As of right now, I think codex releases have actually made balance worse. Guard dropped the ball and essentially feels like a black hole in the meta that warps the space around it. Either you can handle guard and your competitive, or you can't. There are fewer armies that I'd consider a 'contender' in this edition than there were at the end of 7th.
7th edition viable competitive armies:
Gene stealers, Eldar, Yinarri, necrons , 1k sons, space wolves, Dark angles, Space marines, Ad-mech soup, Knights,Tau, demons, renegade knights, renegades
8th edition
Eldar, Guard, Tyranids, Demons, CSM, space marines, admech
While I feel like the gap between the worst armies and the best armies has closed a little, I'm not sure if there are anywhere near as many 'best armies'. This is mixed with the fact that elite armies are straight out garbage right now because anything that's an infantry unit with more than 12 points per model is trash. Games in 7th also were far less often decided by who got first turn, or decided by turn 2. I don't know how I feel about this edition anymore.
You are comparing the final state of an edition with one that even has all the Codex's out.
And no, the difference in power between top-tier armies in 7th was enormous, the amount of lists viable in a faction was SMALL AS F****. The amount of viable units was as little as it could be.
Lets not start to compare top tier armies vs the low tier ones in 7th edition.
The most BUSTED list in 8th is leagues behind the powerlevel of the most busted lists of 7th. And we have 2 more Primarchs now.
Amishprn86 wrote: Top best armies can compete with each other really well, and there are 5 of them IMO (CSM, Eldar, Nids, IG, SM) thats MUCH more balance to me.
If we can tone down the spam a bit i'll be happier, but its better IMO.
Edit: english
Space marines are a horrible codex though. They've only Bobby G's shooty parade to keep them on the map. CSM feel equally reliant on gimmicks, but they're not as bad off as SM
I'll point out that all the factions you've highlighted for 8th are the ones that have their codex out.
Games in 7th were absolutely decided by who got turn 1.
The formation shenanigans strangled the game because they were free upgrades, even outside of the one that actually did give free upgrades, and there was simply *nothing* that could be done about them.
Also, the existence of "look out sir" made character killing an exercise in face chewing frustration with the magical variable armour save. Now it's just "kill all these guys, then kill that guy" with enough options to skip the first step that win-button characters are not the grief they used to be.
If you ever feel nostalgic for 7th, remember the Skyhammer and then the War Con. And if that's not got you depressed enough, the Baronial Court.
I would agree if only because 8th is effectively unbound with far more open soup-abuse armies. I don't think 8th is particularly balanced (when has 40K ever been). It is, however, easily balanced by players and that's enough for me.
I have no idea where you got you list of viable 8th edition armies, but it's basically missing every other army that has had a codex released, sans grey knights. So that's three armies you forgot.
It's also ignoring that yes, pretty much anyone with a codex is viable bright now, and as others have codices added the number will increase.
Finally, I'd heavily dispute everyone of those armies being on the same playing field in 7th.
malamis wrote: I'll point out that all the factions you've highlighted for 8th are the ones that have their codex out.
Games in 7th were absolutely decided by who got turn 1.
The formation shenanigans strangled the game because they were free upgrades, even outside of the one that actually did give free upgrades, and there was simply *nothing* that could be done about them.
Also, the existence of "look out sir" made character killing an exercise in face chewing frustration with the magical variable armour save. Now it's just "kill all these guys, then kill that guy" with enough options to skip the first step that win-button characters are not the grief they used to be.
If you ever feel nostalgic for 7th, remember the Skyhammer and then the War Con. And if that's not got you depressed enough, the Baronial Court.
You could null deploy to avoid losing turn 1
Formations were bad if you didn't have them. If you had a decurion and the other guy had a decurion, it was fun all around
Guard were OP from index and are still the best. Space marines still are the same build from index. Grey knights, death guard, ad mech, dark angels, blood angels all got codecies but are all not top tier or able to compete with guard. It's almost like codex creep isn't doing much to fix the problem.
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SilverAlien wrote: I have no idea where you got you list of viable 8th edition armies, but it's basically missing every other army that has had a codex released, sans grey knights. So that's three armies you forgot.
It's also ignoring that yes, pretty much anyone with a codex is viable bright now, and as others have codices added the number will increase.
Finally, I'd heavily dispute everyone of those armies being on the same playing field in 7th.
I'd dispute that most the codex armies aren't on the same playing field as guard right now.
How about you post this kind of stuff after we actually GET 8th edition? This isn't 8th edition. This is the 8th Beta as far as im concerned. 8th edition is complete once all the factions have their own codexes.
Jaxler wrote: I'd dispute that most the codex armies aren't on the same playing field as guard right now.
The difference in power levels between armies aren't even similar to 7th though. Most index armies currently put up a better fight against guard than the sort of one sided matchups you saw last edition. And the index armies will be getting codices soon, so the gap will narrow further.
Grey knights vs IG is likely to be the largest power gap overall by the time every codex has come out. Compare that to orks vs almost anything last edition. Or SoB, etc.
It's almost impossible for 7th to be more balanced than any other system, it was an absolute train wreck balance wise.
I don't remember half those armies being competitive without allies, or being so overpowered that nothing in the bottom tier could beat them at all.
8th at least has SOME level of allowance for the lower tiers to fight in general, though it has a few obvious issues with a few of the lower tier xenos..
But in 7th, nothing could compare to the top tier. This topics existence is just.. what.
vaklor4 wrote: How about you post this kind of stuff after we actually GET 8th edition? This isn't 8th edition. This is the 8th Beta as far as im concerned. 8th edition is complete once all the factions have their own codexes.
Dose that mean 7th never left beta for you because some faction never got a new codex?
Yeah, 7th was in a constant state of flux. Remember the grenade FAQ that came out towards the end of its lifespan? 7th was one giant failure of a beta.
And no, the difference in power between top-tier armies in 7th was enormous, the amount of lists viable in a faction was SMALL AS F****. The amount of viable units was as little as it could be.
Exactly this. TS viable? HAH. Only if you took Magnus and he didn't get hit by Alpha Strike and the rest of the army loaded on up warp dice.
And no, the difference in power between top-tier armies in 7th was enormous, the amount of lists viable in a faction was SMALL AS F****. The amount of viable units was as little as it could be.
Exactly this. TS viable? HAH. Only if you took Magnus and he didn't get hit by Alpha Strike and the rest of the army loaded on up warp dice.
Magnus was so overpowered he could pretty much carry the entire faction vs anything other then eldar.
While 8th is probably better, there are definitely things I miss about 7th I miss - vehicle facings, for example, or having a few more universal special rules imported (e.g., "Deep strike"). Balance wise....eh. Things seem generally balanced, but so much diversity in rules and uniqueness to armies got lost. Each army gets their generic re-rolling 1 commaders or the like
Jaxler wrote: As of right now, I think codex releases have actually made balance worse. Guard dropped the ball and essentially feels like a black hole in the meta that warps the space around it. Either you can handle guard and your competitive, or you can't. There are fewer armies that I'd consider a 'contender' in this edition than there were at the end of 7th.
7th edition viable competitive armies:
Gene stealers, Eldar, Yinarri, necrons , 1k sons, space wolves, Dark angles, Space marines, Ad-mech soup, Knights,Tau, demons, renegade knights, renegades
8th edition
Eldar, Guard, Tyranids, Demons, CSM, space marines, admech
While I feel like the gap between the worst armies and the best armies has closed a little, I'm not sure if there are anywhere near as many 'best armies'. This is mixed with the fact that elite armies are straight out garbage right now because anything that's an infantry unit with more than 12 points per model is trash. Games in 7th also were far less often decided by who got first turn, or decided by turn 2. I don't know how I feel about this edition anymore.
You never played 7th did you? There is no possible way you EVER played a SINGLE game of competitive 40k if you genuinely believe 7th was 'more balanced'.
And here's the thing, the only 2 armies you named that were ACTUALLY viable were Daemons and Eldar/Ynnari (which was 1 army let's be real) , renegades were just typical lazy forgeworld BS. Other than that you had LISTS that were viable:
Cabal Star, Superfriends star, Centurion Star, Battle Company, Bark Bark Star, Magnus+ Bullgak 2++ blue horrors, etc.
Tau were NOT viable, riptide wing was. Admech was NOT viable, even WarCon couldn't cut it by the end. Knights were HILARIOUSLY unviable, genestealers had such a wild variance in due to the cult ambush table they just weren't consistent enough to be viable, dark angels weren't viable, lionsblade+ bark bark was, Space wolves weren't viable, their characters just appeared in deathstars.
Basically, it was deathstars vs OP D weapons and MSU. You think 7th had better balance? Fine, lemme just throw down my 50pt unit of blue horrors that you could shoot 8000pts of AM into and not even manage to wipe the whole unit.
Oh, and the reason way less games were decided turn 1 was because the vast majority of games were decided at list building.
The difference in powerlevel between the best 5-10 lists and even something as powerful as flyrant spam, let alone armies like BA, Orkz, or god forbid SoB; was more vast than the difference between Stormraven+Girlybro and a Deathwatch footslog terminator list are now.
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Primark G wrote: Yeah Magnus was 50/50. If you went first and he got the buffs up he was-is a beast but if you went second good luck.
Unless you're not a muppet and deepstruck him if your opponent had a decent alpha list. Not like anything can kill your horrors anyway.
Jaxler wrote: As of right now, I think codex releases have actually made balance worse. Guard dropped the ball and essentially feels like a black hole in the meta that warps the space around it. Either you can handle guard and your competitive, or you can't. There are fewer armies that I'd consider a 'contender' in this edition than there were at the end of 7th.
7th edition viable competitive armies:
Gene stealers, Eldar, Yinarri, necrons , 1k sons, space wolves, Dark angles, Space marines, Ad-mech soup, Knights,Tau, demons, renegade knights, renegades
8th edition
Eldar, Guard, Tyranids, Demons, CSM, space marines, admech
While I feel like the gap between the worst armies and the best armies has closed a little, I'm not sure if there are anywhere near as many 'best armies'. This is mixed with the fact that elite armies are straight out garbage right now because anything that's an infantry unit with more than 12 points per model is trash. Games in 7th also were far less often decided by who got first turn, or decided by turn 2. I don't know how I feel about this edition anymore.
You never played 7th did you? There is no possible way you EVER played a SINGLE game of competitive 40k if you genuinely believe 7th was 'more balanced'.
And here's the thing, the only 2 armies you named that were ACTUALLY viable were Daemons and Eldar/Ynnari (which was 1 army let's be real) , renegades were just typical lazy forgeworld BS. Other than that you had LISTS that were viable:
Cabal Star, Superfriends star, Centurion Star, Battle Company, Bark Bark Star, Magnus+ Bullgak 2++ blue horrors, etc.
Tau were NOT viable, riptide wing was. Admech was NOT viable, even WarCon couldn't cut it by the end. Knights were HILARIOUSLY unviable, genestealers had such a wild variance in due to the cult ambush table they just weren't consistent enough to be viable, dark angels weren't viable, lionsblade+ bark bark was, Space wolves weren't viable, their characters just appeared in deathstars.
Basically, it was deathstars vs OP D weapons and MSU. You think 7th had better balance? Fine, lemme just throw down my 50pt unit of blue horrors that you could shoot 8000pts of AM into and not even manage to wipe the whole unit.
Oh, and the reason way less games were decided turn 1 was because the vast majority of games were decided at list building.
The difference in powerlevel between the best 5-10 lists and even something as powerful as flyrant spam, let alone armies like BA, Orkz, or god forbid SoB; was more vast than the difference between Stormraven+Girlybro and a Deathwatch footslog terminator list are now.
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Primark G wrote: Yeah Magnus was 50/50. If you went first and he got the buffs up he was-is a beast but if you went second good luck.
Unless you're not a muppet and deepstruck him if your opponent had a decent alpha list. Not like anything can kill your horrors anyway.
This is the type of arguments that really irk me when people look back on 7th. Most games played where not involving top tier tourny lists but instead it came down to which codexes generally had viability and which ones where underpowered. Tau for example was extremely strong in 7th but they just lacked the tools to deal with psychic deathstars (hope for 6s on stormsurge stomps or lose) which is why they suffered in tournament play. The kind of imbalances that plagued 7th was the divide in game design between the still in 6th and early 7th edition codexes (base codex nids, non forge world guard, orks, dark eldar, grey knights, blood angels, etc) while the releases starting with Necrons where incredibly powerful due to the decurion style detachments and general power creep. Seriously stuff like horrors lists almost never saw play because people generally don't have gak tons of the models required to play such a list while bark bark stars where fairly time consuming and generally unfun for everyone to play (for both parties). Grill 7th's imbalances all you want but listing tournament lists as a reason why the game had poor balance is not very compelling because most games where not played in such a format. Its when somebody brings Dark Eldar to a pick up game and the other side has Tau and thus the game is already next to impossible to win for the DE was the issue with balance in 7th. 8th is better in balance but it definitely has other short comings which imo makes 8th an inferior edition to 7th.
Unrelated to the quote but my gripe with 8th isn't that its more balanced but that the diversity in units/weapons/rules/etc is so diminished and the battlefield matters so little that it just feels like mathhammer dice rolling. I continue to believe that 8th is only more balanced because GW just gutted everything down to simpler rules and not because GW gained any new insight into how to balance a game properly (look at some of their reactionary nerfs to things and see just how much they miss the mark with adjustments).
My main concern with 8-th is that going first is even more important than before with how awfully cover works right now. Previously, it only didn't work vs eldar and tau. Now it doesn't work at all.
At competitive levels this edition looks more balanced since there are more factions that can actually win a tournament.
But several armies had tons of their units nerfed and just a few ones improved. Orks and drukhari have now one decent list each, probably even more competitive than their best 7th lists, but they have only a few units that are really reliable.
SW were nerfed badly as well, but thankfully CA helped them a little bit, putting them in a similar spot they had in 7th edition.
Yeah playing mostly casual and semicompetitive games I'd say 7th edition was more balanced. Now with my armies I have to tailor way more than 7th edition or be forced to play the same list over and over again.
Oh haha, people are rapidly forgetting how fun it was to have games decided by rolling for invisibillity on the Telepathy table. We actually did this. For YEARS
And yes, it sucks that some factions play with indexes when other factions have had codices for more than half a year. But that doesn't beat playing with your 6th edition codex when 7th edition was finally put to sleep (Rest in piss, ye olde abomination)
pismakron wrote: Oh haha, people are rapidly forgetting how fun it was to have games decided by rolling for invisibillity on the Telepathy table. We actually did this. For YEARS
And yes, it sucks that some factions play with indexes when other factions have had codices for more than half a year. But that doesn't beat playing with your 6th edition codex when 7th edition was finally put to sleep (Rest in piss, ye olde abomination)
The true tragedy of 7th was that invisibility wasn't adjusted despite how game breaking it was.
pismakron wrote: Oh haha, people are rapidly forgetting how fun it was to have games decided by rolling for invisibillity on the Telepathy table. We actually did this. For YEARS
And yes, it sucks that some factions play with indexes when other factions have had codices for more than half a year. But that doesn't beat playing with your 6th edition codex when 7th edition was finally put to sleep (Rest in piss, ye olde abomination)
The true tragedy of 7th was that invisibility wasn't adjusted despite how game breaking it was.
Yeah, I vastly prefer GWs current approach of rapid nerf by sledgehammer, rather than their previous mode of releasing and never adjusting anything.
Amishprn86 wrote: Top best armies can compete with each other really well, and there are 5 of them IMO (CSM, Eldar, Nids, IG, SM) thats MUCH more balance to me.
If we can tone down the spam a bit i'll be happier, but its better IMO.
Edit: english
Space marines are a horrible codex though. They've only Bobby G's shooty parade to keep them on the map. CSM feel equally reliant on gimmicks, but they're not as bad off as SM
I do agree that the SM book is a hot mess that is called turd, but i'm sure SM will get a new Codex in july/aug (they cant have the basic army book with different points and unbalanced). So i'm not to worried about that.
I would rather see a fix in Detachment points and terrain, if those 2 are changed just a bit the game can be 100% changed for the better and we wont need 100 different point changes.
Its a fairy tale that 40k can be balanced since the problem is too large to cope with (rules, codices).
In both editions, there are outstanding armies like AM in the 8th and Eldar, Tau in the 7th.
wuestenfux wrote: Its a fairy tale that 40k can be balanced since the problem is too large to cope with (rules, codices).
In both editions, there are outstanding armies like AM in the 8th and Eldar, Tau in the 7th.
I believe GW and their tournament organising friends think the game is balanced now. They've just balanced it for 'soup' players who are carrying over their list building mindset from 7th ed tournament play. The changes they've made so far - fliers, razorbacks, smite etc are all from issues in tournament play, not from issues that regular players have eg GK codex being junk etc.
The TOs/testers need to get out of their tournament bubble and realise the majority of people don't play that way.
All codex factions play on a reasonably fair level with each other if you don't put power builds in (Reaper spam, IG catachan gunlines, Tyrant spam, Bobby G etc...). In 7h this wasn't true, no matter what you played there was no winning against Tau and Eldar, they didn't need a power build.
Also, the difference between a power build and reasonably designed list in 8th isn't that big, you can actually win if you outplay the opponent and have decent luck.
In 7th?
Oh look my army gets literally tabled turn 1 (i had it happen)! Oh how nice my list can't even touch half of the existing meta lists!
Spoletta wrote: All codex factions play on a reasonably fair level with each other if you don't put power builds in (Reaper spam, IG catachan gunlines, Tyrant spam, Bobby G etc...). In 7h this wasn't true, no matter what you played there was no winning against Tau and Eldar, they didn't need a power build.
Also, the difference between a power build and reasonably designed list in 8th isn't that big, you can actually win if you outplay the opponent and have decent luck.
In 7th?
Oh look my army gets literally tabled turn 1 (i had it happen)! Oh how nice my list can't even touch half of the existing meta lists!
Funny, in my mind, I see it as the exact opposite. 8th edition has large discrepancies between codex and index factions, but even in codexes, the damage done on turn 1 is greater than it was in 7th.
Spoletta wrote: All codex factions play on a reasonably fair level with each other if you don't put power builds in (Reaper spam, IG catachan gunlines, Tyrant spam, Bobby G etc...). In 7h this wasn't true, no matter what you played there was no winning against Tau and Eldar, they didn't need a power build.
