I really hope the problem they discovered is that going first is way too big of an advantage. Nids excel at winning the Alpha Strike game, and 8th is all about the Alpha.

It would be really nice to have turns 3-5 matter a bit more than they do right now. It would also be nice if going 2nd didn't drastically reduce the win probability for "normal" army builds.

While I agree with the sentiment, I feel like the first turn advantage is a side affect of the game being designed to flow quickly. Well, at least quicker than prior editions.
One of the things that slowed down gameplay previously is units that were dang hard to kill.
The new AP system and Damage mechanic are a godsend for this, however it does make who goes first way more important.

A decent fix is going to be hard to find without shifting the balance to make the second player have the advantage, or simply slowing down the inevitable until turn 2.

-

Maybe a general stratagem that mimics second edition's hidden and/or overwatch that can only be used against players taking the first turn?

Realistically, addressing this would basically require a new edition.

The problem isn't just the very first game turn -- the flyrant list is strong in part because it can alpha strike even if it goes second. The problem isn't just the first round -- deep strike lists could just wait a turn. The problem isn't just shooting -- Alpha Legion Berzerkers, Blood Angels, Shining Spears, and Mortarion are in CC turn 1.

You'd basically need to change one of three core features of the game. Either you...

1. Abandon player turns entirely and go to something more like players taking turns activating units.

2. Drastically reduce offensive efficiency across the board for all units.

3. Massively limit the ability for anything to attack without spending several turns moving around.

Obviously (1) is just a total redesign of the game. (2) would be easy to do -- you just add another roll to every attack where on a 3+ it fails entirely, or you give everything 3x wounds, or whatever -- but means that games would take much longer (this also buffs slow CC somewhat). (3) is also basically a redesign -- you'd need to strip deep strike from most things, or make it so that you can't take any other actions on the turn you deep strike, and you'd want to limit weapon ranges to perhaps 18" on a regular board (which seems kind of silly for artillery).

I've always thought the game might be improved with rolling to determine deployment, and then rolling again after deployment to determine first turn.

Honestly, making Reserves come randomly and only on turn 2 would be a REALLY strong move towards balancing First and Second turns.

Right now, there is absolutely no reason to start a unit on the table if it can Deepstrike. This is stupid. Strategy games should always be about making decisions.

It's the exact same thing with Plasma. Since it's basically risk-free to Overheat all the time, people just Overheat all the time.

Dionysodorus wrote:
Realistically, addressing this would basically require a new edition.

The problem isn't just the very first game turn -- the flyrant list is strong in part because it can alpha strike even if it goes second. The problem isn't just the first round -- deep strike lists could just wait a turn. The problem isn't just shooting -- Alpha Legion Berzerkers, Blood Angels, Shining Spears, and Mortarion are in CC turn 1.

You'd basically need to change one of three core features of the game. Either you...

1. Abandon player turns entirely and go to something more like players taking turns activating units.

2. Drastically reduce offensive efficiency across the board for all units.

3. Massively limit the ability for anything to attack without spending several turns moving around.

Obviously (1) is just a total redesign of the game. (2) would be easy to do -- you just add another roll to every attack where on a 3+ it fails entirely -- but means that games would take much longer (this also buffs slow CC somewhat). (3) is also basically a redesign -- you'd need to strip deep strike from most things, or make it so that you can't take any other actions on the turn you deep strike, and you'd want to limit weapon ranges to perhaps 18" on a regular board (which seems kind of silly for artillery).

And Alpha-Striking is still possible for point (1). I see it a lot, but I've played a few alternating activation games and in my experience, if alpha is powerful, then alpha is powerful, whether it's from activating your whole army first, or activating one powerful unit first.

Just think about the assault phase right now in 40k if you need an example: swinging first is a powerful ability, even with alternating activation. In a 1v1 scenario, it's basically turn-based anyways, and even in a 1v3 or 1v4 scenario, if the 1 gets to go first it can still cripple or annihilate the greatest threat to it with no risk of response. Alternating activation does not solve the alpha problem - it just redefines it in terms of single, powerful units. A Baneblade will alpha super well in an alternating-activation system.

Reemule wrote:
I've always thought the game might be improved with rolling to determine deployment, and then rolling again after deployment to determine first turn.

Isn't that exactly what's done now? They changed it from the person who finishes deploying first going first, to just getting +1 on the roll for first turn...

Dionysodorus wrote:
Realistically, addressing this would basically require a new edition.

This is the correct answer. The only solution is a new edition that makes 40k a wargame, instead of a CCG with "cards" you have to paint yourself. And I'm glad people are finally starting to agree with what I was saying from day one, that 8th edition is a dumpster fire of bad design.

 Nym wrote:
Honestly, making Reserves come randomly and only on turn 2 would be a REALLY strong move towards balancing First and Second turns.

Right now, there is absolutely no reason to start a unit on the table if it can Deepstrike. This is stupid. Strategy games should always be about making decisions.

It's the exact same thing with Plasma. Since it's basically risk-free to Overheat all the time, people just Overheat all the time.

1) You're right, but I'm not sure how to fix it. "Reserves come in randomly" doesn't really fix it, as either it is so random the choice is automatically not to deepstrike (e.g. something like a 4+ with no re-rolls or modifiers per unit) or it is "random-but-not-really" (e.g. Comes in on a 2+, Special Character X re-rolls 1s for reserve rolls)

2) It's not risk free. The problem with plasma overheat is the re-rolls from characters, not the plasma itself. That's what makes it risk free.

JohnMarik wrote:

Reemule wrote:
I've always thought the game might be improved with rolling to determine deployment, and then rolling again after deployment to determine first turn.

Isn't that exactly what's done now? They changed it from the person who finishes deploying first going first, to just getting +1 on the roll for first turn...

Yep. Its Irony.

 Nym wrote:
Honestly, making Reserves come randomly and only on turn 2 would be a REALLY strong move towards balancing First and Second turns.

Right now, there is absolutely no reason to start a unit on the table if it can Deepstrike. This is stupid. Strategy games should always be about making decisions.

It's the exact same thing with Plasma. Since it's basically risk-free to Overheat all the time, people just Overheat all the time.

I agree. Restricting deep strike would go a long way.

More detailed cover rules would help, too. I don't think cover is useless in 8th edition (in 7th I played against Tau - THAT was useless), but it's a bit bland and basically only useful for infantry and moreso for infantry that already has a good armour save (not that the hordes need any more help, though).

 Peregrine wrote:

Dionysodorus wrote:
Realistically, addressing this would basically require a new edition.

This is the correct answer. The only solution is a new edition that makes 40k a wargame, instead of a CCG with "cards" you have to paint yourself. And I'm glad people are finally starting to agree with what I was saying from day one, that 8th edition is a dumpster fire of bad design.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out!

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Don't let the door hit you on the way out!

What a compelling and insightful defense of GW and 8th edition.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
2) It's not risk free. The problem with plasma overheat is the re-rolls from characters, not the plasma itself. That's what makes it risk free.

That was implied. The problem indeed comes from re-rolling 1's.

As for Reserves, it used to be 4+, 3+ and 2+ from turn 4 and onwards, wasn't it ? I think it would work just as well in 8th edition. You could re-roll it with Command Points of course.

Edit : this would also make summoning more attractive, as you would be able to Deepstrike something with perfect timing instead of rolling randomly.

 Nym wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
2) It's not risk free. The problem with plasma overheat is the re-rolls from characters, not the plasma itself. That's what makes it risk free.

That was implied. The problem indeed comes from re-rolling 1's.

As for Reserves, it used to be 4+, 3+ and 2+ from turn 4 and onwards, wasn't it ? I think it would work just as well in 8th edition. You could re-roll it with Command Points of course.

It was, and I don't remember anyone that used it that way. If they had something that needed reserves, they brought <Unit X> (like the Land Raider Prometheus, or various characters, or enhanced comm array wargear, etc) that modified or re-rolled reserves. Otherwise, they just avoided it, usually. I know I did.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
"Reserves come in randomly" doesn't really fix it, as either it is so random the choice is automatically not to deepstrike (e.g. something like a 4+ with no re-rolls or modifiers per unit)

This is rather obviously false given the fact that deep strike worked this way in previous editions, and people still used it (and won lots of games with it).

In order to break alpha strike you need to increase durability or at the least make it more efficient cost wise directly or indirectly.

Part of it is terrain and stuff tough. A great power of alpha strike comes from near 100% targetting efficiency. There is almost nothing stopping you from making perfect target decisions. This is btw also a great power of a flyrant or manticore. It will "get" to its target.

Peregrine wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
"Reserves come in randomly" doesn't really fix it, as either it is so random the choice is automatically not to deepstrike (e.g. something like a 4+ with no re-rolls or modifiers per unit)

This is rather obviously false given the fact that deep strike worked this way in previous editions, and people still used it (and won lots of games with it).

Unit1126PLL wrote:
It was, and I don't remember anyone that used it that way. If they had something that needed reserves, they brought <Unit X> (like the Land Raider Prometheus, or various characters, or enhanced comm array wargear, etc) that modified or re-rolled reserves. Otherwise, they just avoided it, usually. I know I did.

Drop Pods were the most popular deep striking unit after they were introduced, and they were popular because 50% of them didn't have to roll for reserves (among other things).

Melta storm troopers, hiding units in reserve to avoid the alpha strike, etc. I put units in reserve all the time back in 5th edition when you had to get a 4+ on turn 2. Maybe you never figured out how to make it work, but some of us did.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
"Reserves come in randomly" doesn't really fix it, as either it is so random the choice is automatically not to deepstrike (e.g. something like a 4+ with no re-rolls or modifiers per unit)

This is rather obviously false given the fact that deep strike worked this way in previous editions, and people still used it (and won lots of games with it).

Not if you knew what you were doing. People didn't rely on DS without shenanigans to affect reserve rolls. 7th was dominated by deathstars and the didn't rely on deepstrike. And summoning demon lists just trew buckets of dice/WC at the problem so they would more reliably get the average.

I disagree on making reserves random from turn 2. We have years of data showing how this makes deep striking units more of a liability than anything. Why else would each edition have made it easier to bring them in?

However, I could see bringing in the reserves on a 3+ from turn 1. Possibly include a stratagem that makes this a 2+ for a single unit.
That would create the possibility on not brining in a crucial unit when you need it, without limiting it to later turns. This should allow lists with 2-3 units work just fine, while armies that "choose" to rely on many units dropping in a bit less Alpha-striky

 Peregrine wrote:
Melta storm troopers, hiding units in reserve to avoid the alpha strike, etc. I put units in reserve all the time back in 5th edition when you had to get a 4+ on turn 2. Maybe you never figured out how to make it work, but some of us did.

I did figure out how to make it work... with a 10-pt wargear upgrade that gave me modifiers, or an astropath that gave me re-rolls, or a master of the fleet that gave me modifiers...

...seriously peregrine, do you even read my posts?

I said either it would be randumb and unreliable, in which case no one would use it, or it would come with ways to make it reliable, in which case, people will use it... but then it's just reliable, so essentially the same as it is now except for a small chance of failure which has no player input at all. I thought you were all about player input?

 Nym wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
2) It's not risk free. The problem with plasma overheat is the re-rolls from characters, not the plasma itself. That's what makes it risk free.

That was implied. The problem indeed comes from re-rolling 1's.

As for Reserves, it used to be 4+, 3+ and 2+ from turn 4 and onwards, wasn't it ? I think it would work just as well in 8th edition. You could re-roll it with Command Points of course.

Edit : this would also make summoning more attractive, as you would be able to Deepstrike something with perfect timing instead of rolling randomly.

Random reserves is pretty terrible, I am very much glad to see that mechanic long gone.

I agree first turn advantage is too much. Here is what I would do:

1) In the first Battle Round, all hit rolls are at -1. Call it night fighting, call it a penalty to represent that the army has just arrived at the warzone and is pooped/disoriented... Whatever

2) No deep striking in the first Battle Round. Let the ground troops fight it out for a round first.

3) Raven Guard/Alpha Legion etc strat is changed to a simple infiltrate deployment. Current wording allows way too much cheese!

You won't see a major shift to IGOUGO, despite GW sneaking in some "fixes" of their own in random scenarios and a few codices. GW knows going first is too strong unless your table is covered with terrain, but a fix would be way too difficult.

 Peregrine wrote:

This is the correct answer. The only solution is a new edition that makes 40k a wargame, instead of a CCG with "cards" you have to paint yourself. And I'm glad people are finally starting to agree with what I was saying from day one, that 8th edition is a dumpster fire of bad design.

Just last Saturday I played Tau vs Eldar, and turn 1 was mostly about positioning and handling screening units. In my last tournament I played IG vs IG and first turn saw only a single leman russ lost on both sides thanks to smart play and cover.

8th is a great edition, and solid lists have many ways to mitigate getting alphastruck off the table. The game demands new strategies and playstyles, and it's not GWs fault that you're incapable to adapt your thinking.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I said either it would be randumb and unreliable, in which case no one would use it

Don't make such wide generalisations. I've played Orks for 4 editions, we've hardly ever had any way to modify Reserve rolls, and still many Ork players have used planes, Deffkoptas and other units that needed to roll in order to show up on the table.

Also, people didn't use Reserves because it was DEADLY. A 400pts unit of Terminators could evaporate with a bad scatter. Now that scatter is out of the equation, rolling for Reserves would work a lot better.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I said either it would be randumb and unreliable, in which case no one would use it

You said it, but repeating it over and over again doesn't make it true. Back in 5th edition I'd often put my entire army in reserve, without any reserve modifiers, and win games because of it. The power of reserves, especially with alternate deployment options, is sufficient that even a high price in randomness is still worth paying. And perhaps you should think about the fact that in good game design you don't always use every option you have available. If deep striking (and reserves in general) is unreliable enough that you often decline to use the option then things are working as intended.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galef wrote:
Why else would each edition have made it easier to bring them in?

Because GW is targeting a market that wants a CCG with expensive "cards", involving minimal skill or thought. Reserves have to happen sooner so that models get on the table faster and you roll more dice ASAP. It's the same reason why 8th lets you deep strike with no scatter, get easy turn-1 charges, shoot with effectively zero concern for LOS anywhere on the table, etc. The closer the game comes to "put all your models on the table and then roll dice until you roll enough dice" the better.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Stux wrote:
1) In the first Battle Round, all hit rolls are at -1. Call it night fighting, call it a penalty to represent that the army has just arrived at the warzone and is pooped/disoriented... Whatever

Only if you don't allow it to stack with other -1 penalties, otherwise you have the absurd situation where low-BS armies can't even attempt to shoot on the first turn.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I said either it would be randumb and unreliable, in which case no one would use it

You said it, but repeating it over and over again doesn't make it true. Back in 5th edition I'd often put my entire army in reserve, without any reserve modifiers, and win games because of it. The power of reserves, especially with alternate deployment options, is sufficient that even a high price in randomness is still worth paying. And perhaps you should think about the fact that in good game design you don't always use every option you have available. If deep striking (and reserves in general) is unreliable enough that you often decline to use the option then things are working as intended.

You speak with conviction but not with truth. In 5th edition, reserving your entire army lost you the game because you'd have 0 models on the table at the end of a battle round game turn, since nothing came in Turn 1. It only worked for pod armies, because things did come in turn 1. If you were winning games with your entire army in reserve without reserve modifiers, then it's no wonder you won: you cheated.

And I disagree in general; perhaps in casual play, randumb is good, but in high-stakes competitive play, it was "bring reserve modification of some kind, or don't reserve." You either built your army list around certain units being in reserve, or you didn't.

And yes, Orks may have put stuff in reserve, but they were hardly a high-stakes competitive army (except 5th Edition's Nob Bikers, which had nothing to do with reserves and was before they had fliers).

EDIT:
6th Edition may have been the edition to introduce the game-turn tabling condition, in which case it was legal in 5th to reserve your whole army and have units come in piecemeal on a 4+. I still don't believe it was used in high-stakes competitive play. My memory is hazy.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
In 5th edition, reserving your entire army lost you the game because you'd have 0 models on the table at the end of a battle round game turn, since nothing came in Turn 1. It only worked for pod armies, because things did come in turn 1. If you were winning games with your entire army in reserve without reserve modifiers, then it's no wonder you won: you cheated.

Might want to get your facts straight before making posts like this. The rule for auto-loss at the end of the turn did not exist in 5th, it was introduced in 6th.

You either built your army list around certain units being in reserve, or you didn't.

Or you considered the reserves a limited supporting element and didn't go all-in on buffing them. Melta storm troopers were a cheap and efficient unit, deep striking in to attack tanks, even without any buffs to their reserve rolls. You could easily throw in 105/210 points for them alongside your other stuff and win with them.

Some armies don't have a great alpha strike and it's interesting to note why. Necrons and Orks are two that spring to mind and in both cases they lack three things a lot of other armies have:

1. Range. Most of their weapons are short ranged, and even "long range" weapons tend to be 36".

2. Re-rolls/buffs. Neither army gets meaningful re-roll auras to hit or wound (Necrons will get wound re-rolls in the new Codex though). Any buffs they give out tend to be targeted to specific units, not based on an aura.

3. Lack of mass deep strike. They're basically tied to their deployment zone bar a few options, usually unlocked via characters.

The current alpha strike problems stem entirely from some huge errors on GW's part in the core design of the game and a continuing failure to recognise the problems caused by certain rules. Marines re-rolling everything, with a strong long-range firebase is not only mindless in the extreme, it's dull for all involved, for example. One look at a SM Captain babysitting a bunch of Predators and Devastators would tell GW something's wrong with their philosophy. I'd much rather see a Captain affect a single unit, perhaps at 12" rather than all units within 6". Right now it's like we have a bunch of really timid supersoldiers, all clustered around their mate for protection.

For 'Nids, the Tyrant buff in the Codex gave them extra durability in 3 different ways: extra Toughness, better Invulnerable and Deep Strike. Combine that with a huge amount of dakka and they too are a mindless unit. Custodes Shield Captains are similar with the amount of firepower and resilience they have. Does any single model really need 12 shots (with rerolls in some cases)? I think not.

Sadly that's the way the game is now and nothing short of a huge change in direction is likely to fix it.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
In 5th edition, reserving your entire army lost you the game because you'd have 0 models on the table at the end of a battle round game turn, since nothing came in Turn 1. It only worked for pod armies, because things did come in turn 1. If you were winning games with your entire army in reserve without reserve modifiers, then it's no wonder you won: you cheated.

Might want to get your facts straight before making posts like this. The rule for auto-loss at the end of the turn did not exist in 5th, it was introduced in 6th.

Already mentioned in my edit.

