th there were still a lot of situations where cover made absolutely no difference, assaulting an enemy unit in the flank just meant they all got to pile in and strike any way, morale was a non-issue for most units, and high ground conferred little advantage.
I think stripping these small tactical choices of their benefits/costs cumulatively made the game much shallower, instead favoring a melee mosh-pit or a static firing line.
TheSilo wrote: I don't think that dice rolls preclude 40k from being a deep game. After all, XCOM is one of the best turn-based tactical games of all time and that requires tons of RNG rolls.
One of my issues is that 40k tends to lack tactical depth. In my recent experience, the game is 80% determined before the first move based on who gamed the rules in their army list the best. Unlike XCOM, where a flanking shot will double your chance to hit, there are few rewards in 40k for flanking, taking cover, seizing high ground, etc. In 7th there were still a lot of situations where cover made absolutely no difference, assaulting an enemy unit in the flank just meant they all got to pile in and strike any way, morale was a non-issue for most units, and high ground conferred little advantage.
I think stripping these small tactical choices of their benefits/costs cumulatively made the game much shallower, instead favoring a melee mosh-pit or a static firing line.
Exactly this. When you compound the size of the board with the range of the weapons and charge/movement distances, its no wonder the game turned out the way it is. Most deeper games I play ensure that either you're out of range for a good turn or three, or suffer so many negative modifiers until you get closer, that it forces you and your opponent to actually maneuver for good terrain positions, flanking maneuvers, crossfires, and maximizing your own cover while limiting your opponent's.
When you can shoot halfway across the board with a basic infantry weapon, of course the game will devolve into a combination gunline or mad dash to run across no-man's land.
TheSilo wrote: I don't think that dice rolls preclude 40k from being a deep game. After all, XCOM is one of the best turn-based tactical games of all time and that requires tons of RNG rolls.
One of my issues is that 40k tends to lack tactical depth. In my recent experience, the game is 80% determined before the first move based on who gamed the rules in their army list the best. Unlike XCOM, where a flanking shot will double your chance to hit, there are few rewards in 40k for flanking, taking cover, seizing high ground, etc. In 7th there were still a lot of situations where cover made absolutely no difference, assaulting an enemy unit in the flank just meant they all got to pile in and strike any way, morale was a non-issue for most units, and high ground conferred little advantage.
I think stripping these small tactical choices of their benefits/costs cumulatively made the game much shallower, instead favoring a melee mosh-pit or a static firing line.
Having dice rolls don't preclude something from having depth, but far too many of 40k's mechanics depend on dice rolls and randomness that it saps much of the tactical decisions you can make in other similar games. 8th edition has been better about it with modifiers being more plentiful and rerolls being more abundant, significantly cutting down on some of the randomness, but it is still completely possible to blunder through a game with a "weak" list simply because the dice gods favoured you.
This is part of the reason I'm on the fence about the suggestion that "you should auto-fail on a 1" and "auto pass on a 6", as this is a rubber banding mechanic more at home on a board game (however I do see the merit of it in 40k, which is again why I'm on the fence).
TheSilo wrote: I don't think that dice rolls preclude 40k from being a deep game. After all, XCOM is one of the best turn-based tactical games of all time and that requires tons of RNG rolls.
One of my issues is that 40k tends to lack tactical depth. In my recent experience, the game is 80% determined before the first move based on who gamed the rules in their army list the best. Unlike XCOM, where a flanking shot will double your chance to hit, there are few rewards in 40k for flanking, taking cover, seizing high ground, etc. In 7th there were still a lot of situations where cover made absolutely no difference, assaulting an enemy unit in the flank just meant they all got to pile in and strike any way, morale was a non-issue for most units, and high ground conferred little advantage.
I think stripping these small tactical choices of their benefits/costs cumulatively made the game much shallower, instead favoring a melee mosh-pit or a static firing line.
I assume you mean the remake instead of the original? X-Com had a...funny ballistic resolution system, where accuracy affected how much a shot deviated from a straight path, and you could "miss successfully" as a result.
As far as flanking, in 7th, casualties were "closest model first" (the same system as 2nd, more or less) and casualties had to be in range and sight. Cover didn't matter as much if you were Marines, or were up against Tau, but you could "make" your own cover by running units/vehicles in formation (not Formations), and it still wasn't as silly as 8th: "One model is not standing on the forest base, so the unit doesn't get cover, even though I'm shooting through four windows." And pile-ins were mandatory until 8th; given assault/react/consolidate moves were still subject to normal restrictions ("must remain in coherency, cannot move within 1 inch of a unit you do not intend to assault" and such), flanking could in game an assault. In fact, if you go back into the archives of dakka, you can find dashofpepper's (hilarious if outdated and arguably trollish) Necron Tactica, where he discusses using the Deceiver to "force-kite" enemy units off objectives.
So sure, there may not have been "explicit" bonuses to flanking, like Epic's "the enemy suffers -1 to save and an extra disruption marker" but the core rules did allow for position to matter to some minor degree.
TheSilo wrote: I don't think that dice rolls preclude 40k from being a deep game. After all, XCOM is one of the best turn-based tactical games of all time and that requires tons of RNG rolls.
One of my issues is that 40k tends to lack tactical depth. In my recent experience, the game is 80% determined before the first move based on who gamed the rules in their army list the best. Unlike XCOM, where a flanking shot will double your chance to hit, there are few rewards in 40k for flanking, taking cover, seizing high ground, etc. In 7th there were still a lot of situations where cover made absolutely no difference, assaulting an enemy unit in the flank just meant they all got to pile in and strike any way, morale was a non-issue for most units, and high ground conferred little advantage.
I think stripping these small tactical choices of their benefits/costs cumulatively made the game much shallower, instead favoring a melee mosh-pit or a static firing line.
Exactly this. When you compound the size of the board with the range of the weapons and charge/movement distances, its no wonder the game turned out the way it is. Most deeper games I play ensure that either you're out of range for a good turn or three, or suffer so many negative modifiers until you get closer, that it forces you and your opponent to actually maneuver for good terrain positions, flanking maneuvers, crossfires, and maximizing your own cover while limiting your opponent's.
When you can shoot halfway across the board with a basic infantry weapon, of course the game will devolve into a combination gunline or mad dash to run across no-man's land.
That's another big problem I noticed. I would have liked to see a BS penalty when shooting over half your range (except perhaps for assault weapons and sniper rifles), or a reduction in overall ranges. Positioning would have been so much more important if lascannons had 36" range instead of being able to cover most of the table at 48". Then high-ground positioning could eliminate the range penalty and/or reduce cover saves. In realistic terms, it was always silly that my Leman Russ Demolisher only had 24" range, but in game terms that really forced me to take risks and push up with infantry to guard the tank. A good tactical game encourages that risk/reward mentality, rather than a sit-back-and-shoot mentality.
MechaEmperor7000 wrote: Having dice rolls don't preclude something from having depth, but far too many of 40k's mechanics depend on dice rolls and randomness that it saps much of the tactical decisions you can make in other similar games. 8th edition has been better about it with modifiers being more plentiful and rerolls being more abundant, significantly cutting down on some of the randomness, but it is still completely possible to blunder through a game with a "weak" list simply because the dice gods favoured you.
This is part of the reason I'm on the fence about the suggestion that "you should auto-fail on a 1" and "auto pass on a 6", as this is a rubber banding mechanic more at home on a board game (however I do see the merit of it in 40k, which is again why I'm on the fence).
Dice rolling can be as much for "averages" as it is for "calculated risk." Something like a Ratling Gun ("do you want to keep rolling dice for shots?") is a sort of random where the player makes a meaningful choics. Random that doesn't impact player choices is just filler/bloat. So Daemon Warpstorms=annoying game mechanics. Ditto Soul Blaze: Lots of rolling rolling for little effect. Arguably, so is a unit of Conscripts firing Overwatch with Bobby G. 60 shots, about 70 rolls with rerolling 1, so 12 hits max. Of which 4 wound, maybe 5.8. So almost 100 dice rolled for a "free action" that kills...2 tacmarines on average (but always with the potential to "roll hot" or load dice for a larger range of damage variability)...
A curious thing is much of the mechanics the community want (except for alternate activations) were available in WHFB. Some got implimented (like AP being a reduction rather than an all or nothing deal) while others were, for some unfathomable reason, ignored (cover and range being a penalty to BS). Even more curious is that the half range thing was in shadow wars, so it's not like they weren't aware of it (or they just CP'd the entire necromunda book without even proofreading).
As for the stupid ranges, that's a result of the game's scale creep. A long time ago a 10 point model would be seen as a Swarm model, a space marine would be 18 points if you gave it grenades but nothing else, and an "army" generally consisted of 2 squads, a character, an elite unit, and maybe one or two vehicles if you were lucky. Now it's not uncommon to see half a dozen vehicles supported by at least 4-5 squads of troops at the same points value.
That's another big problem I noticed. I would have liked to see a BS penalty when shooting over half your range (except perhaps for assault weapons and sniper rifles), or a reduction in overall ranges. Positioning would have been so much more important if lascannons had 36" range instead of being able to cover most of the table at 48". Then high-ground positioning could eliminate the range penalty and/or reduce cover saves. In realistic terms, it was always silly that my Leman Russ Demolisher only had 24" range, but in game terms that really forced me to take risks and push up with infantry to guard the tank. A good tactical game encourages that risk/reward mentality, rather than a sit-back-and-shoot mentality.
I played a more modern 28mm ruleset many years ago that had been roughly adapted to 40k models. We used predominantly shooting armies/models (Tau vs IG) and the general idea was that heavy weapons had effectively unlimited range, but anything further than their optimal range would reduce their accuracy for every certain range increment. Infantry weapons had a long max range, but a much shorter optimal range and also suffered for every range increment past the optimal. Cover and morale were deeper too, where it was hard to fully wipe a squad, as 'hits' were abstracted as fire close enough to cause pinning and so on. Of course modifiers would scale up or down whether the unit suffered something mild like being pinned or was routed or outright destroyed.
It was a blast. It helped that we played with a force that would be more typical of a 28mm game; this instance was a small platoon of Guard backed by a Russ, while the Tau were a hammerhead, a squad of crisis suits, and a squad of firewarriors. We played on a bigger table, and the amount of space actually meant you could move around and find cover and advance from cover to cover.