Also, the difference between a power build and reasonably designed list in 8th isn't that big, you can actually win if you outplay the opponent and have decent luck.
In 7th?
Oh look my army gets literally tabled turn 1 (i had it happen)! Oh how nice my list can't even touch half of the existing meta lists!
That's not entirely true. Eldar were strong but basically spammed 4-5 units, tau even less. SM with free transports were at the same levels but they also spammed a few units on the table. However in 7th edition I managed to beat the best tau and SM lists with orks and dark eldar, just not very often since of course those armies were more competitive, but not impossible to defeat. Eldar at their highest levels were unbeatable for me.
But now using my index armies is litterally impossible to counter the current top tiers, even tailoring them. I had better results in 7th edition against the top tiers, the turn 1 tabling is more likely to happen in this edition if you play index vs codex.
In my opinion seventh was more overall balanced, but had worse skews due to formations that gave free stuff and allies. 8th is just a huge cluster right now and while the rules may be simpler the actual gameplay is just stacking Buffs and auras and using soup lists when able to in order to maximize your strengths and Shore up your weaknesses.
In general though I think the problem is that tournament 40K is so far from anything else but it might as well be a different game. And it should have solutely not be the Baseline for deciding everything else, we could seems to be since GW has Reece and the front line crew spearheading balance apparently, people who only play the game competitively and only care about competitively
Vankraken wrote: This is the type of arguments that really irk me when people look back on 7th. Most games played where not involving top tier tourny lists but instead it came down to which codexes generally had viability and which ones where underpowered. Tau for example was extremely strong in 7th but they just lacked the tools to deal with psychic deathstars (hope for 6s on stormsurge stomps or lose) which is why they suffered in tournament play. The kind of imbalances that plagued 7th was the divide in game design between the still in 6th and early 7th edition codexes (base codex nids, non forge world guard, orks, dark eldar, grey knights, blood angels, etc) while the releases starting with Necrons where incredibly powerful due to the decurion style detachments and general power creep. Seriously stuff like horrors lists almost never saw play because people generally don't have gak tons of the models required to play such a list while bark bark stars where fairly time consuming and generally unfun for everyone to play (for both parties). Grill 7th's imbalances all you want but listing tournament lists as a reason why the game had poor balance is not very compelling because most games where not played in such a format. Its when somebody brings Dark Eldar to a pick up game and the other side has Tau and thus the game is already next to impossible to win for the DE was the issue with balance in 7th. 8th is better in balance but it definitely has other short comings which imo makes 8th an inferior edition to 7th.
Except gaining 600 pts of free razorbacks with SM was trivial, what SM players doesn't have 33 foot SM models needed to unlock that pile of BS? Ditto for Eldar which made your units supernaturally accurate for bringing a grand total of three of them for no reason (other than Kelly making Eldar OP every single edition with his inept writing), or Tau getting to ignore 80% of game rules with their respective nonsense. And what models, pray tell, apparently so hard to get that normal players had no access to them whatsoever, were needed to unlock invisibility?
But yeah, if you ignore 99% problems with 7th, and leave 8th as it is, 7th is a tiny bit more balanced. Which should tell you volumes which is more balanced, really
At the very least the use of Index and following up with completing the codex releases in around a year for the entire game is a huge balance improving aspect to the game. As is GW abandoning the need to make each new codex release "the best ever".*
Those things alone have already swing 8th edition toward a more balanced game; sure its not perfect, but if we then add in the use of Chapter Approved I suspect that 8th will continue to improve. We also don't know if GW will even make a 9th edition.
In the past GW has marketed itself on massive rule re-writes every period of years. These, of course, generate new interest and refresh the game as well as generate income out of existing gamers through the introduction of new mechanics, new units and new rules (ergo books to be bought).
We don't know how they'll now tackle the future of 40K; they could well shift into a series of lesser updates through Chapterhouse with a new codex every so often that updates all the previous FAQ/Errata/Dataslate units and chapterhouse changes; without actually changing hte games "core" rules. Or we might see 8th edition simply last a lot lot longer before they try for a 9th edition.
* Which I believe was partly the result of many armies, esp those going longer and longer without a new codex, requiring a huge investment in new moulds and models and new rules all at once; thus GW had to make a huge noise and make them very competitive in order to generate a huge amount of hype. For armies that went for a long while it was almost akin to GW launching a fully new army since the fanbase would continually dwindle whilst an army fell further and further behind and performed worse and worse on the tabletop.
Tbh... i played a girly man with dev squads list and no joke he killed 1k of my 2k list on turn 1.... it was the most op unbalanced bs Ibhave ever seen! But at the same time I also play orks! Now orks suck this edition but last edition I genuinely lost a cc battle between my 30 boyz and 5 necron snipers! That's how bad it was!
A high level analysis even from when everyone was at index level showed that there was much less viable armies than 7th. The "balance" of the shrinking top factions has more or less stayed the same since dex’s have dropped. They’ve only made it worse than at launch.
Typically the only people that seem to think it’s fine are imperium and chaos players. Wow what a shocker the same whiny group of people responsible for screwing up 7th so bad as well.
8th is a joke of a competitive game and the viable army lists are shrinking to power creep. Space marine, chaos, and imp players never did like a fair fight and when they ever had even a slight challenge will go online and post giant tirades about how weak they are and then GW listens and makes the meta worse.
The player base has proven itself completely incapable of self balance or regulation in friendly or competitive environments as far as I’m concerned 40k is a dead game. GW of old was only slightly better at balancing factions but at least it was something.
40k is a joke now. From lore to models to tabletop. It’s basicallyly a gakky 30k in every way with no defining features of its own.
Here we go again, dealing with a question capable of generating only anecdotal responses, which will be offered only by those with extreme viewpoints that only represent their own opinion. Nothing gets proved and all we do is waste a bunch of each other's time.
Maybe the OP wants to offer a better definition for what balanced means, since 7th edition and 8th edition are very different games. The word could not possibly mean the same thing for both editions.
8th ed armies can draw from different factions to the point where they identify with no single Codex. In this sense, 'balance' means very little, your army can be constructed from multiple factions.
As far as pure Codex or Index armies go, very few of them are designed to operate stand-alone in 8th. The best armies are ones that synergize with forces from several sources (i.e. RG and Guard) to create powerful combos.
In 8th, when any player can pick any unit from any Codex as part of their army, it doesn't matter what the rules are for your own Codex. Find the parts that are useful and add on things from other Codexes. Why is it so hard to see this is fundamentally different from the previous edition?
Gamgee wrote: A high level analysis even from when everyone was at index level showed that there was much less viable armies than 7th. The "balance" of the shrinking top factions has more or less stayed the same since dex’s have dropped. They’ve only made it worse than at launch.
Typically the only people that seem to think it’s fine are imperium and chaos players. Wow what a shocker the same whiny group of people responsible for screwing up 7th so bad as well.
8th is a joke of a competitive game and the viable army lists are shrinking to power creep. Space marine, chaos, and imp players never did like a fair fight and when they ever had even a slight challenge will go online and post giant tirades about how weak they are and then GW listens and makes the meta worse.
The player base has proven itself completely incapable of self balance or regulation in friendly or competitive environments as far as I’m concerned 40k is a dead game. GW of old was only slightly better at balancing factions but at least it was something.
40k is a joke now. From lore to models to tabletop. It’s basicallyly a gakky 30k in every way with no defining features of its own.
wuestenfux wrote: Its a fairy tale that 40k can be balanced since the problem is too large to cope with (rules, codices).
In both editions, there are outstanding armies like AM in the 8th and Eldar, Tau in the 7th.
I believe GW and their tournament organising friends think the game is balanced now. They've just balanced it for 'soup' players who are carrying over their list building mindset from 7th ed tournament play. The changes they've made so far - fliers, razorbacks, smite etc are all from issues in tournament play, not from issues that regular players have eg GK codex being junk etc.
The TOs/testers need to get out of their tournament bubble and realise the majority of people don't play that way.
This is spot on. 8th edition by the very way it is presented is not a tournament level game system. It is one designed for the casual player who plays with friends and at a local shop/club. Using tournament players to iron out issues and certain balance concerns was a great idea but a lot of the recent issues have been the result of players trying to shoehorn in a competitive mindset. The smite spam beta test rule, for example, has no place in the default rules but should be a part of tournament rules instead.
The fact Marines needed 10 free vehicles in a list to have a chance to compete tells you all you need to know.
If the game had continued as is, I would've predicted Genestealer Cults being broken to the point I was actually finding points for Combi-Flamers and Flamers in my list!
wuestenfux wrote: Its a fairy tale that 40k can be balanced since the problem is too large to cope with (rules, codices).
In both editions, there are outstanding armies like AM in the 8th and Eldar, Tau in the 7th.
I believe GW and their tournament organising friends think the game is balanced now. They've just balanced it for 'soup' players who are carrying over their list building mindset from 7th ed tournament play. The changes they've made so far - fliers, razorbacks, smite etc are all from issues in tournament play, not from issues that regular players have eg GK codex being junk etc.
The TOs/testers need to get out of their tournament bubble and realise the majority of people don't play that way.
Except if they don't they won't find the broken combos...
Spoletta wrote: All codex factions play on a reasonably fair level with each other if you don't put power builds in (Reaper spam, IG catachan gunlines, Tyrant spam, Bobby G etc...). In 7h this wasn't true, no matter what you played there was no winning against Tau and Eldar, they didn't need a power build.
Also, the difference between a power build and reasonably designed list in 8th isn't that big, you can actually win if you outplay the opponent and have decent luck.
In 7th?
Oh look my army gets literally tabled turn 1 (i had it happen)! Oh how nice my list can't even touch half of the existing meta lists!
That's not entirely true. Eldar were strong but basically spammed 4-5 units, tau even less. SM with free transports were at the same levels but they also spammed a few units on the table. However in 7th edition I managed to beat the best tau and SM lists with orks and dark eldar, just not very often since of course those armies were more competitive, but not impossible to defeat. Eldar at their highest levels were unbeatable for me.
But now using my index armies is litterally impossible to counter the current top tiers, even tailoring them. I had better results in 7th edition against the top tiers, the turn 1 tabling is more likely to happen in this edition if you play index vs codex.
lol, no you didn't. You beat lists you THOUGHT were the best space marine lists but were actually pretty garbage and Tau were NEVER top tier last edition. Get outta here with that nonsense
Gamgee wrote: A high level analysis even from when everyone was at index level showed that there was much less viable armies than 7th. The "balance" of the shrinking top factions has more or less stayed the same since dex’s have dropped. They’ve only made it worse than at launch.
Typically the only people that seem to think it’s fine are imperium and chaos players. Wow what a shocker the same whiny group of people responsible for screwing up 7th so bad as well.
8th is a joke of a competitive game and the viable army lists are shrinking to power creep. Space marine, chaos, and imp players never did like a fair fight and when they ever had even a slight challenge will go online and post giant tirades about how weak they are and then GW listens and makes the meta worse.
The player base has proven itself completely incapable of self balance or regulation in friendly or competitive environments as far as I’m concerned 40k is a dead game. GW of old was only slightly better at balancing factions but at least it was something.
40k is a joke now. From lore to models to tabletop. It’s basicallyly a gakky 30k in every way with no defining features of its own.
Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
I gotta say, of all the people no one would miss...
techsoldaten wrote: Here we go again, dealing with a question capable of generating only anecdotal responses, which will be offered only by those with extreme viewpoints that only represent their own opinion. Nothing gets proved and all we do is waste a bunch of each other's time.
Maybe the OP wants to offer a better definition for what balanced means, since 7th edition and 8th edition are very different games. The word could not possibly mean the same thing for both editions.
8th ed armies can draw from different factions to the point where they identify with no single Codex. In this sense, 'balance' means very little, your army can be constructed from multiple factions.
As far as pure Codex or Index armies go, very few of them are designed to operate stand-alone in 8th. The best armies are ones that synergize with forces from several sources (i.e. RG and Guard) to create powerful combos.
In 8th, when any player can pick any unit from any Codex as part of their army, it doesn't matter what the rules are for your own Codex. Find the parts that are useful and add on things from other Codexes. Why is it so hard to see this is fundamentally different from the previous edition?
Because it's not?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!? In 7th you could draw from XENOS as an imperial player and chaos was even more soupy than it is now, or did you forget about '5 Sorcerors in a unit of 20 khorne dogs'? Allies are far more restrictive now than they used to be, especially now that codexes are coming out and forcing you to take entire detachments of the same faction to get chapter tactics and stratagems.
Gamgee wrote: A high level analysis even from when everyone was at index level showed that there was much less viable armies than 7th. The "balance" of the shrinking top factions has more or less stayed the same since dex’s have dropped. They’ve only made it worse than at launch.
Typically the only people that seem to think it’s fine are imperium and chaos players. Wow what a shocker the same whiny group of people responsible for screwing up 7th so bad as well.
8th is a joke of a competitive game and the viable army lists are shrinking to power creep. Space marine, chaos, and imp players never did like a fair fight and when they ever had even a slight challenge will go online and post giant tirades about how weak they are and then GW listens and makes the meta worse.
The player base has proven itself completely incapable of self balance or regulation in friendly or competitive environments as far as I’m concerned 40k is a dead game. GW of old was only slightly better at balancing factions but at least it was something.
40k is a joke now. From lore to models to tabletop. It’s basicallyly a gakky 30k in every way with no defining features of its own.
No pity for Tau players after the dumpster fire of 6/7th. Wait for your codex so you can be OP again.
Wayniac wrote: In my opinion seventh was more overall balanced, but had worse skews due to formations that gave free stuff and allies. 8th is just a huge cluster right now and while the rules may be simpler the actual gameplay is just stacking Buffs and auras and using soup lists when able to in order to maximize your strengths and Shore up your weaknesses.
In general though I think the problem is that tournament 40K is so far from anything else but it might as well be a different game. And it should have solutely not be the Baseline for deciding everything else, we could seems to be since GW has Reece and the front line crew spearheading balance apparently, people who only play the game competitively and only care about competitively
So what you're saying is that 7th was more balanced as long as you didn't use any of the rules from 7th? Seems legit. Also interesting how you DO include 8th edition soup lists while completely ignoring 7th edition soup lists.
Oh, and no it fething wasn't. Without the 'broken formations and allies' mono-eldar lists and Mono-ultramarines centurion stars (both requiring no allies, and no formations) would table every other army in the game turn 1 every time, except mono-daemon Screamer stars(again, requiring no allies or formations.)
People who clearly never played 7th chiming in all over the place.
Gamgee wrote: A high level analysis even from when everyone was at index level showed that there was much less viable armies than 7th. The "balance" of the shrinking top factions has more or less stayed the same since dex’s have dropped. They’ve only made it worse than at launch.
Typically the only people that seem to think it’s fine are imperium and chaos players. Wow what a shocker the same whiny group of people responsible for screwing up 7th so bad as well.
8th is a joke of a competitive game and the viable army lists are shrinking to power creep. Space marine, chaos, and imp players never did like a fair fight and when they ever had even a slight challenge will go online and post giant tirades about how weak they are and then GW listens and makes the meta worse.
The player base has proven itself completely incapable of self balance or regulation in friendly or competitive environments as far as I’m concerned 40k is a dead game. GW of old was only slightly better at balancing factions but at least it was something.
40k is a joke now. From lore to models to tabletop. It’s basicallyly a gakky 30k in every way with no defining features of its own.
Hey I thought you were quitting because Custodes are the next codex?
Martel732 wrote: 90% of formations weren't broken at all. That's the sad part.
This part is true, ultimately. Formations were an excellent idea that was just poorly executed at times (like Gladius/Demi Battle Company as overpowered and Brazen Onslaught as middle to underpowered) whereas others were very well designed (1st Company Strike Force, Judicator Battalion, and Terminator Annihilation were ones I consider well designed overall).
Soup is a sidegrade for Imperials and Chaos, and a flat nerf for the rest. Your army as a whole must have one common Keyword, but you can have multiple subfactions in the same detachment. The opportunity cost for staying monofaction within one detachment and souping in another isn't too far removed from how you could tradeoff between maximizing Decurion benefits or getting allies.
As far as balance, 7th versus 5th interests me, as despite the view that 5th is the most balanced...I remember that edition favoring mass light mech over most other builds. Sure, you could run a Loganwing and do reasonably well, and the Draigowing janked its way to runner-up status at Nova 2011...but the game ultimately favored a critical mass of Lasplas Razorbacks/Mechvets, and aura of choice. "Gee, do I take Smite or do I take Null Zone?"
By contrast, 7th had the Gladius, Bike armies, War Convo...at least three distinct types of army. Given more time to experiment, I believe Genestealer Cults also had the potential to be a competitive horde army.
The game did have problems of course. Too many USRs, some rules didn't work (Ex: barrage weapons were better at sniping than actual sniper weapons), and there were too many "all or nothing" scenarios. However, cover meant something, and games generally weren't decided on turn 1.
40k has never been well balanced and has had major issues in every edition. 8E has brought it back to the realm of 4E/5E in terms of the scale of that imbalance. 7E was an unsalvageable dumpster fire that nobody should mourn and certainly not anything that anyone should look upon with fondness. That doesn't mean 8E is perfect, it's not and very real issues exist. This will likely always be the case.
Outside of Imperial Guard and a couple ugly units (Reapers, for instance), this edition is actually fairly well balanced. FW is always a problem for balance but it's not as bad as it was at the start of 8th (although FW balance is still bad).
Guard needs to go up in price, Reapers need to go up in price. Other than that, so far so good.
fithos wrote: 7th edition: formations are so stupid. People shouldn't be getting free rules for taking arbitrary combinations of models.
8th edition: chapter tactics/doctrines/craftworlds are so fun and fluffy. Look at my catachan tank devision/aliatoc wraith list.
Call me when you find a Chapter Tactic that gives you 500 points of free tanks.
Depending on the army in question, hitmod or savemod stacking can do "equivalent" levels of harm. Guard being able to get 2++ with ease is one example.
