It's been two years since the last discussion about this (as far as I can see), so let's do it again!
So, to lay down some ground rules, I would like to suggest that we avoid actual broken rules (rather than "broken" rules), such as 4e Harlequins having "Furious Assault"; or Chaos Daemons having "Assault Grenades" a month before 5e launched and thus did nothing and other such sillyness.
For me it has to be the 4e Apocalypse Strategic Asset "Jammers".
For context: In 4e Apocalypse each team had a certain number of "Strategic Assets", which were basically Stratagems that each team could use during the game. Before deployment, each Team bids in secret for how long they want to deploy their stuff between 1 and 30 minutes, the lowest bid deploying first, and any stuff not deployed gets put into reserves (the old style where you rolled each turn to see if the unit arrives). In addition to that, before you begin your deployment each team gets 5 minutes to discuss how they will deploy during their aforementioned deployment time.
Jammers reads as follows:
JAMMERS The comms channels of the enemy are blocked with static, forcing them to deploy blind.
When Revealed: After the bid for deployment, just before the opposing team is given the five minutes to talk about their deployment.
Effect: The opposing team lose their five minutes to discuss deployment and must begin deploying straight away. In addition, they may not communicate with each other during deployment, until the dice to go first is rolled (no speaking, writing, body language or telepathy!).
I have yet to see a rule that utterly destroys the atmosphere and mood of a room as this rule. Its no surprise that this was removed in the 5e Apocalypse Reload.
What rules do you feel were the worst in 40k's history?
oni wrote: EASY question!!! Current edition W40K...
Character targeting rules for Matched play.
Worst evAr! Hands down, no contest!
Yeah. It should've been something like it can't be targeted if it has friendly units within 2" or something.
I'd argue they should be target-able but able to shunt the wounds onto a unit within 3" unless the shooting unit has the Sniper keyword.
Then again I also for arguing for shooting through enemy units needing a BS modifier or having the misses roll to hit the unit in the way, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.
I know, let’s put a rule that would be at home in a skirmish game in a clunky company level game that grinds everything to a halt with stupid things like characters tanking saves and having to break out the callipers to find out who is closest.
I know, let’s put a rule that would be at home in a skirmish game in a clunky company level game that grinds everything to a halt with stupid things like characters tanking saves and having to break out the callipers to find out who is closest.
Dumbest fething rule ever.
That would have to be my vote if it wasn't for Invisibility being even more of a train wreck.
I heard tales of that one rule from 5th or 6th where models drew line of sight with their eyes so that nothing without eyes could ever shoot because they could never draw line of sight.
I know, let’s put a rule that would be at home in a skirmish game in a clunky company level game that grinds everything to a halt with stupid things like characters tanking saves and having to break out the callipers to find out who is closest.
Dumbest fething rule ever.
That would have to be my vote if it wasn't for Invisibility being even more of a train wreck.
I sat out 6th and 7th (mainly due to the above and several other things). Spill! What made invisibility so bad? I heard things but as I never played I don’t know the ins and outs of it.
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Tibs Ironblood wrote: I heard tales of that one rule from 5th or 6th where models drew line of sight with their eyes so that nothing without eyes could ever shoot because they could never draw line of sight.
That’s more people taking the piss out of TLOS, which despite being a rule since 40k’s inception was apparently a new rule in 5th...
I know, let’s put a rule that would be at home in a skirmish game in a clunky company level game that grinds everything to a halt with stupid things like characters tanking saves and having to break out the callipers to find out who is closest.
Dumbest fething rule ever.
That would have to be my vote if it wasn't for Invisibility being even more of a train wreck.
I sat out 6th and 7th (mainly due to the above and several other things). Spill! What made invisibility so bad? I heard things but as I never played I don’t know the ins and outs of it.
It made units untargetable in most situations and was a lynchpin in the 2++ unkillable deathstar combos of the day.
Grimtuff wrote: I sat out 6th and 7th (mainly due to the above and several other things). Spill! What made invisibility so bad? I heard things but as I never played I don’t know the ins and outs of it.
You could only "Snap Shot" at invisible units. That meant only hitting on 6's and totally unable to shoot Template (Flamers) or Blast weapons at the unit. It was combo'd with 3++ or 2++ saves to make a unit functionally immortal. It could affect both Deathstars (multiple Characters grouped together) or even Super-Heavy units like Wraithknights.
I know, let’s put a rule that would be at home in a skirmish game in a clunky company level game that grinds everything to a halt with stupid things like characters tanking saves and having to break out the callipers to find out who is closest.
Dumbest fething rule ever.
That would have to be my vote if it wasn't for Invisibility being even more of a train wreck.
I sat out 6th and 7th (mainly due to the above and several other things). Spill! What made invisibility so bad? I heard things but as I never played I don’t know the ins and outs of it.
It made units untargetable in most situations and was a lynchpin in the 2++ unkillable deathstar combos of the day.
I started in 8th, so I can't say anything about previous editions, but the sheer abundance of giant robots and vehicles with 3++ Invuln Saves is crazy. It's pretty bad that I have a better chance of dealing damage to a Riptide with a Boy Blob hitting it with knives than I do with a Rocket Launcher designed for the purpose of taking down big things.
Which kinda just goes to my biggest gripe of volume of attacks/shots being more important to taking down anything than using weapons designed for those targets.
flandarz wrote: I started in 8th, so I can't say anything about previous editions, but the sheer abundance of giant robots and vehicles with 3++ Invuln Saves is crazy. It's pretty bad that I have a better chance of dealing damage to a Riptide with a Boy Blob hitting it with knives than I do with a Rocket Launcher designed for the purpose of taking down big things.
Which kinda just goes to my biggest gripe of volume of attacks/shots being more important to taking down anything than using weapons designed for those targets.
The invul problem used to be worst and GW is slowly scaling it back now. These days Invuls seem to exist more to cap how much AP.
oni wrote: Invisibility was very bad yes. Worse however was Shifting Worldscape.
Ugh... I'm having nightmarish flash backs of Matt Ward and how everything associated with him was a complete dumpster fire.
For those who don't know the name he was GW's pariah. He literally (no exaggeration) nearly put the whole company in ruin.
He wrote some of the more internally balanced rulesets, and strangely did really well writing the lore for the WD Sisters codex (Cruddace apparently writing the rules).
I feel some of the things he was blamed for were design by executive mandate issues since there was a big push for new stuff to be better than old stuff at the time as well.
That "Remove from play" baloney that the grey knights got against daemons when they finally got a new codex. I get that they were meant to have an edge against daemons, so just give them preferred enemy! Not this auto-win "no fun allowed" stuff..
Lash was pretty bad IMO just because it created a lot of weird situations in pick up games. I remember a lot of tense moments when the other player would move their opponents models and even a few were something got broken or an argument would break out over people not wanting someone else to handle their property.
HoundsofDemos wrote: Lash was pretty bad IMO just because it created a lot of weird situations in pick up games. I remember a lot of tense moments when the other player would move their opponents models and even a few were something got broken or an argument would break out over people not wanting someone else to handle their property.
Doubly so because all csm Players got forced into it more or less.
Thanks to that horrendus codex.
I still use it as a Coffee cup holder.
Jink singlehandedly made the 'stealthy' armies obsolete, since the counters for Jink tended to also affect Stealth and Shrouded.
There was nothing wrong with jink until it became universal rule. Then every body on the street got it for some odd reason and now everyone had to come with a counter to cover saves.
BaconCatBug wrote: For me it has to be the 4e Apocalypse Strategic Asset "Jammers".
If you open it up to apocalypse then it is always going to be :
"Redemptors: A Grey Knight Redemptor Force may only enter the table if the opponent is using a Greater Daemon and/or a Warp Rift in his army. If at any point after the Grey Knights have entered play there are no Chaos models on the table, the Chaos player may control the Grey Knights as if they were his own troops..."
oni wrote: Invisibility was very bad yes. Worse however was Shifting Worldscape.
Ugh... I'm having nightmarish flash backs of Matt Ward and how everything associated with him was a complete dumpster fire.
For those who don't know the name he was GW's pariah. He literally (no exaggeration) nearly put the whole company in ruin.
He wrote some of the more internally balanced rulesets, and strangely did really well writing the lore for the WD Sisters codex (Cruddace apparently writing the rules).
I feel some of the things he was blamed for were design by executive mandate issues since there was a big push for new stuff to be better than old stuff at the time as well.
HoundsofDemos wrote: Lash was pretty bad IMO just because it created a lot of weird situations in pick up games. I remember a lot of tense moments when the other player would move their opponents models and even a few were something got broken or an argument would break out over people not wanting someone else to handle their property.
Yea lash was pretty bad. I always let my opponent move his own models when I cast it to avoid that.
Also the 2++ re-reroll BS in 6th/7th (they blend together for me) was nonsense, especially since then there was no way to circumvent invuls, unlike now when at least there are mortal wounds or spells to remove invuls. Glad GW is moving away from that with the 3++ cap on most things.
I would also say fliers in 6th/7th, since they could only be hit on 6's, and if someone brought a bunch it was super annoying.
2 reasons, A: conga lines are stupid as is a parking lot and stacking of so many units on such a small scale.
B: it just is really, and I mean really immersion breaking and makes me wish back for artillery strikes.
Just to punish it.
It's also leading to auras beeing way to strong.
Some of the unit/faction drawbacks over the years get a groan at least for me:
“We’ll Be Back” - Your entire Necron force gets tabled if at any time your down to less than 25% Warriors.
“It’s Dark in Der” - Morale checks for Ogryns to get in transports...
“Spirit Vision” - Eldar wraith constructs that aren’t within 6” of a Spiritseer have a 50% chance to stare off into space and do nothing.
Y’know, the sort of rules folks complained about for the legacy factions that came out with AoS - but taken seriously by the gaming community for years...
Recently, how +1 to hit or +1 to wound or whatever effect too much.
Like, if you have "gets hot" on a 1, it should be unmodified. If you have an extra hit on a 6, it should be unmodified. Stacking +3 to hit, then getting extra hits on a 3+ instead of a 6+ or something, is just stupid. Same with -2 to hit, so now you overheat on a 1,2, or 3. Really hate how modifiers interact with the game in the current edition.
Turn Radius Ratio. Or any of those other rules that delved far too deep in mechanics trying to replicate reality with very little/nothing to show for the amount of time and effort put in. I am so glad more of the cumbersome 'ultra-realistic' rule sets of the 1990s and earlier are gone.
"Lets turn vehicles into 2-3 wound models with no save...AND keep the damage table kill mechanic!"
Also, 5th edition introducing Kill Points (points awarded per individual unit destroyed, allowing an empty drop pod or Grot Squad to count as much as a tank or legendary character or titan) versus Victory Points (the direct points costs of units destroyed, 1/2 points for vehicle damage or reducing a unit below half strength).
The Jink mechanic from 6E/7E (skimmers/bikes get a 4+ on-demand save that still allowed shooting on 6's, non-skimmers using Smoke, if they had it, had to pre-emptively choose to use them a turn ahead and couldn't benefit going 2nd on turn 1 and totally gave up firing for a one-time 5+)
Invisibility, D weapons, Formations, and 2++'s in 6E/7E.
Virus Outbreak (with an honorary mention to Virus grenades).
The one Strategy card that was routinely destroyed, given it could destroy a non-power armour army before the first turn started...
Yup, this is the very clear winner. If it at least affected everybody, it would have just been bad. But the fact that it could wipe out entire armies from most factions while doing absolutely nothing against Marines just puts it firmly into the 'What were they thinking?' camp.
To be fair, GW themselves told people to remove the card from their decks once the issue was pointed out to them...
I would say that Invisibility was my strongest reason to hate 7th. Even more than formations. Even more than Scatterbikes. Even more than (effectively) removing any functional mobility from the IG in the 6th ed codex... for me, even more than 2++ rerollable saves.
I hated Invisibility.
There are many other rules in the history of 40k I thought were dumb, harmful, poorly thought out and unfun... fishing for Invisibility and then flailing uselessly at a Wraithknight or Two for the rest of the game if your opponent caught it was worse than...
Rolling to see who goes first / wins the game in 8th edition.
True Line of Sight is an awful, unworkable mess. It's impossible to implement correctly and, played strictly, makes most terrain either pointless or unusable. 4th Edition was much better.
My pet peeve was the warp storm table for daemons in 6th/7th ed 40k.
Roll 2D6 and get a random effect. Rolling a 10 buffed all your invulnerables by 1: rolling a 4 nerfed them by 1.
But worst was rolling a 3 - every unit in your army takes a Ld test and if failed, take that many wounds. Rolling a 12 on the ld meant your unit just disappeared.
I had many games swing from certain wins to certain losses based on that damn table.
One thing I hate is from the current edition, and that is the fact that you are effectively punished for doing cool poses and/or heraldry on models. Because any part of a model can be targeted, if your model is holding a banner/spear/gun or something over its head, it is harder to hide. Why couldn't they just make it so that you could only target something if you could see its body. A tank could be destroyed if it has an antenna that sticks up, and that's just stupid. And, silly me, I built a bunch of Tactical squads with back banners on the Sergeants, so now I'll get punished if I ever run those guys again.
From 7th edition, a lot of people complain about Formations, but I don't think they were as bad an idea as people think. They were implemented poorly and some of them were just plain broken good, but that's because back then GW wasn't releasing FAQs and errata and doing things to keep the game balanced. Deathstars and Superfriends lists were the real cancer in 7th. Just absolutely unfun to play against when pretty much nothing in the game could interact with them.
I don't know that I'd call it a "worst rule ever", but a couple of honerable mentions from 3rd ed:
Victory points for destroying a unit being based on full 100 point blocks. It created really weird min/maxing priorities when a 199 point unit gave up half the VPs of a 200 point unit.
Necrons preventing equipmeny from working if they were within X inches, coupled with fast scarab swarms. You had two turns at the outside before all your guns and power weapons stopped working and you were left trying to fight off the scarab swarms with your base melee stats while the warriors got into ideal shoot-and-charge range.
ZergSmasher wrote: One thing I hate is from the current edition, and that is the fact that you are effectively punished for doing cool poses and/or heraldry on models. Because any part of a model can be targeted, if your model is holding a banner/spear/gun or something over its head, it is harder to hide. Why couldn't they just make it so that you could only target something if you could see its body. A tank could be destroyed if it has an antenna that sticks up, and that's just stupid. And, silly me, I built a bunch of Tactical squads with back banners on the Sergeants, so now I'll get punished if I ever run those guys again.
From 7th edition, a lot of people complain about Formations, but I don't think they were as bad an idea as people think. They were implemented poorly and some of them were just plain broken good, but that's because back then GW wasn't releasing FAQs and errata and doing things to keep the game balanced. Deathstars and Superfriends lists were the real cancer in 7th. Just absolutely unfun to play against when pretty much nothing in the game could interact with them.
LOS in 8th is a screwy mechanic for a lot of reasons. GW changing from the eyes of the model to my foot can see your banner isn't great and vehicles get even more odd. The corner of my predator can see the corner of your wave serpent so I can bring full fire power to bear.
Hull Points were a good idea in themselves. The problem was simply that they weren't accompanied by the addition of armour saves for vehicles.
I disagree with the entire concept. They A: added a HP mechanic to tanks, and B: made them much more vulnerable. Nothing has hitpoints, much less a tank. The damage table was a adequate representation of a tank's destruction.
Wound allocation in 5th. annoying having 2 similar units. But one is twice as durable because they have mixed weapon choiches. That or challenges in 6th...
8th edition hasn't been perfect and there are a few rule that I have contention with, but nothing I would consider as the worst rule. Hell, after remembering all the terrible rules in 6/7th I do have new found appreciation for 8th. That said, my pick for worst rule doesn't come from 6/7th, even if I now consider it the worst rule set. No, as stated before, my pick for single worst rule would be Necron Phase Out. I joined in 5th edition and Necrons were my 2nd army. I knew going in that Necrons were a bit of a bottom tier army so I knew what I was getting into, but Phase Out was like being kicked when you were down.
What typically happened whenever Phase Out happened.
Me: Well guess you win.
My opponent: Wait your just going to give up.
Me: I'm not giving up, Necrons auto loss when the infantry takes 75% casualties. If anything my armies giving up.
I would typically play to the bitter end but being forced out early coupled with the amount of times I have had to explain to my opponent that I was't giving up was very frustrating.
Venerable Ironclad wrote: 8th edition hasn't been perfect and there are a few rule that I have contention with, but nothing I would consider as the worst rule. Hell, after remembering all the terrible rules in 6/7th I do have new found appreciation for 8th. That said, my pick for worst rule doesn't come from 6/7th, even if I now consider it the worst rule set. No, as stated before, my pick for single worst rule would be Necron Phase Out. I joined in 5th edition and Necrons were my 2nd army. I knew going in that Necrons were a bit of a bottom tier army so I knew what I was getting into, but Phase Out was like being kicked when you were down.
What typically happened whenever Phase Out happened.
Me: Well guess you win.
My opponent: Wait your just going to give up.
Me: I'm not giving up, Necrons auto loss when the infantry takes 75% casualties. If anything my armies giving up.
I would typically play to the bitter end but being forced out early coupled with the amount of times I have had to explain to my opponent that I was't giving up was very frustrating.
Having played vs necrons in 3rd ed, they were extremely strong when that rule was introduced. They were effectively marines with a FNP save that worked after the assault phase- so if you wiped out a unit in shooting, they would stand up after you'd missed the opportunity to charge them.. The rule, combined with the strength of the units rewarded careful play- you could load up on warriors and keep them safe while rock hard, numerically small monoliths and jetbikes crippled the enemy's ability to get you to phaseout. a unit of warriors in cover with a res-orb lord nearby (and there always was) got a 4+ cover save and then 4+ WBB against battlecannons and demolisher cannons. Thats a 75% survival rate for basic infantry against wounds from the heaviest guns in the game- and if you tried to close to melee while the monolith was active, they could teleport away (and get ANOTHER chance at WBB)
With other armies you could kill heavy and special weapons and have your vehicles be reasonably safe. Not so with gauss weapons, which on a to hit roll of a 6, had a 50% chance of lasting damage (immobilised, weapon destroyed, wrecked). This made theoretical counters to the 'crons like dreadnoughts (crons had no unit leaders or powerfist access) impractical- as you'd have to somehow survive two turns of flaying.
For the opponent- you'd need to play aggressively to get them to phaseout while you still had units capable of culling warriors- also dealing with all the monolith pieplates and jetbike heavygauss. Most often a phaseout victory would come when your army had been severely mauled- you'd have to push hard to get it and risk getting slaughtered in the process.
Necrons were toned down by changes to the ruleset- not changes to the Necrons.
For me one of the worst rule changes was assault cannons gaining an extra shot and rending. This was the beginning of 40k ramping up firepower that lead to the current primaris doubletapping bolters at 30 inches.
Worse- the rending rule changed a reasonable anti personnel bullethose into an anti-everything weapon- with 4 shots and the potential to hit at S7-12 the weapon was more reliable at killing vehicles than dedicated antitank weapons. Rending worked on the hit roll, meaning that a twin assault cannon that was reduced to hitting on 6's (flyers, some other scenarios) was actually more likely to shred whatever vehicle it was pointed at.
Asscans weren't priced for this at all and this was likely one of the reasons 5 man Terminator squads were reduced to 1 heavy weapon per unit.
The terrain rules in 8th are really, really bad, even if you're just playing casually. I've have so many little micro arguments over what constitutes cover, where it's possible to place models, and how to abstract very tall 2nd floor ruins into usable space. Even if we always just house rule it on the spot, it always sours the mood a bit when things don't go your way.
Gitdakka wrote: Wound allocation in 5th. annoying having 2 similar units. But one is twice as durable because they have mixed weapon choiches. That or challenges in 6th...
Oh yeah, both of those were really bad. Varying equipment choices in a squad was a dumb as hell way of making wounds disappear. It was extremely exploitable.