 Peregrine wrote:

You either built your army list around certain units being in reserve, or you didn't.

Or you considered the reserves a limited supporting element and didn't go all-in on buffing them. Melta storm troopers were a cheap and efficient unit, deep striking in to attack tanks, even without any buffs to their reserve rolls. You could easily throw in 105/210 points for them alongside your other stuff and win with them.

You could, yes, but I don't remember that ever being important. The victories I remember Reserves winning in competitive play were victories that involved reserve modification and shenanigans. At least in my local area and any major tournament I ever heard about, the basic 4+ on Turn 2 reserve roll was essentially never used. Also, storm-troopers were 16ppm and garbage, so they were also never used.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
The victories I remember Reserves winning in competitive play were victories that involved reserve modification and shenanigans.

Probably because you only remember the spectacular reserve-focused lists and have forgotten all of the times a random 105 point melta squad dropped in and did more than 105 points worth of damage.

Also, storm-troopers were 16ppm and garbage, so they were also never used.

Lolwut. No. Storm troopers were never used as a "normal" unit, they were used as a pair of BS 4 melta guns for 105 points that could re-roll their scatter dice on arrival. But they were a very strong unit in 5th edition.

Well - with deep strike being handed out like candy - there needs a suitable counter.

Putting out a ton of chaff helps but if deepstrike is going to be so prevalent - interceptor within 12 inches also needs to be more prevalent. Perhaps tau will put this crap to bed in the meta but the real core issue here is the flyrant is getting close combat ability for free. MRC is a 20 point weapon (at least).

Another issue is mawlocks. Their attack is screwing up order of operations here - they kill units in the movement phase allowing tyrants to bypass your screens. This is an easy fix - just change the phase the mawlock makes it's attacks in - make it the shooting phase. Now even with 7 tyrants you aren't hitting anything valuable turn 1 with assault.

I'd like to hear from people that were actually at Adepticon and read what they have to say, and the interactions they had with the GW staff that made them pause on issuing the March FAQ. I had no idea that GW sent someone high enough up the food chain in the company to be able to issue a "FAQ Pause" and shows that they are taking the tournament scene seriously.

As a side note, it's been a long, long time since GW took the events from a private convention they were not running to influence the rules of the game. There was the LVO incident of last year and flyers, but we'll have to see what came out of Adepticon. This is a welcome change in GW policy and shows they are listening to the players.

For first turn player only, count all models as moving (so heavies will always be -1 to hit) and count all enemy as in cover (+1 to save throws). This helps to reduce some of the Alpha Strike (but not all obviously).

 bullyboy wrote:
For first turn player only, count all models as moving (so heavies will always be -1 to hit) and count all enemy as in cover (+1 to save throws). This helps to reduce some of the Alpha Strike (but not all obviously).

I don't think that covers enough personally.

Firstly it only nerfs shooty alpha strikes, melee ones (either using Strike from the Shadows or Warptime, or similar effects) are still potentially incredibly punishing. 90 Khorne Berzerkers in melee turn one is not fun!

Secondly, some gunline armies don't rely on weapons of the Heavy type. While the cover rule helps, it gives an unfair disadvantage to units like Devastators compared to say Hellblasters, which can still move and shoot a total of 36" without penalty.

 Tamwulf wrote:
I'd like to hear from people that were actually at Adepticon and read what they have to say, and the interactions they had with the GW staff that made them pause on issuing the March FAQ. I had no idea that GW sent someone high enough up the food chain in the company to be able to issue a "FAQ Pause" and shows that they are taking the tournament scene seriously.

As a side note, it's been a long, long time since GW took the events from a private convention they were not running to influence the rules of the game. There was the LVO incident of last year and flyers, but we'll have to see what came out of Adepticon. This is a welcome change in GW policy and shows they are listening to the players.

Well... in one of the painting classes with Duncan he mentioned that some of the combos he saw out there at the tournament were... {made blah face and shivered}. There were a few GW guys walking about. At the FW table when I was piicking up some models there was a conversation going on with one of the studio guys and three or four others about 40k being what they considered a busted mess and the studio nodding and listening and asking why they thought that (and alpha striking was definitely said several times)

I'm not convinced that this first-turn thing is an issue; didn't ITC have a higher win rate for second turn? So it might just be a function of the tournaments.

I think we're more likely to see changes to the -1 strategems, or HQs/flyrants specifically. That seems more their style.

xmbk wrote:
I really hope the problem they discovered is that going first is way too big of an advantage. Nids excel at winning the Alpha Strike game, and 8th is all about the Alpha.

It would be really nice to have turns 3-5 matter a bit more than they do right now. It would also be nice if going 2nd didn't drastically reduce the win probability for "normal" army builds.

With individual turn taking longer than ever game needs to end in fewer turns to make 8th supposedly faster game. Thus gw aims 1-2 turn games. Thus alpha is and will be key factor

tneva82 wrote:

xmbk wrote:
I really hope the problem they discovered is that going first is way too big of an advantage. Nids excel at winning the Alpha Strike game, and 8th is all about the Alpha.

It would be really nice to have turns 3-5 matter a bit more than they do right now. It would also be nice if going 2nd didn't drastically reduce the win probability for "normal" army builds.

With individual turn taking longer than ever game needs to end in fewer turns to make 8th supposedly faster game. Thus gw aims 1-2 turn games. Thus alpha is and will be key factor

I love how you post this with absolutely no sources and instead just carry on as if your opinion were fact. It's unreal. First turn damage is probably currently too high, I think ultimately addressing the cover rules would help a great deal.

HuskyWarhammer wrote:
I'm not convinced that this first-turn thing is an issue; didn't ITC have a higher win rate for second turn? So it might just be a function of the tournaments.

I think we're more likely to see changes to the -1 strategems, or HQs/flyrants specifically. That seems more their style.

Whether or not first turn is a problem at competitive level is only part of the concern. In casual games in my experience it is a huge factor, and if that is a more general trend then that deserves a balance pass too.

tneva82 wrote:

xmbk wrote:
I really hope the problem they discovered is that going first is way too big of an advantage. Nids excel at winning the Alpha Strike game, and 8th is all about the Alpha.

It would be really nice to have turns 3-5 matter a bit more than they do right now. It would also be nice if going 2nd didn't drastically reduce the win probability for "normal" army builds.

With individual turn taking longer than ever game needs to end in fewer turns to make 8th supposedly faster game. Thus gw aims 1-2 turn games. Thus alpha is and will be key factor

Players do and Gw does not. There are no matched play missions ending turn 2. Far too many options lacking th emobility for a game like that.

It's a strangely chicken and egg scenario. Because Alpha striking is so prevalent and games at events rarely go to turn 5-6 Alpha strike becomes necesarry since it's the only kind of list you can actually use. Durability an doutlasting your opponent in turn 4 can only work if there is in fact a turn 4.

Also I think people underestimate how much maelstrom objctives can swing the game around in turn 4-5 when both Alpha strikes have destroyed each other. I have seen plenty of tables turn on what appeared surefire wins when Alpha potential was broken. THat scenario doesn't play out because well games simply do not go to those rounds often enough at top tables.

Look up the chess clock discussions for more on this particular topic.

No turn one deep strike or no charging outta deep strike on turn one

 Backspacehacker wrote:
No turn one deep strike or no charging outta deep strike on turn one

I don't disagree with this out of hand. However I think all this does is shift to a beta strike.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
No turn one deep strike or no charging outta deep strike on turn one

I don't disagree with this out of hand. However I think all this does is shift to a beta strike.

I kept screaming to people being able to charge outta deep strike was crazy strong and sure and gak, garunteed deep strike and charging is the new meta.

Beta strike is significantly easier to deal with than alpha strike.

It gives the defending player a turn to deal with what's deployed on the table at an advantage, as well as to additionally maneuver to defend the strike, which in turn puts them at much less of a disadvantage than against an alpha strike.

So called beta strikes might still be too strong (I think certain strats and psychic powers need a look at too) but it's a step in the right direction.

Stux wrote:
Beta strike is significantly easier to deal with than alpha strike.

It gives the defending player a turn to deal with what's deployed on the table at an advantage, as well as to additionally maneuver to defend the strike, which in turn puts them at much less of a disadvantage than against an alpha strike.

So called beta strikes might still be too strong (I think certain strats and psychic powers need a look at too) but it's a step in the right direction.

I think if you address things like fight again strats, warptime, and the like it helps a lot more. I talk about the beta strike a lot because I play Tzaangors so first or 2nd is fine with me, I can still engage the engine and its nearly impossible to really defend against.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Don't let the door hit you on the way out!

What a compelling and insightful defense of GW and 8th edition.

Considering the average level of vitriol and emotionality over rational argument displayed in the post he responded to(and many others) it feels like he actually went overkill on insight and reason tbh.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Stux wrote:
Beta strike is significantly easier to deal with than alpha strike.

It gives the defending player a turn to deal with what's deployed on the table at an advantage, as well as to additionally maneuver to defend the strike, which in turn puts them at much less of a disadvantage than against an alpha strike.

So called beta strikes might still be too strong (I think certain strats and psychic powers need a look at too) but it's a step in the right direction.

This is actually only true some of the time. Deepstriking shooting armies actually get MORE dangerous when they beta strike because it means the opponent has one less turn to react and recover.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
No turn one deep strike or no charging outta deep strike on turn one

I don't disagree with this out of hand. However I think all this does is shift to a beta strike.

I kept screaming to people being able to charge outta deep strike was crazy strong and sure and gak, garunteed deep strike and charging is the new meta.

And yet my Custodes lose if I can't get the charge off out of deepstrike.

Charging out of deepstrike is strong, but it's also the only thing keeping melee in the game. With it Death Company have a guaranteed turn of killing things before they die, without it they die before doing anything at all.

A better solution would be to reverse the escalation of bigger and bigger guns that makes it impossible to get a melee unit into the fight without charging out of deepstrike, simply deleting charge out of deepstrike without touching anything else is just going to bring back the gunline shooty-army-wins meta of 6e/7e.

Eh that's because tazangors need a nerf, fellow t son's player here as well.

I feel like I read multiple posts somewhere about how little terrain was on the adepticon tables.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
No turn one deep strike or no charging outta deep strike on turn one

I don't disagree with this out of hand. However I think all this does is shift to a beta strike.

I kept screaming to people being able to charge outta deep strike was crazy strong and sure and gak, garunteed deep strike and charging is the new meta.

And yet my Custodes lose if I can't get the charge off out of deepstrike.

Charging out of deepstrike is strong, but it's also the only thing keeping melee in the game. With it Death Company have a guaranteed turn of killing things before they die, without it they die before doing anything at all.

A better solution would be to reverse the escalation of bigger and bigger guns that makes it impossible to get a melee unit into the fight without charging out of deepstrike, simply deleting charge out of deepstrike without touching anything else is just going to bring back the gunline shooty-army-wins meta of 6e/7e.

To be fair, the problem is also bad for shooting armies. I can't bring a single Baneblade to a 2k game and actually get to use it (not, at least, without forcing it to be Tallarn and spending 3CP on it... which is essentially just putting it in reserve so now I can have the OP alpha). Big guns instantly deleting units is no fun for the person on the receiving end, regardless of whether they're melee or shooty. It's why I always try to put down a ton of LOS-blocking terrain on my games; it keeps me and my opponent both safe from Turn-1 alphas.

And yes, just to undercut the derail: I recognize LOS-ignoring shooting exists. I'm providing an anecdote, not trying to prove a point.

To be fair unless you treat all terrain like a barrier, it just gets in the way. Idk if they were using the ITC rule of first floor blocks Los if not terrain is just a nucense


Automatically Appended Next Post:
To be fair to be fair, LoW are always target number one and never last more then 2 turns

I always laugh when people tie deep strike and alpha strike together.

The reason most people deep strike as opposed to starting on the board, is to keep things ALIVE because of the bonkers shooting this game has.

It would be 100% to my advantage to keep my Flyrants on the board, if they could actually live through a turn of shooting. Moving up 16" is far better than landing more than 9" away.

Reasons why first turn is stupid:

1. Artillery. Shooting anywhere you want without LOS is dumb. Scatter dice were the balancing factor for this. You could potentially hit, but you also did full scatter, making your accuracy a lot lower than it is now.

2. High power shooting. When you do connect, you'll reduce things to their invulnerable save with no difficulty and any failed save is a chunk of health lost, or models slain. I played a game and lost about 250 points from the shooting of one unit on the first turn. (EDIT- Comparable points values)

3. Allows for greater deep strike denial. You can move your chaff up and reposition so that it is nearly impossible to get full use out of deep strikers.

Deep strike has virtually nothing to do with why first turn is good.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I can't bring a single Baneblade to a 2k game and actually get to use it

Because you play in a stale meta where people know what you bring (only Baneblade, Baneblade 4 lyf) and plan accordingly. Most TAC lists will have immense difficulty erasing a Baneblade in one turn and you know it.

 Insectum7 wrote:
I feel like I read multiple posts somewhere about how little terrain was on the adepticon tables.

That's been a consistent thing for quite a few years now. You'll get maybe 6-8 pieces (on average) of terrain of varying size, most of which in past years would have been able to obscure but not hide most vehicles.

That alone tends to create a very different meta from what a lot of people are apparently used to.

 Marmatag wrote:
Because you play in a stale meta where people know what you bring (only Baneblade, Baneblade 4 lyf) and plan accordingly. Most TAC lists will have immense difficulty erasing a Baneblade in one turn and you know it.

I don't want to derail the thread, but no, I don't know it. I wish this were true, but at every tournament I've attended (and yes, I go to them beyond my local meta), I've lost a single Baneblade turn 1 (or a single baneblade's worth of wounds on 3 tanks, if my opponent is panicky and spreads his shooting around).

I live in the NOVA area, and I have played at tournaments in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Maryland since 8th dropped, and have lost (or had crippled) a single vehicle damn near every game if the enemy got to go first. If you want to reply, reply in PMs, but I don't want to let you spread your misinformation in this thread.

Here is a silly fix that might work and deter keeping your units in reserve.

The person who goes first does NOT have a movement phase.

That means if you go first you cant deep strike until turn 2. you likely will be out of range your first turn on short range weapons, and if you deployed defensively you may not even have line of sight.

it also makes those games where first turn is random encourage you to deploy certain units instead of just keeping them off the board potentially until turn 2.

and considering the first turn is by far the LONGEST turn in terms of time played and movement especially in horde armies takes forever the first turn... this makes the game faster.

However this does hurt melee horde armies who want to move across the board as quickly as possible, who go first, and who do not have an ability to deploy or place a unit into melee range outside of the movement phase (such as a psychic power). Some of this can be fixed with psychic powers or strategems.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Well - with deep strike being handed out like candy - there needs a suitable counter.

Putting out a ton of chaff helps but if deepstrike is going to be so prevalent - interceptor within 12 inches also needs to be more prevalent. Perhaps tau will put this crap to bed in the meta but the real core issue here is the flyrant is getting close combat ability for free. MRC is a 20 point weapon (at least).

Another issue is mawlocks. Their attack is screwing up order of operations here - they kill units in the movement phase allowing tyrants to bypass your screens. This is an easy fix - just change the phase the mawlock makes it's attacks in - make it the shooting phase. Now even with 7 tyrants you aren't hitting anything valuable turn 1 with assault.

You sir totally need to L2P...a nerf for Mawlocs is completely unwarranted given the already built in nerf to multiple Mawlocs...

Epic A remains a far better 40k game than 40k, and while a lot of its mechanics are too different to consider one that could port over if they did a 9th edition would be the idea of a strategy rating.
Here is a sample...
Marines SR 5
Eldar SR 4
Orks SR 3
Imperial Guard SR 2
Tyranids SR 1
The higher strategy rating chooses the board edge, places the first objective, places the first unit etc. When it comes to who goes first (each turn but ignore that bit) you roll a D6 and add your strategy rating. Highest goes first. So a Marine army is designed and balanced assuming that they will be going first and have the edge in deployment, an imperial guard army is the opposite. And so on. So the alpha strike advantage is essentially costed.

gungo wrote:
Here is a silly fix that might work and deter keeping your units in reserve.

The person who goes first does NOT have a movement phase.

That means if you go first you cant deep strike until turn 2. you likely will be out of range your first turn on short range weapons, and if you deployed defensively you may not even have line of sight.

it also makes those games where first turn is random encourage you to deploy certain units instead of just keeping them off the board potentially until turn 2.

and considering the first turn is by far the LONGEST turn in terms of time played and movement especially in horde armies takes forever the first turn... this makes the game faster.

However this does hurt melee horde armies who want to move across the board as quickly as possible, who go first, and who do not have an ability to deploy or place a unit into melee range outside of the movement phase (such as a psychic power). Some of this can be fixed with psychic powers or strategems.

No. just no.

Walking/riding across the board to do anything is already a terrible thing to do, hence why assault armies deepstrike/infiltrate/outflank/teleport or otherwise 'cheat' units up the field.
And you want to give them a 50/50 chance to not move on T1 and instead let the enemy shoot them a bunch for free?

How does this solve anything?

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Epic A remains a far better 40k game than 40k, and while a lot of its mechanics are too different to consider one that could port over if they did a 9th edition would be the idea of a strategy rating.
Here is a sample...
Marines SR 5
Eldar SR 4
Orks SR 3
Imperial Guard SR 2
Tyranids SR 1
The higher strategy rating chooses the board edge, places the first objective, places the first unit etc. When it comes to who goes first (each turn but ignore that bit) you roll a D6 and add your strategy rating. Highest goes first. So a Marine army is designed and balanced assuming that they will be going first and have the edge in deployment, an imperial guard army is the opposite. And so on. So the alpha strike advantage is essentially costed.

If I recall correctly, this was true for a while in 40k as well. I have to reach back into the mists of time...

Only problem is how you'd rule soup, otherwise you'd end up with a 99% guard army taking a Space Marine captain as warlord for the SR 5, or whatever.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Epic A remains a far better 40k game than 40k, and while a lot of its mechanics are too different to consider one that could port over if they did a 9th edition would be the idea of a strategy rating.
Here is a sample...
Marines SR 5
Eldar SR 4
Orks SR 3
Imperial Guard SR 2
Tyranids SR 1
The higher strategy rating chooses the board edge, places the first objective, places the first unit etc. When it comes to who goes first (each turn but ignore that bit) you roll a D6 and add your strategy rating. Highest goes first. So a Marine army is designed and balanced assuming that they will be going first and have the edge in deployment, an imperial guard army is the opposite. And so on. So the alpha strike advantage is essentially costed.

If I recall correctly, this was true for a while in 40k as well. I have to reach back into the mists of time...