7th edition was a better edition in my eyes, so I'm going to be a little biased, but I do think 8th edition has worse balance than 7th. It had more variety, games usually weren't decided on turn 1, and for as much hate as the Psychic phase gets from people (myself included), the 8th edition solution is probably just as bad. I also feel the solution of 'codexes are free power' is a call-back to the 7th edition 'free power' detachments in the codexes that broke balance, and the new mini-codexes are just the new supplements, which was my most hated thing in 7th edition as a whole.
fithos wrote: 7th edition: formations are so stupid. People shouldn't be getting free rules for taking arbitrary combinations of models.
8th edition: chapter tactics/doctrines/craftworlds are so fun and fluffy. Look at my catachan tank devision/aliatoc wraith list.
Call me when you find a Chapter Tactic that gives you 500 points of free tanks.
Depending on the army in question, hitmod or savemod stacking can do "equivalent" levels of harm. Guard being able to get 2++ with ease is one example.
fithos wrote: 7th edition: formations are so stupid. People shouldn't be getting free rules for taking arbitrary combinations of models.
8th edition: chapter tactics/doctrines/craftworlds are so fun and fluffy. Look at my catachan tank devision/aliatoc wraith list.
Call me when you find a Chapter Tactic that gives you 500 points of free tanks.
Depending on the army in question, hitmod or savemod stacking can do "equivalent" levels of harm. Guard being able to get 2++ with ease is one example.
fithos wrote: 7th edition: formations are so stupid. People shouldn't be getting free rules for taking arbitrary combinations of models.
8th edition: chapter tactics/doctrines/craftworlds are so fun and fluffy. Look at my catachan tank devision/aliatoc wraith list.
Call me when you find a Chapter Tactic that gives you 500 points of free tanks.
Depending on the army in question, hitmod or savemod stacking can do "equivalent" levels of harm. Guard being able to get 2++ with ease is one example.
I think part of the biggest problem is being able to take multiple detachments and have them each get their specific benefits. There was no drawback to doing it and often there is a tangible bonus because you can maximize what each Detachment does with specific traits that helping out the most
Wayniac wrote: I think part of the biggest problem is being able to take multiple detachments and have them each get their specific benefits. There was no drawback to doing it and often there is a tangible bonus because you can maximize what each Detachment does with specific traits that helping out the most
this is definitely an issue. As much as I can see the fluff aspect of it, at least for matched play Id really like to see only the faction bonus (doctrine, legion trait, chapter tactic, etc) of the Warlord apply to the army as a whole.
Darsath wrote: 7th edition was a better edition in my eyes, so I'm going to be a little biased, but I do think 8th edition has worse balance than 7th. It had more variety, games usually weren't decided on turn 1, and for as much hate as the Psychic phase gets from people (myself included), the 8th edition solution is probably just as bad. I also feel the solution of 'codexes are free power' is a call-back to the 7th edition 'free power' detachments in the codexes that broke balance, and the new mini-codexes are just the new supplements, which was my most hated thing in 7th edition as a whole.
You're wrong about basically everything you said here. Not gonna sugar coat it, everything you said was backwards AF, point by point:
1. Smashing your junk with a hammer was better than 7th. Even if you don't like 8th, 7th was a dumpster fire top to bottom. And less games were decided turn one because 99% of games were decided in list building. It's not hard to make a simple excel spreadsheet that'll tell you you don't have enough shooting to in your 1850 pts of non-riptide wing Tau, to kill more than 2 Khorne Dogs in my Cabal star by the end of the game.
2. The 8th edition solution to the psychic phase is far, far better; even if you think it's bad just because of how terrible 7th psychic was. It's more interactive, doesn't actively punish you for taking 1 off psykers, doesn't have the broken crap like Invis or endurance, and doesn't take three fricken hours for a deamon player to get through set-up+ his first psychic phase. It's also more tactical because any army that actually USED the psychic phase in 7th had functionally unlimited resources to do so and deny the witch was an absolute joke.
3. Codexes are free power, but codexes have always been free power. And your whole line of argument here is completely bypassing the fact that THE BROKEN FREE FORMATIONS CAME IN THE CODEXES. Codex vs Index power is nowhere near the difference of Old Codex vs. New Codex was in 7th. One good formation could catapult an army forward MASSIVELY in powerlevel (decurion, Warcon)
4. What mini codexes? You mean Custodes? The one army that could actually qualify as a mini-dex? And how is an entirely self-contained, if small, army anywhere near what Angels of Death, or Black Legion, or Skies of Death, or Fall of Cadia, or Biel-Tan, or Rise, or Ghazkhul, or Clan Raukaan, or or or or or or or or or were? The answer is: They're not. The smaller codexes they're releasing now are self-contained factions that are available as allies and are nowhere near as mandatory or as damaging to the game as the supplements of old.
You don't like 8th that's fine. You prefer the 7th edition ruleset? You're wrong, but hey; Heresy is still around and they seem to have staved off 7th's massive problems so far so you can still play the edition you want. But do not pretend for 1 second that 7thed 40k was anything but a dumpster fire in the middle of an atomic waste disposal site, when it comes to army balance.
MagicJuggler wrote: Soup is a sidegrade for Imperials and Chaos, and a flat nerf for the rest. Your army as a whole must have one common Keyword, but you can have multiple subfactions in the same detachment. The opportunity cost for staying monofaction within one detachment and souping in another isn't too far removed from how you could tradeoff between maximizing Decurion benefits or getting allies.
As far as balance, 7th versus 5th interests me, as despite the view that 5th is the most balanced...I remember that edition favoring mass light mech over most other builds. Sure, you could run a Loganwing and do reasonably well, and the Draigowing janked its way to runner-up status at Nova 2011...but the game ultimately favored a critical mass of Lasplas Razorbacks/Mechvets, and aura of choice. "Gee, do I take Smite or do I take Null Zone?"
By contrast, 7th had the Gladius, Bike armies, War Convo...at least three distinct types of army. Given more time to experiment, I believe Genestealer Cults also had the potential to be a competitive horde army.
The game did have problems of course. Too many USRs, some rules didn't work (Ex: barrage weapons were better at sniping than actual sniper weapons), and there were too many "all or nothing" scenarios. However, cover meant something, and games generally weren't decided on turn 1.
Cover never meant anything if you knew how to read your army rules(more than 1 army had blanket 2+ rerollable cover saves that still didn't make them any good) And games weren't decided on turn 1 because they were decided in list building.
Never played 7th. From the rulebook I was given it looked extremely complicated. I'm an avid 2nd ed fan and played more games in the dumbed down 3rd than any other edition.
So that should say something about glancing at 7th and how inviting it looked.
8th took a lot to get used to. It is not a skirmish game. In fact there may be too many models on the table for a quick game....but they made the rules so that you can play a quick game with a whole lot of models.
The problem with that fix is Dice Hammer. Too many freaking dice and rerolls. Too many Auras.
Hey I like to play a big army.
I like to play a fast game.
Making cover and terrain better at nerfing turn 1 alpha strike/shooting would be nice
Limiting the dice would be nice. At least add more modifiers to hit. Less hits mean less saves which means less FNP rolls, etc.
Bring back targeters, Overwatch as an either or not everyone gets it.
Tone down what a unit can do.
Boom my guys can:
Run across the board.
Turn models to dust with psychic mortal wounds
Then shoot a unit off the table.
Charge the other half of the board.
Wipe a lot of dudes out in close combat
And then consolidate into even more mayhem.
It is a bit much. When you can kill off multiple opponents, move the length of the table and still have weapons that can only shoot as far as 1/4 of your movement rate on foot.
Tanks that stay stationary are as easy to hit as those 20+ fast moving flying jetbikes????
2nd edition had a lot of good stuff. 8th has a lot of good stuff.
3rd had some good stuff to make it an army game instead of a million hour long small skirmish 2nd game.
4th thru 7th sounded just limited imagination on top of the 3 big editions that have defined 40k.
Merge the best of 2nd, 3rd and 8th and you wont ever have to look back at the others.
For me it's that gw hasn't really learnt from previous editions, we are already seeing the same issues rear their ugly heads, the biggest difference I have seen is the willingness to at least try to fix these issues, but as I said before, they have not learnt the mistakes of the previous eds so are likely to keep repeating them and go around in circles.
The psychic phase is a good example, it lacks depth and favours the caster too much, it also demands you have a psyker to try and stop it.
Personally I would have taken the 8th fantasy magic phase, refined it, removed the irresistible force but kept miscasts, messed around with the spell lores to make them fit into 40k and removed the super spells entirely, then we would have non psychic armies able to at least try to dispel, a flat bonus of +1 to dispel for tau, +2 for necrons to fit the fluff, thousand sons, grey knights etc. Would have a lot more spells to choose from and it would make the psy phase feel more interactive, right now it's just so dull.
Formosa wrote: For me it's that gw hasn't really learnt from previous editions, we are already seeing the same issues rear their ugly heads, the biggest difference I have seen is the willingness to at least try to fix these issues, but as I said before, they have not learnt the mistakes of the previous eds so are likely to keep repeating them and go around in circles.
The psychic phase is a good example, it lacks depth and favours the caster too much, it also demands you have a psyker to try and stop it.
Personally I would have taken the 8th fantasy magic phase, refined it, removed the irresistible force but kept miscasts, messed around with the spell lores to make them fit into 40k and removed the super spells entirely, then we would have non psychic armies able to at least try to dispel, a flat bonus of +1 to dispel for tau, +2 for necrons to fit the fluff, thousand sons, grey knights etc. Would have a lot more spells to choose from and it would make the psy phase feel more interactive, right now it's just so dull.
The problem is that it makes it harder to cost a psyker. Casters in WHFB were upwards of 400 points or more and so rarely made their points back.
So, yea, it's "less fun" than WHFB magic, but it's also way more balanced and way less frustrating. So, pick your poison.
Darsath wrote: 7th edition was a better edition in my eyes, so I'm going to be a little biased, but I do think 8th edition has worse balance than 7th. It had more variety, games usually weren't decided on turn 1, and for as much hate as the Psychic phase gets from people (myself included), the 8th edition solution is probably just as bad. I also feel the solution of 'codexes are free power' is a call-back to the 7th edition 'free power' detachments in the codexes that broke balance, and the new mini-codexes are just the new supplements, which was my most hated thing in 7th edition as a whole.
You're wrong about basically everything you said here. Not gonna sugar coat it, everything you said was backwards AF, point by point:
1. Smashing your junk with a hammer was better than 7th. Even if you don't like 8th, 7th was a dumpster fire top to bottom. And less games were decided turn one because 99% of games were decided in list building. It's not hard to make a simple excel spreadsheet that'll tell you you don't have enough shooting to in your 1850 pts of non-riptide wing Tau, to kill more than 2 Khorne Dogs in my Cabal star by the end of the game.
Horribly comparison as its just extreme hyperbole. A good portion of games in 7th played to a mission conclusion unlike 8th which is generally an alpha strike blood bath. List building is important in any game of 40k but movement, deployment, and tactics i feel played a much bigger role in 7th than it does in 8th. Codex imbalance was a huge issue so i won't ignore that aspect of things but its far from just being list auto wins.
2. The 8th edition solution to the psychic phase is far, far better; even if you think it's bad just because of how terrible 7th psychic was. It's more interactive, doesn't actively punish you for taking 1 off psykers, doesn't have the broken crap like Invis or endurance, and doesn't take three fricken hours for a deamon player to get through set-up+ his first psychic phase. It's also more tactical because any army that actually USED the psychic phase in 7th had functionally unlimited resources to do so and deny the witch was an absolute joke.
Daemon players spamming psykers was another relatively uncommon thing and yes 7th had a lot more book keeping and didn't scale as well. More interactive is a bit of a stretch where as now the caster just rolls 2 dice while the defender does nothing unless they have a nearby psyker. No risk/reward for the amount of dice used or making that big push to deny that critical power. 7th worked best with relatively even number of psykers but the system broke with psyker spam. Psyker spam in 8th is just spamming smite which is just boring.
3. Codexes are free power, but codexes have always been free power. And your whole line of argument here is completely bypassing the fact that THE BROKEN FREE FORMATIONS CAME IN THE CODEXES. Codex vs Index power is nowhere near the difference of Old Codex vs. New Codex was in 7th. One good formation could catapult an army forward MASSIVELY in powerlevel (decurion, Warcon)
Not really anything wrong with this bit but i will say that 8th's mechanics are so simplistic by comparison to the variables in 7th that small power differences in 8th have bigger impacts on games than similar differences in 7th. That said GW really let the power creep train go full speed with no brakes in the 2nd half of 7th's lifespan.
4. What mini codexes? You mean Custodes? The one army that could actually qualify as a mini-dex? And how is an entirely self-contained, if small, army anywhere near what Angels of Death, or Black Legion, or Skies of Death, or Fall of Cadia, or Biel-Tan, or Rise, or Ghazkhul, or Clan Raukaan, or or or or or or or or or were? The answer is: They're not. The smaller codexes they're releasing now are self-contained factions that are available as allies and are nowhere near as mandatory or as damaging to the game as the supplements of old.
We are just at the begining of the 8th cycle. The supplement spam will be coming once the codexes are caught up.
You don't like 8th that's fine. You prefer the 7th edition ruleset? You're wrong, but hey; Heresy is still around and they seem to have staved off 7th's massive problems so far so you can still play the edition you want. But do not pretend for 1 second that 7thed 40k was anything but a dumpster fire in the middle of an atomic waste disposal site, when it comes to army balance.
"You prefer the 7th edition rule set? You're wrong" ok so we are now saying that people's preferences are right and wrong? Some high and mighty attitude here. 7th had terrible balance sure but in my opinion it is/was a more fun game than 8th. I still stand by my opinion that I would rather play a game of 7th with my Orks vs Eldar than play a game of 8th with any faction.
Formosa did you ever play 2nd edition Psychic Phase that came out in Dark Millenium?
It came after shooting but prior to close combat.
There was a deck of cards. 6 specials and a lot of power and nullify cards.
Any race could try to use a Nullify card. Generally the stronger the caster the better your chances to get your spell off. And better to Nullify. It was a mini-game within the game.
I think it would be nice to incorporate something like that into the Battle Round....and not a players Turn. And the Morale/Rally phase should also be incorporated into the Battle Round and not a turn.
Something like:
1st player Move, Shoot, Assault then Fight
2nd player Move, Shoot, Assault, then Fight
1 common Psychic Phase, then Moral
Or anything that ties more phases together to limit redundancy.
IF I was putting my own 40K together it would be like this.
Battle Round:
Player 1 Declares FallBack and Charges
Player 2 Declares FallBack and Charges
Roll for Fallback and Charges alternating x dice movement.
Player 1 Move phase (plus advancing)
Player 1 Shooting phase
Player 2 Move Phase (plus advancing)
Player 2 shooting phase
Common Psychic Phase
Assault Phase
Morale Phase/Compulsaries/Order Overwatch
end
You can only Fallback on a die roll and only if in close combat
You can only Charge if within range.
Only certain units can be put in overwatch based on the number of highest level characters to issue those Orders and perhaps within a certain distance. (normal to hit and anytime prior to the next psychic phase)
Cover adds to armor saves (soft, hard, and dug in)
stationary units get bonus to shoot
moving units are harder to hit based on combat and fast speed
Ranges are increased 50% for most guns.(The extra range is penalty to shoot)
Smoke/blind/etc can give negative to hit modifiers
Heavy Anti-Tank weapons have negative to hit a normal trooper.
If you need 7+ to hit you need to roll a 6 followed by a 4+. I fyou need an 8+ then you need to roll a 6 followed by a 6+. That way you can always hit/wound
If you need a 1+ to hit or wound and miss you can still hit on a 4+ on a second roll
Get rid of most auras and rerolls.
If you shoot a vehicle from behind perhaps you get +1 to wound. ( I know the tank is spinning around and blasting away, but then positioning will matter)
Terrain rules Terrain Rules....lots of them. And Simple and easy to get..I like the 1/3 or 50% rule.
Darsath wrote: 7th edition was a better edition in my eyes, so I'm going to be a little biased, but I do think 8th edition has worse balance than 7th. It had more variety, games usually weren't decided on turn 1, and for as much hate as the Psychic phase gets from people (myself included), the 8th edition solution is probably just as bad. I also feel the solution of 'codexes are free power' is a call-back to the 7th edition 'free power' detachments in the codexes that broke balance, and the new mini-codexes are just the new supplements, which was my most hated thing in 7th edition as a whole.
You're wrong about basically everything you said here. Not gonna sugar coat it, everything you said was backwards AF, point by point:
1. Smashing your junk with a hammer was better than 7th. Even if you don't like 8th, 7th was a dumpster fire top to bottom. And less games were decided turn one because 99% of games were decided in list building. It's not hard to make a simple excel spreadsheet that'll tell you you don't have enough shooting to in your 1850 pts of non-riptide wing Tau, to kill more than 2 Khorne Dogs in my Cabal star by the end of the game.
Horribly comparison as its just extreme hyperbole. A good portion of games in 7th played to a mission conclusion unlike 8th which is generally an alpha strike blood bath. List building is important in any game of 40k but movement, deployment, and tactics i feel played a much bigger role in 7th than it does in 8th. Codex imbalance was a huge issue so i won't ignore that aspect of things but its far from just being list auto wins.
2. The 8th edition solution to the psychic phase is far, far better; even if you think it's bad just because of how terrible 7th psychic was. It's more interactive, doesn't actively punish you for taking 1 off psykers, doesn't have the broken crap like Invis or endurance, and doesn't take three fricken hours for a deamon player to get through set-up+ his first psychic phase. It's also more tactical because any army that actually USED the psychic phase in 7th had functionally unlimited resources to do so and deny the witch was an absolute joke.
Daemon players spamming psykers was another relatively uncommon thing and yes 7th had a lot more book keeping and didn't scale as well. More interactive is a bit of a stretch where as now the caster just rolls 2 dice while the defender does nothing unless they have a nearby psyker. No risk/reward for the amount of dice used or making that big push to deny that critical power. 7th worked best with relatively even number of psykers but the system broke with psyker spam. Psyker spam in 8th is just spamming smite which is just boring.
3. Codexes are free power, but codexes have always been free power. And your whole line of argument here is completely bypassing the fact that THE BROKEN FREE FORMATIONS CAME IN THE CODEXES. Codex vs Index power is nowhere near the difference of Old Codex vs. New Codex was in 7th. One good formation could catapult an army forward MASSIVELY in powerlevel (decurion, Warcon)
Not really anything wrong with this bit but i will say that 8th's mechanics are so simplistic by comparison to the variables in 7th that small power differences in 8th have bigger impacts on games than similar differences in 7th. That said GW really let the power creep train go full speed with no brakes in the 2nd half of 7th's lifespan.