Challenges were supposed to be a 'cinematic' way to have a pair of important characters fight separately from the other models, but in practice was mainly used to throw roadbumps in the way of melee characters.
The Swarmlord charges into a unit of guardsmen and is about to tear them apart! But wait, the sergeant has issued a challenge. The swarmlord now has no choice but to accept the sergeants challenge and spend his whole turn chewing on the guy, while the other guardsmen stand by and watch. Next turn, 'oh here come two more guard squads'. "Pry open his jaws lads, we've got more sergeants to shovel down his throat!". He then spends the next 3 turns locked in place being forcefed a single sergeant each turn, without any way to escape or do anything except open wide and suppress his gag reflex...
The only way around it was to have a chump character in the same unit to accept the challenge, freeing up the main character to get the work done. All well and good for armies who got a sergeant in each of their squads, but for some armies spare characters were hard to come by. Allowing excess wounds from a challenge to spill over into the squad is one of the things 7th edition actually managed to fix. Challenges were still a pretty flaky mechanic though, and I'm glad they've disappeared.
There are lots of rules across various editions that I think are bad, but the worst parts of the game for me are definitely the changes to faction rules.
The first case of this I can remember is Grey Knights. A fluffy optional unit for narrative battles against demons gets turned into a full army. Ridiculous. The justifications for this highly specialised, extremely limited number of anti-daemon troops fighting anyone else were terrible and forced opponents to re-write their own narrative to suit the Grey Knight player. Any pretence that GW gives a crap about narrative games is laughable when the Grey Knight codex exists.
Now the force organisation chart is gone and armies are no longer really distinct unless they are Xenos armies. The Imperium is one huge blob with the vast majority of the options and the other factions are relegated to comic book villain "foils" for the Imperial protagonists. This was always a problem in 40K but the collapse of individual factions and the rise of soup has blown it wide open. This combines with the ever increasing number of power armoured factions added to the game to make for a very boring and limited game world where everyone is a space marine.
The addition of miniatures more suitable for one off special narrative scenarios like Knights and Flyers to a squad level combined arms game is the end point of this trend. The games story is utterly broken now and there is no sensible narrative to be had any more. These giant robots stomping around on tiny rectangles of ground make no sense at all outside of special scenarios where they are the focus, and fliers likewise do not make sense as permanent presences on battlefields at this scale. Leave that stuff for epic, where an average table gives the space for these things to work in a believable and satisfying way.
That to me is the worst thing about 40K - the lack of rules protecting the uniqueness of factions and the scale and narrative of the game itself.
Eldarain wrote: Leaving the Word Bearers trash rules as is when you know the insane never ending special snowflake Marine release is around the corner.
Extrapolate this backwards with countless horrendous decisions over the years. This thread is painful to read reliving this nonsense.
I feel you.
I belive all csm Players feel you.
But if you dare point it out you are Automatically.
Drive in a straight line through any number of non-vehicle units - up to 36" for some eldar tanks
Force a moral test on all those units
All units are unharmed, even if a land raider ran over them
Land on top of a unit, forcing it to move away, no rules to handle that movement, game broke down when the unit could not move
Death or glory response for a single model which had to destroy the tank or the model was gone. Not hit, not damage, not immobilize, DESTROY
You could also ram a vehicle and did more damage the more distance you covered. It also was a tankshock and you could destroy your own vehicle that way
Which meant that an eldar hovertank army could shock your army into a huge pile, force 6-10 moral tests and then put flamers and templates on them. You also auto-lost any game with more than 3 wave serpents alive because they could just tank-shock onto objectives, pushing your units off them.
It's been eight editions now, and only in 2nd edition did a grenade act like a grenade.
We're sort of half way there now, but for some strange reason I have to be a very smart imperial guardsmen to throw more than one.
Do they make you go first? Do they make you attack less? Are they 1d6 lasgun shots? Do they reduce your charge distance?!? Who knows.
Do you want krak grenades on top of your krakgreanades but still can only throw one?
Welcome to the R&H index where that is a equipment option on a unit that allready has them.
One wonders indeed how gw percives the standard human guardsmen and all other equivalents in intelligence when only one in 10 /20 knows how to pull the Pin and throw them.
It has no strategy, no depth and most of the time it doesn't even do anything. But before every combat you have to roll a pile of dice (or sit around while your opponent rolls a pile of dice) and see if anyone gets lucky.
It's nothing but a shallow, time-killing mechanic that adds absolutely nothing to a game already bloated with pointless rolling.
And the reason I've picked Overwatch over Invisibility or random Warlord Tables or any of the other garbage 6th/7th brought with them is that Overwatch is still with us. For as horrendous as Invisibility was, at least GW learned their lesson and removed the bloody thing. Meanwhile, Overwatch is not only still with us but has apparently been breeding with something and has given birth to a raft of time-killing, bastard children (such as that rascal Random Number of Shots).
95% of the time, never came into play.
5% completely crippled a unit.
It would have been a good rule if it where not so Binary and not 95 % of the time completely useless..
Also bonus round, the lack of usr, now instead we get what feels like 200 special rules slightly diffrent written in codices all over doing often the same but sometimes just do it better or worse then others?!?
Instead of forward operatives etc could have had common infiltration rules?
No seriously.
5th dangerous terrain rules. A roll of 1 kills a X wound model when going over a fence. I;d seen 200pt models die b.c they tripped and rolled their ankle.
Or 5th hitting skimmers vehicles in melee, always a 6 to hit if i remember correctly.
Saber wrote: True Line of Sight is an awful, unworkable mess. It's impossible to implement correctly and, played strictly, makes most terrain either pointless or unusable. 4th Edition was much better.
4th used TLOS, just like every other edition of 40k that came before or after it. The sole exception to this was area terrain which had size categories and its own rules. All other terrain used TLOS.
I can't properly say how pointless I found challenges and how some armies would never ever do them and they led to some absolutely dumb encounters. Like the platoon command squad where you could charge a character MC, issue a challenge feed them your junior officer, and still tie combat because the banner counted as one combat res, and your junior officer was one would locking down the combat in a tie just to be sure you free it up to kill your squad just in time to shoot it all up in the face on your next turn.
Lets not forget also all the look out sirs that led to characters in squads just counting the squad as a huge block of extra wounds.
I know it was for the wrong system but I still want to nominate the 8th edition WHFBFAQ. Sadly, it's no longer on the site but I believe the wording was along the lines of:
Q: When I shoot my cannon at an enemy unit is that unit removed from play?
A: Yes.
Suddenly Empire gained Antimatter Cannons that could delete a unit of any size and strength without having to roll a single dice.
2 reasons, A: conga lines are stupid as is a parking lot and stacking of so many units on such a small scale.
B: it just is really, and I mean really immersion breaking and makes me wish back for artillery strikes.
Just to punish it.
It's also leading to auras beeing way to strong.
THIS, THIS, THIS, A GORILLION TIMES THIS
When I see my opponent packing their units around a character with aura into a big blob, I'd be delighted to drop a juicy template of S10 AP-2 on top of it, blasting half of it away, but instead, I just roll 2d6 and kill a couple of dudes somewhere in the middle.
Also,
Invulnerable saves. Invulnerable saves on everything.
Amishprn86 wrote: 5th dangerous terrain rules. A roll of 1 kills a X wound model when going over a fence. I;d seen 200pt models die b.c they tripped and rolled their ankle.
Or 5th hitting skimmers vehicles in melee, always a 6 to hit if i remember correctly.
In one of my first games in fifth, we had a little cobblestone wall and my opponent rolled 3 leman russ tanks over it, immobilizing all three.
Later in the battle, my opponent landed 5 stormtroopers via deep strike, then scattered a basilisk shot onto them and blew them all up.
Ironically, that kind of madcap chaos was why I decided I liked 40k in the first place. I know the old "Vehicles have no hit points but just random bad stuff happens to them and they can be completely crippled without being destroyed" rules were broken, because there was always a 1/6 chance of just "whoops, instantly dead." but they were kind of fun.
combination of things but I am not a fan of how 8th edition has changes characters and moved things to Auras.
I would prefer the old independent character where the squad could take the wounds first but it was still possible to take down the squad and then destroy the character. Now its jus oh look there in the middle a space maring captain and LT, better shoot all the normal marines in front first while they buff the hack out of them.
speaking of which... related to the above I hate auras. I think the independant character should buff a squad they are part of, but auras make the game really hard to balance and result in stacking buffs that throw balance out the window sometimes s some armies get them and others do not.
The independent character rules are very close to one of the worst rules though. Any character without that rule was just useless by default, and most of the criticism about the new character rule also applies to independent character shenanigans. Plus all the rule nightmares about leaving/joining, conferring and not conferring rule and rule combinations
I'm glad that something like a daemon prince or a SAG mek can actually do something without get blown to bits before moving, and that and apothecary can just move to where he is needed and doesn't ignore the tactical marine dying next to him because he isn't part of the honor guard.
The only thing that should change is the often requested limitation to character protection actually needing things protecting the character nearby, otherwise the character rules are the best ones so far.
I'd argue they should be target-able but able to shunt the wounds onto a unit within 3" unless the shooting unit has the Sniper keyword.
Then again I also for arguing for shooting through enemy units needing a BS modifier or having the misses roll to hit the unit in the way, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.
But then you're forcing characters to always be in balls aren't you?
7th Ed.
Invisibility makes attacks hit the target on a 6, but if the attack would ordinarily auto-hit, it cannot hit an invisible target. This means flamers and blasts (the logical choices) cannot hit invisible targets.
One side effect is some screwy stuff in melee. Two squads beating on an invisible tank in melee. First squad damages and immobilizes the tank. Now the tank is invulnerable and the second squad cannot hurt it, as melee attacks auto-hit an immobile vehicle but invisibility makes that impossible.
Need to block off an objective vs melee army? Drop a drop pod on it then cast invisibility. Now it cannot be removed.
8th in general reeks of minimum effort meh it's good enough "game design" I mean not as bad as 1st ed AoS but it does feel like it was designed based on the assumption nobody would play it.
Saying that the "bespoke rules" thing that was trumpeted before launch that resulted in everything just being some variation of re rolls and/or +/-1 is bad and the targeting/cover and scenery rules stand out as both lazy and bad.
Talinsin wrote: 7th Ed.
Invisibility makes attacks hit the target on a 6, but if the attack would ordinarily auto-hit, it cannot hit an invisible target. This means flamers and blasts (the logical choices) cannot hit invisible targets.
One side effect is some screwy stuff in melee. Two squads beating on an invisible tank in melee. First squad damages and immobilizes the tank. Now the tank is invulnerable and the second squad cannot hurt it, as melee attacks auto-hit an immobile vehicle but invisibility makes that impossible.
Need to block off an objective vs melee army? Drop a drop pod on it then cast invisibility. Now it cannot be removed.
Ahhh, you are missing a key distinction! Auto-hitting attacks couldn't *TARGET* invisible enemies! They could HIT invisible enemies, but only if they were standing close enough to a non-invisible target and you targeted those guys.
Talinsin wrote: 7th Ed.
Invisibility makes attacks hit the target on a 6, but if the attack would ordinarily auto-hit, it cannot hit an invisible target. This means flamers and blasts (the logical choices) cannot hit invisible targets.
One side effect is some screwy stuff in melee. Two squads beating on an invisible tank in melee. First squad damages and immobilizes the tank. Now the tank is invulnerable and the second squad cannot hurt it, as melee attacks auto-hit an immobile vehicle but invisibility makes that impossible.
Need to block off an objective vs melee army? Drop a drop pod on it then cast invisibility. Now it cannot be removed.
Ahhh, you are missing a key distinction! Auto-hitting attacks couldn't *TARGET* invisible enemies! They could HIT invisible enemies, but only if they were standing close enough to a non-invisible target and you targeted those guys.
If I knew the enemy was an invis gakhead i brought the arty tyrant purge formation.
And thudd guns, lots of them.
Tank shock.
Someone mentioned the 5th Edition Version, but the versions in 6th and 7th were hardly better. For me the archetype of rules bloat. It's great that 8th made it work straight forward and simple, every other game it even kills a model...
Also 7th Edition psiphase. Everything around Psi in 7th sucked, invisibility has been mentioned, but the whole phase was a mess, every psyker was reduced to a battery for the strongest one on the board and I can't recall a single time in the Edition when deny the witch actually worked. Also rolling for random psychic powers making your psyker worth 50 or 300 points... The Psiphase from 8th alone makes me never want to look back
oni wrote: Invisibility was very bad yes. Worse however was Shifting Worldscape.
Ugh... I'm having nightmarish flash backs of Matt Ward and how everything associated with him was a complete dumpster fire.
For those who don't know the name he was GW's pariah. He literally (no exaggeration) nearly put the whole company in ruin.
He wrote some of the more internally balanced rulesets, and strangely did really well writing the lore for the WD Sisters codex (Cruddace apparently writing the rules).
I feel some of the things he was blamed for were design by executive mandate issues since there was a big push for new stuff to be better than old stuff at the time as well.
And at least he didn't write the Warpstorm table.
Ward almost single-handedly destroyed WHFB.
Almost??? I don't see any WHFB product being sold anymore.
2 reasons, A: conga lines are stupid as is a parking lot and stacking of so many units on such a small scale.
B: it just is really, and I mean really immersion breaking and makes me wish back for artillery strikes.
Just to punish it.
It's also leading to auras beeing way to strong.
THIS, THIS, THIS, A GORILLION TIMES THIS
When I see my opponent packing their units around a character with aura into a big blob, I'd be delighted to drop a juicy template of S10 AP-2 on top of it, blasting half of it away, but instead, I just roll 2d6 and kill a couple of dudes somewhere in the middle.
You know what absolutely no one misses about templates and blast markers? The arguments about scatter direction. The arguments about what is vs. is not under it. The arguments about infinite columns. The arguments about how they interact with levels and ruins.
Us vets will have a lot of fond memories of them, but removing blast markers and templates has been a great thing.
From my point of view, it is a tie between not being able to deep strike turn 1, and having to deploy same number of points in deep strike and on the table.
Handful of issues from playing 3rd to 6th, skipping 7th and being a noob at 8th
- Lash of Submission - terribly awkward interactions and cheesy
- Jaws of the World Wolf - brutal for newer players and dumb on bikes/5th edition Razorwolf
- Nob Biker Wound Allocation + Wound Allocation from 5th to 6th - Fish of Fury/Devil Fish Shooting Under Transports - Dark Eldar Combat Drugs + Fabius Bile - I simply thought these were poorly designed
- FOC with Multiple Flying Hive Tyrants - this shouldn't have been a feature
- 5th Tank Shock vs. 4th or any other edition
- MATT WARD besides writing LOTR - his entire concept of how to write fluff/rules/interactions didnt work
You know what absolutely no one misses about templates and blast markers? The arguments about scatter direction. The arguments about what is vs. is not under it. The arguments about infinite columns. The arguments about how they interact with levels and ruins.
Us vets will have a lot of fond memories of them, but removing blast markers and templates has been a great thing.
Excuse me but WTF:
The removal of Templates has lead to the whole game beeing now how you can stack behind cover or around 1 HQ with aura / Relic aura.
HURR DURR MAXIMUM SKILLZ .
Sure template removal did make it easier, you know however this is still a wargame. Stacking around a HQ model should be something done in a 1400-1900 Wargame, not in 40k .
Next time Roboute is donning a fething Shako and his soldiers grenadier caps and sings god save the Emperor whilest marching in a line at me or what?
IT's bullshite, it leads to massive balance problems thanks to AURA's TM and in general is just plain not needed.
Especially if someone goes just LOL SPAM (chaff unit of your choice) win by objective not by playing smart. (because scuse me but winning at the list level by taking a pure skew listis not skill.)
It removed actuall punishment of such moves. It removed depth of the game and most importantly it just is atm outright stupidly easy to build a gunline.
(it also put Melee armies that can't first turn charge via movement shenanigans in a spot where they might aswell just stop playing because they lack the tools to propperly break and punish such castles often)
oni wrote: Invisibility was very bad yes. Worse however was Shifting Worldscape.
Ugh... I'm having nightmarish flash backs of Matt Ward and how everything associated with him was a complete dumpster fire.
For those who don't know the name he was GW's pariah. He literally (no exaggeration) nearly put the whole company in ruin.
He wrote some of the more internally balanced rulesets, and strangely did really well writing the lore for the WD Sisters codex (Cruddace apparently writing the rules).
I feel some of the things he was blamed for were design by executive mandate issues since there was a big push for new stuff to be better than old stuff at the time as well.
And at least he didn't write the Warpstorm table.
Ward almost single-handedly destroyed WHFB.
Almost??? I don't see any WHFB product being sold anymore.
2 reasons, A: conga lines are stupid as is a parking lot and stacking of so many units on such a small scale.
B: it just is really, and I mean really immersion breaking and makes me wish back for artillery strikes.
Just to punish it.
It's also leading to auras beeing way to strong.
THIS, THIS, THIS, A GORILLION TIMES THIS
When I see my opponent packing their units around a character with aura into a big blob, I'd be delighted to drop a juicy template of S10 AP-2 on top of it, blasting half of it away, but instead, I just roll 2d6 and kill a couple of dudes somewhere in the middle.
You know what absolutely no one misses about templates and blast markers? The arguments about scatter direction. The arguments about what is vs. is not under it. The arguments about infinite columns. The arguments about how they interact with levels and ruins.
Us vets will have a lot of fond memories of them, but removing blast markers and templates has been a great thing.
Oh please, Fantasy died WAY before Ward joined. They pulled the life support off a vegetable of a game.
You know what absolutely no one misses about templates and blast markers? The arguments about scatter direction. The arguments about what is vs. is not under it. The arguments about infinite columns. The arguments about how they interact with levels and ruins.
Us vets will have a lot of fond memories of them, but removing blast markers and templates has been a great thing.
Excuse me but WTF:
The removal of Templates has lead to the whole game beeing now how you can stack behind cover or around 1 HQ with aura / Relic aura.
HURR DURR MAXIMUM SKILLZ .
Sure template removal did make it easier, you know however this is still a wargame. Stacking around a HQ model should be something done in a 1400-1900 Wargame, not in 40k .
Next time Roboute is donning a fething Shako and his soldiers grenadier caps and sings god save the Emperor whilest marching in a line at me or what?
IT's bullshite, it leads to massive balance problems thanks to AURA's TM and in general is just plain not needed.
Especially if someone goes just LOL SPAM (chaff unit of your choice) win by objective not by playing smart. (because scuse me but winning at the list level by taking a pure skew listis not skill.)
It removed actuall punishment of such moves. It removed depth of the game and most importantly it just is atm outright stupidly easy to build a gunline.
(it also put Melee armies that can't first turn charge via movement shenanigans in a spot where they might aswell just stop playing because they lack the tools to propperly break and punish such castles often)
Blasts sucked and only certain Large Blasts were good. Why are people remembering differently?
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: Ah look, more people throwing hate at Matt Ward without actual specific examples.
I stated that his LOTR rules were well written. He also wrote Dark Elves and Wood Elves and my friends that still played during End Times mentioned I would have enjoyed those rule sets if I didnt abandon my WHFB armies
Matt Ward's poorly written yet overpowered and game destroying rules without mentioning the Grey Knights or his additions to pispoor fluff
- War of the Ring was terrible coming from the previous incarnation of LOTR and made me jump the boat and quit LOTR since the local GW switched over to WotR only. Have you played it? It's not that it's the worst rules, its just poorly designed all around. The game doesnt work and was short lived.
- SOB Codex in White Dwarf during 5th edition was terrible and didnt fit in correctly. Our local SOB raged out hard and complained endlessly. It was paper thin and was all they had for years.
- Friends attending the Throne of Skulls/GTs for 7th edition and getting STOMPED by DoCWHFB. Daemons had multiple INSANE builds. As someone who played Empire/Dwarves this wasn't even the same game. Without max cannons I couldn't even play a normal game. Effectively Ward ended 7th ed WHFB.