Only problem is how you'd rule soup, otherwise you'd end up with a 99% guard army taking a Space Marine captain as warlord for the SR 5, or whatever.

Strategy ratings were definitely a thing in 2nd edition. Orks were a 3, but doubled to a 6 for the roll for first turn.

 daedalus wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I feel like I read multiple posts somewhere about how little terrain was on the adepticon tables.

That's been a consistent thing for quite a few years now. You'll get maybe 6-8 pieces (on average) of terrain of varying size, most of which in past years would have been able to obscure but not hide most vehicles.

That alone tends to create a very different meta from what a lot of people are apparently used to.

Yeah. . . that's one of the biggest problems, imo. Going first is going to mean a lot more without decent terrain. Not just for LOS purposes, but allowing units to start the game in cover too.

I'd also like to see the reserve rules changed somehow. Deep striking with "half the number of units" can still mean 1600 points out of a 2000 point list.

In 4th Ed. they had "Omega level" rules for games, which did something like you could only deploy a few troops and an HQ at the start of the game, and then the game escalated as reserves came in. This coupled with better LOS blocking rules (forests completely blocked LOS, for example) meant that games developed more organically over a couple turns, making the important turns 3-4 instead of 1-2. Not saying it's the best solution, a lot has changed since, but it worked well in my area at the time. Something similar could help change things up.

I hope they learned that they need to ensure tournaments crack down on people being unable to write army lists.

There needs to be more LOS blocking techniques. It may not change how much is lost, but players will have more control over WHAT is lost. Then deployment becomes more of a strategy.

We play with a lot of buildings and such that creates choke points and blind sectors all over the field. It also restricts deep strikers and they're ability to get a direct path to the targets. It helps tremendously. I don't think we've had many tablings before turn 5, and none since we started more Urban and dense city scape style maps (above 1000 points). There are still games decided by tabling, but it doesn't usually happen until turn 5+.

Area terrain needs a good hard look, too. It is pretty garbage. Instructing LOS through it may help, but I cannot say without testing.

 Kanluwen wrote:
I hope they learned that they need to ensure tournaments crack down on people being unable to write army lists.

If you read the "Final Table" thread, apparently it's fine for the top-of-the-line players to totally drop the ball and forget rules, and not a problem that requires addressing or even acknowledgement.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Epic A remains a far better 40k game than 40k, and while a lot of its mechanics are too different to consider one that could port over if they did a 9th edition would be the idea of a strategy rating.
Here is a sample...
Marines SR 5
Eldar SR 4
Orks SR 3
Imperial Guard SR 2
Tyranids SR 1
The higher strategy rating chooses the board edge, places the first objective, places the first unit etc. When it comes to who goes first (each turn but ignore that bit) you roll a D6 and add your strategy rating. Highest goes first. So a Marine army is designed and balanced assuming that they will be going first and have the edge in deployment, an imperial guard army is the opposite. And so on. So the alpha strike advantage is essentially costed.

If I recall correctly, this was true for a while in 40k as well. I have to reach back into the mists of time...

Only problem is how you'd rule soup, otherwise you'd end up with a 99% guard army taking a Space Marine captain as warlord for the SR 5, or whatever.

Thats fairly easy to fix, where are a majority of the points spent? or just go by units, 3 marine units and 6 guard ones, use the guard strat rating, so if your spamming guard for soup you would not get the benefit of the strat rating.

 Formosa wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Epic A remains a far better 40k game than 40k, and while a lot of its mechanics are too different to consider one that could port over if they did a 9th edition would be the idea of a strategy rating.
Here is a sample...
Marines SR 5
Eldar SR 4
Orks SR 3
Imperial Guard SR 2
Tyranids SR 1
The higher strategy rating chooses the board edge, places the first objective, places the first unit etc. When it comes to who goes first (each turn but ignore that bit) you roll a D6 and add your strategy rating. Highest goes first. So a Marine army is designed and balanced assuming that they will be going first and have the edge in deployment, an imperial guard army is the opposite. And so on. So the alpha strike advantage is essentially costed.

If I recall correctly, this was true for a while in 40k as well. I have to reach back into the mists of time...

Only problem is how you'd rule soup, otherwise you'd end up with a 99% guard army taking a Space Marine captain as warlord for the SR 5, or whatever.

Thats fairly easy to fix, where are a majority of the points spent? or just go by units, 3 marine units and 6 guard ones, use the guard strat rating, so if your spamming guard for soup you would not get the benefit of the strat rating.

But which one is it? Points spent or units? An Imperial Knight army will always have WAY more points in Knights than other models, but the other models will be FAR more numerous...

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
I hope they learned that they need to ensure tournaments crack down on people being unable to write army lists.

If you read the "Final Table" thread, apparently it's fine for the top-of-the-line players to totally drop the ball and forget rules, and not a problem that requires addressing or even acknowledgement.

Yeah because that's definitely what's been said in that thread as opposed to it being a debate over the role of judges/refs in events of that size.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Epic A remains a far better 40k game than 40k, and while a lot of its mechanics are too different to consider one that could port over if they did a 9th edition would be the idea of a strategy rating.
Here is a sample...
Marines SR 5
Eldar SR 4
Orks SR 3
Imperial Guard SR 2
Tyranids SR 1
The higher strategy rating chooses the board edge, places the first objective, places the first unit etc. When it comes to who goes first (each turn but ignore that bit) you roll a D6 and add your strategy rating. Highest goes first. So a Marine army is designed and balanced assuming that they will be going first and have the edge in deployment, an imperial guard army is the opposite. And so on. So the alpha strike advantage is essentially costed.

If I recall correctly, this was true for a while in 40k as well. I have to reach back into the mists of time...

Only problem is how you'd rule soup, otherwise you'd end up with a 99% guard army taking a Space Marine captain as warlord for the SR 5, or whatever.

Thats fairly easy to fix, where are a majority of the points spent? or just go by units, 3 marine units and 6 guard ones, use the guard strat rating, so if your spamming guard for soup you would not get the benefit of the strat rating.

But which one is it? Points spent or units? An Imperial Knight army will always have WAY more points in Knights than other models, but the other models will be FAR more numerous...

Both or either, very easy to sort out.

Changing the parameters in some of the missions would be good too. For example, we currently have 2 types..malestrom and eternal war. If this was expanded with sub factions that had different requirements, so that perhaps some were classed as "Meeting Engagements" where DS could not occur on Turn 1, but can in the other sub factions. This would force list building to cater for possible Turn 1 Deepstrike or maybe Turn 2 or later. Combine this with the Always counts as moving and second player always starts in cover (gone to ground), then the potential for Alpha Strike diminishes. More variables are what is needed so that a player can't plan his army around so many fixed parameters. He would need some versatility in the list.

 Formosa wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Epic A remains a far better 40k game than 40k, and while a lot of its mechanics are too different to consider one that could port over if they did a 9th edition would be the idea of a strategy rating.
Here is a sample...
Marines SR 5
Eldar SR 4
Orks SR 3
Imperial Guard SR 2
Tyranids SR 1
The higher strategy rating chooses the board edge, places the first objective, places the first unit etc. When it comes to who goes first (each turn but ignore that bit) you roll a D6 and add your strategy rating. Highest goes first. So a Marine army is designed and balanced assuming that they will be going first and have the edge in deployment, an imperial guard army is the opposite. And so on. So the alpha strike advantage is essentially costed.

If I recall correctly, this was true for a while in 40k as well. I have to reach back into the mists of time...

Only problem is how you'd rule soup, otherwise you'd end up with a 99% guard army taking a Space Marine captain as warlord for the SR 5, or whatever.

Thats fairly easy to fix, where are a majority of the points spent? or just go by units, 3 marine units and 6 guard ones, use the guard strat rating, so if your spamming guard for soup you would not get the benefit of the strat rating.

But which one is it? Points spent or units? An Imperial Knight army will always have WAY more points in Knights than other models, but the other models will be FAR more numerous...

Both or either, very easy to sort out.

Well, it has significant ramifications. If you want horde armies to always go first, do it by points (so they can still bring a massive horde of 100 guardsmen, and then spend 1600 points on Custodes/whoever brings the best SR) and if you want elite armies to always go first, do it by model count (so they can bring 1600 points of custodes/whatever brings the best SR, and then a massive horde of 100 guardsmen).

 Peregrine wrote:

Dionysodorus wrote:
Realistically, addressing this would basically require a new edition.

This is the correct answer. The only solution is a new edition that makes 40k a wargame, instead of a CCG with "cards" you have to paint yourself. And I'm glad people are finally starting to agree with what I was saying from day one, that 8th edition is a dumpster fire of bad design.

This is exactly how everyone feels in my gaming group. 8th ed killed all interest in 40k. Just like sigmar killed my gaming groups love for warhammer fantasy.

Time will tell, but in my group the "CCG" style of design is driving players away with overly simplistic gameplay.

Every one of us used to be "all in" for EVERY GW release for BOTH systems. Now my group is no longer paying attention to any GW releases. It's sad.

Pancakey wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Dionysodorus wrote:
Realistically, addressing this would basically require a new edition.

This is the correct answer. The only solution is a new edition that makes 40k a wargame, instead of a CCG with "cards" you have to paint yourself. And I'm glad people are finally starting to agree with what I was saying from day one, that 8th edition is a dumpster fire of bad design.

This is exactly how everyone feels in my gaming group. 8th ed killed all interest in 40k. Just like sigmar killed my gaming groups love for warhammer fantasy.

Time will tell, but in my group the "CCG" style of design is driving players away with overly simplistic gameplay.

Every one of us used to be "all in" for EVERY GW release for BOTH systems. Now my group is no longer paying attention to any GW releases. It's sad.

And in my gaming group 8th has seen us add a consistent 8 to 10 players each weekend with that number moving up as they've released codexes. Anecdotes are worthless.

That is freaking impressive!


How many hundreds of players do you have?

Its irrelevant how many people either of us have. Both of our stories are anecdotal, or do you intend to tell me you have a gaming group of over 500 people who've all dropped all GW? If that's the case I'd love to know where you play.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
But which one is it? Points spent or units? An Imperial Knight army will always have WAY more points in Knights than other models, but the other models will be FAR more numerous...

Well it means a rewrite from the ground up i suspect or at lerast of the points so you would address this at that point

Soup or broth is an entirely different topic I do think an army has to pick what codex it is and only get CPs from detachments wholely from that codex. You would bolt strategy rating onto that.

Or bolt CPs to the warlord and only detachments that match his most restrictive key word. As to going first I haven't seen it make or break many of my games. I play mono-GK and made my list to work if I go first or second.

I will say that terrain has a lot of effect on a game and I wish GW spent more time on terrain rules.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:
Its irrelevant how many people either of us have. Both of our stories are anecdotal, or do you intend to tell me you have a gaming group of over 500 people who've all dropped all GW? If that's the case I'd love to know where you play.

Agreed. Even in a fairly large local group, you can't just assume the feelings and opinions will proportionally scale up to national or international levels. Just because 75% of people in a group might hate 8e, doesn't mean that's true of the set of all 40k players.

For instance, a single person who is good at debating and has strong opinions can sway a whole group's general impressions one way or the other potentially.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Epic A remains a far better 40k game than 40k, and while a lot of its mechanics are too different to consider one that could port over if they did a 9th edition would be the idea of a strategy rating.
Here is a sample...
Marines SR 5
Eldar SR 4
Orks SR 3
Imperial Guard SR 2
Tyranids SR 1
The higher strategy rating chooses the board edge, places the first objective, places the first unit etc. When it comes to who goes first (each turn but ignore that bit) you roll a D6 and add your strategy rating. Highest goes first. So a Marine army is designed and balanced assuming that they will be going first and have the edge in deployment, an imperial guard army is the opposite. And so on. So the alpha strike advantage is essentially costed.

If I recall correctly, this was true for a while in 40k as well. I have to reach back into the mists of time...

Only problem is how you'd rule soup, otherwise you'd end up with a 99% guard army taking a Space Marine captain as warlord for the SR 5, or whatever.

Thats fairly easy to fix, where are a majority of the points spent? or just go by units, 3 marine units and 6 guard ones, use the guard strat rating, so if your spamming guard for soup you would not get the benefit of the strat rating.

But which one is it? Points spent or units? An Imperial Knight army will always have WAY more points in Knights than other models, but the other models will be FAR more numerous...

Both or either, very easy to sort out.

Well, it has significant ramifications. If you want horde armies to always go first, do it by points (so they can still bring a massive horde of 100 guardsmen, and then spend 1600 points on Custodes/whoever brings the best SR) and if you want elite armies to always go first, do it by model count (so they can bring 1600 points of custodes/whatever brings the best SR, and then a massive horde of 100 guardsmen).

Whatever you do to sort out soup is going to have "serious ramifications" and if they want to take 1600pts of Cutodes and spend the rest on guard, fair enough, if you want to do it by model count, cool, like I said before its very easy to sort out, bet we could sit down for a day and make it work.

KurtAngle2 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Well - with deep strike being handed out like candy - there needs a suitable counter.

Putting out a ton of chaff helps but if deepstrike is going to be so prevalent - interceptor within 12 inches also needs to be more prevalent. Perhaps tau will put this crap to bed in the meta but the real core issue here is the flyrant is getting close combat ability for free. MRC is a 20 point weapon (at least).

Another issue is mawlocks. Their attack is screwing up order of operations here - they kill units in the movement phase allowing tyrants to bypass your screens. This is an easy fix - just change the phase the mawlock makes it's attacks in - make it the shooting phase. Now even with 7 tyrants you aren't hitting anything valuable turn 1 with assault.

You sir totally need to L2P...a nerf for Mawlocs is completely unwarranted given the already built in nerf to multiple Mawlocs...

It's not actually a nerf to mawlocks. It would be a nerf to tyrants. Please don't start with the L2P.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 daedalus wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I feel like I read multiple posts somewhere about how little terrain was on the adepticon tables.

That's been a consistent thing for quite a few years now. You'll get maybe 6-8 pieces (on average) of terrain of varying size, most of which in past years would have been able to obscure but not hide most vehicles.

That alone tends to create a very different meta from what a lot of people are apparently used to.

Yeah. . . that's one of the biggest problems, imo. Going first is going to mean a lot more without decent terrain. Not just for LOS purposes, but allowing units to start the game in cover too.

I'd also like to see the reserve rules changed somehow. Deep striking with "half the number of units" can still mean 1600 points out of a 2000 point list.

In 4th Ed. they had "Omega level" rules for games, which did something like you could only deploy a few troops and an HQ at the start of the game, and then the game escalated as reserves came in. This coupled with better LOS blocking rules (forests completely blocked LOS, for example) meant that games developed more organically over a couple turns, making the important turns 3-4 instead of 1-2. Not saying it's the best solution, a lot has changed since, but it worked well in my area at the time. Something similar could help change things up.

Totally agree!
Not much can be done about the terrain issue but I 100% agree that going first is 10 times more valuable if your opponent has no where to hide.
I think a good table has enough LOS blocking terrain to cover your important peices so if they want to come at you 100% - it's going to be a situation where your best units will be able to retaliate against their best units (while their alpha strike fell on the units you picked to not completely hide). It's still probably better to go first in this situation but at least the game is closer.

When it comes to deep striking units I also agree. It should be about points - not units.

 Peregrine wrote:

Dionysodorus wrote:
Realistically, addressing this would basically require a new edition.

This is the correct answer. The only solution is a new edition that makes 40k a wargame, instead of a CCG with "cards" you have to paint yourself. And I'm glad people are finally starting to agree with what I was saying from day one, that 8th edition is a dumpster fire of bad design.

fething preach brother.

An easy short term fix would be to have you not able to do Deepstrike more than half your POINTS rather than UNITs.

Purifying Tempest wrote:
There needs to be more LOS blocking techniques. It may not change how much is lost, but players will have more control over WHAT is lost. Then deployment becomes more of a strategy.

One of the biggest issues is that, much like Infinity, it seems like environmental rules are a thing that GW wants to push but are afraid to have be mandatory.

We play with a lot of buildings and such that creates choke points and blind sectors all over the field. It also restricts deep strikers and they're ability to get a direct path to the targets. It helps tremendously. I don't think we've had many tablings before turn 5, and none since we started more Urban and dense city scape style maps (above 1000 points). There are still games decided by tabling, but it doesn't usually happen until turn 5+.

Area terrain needs a good hard look, too. It is pretty garbage. Instructing LOS through it may help, but I cannot say without testing.

You would love the way that Forgebane's environmental stuff works then.
On a 1, a "Corrosive Squall" rolls in. Players have to make a single saving throw for each unit that is not wholly within a terrain feature. if the save is failed, unit suffers a Mortal Wound.
2-3, Dust Storms roll in. Until the end of this Battle Round, the range of all ranged weapons is reduced by 6" to a minimum of 12".
4+ Clear weather: nothing additional applies.

What I’d like to see.

Weapon scaling to hordes. The Demolisher gun scales from 3D3 to D6 based on 5+ models in the unit. I think this should scale to 2d6 on 15 models in the target squad. I think Flamer weapons, and other weapons of massive anti horde ability in editions paste should scale also. If your shooting a flamer at 10+ models, it should go to 2D6 automatic hits as an example. Other weapons of this type should get the same treatment in other factions.

Revamping Detachments. I don’t know if that is removing some, adding others, limiting the specific detachments.

Soup something. Maybe that could be a bonus to mono-theme armies, maybe a restructure on what stratagems they can use, maybe a limit to 1 detachment can be souped. I don’t know the answer. (just my opinion man)

I kind hope they also do something really crazy in the course correction to give some of these people who seem to hate the game a reason to leave… finally. Because GW kinda build something you liked 5 editions ago shouldn’t be a reason for you to still be here screaming about how something in a current edition you don’t even play.

Reemule wrote:
I think Flamer weapons, and other weapons of massive anti horde ability in editions paste should scale also. If your shooting a flamer at 10+ models, it should go to 2D6 automatic hits as an example. Other weapons of this type should get the same treatment in other factions.

This, in particular, is something I think would be a fantastic idea.

I don't know if the "scaling guns to unit sizes" is really a solution.

You'll end up with 3x 10 Termagaunts instead of 30, but they all take up the same space, give you more CP, if you want, and can be deployed exactly identically to 30.

That's a valid point, though it does somewhat limit aura shenanigans, slingshots, and magic conga lines.

 daedalus wrote:
That's a valid point, though it does somewhat limit aura shenanigans, slingshots, and magic conga lines.

Kinda, yes.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 daedalus wrote:
That's a valid point, though it does somewhat limit aura shenanigans, slingshots, and magic conga lines.