4. What mini codexes? You mean Custodes? The one army that could actually qualify as a mini-dex? And how is an entirely self-contained, if small, army anywhere near what Angels of Death, or Black Legion, or Skies of Death, or Fall of Cadia, or Biel-Tan, or Rise, or Ghazkhul, or Clan Raukaan, or or or or or or or or or were? The answer is: They're not. The smaller codexes they're releasing now are self-contained factions that are available as allies and are nowhere near as mandatory or as damaging to the game as the supplements of old.
We are just at the begining of the 8th cycle. The supplement spam will be coming once the codexes are caught up.
You don't like 8th that's fine. You prefer the 7th edition ruleset? You're wrong, but hey; Heresy is still around and they seem to have staved off 7th's massive problems so far so you can still play the edition you want. But do not pretend for 1 second that 7thed 40k was anything but a dumpster fire in the middle of an atomic waste disposal site, when it comes to army balance.
"You prefer the 7th edition rule set? You're wrong" ok so we are now saying that people's preferences are right and wrong? Some high and mighty attitude here. 7th had terrible balance sure but in my opinion it is/was a more fun game than 8th. I still stand by my opinion that I would rather play a game of 7th with my Orks vs Eldar than play a game of 8th with any faction.
Ok, since you think you're genuinely trying to defend 7th, I'll be a bit less glib, though the edition doesn't deserve it.
Counterpoint 1. Revionist history on both sides of the aisle on this one. 7th edition had far more brutal alphastrike than 8th does. Any drop pod space marine or eldar list had enough shots that could hit anywhere on the board that any normal army would die in it's entirety. The thing that made it SEEM like missions were actually important were getting hundreds of free points worth of models and the incredible prevelance of 2++ rerollable deathstars. Movement played a bigger role in 7th than it does in 8th because deathstars made the shooting and assault phases totally irrelevant, unless you were eldar or riptide wing which made the assault phase irrelevant. And there weren't ANY tactics in 7th. You buffed up a deathstar and facerolled it around the board and that was it. And finally, lists autowon all the time, except at the very very high end where relative power of list flattened out. There was not a single thing BA, Orkz, DE, SoB, or Space wolves could do to beat a Centurion star without going full superfriends. It was completely impossible. Same with Screamerstar. Both of which could be done with just combines arms detachments.
Counterpoint 2: You really didn't play 7th at any reasonably competitive level did you? Daemon players spamming psykers was the single most prevalent chaos style of play. By the end of the edition Chaos Daemons racked up more GT wins than every other army in the game except Eldar and every single daemon list spammed psykers like crazy. It got so bad that other armies started spamming THEIR psykers just for the chance to summon in daemons. You're defending a psychic system that only existed at a theoretical level. If you brought psykers you brought TONS of them or exceptionally powerful ones like tiggy. No one brought just a librarian or w/e because they were actively detrimental against real psychic armies. You can't praise the systems theoretical value when the truth was that it was built to HEAVILY incentivize spam. Careful allocation of resources was a myth.
Counterpoint 3. The mechanics aren't really that simplistic, they just cut out things that didn't matter or were stupid. AV was largely irrelevant, the old assault phase was a spreadsheet that hated you and didn't offer a single tactical decision despite taking upwards of an hour with larger combats, Dangerous terrain was pointless, USRs were a huge pile of unnecessary bookwork, the ap system was bad, the BS, WS charts were bloated and silly, the ST chart completely broke down with T1,2 or T9,10, characters joining units was so problematic they just tossed it, vehicle rules made vehicles useless and on and on and on. The only thing 8th lost mechanically that MATTERED relative to 7th is the cover system, which in 8th is ABYSMAL admittedly.
Counterpoint 4. You have to realize how silly this one is right? You're literally complaining that 8th might eventually end up as bad as 7th sometime in the future. When the supplement spam happens, by all means tear into it. Supplements are stupid. But until then that's still a big checkmark in 8th's favor.
And finally: that's you right as a gamer I guess. I guess I can understand wanting a ten minute game of scat bikes decimating your army down to two or three nob bikers; people lead busy lives, but this thread isn't about preference, it's about balance. At the end of the day, if you play an Eldar player of equal skill, as an ork player in 7th edition, and the eldar player doesn't absolutely bend over backwards making his army as weak as he possibly can, he won't even have the tools necessary to throw the game.
Both 7-th and 8-th are decided by the lists and who goes first. You instantly know it's no longer a tactical game when someone asks: i have ork bikers and a trukk full of boyz, how can i get a chance vs dark reaper spam, and the answer is not:
- use cover
- reserve stuff
- use positioning and maneuvre
- use other tools like ld No, the only answer is: ditch your bikers and trukks and get a ton of boyz.
And it's not only about orks. There are really a ton of examples where one army concept can't do anything against another army concept and the game doesn't provide ANY real tactical possibilities to mitigate the initial disadvantage of collecting a certain army.
People like variety but the system once again does not provide many possibilities of a balanced list based around different elements. If you take infantry and want to support it with a tank, you're at a disadvantage over taking more infantry or more tanks. Because the enemy has free reign of what he can target and he chooses best weapons to deal with best targets avaliable. And you can do NOTHING about it. The only 'mixed' concept that works is a long ranged gunline + bauble wrap. And that's only because certain bauble wraps are too good for the price. It's boring to play with and against but it works, i guess.
koooaei wrote: Both 7-th and 8-th are decided by the lists and who goes first. You instantly know it's no longer a tactical game when someone asks: i have ork bikers and a trukk full of boyz, how can i get a chance vs dark reaper spam, and the answer is not:
- use cover
- reserve stuff
- use positioning and maneuvre
- use other tools like ld No, the only answer is: ditch your bikers and trukks and get a ton of boyz.
Funny how you ""forgot"" that A) orks are Index army, so of course they have less options, B) that in 7th edition the answer was "trash your orks in nearest garbage bin, you'll never win against Eldar, go buy Tau or Necrons and even then it's uphill fight", C) while dark reapers are bad (gee, yes, Phil Kelly is incompetent and will never not make his pet army broken) it's NOWHERE near 7th edition Eldar vomiting D-shots from every orifice and getting 2+ to hit on every unit for just existing, rerollable with every frakking peanut-cheap support model. That sure sounds more balanced than 8th, eh?
People like variety but the system once again does not provide many possibilities of a balanced list based around different elements. If you take infantry and want to support it with a tank, you're at a disadvantage over taking more infantry or more tanks. Because the enemy has free reign of what he can target and he chooses best weapons to deal with best targets avaliable. And you can do NOTHING about it. The only 'mixed' concept that works is a long ranged gunline + bauble wrap. And that's only because certain bauble wraps are too good for the price. It's boring to play with and against but it works, i guess.
I like how you ""forgot"" vehicles, outside of free gladius and/or war convocation didn't exist at all in 7th, it was endless tide or MCs and GMCs, with eldar and tau having them nonsensically slapped on what was clearly walkers, making what was supposed to be slow, unwieldy vehicle with cockpit melee unit killer to negate any weakness they had in fluff. Gee, that sure was so much more balanced and realistic than 8th, where every SM/AM/IG/Tau army are balanced infantry / vehicle mix, and it's only the Eldar reaper spam that bucks the trend. That sure is 8th ed fault, not Kelly messing up as usual!
Ummm...what exactly is this "balanced infantry/vehicle mix" you're talking about for Marines, Tai or Guard? I don"t believe I've seen a single Rhino, Chimera, or non-Commander Crisis Suit since this edition came out, and those weren't even "tier 1" choices in the first place.
Personally i do have a few gripes with 8th compared to 7th
For example in 8th chaos marks do sweet f all. As someone who likes to play Mono God armies would it of killed them to allow the chaos mark to do more than just allow you to use a certain icon or be effected by a certain stratagem?
Relics again they seem to vary wildly to chaos.
The fact that daemon princes are so much better than lords and sorcerors would it kill gw to fix this? At least the sorceror has something going for him the chaos lord not so much.
Why did csm and chosen lose their option for true grit yet space wolves kept theirs?
Overall these might seem like small things buy they add up to quite a annoying problem
I'd like to actually do the math on this. Is there anywhere I can find a good set of data to use? I'd need total player count, total number of players by faction, and number by faction in the top whatever (8, 16, 10%, etc) for as many tournaments as possible for 8th so far and the last 6-12 months of 7th.
Funny how you ""forgot"" that A) orks are Index army, so of course they have less options, B) that in 7th edition the answer was "trash your orks in nearest garbage bin, you'll never win against Eldar
Ok, how would you win a dark reaper spam with white scar bikers?
In 7-th orks sure were at a disadvantage vs eldar and tau but i constantly won games with my tac ork list that had: boyz, grots, koptas, meganobz, trukks, lobbas. Part of the reason was that i could mitigate the damage because cover ACTUALLY WORKED vs stuff that didn't get ignore cover. Sure, eldar serpent spam had half the list in serpents that ignored cover with half the shots but than serpent spam phased out, even scatbike spam was possible to handle. I could even hide from them because they could only kill what they could see.
I'm in no way saying that 7-th was more balanced. In fact, it was probably worse. But it felt more like a game. Because there were things other than listbuilding and rolling 1-st turn that you could do. Now it's just a listbuilding mishmash. Not very interesting one to boot. There is just so little tactics involved that it sometimes starts feeling as if you're just there to throw dice.
Medicinal Carrots wrote: I'd like to actually do the math on this. Is there anywhere I can find a good set of data to use? I'd need total player count, total number of players by faction, and number by faction in the top whatever (8, 16, 10%, etc) for as many tournaments as possible for 8th so far and the last 6-12 months of 7th.
Well there was one interesting graph posted on this forum that showed gap between top and bottom was actually increasing.
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koooaei wrote: I'm in no way saying that 7-th was more balanced. In fact, it was probably worse. But it felt more like a game. Because there were things other than listbuilding and rolling 1-st turn that you could do. Now it's just a listbuilding mishmash. Not very interesting one to boot. There is just so little tactics involved that it sometimes starts feeling as if you're just there to throw dice.
Well on flip side 8th ed might become the cheapest edition ever. It's so much alpha striking that models are actually basically wound counters. Wonder how long before tournaments realize they get same effect with faster games by removing miniatures out of the equation.
The win rate of top army at that moment (sororitas) was ~80% while the win rate of bottom army (death guard) was ~30%.
Now things have shifted a bit but i dn't think it's shifted towards the 50% mark. It's quite the opposite.
I dont think any of that matters unitl all codex's are out and we get 1 more balance patch for them. To me 8th isnt fully released yet and we are still in the process of getting it released.
By the time all codexes are out it will be time for 9th edition. I mean, if rumours that say orks will receive their codex in december are true it means that they'll get their rules 1 year and a half after the release of the current edition, which is a lot considering that 40k editions usually last 3 years. We'll only have 1 year, maybe 1 and a half with all codexes out.
In the prevoius editions you could play with older codexes, now you must use the index which is a mess: no special rules and overpriced stuff. I think 8th edition is the playtest for 9th, which maybe will be balanced. So far I miss 7th edition, but just because my armies had more viable units and different styles to use.
MagicJuggler wrote: Ummm...what exactly is this "balanced infantry/vehicle mix" you're talking about for Marines, Tai or Guard? I don"t believe I've seen a single Rhino, Chimera, or non-Commander Crisis Suit since this edition came out, and those weren't even "tier 1" choices in the first place.
Really now?
Sigh. So much wrong I don't know where to start. In 7th, era of free razorbacks, Rhino didn't exist. Period. These days I see them sometimes used to transport 10 man units, which is more than you can say about last edition. Even in competitive, SM most common build is razorbacks per 1 troop unit. I often see quadlas Predators too, along with flyers, and dreads. Since when motorized/air cavalry list is not infantry/vehicle mix? And that is without ridiculous, broken crutch of gladius forcing you to do it, people do mix naturally, without being prodded.
Ditto for guard, please find me ONE pure infantry list getting anything in any tournament. Virtually all IG armies I saw in 8th were mixed, both in competitive and in casual games. Tau, too, I saw a lot of command tanks and other vehicles on tables once 8th landed, something that didn't exist at all in 7th. It was all mindless riptidewing/suit spam, something that is NOT balanced and I am glad it's gone. How can anyone without amnesia claim with straight face 'spam best unit, and best unit only' from 7th was in any way better, or even equal to 8th where I see varied, unique armies all the time instead of totally identical, cookie cutter lists (down to last upgrade in the case of eldar/admech) enforced by rulebook itself, I have no idea.
Blackie wrote: By the time all codexes are out it will be time for 9th edition. I mean, if rumours that say orks will receive their codex in december are true it means that they'll get their rules 1 year and a half after the release of the current edition, which is a lot considering that 40k editions usually last 3 years. We'll only have 1 year, maybe 1 and a half with all codexes out.
In the prevoius editions you could play with older codexes, now you must use the index which is a mess: no special rules and overpriced stuff. I think 8th edition is the playtest for 9th, which maybe will be balanced. So far I miss 7th edition, but just because my armies had more viable units and different styles to use.
Nah, i'm 99% sure all codex's by July and who says their will be a 9th this early? They may come out with 9th, but it might just be an 8.1
MagicJuggler wrote: Ummm...what exactly is this "balanced infantry/vehicle mix" you're talking about for Marines, Tai or Guard? I don"t believe I've seen a single Rhino, Chimera, or non-Commander Crisis Suit since this edition came out, and those weren't even "tier 1" choices in the first place.
Really now?
Sigh. So much wrong I don't know where to start. In 7th, era of free razorbacks, Rhino didn't exist. Period. These days I see them sometimes used to transport 10 man units, which is more than you can say about last edition. Even in competitive, SM most common build is razorbacks per 1 troop unit. I often see quadlas Predators too, along with flyers, and dreads. Since when motorized/air cavalry list is not infantry/vehicle mix? And that is without ridiculous, broken crutch of gladius forcing you to do it, people do mix naturally, without being prodded.
Ditto for guard, please find me ONE pure infantry list getting anything in any tournament. Virtually all IG armies I saw in 8th were mixed, both in competitive and in casual games. Tau, too, I saw a lot of command tanks and other vehicles on tables once 8th landed, something that didn't exist at all in 7th. It was all mindless riptidewing/suit spam, something that is NOT balanced and I am glad it's gone. How can anyone without amnesia claim with straight face 'spam best unit, and best unit only' from 7th was in any way better, or even equal to 8th where I see varied, unique armies all the time instead of totally identical, cookie cutter lists (down to last upgrade in the case of eldar/admech) enforced by rulebook itself, I have no idea.
1) Rhinos had Fire Points. It was possible to use them for firing Gravdevs out of. In 8th, transports simply to transport are fairly redundant since you have to be static to disembark from them, you can surround them...
2) In Guard, the vehicles you see are: Taurox Primes (not for actually transporting anything, but Gatling Cannons), and artillery of choice. Oh, and Sentinels are in for the "no deepstrike bubble." Because if you don't infiltrate or have chaff...you might as well not play if you're not turn 1.
3) Riptide and suitspam wasn't even that good. Other than Nanivati's nova list, it didn't actually take tournaments in 7th. Scrub harder.
If there was a real issue with 7th, it was the fact it introduced Maelstrom (Random objectives with random scoring), it had too many USRs and non-USRs, and the scoring system was still very "Rocket Tag." What won games in 7th was being able to draw objectives, turbo onto them, and score points before your opponent was allowed to do anything. A lot of this is unfortunately inherent in 40k being IGOUGO, and with the general increase in dice being thrown in 8th, IGOUGO's poor scalability shows even more than ever.
zerosignal wrote: 7th was a fine ruleset, with just a few tweaks needed.
The issue was codex imbalance (including formation imbalance).
Again a few paragraphs of errata and some points changes would have fixed this.
8th is just... meh. Everything is very homogenous. Spam is even more viable. A lot of tactical stuff has gone. I'm bored of it already.
Everything is homogenous? I just played an army of Ork Tankbustas, some boys, some lobbas, and like 30 Stormboys with a special character with a trio of Imperial Superheavies and various support elements. The armies felt VERY different.
Spam? Spam is fine. I don't know why people think spam is bad. Armies run on spam, IRL, in the fluff, and in the rules.
As for the tactics being gone: this is true in some ways and less true in others. I actually think no-scatter Deep Strike makes things /more/ tactical, because you can more effectively screen against it and more effectively use it, with less "lawl, you done scattered, get fethed mate" or "Oh, I have a pod, so actually there's no danger at all... oh wait I still scattered out of melta range of the target. Neato." Just as an example.
Honestly it could go either way and a lot depends on how GW want to approach things. In that past new editions were a big shake up of hte rules of the game; now with 8th edition there is the ground in place to have fewer new versions of the game and instead have an evolving and updating rules system.
I could well see them going several years and then releasing an updated codex and rulebook combo to account for the FAQ/Errata and balance changes. Yes there's Chapter Approved but after a few years the old rule book and codex will be out of date. So they could easily re-release those without having a whole new edition of the rules.
Also, the thing I think that is different is that modern casting technology means they can whip models out much faster. This means that you can keep the edition of the game fairly static, while releasing models (and new rules for them) fairly quickly, without having to re-boot the whole core ruleset.
Adjustments to rules can be made through mechanisms already put in place (e.g. Chapter Approved).
As for the whole Deepstrike issue, this is something I consider related to 40k turn structure. Although in 7th, Deepstrike could be unreliable, it was problematic when reliable. Take Alex Harrison's LVO army as an example: This was a notable spam army, since it included 9 units of Warp Spiders and an Autarch. Due to decurion bonuses, it autoran 6 from Battle Focus, and passed Reserve Rolls on a 2+.
The end result? 9 units dropping in where you don't want, blowing a hole in your army, then Jetpacking to safety. If your army didn't have Interceptors, you had to sit and take it. And just to make things funnier, if you tried to shoot them, they could then Flickerjump, potentially capping an objective in your own turn.