- Blood Angel Codex having a lot of copy paste from the Spacewolf codex - Bloodlance / Jaws / Razorspam / Badly designed characters during the finecast launch / librarian dreadnought.
- Deleting old school 4th Necrons / Ctan / Necron Airforce invention and creating 6th edition which was easily the most unpopular 40k edition where everyone just waited around for 7th to release (much to their horror)
It's not the "worst 40k rule ever" it's more "Man this dude just can't balance and create solid rules.... as the majority of his coworkers make passable/great books"
You know what absolutely no one misses about templates and blast markers? The arguments about scatter direction. The arguments about what is vs. is not under it. The arguments about infinite columns. The arguments about how they interact with levels and ruins.
Us vets will have a lot of fond memories of them, but removing blast markers and templates has been a great thing.
Excuse me but WTF:
The removal of Templates has lead to the whole game beeing now how you can stack behind cover or around 1 HQ with aura / Relic aura.
HURR DURR MAXIMUM SKILLZ .
Sure template removal did make it easier, you know however this is still a wargame. Stacking around a HQ model should be something done in a 1400-1900 Wargame, not in 40k .
Next time Roboute is donning a fething Shako and his soldiers grenadier caps and sings god save the Emperor whilest marching in a line at me or what?
IT's bullshite, it leads to massive balance problems thanks to AURA's TM and in general is just plain not needed.
Especially if someone goes just LOL SPAM (chaff unit of your choice) win by objective not by playing smart. (because scuse me but winning at the list level by taking a pure skew listis not skill.)
It removed actuall punishment of such moves. It removed depth of the game and most importantly it just is atm outright stupidly easy to build a gunline.
(it also put Melee armies that can't first turn charge via movement shenanigans in a spot where they might aswell just stop playing because they lack the tools to propperly break and punish such castles often)
The arguments about blasts (scatter etc.) existed, but outside of the most competitive games, were not really all that common in my experience. The thing I hated the most about blast markers was not even the use of the blast marker. It was playing the ork or guard player who had 150 models and every move phase had to make sure there was 1' between each model because god for bid I got an extra model or two under a blast. I agree that blasts are cool, and "castling" is really a problem in 8th, but the trade off is just not worth it and I am glad blasts are gone. Just my opinion
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: Blasts sucked and only certain Large Blasts were good. Why are people remembering differently?
Blasts generally sucked because people automatically spread their models out to avoid getting killed by blasts and templates.
You really noticed it when playing lash princes, tankshock immolators, and other strategies that could neatly bunch up your models before firing.
You know what absolutely no one misses about templates and blast markers? The arguments about scatter direction. The arguments about what is vs. is not under it. The arguments about infinite columns. The arguments about how they interact with levels and ruins.
Us vets will have a lot of fond memories of them, but removing blast markers and templates has been a great thing.
Excuse me but WTF:
The removal of Templates has lead to the whole game beeing now how you can stack behind cover or around 1 HQ with aura / Relic aura.
HURR DURR MAXIMUM SKILLZ .
Sure template removal did make it easier, you know however this is still a wargame. Stacking around a HQ model should be something done in a 1400-1900 Wargame, not in 40k .
Next time Roboute is donning a fething Shako and his soldiers grenadier caps and sings god save the Emperor whilest marching in a line at me or what?
IT's bs, it leads to massive balance problems thanks to AURA's TM and in general is just plain not needed.
Especially if someone goes just LOL SPAM (chaff unit of your choice) win by objective not by playing smart. (because scuse me but winning at the list level by taking a pure skew listis not skill.)
It removed actuall punishment of such moves. It removed depth of the game and most importantly it just is atm outright stupidly easy to build a gunline.
(it also put Melee armies that can't first turn charge via movement shenanigans in a spot where they might aswell just stop playing because they lack the tools to propperly break and punish such castles often)
The arguments about blasts (scatter etc.) existed, but outside of the most competitive games, were not really all that common in my experience. The thing I hated the most about blast markers was not even the use of the blast marker. It was playing the ork or guard player who had 150 models and every move phase had to make sure there was 1' between each model because god for bid I got an extra model or two under a blast. I agree that blasts are cool, and "castling" is really a problem in 8th, but the trade off is just not worth it and I am glad blasts are gone. Just my opinion
You know what absolutely no one misses about templates and blast markers? The arguments about scatter direction. The arguments about what is vs. is not under it. The arguments about infinite columns. The arguments about how they interact with levels and ruins.
Us vets will have a lot of fond memories of them, but removing blast markers and templates has been a great thing.
Excuse me but WTF:
The removal of Templates has lead to the whole game beeing now how you can stack behind cover or around 1 HQ with aura / Relic aura.
HURR DURR MAXIMUM SKILLZ .
Sure template removal did make it easier, you know however this is still a wargame. Stacking around a HQ model should be something done in a 1400-1900 Wargame, not in 40k .
Next time Roboute is donning a fething Shako and his soldiers grenadier caps and sings god save the Emperor whilest marching in a line at me or what?
IT's bullshite, it leads to massive balance problems thanks to AURA's TM and in general is just plain not needed.
Especially if someone goes just LOL SPAM (chaff unit of your choice) win by objective not by playing smart. (because scuse me but winning at the list level by taking a pure skew listis not skill.)
It removed actuall punishment of such moves. It removed depth of the game and most importantly it just is atm outright stupidly easy to build a gunline.
(it also put Melee armies that can't first turn charge via movement shenanigans in a spot where they might aswell just stop playing because they lack the tools to propperly break and punish such castles often)
The arguments about blasts (scatter etc.) existed, but outside of the most competitive games, were not really all that common in my experience. The thing I hated the most about blast markers was not even the use of the blast marker. It was playing the ork or guard player who had 150 models and every move phase had to make sure there was 1' between each model because god for bid I got an extra model or two under a blast. I agree that blasts are cool, and "castling" is really a problem in 8th, but the trade off is just not worth it and I am glad blasts are gone. Just my opinion
Well now we have the opposite, ain't much better.
Maybe some of the weapons should have a rule that lets them hit units around the targeted unit. Like, for example, "Units within 3 inches of the target unit take so and so many hits at such and such stats" or something. Not perfect but the absurdity of having an artillery round only hit one of the units in a tightly packed blob ain't any better.
Amishprn86 wrote: 5th dangerous terrain rules. A roll of 1 kills a X wound model when going over a fence. I;d seen 200pt models die b.c they tripped and rolled their ankle.
The Rebel Alliance formerly stationed in Hoth would like to have a word with you.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Karol wrote: From my point of view, it is a tie between not being able to deep strike turn 1, and having to deploy same number of points in deep strike and on the table.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: Blasts sucked and only certain Large Blasts were good. Why are people remembering differently?
Blasts generally sucked because people automatically spread their models out to avoid getting killed by blasts and templates.
You really noticed it when playing lash princes, tankshock immolators, and other strategies that could neatly bunch up your models before firing.
Yes but given 8th is the Aura/Blob edition leaving blasts as they were would have given them an actual purpose and provided some risk v reward to both them and the Blobs, but GW going to GW and they removed a counter to a mechanic they were introducing that they now have had to start creating a counter for (See RavenGuard).
You know what absolutely no one misses about templates and blast markers? The arguments about scatter direction. The arguments about what is vs. is not under it. The arguments about infinite columns. The arguments about how they interact with levels and ruins.
Us vets will have a lot of fond memories of them, but removing blast markers and templates has been a great thing.
Excuse me but WTF:
The removal of Templates has lead to the whole game beeing now how you can stack behind cover or around 1 HQ with aura / Relic aura.
HURR DURR MAXIMUM SKILLZ .
Sure template removal did make it easier, you know however this is still a wargame. Stacking around a HQ model should be something done in a 1400-1900 Wargame, not in 40k .
Next time Roboute is donning a fething Shako and his soldiers grenadier caps and sings god save the Emperor whilest marching in a line at me or what?
IT's bs, it leads to massive balance problems thanks to AURA's TM and in general is just plain not needed.
Especially if someone goes just LOL SPAM (chaff unit of your choice) win by objective not by playing smart. (because scuse me but winning at the list level by taking a pure skew listis not skill.)
It removed actuall punishment of such moves. It removed depth of the game and most importantly it just is atm outright stupidly easy to build a gunline.
(it also put Melee armies that can't first turn charge via movement shenanigans in a spot where they might aswell just stop playing because they lack the tools to propperly break and punish such castles often)
I do think auras were a mistake. IMO more stuff like My Will Be Done (i.e. abilities that only affect a single unit) would have a lot better. It would have allowed HQs to support units without the need to cluster as many units as possible around them. I also think that these rules should really have been limited to buffing infantry. Maybe stuff like Techpriests could buff vehicles but other commanders should really be focused on the infantry side.
Drive in a straight line through any number of non-vehicle units - up to 36" for some eldar tanks
Force a moral test on all those units
All units are unharmed, even if a land raider ran over them
Land on top of a unit, forcing it to move away, no rules to handle that movement, game broke down when the unit could not move
Death or glory response for a single model which had to destroy the tank or the model was gone. Not hit, not damage, not immobilize, DESTROY
You could also ram a vehicle and did more damage the more distance you covered. It also was a tankshock and you could destroy your own vehicle that way
Which meant that an eldar hovertank army could shock your army into a huge pile, force 6-10 moral tests and then put flamers and templates on them. You also auto-lost any game with more than 3 wave serpents alive because they could just tank-shock onto objectives, pushing your units off them.
Best thing to leave the game ever.
I'm pretty sure an imbolised result meant the tank ground to a halt directly in front of the Death or Glory Model.
And Fearless was a rule.
the "Good old days" editions had some truly hilarious rules if applied to today's standards. Let's look at everyone's favorite sacred cow, 2nd edition.
You are allowed to Run (Doubling your move, not getting to shoot) only if no enemy models are within 8". However, you may Charge (Doubling your move, not getting to shoot) at any time. Charging rule specifies that you must "engage the closest model" but it is never actually defined what "engage" means.
Think the Line of Sight rule definition in 8th is bad? Well 2nd edition has you covered: It has no definition. "Models must be able to draw Line of Sight to their targets." That's it, baby.
Blast weapons must be positioned such that most of the models hit are from the target unit. That means if the unit you want to target is nearby a more numerous unit, it might be illegal to shoot a blast or template weapon targeting that unit.
or how about "Large Targets"? Firing at a large target grants +1 to hit. What is a large target, 2nd edition Warhammer 40,000? Well it's a target larger than an elephant. That is literally the rule.
Or how about "It's gonna blow!"? Models in base to base contact with a vehicle that gets hit by a weapon that "Causes it to blow up" get a free move. I'm sure "blow up" has some clearly defined definition somewhere in the rules. Nope! There are unique, narratively described results for all catastrophic vehicle damage, vehicles can go flying, explode, flip over, lash out in their death throes, etc, etc. Is any effect that could cause damage to nearby models "blowing up?" is it only when it describes some kind of explosion?
In order to fight a model in close combat, you must be in base-to-base contact. However, there is a bonus of +1 if your model is standing on higher ground than their opponent. How can bases be in contact while one model is one higher ground? Who knows.
"Fumbles" are defined in the close combat table as a -1 modifier to your combat result. In the text of the rule, however, it says each Fumble grants your opponent +1.
Models attacking vehicles "Must obviously be in base-to-base contact as normal." Therefore vehicles without bases in 2nd edition are immune to all melee combat.
When you charge a vehicle, you can use a gun your model is equipped with rather than a melee weapon (as long as it's not a Move Or Fire or Sustained Fire weapon) and you still get to add the physical strength of the model holding the gun. Also, you score a number of hits with that gun equal to the attacks stat of the model. It also says "The attacker must specify the location struck - with certain logical restrictions!"
Amishprn86 wrote: 5th dangerous terrain rules. A roll of 1 kills a X wound model when going over a fence. I;d seen 200pt models die b.c they tripped and rolled their ankle.
The Rebel Alliance formerly stationed in Hoth would like to have a word with you.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Karol wrote: From my point of view, it is a tie between not being able to deep strike turn 1, and having to deploy same number of points in deep strike and on the table.
Null deployment was arguably worse.
Yes b.c a starwars thing is equal to 40k, where a 9" tall super soldier that trained and fought for many years in almost all terrain dies from stepping over a 1" tall rock. but no, this doesnt just happen once, but multi-time sin a battle. sure ok.
the_scotsman wrote: the "Good old days" editions had some truly hilarious rules if applied to today's standards. Let's look at everyone's favorite sacred cow, 2nd edition.
You are allowed to Run (Doubling your move, not getting to shoot) only if no enemy models are within 8". However, you may Charge (Doubling your move, not getting to shoot) at any time. Charging rule specifies that you must "engage the closest model" but it is never actually defined what "engage" means.
Think the Line of Sight rule definition in 8th is bad? Well 2nd edition has you covered: It has no definition. "Models must be able to draw Line of Sight to their targets." That's it, baby.
Blast weapons must be positioned such that most of the models hit are from the target unit. That means if the unit you want to target is nearby a more numerous unit, it might be illegal to shoot a blast or template weapon targeting that unit.
or how about "Large Targets"? Firing at a large target grants +1 to hit. What is a large target, 2nd edition Warhammer 40,000? Well it's a target larger than an elephant. That is literally the rule.
Or how about "It's gonna blow!"? Models in base to base contact with a vehicle that gets hit by a weapon that "Causes it to blow up" get a free move. I'm sure "blow up" has some clearly defined definition somewhere in the rules. Nope! There are unique, narratively described results for all catastrophic vehicle damage, vehicles can go flying, explode, flip over, lash out in their death throes, etc, etc. Is any effect that could cause damage to nearby models "blowing up?" is it only when it describes some kind of explosion?
In order to fight a model in close combat, you must be in base-to-base contact. However, there is a bonus of +1 if your model is standing on higher ground than their opponent. How can bases be in contact while one model is one higher ground? Who knows.
"Fumbles" are defined in the close combat table as a -1 modifier to your combat result. In the text of the rule, however, it says each Fumble grants your opponent +1.
Models attacking vehicles "Must obviously be in base-to-base contact as normal." Therefore vehicles without bases in 2nd edition are immune to all melee combat.
When you charge a vehicle, you can use a gun your model is equipped with rather than a melee weapon (as long as it's not a Move Or Fire or Sustained Fire weapon) and you still get to add the physical strength of the model holding the gun. Also, you score a number of hits with that gun equal to the attacks stat of the model. It also says "The attacker must specify the location struck - with certain logical restrictions!"
I don't think I have ever rolled more dice for little purpose, and when it did well it was too big a deal and not something that was a tactical choice by the player. I saw it responsible for so many feel bad moments. It was either
I rolled a bunch of dice and nothing happened, or Swarm lord dies turn 1 because I rolled lucky.
Amishprn86 wrote: 5th dangerous terrain rules. A roll of 1 kills a X wound model when going over a fence. I;d seen 200pt models die b.c they tripped and rolled their ankle.
The Rebel Alliance formerly stationed in Hoth would like to have a word with you.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Karol wrote: From my point of view, it is a tie between not being able to deep strike turn 1, and having to deploy same number of points in deep strike and on the table.
Null deployment was arguably worse.
Yes b.c a starwars thing is equal to 40k, where a 9" tall super soldier that trained and fought for many years in almost all terrain dies from stepping over a 1" tall rock. but no, this doesnt just happen once, but multi-time sin a battle. sure ok.
Infantries never took difficult terrain tests though - only for dangerous terrain.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Rules regarding Challenges were pretty bad too.
the_scotsman wrote: the "Good old days" editions had some truly hilarious rules if applied to today's standards. Let's look at everyone's favorite sacred cow, 2nd edition.
You are allowed to Run (Doubling your move, not getting to shoot) only if no enemy models are within 8". However, you may Charge (Doubling your move, not getting to shoot) at any time. Charging rule specifies that you must "engage the closest model" but it is never actually defined what "engage" means.
Think the Line of Sight rule definition in 8th is bad? Well 2nd edition has you covered: It has no definition. "Models must be able to draw Line of Sight to their targets." That's it, baby.
Blast weapons must be positioned such that most of the models hit are from the target unit. That means if the unit you want to target is nearby a more numerous unit, it might be illegal to shoot a blast or template weapon targeting that unit.
or how about "Large Targets"? Firing at a large target grants +1 to hit. What is a large target, 2nd edition Warhammer 40,000? Well it's a target larger than an elephant. That is literally the rule.
Or how about "It's gonna blow!"? Models in base to base contact with a vehicle that gets hit by a weapon that "Causes it to blow up" get a free move. I'm sure "blow up" has some clearly defined definition somewhere in the rules. Nope! There are unique, narratively described results for all catastrophic vehicle damage, vehicles can go flying, explode, flip over, lash out in their death throes, etc, etc. Is any effect that could cause damage to nearby models "blowing up?" is it only when it describes some kind of explosion?
In order to fight a model in close combat, you must be in base-to-base contact. However, there is a bonus of +1 if your model is standing on higher ground than their opponent. How can bases be in contact while one model is one higher ground? Who knows.
"Fumbles" are defined in the close combat table as a -1 modifier to your combat result. In the text of the rule, however, it says each Fumble grants your opponent +1.
Models attacking vehicles "Must obviously be in base-to-base contact as normal." Therefore vehicles without bases in 2nd edition are immune to all melee combat.
When you charge a vehicle, you can use a gun your model is equipped with rather than a melee weapon (as long as it's not a Move Or Fire or Sustained Fire weapon) and you still get to add the physical strength of the model holding the gun. Also, you score a number of hits with that gun equal to the attacks stat of the model. It also says "The attacker must specify the location struck - with certain logical restrictions!"
Oh nostalgia how you have lied to me.
Sometimes I just like to imagine how hardcore RAW-types would react to half of the beardy wargames I end up playing when I go to conventions with my dad. I've played historical games where units move 12" per turn and bows have 2" of range because "any real damage is impossible at ranges higher than 10 meters and this is a 1/64 scale game so..." or games where you have to roll to see enemy tanks through the "fog of war" so your anti-tank gunners can fail to spot a panzer positioned 1" away from their faces. There was one WW1 game where the author tried to represent those crazy stories of a single soldier going nuts and murdering a whole trench full of guys by allowing you to activate a fixed number of times per turn but placing no limit on the number of times you could activate one model. When the GM said that my opponent and I just looked across from each other and mutually understood that this entire game would be the two of us selecting our favorite looking miniature and having him sprint around like the protagonist in an FPS game splattering a dozen enemies every turn and moving a total of 75" on a 4'x6' table.
Breng77 wrote: The 6th Edition Daemon Codex Warpstorm chart.
I don't think I have ever rolled more dice for little purpose, and when it did well it was too big a deal and not something that was a tactical choice by the player. I saw it responsible for so many feel bad moments. It was either
I rolled a bunch of dice and nothing happened, or Swarm lord dies turn 1 because I rolled lucky.
This is up there, next to overwatch..
I not sure anyone cared enough about the game at that point to want to wait for rolling on daemon charts, any of them. It’s like they see the word random and forgot everything about design on that book.
Yet for all the weird rules of the past, I don't recall ever having a LOS discussion or feeling it was unfair in 2nd. Maybe because without the rules being so wide, people just applied common sense.
It's great fun to read about the editions I never got to experience.
I think the current rules for the Monolith and NIght Scythe are the worst ever. "I'm not going to pay 4 CP to destroy your 220 pt unit." That's what I heard in a battle report I recently saw between Necrons and Dark Eldar, does that sound fair or fun? How about if your unit inside your flyer automatically died unless you used a Stratagem that can be negated by some factions? Oh wait, that's how flyers worked in 6th and 7th except you had no way to save them, 5/6 just died, except for Necrons because they were supposed to be these super badass highly advanced androids. That's something Eldar or the Imperium should deal with, using an over-engineered solution to a problem that could be solved in much simpler ways. Why teleport troops to the battlefield if the loss of your teleporters means you lose access to those reinforcements when you could've just put the reinforcements inside the flyer and have them hop out and 5/6 would survive? How about before the emergency protocol stratagem was made or before they changed it so it could be used turn 1? Your flyer died? Your unit died. It's just a huge flavour fail when Necrons seem so much less advanced than what Astra Militarum get with parachutes.