Kinda, yes.

Outside of tau it also helps against overwatch too.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:
An easy short term fix would be to have you not able to do Deepstrike more than half your POINTS rather than UNITs.

This is an interesting thought. I do often see people taking like cheap HQs or vehicles or something so they can use the "Half reserve" rule to still deepstrike the majority of their units that they really want to anyways, basically to circumvent the rule.

Wayniac wrote:

AdmiralHalsey wrote:
An easy short term fix would be to have you not able to do Deepstrike more than half your POINTS rather than UNITs.

This is an interesting thought. I do often see people taking like cheap HQs or vehicles or something so they can use the "Half reserve" rule to still deepstrike the majority of their units that they really want to anyways, basically to circumvent the rule.

These are cases of obvious rules abuse - should have been adressed in the first chapter approved. Hopefully it will be adressed in this one.

Changed my mind about it. feth subtlety.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/753326.page#9890873

 Elric Greywolf wrote:
I've totally been that guy to call people out when they're not up to a reasonable standard.

Last fall I was playing a guy with gray plastic models at a large ITC tournament. I told him that I could either go and get a judge and the judge would remove models from his army, or I could auto-win the first turn roll-off. We settled for me getting +1 to the first turn roll (and since I finished deploying first, it was a net +2).
At the SAME tournament, some other guy had Marine models, with identical paint schemes, that he was claiming were in different Chapters (Wolves and Ultra, I think). I called a TO and got that shut down.

I spend loads of time prepping my models, and even sacrifice other important things to make my tournament showing a priority. I don't stand for lazy hobbyists at tournaments. I consider it very disrespectful to lassiez-faire your way through a major event.

Just report him to the TO. If they're any good, they'll do something about it. If they aren't, you know to avoid for next time. Also spread your story, it helps other people avoid the same shenanigans.

Edit: And yeah, I don't really care if reporting people is overreacting, or whatever else might be thought about it. There's a standard, and I hold myself to it, and I expect others to hold themselves to it as well. If you don't believe that, then abolish the standard.

emphasis is mine.

That's from the LVO 2017 Best GK Player, apparently.

And it's gak like that which is the reason why some people scoff at tournaments.

 daedalus wrote:
Changed my mind about it. feth subtlety.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/753326.page#9890873

 Elric Greywolf wrote:
I've totally been that guy to call people out when they're not up to a reasonable standard.

Last fall I was playing a guy with gray plastic models at a large ITC tournament. I told him that I could either go and get a judge and the judge would remove models from his army, or I could auto-win the first turn roll-off. We settled for me getting +1 to the first turn roll (and since I finished deploying first, it was a net +2).
At the SAME tournament, some other guy had Marine models, with identical paint schemes, that he was claiming were in different Chapters (Wolves and Ultra, I think). I called a TO and got that shut down.

I spend loads of time prepping my models, and even sacrifice other important things to make my tournament showing a priority. I don't stand for lazy hobbyists at tournaments. I consider it very disrespectful to lassiez-faire your way through a major event.

Just report him to the TO. If they're any good, they'll do something about it. If they aren't, you know to avoid for next time. Also spread your story, it helps other people avoid the same shenanigans.

Edit: And yeah, I don't really care if reporting people is overreacting, or whatever else might be thought about it. There's a standard, and I hold myself to it, and I expect others to hold themselves to it as well. If you don't believe that, then abolish the standard.

emphasis is mine.

That's from the LVO 2017 Best GK Player, apparently.

And it's gak like that which is the reason why some people scoff at tournaments.

I agree with the person.

I went to a lot of effort to be there and play. Why didn't you?

I don't think that's the point. The point is, if someone isn't following the rules you should talk to a judge. Not use it to leverage a different advantage.

Blackmail is worse than unpainted

The problem isn't calling someone out for not following the rules.

The problem is NOT calling someone out for not following the rules so you can coerce them into giving you specific bonuses.

One person not following the rules does not mean that you get to also not follow the rules. I thought we got taught this as children.

I'm not entirely certain of your qualms with that.

The guy isn't, technically, even allowed to play in an ITC tournament using a grey army following the basic guidelines.

If the players agree that it's fine, which they can do, based on stipulations, fine. Each tournament is allowed to okay or not okay whatever they want. The TO might of told Mr. GK to Feth off when he'd report the army, as well.

Don't bring grey models to a tournament.

Edit: There's far more glaring things we could focus on as actual problems, like the topic of this thread for example.

Unit1126PLL wrote:
And Alpha-Striking is still possible for point (1). I see it a lot, but I've played a few alternating activation games and in my experience, if alpha is powerful, then alpha is powerful, whether it's from activating your whole army first, or activating one powerful unit first.

Just think about the assault phase right now in 40k if you need an example: swinging first is a powerful ability, even with alternating activation. In a 1v1 scenario, it's basically turn-based anyways, and even in a 1v3 or 1v4 scenario, if the 1 gets to go first it can still cripple or annihilate the greatest threat to it with no risk of response. Alternating activation does not solve the alpha problem - it just redefines it in terms of single, powerful units. A Baneblade will alpha super well in an alternating-activation system.

Going back to the idea of alternating activation, the issue of going first with a massive unit could be resolved by giving units back an Initiative attribute. However, instead of being a racial thing, it would be there to represent units that can quickly respond to battlefield conditions and units that are more ponderous and need more time to maneuver and set up. So, something like a Space Marine Land Speeder would have a high Initiative attribute, whereas something like a Baneblade would have a low one.

With that in place, there could be a strat that lets a unit jump the order, the way there currently is in close combat. Make it pretty expensive, but maybe make it cost -1CP (to a minimum of 1) for every friendly same- faction unit that's already activated.

I hate the idea of precision deep strike. I miss the days of variable landings. The terminator teleporting off the table edge could easily be handled with another try the next turn or they show up on that table edge. Simple and it don't handicap anyone too much.

The game goes too much on units and not points since 3rd ed.

2nd edition solved all that by making 50% max characters
50% max support (tanks, heavy weapon teams, dreadnoughts,etc)
and a minimum 25% troops.....this is points.

The best games were the ones were 50% min for troops made the game very fun.

Night Fight - 2CP: You can play this stratagem after objectives have been placed, but before you deploy any models. For the first round all units suffer a -1 penalty to hit rolls.


There, fixed.

Spoletta wrote:
Night Fight - 2CP: You can play this stratagem after objectives have been placed, but before you deploy any models. For the first round all units suffer a -1 penalty to hit rolls.


There, fixed.

I don't mind it but suggesting more negatives to hit isn't popular around here.

 admironheart wrote:
I hate the idea of precision deep strike. I miss the days of variable landings. The terminator teleporting off the table edge could easily be handled with another try the next turn or they show up on that table edge. Simple and it don't handicap anyone too much.

The game goes too much on units and not points since 3rd ed.

2nd edition solved all that by making 50% max characters
50% mac support (tanks, heavy weapon teams, dreadnoughts,etc)
and a minimum 25% troops.....this is points.

The best games were the ones were 50% min for troops made the game very fun.

personally i love it mostly because its 200% less a pain in the ass to set up and get on with the game.

if anything reserves before was a roll of a dice and scatter. remove the scatter, keep the roll to see if in.

The last thing this game needs is more ways for luck to decide who wins the game. I'd much prefer a fixed amount of units you're allowed to deep strike on a turn (spitballing 0 on turn 1, 2 on turn 2, the rest on turn 3) than to just auto-lose if you happen to roll 3 1's on the most important rolls in the game.

I kinda of like the idea of a limit on the number of units you can place in deep strike. Like maybe a 1 per detachment rule (per turn). So you can drop 3 flying hives - I do this is my competitive list and it does just fine. There are plenty of other great units in the nid codex. None are as underpointed as the hive tyrant but that doesn't mean you can't make a better list than just flying hives. Tyranids also have the ability to shoot you off the table with carnifex. I really hope reapers get the nerf they deserve because they are basically the reason carnifex aren't more common.

 Earth127 wrote:
Blackmail is worse than unpainted

Absolutely this.

If you care about sportsmanship you won't behave like a dick just because some people don't enjoy painting as much as you do (or are not willing or able to dedicate as much time to it as you do). Sure, people suddenly declaring Blood Angels to be Ultramarines isn't okay, but really now, if the tournament organizer allows unpainted models then you just have to accept that the actual gameplay takes priority over what you consider "mandatory investment in other hobby aspects". Take it to the TO and complain about HIS rules for HIS event rather than trying to bully your way to the top against your fellow players. If the other player is violating the rules of the tournament by playing unpainted models then you still take it to the TO right away instead of trying to get as many advantages out of it as possible through de facto bribes before another player takes the issue to the TO (which is massively unfair to all the other players that are still going to or were going to play against the grey tide player). If anything that should get you disqualified as well.

@Topic: IMO the biggest thing is reducing the ability of the player going first to completely cripple the other players army before he/she can even react, making going first an absolute no-brainer auto pick choice. Whoever goes second needs advantages that balance that out and give an incentive to SERIOUSLY consider if you actually want to go first if you win the roll-off. Turn one-charges can be countered by using chaff, turn 1 shooting cannot unless you are lucky enough to have enough terrain, particularly LoS blocking one, one your side of the deployment zone. Just being able to lose completely without being able to do anything about it is the worst balance issue the game has. There isn't an easy solution, but if the rule writers find one than the biggest issue by far is solved.

All the talk about deep strikes is missing the point IMO as it still does not fix the issue of certain armies deploying on the table in their entirety without reserves and still blasting the other player off the table without him ever getting a chance to react or even move his models.

Edit: Gak. Thread moved on. Didn't realize it was many pages.

My pitch for a fix to alpha strike is the player who goes 2nd gets +1 save on the 1st player turn. We could call it "Night Fighting".

 Xenomancers wrote:
I kinda of like the idea of a limit on the number of units you can place in deep strike. Like maybe a 1 per detachment rule (per turn). So you can drop 3 flying hives - I do this is my competitive list and it does just fine. There are plenty of other great units in the nid codex. None are as underpointed as the hive tyrant but that doesn't mean you can't make a better list than just flying hives. Tyranids also have the ability to shoot you off the table with carnifex. I really hope reapers get the nerf they deserve because they are basically the reason carnifex aren't more common.

...Xeno, a limit of 1 unit per detachment for deepstrike? You already know what I'm gonna say.

The solution to alpha strike is to implement Star Wars Legions suppression mechanic (or a derivation thereof). Said mechanic introduces the concept of diminishing returns to the game, so focus-firing units off the table is an inherently less efficient strategy, which in turns make precision targeted alpha strikes less efficient and thus less effective.

Two points on addressing alpha strikes:

1. When coming in from reserve during turn 1, you either can only come in from your deployment zone or the minimum distance required from enemy models is increased from 9" to 12". This way, reserves utilization can be focused towards strategic post-deployment deployment, and not "HAH OVERCHARGED PLASMA AT DOUBLE TAP RANGE IN YOUR FACE!" Few units with special rule may circumvent this general rule however.
2. When weapons that do not require LOS to shoot, it suffers -1 to hit unless it can draw a LOS to the target.

IMO, there's not much brokeness for turn-1 charges - many of these manuevers burn through hefty amount of CP's. These all-in moves shouldn't be penalized I think.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
Night Fight - 2CP: You can play this stratagem after objectives have been placed, but before you deploy any models. For the first round all units suffer a -1 penalty to hit rolls.


There, fixed.

I don't mind it but suggesting more negatives to hit isn't popular around here.

I have always advocated for some pre-game start strategems we can buy to mitigate "possibly" going second

The Above one i have always liked...however the rule should be "unstackable" and no worse then 6+. There are a couple others as well. - 2CP +1 save on all units(no better than 2+) "unstackable", -2CP half the range of opponents shooting weapons.

3 strats that i think would help alot.

These would only be applicable for the first turn only and would only be able to be choosen pre first turn.

My fix for Alpha strike would be to only allow it from turn 2 onwards. It gives the person a turn to reposition and take ground and deal damage to the smaller army as a trade-off for holding units in reserve.

Not perfect, but would be a start.

 NurglesR0T wrote:
My fix for Alpha strike would be to only allow it from turn 2 onwards. It gives the person a turn to reposition and take ground and deal damage to the smaller army as a trade-off for holding units in reserve.

Not perfect, but would be a start.

The problem with that is there are many builds that dont require Deep strike to be able to effectivly Alpha strike an opponent into submission.

How about this:
Change Overwatch to the following:
A unit that did not move in its movement phase may declare Overwatch in its subsequent shooting phase instead of shooting. If it does so it gains +1 to its armor save against shooting attacks (stacks with cover) and may fire at a single unit that charges it until its next turn (at full ballistic skill with modifiers).
All units begin the game on Overwatch unless otherwise specified.

Ine quick fix could be 5th edition cover rules. A flat 4++.

 zedsdead wrote:

 NurglesR0T wrote:
My fix for Alpha strike would be to only allow it from turn 2 onwards. It gives the person a turn to reposition and take ground and deal damage to the smaller army as a trade-off for holding units in reserve.

Not perfect, but would be a start.

The problem with that is there are many builds that dont require Deep strike to be able to effectivly Alpha strike an opponent into submission.

Sisters can obliterate a guard parking lot down to single models without deepstriking anything.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Niiai wrote:
Ine quick fix could be 5th edition cover rules. A flat 4++.

Yeah, like I want to go up against 3++ infantry squads and mortar teams.

I think having flat cover save that isn't negated by AP will help force more diversity in weapon choices but such a change would require some overhall in game mechanics as ignore cover isn't as common or evenly distributed to the different factions. Also an overhall on cover/terrain in general so its not so zogging difficult to actually meet the requirements for cover beyond being a static shooting unit parked inside a piece of area terrain (devs for example). Having more LoS based cover (your shooting through another unit or shooting through that wreckage) makes it so you need clean avenues of fire so it might discourage clumping up for aura buffs and also make it so units behind other units aren't so easy to kill. Would also discourage nothing but plasma spam as historically plasma was fairly meh against units in hard cover but deadly against units out in the open.

I do caution against general mechanics that do the whole "add 1 to your save" or -"1 to hit" as it dis-proportionally benefits certain units way more than others. +1 to your save is basically garbage for an Ork loota thats camping these ruins and gets *drumroll*.... a 5+ armor save (look at me, i am the guardsman now)... oh that plasma just ripped through all of that so i get no save . A Dev marine camping in terrain goes from a 3+ to 2+ so now that Dev has the save of a terminator which is a much bigger bump in survivablity compared to going from a 6+ to 5+. The whole minus to hit thing really hurts low accuracy shooting units like (once again) Orks with their base 5+ to hit with ranged where as your high accuracy units like Space Marines, Eldar, etc have a lot more ground to give before they are missing wildly (sorta similar yet the opposite problem of invisibility really messing up elite units while Orks sorta shrugged at snap shooting). On a d6 system stacking those modifers really gets crazy when you have entire factions unable to make a shooting attack because the roll they need to make a hit is 7+ and thus impossible to make (why is 6 always hits not core rule?).

Turn 1 deep strikes contributes to the alpha strike problem but the core issue is how generally effective it is to just focus on removing units from the board asap and how little there is that you can do to mitigate that. If deep strikes are delayed but alpha striking is still superior then putting units in deep strike reserve is just putting your own dakka/choppa power on ice meaning those points aren't contributing to tenemy unit removal immediately and thus allow more time for their units to remove your units. The benefit of placement or the safety of being off the board needs to outweigh the lose of a turn or two of combat output.

As mentioned, you have to understand that “alpha strike” is not just related to deep striking – rather the ability to destroy half of your opponent’s army right away. Part of it is getting the odd charge off, but a lot more is down to shooting (from starting on the table and from deep strike).

So, if you want to improve durability to alpha strike, my suggestions would be –
1. On a 2+ the first turn has Night Fighting in effect – all shooting suffers -1 to hit. Change minus to hit penalties to allow a natural roll of a 6 to always hit. This is rolled by the player with 1st turn, and cannot be re-rolled.
2. Half your deep striking units can arrive turn 1 (rounding up), the rest turn up in turns 2 and 3.
3. Change the 9” deep strike bubble to 3D6” or 5D3”. This offers a big risk/reward for assault units. (makes the average 10.5/10” but greatly reduces the lower figure to 3/5”)
4. Shooting without LoS incurs a -1 to hit penalty, 6’s always hit. (I suggested this right back at the start of 8th but Guard were top, so backlash)
5. “Woods” terrain completely blocks LoS regardless of whether you can see through it.
6. Ruins need to move officially to the ITC version – ground floor is LoS blocking.
7. A hit roll of a natural 1 when overcharging plasma deals 1 mortal wound even if you re-roll the result using a character aura and subsequently get a 2+ (the re-rolled hit would still count as a hit – however, if you use the re-roll stratagem you do not suffer the wound unless you roll another natural 1). How does missing and have the gun explode get “fixed” by hitting again???

There are some issues with doing things like this though – namely fast, horde, assault armies would hit your gun-lines easier – which could be argued to be a good thing.

Even if just options 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 are introduced (as they all kinda work together and the terrain rules would help the game anyway) I reckon we’d see a lot more units making it to turn 2. It then becomes a game of objectives and beta strike mitigation.

3 and 7 are just things that I think would generally improve the game, but can get a little complicated.

1 results in -3 to hit alitoc so guard, tau etc can't hit them.
Natural six hit, helps worse shooting units disproportionately.
2 ok so I'll hold my deepstike till turn 2 and drop it all at once anyway.
3 thats a lot of randomness to be adding and is yet more rolling in a game beset by having too many buckets of dice
4 To be honest the flat -1 to hit for nlos weapons would be enough
5 Yes tue LOS is way to hard to get cover from unless your using boxes for terain.
6 makes playing cityscape terrain insainly difficult, but for tournaments with minimal terrain fine
7 making it S6 S7 overcharge and not 2d would solve the issues with plasma, making more wounds from overheat just premotes cheap disposible troops spaming plasma over expensive more elite models even considering it.

chaos0xomega wrote:
The solution to alpha strike is to implement Star Wars Legions suppression mechanic (or a derivation thereof). Said mechanic introduces the concept of diminishing returns to the game, so focus-firing units off the table is an inherently less efficient strategy, which in turns make precision targeted alpha strikes less efficient and thus less effective.

I really, really, really love this idea. The problem with Alpha Strike is the ability that Player 1 gets to simply delete Player 2 most annoying unit in one go with no reaction allowed.

Age of Sigmar circumvented this lately by giving Morathi a maximum number of wounds she can lose in a turn, but it feels a bit artificial. The old "Going to ground" rule was nice and having something similar (maybe at the cost of CPs) would be great.