While I view Alternate Activation as superior by a long shot, the specifics tend to divide people. So what I experimented with (before working on my Stack-based AA game) as a stopgap measure was a modified version of 2nd ed Overwatch:
Forfeit shooting in your turn to enter Overwatch. If an enemy attempts to attack this unit or a friendly unit within 6", it may shoot at -1 BS then Overwatch ends. Only one unit may elect to Overwatch as the result of an enemy unit attempting to attack.
Whether it is more balanced or not I think it's very cool that basic troops are good again. I'd rather play a game dominated by hordes than dominated by big single models or super elite deathstars. At least when you lose to a horde you get to kill lots of models
I fully expect new units released like they have done recently - ergo dataslates released with new rules for hte new models. The big question is how GW will approach releasing new models for the game in the long term. They could slow releases of new models and then have a big 40K release of one new model per faction; or they could let them out in drips and drabs; hopefully trying to support all armies at once on a rota so that one army isn't left behind
Alongside that they could do bigger single faction releases to get things like a larger number of models in plastic (eg a big sisters of battle release event) or to update core model sculpts.
So after a few years there'd be more than enough new models to justify a codex update; esp if they continue to use codex to deliver more improved and deeper lore on the game.
MagicJuggler wrote: As for the whole Deepstrike issue, this is something I consider related to 40k turn structure. Although in 7th, Deepstrike could be unreliable, it was problematic when reliable. Take Alex Harrison's LVO army as an example: This was a notable spam army, since it included 9 units of Warp Spiders and an Autarch. Due to decurion bonuses, it autoran 6 from Battle Focus, and passed Reserve Rolls on a 2+.
The end result? 9 units dropping in where you don't want, blowing a hole in your army, then Jetpacking to safety. If your army didn't have Interceptors, you had to sit and take it. And just to make things funnier, if you tried to shoot them, they could then Flickerjump, potentially capping an objective in your own turn.
While I view Alternate Activation as superior by a long shot, the specifics tend to divide people. So what I experimented with (before working on my Stack-based AA game) as a stopgap measure was a modified version of 2nd ed Overwatch:
Forfeit shooting in your turn to enter Overwatch. If an enemy attempts to attack this unit or a friendly unit within 6", it may shoot at -1 BS then Overwatch ends. Only one unit may elect to Overwatch as the result of an enemy unit attempting to attack.
That Overwatch thing makes sense, but I would like to see a way to divide it by weapon type, to avoid MSU spam.
For example, with 3 LRBTs you could have 2 shoot, 1 overwatch, 1 shoot, 2 overwatch, all 3 shoot, or all 3 overwatch. That's much more intimate control over your firepower than a single unit for the same price, e.g. Baneblade, which can either shoot or not.
It would be nice to be able to say "baneblade cannon, autocannon, demolisher cannon, and lascannons are all firing now at BS4+, the twin heavy bolters are all waiting to fire overwatch at -1". And that goes for other units too, this is just an example.
zerosignal wrote: 7th was a fine ruleset, with just a few tweaks needed.
The issue was codex imbalance (including formation imbalance).
Again a few paragraphs of errata and some points changes would have fixed this.
8th is just... meh. Everything is very homogenous. Spam is even more viable. A lot of tactical stuff has gone. I'm bored of it already.
Hrm, while there was no shortage of codex issues, there were a lot of core rules issues. Maelstrom was (though still is) a giant mess of random gak while the Eternal War missions were lifted from 6E but without any allowance for other changes (e.g. Big Guns and Scouring gave no bonuses for using HS/FA units as they were supposed to due to scoring changes but became huge liabilities anyway). Vehicles were monstrously ill-defined and inferior in just about every meaningful way to MC's. Jink was a horrifically abuseable mechanic (particularly next to smoke launchers or GTG). Bikes had way too many special abilities/bonuses. There were all sorts of issues with unkillable deathstars that the core rules enabled. Lots of "oversimplified" 8E mechanics weren't too much different than 7E in the ways that mattered (e.g. yeah DS could scatter and mishap in 7E, but the risk was so mild, particularly next to earlier editions, that 8E's simplifications simply removed an illusion of depth that had long since gone). There was an absurdly heavy emphasis on mid-strength multishot weapons that could glance vehicles and wound infantry on 2's. 8E's not perfect, but the core 7th rules weren't great either.
MagicJuggler wrote: As for the whole Deepstrike issue, this is something I consider related to 40k turn structure. Although in 7th, Deepstrike could be unreliable, it was problematic when reliable. Take Alex Harrison's LVO army as an example: This was a notable spam army, since it included 9 units of Warp Spiders and an Autarch. Due to decurion bonuses, it autoran 6 from Battle Focus, and passed Reserve Rolls on a 2+.
The end result? 9 units dropping in where you don't want, blowing a hole in your army, then Jetpacking to safety. If your army didn't have Interceptors, you had to sit and take it. And just to make things funnier, if you tried to shoot them, they could then Flickerjump, potentially capping an objective in your own turn.
While I view Alternate Activation as superior by a long shot, the specifics tend to divide people. So what I experimented with (before working on my Stack-based AA game) as a stopgap measure was a modified version of 2nd ed Overwatch:
Forfeit shooting in your turn to enter Overwatch. If an enemy attempts to attack this unit or a friendly unit within 6", it may shoot at -1 BS then Overwatch ends. Only one unit may elect to Overwatch as the result of an enemy unit attempting to attack.
That Overwatch thing makes sense, but I would like to see a way to divide it by weapon type, to avoid MSU spam.
For example, with 3 LRBTs you could have 2 shoot, 1 overwatch, 1 shoot, 2 overwatch, all 3 shoot, or all 3 overwatch. That's much more intimate control over your firepower than a single unit for the same price, e.g. Baneblade, which can either shoot or not.
It would be nice to be able to say "baneblade cannon, autocannon, demolisher cannon, and lascannons are all firing now at BS4+, the twin heavy bolters are all waiting to fire overwatch at -1". And that goes for other units too, this is just an example.
I know someone said they hated my idea...but limit Overwatch to a stratagem that allows a commander to pick up to 3 units to place on Overwatch.
If you HATE stratagem....then make it so that the upper tier characters, Farsee, Boss, Chapter Master, Lord, etc can each nominate 1 unit to go into Overwatch if they are near them, etc. That way 1 to 3 units at most will probably be on Overwatch
Either way you Avoid 2nd ed where everyone was on overwatch waiting for the other guy to move and lose.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I actually assumed 8th would be a more living-rulebook-y edition, kinda like how 3rd Edition was, which means it would last much longer.
Updates would come in the vein of Chapter Approved books, while story progression will happen in Campaign Supplements.
I expect there to be multiple versions of lots of characters (e.g. a pre-campaign, campaign, and post-campaign version of a model is conceivable).
That is pretty much what I read from the early days of 8th. There would never be another edition just new units with their datasheets in the box, and continuous yearly updates with CA.
Yeah, this CA wasn't quite like what I expected, or like the CA of old, but that may just be due to how it came out in the mid of the codex release binge. Moving forward it might have collected unit datasheets for the new units of the year, or something similar.
MagicJuggler wrote: As for the whole Deepstrike issue, this is something I consider related to 40k turn structure. Although in 7th, Deepstrike could be unreliable, it was problematic when reliable. Take Alex Harrison's LVO army as an example: This was a notable spam army, since it included 9 units of Warp Spiders and an Autarch. Due to decurion bonuses, it autoran 6 from Battle Focus, and passed Reserve Rolls on a 2+.
The end result? 9 units dropping in where you don't want, blowing a hole in your army, then Jetpacking to safety. If your army didn't have Interceptors, you had to sit and take it. And just to make things funnier, if you tried to shoot them, they could then Flickerjump, potentially capping an objective in your own turn.
While I view Alternate Activation as superior by a long shot, the specifics tend to divide people. So what I experimented with (before working on my Stack-based AA game) as a stopgap measure was a modified version of 2nd ed Overwatch:
Forfeit shooting in your turn to enter Overwatch. If an enemy attempts to attack this unit or a friendly unit within 6", it may shoot at -1 BS then Overwatch ends. Only one unit may elect to Overwatch as the result of an enemy unit attempting to attack.
That Overwatch thing makes sense, but I would like to see a way to divide it by weapon type, to avoid MSU spam.
For example, with 3 LRBTs you could have 2 shoot, 1 overwatch, 1 shoot, 2 overwatch, all 3 shoot, or all 3 overwatch. That's much more intimate control over your firepower than a single unit for the same price, e.g. Baneblade, which can either shoot or not.
It would be nice to be able to say "baneblade cannon, autocannon, demolisher cannon, and lascannons are all firing now at BS4+, the twin heavy bolters are all waiting to fire overwatch at -1". And that goes for other units too, this is just an example.
I understand what you're saying, and this is why I considered the rules a "stopgap." The rules were modified from 2nd ed Overwatch, with three main differences:
-Forfeit shooting, instead of forfeit moving and shooting.
-Triggers on declaring an adverse Psychic Power/shooting attack/charge, rather than during the movement phase.
-You don't get the option to roll leadership to "stay" in Overwatch.
All three changes were meant to de-incentivize extreme turtling/standing off, like what happened in 2nd ed where combined with Blind Grenades you could (paraphrasing Andy Chambers) "attempt to bore your opponent into attempting a reckless charge."
My main project has a more intricate way of handling large units; I know there's a lot of anti-big sentiment in games, but my rationale was if a Baneblade costs approx 3-4 tanks worth of points, it should have 3-4 activations worth of units. "Activate the engine block." "Activate the main turret", etc.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Will I get eaten alive if I say I like 8th Editions Maelstrom more, given the single house-rule of being able to discard an impossible card?
Nope, same here. I have not played a single Eternal War mission yet in 8th. Almost all games are maelstrom, unless I'm teaching a new player to play or play some random narrative mission - those are pretty neat for fun games.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Will I get eaten alive if I say I like 8th Editions Maelstrom more, given the single house-rule of being able to discard an impossible card?
Nope, same here. I have not played a single Eternal War mission yet in 8th. Almost all games are maelstrom, unless I'm teaching a new player to play or play some random narrative mission - those are pretty neat for fun games.
We house-rule malestrom misions so D3 cards give you 2 VP. No rolls. Much more balanced that way.
Martel732 wrote: I prefer ITC to having to negotiate the gak out of GW's maelstrom.
Theres no negotiation, they are in the bases of the regional tourneis, but we play with the hybrid missions that mix Eternal War and Maelstrom objetives.
I only play ITC missions now. Progressive kill & objective scoring, without randomness, and you get to pick your secondaries so you're not completely hosed.
Eternal war was never fun. Ever. It wasn't fun in 7th, it wasn't fun in 8th, glad it's dead. Maelstrom is fun, but the progressive scoring (you cap an objective, you cap more objectives end of game turn), with chosen secondaries, is better, so you're not drawing stupid cards ("make your opponent fail a morale test!") to drawing flat out impossible ones ("hold objective 6! oh look! It's under the IG backline, all you have to do is completely table them to take it!").
You see literally the same handful of people pining for 7th edition.
And it's because they ran stuff that got nerfed or deleted.
"I can't summon free points anymore! 8th is garbage!" For example.
The argument that 7th was a good system and it just needed some fixes applies to 8th IMO.
Both are fine BASE systems that need some work, like any game system out there.
Do not get me wrong, 7th ed with the codex creep, zero codex balance and formations that were out of control had a lot of issues but it had good things as well.
8th has its issues too. The cover mechanics are pretty meh, character targeting is a bit weird, other little things.
Blackie wrote: By the time all codexes are out it will be time for 9th edition. I mean, if rumours that say orks will receive their codex in december are true it means that they'll get their rules 1 year and a half after the release of the current edition, which is a lot considering that 40k editions usually last 3 years. We'll only have 1 year, maybe 1 and a half with all codexes out.
In the prevoius editions you could play with older codexes, now you must use the index which is a mess: no special rules and overpriced stuff. I think 8th edition is the playtest for 9th, which maybe will be balanced. So far I miss 7th edition, but just because my armies had more viable units and different styles to use.
There won't be "editions" any more. We have tri-annual updates and chapter approved. I can see them releasing an update core rules, but not a new ruleset.
Backspacehacker wrote: 7th would have been perfect I'd they did the three following things.
1)formations cost points, not free stuff from formations.
2) get rid of warp charge system. Implement 8th Ed power system into 7th Ed.
3) remove the hull point system and go to the 8th Ed vehicle system for wounding
1) Either that, or grant meaningful disadvantages. Either way, tweaking the trouble formations is one option.
2) Psychic Focus, Smitespam and 2d6? No. Make the system "degrees of success" ala Kings of War.
3) Add more HP, consolidate wounding for vehicles/superheavies.
Marmatag wrote: Show me a Tyranids or Orks player who looks back fondly at 7th edition.
I’m a grey knight, tau, space marine, inquisition player who doesn’t bring big Bobby G to friendly games. I’m looking real fondly on this edition.
“Don’t worry, the Codex will fix it”™
Behold the mighty skyray! It is 195 points, and does a devistating 3 mortal wounds a game and requires markerlights support!
Grey Knights are totally fine, it’s not like we’re only useful if you bring less than 3 units of us. Also why do terminators pay for a 5++ when their 2+ is basically a 5+ vs ap3? I can’t wait for the custodian Codex to read “we’re 1:1 better than grey Knights at being grey knights, lol”
Marmatag wrote: Show me a Tyranids or Orks player who looks back fondly at 7th edition.
I’m an ork player, all I play is 7th, won’t touch 8th with a 50 foot grabba stik, and for the record I play against eldar and tau (a lot) and have never had any trouble with them
I thought 7th was hot garbage. Mainly because of all the free crap and formations. You were stupid to not abuse the free stuff. That was part of gittin gud with 40k 7th... taking lists that gave you free models and as many as you could get by whatever way possible... be it formations or summoning. And then in the same breath complain about balance when free stuff was basically giving you +X points to your list for nothing and was designed TO unbalance the game via list building.
Marmatag wrote: Show me a Tyranids or Orks player who looks back fondly at 7th edition.
I look back at 7th edition fondly and primarily play Orks. I feel like I had a much larger variety of enjoyable builds available to me that had fairly equal chances of success. As I often say in topics, I don't play in tournaments and my group don't always run cutthroat lists but it isn't unusual to see lists designed to be particularly powerful. I've had my fair share of one-sided 7th edition games but I generally felt like my actions had a larger impact on the game than they do in some games of 8th. The game felt more interactive in my opinion, even if my results weren't always great.
I had an awful lot of complaints about 7th but I've also got a number of them about 8th and it seems to me that my issues with 8th have more of a negative effect on my enjoyment of the game.
That's all not very specifically about balance, though. When I'm trying to be objective it strikes me that 8th as a whole is probably more balanced than 7th as a whole. Or at least that the (codex-to-codex or index-to-index) faction balance is greater than last edition but the battles themselves tend to be as imbalanced as ever and usually decided by who gets the first turn.
My experience is limited however and all the above is of course my own opinion, I wouldn't want to seem like I'm belittling any other perspectives.
Marmatag wrote: Show me a Tyranids or Orks player who looks back fondly at 7th edition.
I look back at 7th edition fondly and primarily play Orks. I feel like I had a much larger variety of enjoyable builds available to me that had fairly equal chances of success. As I often say in topics, I don't play in tournaments and my group don't always run cutthroat lists but it isn't unusual to see lists designed to be particularly powerful. I've had my fair share of one-sided 7th edition games but I generally felt like my actions had a larger impact on the game than they do in some games of 8th. The game felt more interactive in my opinion, even if my results weren't always great.
I had an awful lot of complaints about 7th but I've also got a number of them about 8th and it seems to me that my issues with 8th have more of a negative effect on my enjoyment of the game.
That's all not very specifically about balance, though. When I'm trying to be objective it strikes me that 8th as a whole is probably more balanced than 7th as a whole. Or at least that the (codex-to-codex or index-to-index) faction balance is greater than last edition but the battles themselves tend to be as imbalanced as ever and usually decided by who gets the first turn.
My experience is limited however and all the above is of course my own opinion, I wouldn't want to seem like I'm belittling any other perspectives.
It's interesting that you say that you had more army variety when Orkz were completely mono-build last edition, until Ghaazkhul gave them a second mono-build. Orkz struggled against Sisters of Battle and Dark Eldar unless they built a super nob biker star, I'm not sure how you could have been having interesting games against real 7th edition armies when pretty much everything Orkz had except those two build was trash tier. My guess is that your opponents saw the dire straights you were and started throwing games whether through deliberate list changes or deliberately flubbing tactics.
MagicJuggler wrote: Ummm...what exactly is this "balanced infantry/vehicle mix" you're talking about for Marines, Tai or Guard? I don"t believe I've seen a single Rhino, Chimera, or non-Commander Crisis Suit since this edition came out, and those weren't even "tier 1" choices in the first place.
Really now?
Sigh. So much wrong I don't know where to start. In 7th, era of free razorbacks, Rhino didn't exist. Period. These days I see them sometimes used to transport 10 man units, which is more than you can say about last edition. Even in competitive, SM most common build is razorbacks per 1 troop unit. I often see quadlas Predators too, along with flyers, and dreads. Since when motorized/air cavalry list is not infantry/vehicle mix? And that is without ridiculous, broken crutch of gladius forcing you to do it, people do mix naturally, without being prodded.
Ditto for guard, please find me ONE pure infantry list getting anything in any tournament. Virtually all IG armies I saw in 8th were mixed, both in competitive and in casual games. Tau, too, I saw a lot of command tanks and other vehicles on tables once 8th landed, something that didn't exist at all in 7th. It was all mindless riptidewing/suit spam, something that is NOT balanced and I am glad it's gone. How can anyone without amnesia claim with straight face 'spam best unit, and best unit only' from 7th was in any way better, or even equal to 8th where I see varied, unique armies all the time instead of totally identical, cookie cutter lists (down to last upgrade in the case of eldar/admech) enforced by rulebook itself, I have no idea.
See, this is another problem, the difference in perspective. ONLY lions blade strike forces ever took more than 1 or 2 Razorbacks, the guns were too expensive and weren't any good. about 80% of Battlecompanies took Rhinos with grav cannons so they could use the white scars scout move and decimate.
The rest I agree with. SoB are Mech MSU, we've seen marines do all sorts of different builds with Stormraven, Centurions, asscan spam, IG does everything all at once. OH and Khorne Berserkers in rhinos in an Alpha legion detachment (cultist bomb) is the second strongest overall list archetype in the game right now.