I never thought I'd ever say this, but after trying other games it's hard to go back to WH40K for the rules. The models and fluff are still lovely, of course.
IGOUGO is one of the main flaws, of course, but there are a bunch more of those, mainly the game itself not really knowing what it wants to do.
auticus wrote: I think the game knows what it wants to do. It wants to be a very loose and casual framework for creating narrative cinematic games.
When people try to make it become a tightly balanced competitive experience, thats when it flies off the rails.
This WAS true in times of 2nd, 6th and 7th, but I honestly don't know what 8th tries to be anymore. It lacks details needed for cinematic experience and has an awfull lot of oversimplified mechanics (one example - no more "late game spike of courage of lone survivor of decimated Guardians squad, fleeing for most of the game just to tip the tide of battle by being at the right place when he was most needed" kind of Morale effects). 8th is "the new 3rd" and has all of the same anti-climatic reduction in personality... I get it, it is better for fast pick-up games and somewhat tries to acknowledge it's use for tournaments, but it's hard to "make along" proper narrative when supersonic jets occupy ground space and can be engaged in CC...
I'd argue that 6th and 7th equally didn't know what they wanted to be. Model by model interactions combined with unit by unit interactions. You could throw individual grenades and the shape of your melee weapon mattered, but giant monsters and vehicles were unchanged from no damage to barely being alive. The scale of the battles was completely out to lunch (still is) and had no benefits to either being a tournament based competitive game or a narrative oriented campaign based game.
I never thought I'd ever say this, but after trying other games it's hard to go back to WH40K for the rules. The models and fluff are still lovely, of course.
IGOUGO is one of the main flaws, of course, but there are a bunch more of those, mainly the game itself not really knowing what it wants to do.
I came to this conclusion a few years ago. I was hoping 8th edition would change my mind, but after about 4 games of 8th I just went back to other games. I still pay attention, hence why I come here and cruise around on Dakka, because I *want* 40k to be a great game again. I really wish GW would come at it with a new mindset, because let's face it, the "New GW" mentality just isn't real. They have the resources to make the game incredible again, but I think their relentless pursuit of more $$$ at the cost of everything else will stop it from ever happening.
I never thought I'd ever say this, but after trying other games it's hard to go back to WH40K for the rules. The models and fluff are still lovely, of course.
IGOUGO is one of the main flaws, of course, but there are a bunch more of those, mainly the game itself not really knowing what it wants to do.
I came to this conclusion a few years ago. I was hoping 8th edition would change my mind, but after about 4 games of 8th I just went back to other games. I still pay attention, hence why I come here and cruise around on Dakka, because I *want* 40k to be a great game again. I really wish GW would come at it with a new mindset, because let's face it, the "New GW" mentality just isn't real. They have the resources to make the game incredible again, but I think their relentless pursuit of more $$$ at the cost of everything else will stop it from ever happening.
8th commits the biggest crime a game can in that it just is not fun, win or lose by the 2nd or 3rd turn it's just a chore playing.
You could simulate a game of 40k by both players chucking a bucket of dice with whomever rolls the most 6's winning as ultimately that is all that matters, what happens on the table is largely irrelevant as the players choices other than at the list building stage have minimal impact.
In fact most of the time it's the player who can ignore/subvert or break the rules who wins at the tournement level of play. This is exactly the same as what happened with AoS although 40k marginally edges it's sibling out asbgw did not go full AoS with 40k so small mercies and all that.
Its appealing to the most people. Most people don't want complex games. You're right in that GW is going after what is going to make them the most $$$ and the wider audience doesn't want a traditional wargame.
By and large they want the boardgame that is one step removed from a collectible card game.
Thats what sells.
To a company that has stockholders to appease, that is what makes sense for them to go after.
I'm not a great fan of it either but I started seeing almost ten years ago that the kind of games that I came up on and really love became niche and then have slowly started their final death rattle not so long ago.
I never thought I'd ever say this, but after trying other games it's hard to go back to WH40K for the rules. The models and fluff are still lovely, of course.
IGOUGO is one of the main flaws, of course, but there are a bunch more of those, mainly the game itself not really knowing what it wants to do.
I came to this conclusion a few years ago. I was hoping 8th edition would change my mind, but after about 4 games of 8th I just went back to other games. I still pay attention, hence why I come here and cruise around on Dakka, because I *want* 40k to be a great game again. I really wish GW would come at it with a new mindset, because let's face it, the "New GW" mentality just isn't real. They have the resources to make the game incredible again, but I think their relentless pursuit of more $$$ at the cost of everything else will stop it from ever happening.
I think this will always be the fundamental problem. They will never have the incentive to cut or nerf overpowered units, nor cut back the scale of the game since bigger battles and more models just makes them more money. You see this all the time with card games and board games which start off fun and then through expansions and power inflation they just turn into an unholy mess. There's an appeal in adding depth and nuance to a game, but over time the changes just get clunkier.
8th commits the biggest crime a game can in that it just is not fun, win or lose by the 2nd or 3rd turn it's just a chore playing.
You could simulate a game of 40k by both players chucking a bucket of dice with whomever rolls the most 6's winning as ultimately that is all that matters, what happens on the table is largely irrelevant as the players choices other than at the list building stage have minimal impact.
In fact most of the time it's the player who can ignore/subvert or break the rules who wins at the tournement level of play. This is exactly the same as what happened with AoS although 40k marginally edges it's sibling out asbgw did not go full AoS with 40k so small mercies and all that.
I have to disagree here. I used your exact words to desribe 7th edition but I think 8th edition really has become a game where you can actually do something to change the game. Stratagems and the CC phase are really nice tools. While in 7th edition after a game I was like: "Hmm, there's nothing CSM can do against decurion Necrons." or "hmm, without rolling invisibility at the start of the game I would have lost", now in 8th things have changed for me. There's actual tactics involved that can be discussed afterwards, I can see where I did mistakes in positioning or in target choice. It's not on the level of lotr, and the balance also has a long way to go (and that way seems to become longer with the Codizes ), but I think there were some good decisions. If you ask me they should have taken even more from lotr, as that's still the best game GW produced. At least there's something like alternating activation in the CC phase, they probably should have transferred that to movement and shooting as well. There's still too much time where you just sit and wait to make your safes.
If 8th dition isn't fun for you, buy the open war cards or use the narrative scenarios (or both). These could help.
I never thought I'd ever say this, but after trying other games it's hard to go back to WH40K for the rules. The models and fluff are still lovely, of course.
IGOUGO is one of the main flaws, of course, but there are a bunch more of those, mainly the game itself not really knowing what it wants to do.
I came to this conclusion a few years ago. I was hoping 8th edition would change my mind, but after about 4 games of 8th I just went back to other games. I still pay attention, hence why I come here and cruise around on Dakka, because I *want* 40k to be a great game again. I really wish GW would come at it with a new mindset, because let's face it, the "New GW" mentality just isn't real. They have the resources to make the game incredible again, but I think their relentless pursuit of more $$$ at the cost of everything else will stop it from ever happening.
I think this will always be the fundamental problem. They will never have the incentive to cut or nerf overpowered units, nor cut back the scale of the game since bigger battles and more models just makes them more money. You see this all the time with card games and board games which start off fun and then through expansions and power inflation they just turn into an unholy mess. There's an appeal in adding depth and nuance to a game, but over time the changes just get clunkier.
40k isn't actually that complicated. It's actually rather simple for most intents and purposes. It's when certain rules or combinations violate those rules that things fall apart. Like how Warp Spiders broke the fundamental rule of "if you can see an enemy, you can shoot it", or how Ordnance Tyrant armies could shoot into close combat.
8th commits the biggest crime a game can in that it just is not fun, win or lose by the 2nd or 3rd turn it's just a chore playing.
You could simulate a game of 40k by both players chucking a bucket of dice with whomever rolls the most 6's winning as ultimately that is all that matters, what happens on the table is largely irrelevant as the players choices other than at the list building stage have minimal impact.
In fact most of the time it's the player who can ignore/subvert or break the rules who wins at the tournement level of play. This is exactly the same as what happened with AoS although 40k marginally edges it's sibling out asbgw did not go full AoS with 40k so small mercies and all that.
While in 7th edition after a game I was like: "Hmm, there's nothing CSM can do against decurion Necrons." or "hmm, without rolling invisibility at the start of the game I would have lost", now in 8th things have changed for me.
I dunno about you, but playing Chaos in 7th, I take issue against saying that those builds were autolose. While there were *some* changes to certain units in 8th that were for the better (Berzerkers and Noise Marines), other changes gutted other units wholesale. Losing Dirge Casters hurt. Terminators are even worse than in 7th, where you could at least occasionally argue for Plasma Termicide. The changes to Spell Familiars mean that Chaos Sorcerers are "exact equals" of Marine Psykers, not that it matters since you want cheaper Smite Vectors instead. Spawn went from being a fast disruption/beater unit to a "slow melee brute", making them akin to Mutilators that trade Deepstrike for a different set of random tables. Yes, it's "nice" that Obliterators got doubleshots and a stratagem that lets them fire-twice, but removing the whole "choose your gun" aspect defeats the whole purpose of them as a unit! The Heldrake is...weird, as now it works better as a substitute sniper rifle than crowd control. And the fact that 8th came out so shortly after Traitor Legions added full-fledged Legion Tactics, a whole table of Warlord Traits and Relics per Legion (this general reduction of army-specific options reminds me of the same "streamlining" that helped kill off WHFB), and the 8e fluff now has "Iron Warriors of Tzeentch", and...*breathes slowly*
Yeah. Anyway, I had mentioned in another post that my issue with the 8e "traits" is that for many of them, optimal use involves flying directly in the face of established lore.
MagicJuggler wrote: And the fact that 8th came out so shortly after Traitor Legions added full-fledged Legion Tactics, a whole table of Warlord Traits and Relics per Legion (this general reduction of army-specific options reminds me of the same "streamlining" that helped kill off WHFB), and the 8e fluff now has "Iron Warriors of Tzeentch", and...*breathes slowly*
Yeah. Anyway, I had mentioned in another post that my issue with the 8e "traits" is that for many of them, optimal use involves flying directly in the face of established lore.
Yeah having only recently been able to skim the surface of the traitor legions book, it's actually pretty damn interesting. Too bad it had about a week shelf life.
Pancakey wrote: Blob up. Aura-hammer. Boring. Books getting nerfs within days of release. Rules changing at a breakneck pace.