Virus bombing Orks into oblivion? It should have been a mission scenario something on turn 5 or 6 probably, but it's not really a flavour fail. I'd say Iyanden's tactic that makes it ideal for Guardian hordes is right up there in terms of worst rules because it's the opposite of what Iyanden does, or maybe it's a secret flavour win because it's such an effective tactic, but it leads to all the Guardians dying. For me I want to try my hardest to win and have a fun thematic experience while doing it rather than broken stuff that just makes you want to quit (like invisibility) I don't think that's actually the biggest problem because the problem there could have been fixed by rearranging the numbers around and making it harder to cast, whereas flavour fails uses stupid mechanics that have to be entirely rewritten. A bad rule isn't just one that hasn't been properly balanced and playtested, but one that no matter what values you put on the ability, it won't make sense.
flandarz wrote: I started in 8th, so I can't say anything about previous editions, but the sheer abundance of giant robots and vehicles with 3++ Invuln Saves is crazy. It's pretty bad that I have a better chance of dealing damage to a Riptide with a Boy Blob hitting it with knives than I do with a Rocket Launcher designed for the purpose of taking down big things.
Which kinda just goes to my biggest gripe of volume of attacks/shots being more important to taking down anything than using weapons designed for those targets.
That's a problem because of shield drones which IMO are poorly written, they should've worked on a 4+ instead of 2+, as is it's basically impossible to kill a Riptide with quality shooting. On top of that even if the weapon does D3+6 damage the Drone still only takes one mortal wound and ignores it on a 5+. Ork Boys also do a tonne of damage pretty reliably and rockets are underpowered.
I know, let’s put a rule that would be at home in a skirmish game in a clunky company level game that grinds everything to a halt with stupid things like characters tanking saves and having to break out the callipers to find out who is closest.
Dumbest fething rule ever.
I liked those, I think the flaw was with the character rules rather than the wound distribution rules. Assuming no character shananigans the closest model to the firing unit is going to die first, so unless you are being assaulted from multiple sides the unit is going to die one model at a time. 8th is elegant, but it's also pretty dumb. Oh, this guy? No he's still alive despite the conga-line leading to the main blob of his squad being dead, I need to remain in range for my aura abilities. I don't think I've ever brought calipers to a 40k game, if it's down to less than a milimeter you can roll off.
Stormonu wrote: Some of the unit/faction drawbacks over the years get a groan at least for me:
“Spirit Vision” - Eldar wraith constructs that aren’t within 6” of a Spiritseer have a 50% chance to stare off into space and do nothing.
I liked this one as well, it was very thematic IMO, sad to see it leave. It was a needed special rule when they came out with the flamers and again at the beginning of 8th with Ynnari Wraith flamer spam.
Amishprn86 wrote: 5th dangerous terrain rules. A roll of 1 kills a X wound model when going over a fence. I;d seen 200pt models die b.c they tripped and rolled their ankle.
I hated this so much, my Monoliths got stuck half the time I tried to move over something. The only good design choice for the 7th ed Decurion Detachment was Move Through Cover so my Monoliths stopped getting stuck on a piece of wire. The worst part was having to move through the same piece of terrain two turns because the Monolith is so slow.
95% of the time, never came into play.
5% completely crippled a unit.
It would have been a good rule if it where not so Binary and not 95 % of the time completely useless...
I feel like a pinning system would have been better compared to the undead mechanic that everybody follows currently.
slave.entity wrote: The terrain rules in 8th are really, really bad, even if you're just playing casually. I've have so many little micro arguments over what constitutes cover, where it's possible to place models, and how to abstract very tall 2nd floor ruins into usable space. Even if we always just house rule it on the spot, it always sours the mood a bit when things don't go your way.
You need to read the rules more clearly, they are super clear. No house rules required, just lots of LOS-breaking terrain. I recommend you go back over the terrain rules and read them carefully, maybe read an article on how exactly they work instead of trying to make them work the way you want them to work. It's also a good idea to go over terrain before the game begins. Purging terrain that creates arguments from your collection by way of donation might be a good idea.
Wayniac wrote: Yet for all the weird rules of the past, I don't recall ever having a LOS discussion or feeling it was unfair in 2nd. Maybe because without the rules being so wide, people just applied common sense.
I'm sorry, but in the english language there is only one definition for the term "Elephant" and my small plastic carnifex is clearly NOT larger than a 20-foot tall multi-ton pachyderm, and unless you can source somewhere in the RULES that it says we should imagine some kind of scaled-down "Model elephant" we play the game as WRITTEN, not your CAAC rules as intended bs interpretation!
Wayniac wrote: Yet for all the weird rules of the past, I don't recall ever having a LOS discussion or feeling it was unfair in 2nd. Maybe because without the rules being so wide, people just applied common sense.
I'm sorry, but in the english language there is only one definition for the term "Elephant" and my small plastic carnifex is clearly NOT larger than a 20-foot tall multi-ton pachyderm, and unless you can source somewhere in the RULES that it says we should imagine some kind of scaled-down "Model elephant" we play the game as WRITTEN, not your CAAC rules as intended bs interpretation!
African Bush Elephants top out at 11' at the shoulder.
I'd argue they should be target-able but able to shunt the wounds onto a unit within 3" unless the shooting unit has the Sniper keyword.
Then again I also for arguing for shooting through enemy units needing a BS modifier or having the misses roll to hit the unit in the way, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.
But then you're forcing characters to always be in balls aren't you?
You mean like we already do to form aura congalines or bubbles?
I fail to see how it changes the game from what we already have.
Wayniac wrote: Yet for all the weird rules of the past, I don't recall ever having a LOS discussion or feeling it was unfair in 2nd. Maybe because without the rules being so wide, people just applied common sense.
I'm sorry, but in the english language there is only one definition for the term "Elephant" and my small plastic carnifex is clearly NOT larger than a 20-foot tall multi-ton pachyderm, and unless you can source somewhere in the RULES that it says we should imagine some kind of scaled-down "Model elephant" we play the game as WRITTEN, not your CAAC rules as intended bs interpretation!
African Bush Elephants top out at 11' at the shoulder.
I'm gonna quote the incredibly sarcastic and amazing FAQ from the 2nd edition rulebook here:
"I got it wrong - sometimes I wonder how I sleep at night!"
Oh, here's another fun rule from the FAQ:
"Q: Some models are allowed to dodge shooting and hand-to-hand attacks on an unmodified die roll. Can you dodge a psychic attack?
A: This really depends on the kind of attack, so it needs a bit of common sense and interpretation. Basically, is the psychic attack is something which affects the target's mind or body, you can't dodge it. If the psychic attack blasts the target with a burst of physical energy, then the model can try to dodge it like any kind of attack."
Sorry, that goes to Alessio Cavatore. The damage he caused to the game festered for yeaaaaaaars.
You have an odd way of spelling Mat Ward.
Let's leave the WFB stuff aside. That horse is dead and buried anyways.
Doesn't change the fact that his shoddy army book writing slipped the game into that death spiral.
Also: Ranks & Flanks - Never Forget.
Dysartes wrote:*raises head above the parapet*
As an opponent, the v3.5 Chaos Codex.
*ducks down behind the parapet again*
I desperately want to put the Black Templars' "Fall Forward" rule as the worst in 3rd, but the Blood Angels Codex exists. There's literally NOTHING good about that Codex. However, I will agree with you on Chaos 3.5 because it set a precedent for an arms race that literally never abated.
Amishprn86 wrote: 5th dangerous terrain rules. A roll of 1 kills a X wound model when going over a fence. I;d seen 200pt models die b.c they tripped and rolled their ankle.
The Rebel Alliance formerly stationed in Hoth would like to have a word with you.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Karol wrote: From my point of view, it is a tie between not being able to deep strike turn 1, and having to deploy same number of points in deep strike and on the table.
Null deployment was arguably worse.
Yes b.c a starwars thing is equal to 40k, where a 9" tall super soldier that trained and fought for many years in almost all terrain dies from stepping over a 1" tall rock. but no, this doesnt just happen once, but multi-time sin a battle. sure ok.
I always assumed that dangerous terrain represented things like unstable ground (said Asartes vanishes into a newly formed hole, unhurt, but unable to regroup in time to continue fighting), mines, or some other thing that could maim or remove someone from action but not always kill them.
the_scotsman wrote: the "Good old days" editions had some truly hilarious rules if applied to today's standards. Let's look at everyone's favorite sacred cow, 2nd edition.
You are allowed to Run (Doubling your move, not getting to shoot) only if no enemy models are within 8". However, you may Charge (Doubling your move, not getting to shoot) at any time. Charging rule specifies that you must "engage the closest model" but it is never actually defined what "engage" means.
Think the Line of Sight rule definition in 8th is bad? Well 2nd edition has you covered: It has no definition. "Models must be able to draw Line of Sight to their targets." That's it, baby.
Blast weapons must be positioned such that most of the models hit are from the target unit. That means if the unit you want to target is nearby a more numerous unit, it might be illegal to shoot a blast or template weapon targeting that unit.
or how about "Large Targets"? Firing at a large target grants +1 to hit. What is a large target, 2nd edition Warhammer 40,000? Well it's a target larger than an elephant. That is literally the rule.
Or how about "It's gonna blow!"? Models in base to base contact with a vehicle that gets hit by a weapon that "Causes it to blow up" get a free move. I'm sure "blow up" has some clearly defined definition somewhere in the rules. Nope! There are unique, narratively described results for all catastrophic vehicle damage, vehicles can go flying, explode, flip over, lash out in their death throes, etc, etc. Is any effect that could cause damage to nearby models "blowing up?" is it only when it describes some kind of explosion?
In order to fight a model in close combat, you must be in base-to-base contact. However, there is a bonus of +1 if your model is standing on higher ground than their opponent. How can bases be in contact while one model is one higher ground? Who knows.
"Fumbles" are defined in the close combat table as a -1 modifier to your combat result. In the text of the rule, however, it says each Fumble grants your opponent +1.
Models attacking vehicles "Must obviously be in base-to-base contact as normal." Therefore vehicles without bases in 2nd edition are immune to all melee combat.
When you charge a vehicle, you can use a gun your model is equipped with rather than a melee weapon (as long as it's not a Move Or Fire or Sustained Fire weapon) and you still get to add the physical strength of the model holding the gun. Also, you score a number of hits with that gun equal to the attacks stat of the model. It also says "The attacker must specify the location struck - with certain logical restrictions!"
Wayniac wrote: Yet for all the weird rules of the past, I don't recall ever having a LOS discussion or feeling it was unfair in 2nd. Maybe because without the rules being so wide, people just applied common sense.
I'm sorry, but in the english language there is only one definition for the term "Elephant" and my small plastic carnifex is clearly NOT larger than a 20-foot tall multi-ton pachyderm, and unless you can source somewhere in the RULES that it says we should imagine some kind of scaled-down "Model elephant" we play the game as WRITTEN, not your CAAC rules as intended bs interpretation!
African Bush Elephants top out at 11' at the shoulder.
Back in my day elephants were 25 feet tall and they had rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth as well! Or was that the Glabbernarkl?
Fiddly. Ambiguous. Throws open a whole giant array of questions about what other effects trigger on the natural roll v. the modified roll, which requires extra under-the-hood knowledge about what the FAQs have said about what different abilities. All of which is 100% pointless bloat.
Fiddly. Ambiguous. Throws open a whole giant array of questions about what other effects trigger on the natural roll v. the modified roll, which requires extra under-the-hood knowledge about what the FAQs have said about what different abilities. All of which is 100% pointless bloat.
Yeah, that rule is up there as being unintuitive, clunky and something most people forget since it's not at all how anything involving modifiers has worked, ever.
Fiddly. Ambiguous. Throws open a whole giant array of questions about what other effects trigger on the natural roll v. the modified roll, which requires extra under-the-hood knowledge about what the FAQs have said about what different abilities. All of which is 100% pointless bloat.
I understand why they felt the need to do it, but they really should have let modifiers work on it. I mean if modifiers work on Gets Hot or exploding 6s in most cases why not let it work on rerolls?
Fiddly. Ambiguous. Throws open a whole giant array of questions about what other effects trigger on the natural roll v. the modified roll, which requires extra under-the-hood knowledge about what the FAQs have said about what different abilities. All of which is 100% pointless bloat.
I understand why they felt the need to do it, but they really should have let modifiers work on it. I mean if modifiers work on Gets Hot or exploding 6s in most cases why not let it work on rerolls?
Because regardless of whether the maths pans out or not, it doesn't "feel" nice for your unit with a -1 to hit to suddenly allow your opponent to re-roll both 1's and 2's with a "re-roll 1's" ability, or to let your opponent re-roll more dice than they "should".
The gradual change from re-roll misses to just re-roll anything is welcome.
Fiddly. Ambiguous. Throws open a whole giant array of questions about what other effects trigger on the natural roll v. the modified roll, which requires extra under-the-hood knowledge about what the FAQs have said about what different abilities. All of which is 100% pointless bloat.
I understand why they felt the need to do it, but they really should have let modifiers work on it. I mean if modifiers work on Gets Hot or exploding 6s in most cases why not let it work on rerolls?
Because regardless of whether the maths pans out or not, it doesn't "feel" nice for your unit with a -1 to hit to suddenly allow your opponent to re-roll both 1's and 2's with a "re-roll 1's" ability, or to let your opponent re-roll more dice than they "should".
The gradual change from re-roll misses to just re-roll anything is welcome.
And that's why I get why they did it, I just feel like there should be more uses of "unmodified" in the rules than we currently have (namely Gets Hot and Exploding 6s).
Blastaar wrote: Removal of blasts/templates- very cinematic and fun, and I think better for gameplay (alleged arguments aside) making positioning matter
Objectively False. Small Markers would only ever hit 1 model if spaced out correctly, 3 models at most. All Blast Markers and Templates did was cause games to last 6 hours because you needed to space your models out and allowed Burna Boyz to get 75 hits out of a Battlewagon. Neither were "cinematic" or "fun". The process of scattering caused more arguments than anything else. Positioning didn't matter, spacing did and spacing just caused tedium.
Now, was the replacement of "roll dice to see how many dice you roll" good? No. Ideally they should have made Small Blast weapons "Blast 3" and Large Blast weapons "Blast 6", where you roll 2 dice per shot and are limited to a maximum of hits equal to the number of models in the unit.
Warning: This turned into a wall of text, but I'm keeping it as-is
True. Line. Of. Sight.
I don't know if WH40k has always had this rule and maybe it once made sense from a collection of rules standpoint, but I don't think there is a more core rule that seems destined to create more arguments and uncertain game states.
Let's be clear about this - its a rule that requires you to determine if an object 1 - 4 inches above the tabletop can see a significant portion of an opposing model by asking both players to make a judgement from the object's point of view.
It sounds simple right up until you look at this 1" high head and realize that from your view, 2-4 feet above the table, you can't really know - even with a decent understanding of trigonometry. You can get a general idea by lowering you head to that of the model, but even then you'd need a bodycam on the bloody things to know for certain.
This is all pretty frustrating, but the real sin of the rule is the fact that it's one of the few (last?) rules in wh40k that doesn't abstract. Movement is abstracted, range, scattering, AOEs, Dropping in from orbit, all abstracted. But not line of sight. Its this one last dinosaur that forces players to either have the game state bog down or just hold some immediate negoations to at least partially ignore the rule.
You've all done it - notified an opponent that your intent is to hide a model from LOS rather than figure out if its possible. You've likewise moved a sniper into position declaring the intent to put something into LOS even though you aren't certain if the LOS is there or not. And we've all felt the frustration of having to agree because you really don't want to dig out the laser/drop you head down and risk bogging down the game only to risk something you might be wrong in. Walking away from a game wondering if that miracle between the buildings shots may or may not have been possible according to the actual rules.
It also is one of the main drivers of grump against custom/modded models. There's a general agreement that base size should be the same and that WYSIWYG is a general guideline, but the difference in profile (and therefore Line of Sight possibilities) is what people seem to get bent over. It wasn't that long ago that we saw an American tournament threaten to throw out crocodile riding roughriders completely on the basis that the 3d profile (and thus the area in which it could see and be seen) was lower and thus changed how the model performed on the tabletop.
I'm convinced this rule is almost single-handily responsible for the generally laissez-faire attitude the community has towards the rules in general. If you can't even agree on line of sight, the problem of oddly worded rules and strange loopholes seem minor.
Blastaar wrote: Removal of blasts/templates- very cinematic and fun, and I think better for gameplay (alleged arguments aside) making positioning matter
Objectively False. Small Markers would only ever hit 1 model if spaced out correctly, 3 models at most. All Blast Markers and Templates did was cause games to last 6 hours because you needed to space your models out and allowed Burna Boyz to get 75 hits out of a Battlewagon. Neither were "cinematic" or "fun". The process of scattering caused more arguments than anything else. Positioning didn't matter, spacing did and spacing just caused tedium.
Now, was the replacement of "roll dice to see how many dice you roll" good? No. Ideally they should have made Small Blast weapons "Blast 3" and Large Blast weapons "Blast 6", where you roll 2 dice per shot and are limited to a maximum of hits equal to the number of models in the unit.
The most annoying aspect is they have a system of more hits the bigger the unit with some of the Forge World weapons.
I don't know if WH40k has always had this rule ...
It has. The specifics have changed slightly from edition to edition, most notably with how abstract things like Area Terrain are resolved within it, but every edition back to Rogue Trader has used true LOS for the core of the shooting rules.
And while the problems you listed are certainly issues with it, from my experience (over 20 years now) they rarely actually cause problems on the table. YMMV, particularly if you have a more nitpicky gaming group, but most of the issues I experienced came from disagreements over how much of a model was obscured in those editions where that mattered for cover (since determining 50% of a model is tricky with some models) rather than with determining whether something had LOS or not.
Most players (again, from my experience) realise that nitpicking over LOS is a two-way street, so tend to err on the side of just getting on with the game.
oni wrote: EASY question!!! Current edition W40K...
Character targeting rules for Matched play.
Worst evAr! Hands down, no contest!
Yeah. It should've been something like it can't be targeted if it has friendly units within 2" or something.
Yeah, I had a game where I couldn't shoot a Demon Prince, a Chaos Lord or Ahriman because there was one Chaos Marine who was closer, who was nowhere near either the lord or the Prince. That is fething dumb.
The deep strike rules for the monolith are pretty bad too. Not only do you have to land 12" away from an enemy, you also have to measure from the hull due to the Hover rule. Why both? If it were 12", but measure from the center, I'd understand, but 12" AND Hover? Its as if GW doesn't want necron players to use their most iconic vehicle.
Drive in a straight line through any number of non-vehicle units - up to 36" for some eldar tanks
Force a moral test on all those units
All units are unharmed, even if a land raider ran over them
Land on top of a unit, forcing it to move away, no rules to handle that movement, game broke down when the unit could not move
Death or glory response for a single model which had to destroy the tank or the model was gone. Not hit, not damage, not immobilize, DESTROY
You could also ram a vehicle and did more damage the more distance you covered. It also was a tankshock and you could destroy your own vehicle that way
Which meant that an eldar hovertank army could shock your army into a huge pile, force 6-10 moral tests and then put flamers and templates on them. You also auto-lost any game with more than 3 wave serpents alive because they could just tank-shock onto objectives, pushing your units off them.
Best thing to leave the game ever.
I'm pretty sure an imbolised result meant the tank ground to a halt directly in front of the Death or Glory Model.
And Fearless was a rule.
Yeah, pretty sure you can just immobilize. And death or glory was elective.
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Stormonu wrote: Some of the unit/faction drawbacks over the years get a groan at least for me:
“We’ll Be Back” - Your entire Necron force gets tabled if at any time your down to less than 25% Warriors.