I'm an ork player and i have 15 meganobz. I also am very tired of having to field exclusively boyz to pull a win. The problem is that even if vehicles suddenly get really good, i'll still have to either put a ton of bodies OR a ton of vehicles. In 7-th i could at least use cover and nightfight to mitigate alphastrike vs trukks. 7-th was more fun and tactical unless you played vs cutthroat tourney lists like a screamer star or flyrant spam.
MagicJuggler wrote: Ummm...what exactly is this "balanced infantry/vehicle mix" you're talking about for Marines, Tai or Guard? I don"t believe I've seen a single Rhino, Chimera, or non-Commander Crisis Suit since this edition came out, and those weren't even "tier 1" choices in the first place.
Really now?
Sigh. So much wrong I don't know where to start. In 7th, era of free razorbacks, Rhino didn't exist. Period. These days I see them sometimes used to transport 10 man units, which is more than you can say about last edition. Even in competitive, SM most common build is razorbacks per 1 troop unit. I often see quadlas Predators too, along with flyers, and dreads. Since when motorized/air cavalry list is not infantry/vehicle mix? And that is without ridiculous, broken crutch of gladius forcing you to do it, people do mix naturally, without being prodded.
Ditto for guard, please find me ONE pure infantry list getting anything in any tournament. Virtually all IG armies I saw in 8th were mixed, both in competitive and in casual games. Tau, too, I saw a lot of command tanks and other vehicles on tables once 8th landed, something that didn't exist at all in 7th. It was all mindless riptidewing/suit spam, something that is NOT balanced and I am glad it's gone. How can anyone without amnesia claim with straight face 'spam best unit, and best unit only' from 7th was in any way better, or even equal to 8th where I see varied, unique armies all the time instead of totally identical, cookie cutter lists (down to last upgrade in the case of eldar/admech) enforced by rulebook itself, I have no idea.
1) Rhinos had Fire Points. It was possible to use them for firing Gravdevs out of. In 8th, transports simply to transport are fairly redundant since you have to be static to disembark from them, you can surround them...
2) In Guard, the vehicles you see are: Taurox Primes (not for actually transporting anything, but Gatling Cannons), and artillery of choice. Oh, and Sentinels are in for the "no deepstrike bubble." Because if you don't infiltrate or have chaff...you might as well not play if you're not turn 1.
3) Riptide and suitspam wasn't even that good. Other than Nanivati's nova list, it didn't actually take tournaments in 7th. Scrub harder.
If there was a real issue with 7th, it was the fact it introduced Maelstrom (Random objectives with random scoring), it had too many USRs and non-USRs, and the scoring system was still very "Rocket Tag." What won games in 7th was being able to draw objectives, turbo onto them, and score points before your opponent was allowed to do anything. A lot of this is unfortunately inherent in 40k being IGOUGO, and with the general increase in dice being thrown in 8th, IGOUGO's poor scalability shows even more than ever.
Bull, no tournament ANYWHERE used full maelstrom and even ITCs maelstrom so heavily mitigated the risk that it might as well been 'pick what you want to do.' Not that people didn't still whine about it.
No the problem with 7th WASN'T codex imbalance(although that made it super obvious) it definitely wasn't maelstrom(which is the most pathetic example of grasping at straws I've ever heard) it was SEVENTH EDITION. The rules were and ARE fundamentally broken down to their core, even in heresy. It has no meaningful tactics in 2 out of 4 phases. The psychic phase and assault phase were totally pointless, you couldn't do ANYTHING to have an impact on either. Oh, you cast all your psychic powers, I throw my 2 dice at invis, darn no boxcars, time for shooting. And assault was just 'Excel, but if it hated you.' Movement boiled down to 'move infantry into buildings and immobilize your vehicles' shooting was just 'blow up all his useless vehicles thanks to the doggak AV rules and then flail at whatevers left'. The edition was broken down to it's very core.
8th isn't perfect, but at least it works. (oh but heresy, dur dah hur. Oh yeah? Go try and play custodes in narrative game. They get one new army and the whole thing breaks down.)
Marmatag wrote: Show me a Tyranids or Orks player who looks back fondly at 7th edition.
I’m an ork player, all I play is 7th, won’t touch 8th with a 50 foot grabba stik, and for the record I play against eldar and tau (a lot) and have never had any trouble with them
Orks are actually doing far better in 8th than they were in 7th. But since you're beating Eldar in 7th edition with Orks it's safe to say you're not exactly playing competitive 40k. Or your opponent has never heard of "scatbike" or "wraithknight."
Well so far in 8th I didn't have to tailor lists before the game to create some balance. After playing against Necron decurion in 7h with chaos we realized that there was nothing I could do to win. That changed with Traitor Legions, though.
The best part about 8th is that I can put every model I like on the table or create a cool fluffy list and still stand a chance to win. Because decisions matter now, where in 7th mostly lists mattered and there hardly were any decisions to make.
Choosing psychic powers alone is a huge step forward. In 7th: "Oh, I rolled a 4 - that's invisibility." "Okay, you won, next game please."
malamis wrote: I'll point out that all the factions you've highlighted for 8th are the ones that have their codex out.
Games in 7th were absolutely decided by who got turn 1.
The formation shenanigans strangled the game because they were free upgrades, even outside of the one that actually did give free upgrades, and there was simply *nothing* that could be done about them.
Also, the existence of "look out sir" made character killing an exercise in face chewing frustration with the magical variable armour save. Now it's just "kill all these guys, then kill that guy" with enough options to skip the first step that win-button characters are not the grief they used to be.
If you ever feel nostalgic for 7th, remember the Skyhammer and then the War Con. And if that's not got you depressed enough, the Baronial Court.
What he said. 8th is not perfect but has expanded the variety of units on the table significantly. My Eldar friend has even remembered that the codex includes more than wind riders, wraith knights, and warp spiders.
We need to see how the rest of the codices come out. We still have major factions which are still in index which places them at a lower power level competitively just because they don't have expanded stratagem lists.
I got to play against a Decurion once, but got to play against Eldar several times, as well as different shades of Marine army. For me, the main advantage Chaos had was they could get ML 3 Psykers and Familiars; I ended up going down the Chaos Warband route, because what self-respecting Chaos player only takes a bunch of Cultists and a Primarch?
Anyway, the thing I miss most about 7th is the elimination of USRs and Psychic Power types altogether. Don't get me wrong, 80+ USRs is bad design, but so is relying on regex matching for weapon-types. Likewise, the elimination of Beam means you can end up with powers like:
The Blood Lance has a warp charge value of 6. If manifested, select a visible enemy model within 12" and draw a line between them and the psyker. Roll a D6 for each model the centre of the line passes over. For each roll of 5+ that model's unit suffers a mortal wound.
Ignoring the ambiguous syntax of "them and the Psyker" instead of "the enemy model and the Psyker," does "draw a line between" mean you draw a line segment connected from the Psyker to the target, or does "between" mean I can draw a line from one table edge to another, as long as the line is in "between" both models?
Is this Psychic Power technically considered an attack? If not, is it considered a simultaneous effect? Do the two "for-each" clauses mean that you could potentially square the number of casualties suffered, ala the 6E Pyrovore nuking an entire board? The beautiful thing about this? None of this can form a RAW precedent for similar situations, and RAI must always be inferred (or creatively assumed).
Or let's look at Daemonic Ritual: Instead of moving in their Movement Phase, any CHAOS CHARACTER may, at the end of their Movement Phase, attempt to summon a DAEMON unit with this ability by performing a Daemonic Ritual. Does "with this ability" mean the Chaos Character is using Daemonic Ritual to summon a Daemon, or does it mean that the Daemon has Daemonic Ritual, thus letting a Chaos Character use the Daemon's Daemonic Ritual to summon it? Clearly the fact all these non-character Daemons have Daemonic Ritual must be a typo: Otherwise, the ability would be called Summonable.
Or let's look at "Before deployment starts" versus "before the battle" leading to "can an Ultramarine Warlord roll to get CP back from the Relic Stratagem," ultimately leading to the question of whether a Warlord is considered alive before the battle.
And of course, Chapter Approved gave us revised Character targeting rules...
Marmatag wrote: Show me a Tyranids or Orks player who looks back fondly at 7th edition.
I’m an ork player, all I play is 7th, won’t touch 8th with a 50 foot grabba stik, and for the record I play against eldar and tau (a lot) and have never had any trouble with them
Orks are actually doing far better in 8th than they were in 7th. But since you're beating Eldar in 7th edition with Orks it's safe to say you're not exactly playing competitive 40k. Or your opponent has never heard of "scatbike" or "wraithknight."
No I don’t play competitively and for good reason (the game was designed for narrative) and actually I go up against 2 wraith knights fairly often
MagicJuggler wrote: Likewise, the elimination of Beam means you can end up with powers like:
The Blood Lance has a warp charge value of 6. If manifested, select a visible enemy model within 12" and draw a line between them and the psyker. Roll a D6 for each model the centre of the line passes over. For each roll of 5+ that model's unit suffers a mortal wound.
Ignoring the ambiguous syntax of "them and the Psyker" instead of "the enemy model and the Psyker," does "draw a line between" mean you draw a line segment connected from the Psyker to the target, or does "between" mean I can draw a line from one table edge to another, as long as the line is in "between" both models?
It's very obvious how this power works unless you try to misunderstand it on purpose.
Is this Psychic Power technically considered an attack?
8th clearly defines what an attack is - either one shot during the shooting phase or one strike during the fight phases.
If not, is it considered a simultaneous effect? Do the two "for-each" clauses mean that you could potentially square the number of casualties suffered, ala the 6E Pyrovore nuking an entire board? The beautiful thing about this? None of this can form a RAW precedent for similar situations, and RAI must always be inferred (or creatively assumed).
Or let's look at Daemonic Ritual: Instead of moving in their Movement Phase, any CHAOS CHARACTER may, at the end of their Movement Phase, attempt to summon a DAEMON unit with this ability by performing a Daemonic Ritual. Does "with this ability" mean the Chaos Character is using Daemonic Ritual to summon a Daemon, or does it mean that the Daemon has Daemonic Ritual, thus letting a Chaos Character use the Daemon's Daemonic Ritual to summon it? Clearly the fact all these non-character Daemons have Daemonic Ritual must be a typo: Otherwise, the ability would be called Summonable.
So the rule is bad because you don't like the naming?
Every CHAOS CHARACTER, unless his rules state otherwise, can summon DAEMONs with the Daemonic Ritual rule. DAEMON CHAOS CHARACTERs can summon copies of themselves if you roll high enough.
Nothing about this rule is unclear in any way unless you are being thick on purpose.
Or let's look at "Before deployment starts" versus "before the battle" leading to "can an Ultramarine Warlord roll to get CP back from the Relic Stratagem," ultimately leading to the question of whether a Warlord is considered alive before the battle.
Oh, yeah 7th had no rules with holes at all, and if any, they were FAQed. No, wait!
I bet I can name a broken rule in 7th for every rule you find in 8th. First up: what does Mob Rule do if you field a detachment or formation from Waagh! Ghazkull and roll a six?
Did you know that Waaagh! Ghazghkull had a 1500+ points formation which allowed Ghazghkull Thrakka to generate three additional warlord traits from a table which only contained two that had any effect on him?
And of course, Chapter Approved gave us revised Character targeting rules...
MagicJuggler wrote: Likewise, the elimination of Beam means you can end up with powers like:
The Blood Lance has a warp charge value of 6. If manifested, select a visible enemy model within 12" and draw a line between them and the psyker. Roll a D6 for each model the centre of the line passes over. For each roll of 5+ that model's unit suffers a mortal wound.
Ignoring the ambiguous syntax of "them and the Psyker" instead of "the enemy model and the Psyker," does "draw a line between" mean you draw a line segment connected from the Psyker to the target, or does "between" mean I can draw a line from one table edge to another, as long as the line is in "between" both models?
It's very obvious how this power works unless you try to misunderstand it on purpose.
Is this Psychic Power technically considered an attack?
8th clearly defines what an attack is - either one shot during the shooting phase or one strike during the fight phases.
If not, is it considered a simultaneous effect? Do the two "for-each" clauses mean that you could potentially square the number of casualties suffered, ala the 6E Pyrovore nuking an entire board? The beautiful thing about this? None of this can form a RAW precedent for similar situations, and RAI must always be inferred (or creatively assumed).
Or let's look at Daemonic Ritual: Instead of moving in their Movement Phase, any CHAOS CHARACTER may, at the end of their Movement Phase, attempt to summon a DAEMON unit with this ability by performing a Daemonic Ritual. Does "with this ability" mean the Chaos Character is using Daemonic Ritual to summon a Daemon, or does it mean that the Daemon has Daemonic Ritual, thus letting a Chaos Character use the Daemon's Daemonic Ritual to summon it? Clearly the fact all these non-character Daemons have Daemonic Ritual must be a typo: Otherwise, the ability would be called Summonable.
So the rule is bad because you don't like the naming?
Every CHAOS CHARACTER, unless his rules state otherwise, can summon DAEMONs with the Daemonic Ritual rule. DAEMON CHAOS CHARACTERs can summon copies of themselves if you roll high enough.
Nothing about this rule is unclear in any way unless you are being thick on purpose.
Or let's look at "Before deployment starts" versus "before the battle" leading to "can an Ultramarine Warlord roll to get CP back from the Relic Stratagem," ultimately leading to the question of whether a Warlord is considered alive before the battle.
Oh, yeah 7th had no rules with holes at all, and if any, they were FAQed. No, wait!
I bet I can name a broken rule in 7th for every rule you find in 8th. First up: what does Mob Rule do if you field a detachment or formation from Waagh! Ghazkull and roll a six?
Did you know that Waaagh! Ghazghkull had a 1500+ points formation which allowed Ghazghkull Thrakka to generate three additional warlord traits from a table which only contained two that had any effect on him?
And of course, Chapter Approved gave us revised Character targeting rules...
You should give that page a read before making a fool out of yourself with badly drawn pictures.
A line segment is part of a line, but in itself is not a line due to being bounded by endpoints.
Euclid described a line as "breadthless length" which "lies equally with respect to the points on itself"
RAW, this means for a line to between two models, it would have to intersect with a segment drawn between both points. Geometry 101.
"With this ability" can either mean "can use this ability to summon a Daemon," or "can summon a Daemon that has this ability." English. The "by performing a Daemonic Ritual" is either game terminology or fluff that makes the RAI more ambiguous.
Note: I have posted my share of YMDCs for 7th too. For example, "Can I use Siphon Magic to store dice from turn to turn?" Because Siphon Magic didn't generate Warp Charge, but Tokens that could be spent by their owning model as Warp Charge, and there was no explicit discard pile (or universal rules for how Tokens work), you could argue that said Siphon Magic tokens can be kept in place on a model. Either way, the fact that there are no universal precedents, even within the scope of the FAQs (Keywords and Faction Keywords are functionally the same unless you're Daemons) means this ambiguity will continue to rear its head.
PS: That frontline article is drivel.
The highly sarcastic tone with which the Warhammer 40,000 community page takes when responding to some of the rules questions they get show the contempt with which they hold the abusive RAW arguments that often come up.
Might as well say "GW gets kicks from abusing their playerbase the moment they dare to ask for proper rules."
Anither gripe i have with 8th is how useless summoning is.
Like OK i get it it was too good in 7th but why would i ever summon now when im having to pay full price for units that wont even get access to the buffs they get from being ran in a demons detachment? Overall 8th has some major issues. Now im not saying summoning should be free but summoned units should cost less points.
The best data I could find was at Best Coast Pairings. I've run the numbers so far for January, and there appears to be a surprising amount of balance, although it's a fairly small sample size. The only factions that really seem at all out of whack for balance are Asuryani and Ynnari, and not by much.
I'll try to run the numbers for last year as well to get a better picture of 8th as a whole. Unfortunately there are only about 2 and a half months worth of results from 7th up there, so it'll be a smaller sample relative to 8th when I get there. I'll also plan of adding in more results as they come.
I only looked at tournaments that had at least 20 players, of which there were 12. I looked at total players by faction that attended, made the top 10%, and made the top 4 of each tournament. Below is the standardized residual for each faction for making top 10% or top 4. This is basically showing how many standard deviations the actual results are off from the expected results. Positive numbers performed better than expected, negative performed worse. Anything from -2 to 2 is essentially in the "normal" or "well balanced" range, since it's effectively indistinguishable from completely random results (i.e. if all matches were decided by coin flips for all tournaments, 95% of the results would fall between -2 and 2), and most likely the result of dice rolls and player skill more than faction. Anything greater than 2 or less than -2 is statistically significant enough to safely say there's something about the faction itself causing it to over or under perform. Anything greater than 3 or less than -3 is seriously out of balance for that faction compared to everything else.
TL;DR:
-3.01 or less = Terrible
-3 to -2.01 = Consistently Bad
-2 to 2 = Average
2.01 to 3 = Consistently Good
3.01 or more = Overpowered
Faction______________Players__Top 10%___Top 4
Imperium_____________8______-0.89______-0.21
Adeptus Astartes______33______-0.22______0.03
Blood Angels_________22______-0.81______-1.27
Dark Angels__________14______-0.34______-0.87
Space Wolves_________4______-0.63______-0.83
Deathwatch___________2______-0.45______-0.55
Grey Knights__________5______-0.71______0.22
Astra Militarum________35_____ -0.8_______-0.51
Adeptus Mechanicus___13______-0.26______-0.71
Questor Imerialis_______4______0.95_______0.38
Adeptus Sororitas______4______0.95_______0.87
Chaos_______________5______-0.71______-0.91
Chaos Daemons_______6______-0.77______-1
Heretic Astartes_______30_____-0.46_______0.72
Death Guard__________29_____-0.53______-1.01
Questor Traitoris_______1______-0.32______-0.45
Orks_________________9_____-0.95_______-0.37
Aeldari______________17______1.76_______0.92
Asuryani_____________18______2.76______2.06
Drukhari______________6______-0.77______0.03
Harlequins____________3______-0.55______-0.63
Ynnari_______________8_______2.46______1.88
Necrons______________4______-0.6_______-0.69
T'au________________12______0.64_______0.97
Tyranids_____________23______0.92_______1.31
Genestealer Cults______1______-0.32______-0.45
Most factions came in within 1 standard deviation of the expected results, which is extremely well balanced overall between the factions. Keep in mind that this is less than 1 months worth of data, though, so it's only the most recent small part of the picture since 8th rolled out.