Crowdsourced rules by "tourney" players go figure!
it would help is GW actuallly cared what the playtesters said. GW sent the AM coded to the printers before even getting any feedback from their playtesters
Pancakey wrote: Blob up. Aura-hammer. Boring. Books getting nerfs within days of release. Rules changing at a breakneck pace.
Crowdsourced rules by "tourney" players go figure!
it would help is GW actuallly cared what the playtesters said. GW sent the AM coded to the printers before even getting any feedback from their playtesters
We dont know that fully, they could be doing multi-years worth things at once (99% all business do this) they could be doing 1st runs to get rules out the door then take the feedback from testers and players, wait to see how bad it really is to get a clear view then in a year make changes via Chapter Approve Books.
We dont know that for sure tho. Having written a business manuals and procedures for a business i worked for, i can tell you sometimes its better to see the actual fires before fire proofing, your never truly are ready and a small burn with the promise of fixes is better than one major fire.
The amount of rules, testing, paperwork that is going into 40k right now is just mind blowing
Xenomancers wrote: It's a much faster game - 5th and 6th had a problem with certain units being to hard to kill but in 8th - things die real quick. Most games are over by turn 3 as a result of tableing. I think it's a better game for sure. Worth getting into.
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Cream Tea wrote: The First Turn Problem is the worst thing about 8th in my opinion. It can be mitigated with LoS-blocking terrain, but it'd be a better game if massive amounts of terrain were optional, not required.
That said, the game flows much better than 7th, and you can get more games in during a day of gaming. I feel the balance is better than in 7th, not that that's high praise. It's a fairly fun casual game, especially if you work together with your opponent to make it a pleasurable experience.
Easily the biggest problem. Terrain also benefits some armies and hurts others. LOS blocking terrain is certainly important though - I'd say each army needs to be able to safely hide half of their army from LOS for a table to be fair.
Maybe both sides start with only 50% of units (or points) on the table? Rest comes on in turn 2?
One other big issue is the huge tactical disadvantage of setting up first and going second and the converse huge tactical advantage of setting up second and moving first. This should NEVER, ever happen. Being able to set up in response to your opponents set up and then going first should be an automatic win pretty much every time.
HoundsofDemos wrote: I hate that vehicles are so expensive and how transports as a whole seem meh. My old army style just doesn't work in this edition.
Agreed, I also hate how elite infantry are a joke and an edition that traded complexity and depth for speed and ease of play incentivized massive model count armies.
Martel732 wrote: Elite infantry have been bad for a long time, now. 5th began the trend, with drop pods being a necessary crutch.
That got exponentially worse with the advent of weapons causing multiple wounds per shot and an ap system so poorly implemented that it makes power armor a joke.
I found the basic game and the indexes to be pretty decent with a few flaws.
Now that the codex production is in full swing, it's depressing to see the same old mistakes repeated. This is likely to be the _most_ imbalanced edition, though admittedly on the subfaction level instead of the codex level.
Martel732 wrote: Elite infantry have been bad for a long time, now. 5th began the trend, with drop pods being a necessary crutch.
Yes and no. Terminators have been bad for a long time, but basic marines were ok, scouts were/are awesome and my rhino's used to do their jobs perfectly, being a cheap but just durable enough shield to get my guys across the field. Now armor is kinda of joke, cover is pointless and since enough grout shots can kill anything vehicles finally having the proper amount of wounds is bunk.
Armor is far from a joke. It's better than it ever has been. You WANT people shooting stupid stuff at your vehicles. The problem is how close range and assault units interact with chaff units.
Basic marines have been bad for a long time competitively. So there's nothing new there.
I prefer for my space marines to have a 4+ save 40% of the time and a 3+ 50% of the time, with a 6+save 10% of the time, instead of 6-7th edition... 0 armour save 90% of the time.
The same goes for Terminators. And sorry but 8th editions is the first edition where my Dreadnoughts end the game alive. Normally with 1-3 wounds, but still. Vehicles have never been toughther.
I don't wan't to play 40k as a simulation but as a fun / narative game, so simple rules are good by me. Of course it has more then a few flaws.
But to me the major fix would be with cover benefits. By improving the way you gain cover and units in cover survability a bit, first turn would be less brutal and the game more enjoyable to me. And you would have a (little) bit more tactical depth without making the game more complex.
So in my local group 8th has certainly divided it up.
Around 7-8 swear by 8th, and 11-12 of them swear by Horus Heresy (Mainly because of the lore behind it, but it being 7th was a big factor.
I'm lucky that I use my Horus Heresy era World Eater force in 40k and enjoy both games.
8th I certainly couldn't play week in and out, it's pretty bland with everything being a template of each other, lack of terrain rules and the general copy and pasting everywhere (From everyone deep striking exact same way to the same chapter traits everywhere).
It is however fun, quick and great to play every not and then for a casual game.
The amount of dice, and worse, the amount of re-rolling of said dice is an order of magnitude higher than it has been in older editions (namely 2nd, 3rd etc.).
I'll be honest, I don't even take units which can roll more than say 20 dice as I simply don't want to roll that many dice and it feels gamey/cheesy as hell. It is, without question, rather silly when a single unit needs to resolve attacks using 30-40 dice and gets to re-roll those, etc. It becomes almost comical.
It is 40K though in its current state and sadly the expectation is kill all the things, and if you're not rolling 10 dice per model..you suck apparently, etc. It is a bizarre state of affairs. I think the general killy-ness of the game is aimed at sweeping more models off the table - thus selling more models by allowing larger and progressively larger games.
That is precisely why you don't use rules like that. I understand the consternation of tournament players, but this edition really relies on the players taking the game and making it their own - it's not that tough really. Heck we're going to be trying randomized activation soon.
As a strictly written game? It's a bit pants. As a chassis on which to create a fun gaming experience? It's plenty.
Elbows wrote: That is precisely why you don't use rules like that. I understand the consternation of tournament players, but this edition really relies on the players taking the game and making it their own - it's not that tough really. Heck we're going to be trying randomized activation soon.
As a strictly written game? It's a bit pants. As a chassis on which to create a fun gaming experience? It's plenty.
Elbows wrote: this edition really relies on the players taking the game and making it their own
Was there ever any edition that didn't? It seems to me GW always write incomplete rulesets that rely massively on deciphering intent and fixing stuff that doesn't work.
The amount of dice, and worse, the amount of re-rolling of said dice is an order of magnitude higher than it has been in older editions (namely 2nd, 3rd etc.).
I'll be honest, I don't even take units which can roll more than say 20 dice as I simply don't want to roll that many dice and it feels gamey/cheesy as hell. It is, without question, rather silly when a single unit needs to resolve attacks using 30-40 dice and gets to re-roll those, etc. It becomes almost comical.
It is 40K though in its current state and sadly the expectation is kill all the things, and if you're not rolling 10 dice per model..you suck apparently, etc. It is a bizarre state of affairs. I think the general killy-ness of the game is aimed at sweeping more models off the table - thus selling more models by allowing larger and progressively larger games.
Rolling so many dice has a good spin to it, specially with d6 dices. They make games much more averaged, and much less based on luck. When you roll so many dice, the average is gonna be much better in the game. Yeah, everyone remembers "If he didn't rolled that six in the last turn, he wouldn't have kill my last unit and stealed me the relic, so I should have won!" but people forgot ALL those other times in the same game where you have had luck with your dice.
Elbows wrote: That is precisely why you don't use rules like that. I understand the consternation of tournament players, but this edition really relies on the players taking the game and making it their own - it's not that tough really. Heck we're going to be trying randomized activation soon.
As a strictly written game? It's a bit pants. As a chassis on which to create a fun gaming experience? It's plenty.
Its not a very good chassis either.
Okay? So don't play it. Problem solved. Carry on. I thought 7th was unbridled gak...so I didn't play it.
honestly, I loved it at the beginning but with codex coming out now you can see that the power creep is very real. Was hoping this edition would make much more balanced forces and GW did a good job of it at the beginning... I feel like we're back to where we started
Also, as it's already been stated: Games are kind of bland and stale. I can usually tell before the game begins who will win, and typically a game never goes more than 2 turns with a very one sided victory. No intricate rules or things that make armies much different now. at least in 7th is someone decided to bring rowboat girlyman I had a few options for trying to beat him, in this edition none of my armies stand that same chance.
with all that said, I will still play the game when friends ask me but personally I'm much more interested in Necromunda at the moment... We'll see how much GW dumbs it down tho
Elbows wrote: That is precisely why you don't use rules like that. I understand the consternation of tournament players, but this edition really relies on the players taking the game and making it their own - it's not that tough really. Heck we're going to be trying randomized activation soon.
As a strictly written game? It's a bit pants. As a chassis on which to create a fun gaming experience? It's plenty.
Its not a very good chassis either.
Okay? So don't play it. Problem solved. Carry on. I thought 7th was unbridled gak...so I didn't play it.
I thought 7th was gak too, and it just so happened that I didn't play much of it either. Unfortunately for me though, if I want to push models around a table with like minded folks, my options are 40k 8th, or AoS. So like it or not, I'm stuck with it if I want to use my models.
My point was simply that your claim that 8th is a good chassis isn't really true either. That's all. If you want to discuss why you think it makes a good chassis, then by all means, I'm happy to discuss why I don't think so.
But I appreciate that you took the time to explain to me an option I never ever possibly considered.
The same goes for Terminators. And sorry but 8th editions is the first edition where my Dreadnoughts end the game alive. Normally with 1-3 wounds, but still. Vehicles have never been toughther.
if your opponent is bringing actual AT weapons, this shouldnt be the case. If you were used to just having fields of scatterlasers plink stuff to death, ok, but against something like a Lascannon? They should go down easier than ever. They dot have the chance to die in one hit, but require fewer shots to kill on average, meaning an opponent doesnt need to invest as much to kill each vehicle typically.
Looking at a Dread, what took 9 BS4 Lascannons on average in 5E took 7 on average in 7E and 6 BS3+ on average in 8E. Looking at a Russ tank, what took 27 BS4 Lascannons in 5E took 14 in 7E and 9 BS3+ Lascannons in 8E.