.
No, you're thinking of Phase Out.
We'll Be Back is what allows necrons to get back up. Its a different rule.
JohnU wrote: Being a xenos player in a store with a very high percentage of Marine players, God did I hate Sweeping Advance.
Why? If your unit was caught and beaten in combat, how combat effective were you expecting it to be afterwards? I guess a couple of firedragons, retreating by a landraider or something?
Removing morale effects like 'falling back, pinned, rallying' sped up the game dramatically- my guess is Sweeping Advance was supposed to do the same by destroying crippled units and removing them from the board.
For me personally, the proliferation of tactical objective decks and stratagems, especially army-specific ones, was the straw that broke the camel's back. Armies now have access to dozens and dozens of special rules on-tap, meaning my turns are now bogged down in a massive mire of indecision because the amount of potential actions I can take has been increased sometimes by an order of magnitude (and the maths has become infinitely more complex), and likewise the predictability of opponents' turns has become far more nebulous, with them being able to pull off victories out of nowhere because of an interaction I've failed to prognosticate for, or forgotten about the implications of. It's all just so much more mentally taxing, and it killed my enjoyment of the game stone dead.
JohnU wrote: Being a xenos player in a store with a very high percentage of Marine players, God did I hate Sweeping Advance.
Why? If your unit was caught and beaten in combat, how combat effective were you expecting it to be afterwards? I guess a couple of firedragons, retreating by a landraider or something?
Removing morale effects like 'falling back, pinned, rallying' sped up the game dramatically- my guess is Sweeping Advance was supposed to do the same by destroying crippled units and removing them from the board.
Sure a squad of firewarriors getting punked by a couple of marines was annoying, but expected, but any mob of orks was dangerous as long as the PK nob was alive. Once that mob dropped below 11, they're probably running.
Mostly it was just frustrating since it was asymmetrical compared to marines. As a new player back then (4th) and not knowing their codex you learned all the BRB rules and it seemed like marines ignored half of them.
Sweeping Advance did speed up the game quite a bit when they played Khorne berserker rhino rush.
I can’t believe this thread lasted more than two posts when there was once a rule that could kill an entire army before the game began.
Yes, I know it was mentioned already, and it should have been the last post in the thread.
Yes, but to be fair GW themselves said in White Dwarf to tear it up and pretend it never existed. So.. now that I think about it, that's pretty much the worst rule ever if the designers themselves said yeah no, this was a mistake.
TLOS, while it has always existed, I don't ever recall it being an issue until recently. In 2nd and 3rd I don't ever once recall having an argument over LOS or nonsense like I can see a tiny piece of your model peeking out from a tiny hole in a ruin that's across a large forest so I can shoot you just as easily as if you were standing out in the open.
Sure a squad of firewarriors getting punked by a couple of marines was annoying, but expected, but any mob of orks was dangerous as long as the PK nob was alive. Once that mob dropped below 11, they're probably running.
Didn't they use their number of models as LD? So with 8 models in the unit, they'd be LD8- same as marines? And if this was 3rd ed orks, their choppas allowed a max save of 4+ and struck at init 4 on the charge- both rules specifically designed to feth up marines. In order to lose combat v marines you'd have to either get super shot up on the way in or get charged/countercharged by a solid block of them ( and you couldn't shoot non pistol/assault weapons and charge- so they'd be giving up stand & doubletap to make that happen)
I broke ork squads that charged me with Templars, but that was their schtick.
My point was that sweeping advance was supposed to be a reward for clever charging and inflicting enough casualties to inflict heavy LD modifiers and break a unit. The real issue was that due to real-world meta reasons, you were playing against the army that ignored that rule the majority of the time but they could do it to you.
I'd argue they should be target-able but able to shunt the wounds onto a unit within 3" unless the shooting unit has the Sniper keyword.
Then again I also for arguing for shooting through enemy units needing a BS modifier or having the misses roll to hit the unit in the way, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.
But then you're forcing characters to always be in balls aren't you?
You mean like we already do to form aura congalines or bubbles?
I fail to see how it changes the game from what we already have.
I get that we have bubbles, but there's a bit more than that.
Ahriman and DPs often run in configurations that don't keep them near a lot of units. Same with smash captains. Parking a character sniper by themselves is no longer possible. Assassins would be pretty useless. Is Trajan passing wounds off to tanks?
Dunno if this has been mentioned before, but I really think plasma guns should overheat on an UNMODIFIED roll of 1, like in Kill Team. Hit penalties should not make plasma more likely to overheat, and hit bonuses should not prevent it from overheating. Because it doesn't make a lick of sense for your gun to be more likely to blow up when shooting at an aircraft.
Also I really hate how re-rolls and penalties interact. The penalty should be applied before the re-roll, allowing you to re-roll dice that failed to hit as a result of the penalty.
Heroic Intervention really needs some fixing.
Yeah, my grievances are for the current edition, because I'm not an old-timer like some of you.
Jidmah wrote: You could also ram a vehicle and did more damage the more distance you covered. It also was a tankshock and you could destroy your own vehicle that way
The old Dark Eldar torpedo charge - ram an enemy vehicle from across the board, blowing up the DE transport in the processess. The passengers could then charge out of the crater as they were technically not disembarking.
SeanDrake wrote: 8th in general reeks of minimum effort meh it's good enough "game design" I mean not as bad as 1st ed AoS but it does feel like it was designed based on the assumption nobody would play it.
Yeah. So many 8th edition rules drive me crazy:
- New terrain rules (or lack thereof) in general, in particular the fact that area terrain doesn't block line of sight anymore.
- New line of sight and wound allocation rules that let out-of-sight models can be killed as though they're in the open when even only model is just partially visible to the shooter.
- New wound table that makes low toughness models harder to wound and high toughness models easier to wound compared to prior editions. E.g. S5 used to wound T3 on a 2+, but T7 on a 6+; now it wounds T3 on a 3+, and T7 on a 5+. Multi-shot mid-strength weapons became more anti-tank and worse at performing their actual job (killing infantry).
- Completely worthless blast weapon rules that heavily penalize armies with bad BS (which is the opposite of how it always used to be) and offer no disincentive to pack models around aura-generating characters or build deathball units. The old rules were too fiddly, but the new ones are just useless.
- Strategems encourage powergamers to prepare sick combos during the list-building phase rather than really playing tactically once the game has begun
Then there are some stinkers that have been with us for years:
- Detachments, which allow and encourage powergamers to craft soup armies that are un-fun to play against.
- Knights, for encouraging everyone to over-emphasize anti-tank weapons to counter them, which makes combined arms lists un-feasible because sub-Knight-sized vehicles are destroyed more or less immediately.
- Overwatch. Takes up time, never does anything significant, rarely ever does anything at all.
I think you might be using the Wound Table backwards if you're getting those results. A bog-standard S4 attack is gonna Wound T3 on a 3+ and T5 on a 5+. No idea how your low T models are fairing better than your high T ones, at least when it comes to Wounding.
It has no strategy, no depth and most of the time it doesn't even do anything. But before every combat you have to roll a pile of dice (or sit around while your opponent rolls a pile of dice) and see if anyone gets lucky.
It's nothing but a shallow, time-killing mechanic that adds absolutely nothing to a game already bloated with pointless rolling.
And the reason I've picked Overwatch over Invisibility or random Warlord Tables or any of the other garbage 6th/7th brought with them is that Overwatch is still with us. For as horrendous as Invisibility was, at least GW learned their lesson and removed the bloody thing. Meanwhile, Overwatch is not only still with us but has apparently been breeding with something and has given birth to a raft of time-killing, bastard children (such as that rascal Random Number of Shots).
Interesting argument. I was going to disagree but I think you're right. The cinematic idea of overwatch is cool, but the defending unit's CC attacks can represent their desperate shots at the charging enemy just fine. Overwatch is an okay way of preventing a unit in 12" from always attempting a charge for the hell of it, but actually I don't think that matters much, and the time saved fishing for 6's would be better for the game. The only part of overwatch worth keeping would be flamer weapons; they should still get to shoot as they do. Otherwise get rid of it, it's not a terrible idea in theory just a nuisance in practice
You know what absolutely no one misses about templates and blast markers? The arguments about scatter direction. The arguments about what is vs. is not under it. The arguments about infinite columns. The arguments about how they interact with levels and ruins.
Us vets will have a lot of fond memories of them, but removing blast markers and templates has been a great thing.
Excuse me but WTF:
The removal of Templates has lead to the whole game beeing now how you can stack behind cover or around 1 HQ with aura / Relic aura.
The removal of templates/blasts also removed the need to space everything exactly 2" apart because otherwise some 5 point flamer would kill over ten times its points in a single round of shooting. You also seem to have forgotten that, on a properly spaced castle - yes those existed even back then - a blast would hit no more than 6 models, a small blast no more than 3. The only exception to this were barrage weapons which were accurate enough to hit whatever they want, for example shooting four artillery shells at the guy holding the lascannon in a squad of 10, without hurting anyone else.
It also removed that any melee unit was massacred after their first charge because they had not other choice but clumping up.
It also removed that deep strikers and passengers dropping put of vehicles were dying in droves, because there was no way to move them apart.
It also removed the odd thing where ten flamers would hit 5 out 30 guys standing clumped up due to a choke-point and the entire unit exploded.
Templates and blasts had so many implications you needed to play around, and most of those had nothing to do with damage scaling with unit size. It was a defunct mechanism that required everyone to waste extra time on movement and measurement and it's good that it's gone.
If you feel auras are broken, fix auras. Don't introduce another broken thing.
Last, but not least, there are plenty effects that punish bunching up - all those stratagems, powers and abilities that deal mortal wounds to everything within a certain point/unit. If you hate castles, run Mortarion into one and watch everything whither to his aura. Fun times.
JohnU wrote: Being a xenos player in a store with a very high percentage of Marine players, God did I hate Sweeping Advance.
Why? If your unit was caught and beaten in combat, how combat effective were you expecting it to be afterwards? I guess a couple of firedragons, retreating by a landraider or something?
Removing morale effects like 'falling back, pinned, rallying' sped up the game dramatically- my guess is Sweeping Advance was supposed to do the same by destroying crippled units and removing them from the board.
Why?
Charge a unit of trukkboyz into tactical marines.
Tactical marines had higher initiative and kill 2 boyz.
Boyz kill one marine.
Boyz lose combat, 4+d6 will usually beat 2+d6, trukkboyz get wiped out.
Blastaar wrote: Removal of blasts/templates- very cinematic and fun, and I think better for gameplay (alleged arguments aside) making positioning matter
Objectively False. Small Markers would only ever hit 1 model if spaced out correctly, 3 models at most. All Blast Markers and Templates did was cause games to last 6 hours because you needed to space your models out and allowed Burna Boyz to get 75 hits out of a Battlewagon. Neither were "cinematic" or "fun". The process of scattering caused more arguments than anything else. Positioning didn't matter, spacing did and spacing just caused tedium.
Now, was the replacement of "roll dice to see how many dice you roll" good? No. Ideally they should have made Small Blast weapons "Blast 3" and Large Blast weapons "Blast 6", where you roll 2 dice per shot and are limited to a maximum of hits equal to the number of models in the unit.
Fun is subjective. You may have experienced 6 hour games, I never did, or arguments- never had a single one- we were actually capable of measuring in the proper direction, and using our eyes-and small blasts especially did some good work for me- maybe because we used lots of terrain. Nothing objective about either of our statements, just anecdotal experience and preference. But, as usual, BCB has such hatred of certain mechanics he gets triggered by their mere mention.
flandarz wrote: I think you might be using the Wound Table backwards if you're getting those results. A bog-standard S4 attack is gonna Wound T3 on a 3+ and T5 on a 5+. No idea how your low T models are fairing better than your high T ones, at least when it comes to Wounding.
I'm comparing to prior editions. It used to be that S5 wounded T3 on a 2+, S6 wounded T4 on a 2+, etc.
'Templates are bad because people take too much time lining up their models to be nearly 2" apart.'
I've always hated this line of reasoning. It goes against a fundamental aspect of combat anytime the last few centuries...
Don't. Bunch. Up.
I get the fact that 40K isn't the greatest simulation for combat, but shouldn't something so elementary be represented better? Introduce a time clock, maybe? Alter coherency rules? Don't be that guy? I don't know what the best solution is, but my group still uses templates and we don't have this problem.
Templates punish a force for becoming too concentrated. Forcing units to keep spread out due to fear of becoming too dense makes it much harder to move larger units effectively or without harm - as it SHOULD BE. A rule set should allow for such possibilities, giving either side chances to inflict more harm at certain tactical choke points. If the rules don't allow for such outcomes, then don't pretend what is being played is a war game.
The aspect of game of seeing a game where units are piled together without any tactical meaning has the same appeal of watching a 2-year old eat oatmeal.
Blastaar wrote: Removal of blasts/templates- very cinematic and fun, and I think better for gameplay (alleged arguments aside) making positioning matter
Objectively False. Small Markers would only ever hit 1 model if spaced out correctly, 3 models at most. All Blast Markers and Templates did was cause games to last 6 hours because you needed to space your models out and allowed Burna Boyz to get 75 hits out of a Battlewagon. Neither were "cinematic" or "fun". The process of scattering caused more arguments than anything else. Positioning didn't matter, spacing did and spacing just caused tedium.
Now, was the replacement of "roll dice to see how many dice you roll" good? No. Ideally they should have made Small Blast weapons "Blast 3" and Large Blast weapons "Blast 6", where you roll 2 dice per shot and are limited to a maximum of hits equal to the number of models in the unit.
Fun is subjective. You may have experienced 6 hour games, I never did, or arguments- never had a single one- we were actually capable of measuring in the proper direction, and using our eyes-and small blasts especially did some good work for me- maybe because we used lots of terrain. Nothing objective about either of our statements, just anecdotal experience and preference. But, as usual, BCB has such hatred of certain mechanics he gets triggered by their mere mention.
Not to mention that templates could be really useful in 40k blob/Aura edition that we have now which maybe why they were removed.
amanita wrote: 'Templates are bad because people take too much time lining up their models to be nearly 2" apart.'
I've always hated this line of reasoning. It goes against a fundamental aspect of combat anytime the last few centuries...
Don't. Bunch. Up.
In that case, shouldn't you also be arguing against unit coherency? Because that was the other part of the problem and the reason it took so long to set up units.
The problem wasn't just having to make sure your models were spaced out. It was having to ensure that your models were spaced out but still within 2" of each other.
It has no strategy, no depth and most of the time it doesn't even do anything. But before every combat you have to roll a pile of dice (or sit around while your opponent rolls a pile of dice) and see if anyone gets lucky.
It's nothing but a shallow, time-killing mechanic that adds absolutely nothing to a game already bloated with pointless rolling.
And the reason I've picked Overwatch over Invisibility or random Warlord Tables or any of the other garbage 6th/7th brought with them is that Overwatch is still with us. For as horrendous as Invisibility was, at least GW learned their lesson and removed the bloody thing. Meanwhile, Overwatch is not only still with us but has apparently been breeding with something and has given birth to a raft of time-killing, bastard children (such as that rascal Random Number of Shots).
Interesting argument. I was going to disagree but I think you're right. The cinematic idea of overwatch is cool, but the defending unit's CC attacks can represent their desperate shots at the charging enemy just fine. Overwatch is an okay way of preventing a unit in 12" from always attempting a charge for the hell of it, but actually I don't think that matters much, and the time saved fishing for 6's would be better for the game. The only part of overwatch worth keeping would be flamer weapons; they should still get to shoot as they do. Otherwise get rid of it, it's not a terrible idea in theory just a nuisance in practice
As someone that plays a LOT of melee, OW in 8th is a dangerous thing you need to watch out for actually. I guess it depends what/who you are fighting, b.c it can change the game.
My two cents and nothing new (also, most of this post is hyperbole)
1: True Line of Sight. But for me people have ignored the terrain issue. The models are supposed to be scaled at X, but terrain NEVER is. One example; A marine scaled Mulberry tree would cover a huge portion of a table (like 15%). They never do. To play true line of sight you need the entire range and terrain scaled correctly (or at least within 10%) which does not happen even between models (a rhino holds 10 of these marine figures? Really? Do they amputate parts?)
2: The plasma overheat thing. Please, only on a 1. It being dark doesn't make weapons break more often.
3: Random shots. Not good, slows game down, doesn't add anything for me.
4: Super heavies in normal game. So shoot me. I can't stand it. Immersion breaking. The USS new Jersey didn't sail into a small inlet to help 20 guys from a platoon search a village. (I know, ridiculous example...and gunfire from off board? Great!) but far beyond that, this game has balance issues, and one of them is there is ZERO way to ever balance units who can range from 4-10 points with units that are 250+ (or whatever number you like, I think about 200 is where it can be really bad either way) ((Plus, I hate seeing a knight list, because for me rarely is the game competitive beyond turn 1, one way or the other (although this might be 8th in a nutshell))
5: The whole invuln/mortal wounds mechanic. Lower the amount of AP in game, raise armor saves (with 1 always fails) and eliminate both of these please. I am not a fan of any rule my tactics cant counter (meaning, I position perfectly to get say my rough riders charging your hero, oh but nevermind, you made all your 2++ so the way I out thought you, maneuvered, etc didn't matter)
ChargerIIC wrote: Warning: This turned into a wall of text, but I'm keeping it as-is
True. Line. Of. Sight.
I don't know if WH40k has always had this rule and maybe it once made sense from a collection of rules standpoint, but I don't think there is a more core rule that seems destined to create more arguments and uncertain game states.
Let's be clear about this - its a rule that requires you to determine if an object 1 - 4 inches above the tabletop can see a significant portion of an opposing model by asking both players to make a judgement from the object's point of view.
It sounds simple right up until you look at this 1" high head and realize that from your view, 2-4 feet above the table, you can't really know - even with a decent understanding of trigonometry. You can get a general idea by lowering you head to that of the model, but even then you'd need a bodycam on the bloody things to know for certain.
This is all pretty frustrating, but the real sin of the rule is the fact that it's one of the few (last?) rules in wh40k that doesn't abstract. Movement is abstracted, range, scattering, AOEs, Dropping in from orbit, all abstracted. But not line of sight. Its this one last dinosaur that forces players to either have the game state bog down or just hold some immediate negoations to at least partially ignore the rule.
You've all done it - notified an opponent that your intent is to hide a model from LOS rather than figure out if its possible. You've likewise moved a sniper into position declaring the intent to put something into LOS even though you aren't certain if the LOS is there or not. And we've all felt the frustration of having to agree because you really don't want to dig out the laser/drop you head down and risk bogging down the game only to risk something you might be wrong in. Walking away from a game wondering if that miracle between the buildings shots may or may not have been possible according to the actual rules.
It also is one of the main drivers of grump against custom/modded models. There's a general agreement that base size should be the same and that WYSIWYG is a general guideline, but the difference in profile (and therefore Line of Sight possibilities) is what people seem to get bent over. It wasn't that long ago that we saw an American tournament threaten to throw out crocodile riding roughriders completely on the basis that the 3d profile (and thus the area in which it could see and be seen) was lower and thus changed how the model performed on the tabletop.
I'm convinced this rule is almost single-handily responsible for the generally laissez-faire attitude the community has towards the rules in general. If you can't even agree on line of sight, the problem of oddly worded rules and strange loopholes seem minor.
Laser pointers plus common sense civility and "My deamon prince is moving up to and crouching behind this 2 story wall, so his wingtips (though on the model pointing out) should be drawn in and not visible - OK?" ... "OK."
jeff white wrote: Laser pointers plus common sense civility and "My deamon prince is moving up to and crouching behind this 2 story wall, so his wingtips (though on the model pointing out) should be drawn in and not visible - OK?" ... "OK."