Going to ground, 1 or 2CP : use it before rolling for saves in the Shooting phase. For the remainder of the Shooting phase, this unit gains a bonus to its armor save equal to the number of wounds it has suffered this turn (a roll of 1 is always a failure). During its next turn, you can only choose to activate this unit in one phase (Movement, Psychic, Shooting or Charge / Fight).

 Nym wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
The solution to alpha strike is to implement Star Wars Legions suppression mechanic (or a derivation thereof). Said mechanic introduces the concept of diminishing returns to the game, so focus-firing units off the table is an inherently less efficient strategy, which in turns make precision targeted alpha strikes less efficient and thus less effective.

I really, really, really love this idea. The problem with Alpha Strike is the ability that Player 1 gets to simply delete Player 2 most annoying unit in one go with no reaction allowed.

Age of Sigmar circumvented this lately by giving Morathi a maximum number of wounds she can lose in a turn, but it feels a bit artificial. The old "Going to ground" rule was nice and having something similar (maybe at the cost of CPs) would be great.

Going to ground, 1 or 2CP : use it before rolling for saves in the Shooting phase. For the remainder of the Shooting phase, this unit gains a bonus to its armor save equal to the number of wounds it has suffered this turn (a roll of 1 is always a failure). During its next turn, you can only choose to activate this unit in one phase (Movement, Psychic, Shooting or Charge / Fight).

Not sure why we need every action tied to CPs. Its nice having certain core gameplay actions being free and always available but as a trade off. 7th's jink was generally a good trade off between boosting that durability at the cost of shooting firepower. Same with going to ground to improve that cover save but at the cost of being forced to snap shoot, no movement, and no overwatch.

 Vankraken wrote:
Not sure why we need every action tied to CPs.

Well, in this very case the goal is to prevent the ennemy from over-focusing one particular unit. If you could go to ground with multiple units, with the restrictions I set, horde armies would be too strong. Most of them would just go to ground and then choose to activate during the Movement phase (with Advance), in order to set-up turn 3 charges.

What about the beta rules, character targeting and smite mitigation, are they likely to be approved?

 Nym wrote:

 Vankraken wrote:
Not sure why we need every action tied to CPs.

Well, in this very case the goal is to prevent the ennemy from over-focusing one particular unit. If you could go to ground with multiple units, with the restrictions I set, horde armies would be too strong. Most of them would just go to ground and then choose to activate during the Movement phase (with Advance), in order to set-up turn 3 charges.

You can't if its a strategem. 1 per phase. You would just bait out the strategem then focus down another unit.

Ugh. No, we do not need to add more -1 penalties to shooting on turn 1. That just makes long-range armies worthless, you can't hit anything on turn 1 and then you get mass charged, locked in combat, and wiped off the table before you ever fire a meaningful shot. Nor do we need more absurd CP mechanics, or whatever other artificial limits you can think of. What we need is two things:

1) Reserves go back to 5th edition. Roll to get them (4+/3+/2+/auto on turns 2/3/4/5), roll some kind of scatter/mishap chance/etc if you deep strike. No more turn-1 alpha strike delivered anywhere you want without any chance of failure, if you want the massive power of deep stirke you have to pay for it with a high chance of failure.

2) Fix the broken LOS mechanics. LOS through terrain gives cover, ruins block LOS entirely even if you can see a fingertip of a model through a tiny crack in the wall, etc. And play with more than a token tree or two. This prevents long-range alpha strikes from dominating, with significantly limited ability to draw LOS to the opposite deployment zone you can't just sit back and roll dice until you remove their entire army.

Yes, IG artillery still gets to deliver shots on turn 1. No, this is not a problem, despite the irritating IG hate from people who seem to expect us to be nothing but easy wins for the glorious space marines. The big guns are lucky to get 2-3 wounds per turn, and the mortar spam is much less impressive against anything that has good durability or ever gets to draw LOS to them. You are going to take some damage from IG shooting, deal with it. It's the one thing they're supposed to be good at.

 Peregrine wrote:
Ugh. No, we do not need to add more -1 penalties to shooting on turn 1. That just makes long-range armies worthless, you can't hit anything on turn 1 and then you get mass charged, locked in combat, and wiped off the table before you ever fire a meaningful shot. Nor do we need more absurd CP mechanics, or whatever other artificial limits you can think of. What we need is two things:

1) Reserves go back to 5th edition. Roll to get them (4+/3+/2+/auto on turns 2/3/4/5), roll some kind of scatter/mishap chance/etc if you deep strike. No more turn-1 alpha strike delivered anywhere you want without any chance of failure, if you want the massive power of deep stirke you have to pay for it with a high chance of failure.

2) Fix the broken LOS mechanics. LOS through terrain gives cover, ruins block LOS entirely even if you can see a fingertip of a model through a tiny crack in the wall, etc. And play with more than a token tree or two. This prevents long-range alpha strikes from dominating, with significantly limited ability to draw LOS to the opposite deployment zone you can't just sit back and roll dice until you remove their entire army.

Yes, IG artillery still gets to deliver shots on turn 1. No, this is not a problem, despite the irritating IG hate from people who seem to expect us to be nothing but easy wins for the glorious space marines. The big guns are lucky to get 2-3 wounds per turn, and the mortar spam is much less impressive against anything that has good durability or ever gets to draw LOS to them. You are going to take some damage from IG shooting, deal with it. It's the one thing they're supposed to be good at.

The issue with IG isn't that it can be devastating first turn, but that you have no means of retaliating against well placed manticores until turn 3 or 4. As the rules stand, the manticores can literally be put into closed boxes and it'll still shoot without any penalties. But again, IG LOS artilleries are the one of the least of worries in alpha strikes.

 DominayTrix wrote:

 Nym wrote:

 Vankraken wrote:
Not sure why we need every action tied to CPs.

Well, in this very case the goal is to prevent the ennemy from over-focusing one particular unit. If you could go to ground with multiple units, with the restrictions I set, horde armies would be too strong. Most of them would just go to ground and then choose to activate during the Movement phase (with Advance), in order to set-up turn 3 charges.

You can't if its a strategem. 1 per phase. You would just bait out the strategem then focus down another unit.

Of course that also makes it very unscalable rule and those are generally not good game design.

 skchsan wrote:
The issue with IG isn't that it can be devastating first turn, but that you have no means of retaliating against well placed manticores until turn 3 or 4.

But why is that such a problem? "I can't delete a unit on turn 1-2 no matter where it is" is hardly a major problem. You can take LOS-ignoring weapons of your own, you can take fast units that can get around terrain to draw LOS (hi flyers, you might be useful here), you can take your chances with the reserves roll and bring some deep striking threats, etc. Or you can just accept the not-terribly-impressive shooting they're putting out and win the game elsewhere on the table. Manticores are hardly game-breaking.

Adepticon taught us one thing - Adepticon is not an accurate measure of the hobby. It's a tournament, not a game between friends for fluff purposes but rather a load of people pretty much out to win regardless of how they do it. Not to say there aren't some nice people, but it's not representative of the wider hobby.

Tournaments need to fix this themselves with their own restrictions and adding random missions so that people field balanced armies rather than ones good at the one mission you give them.

Ice_can wrote:
1 results in -3 to hit alitoc so guard, tau etc can't hit them.
Natural six hit, helps worse shooting units disproportionately.
2 ok so I'll hold my deepstike till turn 2 and drop it all at once anyway.
3 thats a lot of randomness to be adding and is yet more rolling in a game beset by having too many buckets of dice
4 To be honest the flat -1 to hit for nlos weapons would be enough
5 Yes tue LOS is way to hard to get cover from unless your using boxes for terain.
6 makes playing cityscape terrain insainly difficult, but for tournaments with minimal terrain fine
7 making it S6 S7 overcharge and not 2d would solve the issues with plasma, making more wounds from overheat just premotes cheap disposible troops spaming plasma over expensive more elite models even considering it.

With the T’au example, they’d hit exactly the same as every other faction (bar Custodes) when shooting at an Aliatoc flyer from more than 12” away, and slightly worse than Marines when it isn’t a flyer. Sure, it helps those armies that hit on 5+s more than it helps an army that hits on 3+s, but I must admit that I find it odd that this is an excuse to not apply a “6’s always hit” rule.

Dropping it all turn 2, I don’t have a problem with. By that time I’ve potentially dropped half my reserves in and moved my units in such a way that you’re deep strike is now extremely limited. Sure, not all armies can do this, but a lot can. I’m not bothered by your deep striking Scions if they are practically dropping into your own deployment zone. That, or it gives you the opportunity to claim objectives and/or remove some of the “on board” priority targets. Unless you’re running Scouts or Nurglings etc, if you go 2nd vs a deep strike heavy list you’re always giving up table control from the very start.

I agree that it adds randomness, but I must admit I kinda miss the days of random, misshaping deep strikes. Right now it’s a case of, “I’ll have all my deep strikers setup to shoot and suicide”, or “I’ll drop in so many units that I’m bound to roll some 9+ charges”. It adds in the risk of your Scions suddenly ending up 13” away from their target and unable to rapid fire etc. Still – prob not the best fix though.

While the flat -1 for non LoS weapons would likely be enough, it doesn’t affect all the LoS alpha strike weapons. The plasmas and meltas etc. The T’au and Marine missiles – the Obliterator spam. It changes the options for players. Sure it might just delay everything for 1 turn, but you then have to factor that lost turn into your game plan and list building. Sure, turn 2 could still see massive beta strikes, but it does allow for a more tactical early game.

Cityscape games are usually played over several levels though right? And often with “full” buildings. Could simply make a change for the “Cities of Death” ruleset, stating that LoS blocking aspect is removed for that particular game type.

Sumilidon wrote:
Adepticon taught us one thing - Adepticon is not an accurate measure of the hobby. It's a tournament, not a game between friends for fluff purposes but rather a load of people pretty much out to win regardless of how they do it. Not to say there aren't some nice people, but it's not representative of the wider hobby.

Tournaments need to fix this themselves with their own restrictions and adding random missions so that people field balanced armies rather than ones good at the one mission you give them.

Games Workshop itself disagrees with you so.... no.

The terrain being essentially save boosting see through smoke is a big issue. I dislike the whole 'Can I see through it? I can shoot/charge through it' thing immensely. This was brought home to me in my first game of 8th edition (actually my first since my 2nd ed days bar 1 game in 5th and 1 game in 3rd). Laid out the table which included a 2 foot wide wood, with trees that were both removable and spaced to allow infantry to be placed between them.
Set up the army, then the AM player opposite opened fire straight through the wood informing me that as it didn't block the players table level LOS it didn't block the models either... Really I build scenery to be played on, not for my models to have to move through like actual humans so it tends to accommodate their bases and the like!

Something like 12 inches of scenery blocks LOS to anything beyond it would be a good rule...

Sumilidon wrote:
Adepticon taught us one thing - Adepticon is not an accurate measure of the hobby. It's a tournament, not a game between friends for fluff purposes but rather a load of people pretty much out to win regardless of how they do it. Not to say there aren't some nice people, but it's not representative of the wider hobby.

Tournaments need to fix this themselves with their own restrictions and adding random missions so that people field balanced armies rather than ones good at the one mission you give them.

Adepticon is a convention of nemerous events, not a single WAAC tournament. The vast majority of participants are there for the hobby and not to win the Championships.

The Team Tournament, the largest event of the con, scores paint, theme, presentation and sportsmanship. All categories that are hobby focused and not game result focused. That event alone is double the size of the Championships. There are even more events beyond that one on smaller scales that are hobby focused as well. Add in all the modeling and painting seminars and your blowing the doors off the purely competitive mindset group of people that your referring to. 4,500 attendees total. 256 played in the Champs. Let that sink in.

Champs are what get all the attention here, but they are by no means the focus of that convention.

On internet forums dedicated to gaming, the championships are what the forums will always focus on, so thats a good point. Forum and facebook conversations can be misleading in that it would seem everyone is only concerned about waac and wiinning the tournament, but thats rarely the case.

The championships should get all the attention because that's where good game design is tested. A game that is balanced and designed well enough to handle the highest levels of competitive play will work at lower levels of competitiveness, and be a better game as a result of that balance. The opposite is not true, however, you can't assume that your rules are finished just because someone played a low-competitiveness game with them.

I still feel that there are changes that should be applied to tournaments, but NOT affect all of Matched Play (which generally seems to mean "using points instead of power level"). However, this is something GW themselves seems unwilling to do in that they change all of Matched Play because they seem to equate Matched Play with "competitive".

Things like this I feel ITC should handle rather than GW (or the specific tournament, but ITC is widely recognized enough that they could get away with it) just so you don't see restrictions meant to "fix" tournaments affect everyone who wants to use Matched Play versus Open/Narrative.

Wayniac wrote:
I still feel that there are changes that should be applied to tournaments, but NOT affect all of Matched Play (which generally seems to mean "using points instead of power level"). However, this is something GW themselves seems unwilling to do in that they change all of Matched Play because they seem to equate Matched Play with "competitive".

Things like this I feel ITC should handle rather than GW (or the specific tournament, but ITC is widely recognized enough that they could get away with it) just so you don't see restrictions meant to "fix" tournaments affect everyone who wants to use Matched Play versus Open/Narrative.

It would be nice to see GW release a set of true "advanced rules" to be used for competitive plays.

The new 8th ed ruleset is really good for bringing new players in because of its simplicity and ambiguities of wording where it engages both players in discussion, teaching & learning the game. In a competitive setting, it's a mess.

Sumilidon wrote:
so that people field balanced armies rather than ones good at the one mission you give them.

Taking armies that are good at the mission should be what everyone is doing, including fluffy narrative players.

If you know you're going to be playing maelstrom rather than eternal war (even if you don't know which mission specifically) why wouldn't you be adjusting your army to suit?

Wayniac wrote:
I still feel that there are changes that should be applied to tournaments, but NOT affect all of Matched Play (which generally seems to mean "using points instead of power level"). However, this is something GW themselves seems unwilling to do in that they change all of Matched Play because they seem to equate Matched Play with "competitive".

Things like this I feel ITC should handle rather than GW (or the specific tournament, but ITC is widely recognized enough that they could get away with it) just so you don't see restrictions meant to "fix" tournaments affect everyone who wants to use Matched Play versus Open/Narrative.

Because Matched Play is the 'competitive' ruleset? The Matched part kinda gives it away imo.
If you don't want to use the full 'competitive' ruleset your free to houserule out any part your group disagrees with.

Terrain, deepstriking, alphastriking... all of these things aside. At least Adepticon did show them that the balance of the flying hive tyrant was a bit off. Maybe a lot of the other HQs are not underpowered and thus not represented as much when observed externally, and fixing the tyrant may show that. But when you have something clearly superior to everything else (hello Dark Reapers), a sense of everything else being underpowered is created.

All of the other parts of the recipe can be handled individually, and hopefully GW is looking at them all together and in isolation. That way they can fix the Flying Hive Tyrant for all games, casual and competitive. I imagine those lists would be all the more unforgiving versus lists that are more fluff and casually oriented. They can actually look at what caused those results (was it the model, the tabletop, the scoring, a combination?) and start making positive headway into fixing a lot of the problems with the edition.

I don't even play Dark Reapers in a casual setting anymore. There is the negative stigma against them for very good reason. Fortunately, at lower numbers, the problem isn't as pronounced, but I totally believe the problem is with Ynnari and not as much Dark Reapers. But, we have to wait and see how GW fixes them.

And that is what Games Workshop wanted to see. Break their game, show them what is wrong so they can correct it. Most of the fixes have been points changes, but who knows how they'll choose to fix this. 1 Flying Hive Tyrant may not be skewing the balance as terribly as 7 on the same battlefield, but the fact is... it is still having an affect. So while this does proliferate down to "casual" play, it is still a problem, and it is still a good fix. Besides, if the fix sucks so much... you're in casual play... why do you care? Just ignore it. When my wife's Dark Eldar heavy Ynnari army got slapped with the changes over the fall, we chose to ignore the changes to Soulbursting for the duration of our narrative campaign to help lessen the tabletop performance of her army versus ours. She ended up winning the narrative campaign with a Soulburst of all things. But it was casual, and we decided to ignore that rule change.

But look at it from the positive side of things:

At least they're looking, and trying. Which is a lot more than what happened over 7th edition where they just kept adding more ways to deathstar or 2++ reroll instead of fixing the problem of deathstars and 2++ rerolls. They've seen things over the past few months that they want to address, and they're doing it without a total rewrite of all of their books.

Imagine how much time and effort is destroyed by an edition change. Now think of how much expansion they could have done if the edition just lasted longer.

I am not advocating for going back to 7th. Nostalgia glasses are not rose-tinted in this case. Overall, 8th has been an improvement. Better in many areas, weaker in some.

What I would really like to see is assault armies getting a +1 or something. Freely disengaging after sinking resources into simply making it to melee seems a bit powerful for the corner-dwelling armies of the edition. We may start playing where the unit being disengaged gets to take a swing at the retreating unit as if it were the fight phase. Sure, they still get obliterated by the shooting. But at least the screen doesn't get to freely screen again after the guys with swords just politely watched them turn their backs and leave.

Terrain still seems to be the most potent fix to a lot of the problems. I'll try to talk my group into doing things like no firing through a dense cover fixture like a forest and building, and we already play with enough other fixtures to really hurt alpha striking and force players to work on positioning early in the game. Maybe that is another take-away from Adepticon that at least the community can agree on: a 6'x4' playing surface with largely nothing to obstruct line of sight disproportionately weights the game on the roll to go first. The more terrain present, the less valuable that roll to go first becomes. There should be a a trade-off where going first is still advantageous, but not insurmountable for the person who goes second. I'm sure the bean counters out there can find a proper terrain balance to make that happen.

Real LOS blocking terrain should be used. The entire "true LOS" has always been an issue with any of GW's games.

Institute a silhouette system like Infinity has. It's not difficult.

Then make Forests and buildings actually block LOS.

The next issue is durability, but that's not a discussion I care to have ATM

 Peregrine wrote:
Ugh. No, we do not need to add more -1 penalties to shooting on turn 1. That just makes long-range armies worthless, you can't hit anything on turn 1 and then you get mass charged, locked in combat, and wiped off the table before you ever fire a meaningful shot. Nor do we need more absurd CP mechanics, or whatever other artificial limits you can think of. What we need is two things:

1) Reserves go back to 5th edition. Roll to get them (4+/3+/2+/auto on turns 2/3/4/5), roll some kind of scatter/mishap chance/etc if you deep strike. No more turn-1 alpha strike delivered anywhere you want without any chance of failure, if you want the massive power of deep stirke you have to pay for it with a high chance of failure.