The same goes for Terminators. And sorry but 8th editions is the first edition where my Dreadnoughts end the game alive. Normally with 1-3 wounds, but still. Vehicles have never been toughther.
if your opponent is bringing actual AT weapons, this shouldnt be the case. If you were used to just having fields of scatterlasers plink stuff to death, ok, but against something like a Lascannon? They should go down easier than ever. They dot have the chance to die in one hit, but require fewer shots to kill on average, meaning an opponent doesnt need to invest as much to kill each vehicle typically.
Looking at a Dread, what took 9 BS4 Lascannons on average in 5E took 7 on average in 7E and 6 BS3+ on average in 8E. Looking at a Russ tank, what took 27 BS4 Lascannons in 5E took 14 in 7E and 9 BS3+ Lascannons in 8E.
And this is a totally dishonest argument to make. Lascannons where trash in past editions for a reason. Nobody used them, because they wheren't capable of doing their job. The problem was how vehicles where destroyed by NON-Anti tank weaponry.
In 8th Lasscannons are USEFULL at last. And vehicles are much toughter agaisn't mid-strenght weapons like Scater Lassers.
So yeah, vehicles aren't as durable agaisn't Anti-Tank weaponry that was totally useless in past editions. And are more durable agaisn't normal weaponry. So I'll keep my opinion: In 8th vehicles work better than in past editions.
The amount of dice, and worse, the amount of re-rolling of said dice is an order of magnitude higher than it has been in older editions (namely 2nd, 3rd etc.).
I'll be honest, I don't even take units which can roll more than say 20 dice as I simply don't want to roll that many dice and it feels gamey/cheesy as hell. It is, without question, rather silly when a single unit needs to resolve attacks using 30-40 dice and gets to re-roll those, etc. It becomes almost comical.
It is 40K though in its current state and sadly the expectation is kill all the things, and if you're not rolling 10 dice per model..you suck apparently, etc. It is a bizarre state of affairs. I think the general killy-ness of the game is aimed at sweeping more models off the table - thus selling more models by allowing larger and progressively larger games.
Just 30? Try getting charged by 30 sluggaboyz. Took about 15 minutes to resolve all 120 dice...
Regarding dice: At the start of 8th, there was The Flock. 10 Razorwing Flocks were 70 points. They threw out 80 dice to hit (on 5+), rerolling on 5+ if a Beastmaster was nearby They usually wounded on 5s or 6s, but Doom let them reroll wounds. So an absolute worst-case scenario could be rolling 320 dice before saves to resolve the attacks of 70 points worth of models. 205 is a more realistic average (80 attacks and 52.8 rerolls for about 42.3 hits, which reroll to wound). For about 24 wounds vs t3, 12 vs t4+. So...4 Marines dead. Even after the point adjustment, this is the sort of thing where too many rolls kills a game (especially when it is contentious which dice are cocked or not).
Regarding vehicles: Galas is more correct on this one. Hull Points weren't the issue so much as lack of HP combined with a relatively forgiving damage chart. For all the complaints that vehicles were one-shot exploding deathtraps, the truth of the matter was that it was easier to kill vehicles by stripping their HP down with mid-strength weapons (Scatter Lasers and such) rather than using supposedly "dedicated" AT.
However, while 8th does the "damage" side of this nominally better, there are assorted components that were arguably lost in translation. Yes, you can assault from transports, but said transports are always static (except Valkyries and such). You no longer get the extra movement from "Assault Ramp" or Open-Topped Transports. You no longer have Fire Points. Tank Shock is gone. You can "stop" a Land Raider in its tracks by surrounding it with a small unit of Hormagaunts. Heck, if so much as one Hormagaunt makes melee with your Land Raider, Russ, any non-Fly, non-Baneblade vehicle...that vehicle ain't shooting for a turn. Flyers are Schroedinger's Aircraft, where you can't "move past them" since they "block the ground" but you can't assault them because they're "in the air."
The same goes for Terminators. And sorry but 8th editions is the first edition where my Dreadnoughts end the game alive. Normally with 1-3 wounds, but still. Vehicles have never been toughther.
if your opponent is bringing actual AT weapons, this shouldnt be the case. If you were used to just having fields of scatterlasers plink stuff to death, ok, but against something like a Lascannon? They should go down easier than ever. They dot have the chance to die in one hit, but require fewer shots to kill on average, meaning an opponent doesnt need to invest as much to kill each vehicle typically.
Looking at a Dread, what took 9 BS4 Lascannons on average in 5E took 7 on average in 7E and 6 BS3+ on average in 8E. Looking at a Russ tank, what took 27 BS4 Lascannons in 5E took 14 in 7E and 9 BS3+ Lascannons in 8E.
And this is a totally dishonest argument to make.
Wat?
I took a common anti tank weapon thats been available in literally every edition of the game, that has been available to a wide variety of armies, and showed the expected averages over multiple editions
That's "dishonest".
Ok...um....not sure what to say to that.
Lascannons where trash in past editions for a reason. Nobody used them, because they wheren't capable of doing their job. The problem was how vehicles where destroyed by NON-Anti tank weaponry.
This was pretty much exclusive to 6E/7E and they still saw use even there. Lascannons were all the rage in 3E and 4E, and were quite popular in 5E. They werent completely absent from 7E tables either. Some armies more than others, usually depending on cost issues, but theyve been a constant presence.
No, Lascannons were not trash on all past editions by any means.
In 8th Lasscannons are USEFULL at last. And vehicles are much toughter agaisn't mid-strenght weapons like Scater Lassers.
which was pretty much an element of two editions (the two shortest lived editions thus far), and are also now vulnerable to much weaker attacks in ways they never were.
Scatterlasers also werent capable of hurting everything in 7E either, they were wayyyyyy too powerful against light armor, but couldnt touch AV13/14, which they can now. A Russ didn't care squat all about a Scatterlaser in 7E for example.
So yeah, vehicles aren't as durable agaisn't Anti-Tank weaponry that was totally useless in past editions. And are more durable agaisn't normal weaponry. So I'll keep my opinion: In 8th vehicles work better than in past editions.
this pretty much only holds true of we're talking 7th to 8th, and only under some circumstances, not "vehicles have *never* been tougher".
This is not me defending 7E. 7E was a complete disaster and by far the worst edition 40k has ever had, followed closy by 6E. However tanks and vehicles have been awward and funky in every edition, and vehicle resiliency has many of its own weird issues in 8E, especially comparativr resiliency between vehicles, many were poorly translated into 8E's paradigm.
Lascannons were crazy dangerous in 2nd, just VERY expensive. They got worse in the 3rd ed paradigm, but also became more accessible in greater numbers.
They didn't truly become trash until popular MCs could survive dozens of shots.
Martel732 wrote: They didn't truly become trash until popular MCs could survive dozens of shots.
QFT
Hull pointing out with s7 and s8 added to the issue that lascannons had which was often justifying their cost. They still got plenty of work done in 7th.
Yeah, the S6-7 chip out technique hurt them a lot, too. The AP 2 nerf was the little cherry on top. But vehicles need some kind of buff, but not vs low AP. They needed is vs being HPed out. They should have doubled all HPs and not nerfed the penetration table.
What I imagine should have been done, at least for 7th is:
-Vehicles gain +2 HP, period.
-Modifiers to vehicle damage start at AP 3.
-Tank Hunters lets you adjust damage rolls by +-1, instead of it being used to reroll penetration. This makes Tank Hunters more useful for weapons that are more likely to penetrate in the first place, and also lets you do some shenanigans like "immobilize" rather than "explode' an enemy vehicle.
-Vehicle Destroyed: Explodes, and Instant Death are consolidated into "Massive Damage." An extra D3 hits/HP with no saves/FNP/etc allowed. If a vehicle loses its last HP as part of a batch of attacks that causes Massive Damage, it explodes.
-Grav is simply "Concussive" versus vehicles, rather than Immobilizing.
And work from there, at least regarding Monsters.
All of these changes shift the weight of AT from fast-firing "mid-strength" weapons (Scatter Lasers, Hi-Yield Missile Pods, etc) and more towards "hi-power" ones like Dark Lances/Railguns, while mitigating stuff like losing a Land Raider to a lucky lascannon. Plus it lets you start getting rid of fanwanky rules like "Assured Destruction" for Fire Dragons (they're not just Tank Hunters), and such.
MagicJuggler wrote: What I imagine should have been done, at least for 7th is:
-Vehicles gain +2 HP, period.
-Modifiers to vehicle damage start at AP 3.
-Tank Hunters lets you adjust damage rolls by +-1, instead of it beinf used to reroll penetration. This makes Tank Hunters more useful for weapons that are more likely to penetrate in the first place, and also lets you do some shenanigans like "immobilize" rather than "explode' an enemy vehicle.
-Vehicle Destroyed: Explodes, and Instant Death are consolidated into "Massive Damage." An extra D3 hits/HP with no saves/FNP/etc allowed. If a vehicle loses its last HP as part of a batch of attacks that causes Massive Damage, it explodes.
-Grav is simply "Concussive" versus vehicles, rather than Immobilizing.
And work from there, at least regarding Monsters.
All of these changes shift the weight of AT from fast-firing "mid-strength" weapons (Scatter Lasers, Hi-Yield Missile Pods, etc) and more towards "hi-power" ones like Dark Lances/Railguns, while mitigating stuff like losing a Land Raider to a lucky lascannon. Plus it lets you start getting rid of fanwanky rules like "Assured Destruction" for Fire Dragons (they're not just Tank Hunters), and such.
Those are all fine changes.The real headache are the monsters. I think 8th ed did fine with the fix for this.
I might be in a weird camp but I never liked that my tanks could be destroyed by one lucky shot. Always felt anti-fun, especially when monstrous creatures never had that problem.
Red_Five wrote: I might be in a weird camp but I never liked that my tanks could be destroyed by one lucky shot. Always felt anti-fun, especially when monstrous creatures never had that problem.
Nothing about losing a unit ever seems too fun. I will agree though that there should have been an equivalent possibility on the mc side of things. I also always felt more shooting attacks should have a chance to stagger or slow mc's.
I love 8th edition. No edition is perfect, but this one is just fun.
7th was getting to a point for me where I was going to do something I never thought I'd do and that's quit 40k.
2++ Re-rolling, Riptide/Surge Spam/ Eldar Jetbike spam/Invis spam. Guard, Tyranids, Grey knight armies all NEVER standing a chance against others. Death stars, D weapons
No thank you. I'll keep my beastly 3++ Shield Dreads, Bjorn having more than 3 bloody hullpoints at the cost of Wulfen and calvary nerfed. Thank you!