Nope, not okay. If I can see any part of him with any part of my model I can see him. When you start doing things according to roleplaying rules instead of wargaming rules you introduce uncertainty where none is needed. Get a DP on foot if you want him to hide, those wings are too cheap, being harder to hide is a small additional price. If you think your model should be able to physically hide but you don't want to drag the game out you can play by intention by asking your opponent if they can see it. Either your opponent will say he can't see it or he can help direct you as to put it in a position where it can't be seen.
jeff white wrote: Laser pointers plus common sense civility and "My deamon prince is moving up to and crouching behind this 2 story wall, so his wingtips (though on the model pointing out) should be drawn in and not visible - OK?" ... "OK."
Nope, not okay. If I can see any part of him with any part of my model I can see him. When you start doing things according to roleplaying rules instead of wargaming rules you introduce uncertainty where none is needed. Get a DP on foot if you want him to hide, those wings are too cheap, being harder to hide is a small additional price. If you think your model should be able to physically hide but you don't want to drag the game out you can play by intention by asking your opponent if they can see it. Either your opponent will say he can't see it or he can help direct you as to put it in a position where it can't be seen.
Accordingly to killteam rules, where you explicitly are allowed to ignore non fundamental parts.
It ain't as clear cut. Though I agree with you.
The worst offender is "anything can hurt anything" wound chart, coupled with "these models have T3 or S3 weapons, so they're at least 50% cheaper than models with T4 or S4 guns."
skchsan wrote: The worst offender is "anything can hurt anything" wound chart, coupled with "these models have T3 or S3 weapons, so they're at least 50% cheaper than models with T4 or S4 guns."
Honestly the wound Chart is just euugghhh.
Even for a csm player, which can with VotLW abuse the Chart like no one else.
Yeah like why fix what wasn't broken, right? I don't recall anyone ever complaining about the old wound chart. The fact that a lasgun couldn't hurt a Rhino was fine. Tanks--even light APCs--should not be vulnerable to small arms fire. Having no chance to damage the rhino saved time, too (of those 18 Lasgun shots that you're going to roll, do you really think any wounds will squeak through?).
Likewise when a Heavy Bolter is failing to wound light infantry 1/3 of the time... I dunno man, it's just wrong.
Pointed Stick wrote: Yeah like why fix what wasn't broken, right? I don't recall anyone ever complaining about the old wound chart. The fact that a lasgun couldn't hurt a Rhino was fine. Tanks--even light APCs--should not be vulnerable to small arms fire. Having no chance to damage the rhino saved time, too (of those 18 Lasgun shots that you're going to roll, do you really think any wounds will squeak through?).
Likewise when a Heavy Bolter is failing to wound light infantry 1/3 of the time... I dunno man, it's just wrong.
I'm fairly certain its because of people being upset at all Knight lists making most weapons useless against them since they where all AV13 and AV12. Of course GW being pants on head probably thought that the problem was that lasguns where useless against Knights instead of the more obvious problem of an all Knight army.
Pointed Stick wrote: Yeah like why fix what wasn't broken, right? I don't recall anyone ever complaining about the old wound chart. The fact that a lasgun couldn't hurt a Rhino was fine. Tanks--even light APCs--should not be vulnerable to small arms fire. Having no chance to damage the rhino saved time, too (of those 18 Lasgun shots that you're going to roll, do you really think any wounds will squeak through?).
Likewise when a Heavy Bolter is failing to wound light infantry 1/3 of the time... I dunno man, it's just wrong.
I'm fairly certain its because of people being upset at all Knight lists making most weapons useless against them since they where all AV13 and AV12. Of course GW being pants on head probably thought that the problem was that lasguns where useless against Knights instead of the more obvious problem of an all Knight army.
Agreed. Even before Knights they experimented with needing double 6 to penetrate to cause a glancing wound to address the "problem".
It's a problem that comes from the game allowing for such a wide range of different unit types. It's less than ideal to have large chunks of a players army rendered completely irrelevant due to the composition of the other player's army. Realistically, it forces a choice between limiting the range of armour available, or making sure that all (or at least most units have some way of hurting all other units.
I do agree though that the current method wasn't the best way to go about that. Lasguns shouldn't be able to hurt titans, even if the chance is kept fairly remote... because if you make it a remote enough chance, then you're just adding extra rolls for no real practical benefit. The better solution (if we work on the assumption that vehicle-heavy armies are just a thing now) would have been to leave the wound chart as it was and ensure that units armed with small arms also always have access to equipment that can be used to damage heavy armour.
skchsan wrote: The worst offender is "anything can hurt anything" wound chart, coupled with "these models have T3 or S3 weapons, so they're at least 50% cheaper than models with T4 or S4 guns."
If you don't want a game system where anything can hurt anything, remove the damn super-heavies.
amanita wrote: 'Templates are bad because people take too much time lining up their models to be nearly 2" apart.'
I've always hated this line of reasoning. It goes against a fundamental aspect of combat anytime the last few centuries...
Don't. Bunch. Up.
I get the fact that 40K isn't the greatest simulation for combat, but shouldn't something so elementary be represented better? Introduce a time clock, maybe? Alter coherency rules? Don't be that guy? I don't know what the best solution is, but my group still uses templates and we don't have this problem.
Templates punish a force for becoming too concentrated. Forcing units to keep spread out due to fear of becoming too dense makes it much harder to move larger units effectively or without harm - as it SHOULD BE. A rule set should allow for such possibilities, giving either side chances to inflict more harm at certain tactical choke points. If the rules don't allow for such outcomes, then don't pretend what is being played is a war game.
The aspect of game of seeing a game where units are piled together without any tactical meaning has the same appeal of watching a 2-year old eat oatmeal.
Thing is, either you kept those 120 boyz 2" apart, or you lost the game to a imperial artillery killing 12-14 of them per shot. It was mandatory to keep units 2" apart because all blast were priced as if they were, and therefore I spend a great deal of my game time spacing out models, while my opponents spent a great deal of their game time watching me space out models. Zero tactical decision involved, spacing out 2" was best at all times.
As long as horde units are part of the game, you need to make them playable. Adding both additional time on those units and enforcing chess clocks means just removing them, and thus entire armies, from the game.
The alternative is increasing the cost of all blasts to account for the maximum possible hits, so any large blasts is costed as if it were heavy 14 and any small blast as if it were heavy 7. LRBT would be 200 points, a squad with plasma cannon devs would be 289. Or, in other words, just remove all blasts units from the game. You can bring blasts, but you will lose the game, just like those horde units which have to be spaced out but are on a chess clock.
Oh, and in case you missed it - WH40k has stopped being a wargame a long time ago. In none of the four editions I played real tactics mattered. 5th was all about wound allocation, last turn objective grabbing and autocannons were the best weapon to kill anything except landraiders 6th was the edition where you couldn't do anything about the daemons and tyranids flying around you, and invincible psykers couldn't be scratched by and entire artillery battalion shooting at them for five turns. 7th was the edition where commanders hoped that their enemy didn't kill too many tactical squads, otherwise they would have to dump all their transport in space before the next battle. Also, a single guy could join a unit to give them awesome skills - which they would forget in an instant when he left to join the other squad right next to them. Also, a guy in great armor could protect up to forty guardsmen by running up and down their lines and catching every single bullet, laser and missile aimed at any of them with his armor.
But yeah, "tactical meaning" of spacing out all models 2"...
Other rules problems come and go, IGOUGO remains an idiotic idea that does more to damage the game than any other issue. Even if you fixed all of the other problems mentioned here IGOUGO would still make 40k a game.
Other rules problems come and go, IGOUGO remains an idiotic idea that does more to damage the game than any other issue. Even if you fixed all of the other problems mentioned here IGOUGO would still make 40k a game.
What is even more hilarious is that in the Apocalypse Field manual they even explicitly call out IGOUGO as being bad.
Did not read entire thread however honourable or dishonourable mentions.
Unlimited Daemon Summoning.
Snap Shots/Original Flyers (can only be hit on a 6.)
Original Destroyer Weapons (It kill you no saves of any kind allowed.)
Vortex Rules (Removes models AND terrian regardless of stats)
Wound Allocation (That allowed you to share wounds in a unit so long as they have different equipment.)
Invulnerable Saves (In a previous edition RAW, INV only applied to wounds, vehicles did not them.)
My TOP RATED rule that is the worst and something I want completely removed form the game. The Morale Phase.
-It does not fit in 40k universe and is a complete waste of time.
Automatically Appended Next Post: At True Line of Sight post.
In a previous edition they had it so that only the body counted.
However there was a funny rule in one edition where RAW models had to "SEE" using eye level to hit the enemy.
-There are lots of units that don't have eyes so, raw they can't see anything can thus can't hit anything.
However there was a funny rule in one edition where RAW models had to "SEE" using eye level to hit the enemy.
That wasn't one edition... it was every edition prior to the current one.
I sure the wording was different. One edition gave model's a height value. Size 1-3 or something...
Seen 3rd,4th,5th, start of 6th, start of 7th, 8th so far. Memory is a bit off.
However there was a funny rule in one edition where RAW models had to "SEE" using eye level to hit the enemy.
That wasn't one edition... it was every edition prior to the current one.
I sure the wording was different. One edition gave model's a height value. Size 1-3 or something...
Seen 3rd,4th,5th, start of 6th, start of 7th, 8th so far. Memory is a bit off.
It is. As I have already stated, every single edition of 40k used TLOS. The sole exception was the rules for area terrain in 3rd and 4th. 4th also added a height category, but this only applied to models in area terrain.
3rd ed. Rulebook page 36- "Sometimes it may be hard to tell if a LOS is blocked or , so players must stoop over the table for a "model's eye view". This is the best way to see if LOS exists...
Enemy models and all vehicles, friend or foe, do block a unit's LOSif they are in the way, just like buildings and other terrain. enemy models will block the LOS to other models up to twice their height."
2nd ed. rulebook page 26- "However in some cases it will be difficult to tell if a LOS is blocked or not, and players must stoop over the table for a model's eye view. This is always the best way to determine if LOS exists- some players even use small periscopes or mirrors to check the views from their models!..."
I'm pretty sure the height thing in 4th blocked LOS regardless of "True" Height. I remember forests being "infinitely tall" so even if a Wraithlord could see over the trees, they could not shoot a unit behind them.
greatbigtree wrote: I'm pretty sure the height thing in 4th blocked LOS regardless of "True" Height. I remember forests being "infinitely tall" so even if a Wraithlord could see over the trees, they could not shoot a unit behind them.
Yes, that was the point of it. You could model your area terrain however you wanted, and it still counted as the height it was assigned.
You still took LOS from the model's eyes, with the Height categories simply determining which area terrain and close combat scrums you could see over.
insaniak wrote: It's a problem that comes from the game allowing for such a wide range of different unit types.
Which makes us wonder the design intent behind Escalation and why it has become the norm for 40k and not off-shoot campaign.
Because including them in the standard game sells more models.
Ding Ding Ding, we have a winner.
Infact the whole ca move and pledges to improve balance is basically just there to maintain the knight Primarch arms race.
Not Online!!! wrote: Infact the whole ca move and pledges to improve balance is basically just there to maintain the knight Primarch arms race.
Could you explain in more detail? I'd think the intention was to allow more army diversity to stop discouraging people from getting vast collections and just limiting themselves to a nasty 1750 list and maybe a few softer units for casual play and instead open up options for people to get 3 of everything. You don't really need CA to create an arms race, that's exactly what's happening in the absence of CA isn't it? It's also what's been happening since 5th edition because of the absence of CA pts balancing.
jeff white wrote: Laser pointers plus common sense civility and "My deamon prince is moving up to and crouching behind this 2 story wall, so his wingtips (though on the model pointing out) should be drawn in and not visible - OK?" ... "OK."
Nope, not okay. If I can see any part of him with any part of my model I can see him. When you start doing things according to roleplaying rules instead of wargaming rules you introduce uncertainty where none is needed. Get a DP on foot if you want him to hide, those wings are too cheap, being harder to hide is a small additional price. If you think your model should be able to physically hide but you don't want to drag the game out you can play by intention by asking your opponent if they can see it. Either your opponent will say he can't see it or he can help direct you as to put it in a position where it can't be seen.
okey but this favours people who resculpt their models. GW loves to put stuff on stupid scenic bases. The new raven guard claw character for example, is 1/3 taller then a normal space marine, because GW planted a litteral wall on his base. As with birds, a demon with wing would have his folded when it lands, else there would be a big risk of them being damaged. People should really not be punished for GW deciding that their infantry should have a gigantic horn or a bell on top of their head making them twice as high.
Not Online!!! wrote: Infact the whole ca move and pledges to improve balance is basically just there to maintain the knight Primarch arms race.
Could you explain in more detail? I'd think the intention was to allow more army diversity to stop discouraging people from getting vast collections and just limiting themselves to a nasty 1750 list and maybe a few softer units for casual play and instead open up options for people to get 3 of everything. You don't really need CA to create an arms race, that's exactly what's happening in the absence of CA isn't it? It's also what's been happening since 5th edition because of the absence of CA pts balancing.
No the CA is there to state that "they do something about balance". Which when you put it into context with 7th that broke many a camels back is basically a PR trick.
IT's the same company, just now with an somewhat competetn PR team.
jeff white wrote: Laser pointers plus common sense civility and "My deamon prince is moving up to and crouching behind this 2 story wall, so his wingtips (though on the model pointing out) should be drawn in and not visible - OK?" ... "OK."
Nope, not okay. If I can see any part of him with any part of my model I can see him. When you start doing things according to roleplaying rules instead of wargaming rules you introduce uncertainty where none is needed. Get a DP on foot if you want him to hide, those wings are too cheap, being harder to hide is a small additional price. If you think your model should be able to physically hide but you don't want to drag the game out you can play by intention by asking your opponent if they can see it. Either your opponent will say he can't see it or he can help direct you as to put it in a position where it can't be seen.
okey but this favours people who resculpt their models. GW loves to put stuff on stupid scenic bases. The new raven guard claw character for example, is 1/3 taller then a normal space marine, because GW planted a litteral wall on his base. As with birds, a demon with wing would have his folded when it lands, else there would be a big risk of them being damaged. People should really not be punished for GW deciding that their infantry should have a gigantic horn or a bell on top of their head making them twice as high.
So because people can cheat we shouldn't have rules? Should I re-roll my 1s when BCB uses D8s against me? Modelling for advantage is the same as using cooked dice. If a model has an inconvenient model then that's just how it is. If you want to use a proxy or if you want to convert your model I expect the model to have roughly the same proportions. 40k is not a roleplaying game when you try to make it one it becomes much more complicated. How do you determine how tightly someone's wings can be folded? Maybe they are monomolecular wings and they can retract fully into your model's backpack so the wings should be ignored fully. How about that outstretched arm? Can it stretch and unstretch at will? Using the old LOS rules is perfectly fine as a house rule, but I think the current rules are crystal clear and make arguments almost impossible.
Not Online!!! wrote: The CA is there to state that "they do something about balance". Which when you put it into context with 7th that broke many a camels back is basically a PR trick. It's the same company, just now with an somewhat competent PR team.
So making Necrons into more than the Tesseract Vault faction was a PR trick? How about lowering the cost of Land Raiders or Terminators, but only enough that they are less bad rather than super OP. You aren't making anyone go out and buy Land Raiders, you are just allowing people to have more fun with the models they probably already own for the most part. All this time spent balancing units and you think it's PR rather than a business investment in a higher quality game? It's the game designers not the PR team doing this because GW management is no longer insane enough to think the quality of the game will ever get high without patches. A company is just the sum of its work and old management actively prevented balance to a high degree, it's not the same company. Like making Wraithknights 100 pts cheap, sure you sell a relatively large amount of those kits, but you also force people out of the game and prevent people getting invested in many factions when they find out they lost when they picked their faction, even in casual games. Maybe you are right, the "PR campaign" is certainly working on me. I'd considered recasters prior to GW's new direction and now I don't really. How about fixing the autokill GSC spell ASAP? Old GW let summoning and invisibility remain OP for years.
Infinity and Warmachine both define a model's physical footprint on the table as a cylinder of defined height above the base, ignoring any protruding bits. I know that isn't how GW has chosen to write their game (mostly because of the "what do you do with models without a base?" question) but it'd make LOS determination way easier and "modeling for advantage" a non-issue if they did do it that way.
When it came to rolling to penetrate enemy tanks, you had to knock one off the score for every full 24” of distance twixt shooter and target.
Seriously. That was a rule.
Sounds like a rule based off historical tank combat where armor penetration diminished with distance and a tank cannons / AT guns couldn't penetrate reliably against certain tanks unless within a certain range.
When it came to rolling to penetrate enemy tanks, you had to knock one off the score for every full 24” of distance twixt shooter and target.
Seriously. That was a rule.
Sounds like a rule based off historical tank combat where armor penetration diminished with distance and a tank cannons / AT guns couldn't penetrate reliably against certain tanks unless within a certain range.
That's how Bolt Action works (though it's only -1 when outside half, not 'for every full 24"').
All of the "Almost Pointless" mechanics - Overwatch, Morale, those stupid 2+ bodyguard rolls, etc. You can't ignore them because there's at 0.0X% chance they might decide the game, so their main function is to bloat the game with false complexity. Additionally when they DO matter, they only really ever function as an anticlimactic "Gotcha!". The kicker is that instead of reworking (or removing) these mechanics to make them less obnoxious and/or pointless, GW keep piling garbage modifiers onto them that act as noob traps (-LD armies like Night Lords) or buffing them into fun-killers (Shield Drones).
Stomp was a pretty bad rule, oh you rolled a six, I guess I'll just remove all these models. And also the grav rules from 7th ed, 6s will always cause an immobilized result on a tank and any further 6s take two hull points of it. So annoying.
Surprised no one's mentioned the special rule for Toholk the Blinded's melee weapon.
Aeonstave: S User(4) AP -1 D 2. Seems Ok? here's the kicker..."A unit that suffers an unsaved wound from this weapon may not Advance until the end of its next turn."
For those of us (guilty as charged) who are beating up on 8th edition's basic rules, let's not forget how truly awful a lot of the basic rules in prior editions were:
- Tank shock with nonsensical rules
- Grenades having their rules changed every edition and never making sense in any one of them
- Initiative (I charge you and you go first and wipe me out, WTF)
- Fixed per movement values per unit class which spawned a huge assortment of overcomplicated movement-altering special rules (some of which are still with us today, such as Advance, the modern version of Fleet)
- All models in a squad must fire at the same target ("Everyone provide covering fire with their Lasguns while harry shoots the missile launcher at that the Land Raider!")
- "Guess range" weapons (I got good enough to be a sniper with those)
- No pre-measuring; shots could just go poof and be totally wasted
- AP3 weapons having no effect whatsoever against 2+ saves
- Endless arguments over blast template scattering and who was fully or partially under the marker
- Pinning (100% un-fun)
- The entire set of vehicle rules, which made them fiddly to use and super vulnerable to anti-tank weaponry unless they had special durability rules (in particular they were made of tissue paper against high-strength melee troops in 5th edition IIRC and beyond. Nobs with powerklaws could immediately shred any tank without AV14 on rear armor)
Perhaps my personal bugbear was the 3rd edition Dark Angel special rule "Intractable".
Once you got within 24", and within range of at least 1 gun, you had to roll a D6 before activating the unit. If you rolled a 1, they refused to move or charge, and could only shoot.
They did get Stubborn, but it was fething bs that your assault marines might just decide to hang out and fire their bolt pistols for a turn.
Ezaviel wrote: Perhaps my personal bugbear was the 3rd edition Dark Angel special rule "Intractable".
Once you got within 24", and within range of at least 1 gun, you had to roll a D6 before activating the unit. If you rolled a 1, they refused to move or charge, and could only shoot.
They did get Stubborn, but it was fething bs that your assault marines might just decide to hang out and fire their bolt pistols for a turn.
Only Ravenwing were immune to the rule.
Ugh. At least when they forced World Eaters to move forward and charge they also told you "You're not allowed to put the Mark of Khorne on Havocs, it'd be a trap and they wouldn't work."
kryczek wrote: Overwatch for me is the worst. It breaks up the flow of the game for very little most of the time and makes the game too shooting focused.