2) Fix the broken LOS mechanics. LOS through terrain gives cover, ruins block LOS entirely even if you can see a fingertip of a model through a tiny crack in the wall, etc. And play with more than a token tree or two. This prevents long-range alpha strikes from dominating, with significantly limited ability to draw LOS to the opposite deployment zone you can't just sit back and roll dice until you remove their entire army.

Yes, IG artillery still gets to deliver shots on turn 1. No, this is not a problem, despite the irritating IG hate from people who seem to expect us to be nothing but easy wins for the glorious space marines. The big guns are lucky to get 2-3 wounds per turn, and the mortar spam is much less impressive against anything that has good durability or ever gets to draw LOS to them. You are going to take some damage from IG shooting, deal with it. It's the one thing they're supposed to be good at.

This. The big problems we have right now is that there are literally zero draw backs to taking stuff in reserves to be deep struck. And terrain needs to be fixed badly.

Much to the shagrin of people, GW needs to bring back the 50% obscure gets cover, and if you can only see like a hand, wing, or foot of a model thats not grounds to shoot at it. I know GW removed those to "Try and speed up the game," Or "To reduce arguemetns," but it does not because you will still have Gak players that will try and argue everything. As it stands the LoS rules are a joke

Wayniac wrote:
I still feel that there are changes that should be applied to tournaments, but NOT affect all of Matched Play (which generally seems to mean "using points instead of power level"). However, this is something GW themselves seems unwilling to do in that they change all of Matched Play because they seem to equate Matched Play with "competitive".
Things like this I feel ITC should handle rather than GW (or the specific tournament, but ITC is widely recognized enough that they could get away with it) just so you don't see restrictions meant to "fix" tournaments affect everyone who wants to use Matched Play versus Open/Narrative.

I think this is semantics. Matched play IS competitive play. Open play isn't. There's already 2 separate sets of rules. Open play is basically a free for all. You CAN use points in open play. Nobody's gonna stop you. It seems you don't like a specific few rules GW implements to balance competitive play. That's fine. When you ask someone for a casual game just say "Hey I don't like this rule. Any chance we could avoid using it this game?" Though I suspect GWs competitive adjustments have a reason for existing. "Hey I don't like how GW limited the number of tau commanders I can bring. Can we ignore that? My list has 12" probably won't go over so well.

You're asking for THREE separate rule sets. Casual, Sort of Competitive, and Competitive. Lets not.

njtrader wrote:
Real LOS blocking terrain should be used. The entire "true LOS" has always been an issue with any of GW's games.

Institute a silhouette system like Infinity has. It's not difficult.

Then make Forests and buildings actually block LOS.

The next issue is durability, but that's not a discussion I care to have ATM

This! I like 8th, but the terrain rules are absolute garbage. I've never been a fan of TLoS.

ThePorcupine wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
I still feel that there are changes that should be applied to tournaments, but NOT affect all of Matched Play (which generally seems to mean "using points instead of power level"). However, this is something GW themselves seems unwilling to do in that they change all of Matched Play because they seem to equate Matched Play with "competitive".
Things like this I feel ITC should handle rather than GW (or the specific tournament, but ITC is widely recognized enough that they could get away with it) just so you don't see restrictions meant to "fix" tournaments affect everyone who wants to use Matched Play versus Open/Narrative.

I think this is semantics. Matched play IS competitive play. Open play isn't. There's already 2 separate sets of rules. Open play is basically a free for all. You CAN use points in open play. Nobody's gonna stop you. It seems you don't like a specific few rules GW implements to balance competitive play. That's fine. When you ask someone for a casual game just say "Hey I don't like this rule. Any chance we could avoid using it this game?" Though I suspect GWs competitive adjustments have a reason for existing. "Hey I don't like how GW limited the number of tau commanders I can bring. Can we ignore that? My list has 12" probably won't go over so well.

You're asking for THREE separate rule sets. Casual, Sort of Competitive, and Competitive. Lets not.

Like like... Open... Narrative, and Matched.

Huh.
We do already have three game types.
And Apocalypse? Wow.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Much to the shagrin of people, GW needs to bring back the 50% obscure gets cover, and if you can only see like a hand, wing, or foot of a model thats not grounds to shoot at it. I know GW removed those to "Try and speed up the game," Or "To reduce arguemetns," but it does not because you will still have Gak players that will try and argue everything. As it stands the LoS rules are a joke

This has to be my favorite Dakka buzzword - 'joke'. Anything someone doesn't like, doesn't agree with, doesn't support is a joke. Maybe instead of a joke it's a system that needs work? Maybe it isn't where you'd like it to be and you think it could be drastically improved. Honestly calling things a joke cheapens your argument.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:
Like like... Open... Narrative, and Matched.

Huh.
We do already have three game types.
And Apocalypse? Wow.

My point was what people seem to be asking for is really nebulous. There's one or two rules they're not fans of, or one or two rules they came up with that they want implemented, and want the whole thing in its own separate rules category of "kind of competitive but not really."

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Much to the shagrin of people, GW needs to bring back the 50% obscure gets cover, and if you can only see like a hand, wing, or foot of a model thats not grounds to shoot at it. I know GW removed those to "Try and speed up the game," Or "To reduce arguemetns," but it does not because you will still have Gak players that will try and argue everything. As it stands the LoS rules are a joke

This has to be my favorite Dakka buzzword - 'joke'. Anything someone doesn't like, doesn't agree with, doesn't support is a joke. Maybe instead of a joke it's a system that needs work? Maybe it isn't where you'd like it to be and you think it could be drastically improved. Honestly calling things a joke cheapens your argument.

I think the "doesn't support" is the key distinction there. I'm pretty sure many people who play athletic sports consider e-sports a 'joke'. I consider Warmachine tournaments 'a joke'. Heck, I even consider 40k tournaments 'a joke'. But that is my own individual opinion after having attended and experienced many of those things. I do believe the people who participate in those events though, many of them do not consider it a joke. It is actually nice to see them being given some love and consideration.

What's the worst that could happen? They help balance the game for me way down here in casual-land? That'd be a tragedy. I was just about to give my local group a new list that uses 7 Flyrants as a tyranid force, I like big bugs! This is casual-land, different rules for balance down here! They won't be nearly as overpowered!

I do agree, dogging people's passion as a joke is probably not a way to advance change and win friends. Regardless of how you perceive the endeavor.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:
This has to be my favorite Dakka buzzword - 'joke'. Anything someone doesn't like, doesn't agree with, doesn't support is a joke. Maybe instead of a joke it's a system that needs work? Maybe it isn't where you'd like it to be and you think it could be drastically improved. Honestly calling things a joke cheapens your argument.

Perhaps GW should stop making joke rules then? I mean, it's not like any reasonable person can look at GW's LOS rules or the arguments they made in support of those rules and say "yes, this is a great idea". It is indeed a pretty good joke that GW authors are actually getting paid for the utter trash they keep publishing.

Or of course you could stop nitpicking whether the word "joke" is used instead of "terrible" or "badly written" or whatever, and deal with the substance of the criticism.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

AdmiralHalsey wrote:
We do already have three game types.

We really don't. We have matched play, matched play with a different set of tournament-style missions, and some nonsense about "just play with your models and buy more space marines even if you play tyranids" that nobody bothers to pay attention to. And that's how it should be. Adding additional "ways to play" that are just bad versions of matched play is not improving the game.

 Peregrine wrote:
Perhaps GW should stop making joke rules then? I mean, it's not like any reasonable person can look at GW's LOS rules or the arguments they made in support of those rules and say "yes, this is a great idea". It is indeed a pretty good joke that GW authors are actually getting paid for the utter trash they keep publishing.

Or of course you could stop nitpicking whether the word "joke" is used instead of "terrible" or "badly written" or whatever, and deal with the substance of the criticism.

Deleted - not worth it.

Got to agree the 3 ways to play is just marketing bull crap. Since the launch of 8th I have never seen a single person at my store even use power points. I mean if you want a good example of how little it is used, look for how many people post here is my 200 power point list of nids.

GW is just wasting their time with power points instead of fixing the only rules that matter the point and matched play rules. The narrative and open play can best be described as "official house rules"

But back to LoS, it's a complete mess/joke in 8th. Almost every game I have played were we don't use the ITC rule of first floor blocks LoS terrian just becomes more of a pain in the ass to deal with then it is actually useful.

The lack of anyone using PL and non matched play is actually a problem. People are dismissing 80% of scenarios on the basis it's unfair and use the most symetrical. Leading to litlle variety and the same netlists winning all the time.

There has been no nerf to dark reapers, yet they are not winning massive tournaments. Why well because the LVO mission format favoured them so they won. Reduce variety and you get well reduced variety.

 Earth127 wrote:

The lack of anyone using PL and non matched play is actually a problem. People are dismissing 80% of scenarios on the basis it's unfair and use the most symetrical. Leading to litlle variety and the same netlists winning all the time.

There has been no nerf to dark reapers, yet they are not winning massive tournaments. Why well because the LVO mission format favoured them so they won. Reduce variety and you get well reduced variety.

It's also because power points are horribly broken and unbalanced as hell

As are points. Anybody pretending points aren#' horribly broken crap are kidding themselves

tneva82 wrote:
As are points. Anybody pretending points aren#' horribly broken crap are kidding themselves

The arguement is that power points are horribly balenced compared to points and points are badly balenced compared to... Well, nothing, because we don't have another system. So we use the best of a bad world, and look suprised when people want to use the worst of a bad world.

 Earth127 wrote:
The lack of anyone using PL and non matched play is actually a problem. People are dismissing 80% of scenarios on the basis it's unfair and use the most symetrical. Leading to litlle variety and the same netlists winning all the time.

It is not a problem at all, because using power points instead of the full point system adds absolutely nothing to the game. GW could remove power entirely and nothing of value would be lost. Likewise for things like getting to spam plasma command squads because it "isn't matched play". And of course open play is such an obviously stupid idea for anyone but their used car salesman retail employees that I'm amazed GW had the audacity to publish it in a book.

(Remember, mission choice in matched play is not limited to the ITC scenario pack, you can still use asymmetrical missions in matched play. And all of GW's so-called narrative missions are really just asymmetrical matched play missions.)

tneva82 wrote:
As are points. Anybody pretending points aren#' horribly broken crap are kidding themselves

Never said points weren't but power points are far worse.

Case and point, 20 genestealers are 16 power points. 10 rubrics all kitted with flame thrower and bolters because you can do that, with a reaper auto Cannon at only 14 power points, with a psyker in the unit as well. Gene stealers are 242 points, while the rubric squad is over 350 points.

Power points are WAY worse off then pointa

 Peregrine wrote:

 Earth127 wrote:
The lack of anyone using PL and non matched play is actually a problem. People are dismissing 80% of scenarios on the basis it's unfair and use the most symetrical. Leading to litlle variety and the same netlists winning all the time.

It is not a problem at all, because using power points instead of the full point system adds absolutely nothing to the game. GW could remove power entirely and nothing of value would be lost. Likewise for things like getting to spam plasma command squads because it "isn't matched play". And of course open play is such an obviously stupid idea for anyone but their used car salesman retail employees that I'm amazed GW had the audacity to publish it in a book.

(Remember, mission choice in matched play is not limited to the ITC scenario pack, you can still use asymmetrical missions in matched play. And all of GW's so-called narrative missions are really just asymmetrical matched play missions.)

And I bet people don't play them because of that. The scenario spinning some rules on its head can make everything go topsy turvey and make for a more enjoyable if unbalanced experience.
Worse than a mission where I realize I can't win on turn 2 is a mission I realize I can't win when I unpack my army or an opponent that believes he can't win when I unpack my army. Twists in the mission scenario can break spam lists since they turn what is good on its head. If the twists are more or less wel made and not kneejerk TAC lists should perform better.

No people don't play power points because the balance in them is far worse then matches points.

It's not about the mission, it's that PL is not a good balancing system


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Let's look at another example, a predator tank, with just an auto Cannon, 9 PL. A predator tank with twin laz cannons, laz cannons on the side, a hunter killer missle, and a stormbolter, still 9pl that's 70 points of free very powerful gear.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Much to the shagrin of people, GW needs to bring back the 50% obscure gets cover, and if you can only see like a hand, wing, or foot of a model thats not grounds to shoot at it. I know GW removed those to "Try and speed up the game," Or "To reduce arguemetns," but it does not because you will still have Gak players that will try and argue everything. As it stands the LoS rules are a joke

Wings used to be excluded but you've always been able to shoot a model where you could just see a hand or a foot.

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Much to the shagrin of people, GW needs to bring back the 50% obscure gets cover, and if you can only see like a hand, wing, or foot of a model thats not grounds to shoot at it. I know GW removed those to "Try and speed up the game," Or "To reduce arguemetns," but it does not because you will still have Gak players that will try and argue everything. As it stands the LoS rules are a joke

Wings used to be excluded but you've always been able to shoot a model where you could just see a hand or a foot.

True true

 Backspacehacker wrote:

GW is just wasting their time with power points instead of fixing the only rules that matter the point and matched play rules. The narrative and open play can best be described as "official house rules"

I use power level all the time and I haven't noticed anything amiss. So long as you take all upgrade options available (sponsons, cybork bodies etc...) the power to points difference isn't even that big. Plus it's easy to do an asymmetrical game for a bunker assault or something.

Also, with your predator example: sure you may be down 70 points, but going full lascannon might be worse than autocannon+bolters for a scenario (eg lots of infantry) so those 70 pts are actually meaningless.

Well sure anything can be worthless if you do the whole pick and choose what your fighting but the point still stands I can get 70 points of free gear. Or with rubrics over 100 points of free gear.

The issue with saying just choose not to use some matched play rules is that nobody does that. People don't pick and choose which to keep, other than missions thanks to ITC. Not that I've ever seen. Either you play matched play and use all the adjustments or you don't play matched at all (which also barely anyone does). There is no cherry picking.

Wayniac wrote:
The issue with saying just choose not to use some matched play rules is that nobody does that. People don't pick and choose which to keep, other than missions thanks to ITC. Not that I've ever seen. Either you play matched play and use all the adjustments or you don't play matched at all (which also barely anyone does). There is no cherry picking.

Then you need to take better control of the game you're playing and set better expectations with your opponents. This is simply a matter of not being willing to have a conversation about the type of game you're interested in.

I like 8th so far, but it definitely has issues. Overall better than 7th IMO. I think 8th is a good framework to make a very good 9th edition.

Toning down alpha strike would help. Imagine only being allowed to put 1 unit per detachment in reserves. That might suck, but it's a possibility.

I would like to see cover go back to being an alternative save and have AP be worse against it or something. Like reduce all ap by 2. An infantry unit in ruins gets a 4+ save and shots against them are 2 less AP, so plasma would knock it to a 5+ save. It would give a reason for lightly armored units to take cover, and wouldn't give a massive benefit to 3+ armored units unless they're getting shot with high AP weapons.

Or even just a flat save that's not modified by AP like it used to be. I would also like to have 50% obscurement give cover for everything again. It would make LOS matter more. Screening units providing cover for back line stuff, etc.

cmspano wrote:
I like 8th so far, but it definitely has issues. Overall better than 7th IMO. I think 8th is a good framework to make a very good 9th edition.

Toning down alpha strike would help. Imagine only being allowed to put 1 unit per detachment in reserves. That might suck, but it's a possibility.

I would like to see cover go back to being an alternative save and have AP be worse against it or something. Like reduce all ap by 2. An infantry unit in ruins gets a 4+ save and shots against them are 2 less AP, so plasma would knock it to a 5+ save. It would give a reason for lightly armored units to take cover, and wouldn't give a massive benefit to 3+ armored units unless they're getting shot with high AP weapons.

Or even just a flat save that's not modified by AP like it used to be. I would also like to have 50% obscurement give cover for everything again. It would make LOS matter more. Screening units providing cover for back line stuff, etc.

Personally would like cover to be wildy variable

say the benefit of a forest would be a -1 to hit, ruins is a stock +1 to armor saves, swamps reduce speed, razor wire and traps hand out mortal wounds on 6s, fortified terrain +2 cover.

then i play my imp fist and ignore all of that for raisins

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Well sure anything can be worthless if you do the whole pick and choose what your fighting but the point still stands I can get 70 points of free gear. Or with rubrics over 100 points of free gear.

But those 70 points really mean nothing at that point. Especially since most weapons costs are all over the place anyway.

cmspano wrote:
I like 8th so far, but it definitely has issues. Overall better than 7th IMO. I think 8th is a good framework to make a very good 9th edition.

Toning down alpha strike would help. Imagine only being allowed to put 1 unit per detachment in reserves. That might suck, but it's a possibility.

I would like to see cover go back to being an alternative save and have AP be worse against it or something. Like reduce all ap by 2. An infantry unit in ruins gets a 4+ save and shots against them are 2 less AP, so plasma would knock it to a 5+ save. It would give a reason for lightly armored units to take cover, and wouldn't give a massive benefit to 3+ armored units unless they're getting shot with high AP weapons.

Or even just a flat save that's not modified by AP like it used to be. I would also like to have 50% obscurement give cover for everything again. It would make LOS matter more. Screening units providing cover for back line stuff, etc.

That is exactly like it work right now, be 50% obscured (by enemy models, your models, scenario elements, whatever) and you get the cover bonus, as long as you have a toe in a scenario element and you are not infantry.

Gaining cover in 8th is incredibly easy as is.

Spoletta wrote:

cmspano wrote:
I like 8th so far, but it definitely has issues. Overall better than 7th IMO. I think 8th is a good framework to make a very good 9th edition.

Toning down alpha strike would help. Imagine only being allowed to put 1 unit per detachment in reserves. That might suck, but it's a possibility.

I would like to see cover go back to being an alternative save and have AP be worse against it or something. Like reduce all ap by 2. An infantry unit in ruins gets a 4+ save and shots against them are 2 less AP, so plasma would knock it to a 5+ save. It would give a reason for lightly armored units to take cover, and wouldn't give a massive benefit to 3+ armored units unless they're getting shot with high AP weapons.

Or even just a flat save that's not modified by AP like it used to be. I would also like to have 50% obscurement give cover for everything again. It would make LOS matter more. Screening units providing cover for back line stuff, etc.

That is exactly like it work right now, be 50% obscured (by enemy models, your models, scenario elements, whatever) and you get the cover bonus, as long as you have a toe in a scenario element and you are not infantry.

Gaining cover in 8th is incredibly easy as is.