KingCorpus wrote: I love 8th edition. No edition is perfect, but this one is just fun.
7th was getting to a point for me where I was going to do something I never thought I'd do and that's quit 40k.
2++ Re-rolling, Riptide/Surge Spam/ Eldar Jetbike spam/Invis spam. Guard, Tyranids, Grey knight armies all NEVER standing a chance against others. Death stars, D weapons
No thank you. I'll keep my beastly 3++ Shield Dreads, Bjorn having more than 3 bloody hullpoints at the cost of Wulfen and calvary nerfed. Thank you!
Funny thing is nearly all of above is not issue with 7th ed rules but by codex. Ie they could have been fixed by fixing codexes. Just look at 30k. 7th ed rules and hell of a lot more balanced without above being major issues(and now even less) while being less of an alpha strike game.
Guess much depends on how much you love or hate alpha strike games. I despite that so no wonder 8th ed leaves me cold.
I quit 40k during 7th. The free stuff you got from formations really really made me not want to play... and so I didn't.
I can understand the hate for alpha striking. Especially if you want to play a wargame where movement and what not matters and part of the game is pulling off maneuvers.
Alpha striking is bypassing the entire movement phase basically to place your guys wherever you want. It annoys me too, but I have come to realize 40k is basically a board game now and not a wargame. Its been that way for many years.
I've enjoyed 8th, hobby A.D.D. has had me waiver in and out of every edition - this one is no different. I'm back more on AoS and Blood and Plunder, a couple buddies are looking at some post apocalypse gang war type games too... it is all about friends and having fun for me. 8th can do that, if the individuals in your group can do that... but IMO 8th and tournament/competitive play is just not fun.
And, a long standing life lesson - don't dismiss without a solution(s)... you need 30-50% of the board to be 10 inch or taller LoS blocking terrain. This forces maneuver and picking your firing lanes and limits some of the alpha strike abilities. OR play long way, I've played a bunch of the Open War card games and love the long edge table set up... you can still drop that infiltrator squad in to grab the alpha strike but they will probably be unsupported and therefor shot off the board the next turn. These force players to think and maneuver their strengths against opponent weaknesses more (again, my opinion).
All said and done, 40k is a shoot out where you set up and remove models.
One thing to consider when reading through a thread like this the missing perspective. There is an entire contingent of people who dislike 8th edition and have dropped 40K for other interests. They are not going to search out and post into a thread like this in the same numbers as those still engaged. This is an internet forum phenomenon that is particularly interesting during the death throes of a game. Similiar to this, in those situations posters fall into a kind of group think supported by the company that does not take into account the number of people who were dissatisfied and quit. It never fails that a majority of posters have no perspective on this and are therefor blind to the deficits of the system.
In 8th edition you need to bring a Codex powered Alpha Strike list or you are little people. GWs "better communication with players" initiative is another way to cost-up the product. All "listening" does is provide a path for GW to release untested jank that the players test through gaming OP combos and then provide GW feedback that they will use to sell chapter approved books for additional profit.
If you have a playgroup interested in getting into a miniatures game I suggest avoiding GW at all costs.
Tokhuah wrote: One thing to consider when reading through a thread like this the missing perspective. There is an entire contingent of people who dislike 8th edition and have dropped 40K for other interests. They are not going to search out and post into a thread like this in the same numbers as those still engaged. This is an internet forum phenomenon that is particularly interesting during the death throes of a game. Similiar to this, in those situations posters fall into a kind of group think supported by the company that does not take into account the number of people who were dissatisfied and quit. It never fails that a majority of posters have no perspective on this and are therefor blind to the deficits of the system.
In my experience, the opposite is true. People who hate the direction a game is going are the most active and vociferous. Even after they quit, they will continue to post on forums and complain. They do so because they love the game and hate seeing what it has become.
Tokhuah wrote: One thing to consider when reading through a thread like this the missing perspective. There is an entire contingent of people who dislike 8th edition and have dropped 40K for other interests. They are not going to search out and post into a thread like this in the same numbers as those still engaged. This is an internet forum phenomenon that is particularly interesting during the death throes of a game. Similiar to this, in those situations posters fall into a kind of group think supported by the company that does not take into account the number of people who were dissatisfied and quit. It never fails that a majority of posters have no perspective on this and are therefor blind to the deficits of the system.
In my experience, the opposite is true. People who hate the direction a game is going are the most active and vociferous. Even after they quit, they will continue to post on forums and complain. They do so because they love the game and hate seeing what it has become.
Yeah, that "Reasonable people has quit, only fanboys remains" is just BS.
For every one that hast jus quit GW all together for 8th, theres other guy that just likes the game but doesn't bother to enter forums. Forums, by their own nature, are only a small, small fraction of the playerbase of a game.
KingCorpus wrote: I love 8th edition. No edition is perfect, but this one is just fun.
7th was getting to a point for me where I was going to do something I never thought I'd do and that's quit 40k.
2++ Re-rolling, Riptide/Surge Spam/ Eldar Jetbike spam/Invis spam. Guard, Tyranids, Grey knight armies all NEVER standing a chance against others. Death stars, D weapons
No thank you. I'll keep my beastly 3++ Shield Dreads, Bjorn having more than 3 bloody hullpoints at the cost of Wulfen and calvary nerfed. Thank you!
Funny thing is nearly all of above is not issue with 7th ed rules but by codex. Ie they could have been fixed by fixing codexes.
It wasnt just codex issues, though that was a big part of it. The entire concept of formations and allies just didnt work there, vehicles never measured up (having two overlapping kill mechanics was stupid and pointless), the psychic phase was a mess, summoning was a problem, wound allocation was a mess, etc
Just look at 30k. 7th ed rules and hell of a lot more balanced without above being major issues(and now even less) while being less of an alpha strike game.
to be fair, it also had more restrictions and is mostly marines vs other marines with a tiny bit of weird IG sprinkled in, no Eldar, no Orks, no Tyranids, no Daemons, etc. Mostly all FW is balancing there is Legion traits.
KingCorpus wrote: I love 8th edition. No edition is perfect, but this one is just fun.
7th was getting to a point for me where I was going to do something I never thought I'd do and that's quit 40k.
2++ Re-rolling, Riptide/Surge Spam/ Eldar Jetbike spam/Invis spam. Guard, Tyranids, Grey knight armies all NEVER standing a chance against others. Death stars, D weapons
No thank you. I'll keep my beastly 3++ Shield Dreads, Bjorn having more than 3 bloody hullpoints at the cost of Wulfen and calvary nerfed. Thank you!
Funny thing is nearly all of above is not issue with 7th ed rules but by codex. Ie they could have been fixed by fixing codexes.
It wasnt just codex issues, though that was a big part of it. The entire concept of formations and allies just didnt work there, vehicles never measured up (having two overlapping kill mechanics was stupid and pointless), the psychic phase was a mess, summoning was a problem, wound allocation was a mess, etc
Just look at 30k. 7th ed rules and hell of a lot more balanced without above being major issues(and now even less) while being less of an alpha strike game.
to be fair, it also had more restrictions and is mostly marines vs other marines with a tiny bit of weird IG sprinkled in, no Eldar, no Orks, no Tyranids, no Daemons, etc. Mostly all FW is balancing there is Legion traits.
Again those weren't issue with 30k. Which is basically 7th ed with new codexes. Fix the codex, fix the problems.
Again those weren't issue with 30k. Which is basically 7th ed with new codexes. Fix the codex, fix the problems.
7th had numerous core rule issues. The psychic phase was a total disaster, vehicles were a mess, the details of power weapons were important while giant monsters acted the same regardless of how hurt they were, the combination of model by model rules mixed with squad by squad rules and giant creatures/vehicles lead to a confused game that didn't know if it was a squad based skirmish game or a massive battalion level combat game. All of these are core issues that would have plagued the game regardless of the codex issues compounding them.
That's not going into how morale was largely irrelevant, the game's movement phase was mostly a joke, maelstrom was a random mess, USRs were out of control, and missions were bland and uninspired.
Tokhuah wrote: One thing to consider when reading through a thread like this the missing perspective. There is an entire contingent of people who dislike 8th edition and have dropped 40K for other interests. They are not going to search out and post into a thread like this in the same numbers as those still engaged. This is an internet forum phenomenon that is particularly interesting during the death throes of a game. Similiar to this, in those situations posters fall into a kind of group think supported by the company that does not take into account the number of people who were dissatisfied and quit. It never fails that a majority of posters have no perspective on this and are therefor blind to the deficits of the system.
In my experience, the opposite is true. People who hate the direction a game is going are the most active and vociferous. Even after they quit, they will continue to post on forums and complain. They do so because they love the game and hate seeing what it has become.
Yeah, that "Reasonable people has quit, only fanboys remains" is just BS.
For every one that hast jus quit GW all together for 8th, theres other guy that just likes the game but doesn't bother to enter forums. Forums, by their own nature, are only a small, small fraction of the playerbase of a game.
I remember reading a report that said the WWE investigated WWE forums and they found that about 10% of their audience were dedicated forum goers.
That number feels about right for my experiences with nerd hobbies in general. About 1 in every 10 is active on one or more non-facebook, non-twitter blog or forum.
Again those weren't issue with 30k. Which is basically 7th ed with new codexes. Fix the codex, fix the problems.
7th had numerous core rule issues. The psychic phase was a total disaster, vehicles were a mess, the details of power weapons were important while giant monsters acted the same regardless of how hurt they were, the combination of model by model rules mixed with squad by squad rules and giant creatures/vehicles lead to a confused game that didn't know if it was a squad based skirmish game or a massive battalion level combat game. All of these are core issues that would have plagued the game regardless of the codex issues compounding them.
That's not going into how morale was largely irrelevant, the game's movement phase was mostly a joke, maelstrom was a random mess, USRs were out of control, and missions were bland and uninspired.
Maelstrom still exists (oh, but you can spend CP to redraw "impossible" objectives). Replacing USRs with non-USRs leads to "write everything twice" syndrome. Missions in 8th matter less compared to tabling. Vehicles shoot from their exhaust pipes, and cover means nothing, and the Psychic Phase is "spam Smite."
Again those weren't issue with 30k. Which is basically 7th ed with new codexes. Fix the codex, fix the problems.