7th was bad. A list I would always crush with was: Psychic tank Ahriman, Screamer Star, summoning spam, and horrors galore. Nothing even remotely fun or balanced about that list. RIP 7th.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Champion of Slaanesh wrote: Anither gripe i have with 8th is how useless summoning is.
Like OK i get it it was too good in 7th but why would i ever summon now when im having to pay full price for units that wont even get access to the buffs they get from being ran in a demons detachment? Overall 8th has some major issues. Now im not saying summoning should be free but summoned units should cost less points.
Summoning is good when used right. It's a good reactionary tactic used to respond directly to lists. You being a full list but leave 400ish points free, and make sure your summoners are safe, then summon what is needed vs the opponent you are playing.
Medicinal Carrots wrote: The best data I could find was at Best Coast Pairings. I've run the numbers so far for January, and there appears to be a surprising amount of balance, although it's a fairly small sample size. The only factions that really seem at all out of whack for balance are Asuryani and Ynnari, and not by much.
I'll try to run the numbers for last year as well to get a better picture of 8th as a whole. Unfortunately there are only about 2 and a half months worth of results from 7th up there, so it'll be a smaller sample relative to 8th when I get there. I'll also plan of adding in more results as they come.
I only looked at tournaments that had at least 20 players, of which there were 12. I looked at total players by faction that attended, made the top 10%, and made the top 4 of each tournament. Below is the standardized residual for each faction for making top 10% or top 4. This is basically showing how many standard deviations the actual results are off from the expected results. Positive numbers performed better than expected, negative performed worse. Anything from -2 to 2 is essentially in the "normal" or "well balanced" range, since it's effectively indistinguishable from completely random results (i.e. if all matches were decided by coin flips for all tournaments, 95% of the results would fall between -2 and 2), and most likely the result of dice rolls and player skill more than faction. Anything greater than 2 or less than -2 is statistically significant enough to safely say there's something about the faction itself causing it to over or under perform. Anything greater than 3 or less than -3 is seriously out of balance for that faction compared to everything else.
TL;DR:
-3.01 or less = Terrible
-3 to -2.01 = Consistently Bad
-2 to 2 = Average
2.01 to 3 = Consistently Good
3.01 or more = Overpowered
Faction______________Players__Top 10%___Top 4
Imperium_____________8______-0.89______-0.21
Adeptus Astartes______33______-0.22______0.03
Blood Angels_________22______-0.81______-1.27
Dark Angels__________14______-0.34______-0.87
Space Wolves_________4______-0.63______-0.83
Deathwatch___________2______-0.45______-0.55
Grey Knights__________5______-0.71______0.22
Astra Militarum________35_____ -0.8_______-0.51
Adeptus Mechanicus___13______-0.26______-0.71
Questor Imerialis_______4______0.95_______0.38
Adeptus Sororitas______4______0.95_______0.87
Chaos_______________5______-0.71______-0.91
Chaos Daemons_______6______-0.77______-1
Heretic Astartes_______30_____-0.46_______0.72
Death Guard__________29_____-0.53______-1.01
Questor Traitoris_______1______-0.32______-0.45
Orks_________________9_____-0.95_______-0.37
Aeldari______________17______1.76_______0.92
Asuryani_____________18______2.76______2.06
Drukhari______________6______-0.77______0.03
Harlequins____________3______-0.55______-0.63
Ynnari_______________8_______2.46______1.88
Necrons______________4______-0.6_______-0.69
T'au________________12______0.64_______0.97
Tyranids_____________23______0.92_______1.31
Genestealer Cults______1______-0.32______-0.45
Most factions came in within 1 standard deviation of the expected results, which is extremely well balanced overall between the factions. Keep in mind that this is less than 1 months worth of data, though, so it's only the most recent small part of the picture since 8th rolled out.
I did the same, including tournaments with 8 or more players. I also did it separately for December.
I confirm your results, apart from Ynnari and Aeldari the factions are having an equal share of wins. At least in January...
Believe me, you don't want to check December, that was some fine mess.
I will state it here, knowing that i will receive a lot of flat for it. Chapter Approved did wonders to the meta.
Darsath wrote: Don't know why Jidmah is opposed to making rules as clear and well-defined as possible.
All the rules Magic Juggler claimed to be problematic are perfectly clear, except for the question of whether a warlord can use its traits before the battle starts.
Most of them could be written slightly more technical, but there is absolutely no question on how they work currently unless you are trying to misunderstand them on purpose of ignore the fact that FAQs exist.
There have never been as little problems with rules in 40k than they have now, due to more careful rule writing on GW's part, FAQs and their designers/community team responding to rule queries.
Therefore I call BS on anyone claiming that rule writing of 8th has a lower quality than 7th.
Marmatag wrote: Show me a Tyranids or Orks player who looks back fondly at 7th edition.
I'm an ork player and I don't look back fondly at 7th edition but I prefer it to the current ones. Simply because now I have way lesser options available even for casual games. With drukhari I have the same feeling, GW nerfed a lot of units without improving anything.
I had better results against the top tiers in 7th than in 8th so far. Without the codex drukhari and orks are almost unplayable for me, one-dimensional and too boring.
Marmatag wrote: Show me a Tyranids or Orks player who looks back fondly at 7th edition.
I'm an ork player and I don't look back fondly at 7th edition but I prefer it to the current ones. Simply because now I have way lesser options available even for casual games. With drukhari I have the same feeling, GW nerfed a lot of units without improving anything.
I had better results against the top tiers in 7th than in 8th so far. Without the codex drukhari and orks are almost unplayable for me, one-dimensional and too boring.
Aye, however at least in 8th edition you're looking at months until your new codex rather than waiting for years to possibly get one before a 9th edition drops.
Marmatag wrote: Show me a Tyranids or Orks player who looks back fondly at 7th edition.
I'm an ork player and I don't look back fondly at 7th edition but I prefer it to the current ones. Simply because now I have way lesser options available even for casual games. With drukhari I have the same feeling, GW nerfed a lot of units without improving anything.
I had better results against the top tiers in 7th than in 8th so far. Without the codex drukhari and orks are almost unplayable for me, one-dimensional and too boring.
Aye, however at least in 8th edition you're looking at months until your new codex rather than waiting for years to possibly get one before a 9th edition drops.
As a DE player, we have been gutted from 5th to 6th, from 6th to 7th, and from 7th to 8th. I MISS 5th DE as an Army, that was amazing... i miss it a lot actually....
What is gone?
Units:
Asdrubael Vect
Lady Malys
Duke Sliscus
Kheradruahk
Baron Sathonyx
Harlequins (but thats ok)
Dais of Destruction
Gear:
Bladevanes
Grenades on most units (most xeno's lost this)
Retro jets
Chain snares
Grisly Trophies
Splinter racks
Enhance Aethersails
(we had Night and flicker fields, we only get 1 now)
Night Vision (not a big one, but still a rule that is gone that made us more unique)
PGL and TGL got rolled into 1
Vex Mask (a weaker Banshee mask)
Envenoms Blades (bladevanes for vehicles)
An actual WWP Orb of Despair
Animus Vitae (something that was fun, helped PFP)
Casket of Flensing
Archangel of Pain (amazing piece of gear that would fit well in 8th, it was a -1 to hit 1 time use item)
What was nerf: (i mean actual hard nerfs, not really point changes)
Wyches (from 5th till now they are nothing like they used to be)
Splinter Cannons (1/2 the shots are gone)
Reavers (Took away the thing that made them special)
Bloodbrides (used to be weapons experts and able to each take a weapon, now only 1 per 5, so.. idk what their point is other than +4pts a model to gain +1 attack.)
Points nerf: Way to long to type lol.
I love 8th, it is for sure more fun with armies that uses ALL the phases, but as a DE player, i honestly want my 5th ed book back.
Marmatag wrote: Show me a Tyranids or Orks player who looks back fondly at 7th edition.
I’m an ork player, all I play is 7th, won’t touch 8th with a 50 foot grabba stik, and for the record I play against eldar and tau (a lot) and have never had any trouble with them
Orks are actually doing far better in 8th than they were in 7th. But since you're beating Eldar in 7th edition with Orks it's safe to say you're not exactly playing competitive 40k. Or your opponent has never heard of "scatbike" or "wraithknight."
I am an Ork main and I absolutely prefer 7th to 8th. For me it has far less to do with game balance than it does the problem of the core game of 8th being shallow and boring. Also an army doing "better" isn't really better if your stuck with 1 viable strategy (spam all da boyz!) and basically anything with a ranged weapon (half the army) is absolute trash. The formations for Orks, while generally not great, did have a few gems that made Orks more interesting in 7th while once again in 8th the Ork rules are just really bland and boring.
Orks are actually doing far better in 8th than they were in 7th.
This is true but only if you consider tournaments. Because those good results with orks are based around the fact that games are limited to three turns and the green tides (the only competitive style of playing orks) completely invalidate the enemy anti tank, which is mandatory against the majority of competitive lists.
In a casual game even a green tide can be countered quite well, by pretty much any army in the game, only drukhari can't really handle all those cheap bodies. And we had different lists that were mid tiers in semi-competitive metas in 7th, which are the ones I'm interested.
Wyches (from 5th till now they are nothing like they used to be)
Haywire grenade deliverers? I've never really seen the Wych Cults good even back in 3rd.
Compare to now lol, I'd rather have Cultists.... at least they really could tie up units, hurt vehicles, and even take on marines, now? Cant do any of that. You used to see Wyches on the table in 5th (and sometimes 2-3 units of them) and that was for Comp list.
Darsath wrote: Don't know why Jidmah is opposed to making rules as clear and well-defined as possible.
All the rules Magic Juggler claimed to be problematic are perfectly clear, except for the question of whether a warlord can use its traits before the battle starts.
Most of them could be written slightly more technical, but there is absolutely no question on how they work currently unless you are trying to misunderstand them on purpose of ignore the fact that FAQs exist.
There have never been as little problems with rules in 40k than they have now, due to more careful rule writing on GW's part, FAQs and their designers/community team responding to rule queries.
Therefore I call BS on anyone claiming that rule writing of 8th has a lower quality than 7th.
The elimination of USRs altogether prevents any rules from serving as precedent for another rule. Another difference was that previous editions from late 4th onward used the format:
Flufftext in italics describing what the power does.
Crunch plaintext describing how to resolve the power, with fluff (Chaos is Fickle!) the exception rather than the norm.
Versus the current format of plaintext containing crunch containing crunch and fluff, sometimes within the same sentence.
I counter-claim BS on rule-writing quality not being any lower. There is a reason "MOST PLAYTESTED EDITION" is a meme. 7th did not require a FAQ for squad coherency, one of the most basic rules of 40k, by simple merit of including a picture diagram of example legal/illegal configurations. "As a single group," had ambiguous context by contrast.
I do not get when people go "lalalalalalalala" when it is pointed out that informal rulewriting creates ammo for That Guy to turn the system into Rulelawyer Judge Judy.
I do not get when people go "lalalalalalalala" when it is pointed out that informal rulewriting creates ammo for That Guy to turn the system into Rulelawyer Judge Judy.
I don't play That Guy. Even if the rules were perfectly written, I still wouldn't play That Guy.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I am amused by the attitude of "get the fluff out of my rules."
I find it as childish as
"Get the rules out of my fluff!"
Keep them adjacent but not mixed, like ammonia and bleach. By themselves, they provide a clean experience, but lead to a toxic atmosphere when put together.
I do not get when people go "lalalalalalalala" when it is pointed out that informal rulewriting creates ammo for That Guy to turn the system into Rulelawyer Judge Judy.
I don't play That Guy. Even if the rules were perfectly written, I still wouldn't play That Guy.
Back in 5th, I fought a Chaos player with a Lash Prince. He tried many a "creative" use of the power, all which I called him out on since as a Psychic Shooting Attack, it was subject to all the same targeting restrictions involved in shooting.
I won the round, but to this day I don't know why got a 0 for my Sportsmanship Score...
ZebioLizard2 wrote: Funny, it seems the people who tend to use "Most playtested edition" as meme seem to be the same people who are already detractors of 8th.
As long as there is a crack they'll stick something in it and hammer it until they're blinded by the dust.
ZebioLizard2 wrote: Funny, it seems the people who tend to use "Most playtested edition" as meme seem to be the same people who are already detractors of 8th.
As long as there is a crack they'll stick something in it and hammer it until they're blinded by the dust.
It's more or less the same group of players that impaled themselves on "3 years of playtesting" for Warmachine MK3.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I once heard someone (you, possibly?) write that "40k players are the architects of their own misery."
That phrase boils to the surface of my mind like, fething constantly reading this forum, lol.
Just read the "Thousand sons are dead thread" for examples of this problem, especially the Original post.
7th wasn't more blanced, it was awfull. Trying to get a fun game in required at least one of the players knowing how to dodge/ gauge power. in 8th some isuues aside most "lists" tend to at lmeast produce a fun game (GK and IG aside).
Gamgee wrote: A high level analysis even from when everyone was at index level showed that there was much less viable armies than 7th. The "balance" of the shrinking top factions has more or less stayed the same since dex’s have dropped. They’ve only made it worse than at launch.
Typically the only people that seem to think it’s fine are imperium and chaos players. Wow what a shocker the same whiny group of people responsible for screwing up 7th so bad as well.
8th is a joke of a competitive game and the viable army lists are shrinking to power creep. Space marine, chaos, and imp players never did like a fair fight and when they ever had even a slight challenge will go online and post giant tirades about how weak they are and then GW listens and makes the meta worse.
The player base has proven itself completely incapable of self balance or regulation in friendly or competitive environments as far as I’m concerned 40k is a dead game. GW of old was only slightly better at balancing factions but at least it was something.
40k is a joke now. From lore to models to tabletop. It’s basicallyly a gakky 30k in every way with no defining features of its own.
That is funny, because I think that it was the whiny tau and eldar players that were the problem . Actually, no I dont. While Tau and Eldar could be toxic to tournament results I would not blame the players for that. It was a cash in at the end of 7th and its why those two factions were so powerful. At that point balance was thrown to the wind and they just focused on sales until the slate could be wiped clean,. But your colorful version of events just doesnt gel with me. But then again im playing chaos so that make makes me a whiny shizboy who doesnt like a fair fight and ruined everything.
I myself like 8th far more than 7th, It isnt perfect by any means and has a few standing issues (alpha strike and 1st turn lists seem to be to strong ect). But overall, for the armies with codex drops, its a much better game. And with the reintroduction of CA, things can only stand to get better. And i hate the smite nerf, its gak and breaks just as much as it fixes (ironically it hurts armies like GK far more than its intended target). But even with horrible rulings aside I think 8th is on the right track.
However it is not always about balance. Maybe I am blessed but I run into casual players FAR FAR more than these mystical WAAC store killers. Yes I know it is luck but I do think the WAAC crew is vastly outnumbered in actual player numbers. Its just they tend to be the loudest voices so have the illusion of a greater representation. 8th has many advantages over 7th for new players. Games have never been faster, easier to set up and more open to newer players than ever before., The lack of special mechanics is not something I enjoy but I can also see how it has done the game as a whole, good. Far less time is spent in the books looking for rules and more in playing the actual game. I have seen more new players in this edition than ive ever seen in 6th and 7th. My point is that while I do not approve of certain rulings I think 8th is on the right track.
ZebioLizard2 wrote: Funny, it seems the people who tend to use "Most playtested edition" as meme seem to be the same people who are already detractors of 8th.
I fear GW has rather made a rod for their own back in pandering to the tournament scene in this addition. I'm sure it's only a minority of tournament players but the internet constantly shows what noise an entitled minority in nerd culture can make. They're ridiculous.
ZebioLizard2 wrote: Funny, it seems the people who tend to use "Most playtested edition" as meme seem to be the same people who are already detractors of 8th.
I fear GW has rather made a rod for their own back in pandering to the tournament scene in this addition. I'm sure it's only a minority of tournament players but the internet constantly shows what noise an entitled minority in nerd culture can make. They're ridiculous.
ZebioLizard2 wrote: Funny, it seems the people who tend to use "Most playtested edition" as meme seem to be the same people who are already detractors of 8th.
I fear GW has rather made a rod for their own back in pandering to the tournament scene in this addition. I'm sure it's only a minority of tournament players but the internet constantly shows what noise an entitled minority in nerd culture can make. They're ridiculous.
It's the best way to crowd-source game balance.
Probably true but I still feel they're more interested in making a war game rpg than a true strategic/competitive war game even in matched play. There's always going to be a disconnect especially now they are pushing this 3 ways of playing thing.
I enjoy playing in tournaments, especially when you get to know the same pool of like 20-30 people that go to the events.
It's also more fun for me now that i can actually play my army without getting brutalized, instead of trying to figure out how i can create the most points-efficient death star.
ZebioLizard2 wrote: Funny, it seems the people who tend to use "Most playtested edition" as meme seem to be the same people who are already detractors of 8th.
I fear GW has rather made a rod for their own back in pandering to the tournament scene in this addition. I'm sure it's only a minority of tournament players but the internet constantly shows what noise an entitled minority in nerd culture can make. They're ridiculous.
It's the best way to crowd-source game balance.
While True
lets see if GW can follow through with it.
7th wasnt even a game 8th isnt perfect but it has the foundation to be much better balanced.
Amishprn86 wrote: lol.. or he is ran out of the store b.c no one plays with him and becomes know as the ass hat.
In my experience being an ass hat and sometimes being competitive are not always one and the same. Turns out people can enjoy games differently.
Thats not the same.
If your that guy, your bad to them, Not all casuals or casual groups are this way, but people talk behind others backs and will let others know that "Hey he is here to win and plays net lists, dont play with that guy"
Its never about what you are doing but how you are doing it.
Yes the goal of playing a game is to win but sitting there being a donkey cave bringing some competitive list against some new players is not going to be enjoyable for one more more people.
just as much as taking a casual/theme list and whining about a competitive list during a Tournament involving cash money.
not being able to perceive social context is a sign that you are a TFG and or have other problems
If to win you cheat, reflect a very bad sportsmanship, etc... then yeah, thats a bad thing. Keep the strawmans to yourself please, nobody has said that playing to win per se is a bad thing.