With issues like WYSIWYG and modeling for advantage issues at hand, GW needs to develop a TLOS system based purely on base-to-base, sell proper bases for vehicles, become more strict with base sizes for competitive play, sell laser pointers for determining TLOS (the line tool and the point tool).

The game needs an objective criteria for TLOS.

 skchsan wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

cmspano wrote:
I like 8th so far, but it definitely has issues. Overall better than 7th IMO. I think 8th is a good framework to make a very good 9th edition.

Toning down alpha strike would help. Imagine only being allowed to put 1 unit per detachment in reserves. That might suck, but it's a possibility.

I would like to see cover go back to being an alternative save and have AP be worse against it or something. Like reduce all ap by 2. An infantry unit in ruins gets a 4+ save and shots against them are 2 less AP, so plasma would knock it to a 5+ save. It would give a reason for lightly armored units to take cover, and wouldn't give a massive benefit to 3+ armored units unless they're getting shot with high AP weapons.

Or even just a flat save that's not modified by AP like it used to be. I would also like to have 50% obscurement give cover for everything again. It would make LOS matter more. Screening units providing cover for back line stuff, etc.

That is exactly like it work right now, be 50% obscured (by enemy models, your models, scenario elements, whatever) and you get the cover bonus, as long as you have a toe in a scenario element and you are not infantry.

Gaining cover in 8th is incredibly easy as is.

With issues like WYSIWYG and modeling for advantage issues at hand, GW needs to develop a TLOS system based purely on base-to-base, sell proper bases for vehicles, become more strict with base sizes for competitive play, sell laser pointers for determining TLOS (the line tool and the point tool).

The game needs an objective criteria for TLOS.

We need a criteria for LOS, i agree with that, but going to the warmahordes levels of "You could play with the bases alone" doesn't seem like a good idea.

 skchsan wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

cmspano wrote:
I like 8th so far, but it definitely has issues. Overall better than 7th IMO. I think 8th is a good framework to make a very good 9th edition.

Toning down alpha strike would help. Imagine only being allowed to put 1 unit per detachment in reserves. That might suck, but it's a possibility.

I would like to see cover go back to being an alternative save and have AP be worse against it or something. Like reduce all ap by 2. An infantry unit in ruins gets a 4+ save and shots against them are 2 less AP, so plasma would knock it to a 5+ save. It would give a reason for lightly armored units to take cover, and wouldn't give a massive benefit to 3+ armored units unless they're getting shot with high AP weapons.

Or even just a flat save that's not modified by AP like it used to be. I would also like to have 50% obscurement give cover for everything again. It would make LOS matter more. Screening units providing cover for back line stuff, etc.

That is exactly like it work right now, be 50% obscured (by enemy models, your models, scenario elements, whatever) and you get the cover bonus, as long as you have a toe in a scenario element and you are not infantry.

Gaining cover in 8th is incredibly easy as is.

With issues like WYSIWYG and modeling for advantage issues at hand, GW needs to develop a TLOS system based purely on base-to-base, sell proper bases for vehicles, become more strict with base sizes for competitive play, sell laser pointers for determining TLOS (the line tool and the point tool).

The game needs an objective criteria for TLOS.

Eh its mostly for the balls to the walls "competitive" crew and the once in a blue moon disagreement. 99% of the time its not actually an issue.
though it certainly could use a well defined criteria.

Spoletta wrote:
We need a criteria for LOS, i agree with that, but going to the warmahordes levels of "You could play with the bases alone" doesn't seem like a good idea.

Well technically requiring actual physical models are tournament rules. May I ask what's more objective than model bases?

 Desubot wrote:

Eh its mostly for the balls to the walls "competitive" crew and the once in a blue moon disagreement. 99% of the time its not actually an issue.
though it certainly could use a well defined criteria.

I'd argue that I fall into that competitive category and even I don't see the issues with LoS. I normally just discuss with my opponent prior to moving if it is feasible to block LoS with the move and we agree and move on. That said cover does need a re-work.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

Eh its mostly for the balls to the walls "competitive" crew and the once in a blue moon disagreement. 99% of the time its not actually an issue.
though it certainly could use a well defined criteria.

I'd argue that I fall into that competitive category and even I don't see the issues with LoS. I normally just discuss with my opponent prior to moving if it is feasible to block LoS with the move and we agree and move on. That said cover does need a re-work.

Yeah honsetly. a comprehensive rework or codex:terrain would be nice.

every game ends up being exactly the same. need to spice things up and the easiest way is to have terrain do things.

tneva82 wrote:As are points. Anybody pretending points aren#' horribly broken crap are kidding themselves

PL is perfectly fine, out of my games in 8th(I little over 40) I've probably used PL for 10-15 of them and never had a problem with list inequality. 100pl of Salamanders and 100pl of nids are roughly equivalent. one might be a little more shooty vs stompy than the other. Last time I checked war isn't fair.

All GW points/power/whatever is unbalanced. There are far too many moving parts and far too many types play to balance across them all. I firmly believe GW doesn't care if it is (I feel the same way).

I'm all for GW coming up with an actual tournament ruleset. Like missions, a specific amount of command points(everybody has same #), and all the special minutia that competitive players love. They just really need to leave 8th alone and worry about making dope models

Racerguy180 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:As are points. Anybody pretending points aren#' horribly broken crap are kidding themselves

PL is perfectly fine, out of my games in 8th(I little over 40) I've probably used PL for 10-15 of them and never had a problem with list inequality. 100pl of Salamanders and 100pl of nids are roughly equivalent. one might be a little more shooty vs stompy than the other. Last time I checked war isn't fair.

All GW points/power/whatever is unbalanced. There are far too many moving parts and far too many types play to balance across them all. I firmly believe GW doesn't care if it is (I feel the same way).

I'm all for GW coming up with an actual tournament ruleset. Like missions, a specific amount of command points(everybody has same #), and all the special minutia that competitive players love. They just really need to leave 8th alone and worry about making dope models

PL is a lot like points in the fact that if you just look for the stuff that is costed incorrectly - you can make a much more powerful list. PL issues to me though seem more problematic - because it encourages only units that have lots of upgrades - it makes units without upgrades useless.

That's the point of PL. Devestors are another good example that comes to mind.

40k used to be about deploying units and rushing through terrain to get at the enemy.

Now, there is pretty much no reason for terrain.

Games are played on a flat table, both players put as much as they can in Reserve, and end up on top of each other on turn one.

Such involvement. Much battlefield wow.

Spoletta wrote:

We need a criteria for LOS, i agree with that, but going to the warmahordes levels of "You could play with the bases alone" doesn't seem like a good idea.

Why?

it makes units without upgrades useless.

It doesn't make them useless at all. It means that people trying to game the system with free crap have a criteria set that as much free crap as possible = winning at life, and that units without all the free stuff != winning at life... but having played PL almost exclusively since release I can tell you that that is not really the case at all and hasn't been an issue on our tables.

I use deep strike to protect things, if you take that away, then we’re left with 0 way to protect anything.

Line of Sight Blocking Terrain.

I've played plenty of games with proper LOS blocking terrain. GW's terrain is not good for this, since any little hole will allow a battle tank to snipe at you. Proper closed off terrain that narrows down the lanes of sight solves a LOT of the Alpha Strike problem.

Yes you still have trouble with deep strikers and other things, but at least it's not a dong-measuring contest to see who can roll the best dice as lines of armies fire at each other until one is wiped off the table.

I wonder if GW will consider IGOYOUGO by unit in all phases, like deployment and (similar to..) close combat.

I think this may alleviate many of the alpha strike issues turn one and two while also allowing players to move some models around before taking them off the table. ...it might also give a better overall flow to the game.

xmbk wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

We need a criteria for LOS, i agree with that, but going to the warmahordes levels of "You could play with the bases alone" doesn't seem like a good idea.

Why?

If you even need to ask, then our visions of the game are so different that there is no use in discussing.

Edit: For reference:

Q: Do units that are not Infantry (Vehicles, Monsters,
etc.) gain the benefit of cover from woods, ruins etc. if they are at
least 50% obscured by that piece of terrain but are not actually
on or within it?
A: No. Unless they are Infantry, such a unit must meet
the two following conditions to gain the benefit of cover:
• All of its models must be either on or within the terrain.
• The unit must be at least 50% obscured from the point
of view of the firer (note that it doesn’t matter what is
obscuring the target, only that it is obscured).


From rulebook's FAQ.

 auticus wrote:
It doesn't make them useless at all. It means that people trying to game the system with free crap have a criteria set that as much free crap as possible = winning at life, and that units without all the free stuff != winning at life... but having played PL almost exclusively since release I can tell you that that is not really the case at all and hasn't been an issue on our tables.

IOW, power points only work if you voluntarily agree not to make effective armies under the system and pretend that you're paying the conventional point cost for all of your upgrades. Why do you consider this a compelling defense?

 Peregrine wrote:

 auticus wrote:
It doesn't make them useless at all. It means that people trying to game the system with free crap have a criteria set that as much free crap as possible = winning at life, and that units without all the free stuff != winning at life... but having played PL almost exclusively since release I can tell you that that is not really the case at all and hasn't been an issue on our tables.

IOW, power points only work if you voluntarily agree not to make effective armies under the system and pretend that you're paying the conventional point cost for all of your upgrades. Why do you consider this a compelling defense?

Because it works out fine?

Dandelion wrote:
Because it works out fine?

Only in situations where conventional points work out fine. You never gain anything with power points, and you have a lot of potential to make the game worse, so why would you want to use the inferior system?

You already think the game is inferior, so what does it matter?

Here's my 2 CP:

I have a friend who plays Grey Knights, while I have been playing a pure Primaris force, or Orks as the case may be.

For my first game with my Primaris marine force, he used an army that consisted of four Grandmaster DKs, and nothing but interceptors otherwise. My army consisted of 25 intercessors, three lieutenants, a captain in gravis armor, 6 aggressors and inceptors, 10 hellblasters, and a redemptor dreadnought, using the Iron Hands chapter tactic. I knew that his list was geared toward tournament play and that it would probably smash mine, but I was curious to see if I could weather his first turn and give a good return. Now, I probably held on to more models than most would considering that all of mine had 2 wounds, a 3+ save, and a 6+ FNP on top of all that, but he mangled it pretty badly, and I wasn't able to return any meaningful fire. I'm pretty sure that most other armies would get hurt even worse than I did.

The trick to that GK setup is that the DKs are put in reserve and the interceptors are put on the far edge of his deployment zone, so even if he has to put 50% of his army on the board at start, he can put them well out of range. Even if I go first, and even if I can manage to move forward and get a couple of shots in, that just leaves me open to 4 DKs flanking me. I don't begrudge him this tactic; it's smart, and it makes good use of GK's ability to teleport. That said, that list is not something that I want to play against very often except to try a new defense against it, as it has the ability to dictate the course of the battle despite any restrictions on how many models you can bring out of reserve. It means that 99.9% of all our games would be fought the same way, whether it's maelstrom or eternal war. Furthermore, it means that the game type is essentially useless, because it becomes a slugfest to see who gets wiped off of the board. Plus, I could stop this tactic if I used scouts, which I don't have, don't really want and can't afford to buy (I would for tournaments, though. It wouldn't even mess with my fluff because I could just put them in a separate detachment).

That said, as far as deep striking is concerned, I kind of like the suggestion to limit how many units can drop down in a turn. GKs would still be able to leverage interceptors to teleport most things into firing range on turn one, but other units would have to wait their turn, which would make it far easier to weather the alpha strike and still feel like you're in the game. Since I don't consider myself very knowledgeable on other armies' versions of the tactic, I can't really say if this would be balanced for the game or not. It's just the only suggestion that I've seen thus far that seems like it would make any positive difference in the tiny little meta that is my living room.

(Edited for clarification

 Peregrine wrote:

Dandelion wrote:
Because it works out fine?

Only in situations where conventional points work out fine. You never gain anything with power points, and you have a lot of potential to make the game worse, so why would you want to use the inferior system?

Because the math is easy and I don't need to worry about which upgrades I'm going to take. "oh but if you drop the sponsons you can use those points on more guardsmen..." Yeah, I'm not interested in that minutiae. I want to be able to grab my stupid tank and just play it. Does it need to be 100% fair? No, because I'm not playing cutthroat games. And war is never fair anyway. A more realistic battle involves the attacking side always outnumbering the defender. Why else would they attack? Just the other day I played a game where the attacker (me) had almost twice the power level of the defender, but the defender was dug in and was given bonus command points. Using power helped gauge that difference so that we could fine tune the scenario. Points would have been irrelevant.

drbored wrote:
Line of Sight Blocking Terrain.

I've played plenty of games with proper LOS blocking terrain. GW's terrain is not good for this, since any little hole will allow a battle tank to snipe at you. Proper closed off terrain that narrows down the lanes of sight solves a LOT of the Alpha Strike problem.

Yes you still have trouble with deep strikers and other things, but at least it's not a dong-measuring contest to see who can roll the best dice as lines of armies fire at each other until one is wiped off the table.

Or just proper terrain rules that allow for LOS blocking without equally silly looking total solid brick walls. Buildings usually have these things called "windows" so one would like to have them on buildings. But equally sniping tank through narrow glimpse through 2 windows is silly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

Dandelion wrote:
Because it works out fine?

Only in situations where conventional points work out fine. You never gain anything with power points, and you have a lot of potential to make the game worse, so why would you want to use the inferior system?

Balance wise they are both bad. Only difference is they are different. In practice both are just as broken. So it's just different way of getting to equally bad end result. One is however easier to use on the spot. So one is good for preplanned game, other for on the spot.

Neither is inferior. That's where you are dead wrong.

tneva82 wrote:

drbored wrote:
Line of Sight Blocking Terrain.

I've played plenty of games with proper LOS blocking terrain. GW's terrain is not good for this, since any little hole will allow a battle tank to snipe at you. Proper closed off terrain that narrows down the lanes of sight solves a LOT of the Alpha Strike problem.

Yes you still have trouble with deep strikers and other things, but at least it's not a dong-measuring contest to see who can roll the best dice as lines of armies fire at each other until one is wiped off the table.

Or just proper terrain rules that allow for LOS blocking without equally silly looking total solid brick walls. Buildings usually have these things called "windows" so one would like to have them on buildings. But equally sniping tank through narrow glimpse through 2 windows is silly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

Dandelion wrote:
Because it works out fine?

Only in situations where conventional points work out fine. You never gain anything with power points, and you have a lot of potential to make the game worse, so why would you want to use the inferior system?

Balance wise they are both bad. Only difference is they are different. In practice both are just as broken. So it's just different way of getting to equally bad end result. One is however easier to use on the spot. So one is good for preplanned game, other for on the spot.

Neither is inferior. That's where you are dead wrong.

I used to do this all the time in the men of war series
Man those tanks on the other side of the window never expected that.

You know video game isn't all that sensible comparison either for much the same reason as miniature games are...Miniature games even more so seeing they rarely have interior walls, bookshelves, smoke and whatnot interfering that in reality would be there.

Video Games can probably simulate reality better than tabletop, since they can easily put all those details in now a days.

 auticus wrote:

it makes units without upgrades useless.

It doesn't make them useless at all. It means that people trying to game the system with free crap have a criteria set that as much free crap as possible = winning at life, and that units without all the free stuff != winning at life... but having played PL almost exclusively since release I can tell you that that is not really the case at all and hasn't been an issue on our tables.

Actually what it does is make units with meh upgrades worse. If you have really good upgrades that cost above your average unit cost, PL buffs that unit. If you have no upgrades, PL is generally ok. If you are a unit with upgrades that almost no one takes you end up overcosted in PL. The big issue for PL from a tournament standpoint right now is that GW has done (and I don't believe intends to do) any re-balancing using PL. Further most groups playing with it are not trying to min-max using it so we really have no idea how well things work out if you do (they don't work out great in points right now either, but at least GW is making some effort on that end).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Spoletta wrote:

xmbk wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

We need a criteria for LOS, i agree with that, but going to the warmahordes levels of "You could play with the bases alone" doesn't seem like a good idea.

Why?

If you even need to ask, then our visions of the game are so different that there is no use in discussing.

Edit: For reference:

Q: Do units that are not Infantry (Vehicles, Monsters,
etc.) gain the benefit of cover from woods, ruins etc. if they are at
least 50% obscured by that piece of terrain but are not actually
on or within it?
A: No. Unless they are Infantry, such a unit must meet
the two following conditions to gain the benefit of cover:
• All of its models must be either on or within the terrain.
• The unit must be at least 50% obscured from the point
of view of the firer (note that it doesn’t matter what is
obscuring the target, only that it is obscured).


From rulebook's FAQ.

Meh I think I would prefer the malifaux version of TLOS, it isn't perfect but it is better than pure TLOS. IT comes down to defining terrain, and then everything model having a height characteristic. So a piece of terrain referred to as blocking would block LOS, then the terrain has a height (you could easily state that this is it's actual height in inches.) and if a model is shorter than that LOS is blocked unless the firing model is taller than the terrain in quesiton or you can draw a line not passing over the terrain that passes over the models base(or hull). Sure you could say "well then you just need the base" to which I would say to someone "well sure, but no one will play you." TLOS is a terrible mechanic that makes things much more difficult. % obscured is a bad rule because it really easy to tell when it is on one extreme or the other, not so much around exactly 50%. Abstract terrain just works much better for an abstract game, than TLOS.

Further most groups playing with it are not trying to min-max using it so we really have no idea how well things work out if you do (they don't work out great in points right now either, but at least GW is making some effort on that end).

Thats the key. PL isn't for powergaming and min max play. Points aren't good either as you noted but here we are (this is why I don't play 40k in a powergaming context until these mechanisms are at a point where I consider them not building themselves)

Spoletta wrote:

xmbk wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

We need a criteria for LOS, i agree with that, but going to the warmahordes levels of "You could play with the bases alone" doesn't seem like a good idea.

Why?

If you even need to ask, then our visions of the game are so different that there is no use in discussing.

Edit: For reference:

Q: Do units that are not Infantry (Vehicles, Monsters,
etc.) gain the benefit of cover from woods, ruins etc. if they are at
least 50% obscured by that piece of terrain but are not actually
on or within it?
A: No. Unless they are Infantry, such a unit must meet
the two following conditions to gain the benefit of cover:
• All of its models must be either on or within the terrain.
• The unit must be at least 50% obscured from the point
of view of the firer (note that it doesn’t matter what is
obscuring the target, only that it is obscured).


From rulebook's FAQ.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. Saying "you could play with bases alone" means clearer definitions of terrain. Forests are the easiest example. Tree height is rarely to scale - there are tables where ancient oaks barely reach the 2nd story of buildings.