7th had numerous core rule issues. The psychic phase was a total disaster, vehicles were a mess, the details of power weapons were important while giant monsters acted the same regardless of how hurt they were, the combination of model by model rules mixed with squad by squad rules and giant creatures/vehicles lead to a confused game that didn't know if it was a squad based skirmish game or a massive battalion level combat game. All of these are core issues that would have plagued the game regardless of the codex issues compounding them.
That's not going into how morale was largely irrelevant, the game's movement phase was mostly a joke, maelstrom was a random mess, USRs were out of control, and missions were bland and uninspired.
Maelstrom still exists (oh, but you can spend CP to redraw "impossible" objectives). Replacing USRs with non-USRs leads to "write everything twice" syndrome. Missions in 8th matter less compared to tabling. Vehicles shoot from their exhaust pipes, and cover means nothing, and the Psychic Phase is "spam Smite."
Not exactly much of an improvement.
Don't get me wrong, I agree completely. The new edition is a perfect example of one step forwards but one step (maybe a step and a half) backwards. As an example, I love that vehicles use the same rules as MCs, but hate how vehicles are super over simplified. There's a lot in this edition that just leaves you scratching your head. I'm simply commenting on some people with a skewed vision of 7th being a perfect core ruleset marred by bad codices, to which its pretty evident the core rules were a serious issue compounded by even worse codices.
To be fair, nobody seemed to care about literally every other unit type in the game being able to do this...
8E has *major* issues. We're unlikely to ever have a perfect or even just solidly good core ruleswt in edition sadly, and 8E doesn't even come close to that standard. That said, I dont miss anything about 7E.
To be fair, nobody seemed to care about literally every other unit type in the game being able to do this...
8E has *major* issues. We're unlikely to ever have a perfect or even just solidly good core ruleswt in edition sadly, and 8E doesn't even come close to that standard. That said, I dont miss anything about 7E.
I'll take 8th over 7th any day of the week. 8th has a *slightly* better vision and execution of what its trying to be. Its just trying to be even more Yahtzee with cool models than before.
To be fair, nobody seemed to care about literally every other unit type in the game being able to do this...
8E has *major* issues. We're unlikely to ever have a perfect or even just solidly good core ruleswt in edition sadly, and 8E doesn't even come close to that standard. That said, I dont miss anything about 7E.
Granted, it was a common complaint that Riptides were not Walkers due to being fluffed as them but being able to foot-bullet with them.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Blacksails wrote: Don't get me wrong, I agree completely. The new edition is a perfect example of one step forwards but one step (maybe a step and a half) backwards. As an example, I love that vehicles use the same rules as MCs, but hate how vehicles are super over simplified. There's a lot in this edition that just leaves you scratching your head. I'm simply commenting on some people with a skewed vision of 7th being a perfect core ruleset marred by bad codices, to which its pretty evident the core rules were a serious issue compounded by even worse codices.
The Internet is a giant distortion chamber. There are and were numerous issues with 7th, but there were also things that 8th "fixed" that didn't need fixing. 8th needed a FAQ to define squad coherency due to bad RAW. The egregious thing was that this came after the big batch of FAQs for 7th so GW *should* have learned which parts were and weren't broken.
Another factor distorting everything is the whole "no model no rule" policy. Granted, this issue came up at the tail end of 6th, but is being put in overdrive now. The fact 8th also has assorted renames, like Eldar->Aeldari or Dark Eldar->Drew Carey also makes GW look like Hasbro regarding IP (see, renaming Soundwave to Soundblast). The whole "index vs codex" item doesn't help, as well as the line that "kitbashing is scary for newcomers." Again, nothing to do with core rules but it also colors views. (My Chaos Lord is Codex-illegal for 8e due to using a Disc of Tzeentch. I had bought 3 Chariots pre-WoM hike for kitbashing)
It is pretty noncontroversial to say that 8e Cover is FUBAR. For me personally, what really kills it is the fact that for shooting, fast-rolling vs slow-rolling can affect your statistical efficiency. "My plasma gun does 2 wound to your Centurion. 1 bolter fires...and one bolter..." Same with Cover and slow-rolling. Same with "not FNP" versus multiwound weapons. By comparison, 7e did "batch by weapons" which was simpler. A middle ground could be: batch by weapons, each weapon class only targets one unit." So you could do "Bolters to infantry, missile launcher to tank" but not split Bolters vs 2 squads.
The Internet is a giant distortion chamber. There are and were numerous issues with 7th, but there were also things that 8th "fixed" that didn't need fixing. 8th needed a FAQ to define squad coherency due to bad RAW. The egregious thing was that this came after the big batch of FAQs for 7th so GW *should* have learned which parts were and weren't broken.
Another factor distorting everything is the whole "no model no rule" policy. Granted, this issue came up at the tail end of 6th, but is being put in overdrive now. The fact 8th also has assorted renames, like Eldar->Aeldari or Dark Eldar->Drew Carey also makes GW look like Hasbro regarding IP (see, renaming Soundwave to Soundblast). The whole "index vs codex" item doesn't help, as well as the line that "kitbashing is scary for newcomers." Again, nothing to do with core rules but it also colors views. (My Chaos Lord is Codex-illegal for 8e due to using a Disc of Tzeentch. I had bought 3 Chariots pre-WoM hike for kitbashing)
It is pretty noncontroversial to say that 8e Cover is FUBAR. For me personally, what really kills it is the fact that for shooting, fast-rolling vs slow-rolling can affect your statistical efficiency. "My plasma gun does 2 wound to your Centurion. 1 bolter fires...and one bolter..." Same with Cover and slow-rolling. Same with "not FNP" versus multiwound weapons. By comparison, 7e did "batch by weapons" which was simpler. A middle ground could be: batch by weapons, each weapon class only targets one unit." So you could do "Bolters to infantry, missile launcher to tank" but not split Bolters vs 2 squads.
I can't really disagree with any of this. I think 7th was the lowest point in 40k for my experience (I started in 5th), but 8th isn't much better. You raise valid points that I generally agree with.
8th editition's base rules are way worse with how cluncky some of the rules are. Flyers mechanics are laughably bad. The cover system is terrible. Rerolls and modifiers are about as unintuitive as possible.
What made 7th bad was not the edition itself, but the formations, the bad balancing, and the codexes. 7th edition rules were much better in my opinion, but the way they ended up being used in codexes nullified that. I think 7th edition with 8th edition codexes / indexes would be awesome.
I actually liked the core rules of 7th as well, just had problems with the redicilous amount of universal standard rules that often had several that did almost the same thing, but not quite so I would have to constantly check the BRB over and over again each turn. USR's were a good thing; standardizing them did stream line the game to an extent. They just let the USR's get out of control. Also hated that some people could sit out the rules for 2 whole editions with no updates... Overall, if you were to slash the USR list down, and update codices with playtested material, then I believe you'd have a pretty awesome game system. Can't wait for 8.5 edition =D
Tokhuah wrote: One thing to consider when reading through a thread like this the missing perspective. There is an entire contingent of people who dislike 8th edition and have dropped 40K for other interests. They are not going to search out and post into a thread like this in the same numbers as those still engaged. This is an internet forum phenomenon that is particularly interesting during the death throes of a game. Similiar to this, in those situations posters fall into a kind of group think supported by the company that does not take into account the number of people who were dissatisfied and quit. It never fails that a majority of posters have no perspective on this and are therefor blind to the deficits of the system.
In my experience, the opposite is true. People who hate the direction a game is going are the most active and vociferous. Even after they quit, they will continue to post on forums and complain. They do so because they love the game and hate seeing what it has become.
Yeah, that "Reasonable people has quit, only fanboys remains" is just BS.
For every one that hast jus quit GW all together for 8th, theres other guy that just likes the game but doesn't bother to enter forums. Forums, by their own nature, are only a small, small fraction of the playerbase of a game.
Thank you both for providing your perspective as additional evidence that supports our theory. Your responses will be entered into the database being used for the analysis of forum poster behavior patterns.
1.) Bad psychic phase execution including base rulebook powers and random selection.
2.) Way to many USRs 3.) Unit types determining how good units were (MC vs vehicle, FMC vs non FMC etc)
5.) Allies - though this is still an issue.
I think it could have been fixed by making a ton of changes, but 8th is another perfectly good way to approach fixing said edition. Probably better in that it invalidated all codices making easier to balance them going forward instead of worrying about past interactions making specific units too powerful.
First of all, I haven't played a single match of 8E, so give my opinion whatever weight you want to. My opinion is based on reading people's feedback, both positive and negative, on several forums, reading up on the index and codex releases myself, and my several years of experience with this game.
My experience with earlier editions, for comparison with how I feel about the current edition.
Spoiler:
I started during 5E with Blood Angels, right about after their codex release, back when they were probably at the height of their power so far. As a beginner I really liked the edition overall, but as I became more experienced, I started to see the flaws in it (wound allocation tricks for death stars, no pre-measuring, randomness of vehicle survival...), but it never really was enough to put me off enough to stop playing. I even went to a few tourneys, taking 2nd place once with a "Descent of the Angels" list, winning myself a Contemptor Dreadnought - funny thing is, I had the highest score from matches, losing 1st place to painting points, but 1st place reward would have been Shadow Spectres, so all in all I felt like the real winner still... All in all, 5E was pretty descent, barring the excess power creep towards the end.
I was excited about the new depth and options 6E brought to the game, but the imbalance of codex releases became very prevalent soon even within my small playing group. Regardless of this, we managed to enjoy the edition, since most of us didn't have access to the really broken stuff, and wanted to keep it casual, and out group's Tau player didn't really get that much games with us due to various reasons... I participated in fewer tourneys, preferring patrol tournaments due to quite extreme powercreep and crazy ally shenanigans, and losing out on codex update with Blood Angels... Overall, my excitement over the new mechanics and fixes to some of the issues in 5E kept me interested enough in the edition, even though the new Lords of War felt quite alarming for the game's future. Psychic phase and vehicle hull points weren't really all that great as they were implemented, among other things.
Arrival of 7E has my hopes up high, with its early codex releases being toned down from the crazy power creep of 6E, although "blanderizing" them in the process as the early codex releases gutted a lot of personality from their armies. Then came the Necrons with their decurion formation, throwing out my hopes for the edition. My enthusiasm plummeted and I played much less than before. I went to one patrol tournament, scoring 1st place and winning the new Blood Angels chaplain, but I mostly steered clear of larger scale battles. All of my armies, Blood Angels, Imperial Guard and Sisters of Battle, were gutted during the early releases of the edition, and never really got back up to speed with the later releases. That change of style in codex production mid-edition is probably my biggest disappointment in GW ever. Rules changes didn't really do all that much to fix things.