Overwatch isn't really the issue for the shootyness of the game though.
That blame squarely rests on cheaper infantry, aswell as the focus on superheavies.
Also there's the fact that transports massively suck for most melee armies and on top of that firepower significantly increased.
A csm once was 15 pts for 1 shot from 13-24 " now he is 13 for 2.
Auras increased that aswell and then there is the fact that melee always got the disadvantage of getting fought back.
Whilest shooting generally has no direct reprecussion.
I actually liked this rule. I feel like it did a better job of representing how easy it should be to kill infantry with anti-tank weapons than we have today. Space Marine Librarian hit with a lascannon? He's toast. Today he's got a pretty good chance of being just fine thanks to the random damage characteristic.
Come to think of it, maybe random damage characteristics are what's annoying.
I actually liked this rule. I feel like it did a better job of representing how easy it should be to kill infantry with anti-tank weapons than we have today. Space Marine Librarian hit with a lascannon? He's toast. Today he's got a pretty good chance of being just fine thanks to the random damage characteristic.
Come to think of it, maybe random damage characteristics are what's annoying.
The issue was though it scaled badly.The strength required being 2x the targets toughness made it almost impossible to reach for the characters you'd actually want (or need) to pull it off against.
Not to mention Eternal warrior, (the rule that negated it) and toughness increasing wargear was handed out to high T characters far more readily than those with low T (and thereby were more likely to need it)
I can count on one hand the amount of times I didn't lose a T3 character to the first hit they took (because of instant death) It was immensely frustrating.
Quite broadly speaking, they were equivalent role type units.
Except, one could pod shot a Dread and kill it. Or at least remove its CCW or legs, rendering it largely neutered.
Monstrous Creatures? Downside was vulnerability to most small arms fire (barring the Wraithlord). Upside? I had to kill it kill it to stop it. Add in their saving throw, and weapons like Autocannon (which could mess up Dreads) were outright laughed at.
Quite broadly speaking, they were equivalent role type units.
Except, one could pod shot a Dread and kill it. Or at least remove its CCW or legs, rendering it largely neutered.
Monstrous Creatures? Downside was vulnerability to most small arms fire (barring the Wraithlord). Upside? I had to kill it kill it to stop it. Add in their saving throw, and weapons like Autocannon (which could mess up Dreads) were outright laughed at.
Broadly true for all those shooty 'monsters' that kept coming out, like riptides and such. Those were broken.
However as a tyranid player, many of the arguments calling for broad nerfs to all monsters always rang a bit hollow to me. Nids had approximately half the monstrous creature in the game, but only a couple of them ever saw use. Pretty much just the ones that could exploit 7th editions broken flyer rules.
The downsides as I saw it, is that all the monsters I had access to cost many more points than most vehicles, and were generally equipped with about half as much effective weaponry.
I admit to feeling a certain sense of schadenfreude when 8th edition rolled around and people started complaining that their vehicles cost twice as much. Just like I had been paying for my monsters previously. You got what you wished for
I've identified your problem. You charged 10 boyz (basic troops from horde army) into 10 marines(basic generalists in an elite army).
Jidmah wrote: Tactical marines had higher initiative and kill 2 boyz.
Boyz kill one marine.
Boyz struck at double init on the charge if they passed a power of the waagh test (2d6, if equal or lower than strength of unit- in this case fail on a 11/12). You were attacking with 40 attacks (2+ccw+charge) hitting with 20 and wounding with say, 6- of which half would be casualties due to the choppa rule. Marines struck simultaneously with 10 attacks, maybe an extra for the sarge, 50% hit rate, 50% wound rate, 2 casualties is about right.
Jidmah wrote: Boyz lose combat, 4+d6 will usually beat 2+d6, trukkboyz get wiped out.
"Crippled units" my green twerking ork but.
Unless I'm mathhammering wrong- your orks should have won 1st combat vs the marines more often than not- but that's hardly the problem. The problem was you charged a solid unit of marines with an equal number of boyz- you should have charged with 20 (2 trukk mobs). You were never going to be able to sweeping advance them, so assuming you killed 3 and they killed 2, now you've lost your charge bonuses and you are stuck in combat to get whittled down or counter charged.
Charge with 2 trukk mobs and the story changes- now you've caused about 6-7 casualties, enough to severely effect the marines ability to fight back in their combat phase. In the turn you charged you were initiative 4, so they are less likely to escape than you are to catch them. And if you hold them there, you have about 18 boyz safe from in the enemy shooting phase, who should finish off the rest of the marines in the enemy assault phase, freeing them up in your turn.
Marine invulnerability to sweeping advance was a rope to hang them with if you did it right- but slapping a solid wall of ceramite with 10 boyz and wondering why you lost is not an argument against sweeping advance.
Yeah, it didn't work that way in any of the editions I played in, which would be 5th, 6th and 7th. Marines hit first in all of those editions, period.
Averages don't happen as often as you like, and combat was won or lost by how good your PK rolls were. If the PK rolled badly, a fully intact unit got run down because the marines killed one more 6 point boy than you killed 18 point marines. If they stayed alive, the PK would eventually wipe out the marines.
Wasn't the most imbalanced thing in the world but GOD was it a feelsbad moment when someone lobbed a random krak missile at your super pumped up space marine chapter master and he just went "Kersplat."
Wasn't the most imbalanced thing in the world but GOD was it a feelsbad moment when someone lobbed a random krak missile at your super pumped up space marine chapter master and he just went "Kersplat."
Nah, I loved that. Space marine standing heroically on a rock with no helmet on on their own?
XV88: "Target acquired"
Also, didn't space marines often have access to eternal warrior relics? I can remember a storm shield which granted it. Which was a kick in the teeth because I think it was either the same cost or only slightly more expensive than a Tau shield generator at the time whilst offering a better save and protection from instant death.
Wasn't the most imbalanced thing in the world but GOD was it a feelsbad moment when someone lobbed a random krak missile at your super pumped up space marine chapter master and he just went "Kersplat."
There was also the issue of Eternal Warrior being handed out in a rather haphazard way, so some factions would have many characters who were all immune to ID, whilst others had none at all.
ID also led to kludgy stuff like bikers with T4(5), and caused huge problems to units with many wounds but low toughness, like Tyranid Warriors and Ogryns, who tended to pay dearly for their multiple wounds, yet lost them all on 2+ to tank ordnance (which also often took out entire squads with one blast marker.
the_scotsman wrote: Wasn't the most imbalanced thing in the world but GOD was it a feelsbad moment when someone lobbed a random krak missile at your super pumped up space marine chapter master and he just went "Kersplat."
Certainly helped cut down on the herohammer though.
the_scotsman wrote: Wasn't the most imbalanced thing in the world but GOD was it a feelsbad moment when someone lobbed a random krak missile at your super pumped up space marine chapter master and he just went "Kersplat."
Certainly helped cut down on the herohammer though.
I mean kinda. It really just meant they were deployed in super mega doomblobs and they were just as undefeatable.
Agamemnon2 wrote: ID also led to kludgy stuff like bikers with T4(5), and caused huge problems to units with many wounds but low toughness, like Tyranid Warriors and Ogryns, who tended to pay dearly for their multiple wounds, yet lost them all on 2+ to tank ordnance (which also often took out entire squads with one blast marker.
One of my least fun experiences was playing nids against GKs in 5th edition. Or DE agaisnt GKs in 7th edition.
Tyranids had very few invulnerable saves across their whole army - with MCs, Tyranid Warriors and other such relying on wounds and armour saves for protection. Running that into an army of Force Weapons really wasn't fun. Especially since the nids couldn't even rely on striking first, as 5th edition Halberds granted +2I.
Dark Eldar was similarly unfun if you wanted to use Coven units - which relied on FNP for protection (again, not much use vs. Force Weapons).
the_scotsman wrote: Wasn't the most imbalanced thing in the world but GOD was it a feelsbad moment when someone lobbed a random krak missile at your super pumped up space marine chapter master and he just went "Kersplat."
Certainly helped cut down on the herohammer though.
Not really. It just killed any variety in the heroes you'd see, since people inevitably opted for only those heroes with Eternal Warrior.
Agamemnon2 wrote: ID also led to kludgy stuff like bikers with T4(5), and caused huge problems to units with many wounds but low toughness, like Tyranid Warriors and Ogryns, who tended to pay dearly for their multiple wounds, yet lost them all on 2+ to tank ordnance (which also often took out entire squads with one blast marker.
One of my least fun experiences was playing nids against GKs in 5th edition. Or DE agaisnt GKs in 7th edition.
Tyranids had very few invulnerable saves across their whole army - with MCs, Tyranid Warriors and other such relying on wounds and armour saves for protection. Running that into an army of Force Weapons really wasn't fun. Especially since the nids couldn't even rely on striking first, as 5th edition Halberds granted +2I.
Dark Eldar was similarly unfun if you wanted to use Coven units - which relied on FNP for protection (again, not much use vs. Force Weapons).
the_scotsman wrote: Wasn't the most imbalanced thing in the world but GOD was it a feelsbad moment when someone lobbed a random krak missile at your super pumped up space marine chapter master and he just went "Kersplat."
Certainly helped cut down on the herohammer though.
Not really. It just killed any variety in the heroes you'd see, since people inevitably opted for only those heroes with Eternal Warrior.
Which was a problem with how the ID mechanics worked, not EW being broken.
ThatMG wrote: About Instant Death was that it effected things it shouldn't
Tyranid Warriors
Zoanthropes.
+others.
Really it's a bad rule.
It really wasn't. It was a great leveller that is somewhat missing from the modern game. Have a SM character rampaging through your ranks? One well placed krak missile later and he's toast. Now, there were units that got caught in the crossfire (both of the above you mentioned we immune to it when in Synapse range so are categorically bad examples), but on the whole it was good. Did you ever experience the alpha strike of the infiltrating, daemonic speed CSM 3.5 dex Lord which could charge you turn 1 and there was literally nothing you could do about it? You would yearn for instant death with that thing going through your lines, luckily it existed back then.
I'm going to say 4th edition unchargable skimmers.
I played Dark Angels back then. A decent chunk of my army was Tornado Landspeers; 1 heavy bolter, 1 assault cannon (back when 6 to hit = auto wound, no armor save allowed).
While I never ran Fish of Fury due to not being Tau, I sure as gak did the same with my speeders. There were multiple times when they'd body-block genestealer blobs / death company / ect from charging what they wanted to, so my entire army could just blow them away.
Special shout out random charge distances as implemented in 6th edition. It was fine in previous editions when the 'random' charge distance was a side effect of charging through obstacles, which rewarded both players for good positioning. But making even super close charges unreliable is just ugh, and one of the problems with melee due to unreliability.
And it replaced D6 (or D8, D10, D20 whatever) damage in the first place, ala 2nd edition. Where pretty much any model other than characters could only target either the closest infantry target or the closest vehicle/monster target.
ThatMG wrote: About Instant Death was that it effected things it shouldn't
Tyranid Warriors
Zoanthropes.
+others.
Really it's a bad rule.
It really wasn't. It was a great leveller that is somewhat missing from the modern game. Have a SM character rampaging through your ranks? One well placed krak missile later and he's toast. Now, there were units that got caught in the crossfire (both of the above you mentioned we immune to it when in Synapse range so are categorically bad examples), but on the whole it was good. Did you ever experience the alpha strike of the infiltrating, daemonic speed CSM 3.5 dex Lord which could charge you turn 1 and there was literally nothing you could do about it? You would yearn for instant death with that thing going through your lines, luckily it existed back then.
Yeah, until you had a T6 or greater character, which most of the problematic ones were, and then you didn't get any help from instant death and you had to kill them with a bajillion lascannon shots that did 1 damage...
ID like Strength D and the "Superheavy" designation was one of the stupidest mechanics of older editions because it created extreme power differentials between units that juuuuust barely got over that bar.
Kind of like what is IMO the worst mechanic of 8th: Character rule, where an extremely flimsy unit becoming a character gains a HUGE amount of durability and an extremely sturdy unit losing character designation by having exactly 10 wounds loses a HUGE amount of durability...to the point where 9 to 10 wounds makes you vastly less durable.
A T4 hq was much, MUCH, MUUUUUUUCH easier to kill than a T5 or T6 HQ for no real properly explored reason. This meant that certain fairly arbitrary character units, like say Nurgle Bike HQs, got to be 10x-20x more durable statistically than other units that pay similar points into different kinds of durability like a Storm Shield Terminator Captain.
The superheavy/strength D designation was similar. I think it was Wraithknights and Gorkanauts which were the best examples of this. A gorkanaut was something like 260-270 points, and WKs were I believe 295-ish at their hayday, and the WK was the smallest thing in the game to have Super-Heavy status and the Strength D melee weapon, while gorkas just missed out on that, being regular vehicles with a S10, good AP weapon.
It took something like 3 Gorkanauts to down a sword WK in melee, and the WK would mulch a gorkanaut per turn extremely reliably. Because if you got juuuuuust over this line, you earned a bunch of super-powerful special rules including 4+D3 chances to insta-gib any non superheavy opponent by rolling a 6.
CHARACTER keyword gamesmanship is the same way. I would much prefer a system like this (I know, clunky and not perfect but you get the idea):
"Look Out, Sir!: When your opponent wishes to target one of your CHARACTER keyword units while that CHARACTER unit is not the closest model, you may attempt to intercept that attack with a friendly model within 6". Roll 2D6. If you roll above the Wounds stat of your character, the selected friendly unit is the target of the attack instead."
Automatically Appended Next Post:
flandarz wrote: I figured it was replaced by that ability that deals MWs (on a 2+
3+, etc) if you didn't slay a model with your weapon. Or just MWs in general.
Well that was kind of the answer to super reliable invuln saves. but the extreme durability of T6+ characters and MCs was resolved by bringing back a Damage stat for weapons.
And it replaced D6 (or D8, D10, D20 whatever) damage in the first place, ala 2nd edition. Where pretty much any model other than characters could only target either the closest infantry target or the closest vehicle/monster target.
Although there was a workaround for that, if you got the right mission card... You were allowed to ignore other targets in favour of a mission objective. Played a game with a mate of mine back when the original Abaddon model was first released. It was the first time he had put Abaddon on the table... I had The Assassin mission card (kill the enemy commander). Turn one, Lascannon to Abaddon's head, failed saves, rolled stupid high damage. Very expensive Cult Terminator bodyguard are left standing around the body of their (now former) boss saying 'Uh... what just happened?'
We wound up having a do-over after that game, to give Abby a chance to actually do something.
For the most part, though, the targeting rules did mean that characters could be somewhat protected from one-shotting them. Although everyone tended to run their characters with Displacer Fields or Power Fields just in case. And from 3rd onwards, Instant Death meant that invulnerable saves continued to be seen as a requirement for Independent Characters. From a practical point of view, it makes sense that characters (and vehicles) can be taken out by a single lucky shot... but from a gameplay point of view, it was always a little disappointing to lose your big bad before they had a chance to do anything. The rate of casualty removal in general is one of the things I became increasingly unhappy with over the years...
ThatMG wrote: About Instant Death was that it effected things it shouldn't
Tyranid Warriors
Zoanthropes.
+others.
Really it's a bad rule.
...Now, there were units that got caught in the crossfire (both of the above you mentioned we immune to it when in Synapse range so are categorically bad examples)...
That depends heavily on what edition you're talking about. I think the last time synapse provided protection from Instant Death was in the 4th edition codex.
Warriors were pretty much never taken throughout 5th, 6th, and 7th, precisely because of their vulnerability to instant death. Making them excellent examples.
ThatMG wrote: About Instant Death was that it effected things it shouldn't
Tyranid Warriors
Zoanthropes.
+others.
Really it's a bad rule.
It really wasn't. It was a great leveller that is somewhat missing from the modern game. Have a SM character rampaging through your ranks? One well placed krak missile later and he's toast.
Between krak missiles/melta, grenades, smite, and close combat weapons with flat 3 damage, characters tend to die pretty fast in enemy ranks. Except you now need to dedicate to killing it instead of relying on a single lucky hit, a much better solution in my book.
For me: Falling back. Easily the most broken mechanic I've ever seen in 40k. And most nonsensical - just waltz away from close combat at will, unchallenged, and often without penalty.
Perhaps that's biased as I'm an ork player, but as long as falling back remains unchanged, melee focused armies are more or less going to be permanently shelved in competitive scenes.
ThatMG wrote: About Instant Death was that it effected things it shouldn't
Tyranid Warriors
Zoanthropes.
+others.
Really it's a bad rule.
It really wasn't. It was a great leveller that is somewhat missing from the modern game.
I have to disagree with this.
If anything it meant the strong characters were stronger and the weak characters were weaker (especially since many characters that were already difficult to kill also had Eternal Warrior to boot).
There was exactly one army Fear was useful against, and that was Orks. Mob Rule Applyed to Morale and Pinning tests.... but not fear tests. So while everyone else was immune, had high leadership, or just didn't care about their WS being dropped, Orks got hosed over by Fear.
There was exactly one army Fear was useful against, and that was Orks. Mob Rule Applyed to Morale and Pinning tests.... but not fear tests. So while everyone else was immune, had high leadership, or just didn't care about their WS being dropped, Orks got hosed over by Fear.
To be fair 7th Mob Rule was a horrible rule and served to punish Ork units for having low morale and low armor. It especially crippled the Ork specialist units that had 6+ armor, low numbers, low morale, and higher PPM. That whole Ork dex was made by somebody who really didn't want Orks to be anything other than an NPC punching bag for the heroes to beat up on.
Fear was ok against Guard, Eldar, and CSMs of all things. What was truly useless was Soulfire as it not only caused next to no impact on the game, it required actual book keeping and dice rolls to resolve for little to no effect. At least rules like Amphibious Chimeras and A Grots Life had no real gameplay impact but also didn't demand any attention.
Fear did nothing to those items as all of them besides CSM died too easily for Fear to even come in, and CSM was always run as MSU so they died terribly easily too.
It's worth noting that FnP couldn't be taken if you were subject to instant death (of course you can't feel the wound, it's not attached to you any more!), so D6 damage isn't as good as instant death.
Also D6 damage vs a 3-4 wound model is not as effective as the guarantee of instant-death.
Obviously, as all-or-nothing deaths were not good for the game, neither for vehicles, nor for characters. When your D6 damage fails to kill the character, you can still finish it off with bolters or a grenade.
I also assure you that a Thundercoil harpoon is very much instant death to any character it hits.
The just implemented a scale between "can one-shot a comissar" and "can one-shot the swarm lord".
It's worth noting that FnP couldn't be taken if you were subject to instant death (of course you can't feel the wound, it's not attached to you any more!), so D6 damage isn't as good as instant death.
Also D6 damage vs a 3-4 wound model is not as effective as the guarantee of instant-death.
It isn't as effective but it is 100% more fair as it give value to having extra wounds. With the old double toughness instant death rules T4 with 10 wounds was not really a great value compared to T5 with 3 wounds. It would take 9 S4 hits (not including any save) to remove the 3 T5 wounds, and 20 S4 hits to do the 10 wounds. But The T5 guy could eat 3.6 S8 hits, where the T 4 model only takes 1.2. In a world with D6 wounds for a Krak missile the T5 model would likely take 1-2 hits to kill, but the T 4 model with 10 wounds would likely take 4 hits. So you are getting value for the wounds you are paying for.
The D6 (etc) rules allow for durability to represented in a variety of ways. Instead of really requiring T5+ or Eternal warrior. ( I'm honestly not a huge fan of random damage I would prefer larger numbers of fixed damage values topping out at around 4 damage but that is another discussion, and largely the same reason instant death was not a great mechanic D6 damage has the same issue that it devalues high wounds to an extent just not as badly)
And it replaced D6 (or D8, D10, D20 whatever) damage in the first place, ala 2nd edition. Where pretty much any model other than characters could only target either the closest infantry target or the closest vehicle/monster target.