Another example is the difference between models from different editions. Why do my 2nd edition models gain obscured but your new editions of the same unit don't?

If you don't see this as an issue, we really are playing different versions of the game.

 auticus wrote:

Further most groups playing with it are not trying to min-max using it so we really have no idea how well things work out if you do (they don't work out great in points right now either, but at least GW is making some effort on that end).

Thats the key. PL isn't for powergaming and min max play. Points aren't good either as you noted but here we are (this is why I don't play 40k in a powergaming context until these mechanisms are at a point where I consider them not building themselves)

Alright im gonna point this out, all of the power level argument is under the assumption that you are with a close nit group of friends, if you just show up at a shop looking to play, no one is going to use power points because just basic point points is a more universally accepted form of the game. It can not be ignored that PL do expose power gaming much worse because anyone building a list taht has any inkling of wanting to win, will utilize all the free stuff. Points put a curb to that and prevent the power game somewhat, or even semi competitive player from gearing all out.

In a closed group, sure power levels can work, in a normal setting, its not going to, why od you think none of the tournaments use PL? If PL were so balanced we would see them in the ITC level, but we dont because of the lack of balance and ease of exploration. Because of this, i see no point in power level, GW might as well just scrap it and go back to using points as powerlevel are just a waste of time, since they are no more then "official house rules." If the argument for PL is "the math is easier." its addition, that is all, your just adding more things.

They are not balanced, if you're worried about exploitation stop right there and used matched play.

They are in the words of GW meant to be a gross estimate of how powerfull a unit can be to easily build a list for a whacky scenario.

And if you don't believe the narrative or open scenarios are whackier than the matched play ones(or god forbid the ITC-pack wich I think suffers from lack of wackiness) I think you need to try them.

 Peregrine wrote:

Dionysodorus wrote:
Realistically, addressing this would basically require a new edition.

This is the correct answer. The only solution is a new edition that makes 40k a wargame, instead of a CCG with "cards" you have to paint yourself. And I'm glad people are finally starting to agree with what I was saying from day one, that 8th edition is a dumpster fire of bad design.

Exactly. Man, I used to play this game every week, I was on this forum all the time. 7th and 8th have been awful. I've got over 100,000 points of 40k, nicely painted, and it's just collecting dust, waiting (hoping) for a return to when this is a wargame again. Terrain should matter. It should be a factor in movement. Reserves did a lot to mitigate alpha-striking - until they added the stupid rule that you lose if you have no models on the table. And, can we focus on infantry again, instead of primarchs and giant monsters?

In a closed group, sure power levels can work, in a normal setting, its not going to, why od you think none of the tournaments use PL? If PL were so balanced we would see them in the ITC level, but we dont because of the lack of balance and ease of exploration. Because of this, i see no point in power level, GW might as well just scrap it and go back to using points as powerlevel are just a waste of time, since they are no more then "official house rules." If the argument for PL is "the math is easier." its addition, that is all, your just adding more things.

I'd like to point out that to many people, a closed group IS the normal setting and that the ITC level is a sub set of the game, as much as to a tournament player ITC is the normal setting and closed groups a sub set of the game.

It goes both ways and GW provided us multiple ways to play the game, which is one thing that I agree with them on.

I'd also like to point out that points are so far not balanced and are easy to exploit. To the point that the game is broken at the power gaming level regardless if you are using PL or points.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
The issue with saying just choose not to use some matched play rules is that nobody does that. People don't pick and choose which to keep, other than missions thanks to ITC. Not that I've ever seen. Either you play matched play and use all the adjustments or you don't play matched at all (which also barely anyone does). There is no cherry picking.

Then you need to take better control of the game you're playing and set better expectations with your opponents. This is simply a matter of not being willing to have a conversation about the type of game you're interested in.

The moment you HAVE to police yourself, the game or point system is broken and needs to be fixed. End of story. We aren't to do the designer's job.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:

In a closed group, sure power levels can work, in a normal setting, its not going to, why od you think none of the tournaments use PL? If PL were so balanced we would see them in the ITC level, but we dont because of the lack of balance and ease of exploration. Because of this, i see no point in power level, GW might as well just scrap it and go back to using points as powerlevel are just a waste of time, since they are no more then "official house rules." If the argument for PL is "the math is easier." its addition, that is all, your just adding more things.

I'd like to point out that to many people, a closed group IS the normal setting and that the ITC level is a sub set of the game, as much as to a tournament player ITC is the normal setting and closed groups a sub set of the game.

It goes both ways and GW provided us multiple ways to play the game, which is one thing that I agree with them on.

I'd also like to point out that points are so far not balanced and are easy to exploit. To the point that the game is broken at the power gaming level regardless if you are using PL or points.

Points have more granularity and are at least more fixable than Power Level. You can't argue against that.

Points have more granularity and are at least more fixable than Power Level. You can't argue against that.

Wasn't trying to argue it

They are more granular. But until they are actually fixed and provide real balance and not just structure, I'll stick with Power Level because its easier.

The moment points are actually enforcing some balance, I'll reconsider. Right now, they provide the same gaming experience to me.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
The issue with saying just choose not to use some matched play rules is that nobody does that. People don't pick and choose which to keep, other than missions thanks to ITC. Not that I've ever seen. Either you play matched play and use all the adjustments or you don't play matched at all (which also barely anyone does). There is no cherry picking.

Then you need to take better control of the game you're playing and set better expectations with your opponents. This is simply a matter of not being willing to have a conversation about the type of game you're interested in.

The moment you HAVE to police yourself, the game or point system is broken and needs to be fixed. End of story. We aren't to do the designer's job.

This has been the nature of 40k for years. 40k has always been a self policed game - 8th didn't change that.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
The issue with saying just choose not to use some matched play rules is that nobody does that. People don't pick and choose which to keep, other than missions thanks to ITC. Not that I've ever seen. Either you play matched play and use all the adjustments or you don't play matched at all (which also barely anyone does). There is no cherry picking.

Then you need to take better control of the game you're playing and set better expectations with your opponents. This is simply a matter of not being willing to have a conversation about the type of game you're interested in.

The moment you HAVE to police yourself, the game or point system is broken and needs to be fixed. End of story. We aren't to do the designer's job.

This has been the nature of 40k for years. 40k has always been a self policed game - 8th didn't change that.

Agreed, with the addition that most of wargaming has always been self policing. I've played Field of Glory, Flames of War, Bolt Action, X-Wing, Dunn-Kempf, DBX, Cold War Commander, Infinity, Malifaux, Warmachine, and others (though the ones I can't remember are usually one-off games and not systems I bought into) and they all require self-policing to make sure players come to the table with the same expectations. In my opinion, part of the beauty of hobby tabletop wargaming has been its freedom to do as you will with your hobby, but that sort of freedom comes at the cost of having to put effort into your enjoyment.

 Redbeard wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Dionysodorus wrote:
Realistically, addressing this would basically require a new edition.

This is the correct answer. The only solution is a new edition that makes 40k a wargame, instead of a CCG with "cards" you have to paint yourself. And I'm glad people are finally starting to agree with what I was saying from day one, that 8th edition is a dumpster fire of bad design.

Exactly. Man, I used to play this game every week, I was on this forum all the time. 7th and 8th have been awful. I've got over 100,000 points of 40k, nicely painted, and it's just collecting dust, waiting (hoping) for a return to when this is a wargame again. Terrain should matter. It should be a factor in movement. Reserves did a lot to mitigate alpha-striking - until they added the stupid rule that you lose if you have no models on the table. And, can we focus on infantry again, instead of primarchs and giant monsters?

Interestingly I see more infantry in the game now than I did in any previous edition. Early 8th had bigger things on the table, but they have largely fallen to the wayside in favor of infantry spam. Really what I miss is more restricted list building, I think at least having limits on repeat units would be largely good for the game.

That's because since wounds from hits don't bleed over anymore it's more beneficial to run min squads of 1 wound unit. Oh no, you unloaded your laz pred into my marine squad, you killed 3 marines with 3 hits each dealing 4 damage....I'm just gonna hit your one big guy with all my little guys and bring you down or make you worthless profile wise.

This edition is all about death by 1000 paper cuts.

Breng77 wrote:


Meh I think I would prefer the malifaux version of TLOS, it isn't perfect but it is better than pure TLOS. IT comes down to defining terrain, and then everything model having a height characteristic. So a piece of terrain referred to as blocking would block LOS, then the terrain has a height (you could easily state that this is it's actual height in inches.) and if a model is shorter than that LOS is blocked unless the firing model is taller than the terrain in quesiton or you can draw a line not passing over the terrain that passes over the models base(or hull). Sure you could say "well then you just need the base" to which I would say to someone "well sure, but no one will play you." TLOS is a terrible mechanic that makes things much more difficult. % obscured is a bad rule because it really easy to tell when it is on one extreme or the other, not so much around exactly 50%. Abstract terrain just works much better for an abstract game, than TLOS.

That's pretty much how 4th edition area terrain worked.

Wasn't 4th Ed the over watch edditon where if anything crossed your Loss while you were in over watch you could fire at them with full BS

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
The issue with saying just choose not to use some matched play rules is that nobody does that. People don't pick and choose which to keep, other than missions thanks to ITC. Not that I've ever seen. Either you play matched play and use all the adjustments or you don't play matched at all (which also barely anyone does). There is no cherry picking.

Then you need to take better control of the game you're playing and set better expectations with your opponents. This is simply a matter of not being willing to have a conversation about the type of game you're interested in.

The moment you HAVE to police yourself, the game or point system is broken and needs to be fixed. End of story. We aren't to do the designer's job.

This has been the nature of 40k for years. 40k has always been a self policed game - 8th didn't change that.

Agreed, with the addition that most of wargaming has always been self policing. I've played Field of Glory, Flames of War, Bolt Action, X-Wing, Dunn-Kempf, DBX, Cold War Commander, Infinity, Malifaux, Warmachine, and others (though the ones I can't remember are usually one-off games and not systems I bought into) and they all require self-policing to make sure players come to the table with the same expectations. In my opinion, part of the beauty of hobby tabletop wargaming has been its freedom to do as you will with your hobby, but that sort of freedom comes at the cost of having to put effort into your enjoyment.

I have not played all those games but Malifaux for example takes a lot less in the realm of self policing. IT isn't perfect but there are at least some restrictions on models, spam etc. A large part of that is you build your list at the table, and build it toward the mission, many of which don't even involve killing the opponent. I feel like in most cases the most competitive list in malifaux vs an average or lesser list is far less of a discrepancy than it is in 40k. Part of that is probably due to scale.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Wasn't 4th Ed the over watch edditon where if anything crossed your Loss while you were in over watch you could fire at them with full BS

No. There was no such thing as overwatch in 4th edition.

You may be thinking of 2nd edition, where you could skip your turn with a unit to go into overwatch and then shoot during the opponent's movement phase.

 docdoom77 wrote:

Breng77 wrote:


Meh I think I would prefer the malifaux version of TLOS, it isn't perfect but it is better than pure TLOS. IT comes down to defining terrain, and then everything model having a height characteristic. So a piece of terrain referred to as blocking would block LOS, then the terrain has a height (you could easily state that this is it's actual height in inches.) and if a model is shorter than that LOS is blocked unless the firing model is taller than the terrain in quesiton or you can draw a line not passing over the terrain that passes over the models base(or hull). Sure you could say "well then you just need the base" to which I would say to someone "well sure, but no one will play you." TLOS is a terrible mechanic that makes things much more difficult. % obscured is a bad rule because it really easy to tell when it is on one extreme or the other, not so much around exactly 50%. Abstract terrain just works much better for an abstract game, than TLOS.

That's pretty much how 4th edition area terrain worked.

It is similar, though there was no size stat on models. There were tiers of terrain though, it was just a bit less granular than a size system would be.

Breng77 wrote:
Really what I miss is more restricted list building, I think at least having limits on repeat units would be largely good for the game.

I 100% agree with this, in a general sense. The response you'll get on dakka is: "BUT SISTERZZ!!1" or equivalent.

Although I am seeing far less infantry spam now, than i used to. I would say infantry spam is falling out of the meta.

 docdoom77 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Wasn't 4th Ed the over watch edditon where if anything crossed your Loss while you were in over watch you could fire at them with full BS

No. There was no such thing as overwatch in 4th edition.

You may be thinking of 2nd edition, where you could skip your turn with a unit to go into overwatch and then shoot during the opponent's movement phase.

Yep that's it it was 2nd Ed that was the one where no one would move lol

Breng77 wrote:
I have not played all those games but Malifaux for example takes a lot less in the realm of self policing. IT isn't perfect but there are at least some restrictions on models, spam etc. A large part of that is you build your list at the table, and build it toward the mission, many of which don't even involve killing the opponent. I feel like in most cases the most competitive list in malifaux vs an average or lesser list is far less of a discrepancy than it is in 40k. Part of that is probably due to scale.

In my experience it is entirely possible to have a bad game of Malifaux because both players walked into the game with different ideas of how it should go.

 Marmatag wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
Really what I miss is more restricted list building, I think at least having limits on repeat units would be largely good for the game.

I 100% agree with this, in a general sense. The response you'll get on dakka is: "BUT SISTERZZ!!1" or equivalent.

Although I am seeing far less infantry spam now, than i used to. I would say infantry spam is falling out of the meta.

If only we still had this really useful tool called a Force Organisation Chart.

Such a handy thing in limiting spam that was.

 Marmatag wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
Really what I miss is more restricted list building, I think at least having limits on repeat units would be largely good for the game.

I 100% agree with this, in a general sense. The response you'll get on dakka is: "BUT SISTERZZ!!1" or equivalent.

Although I am seeing far less infantry spam now, than i used to. I would say infantry spam is falling out of the meta.

I don't mind the soup options. I do think there are probably too many force orgs available.

I mean the FOC did limit spam more than now, but it depends on what you wanted to spam.

Want to spam dedicated transports, FOC doesn't help, Troop choice, FOC doesn't help much (again more than now)

The other issue with the FOC was that some slots had too many good options and others had crap.

I think we would be far better off with limits (similar to Tau commanders) on specific units.

Personally I like:

All HQs are unique per detachment.
Elites/Fast/Heavy maybe 2 of each unit per detachment
Troops - limited to 3 of each type per detachment, unless you have already taken max of all available troops (so sisters who have only 1 troop choice are uneffected)
Dedicated transports - go back to being taken by specific units, not 1 per other unit.maybe have same limit as troop choices.

 Ordana wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
Really what I miss is more restricted list building, I think at least having limits on repeat units would be largely good for the game.

I 100% agree with this, in a general sense. The response you'll get on dakka is: "BUT SISTERZZ!!1" or equivalent.

Although I am seeing far less infantry spam now, than i used to. I would say infantry spam is falling out of the meta.

If only we still had this really useful tool called a Force Organisation Chart.

Such a handy thing in limiting spam that was.

BUT SISSTERZZ!!!1

No seriously, I agree. If i was to re-write the detachments, they'd go something like this.

Battalion (+3 CP)
2HQ
3Troop
0-2 Heavy
0-2 Elite
0-2 Fast Attack
0-1 Flyer

Spearhead/Vanguard/Outrider (+1 CP)
1 HQ
1 Troop
2 Heavy/Elite/Fast

Fortification Network (-1 CP)
1-3 Fortification

Super-Heavy Detachment (+1 CP)
5 Lord of War

Patrol Detachment (+1 CP)
1 HQ
1 Troop
0-1 Elite
0-1 Fast
0-1 Heavy

Brigade (+5 CP)
3 HQ
5 Troop
2 Elite
2 Fast
2 Heavy
0-1 Flyer
0-1 LoW

Super heavy auxiliary detachment - Deleted
Air Wing - Deleted
Supreme Command Detachment - Deleted
Auxiliary Detachment - Deleted

 Marmatag wrote:
-snip-

I am thankful to whatever deity exists that you didn't write 8th edition.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
-snip-

I am thankful to whatever deity exists that you didn't write 8th edition.

Oh sorry i forgot one:

Baneblade Wing (+1000 CP)
3 Baneblade

Now does it sound like a good set of detachments?

the main problem of the old FOG was a internal codex balance issue
there were those that got just 1 good unit for each slot, so there was no problem of taking 12 good special units next to 6 good standards
and those were all good units used the same slots, running into massive problems.

and the slot was more chosen because of fluff than for anything else

GW solution to this is to add several different detachments, so that the slot a unit get can be based on fluff and it doesn't matter if all good units get the same one, instead of balancing the units and which slot they get


as long as the internal codex balance is that bad, GW could also just remove FOG/Detachments completely and just add a 0-X restriction to specific units instead
army lists won't look that different

 Marmatag wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
-snip-

I am thankful to whatever deity exists that you didn't write 8th edition.

Oh sorry i forgot one:

Baneblade Wing (+1000 CP)
3 Baneblade

Now does it sound like a good set of detachments?

No, because my problem wasn't specifically with the presence or absence of a single detachment type, but rather the entire philosophy that was behind the detachment system entirely, primarily with regards to how little sense it makes. Why does a Vanguard detachment / Spearhead detachment require 1 Troop? It just seems arbitrary. Why can't a battalion take a Lord of War, and why does the Lord of War detachment require 5? That's also arbitrary, and benefits certain armies (ones with cheap brigades) far more than others, as well as keeping LOWs in general out of 2k games unless you have a cheap Brigade. Seems arbitrary. Why does the Fortification Network cost 1 cp? Are fortifications really so OP? Seems arbitrary. Why is there no way to bring exactly 4 troops without bringing more than one detachment? Seems arbitrary. Why, if I wanted to bring 9 troops, I'd need a Battalion, Patrol, and Brigade, but if I wanted to bring 10 Troops I could just bring two Brigades? Seems arbitrary.

I think it would be a interesting rule that you have to fill 1 detachment before adding more. And then fill the second before adding a third.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
The issue with saying just choose not to use some matched play rules is that nobody does that. People don't pick and choose which to keep, other than missions thanks to ITC. Not that I've ever seen. Either you play matched play and use all the adjustments or you don't play matched at all (which also barely anyone does). There is no cherry picking.

Then you need to take better control of the game you're playing and set better expectations with your opponents. This is simply a matter of not being willing to have a conversation about the type of game you're interested in.

The moment you HAVE to police yourself, the game or point system is broken and needs to be fixed. End of story. We aren't to do the designer's job.

This has been the nature of 40k for years. 40k has always been a self policed game - 8th didn't change that.

My statement stands then?

Reemule wrote:
I think it would be a interesting rule that you have to fill 1 detachment before adding more. And then fill the second before adding a third.

So that Battalion becomes a Brigade and Brigade becomes UNPLAYABLE? How stupid