I started making plans for a rules edition of my own during 7E, but dropped it soon after the rumors started rolling out about 8E.
I was really excited about the coming of 8E when we started getting rumors of the changes to come, and the release of index army lists for all factions... ON RELEASE! This was tremendous news. Return of movement value, new AP system, concept of command points and strategems, idea of the new cover system and to hit modifiers, and the concept of mortal wounds were good news too for the game in my opinion, as was making vehicles' stats be in line with monsters.
Sadly the good news were not to last, as initiative stat was dumped, mortal wounds started popping up all over the place - at least for some armies, the disparity of Smite between the armies, vehicle facings and firing arcs were made irrelevant, "sigmarification" of statlines, no more templates, no more scatter, no more damage table but a steady degradation of stats - for some units, falling back from melee, solo characters that provide "auras" and can't be shot if they're not the closest, the new morale system...
8E has made many improvements to the game, fixing mistakes from earlier editions and bringing new great features to the game. The game has also been streamlined - but at what cost? To me it doesn't feel like the same game at all anymore with so many things cut out from the rules. I find it terribly sad that the winner of the match is now often decided in 2-3 turns, and wipe-outs within that time frame are more common than ever, making the scenario missions largely irrelevant. The simple mechanics have made the game faster, but the amount of rerolling that's in the game now slows it back down, especially because the game rules heavily favor horde armies - no templates, smite hurts elite troops the most, morale mitigation available for most horde armies.
I really like the additional reflections of fluff in the game rules, in the form of sub-faction specific special rules and strategems, but the faction rules seem to have started repeating themselves already... And to me it feels like the strategems are mostly serving to break the game even further.
If the codex releases stay the way they are now, I guess the game will eventually be fairly balanced. When all armies are OP, no one is OP.
I may try the new edition out at some point, but I don't believe I will be playing it all that much. And no way am I even considering going to tournaments.
I have dug out my notes for making up a new rules edition by myself, mixing features from the editions, for my playing group. We're doing playtest on the basics at the moment, and everyone is happy with the basic rules so far.
I didn't play alot of 7th, so I can't really comment on what's been improved of in relation to that, but I did play a bunch of 3rd, 4th, 5th, and a little bit of 6th.
As I understand it, the main goal of 8th was to simplify the game, but with all these command points, stratagems and tactical objectives, I don't really think they succeeded. It takes more time to finish a 2k game now than in 5th.
As someone who uses a lot of tanks, the biggest changes to me was the removal of templates and armor values.
Templates gone:
The good - no more arguments about where a shot really scattered and how many models are covered
The (partially) bad - a battle cannon now feels more like some kind of machinegun? The end result VS a squad is the same though, and more predictable.
The ugly - with the number of shots it can put out, the generalist battle cannon is now better VS tanks than the anti tank specialist Vanquisher cannon, both on average and in the maximum potential of damage inflicted. Flame weapons are also now very good VS single models.
I would have liked to see templates kept in the game, maybe without the scatter mechanic so you instead just roll to either hit or miss, using the model's BS characteristic.
Armor Value replaced with T/W:
The very good - vehicles are now more in line with monsters in terms of survivability. With the (re)-introduction of Damage, weapons that were good at killing tanks can now inflict major damage on monsters too, rather than just causing a single wound.
The kinda bad - While damage tables were very all-or-nothing (and I appreciate that in 8th a single glancing hit won't prevent my tank from shooting the next turn), was rolling to penetrate really that much more complex than rolling to wound? Different armor facings made tanks feel more like tanks, and rewarded flanking around them.
The ugly - unifying these stats means that you can't have weapons that are really good at penetrating armor without also making them really good VS creatures, or vise versa. Not saying no weapon should be good against both (as mentioned above - I like that many weapons now are equally good against both types), but it gives GW fewer parameters to play with when adjusting for balance. You see this in other games too, where on the one hand the developers try to simplify things, but then they find it's hard to balance stuff without going too far in one direction, and then they resort to adding more gimmicks, resulting in something that's more complex than what they started out with.
I would have liked to see tanks have both armor value and wounds. So instead of a Leman Russ being T8/W12/Sv3+, it could be AV14/12/10, and have 12 wounds, losing one (or more, depending on damage) with each penetration. Actual armor values could be adjusted.
I'm fine with the damage table being gone.
Cover:
Why does it add to the targets armor save rather than detract from the shooters ballistic skill? Seems to me a -1 to hit would be the most logical thing to do. Going from 2nd to 3rd, they went from a -1 (or more) to hit, to a straight up cover save, as that was simpler and easier than modifying stats. Now we're back to modifying stats - but why +1 to save rather than -1 to hit? It would make more sense, and not be any more complicated.
Armor saves/armor piercing:
Best change ever.
Command points and stratagems:
I kinda like them, but they do add to complexity and the time it takes to play a game.
Kill points:
I realize that it's not new to 8th, but it's still new enough for me. I don't get it. Why is a 50pt imperial guard squad worth as much as a 300pt squad of terminators in terms of kill points? Just getting the unit's points cost as victory points made a lot more sense. You had to do a bit of simple math after each game, but it's not like everyone doesn't have a calculator on their phone nowadays.
Fewer wargear options:
I get that much of the stuff that's now gone was rarely used anyway, and people will always gravitate towards a few cookiecutter builds, but it was nice to have options.
Formations:
Were these in 7th too? They're new to me anyway. Part of me miss the old Standard FOC and the limits it imposed. I think making a single Battalion formation mandatory, with the option of adding other formations too, would be a huge improvement.
Over all, there are some changes I really like, and some I just don't get why they did.
I wax and wane, but I am feeling a bit burnt out - although probably going to have fun collecting a Tyranid Army I have wanted for years but never bothered with.
8th's problem is that damage output is too high and as a result getting the first turn is too decisive.
Instead of certain armies (you know who) having comically good damage output in 7th, it now seems everyone has it. And the counters are these increasingly desperate "everyone in the army automatically has cover, er, and a blanket -1 to hit with options to get more with buffs, psykers etc.... for reasons."
Which serves to tone down the overpowered - but makes the average feel completely useless.
Games between armies of roughly the same "tier" are almost always decided by the end of the player who goes first's second turn. Its a bit different if you get two bad armies but that is a strange way to imply balance.
The player who goes first has a massive advantage since they either get a round of shooting off or get to move much closer to the opponent if they are an assault focused army (and in which case they are probably geared for some turn 1 charges if they have a codex).
Yes missions can sometimes add the illusion of the game being in the balance up to the end - but that is usually a rather unsatisfying "I have nuked your army from orbit but your 1 remaining unit might hold on to the objective and steal the game if we roll to end it this turn". It also a dice game - so sometimes weird things happen - but more and more games go this way.
Basically the first roll to decide who goes first (if you seize etc) is the most important by miles.
I have not started counting it - but gut feel suggests if you go first you have something like an 75-80% chance of winning (again, assuming your army is roughly comparable to your opponents - bad armies are bad). It may well be higher.
I think something needs to be done about that. Not sure what exactly but its a problem. Its not fun to deploy your army only to then take 40%~ of your army off the table because your opponent had the first turn. Its not fun to play for 30 minutes (plus setting up the table, deploying etc) and go "sure, dice could skew it back, but barring a miracle the next hour is just a formality. I've lost."
In the same way its not balanced to say give the player who goes first a big penalty, so the player who goes second just shoots/assaults them off the table. Basically there really needs to be something more to the game than tabling your opponent ASAP. Which I think can only happen if damage output is dramatically lower.
The defensive to-hit modifiers are a real bummer. Otherwise, I am ok with the new edition.
I've played since 5th and have seen my primary faction (orks) steadily fall in power level and tourney competitiveness since then. I play because I like the game. Although I would enjoy it more if that particular rule was gone.
In 7th edition, the formations were bad, but not as frustrating as 2++ re-rollable.
These 2 mechanics (2++ re-rollable and now defensive hit modifiers) have degraded the game from probability and tactics to 100% un-winable games. YMMV.
I'll still play your Ravenguard or Death Guard or Eldar with my Orks, but don't expect for me to think you are some kind of strategic genius because you win though.
What's even worse, is how 8th also now has 2++ saves and hit mods, sometimes on the same unit. Guard Crusaders are a notable example of this.
A fairly common tournament ruling was "Saves which are rerolled are a 4+ at best on the reroll," but IMO a simpler houserule is "Invulnerable Saves that are not explicitly 2+ Invulnerable cannot be improved to better than a 3++."
As for formations, call me cynical, but the 8e detachments, unit rules, and stratagems are almost analogous in terms of locking players into specific units. The 8e Tyranid codex is particularly unsubtle about wanting players to buy dem Zoanthroapes, from giving larger units more Mortal Wounds, to a Stratagem that requires 3x3 Zoanthroape units. There has not been anything full-on Gladius-tier yet, but it's only a matter of time.
That being said, some Formation options were legitimately neat and not actually all that broken. Stuff like the Pinion Demi-Company, Helforged Warpack, etc. Rather than lazily transferring some Formations over to stratagems, a more calculated cleanup of worthwhile bonuses into unit upgrades would have been more ideal. You know, spending points to let a Warpsmith restore Daemonforge to nearby Fiends, spending points for a Scout team to have an enhanced Auspex relay, etc. The fact GW has doubled down on reducing loadout options because "kitbashing is scary," is particularly offensive.
I think my biggest complaint is the approach with the new codices. They contain way too much copy and paste rules from other codices, with little in the way of unique rules. Ontop of that, GW's entire design behind them is literally power creep.
If you contrast 30k, which has an foc, to 8th, which has a... buy our toys. This might be a dakka dakka first but I'ma quote jane fonda "you want to play golf or you wanna feth around?" the 8th army construction may as well have a hyperlink to gw's online store.
I recently played a 3500pt 30k game, the max before even they tell you the foc is now not doing much, think apoc, take what you want. But think about that, you get to 3500 points before you abandon the foc. And that's with 30k's pretty generous foc. (extra hq and elite slot).