You know many people play for many reasons, yes winning is one, but for some its not. Even if winning is the end goal for most, there are still other goals as well.
1) Social time, not worrying about, thinking to hard, or playing to win, instead injoying a beer and talking for 5hrs
2) Hobbist, wanting to play and show off the models they worked hard on
3) Just not wanting to place 75 models and removing 25 of them turn 1 without getting to move them (imagine if you played Chess and you had o remove 1/2 your pawns in 1 turn.. not very fun)
4) Wanting to play with different models and lists everytime, but if those models are removed and you cant play with them, thats not fun
5) Likes to play fluffy lists, enjoys the stories and that type of army, you want a long game, 3+ turns, but your 100% sure you will lose by turn 3 and its only turn 1
Should i continue?
Im a more of Comp player, tho i dont want Cheese lists (40 Dark Reapers for exmaple) i do want a strong back and forth hard game (not a rock paper scissor game) but i fully understand casual players and will make lists for those players.
Gamgee wrote: A high level analysis even from when everyone was at index level showed that there was much less viable armies than 7th. The "balance" of the shrinking top factions has more or less stayed the same since dex’s have dropped. They’ve only made it worse than at launch.
Typically the only people that seem to think it’s fine are imperium and chaos players. Wow what a shocker the same whiny group of people responsible for screwing up 7th so bad as well.
It's really rich coming from ardent defender of one of the most garbage, unfun to play, rule-breaking, nonsense-rules and fluff army of the 7th, Tau. Now that Tau were nerfed to place where they really should be in the first place, all you produce is endless stream of complains after seeing for yourself what most Imperial players had to experience during 6th and 7th editions - except not even IG in 8th is nowhere near as broken as Tau were in 7th, you had to ""suffer"" it for several months, not years, and 8th edition Tau are nowhere near as close to the bottom as most Imperial armies were in 7th.
Maybe look for Taunar-sized beam in your eye before you start lamenting microscopic dust in other players?
8th is a joke of a competitive game and the viable army lists are shrinking to power creep. Space marine, chaos, and imp players never did like a fair fight and when they ever had even a slight challenge will go online and post giant tirades about how weak they are and then GW listens and makes the meta worse.
*cough* Riptidewing *cough* was sure epitome of no creep and list variety, eh?
The player base has proven itself completely incapable of self balance or regulation in friendly or competitive environments as far as I’m concerned 40k is a dead game. GW of old was only slightly better at balancing factions but at least it was something.
Yup, I agree. See Tau "we're totally not broken, pretty weak in fact!" players in 7th
If something has shown me 8th with Imperial Guard players is that theres no such thing as "Tau players", or "SM players", or "Eldar players".
Theres just players that play armies that can be OP, balanced or be trash in any given edition, but most players will defend their armies, be it OP or trash.
And everyone is kind of right. I stoped playing 7th edition because it was garbage, but even playing Tau I just didn't wanted to play the 3 units that were busted to have a chance.
There hasn't never been such thing has a "OP army", theres an army that normally has 2-5 options that are OP. So is totally plausible to have a 7th Tau or Eldar player that thinks their army is weak, because their actual army is composed of the units that are weak, as is possible to have a 8th Imperial Guard player that thinks his army is weak because he plays something like IG veterans in chimeras.
Of course, who I'm kidding, this is the internet so everything is black or white.
You know many people play for many reasons, yes winning is one, but for some its not. Even if winning is the end goal for most, there are still other goals as well.
1) Social time, not worrying about, thinking to hard, or playing to win, instead injoying a beer and talking for 5hrs
2) Hobbist, wanting to play and show off the models they worked hard on
3) Just not wanting to place 75 models and removing 25 of them turn 1 without getting to move them (imagine if you played Chess and you had o remove 1/2 your pawns in 1 turn.. not very fun)
4) Wanting to play with different models and lists everytime, but if those models are removed and you cant play with them, thats not fun
5) Likes to play fluffy lists, enjoys the stories and that type of army, you want a long game, 3+ turns, but your 100% sure you will lose by turn 3 and its only turn 1
Should i continue?
Im a more of Comp player, tho i dont want Cheese lists (40 Dark Reapers for exmaple) i do want a strong back and forth hard game (not a rock paper scissor game) but i fully understand casual players and will make lists for those players.
1) why play 40k instead of, say the RPG itself?
2) Not mutually exclusive with playing to win.
3) If a system puts so much emphasis on first-turn advantage...(incidentally, I got seized on in my last 3 games of 7th, and was srill able to recover).
4) So...don't play 8th? Or find a system that isn't IGOUGO?
5) If a game requires a massive disconnect between efficiency to adhere to subjective fluff...
1a) B.c people like the models 1b) B.c they have friends that play it 1c) B.c they they like the game and not RPGs 1d) B.c they enjoy the hobby and the game 1e) They invested into the game but have changed what they want out of it 2) I said it could be 2ndary goals apart from winning, never said they didnt fully care about these, but could greatly effect them and even said most players will still want to win, but again might also have other gaosl 3) what? going 1st shouldn't mean to much if the game was balance 4) See #1
Also like to note that the rules over and over again tell you to "talk" to your opponent about what type of game you 2 are going to have. If you are not doing this then its both players fault.
I'm just trying to show you there are many players out there for different reason and if you truely think everyone is in this game to only win games with toys then you are insanely naive.
In all seriousness, I want to feel like I *earned* my win. I want to compete, and actually play the game without having to wait for my opponent to do everything.
Hence why 40k sticks to IGOUGO continues to baffle me, alongside the general removal of what few choices a player had when it wasn't their turn.
In all seriousness, I want to feel like I *earned* my win. I want to compete, and actually play the game without having to wait for my opponent to do everything.
Hence why 40k sticks to IGOUGO continues to baffle me, alongside the general removal of what few choices a player had when it wasn't their turn.
Then you agree with me, if your in an area with casuals you taking a fully optimised list and winning turn 2 isnt an Earned win.
In all seriousness, I want to feel like I *earned* my win. I want to compete, and actually play the game without having to wait for my opponent to do everything.
Hence why 40k sticks to IGOUGO continues to baffle me, alongside the general removal of what few choices a player had when it wasn't their turn.
I remember watching something about tiny wars or whatever the book was called by HP Mfing lovecraft that was effectively the first miniature war game and IIRC it used IGOUGO. its probably just ingrained into 40k and fantasy as its been around pretty damn long.
Do older Napoleonic and historical (not fow or boltaction) use igug?
I haven't had an amazing amount of games since 8th started (maybe 15 total), and I don't go to tournaments or play competitive games, but so far it has been a lot easier to have a relatively balanced friendly/semi-competitive game than it was in 7th.
During the last year of 7th my group would have to place restrictions like "if you want to play X or Y, then tell me so I don't bring Z because it's too one-sided", " and so on. Hell, tau was a pain to play just because the only way games would be fun was to use the weakest half of the codex.
8th has similar problems, but all the problems I'm experiencing are slowly getting fixed when the respective codices are released. The big problems for me involved having footslogging daemons across the board, orks being useless (I play speed freaks), and most tau suits are overpriced. Well, 1 out of the 3 codices have been released and 1 of my 3 big problems has been fixed.
I'll wait until all the codexes are out before I bother whining/celebrating, but so far GW has impressed me. Not 100% of the time, but enough to start to trust them a tad more. Still cautious of codex creep though
In 7th ed, almost every game I had resulted in both players having models on the table still, but the outcome was almost always predictable as early as turn 1, sometimes even deployment depending on how epic a deathstar one player formed over the other.
In 8th ed, almost every game I've had resulted in one player not having ANY models on the table still, but the outcome of the game has been anyone's guess on up to even turn 3. There've even been a few that came down to every last guy shooting at the end of turn 5.
There's some outliers there. The only army I've lost to with IG is Eldar/Ynarri, but I've beaten them too. I heavily lost a game with SM/GK against Eldar. I beat a SW/BA (post codex) army with DA.
The balance isn't perfect, but from my own experience, it seems much closer than I remember it being since 5th.
In all seriousness, I want to feel like I *earned* my win. I want to compete, and actually play the game without having to wait for my opponent to do everything.
Hence why 40k sticks to IGOUGO continues to baffle me, alongside the general removal of what few choices a player had when it wasn't their turn.
Then you agree with me, if your in an area with casuals you taking a fully optimised list and winning turn 2 isnt an Earned win.
Inversely, making the game overemphasize the list instead of the game...
...mind, I ran Chaos Space Marines, and it threw most players off by a long shot.
I've run the numbers on the tournaments in the last 2 and a half months of 7th. I'll spare everyone the full breakdown by faction, but the short highlights are:
Last months of 7th had 28 factions played
For top 10%, 16 factions were within 1 deviation of expected results, 10 between 1 and 2 deviations, and 2 factions more than 2 deviations away
For top 4, 18 factions within 1 deviation of expected, 8 from 1 to 2, 1 faction from 2 to 3, and 1 faction more than 3 deviations from expected
Compared to January of this year which had 26 factions played.
Top 10 % had 23 within 1 deviation, 1 between 1 and 2, and 2 more than 2 deviations away
Top 4 had 20 within 1 deviation, 5 between 1 and 2, and 1 more than 1 deviations away
As a quick and dirty metric of overall balance, I took the standard deviation of the all standardized residuals. The lower the number, the closer to statistical faction balance the environment is:
Top 10%
7th: 1.11
Jan 2018: 1.02
Top 4
7th: 1.22
Jan 2018: 0.90
So 8th as it currently stands does indeed appear to have a better faction balance than 8th did at the end. This is a relatively small data set for 8th, though. I'll look forward to updating it with LVO and other results, and looking at 8th stats from before Chapter Approved.
I'll also note that 8th is doing that with fewer differences between tournament rules and the standard edition rules as well - no real extensive ITC, NOVA, etc FAQ that significantly change the rules, mainly different mission sets, which 7th also had.
In all seriousness, I want to feel like I *earned* my win. I want to compete, and actually play the game without having to wait for my opponent to do everything.
Hence why 40k sticks to IGOUGO continues to baffle me, alongside the general removal of what few choices a player had when it wasn't their turn.
Aside from alpha strike you had all the choices leading up to that turn. And even with alpha strike you have choice in list making and deployment.
In all seriousness, I want to feel like I *earned* my win. I want to compete, and actually play the game without having to wait for my opponent to do everything.
Hence why 40k sticks to IGOUGO continues to baffle me, alongside the general removal of what few choices a player had when it wasn't their turn.
I remember watching something about tiny wars or whatever the book was called by HP Mfing lovecraft that was effectively the first miniature war game and IIRC it used IGOUGO. its probably just ingrained into 40k and fantasy as its been around pretty damn long.
Do older Napoleonic and historical (not fow or boltaction) use igug?
You're thinking of Little Wars by HG Wells. Alas that he had not the foresight to include the Martians or Morlocks as actual playable armies (granted: Martians and morlocks would be a boss name for a game). It didn't use dice either, but spring-loaded toy cannons.
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Medicinal Carrots wrote: I've run the numbers on the tournaments in the last 2 and a half months of 7th. I'll spare everyone the full breakdown by faction, but the short highlights are:
Last months of 7th had 28 factions played
For top 10%, 16 factions were within 1 deviation of expected results, 10 between 1 and 2 deviations, and 2 factions more than 2 deviations away
For top 4, 18 factions within 1 deviation of expected, 8 from 1 to 2, 1 faction from 2 to 3, and 1 faction more than 3 deviations from expected
Compared to January of this year which had 26 factions played.
Top 10 % had 23 within 1 deviation, 1 between 1 and 2, and 2 more than 2 deviations away
Top 4 had 20 within 1 deviation, 5 between 1 and 2, and 1 more than 1 deviations away
As a quick and dirty metric of overall balance, I took the standard deviation of the all standardized residuals. The lower the number, the closer to statistical faction balance the environment is:
Top 10%
7th: 1.11
Jan 2018: 1.02
Top 4
7th: 1.22
Jan 2018: 0.90
So 8th as it currently stands does indeed appear to have a better faction balance than 8th did at the end. This is a relatively small data set for 8th, though. I'll look forward to updating it with LVO and other results, and looking at 8th stats from before Chapter Approved.
I'll also note that 8th is doing that with fewer differences between tournament rules and the standard edition rules as well - no real extensive ITC, NOVA, etc FAQ that significantly change the rules, mainly different mission sets, which 7th also had.
Scoring by faction is arguably loaded though ever since 6th added allies. I remember reading about Orks winning Wargamescon 2015 for example...only it wasn't Orks. It was a Daemon army, Fateweaver and all, and it took Mogrok's Bossboyz to add +1 to Seize and some throwaway Shokk Attack Gunz, but mostly to turn off the Warp Storm.
Of course, Wargamescon 2017 was a Superfriends list of 5 Culexus Assassins, 3 Vindicare, 3 Eversor, Gulliman, Draigo, Celestine, etc all taking full advantage of Character targeting rules. In fact, a single unit of Retributors was the only non-Character unit.
Dakkacon 2017 was a "Tyranid + Elysian" list with a single Acolyte as a linker, etc.
How do you actually measure faction balance under these metrics? In 7th, soup was a problem but in a different way.
How do you actually measure faction balance under these metrics? In 7th, soup was a problem but in a different way.
On one hand, you can argue that what's really happening is the removal of a lot of factions that didn't really need to be factions in the first place. There are a good number of factions that are only defined by what color you paint the same set of models (which is weird when alt color schemes are a thing...). If you consolidate them down, you're talking more about internal faction balance than anything.
By the same token, its actually fairly surprising how many unit options in the game lack meaningful differences in the model line. Outside of the obvious Red marines vs Blue marines vs Spikey marines, Grey Knights are notably bad for going way out of their way in trying to make an entire faction out of like.... 3 kits. Knights are also pretty humorous for giving us 4 options that are identical outside of which weapon option they take. There's lots of stuff like this, but overall I think direction of fewer factions with more diverse model ranges is way more interesting than "how little do I need to add to make this technically a new faction?" I know I'm personally way happier with the idea that a new release might add to my existing army rather than needing to buy 2-3 of everything to try and reach 2000 points.
in 7th I played a game where thanks to gladius formation I ended a game with more points in models on the field than the supposed game that was being played. note me and the opponent did this on purpose to show A how bad orks were with one of the strongest possible orks lists at the time vs showing how stupid OP formations could be.
by comparison I have never seen that unbalanced level in 8th sure things need adjusting but 7th was rough.
G00fySmiley wrote: in 7th I played a game where thanks to gladius formation I ended a game with more points in models on the field than the supposed game that was being played. note me and the opponent did this on purpose to show A how bad orks were with one of the strongest possible orks lists at the time vs showing how stupid OP formations could be.
Except there really was only a couple of formations thay were broken. I'm not defending what 7th became, but let's not pretend it was Formations in general. Most of them were just good to super terrible. Gladius/Battle Demi-Company, Aspect Shrine, etc were exceptions, not the rule.
G00fySmiley wrote: in 7th I played a game where thanks to gladius formation I ended a game with more points in models on the field than the supposed game that was being played. note me and the opponent did this on purpose to show A how bad orks were with one of the strongest possible orks lists at the time vs showing how stupid OP formations could be.
Except there really was only a couple of formations thay were broken. I'm not defending what 7th became, but let's not pretend it was Formations in general. Most of them were just good to super terrible. Gladius/Battle Demi-Company, Aspect Shrine, etc were exceptions, not the rule.
FW formations were banned b.c how strong they where. Apoc blast D weapons.. for like 600pts-650pts (cant remember) but if you killed 1 of the 3 models you still have 2 more warp hunters...., i mean come on...
G00fySmiley wrote: in 7th I played a game where thanks to gladius formation I ended a game with more points in models on the field than the supposed game that was being played. note me and the opponent did this on purpose to show A how bad orks were with one of the strongest possible orks lists at the time vs showing how stupid OP formations could be.
Except there really was only a couple of formations thay were broken. I'm not defending what 7th became, but let's not pretend it was Formations in general. Most of them were just good to super terrible. Gladius/Battle Demi-Company, Aspect Shrine, etc were exceptions, not the rule.
The players have their role in imbalance as well. I took Aspect Shrines but there's a difference between my Shrine of Banshees, Spears and Scorpions and one of three Warp Spiders.
G00fySmiley wrote: in 7th I played a game where thanks to gladius formation I ended a game with more points in models on the field than the supposed game that was being played. note me and the opponent did this on purpose to show A how bad orks were with one of the strongest possible orks lists at the time vs showing how stupid OP formations could be.
Except there really was only a couple of formations thay were broken. I'm not defending what 7th became, but let's not pretend it was Formations in general. Most of them were just good to super terrible. Gladius/Battle Demi-Company, Aspect Shrine, etc were exceptions, not the rule.
FW formations were banned b.c how strong they where. Apoc blast D weapons.. for like 600pts-650pts (cant remember) but if you killed 1 of the 3 models you still have 2 more warp hunters...., i mean come on...
You're not really proving me wrong so I don't know what you're trying to say.
G00fySmiley wrote: in 7th I played a game where thanks to gladius formation I ended a game with more points in models on the field than the supposed game that was being played. note me and the opponent did this on purpose to show A how bad orks were with one of the strongest possible orks lists at the time vs showing how stupid OP formations could be.
Except there really was only a couple of formations thay were broken. I'm not defending what 7th became, but let's not pretend it was Formations in general. Most of them were just good to super terrible. Gladius/Battle Demi-Company, Aspect Shrine, etc were exceptions, not the rule.
FW formations were banned b.c how strong they where. Apoc blast D weapons.. for like 600pts-650pts (cant remember) but if you killed 1 of the 3 models you still have 2 more warp hunters...., i mean come on...
You're not really proving me wrong so I don't know what you're trying to say.
Im saying there was many formations not just the few you said. It wasnt a couple.. that book alone had many, tho 3 in it were really bad (banned from ITC/Adepticon and many others). I wasnt trying to prove you wrong either, just saying there was more than you thought........
which made your units supernaturally accurate for bringing a grand total of three of them for no reason (other than Kelly making Eldar 