If you want a biting metaphor for 8th edition, your models are basically counters in risk. Oh look, a cannon, a horse, it has more wounds than a single wound model, which is also weirdly incentivezed over incredibly overpriced elite infantry at absurder-em.
Even worse than flame AA being the bee's knee's. Even worse than artillery hitting, well, whatever it wants. And I'm not even the first to mention it but, flyer rules. They kept the movement but allowed flyers, like all other models, to shoot anywhere from the hull. Worse still is zero downside assaults with flyers in hover mode. The few handful of games of 8th I had I were sober, the game felt drunk every time.
The sole criteria for entering the game in 8th is "do you like circles?" (HBMC said it best about auras)
Crablezworth wrote: If you contrast 30k, which has an foc, to 8th, which has a... buy our toys. This might be a dakka dakka first but I'ma quote jane fonda "you want to play golf or you wanna feth around?" the 8th army construction may as well have a hyperlink to gw's online store.
Wow, a little off. Horus Heresy has 1 FOC, while 8th has many. 7th had a "buy our toys" list, especially as the codices came out with detachments like the Gladius.
Interestingly enough, Horus Heresy is mainly about one Army (with many sub-Factions), and 8th has many. What an interesting correlation...
Crablezworth wrote: Even worse than artillery hitting, well, whatever it wants.
I would think artillery has a harder time "hitting... whatever it wants" now due to the loss of templates.
Crablezworth wrote: If you contrast 30k, which has an foc, to 8th, which has a... buy our toys. This might be a dakka dakka first but I'ma quote jane fonda "you want to play golf or you wanna feth around?" the 8th army construction may as well have a hyperlink to gw's online store.
Wow, a little off. Horus Heresy has 1 FOC, while 8th has many. 7th had a "buy our toys" list, especially as the codices came out with detachments like the Gladius.
Interestingly enough, Horus Heresy is mainly about one Army (with many sub-Factions), and 8th has many. What an interesting correlation...
Crablezworth wrote: Even worse than artillery hitting, well, whatever it wants.
I would think artillery has a harder time "hitting... whatever it wants" now due to the loss of templates.
I think what he means is that artillery is now capable of shooting things you wouldn't use artillery for, such as flying things, since they were immune to templates. The only thing artillery got worse at shooting is really just hordes.
Crablezworth wrote: If you contrast 30k, which has an foc, to 8th, which has a... buy our toys. This might be a dakka dakka first but I'ma quote jane fonda "you want to play golf or you wanna feth around?" the 8th army construction may as well have a hyperlink to gw's online store.
I recently played a 3500pt 30k game, the max before even they tell you the foc is now not doing much, think apoc, take what you want. But think about that, you get to 3500 points before you abandon the foc. And that's with 30k's pretty generous foc. (extra hq and elite slot).
If you want a biting metaphor for 8th edition, your models are basically counters in risk. Oh look, a cannon, a horse, it has more wounds than a single wound model, which is also weirdly incentivezed over incredibly overpriced elite infantry at absurder-em.
Even worse than flame AA being the bee's knee's. Even worse than artillery hitting, well, whatever it wants. And I'm not even the first to mention it but, flyer rules. They kept the movement but allowed flyers, like all other models, to shoot anywhere from the hull. Worse still is zero downside assaults with flyers in hover mode. The few handful of games of 8th I had I were sober, the game felt drunk every time.
The sole criteria for entering the game in 8th is "do you like circles?" (HBMC said it best about auras)
Horus heresy will continue to be hamstrung by the terrible 7th edition ruleset. It works now because every army is basically the same and the ones that aren't are prohibitive in some way to play (expensive, no poster boy, expensive, less lore build up, extremely expensive...)
'Hope you like circles'? Oh yeah? Well if you're playing 30k hope you DON'T like vehicles being on the table for longer than 4 seconds, seeing something other than space marines, having money, FAQs, models that don't melt in the sun, etc.
Both systems have problems, but trying to argue that HH is definitively better than 8th will be laughable until they make a ruleset that isn't totally propped up by how similar all the armies are.
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Sledgehammer wrote: 8th editition's base rules are way worse with how cluncky some of the rules are. Flyers mechanics are laughably bad. The cover system is terrible. Rerolls and modifiers are about as unintuitive as possible.
What made 7th bad was not the edition itself, but the formations, the bad balancing, and the codexes. 7th edition rules were much better in my opinion, but the way they ended up being used in codexes nullified that. I think 7th edition with 8th edition codexes / indexes would be awesome.
Revisionist history at it's finest.
What made 7th bad was the unbearable crapfest that was the old brb. Assault was raw unmitigated garbage from top to bottom. Literally every part from weaponskill, to initiative, to charge rules, to resolution was bloated stupid horsegak.
The old ST chart made any toughness below 3 pointless and any toughness above 8 unusable with how incredibly punishing trying to deal with a base T9 model would be in most cases. It also created super devestating breakpoints where +1 S or +1 T would skyrocket a units effectiveness if it went from odd to even but wouldn't even be noticeable even to odd.
The AP system was utter garbage and if you can't see how 'my defenses stop everything until.they stop nothing' polarizes things that's your problem.
Vehicle rules were terrible. Vehicles were made out of papermache but were even more fragile around back. Not that anyone ever bothered hitting rear or even side armor. Why waste the effort when there's a 94% chance it blows up anyway? Facing were straight up asinine. If your tank or plane wasn't a perfect friggin square/rectangle it could very easily become impossible to tell anything about facings, let alone where weapons could hit. The weapon facings made sponson weapons an absolute crapshoot. Shooting forward? 150pts of firepower, slightly left? 80pts.
USRs. Just USRs. No, I love 4+ invul 2+ rerollable cover, immune to morale, +2 S because you put 2 characters and a psyker in.
Psychic phase: Either you bring 30 dice or don't bother. Either way, wastes half an hour per turn.
And ALL of that is ignoring how terrible it was to actually learn the game. How stupidly fiddly and opaque all of the rules were.
Not that I don't agree that 7th complaints are valid ERJAK, but the specifics are less accurate.
1) Charge rules for 7th and 8th are functionally the same, unless you consider "B2B" versus "1 inch away" a dramatic shift. Yes, you can now charge without seeing a target due to the 8e FAQ, but 7e Overwatch was "once per turn", and casualties were restricted to models in range/LOS, so that's arguably a wash. I understand the appeal of removing Initiative, as breaking down a fight into multiple Initiative steps of "move models 3 inches and attack" just bogged things down into minutae, especially compared to 5th which had a single "Defender React" move.
The 3rd/7th chart of "hit on 3+ if greater, 4+ unless your opponent has more than twice your WS" was admittedly wonky. That being said, I seriously doubt that players would have had too much difficulty if 8th used the same "chart" for WS as it does for Strength vs Toughness (or even a more linear chart, ala WHFB 3rd).
2) Except for fairly fringe Toughness modifiers, there was only one T2 unit in 40k anyway. The only T8 unit of note was the Wraithknight. As for armor saves, the current "+1 to armor" for cover means cheap Conscripts and Guard in the open, Marines and Terminators camping cover, rather than the inverse.
3) Vehicles were actually more likely to be Glanced to death, due to low HP and a fairly weak damage chart. Most the real complaints were not about Lascannons or Railguns, but Scatter Lasers and Death Spinners (*S6 Intensifies*), Grav, or Haywire.
4) That itself wasn't an issue with USRs. Azrael's Lion Helm was a specific ability. The same issues with buff-stacking are being brought up with 8th now, Crusaders with Psychic Barrier (or Incoming) being one of the more recent examples of "undercosted unit with 2++." A more serious issue was that GW had many rules that were redundant, seldom-used (IIRC, only one unit in THE ENTIRE GAME used Missile Lock), or were inadvertently marked with *, leading to many 7e units/formations getting rules that were exact copypastes of those USRs, without the * qualifier. "A unit in a Lorestealer Host may reroll 1s to hit and to wound enemy Psykers," since Preferred Enemy(Psyker) would allow an attached Herald to benefit, and all. (This is where GW really could have learned about meta-USRs from Privateer Press. Preferred Enemy vs Granted[Preferred Enemy] or so).
5) Only for Witchfires. Realistically, you needed 18 or so dice to have a 60% chance deny a Blessing that cast on 3 successes. Pooling was an actual issue, but the real issue with Psykers still remains that they are very binary. While you can roll 10 Guardsmen with FRFSRF and expect 10/20 hits on average with a fairly normalized probability, casting and denial is all-or-nothing. Likewise, Psychic Focus means 8e Psykers are "spam Smite", with one Psyker using one or two of the good powers available (as let's be honest, the internal balance is still off. "Gee, do I take Eadbanger or Da Jump?").
The all or nothing nature of psychics in 7th just lead to many games being not fun to play through. "oh, you now hit my deathstar on 6 and I have 2++ to boot; nope, can't even target them with templates!"
The push to vehicles getting a toughness value was actually a long time in the making. It was discussed since some time in 5th edition; I had actually hoped that it would make it into 6th but they went the entirely stupid route of hull points instead (which was probably a reaction to the large number of mechanized infantry armies).
I like 8th with some exceptions:
-power creep only months in
-haven't found a valid points scale for hordes vs. elite infantry
-template weapons aren't really as useful against hordes, which is what they were designed for
-some aura buffs are not priced appropriately
-certain psychic powers should be prohibited to 1 cast per turn. Many should be castable multiple times: GK should be able to cast hammerhand whenever it wants, orks should be able to cast multiple +1attack on different units. This would make casters more than just smite batteries.
-the god damned GK librarian can't cast smite as effectively as any random psyker.
-probably could have engineered a better melee to hit chart instead of making all the rolls a given; although the current way plays into hit modifiers better (rather than making situations where you hit on 5+ and get negative modifiers as well).
I can take the army and the unit composition that I want regardless of the opposition and have a good, fun time in the end. Something that wasn't the case against 6th edition Eldar and Tau.
), but I think there were some good decisions. If you ask me they should have taken even more from 
My opinion is based on reading people's feedback, both positive and negative, on several forums, reading up on the index and codex releases myself, and my several years of experience with this game.
Overall, my excitement over the new mechanics and fixes to some of the issues in 5E kept me interested enough in the edition, even though the new Lords of War felt quite alarming for the game's future. Psychic phase and vehicle hull points weren't really all that great as they were implemented, among other things.
This was tremendous news. Return of movement value, new 