Although there was a workaround for that, if you got the right mission card... You were allowed to ignore other targets in favour of a mission objective. Played a game with a mate of mine back when the original Abaddon model was first released. It was the first time he had put Abaddon on the table... I had The Assassin mission card (kill the enemy commander). Turn one, Lascannon to Abaddon's head, failed saves, rolled stupid high damage. Very expensive Cult Terminator bodyguard are left standing around the body of their (now former) boss saying 'Uh... what just happened?'
We wound up having a do-over after that game, to give Abby a chance to actually do something.
For the most part, though, the targeting rules did mean that characters could be somewhat protected from one-shotting them. Although everyone tended to run their characters with Displacer Fields or Power Fields just in case. And from 3rd onwards, Instant Death meant that invulnerable saves continued to be seen as a requirement for Independent Characters. From a practical point of view, it makes sense that characters (and vehicles) can be taken out by a single lucky shot... but from a gameplay point of view, it was always a little disappointing to lose your big bad before they had a chance to do anything. The rate of casualty removal in general is one of the things I became increasingly unhappy with over the years...
I mean, this is the big feels-bad with 2nd edition in general. Yeah, it was cool that every vehicle had its own super indepth damage table, but for every game where crazy zany stuff happened like guns blowing off, the vehicle moving out of control, etc, there was a game where the vehicle just bit the dust turn 1 to a random shot.
Lascannon penned, rolled a 6 on the table, your land raider explodes killing everyone instantly and taking out a chunk of your troops too, just like that.
ThatMG wrote: About Instant Death was that it effected things it shouldn't
Tyranid Warriors
Zoanthropes.
+others.
Really it's a bad rule.
It really wasn't. It was a great leveller that is somewhat missing from the modern game. Have a SM character rampaging through your ranks? One well placed krak missile later and he's toast. Now, there were units that got caught in the crossfire (both of the above you mentioned we immune to it when in Synapse range so are categorically bad examples), but on the whole it was good. Did you ever experience the alpha strike of the infiltrating, daemonic speed CSM 3.5 dex Lord which could charge you turn 1 and there was literally nothing you could do about it? You would yearn for instant death with that thing going through your lines, luckily it existed back then.
Completely disagree with you, 1 battle cannon shot would literally kill full units of Tyranid Warriors that costed as much as the tank did, how is that good for the game? You know what happened? NO ONE PLAYED WITH WARRIORS, as a nid player in 5th, everyone, even no nid players would tell all other new nid players "See that box of warriors, Dont buy them"
ThatMG wrote: About Instant Death was that it effected things it shouldn't
Tyranid Warriors
Zoanthropes.
+others.
Really it's a bad rule.
It really wasn't. It was a great leveller that is somewhat missing from the modern game. Have a SM character rampaging through your ranks? One well placed krak missile later and he's toast. Now, there were units that got caught in the crossfire (both of the above you mentioned we immune to it when in Synapse range so are categorically bad examples), but on the whole it was good. Did you ever experience the alpha strike of the infiltrating, daemonic speed CSM 3.5 dex Lord which could charge you turn 1 and there was literally nothing you could do about it? You would yearn for instant death with that thing going through your lines, luckily it existed back then.
Completely disagree with you, 1 battle cannon shot would literally kill full units of Tyranid Warriors that costed as much as the tank did, how is that good for the game? You know what happened? NO ONE PLAYED WITH WARRIORS, as a nid player in 5th, everyone, even no nid players would tell all other new nid players "See that box of warriors, Dont buy them"
Which is a shame because Tyranid warriors are actually a great kit.
ThatMG wrote: About Instant Death was that it effected things it shouldn't
Tyranid Warriors
Zoanthropes.
+others.
Really it's a bad rule.
It really wasn't. It was a great leveller that is somewhat missing from the modern game. Have a SM character rampaging through your ranks? One well placed krak missile later and he's toast. Now, there were units that got caught in the crossfire (both of the above you mentioned we immune to it when in Synapse range so are categorically bad examples), but on the whole it was good. Did you ever experience the alpha strike of the infiltrating, daemonic speed CSM 3.5 dex Lord which could charge you turn 1 and there was literally nothing you could do about it? You would yearn for instant death with that thing going through your lines, luckily it existed back then.
Completely disagree with you, 1 battle cannon shot would literally kill full units of Tyranid Warriors that costed as much as the tank did, how is that good for the game? You know what happened? NO ONE PLAYED WITH WARRIORS, as a nid player in 5th, everyone, even no nid players would tell all other new nid players "See that box of warriors, Dont buy them"
To be fair, even without the ID issue, Warriors weren't viable. The lack of a 3+sv meant lots of multishot anti infantry heavy weapons were spectacularly effective against them (a heavy bolter killed a W3 4+sv 20-30something pt Warrior at the same rate it killed a 14pt W1 Space Marine), and their alternative Synpase options were usually killier and more resilient in general, and often faster to boot (e.g. winged huve tyrant).
Which is a shame as Warriors are among my favorite Tyranid models.
ThatMG wrote: About Instant Death was that it effected things it shouldn't
Tyranid Warriors Zoanthropes. +others.
Really it's a bad rule.
It really wasn't. It was a great leveller that is somewhat missing from the modern game. Have a SM character rampaging through your ranks? One well placed krak missile later and he's toast. Now, there were units that got caught in the crossfire (both of the above you mentioned we immune to it when in Synapse range so are categorically bad examples), but on the whole it was good. Did you ever experience the alpha strike of the infiltrating, daemonic speed CSM 3.5 dex Lord which could charge you turn 1 and there was literally nothing you could do about it? You would yearn for instant death with that thing going through your lines, luckily it existed back then.
Completely disagree with you, 1 battle cannon shot would literally kill full units of Tyranid Warriors that costed as much as the tank did, how is that good for the game? You know what happened? NO ONE PLAYED WITH WARRIORS, as a nid player in 5th, everyone, even no nid players would tell all other new nid players "See that box of warriors, Dont buy them"
To be fair, even without the ID issue, Warriors weren't viable. The lack of a 3+sv meant lots of multishot anti infantry heavy weapons were spectacularly effective against them (a heavy bolter killed a W3 4+sv 20-30something pt Warrior at the same rate it killed a 14pt W1 Space Marine), and their alternative Synpase options were usually killier and more resilient in general, and often faster to boot (e.g. winged huve tyrant).
Which is a shame as Warriors are among my favorite Tyranid models.
I played Warriors a few times in Combat Patrol, without the ID (unless it was against SW and Long fangs with 4 Lascannons) they did great, they are bullet sponges sure, but with 3 wounds, it still took a bit to hurt them even with a 4+ save, remember if they did kill the model you could do wound shenanigans, and if you kept gants in front it helped too.
Primes were better than Tyrants in 5th, they could be in any unit and with the way LW/BS worked they where just as killy as a Tyrant, but now they are a cheap Synapse in unit that can hid, put them with Zoans, Hve guard, even Carnifex's, it was very common to do so. PS: Also everyone took a Doom+Pod no matter what lol, that was 1 of 3 elite slots.
skchsan wrote: Units previously furnished with AV values should have had some sort of AP modifier stat instead of inflating Wound value the way they did.
We could call it save mod mod!
And then, when weapons like melta guns feel too weak, we can have some kind of ability on them to ignore SMM - maybe some kind of "Save mod mod mod".
The possibilities of what can be done with a single d6 roll are LITERALLY LIMITLESS!
Vaktathi wrote: ...a heavy bolter killed a W3 4+sv 20-30something pt Warrior at the same rate it killed a 14pt W1 Space Marine...
I wish they had been that cheap. They started at 30 points, but by the time you had given them useful gear, they were often over 40 points. If you went all out silly and gave them all the upgrades, you could get them to 60+ (they were one of those units that had a lot of useless wargear you could waste points on).
Personally I kinda dislike how 8th edition handled them. They were one of the few multi-wound models that did not actually gain any wounds going into 8th edition. Instead their point cost was effectively slashed in half. I kinda wish they had kept the point cost, but improved their statline to make them worth it. The models are large enough to justify it. Oh well, at least they're somewhat usable these days.
I mean, this is the big feels-bad with 2nd edition in general. Yeah, it was cool that every vehicle had its own super indepth damage table, but for every game where crazy zany stuff happened like guns blowing off, the vehicle moving out of control, etc, there was a game where the vehicle just bit the dust turn 1 to a random shot.
Lascannon penned, rolled a 6 on the table, your land raider explodes killing everyone instantly and taking out a chunk of your troops too, just like that.
That was by no means exclusive to 2nd edition, though. I bought a Vindicator back when the metal/plastic hybrid kit was first released in 3rd edition, and I didn't get to shoot with it until 5th edition...
I loved the "golden beebee" feel. Always brought a handful of Lascannons (or similar) - on the average shot, it won't 1-round a LR. But a couple in the backfield on scoring units means my opponent needs to consider the possibility...
Felt more engaging than "Fire all a dozen Lascannon (equivelents) into a Leman Russ - I might bracket it this turn!".
I'll go on record as HATING the 3rd and 4th ed damage effects tables. Maybe my first Lascannon shot will make that Russ explode, maybe I'll fire 12 of them at it and do nothing beyond inconveniencing the crew.
That was the big appeal of Warmachine when it first came out, damage stuck around so if you couldn't kill something this turn you at least reduced it's effectiveness and made it easier to kill next turn, and the fact that 8th ed copied it was one of the reasons I gave 40k another chance.
Bharring wrote: I loved the "golden beebee" feel. Always brought a handful of Lascannons (or similar) - on the average shot, it won't 1-round a LR. But a couple in the backfield on scoring units means my opponent needs to consider the possibility...
Felt more engaging than "Fire all a dozen Lascannon (equivelents) into a Leman Russ - I might bracket it this turn!".
Are you...are you complaining that 8th edition is NOT DEADLY ENOUGH?
On average a dozen lascannons deal 16 wounds to a leman russ.
Belatedly - and I'm not going back through the thread to see if it has already been mentioned - but the worst current rule in 40k isn't even a written rule. Instead, it's a GW policy that is poisoning the game.
I am, of course, referring to "No model, no rules"
Pull your collective heads out of your backsides, GW, and realise that people/companies making third party parts are a, doing so because you have left a gap in the market you're not willing to fulfil in a reasonable manner; and b, conversion parts (as opposed to proxy models) still require people to buy your damned kits.
If I could take over the Towers of Lenton tomorrow, guess what the first edifice I'd start to tear down would be...
Bharring wrote: I loved the "golden beebee" feel. Always brought a handful of Lascannons (or similar) - on the average shot, it won't 1-round a LR. But a couple in the backfield on scoring units means my opponent needs to consider the possibility...
Felt more engaging than "Fire all a dozen Lascannon (equivelents) into a Leman Russ - I might bracket it this turn!".
Are you...are you complaining that 8th edition is NOT DEADLY ENOUGH?
On average a dozen lascannons deal 16 wounds to a leman russ.
The "golden BB" feel isn't about overall killiness - it's about low-probability high-impact results being possible.
A single Lascannon hit in 7th had a 1/6 chance to pen, then 1/6 chance to explode a LandRaider That's a 1/36 per hit -or a 1/54 per shot for most platforms - chance to wipe out a LandRaider. Don't bank on it, but it can change games.
A single Lascannon hit in 8th has a 0% chance to kill a Land Raider.
In 7th, didn't it average ~10 LC hits to kill a Land Raider? In 8th, doesn't it average ~8 (before CPs/rerolls/etc)? I haven't run the numbers, so I could be off there.
So a single LasCannon was scarier to a Land Raider in 7th, but LasCannons in bulk are scarier to a LandRaider in 8th. That disparity is what I'm referring to as the "Golden BB".
(IIRC, the term comes from a single small arms or low-tech AA shot being capable of downing an advanced warplane, but having a very low chance of it happening.)
ThatMG wrote: About Instant Death was that it effected things it shouldn't
Tyranid Warriors
Zoanthropes.
+others.
Really it's a bad rule.
It really wasn't. It was a great leveller that is somewhat missing from the modern game. Have a SM character rampaging through your ranks? One well placed krak missile later and he's toast. Now, there were units that got caught in the crossfire (both of the above you mentioned we immune to it when in Synapse range so are categorically bad examples), but on the whole it was good. Did you ever experience the alpha strike of the infiltrating, daemonic speed CSM 3.5 dex Lord which could charge you turn 1 and there was literally nothing you could do about it? You would yearn for instant death with that thing going through your lines, luckily it existed back then.
Completely disagree with you, 1 battle cannon shot would literally kill full units of Tyranid Warriors that costed as much as the tank did, how is that good for the game? You know what happened? NO ONE PLAYED WITH WARRIORS, as a nid player in 5th, everyone, even no nid players would tell all other new nid players "See that box of warriors, Dont buy them"
Having played Thallax (T5/3W/4+/6++) extensively in 30k I wonder if the issue here is more that Tyranid Warriors were badly mis-statted than ID being conceptually flawed?
ThatMG wrote: About Instant Death was that it effected things it shouldn't
Tyranid Warriors
Zoanthropes.
+others.
Really it's a bad rule.
It really wasn't. It was a great leveller that is somewhat missing from the modern game. Have a SM character rampaging through your ranks? One well placed krak missile later and he's toast. Now, there were units that got caught in the crossfire (both of the above you mentioned we immune to it when in Synapse range so are categorically bad examples), but on the whole it was good. Did you ever experience the alpha strike of the infiltrating, daemonic speed CSM 3.5 dex Lord which could charge you turn 1 and there was literally nothing you could do about it? You would yearn for instant death with that thing going through your lines, luckily it existed back then.
Completely disagree with you, 1 battle cannon shot would literally kill full units of Tyranid Warriors that costed as much as the tank did, how is that good for the game? You know what happened? NO ONE PLAYED WITH WARRIORS, as a nid player in 5th, everyone, even no nid players would tell all other new nid players "See that box of warriors, Dont buy them"
Having played Thallax (T5/3W/4+/6++) extensively in 30k I wonder if the issue here is more that Tyranid Warriors were badly mis-statted than ID being conceptually flawed?
They were. That extra pip of toughness would have made them only susceptible to a handful of weapons compared to the all to easy to find S8 and S9. Strength 10 back in the day was incredibly rare.
ThatMG wrote: About Instant Death was that it effected things it shouldn't
Tyranid Warriors Zoanthropes. +others.
Really it's a bad rule.
It really wasn't. It was a great leveller that is somewhat missing from the modern game. Have a SM character rampaging through your ranks? One well placed krak missile later and he's toast. Now, there were units that got caught in the crossfire (both of the above you mentioned we immune to it when in Synapse range so are categorically bad examples), but on the whole it was good. Did you ever experience the alpha strike of the infiltrating, daemonic speed CSM 3.5 dex Lord which could charge you turn 1 and there was literally nothing you could do about it? You would yearn for instant death with that thing going through your lines, luckily it existed back then.
Completely disagree with you, 1 battle cannon shot would literally kill full units of Tyranid Warriors that costed as much as the tank did, how is that good for the game? You know what happened? NO ONE PLAYED WITH WARRIORS, as a nid player in 5th, everyone, even no nid players would tell all other new nid players "See that box of warriors, Dont buy them"
Having played Thallax (T5/3W/4+/6++) extensively in 30k I wonder if the issue here is more that Tyranid Warriors were badly mis-statted than ID being conceptually flawed?
IN older editions they were 2 wounds T5, if they kept that they wouldnt be that strong (still able to bolter them down) but also wouldn't ID them and you would have seen them played during 5th/6th. Every nid player i knew and even most players i knew all agreed they needed to be T5 2 wounds, and kept the upgrade option for 3+ save, remember they were 30pts base back then, they with some upgrades got over 100pts for just 3 of them, an extra 15pts for a unit of 3 to get 3+ wouldnt have been a problem for 5th b.c they were costly. The players that did take them took them with Rending claws and Scything Talons to keep them super cheap.
Dysartes wrote: Belatedly - and I'm not going back through the thread to see if it has already been mentioned - but the worst current rule in 40k isn't even a written rule. Instead, it's a GW policy that is poisoning the game.
I am, of course, referring to "No model, no rules"
Pull your collective heads out of your backsides, GW, and realise that people/companies making third party parts are a, doing so because you have left a gap in the market you're not willing to fulfil in a reasonable manner; and b, conversion parts (as opposed to proxy models) still require people to buy your damned kits.
If I could take over the Towers of Lenton tomorrow, guess what the first edifice I'd start to tear down would be...
This is probably the most pressing issue.
And is especially annoying due to how certain factions are treated with updates to their lines.
Dysartes wrote: Belatedly - and I'm not going back through the thread to see if it has already been mentioned - but the worst current rule in 40k isn't even a written rule. Instead, it's a GW policy that is poisoning the game.
I am, of course, referring to "No model, no rules"
Pull your collective heads out of your backsides, GW, and realise that people/companies making third party parts are a, doing so because you have left a gap in the market you're not willing to fulfil in a reasonable manner; and b, conversion parts (as opposed to proxy models) still require people to buy your damned kits.
If I could take over the Towers of Lenton tomorrow, guess what the first edifice I'd start to tear down would be...
This is probably the most pressing issue.
And is especially annoying due to how certain factions are treated with updates to their lines.
That's not GW's fault, it's Chapterhouse's for ruining a good thing by not playing by the rules.
IN older editions they were 2 wounds T5, if they kept that they wouldnt be that strong (still able to bolter them down) but also wouldn't ID them and you would have seen them played during 5th/6th. Every nid player i knew and even most players i knew all agreed they needed to be T5 2 wounds, and kept the upgrade option for 3+ save, remember they were 30pts base back then, they with some upgrades got over 100pts for just 3 of them, an extra 15pts for a unit of 3 to get 3+ wouldnt have been a problem for 5th b.c they were costly. The players that did take them took them with Rending claws and Scything Talons to keep them super cheap.
The last time they were T5 was all the way back in 2nd edition. In 3rd and 4th they were T4 2W.
However back in 4th (I didn't play enough 3rd to remember), Synapse provided immunity from instant death caused by an attacks strength doubling a models toughness. Although not immunity from other forms of ID, like force weapons. That's what made warriors usable in 4th at least.
Dysartes wrote: Belatedly - and I'm not going back through the thread to see if it has already been mentioned - but the worst current rule in 40k isn't even a written rule. Instead, it's a GW policy that is poisoning the game.
I am, of course, referring to "No model, no rules"
Pull your collective heads out of your backsides, GW, and realise that people/companies making third party parts are a, doing so because you have left a gap in the market you're not willing to fulfil in a reasonable manner; and b, conversion parts (as opposed to proxy models) still require people to buy your damned kits.
If I could take over the Towers of Lenton tomorrow, guess what the first edifice I'd start to tear down would be...
This is probably the most pressing issue.
And is especially annoying due to how certain factions are treated with updates to their lines.
That's not GW's fault, it's Chapterhouse's for ruining a good thing by not playing by the rules.
Exemple havocs.
Come with two of each hw or 1 chaincannon.
The squad needs 4 heavy weapons.
They implement a new weapon that is a vast improvement for all csm units that can use it.
There is 1 in the box.
They dont sell additional weapons at a decent price ymmv and instead expect me to buy enough havoc kits to fully equip my squads.
It's artificial scarcity 101, however where scarcity is a market oppurtunity appears.
Dysartes wrote: Belatedly - and I'm not going back through the thread to see if it has already been mentioned - but the worst current rule in 40k isn't even a written rule. Instead, it's a GW policy that is poisoning the game.
I am, of course, referring to "No model, no rules"
Pull your collective heads out of your backsides, GW, and realise that people/companies making third party parts are a, doing so because you have left a gap in the market you're not willing to fulfil in a reasonable manner; and b, conversion parts (as opposed to proxy models) still require people to buy your damned kits.
If I could take over the Towers of Lenton tomorrow, guess what the first edifice I'd start to tear down would be...
It's especially galling when that applies to things that are easy to kit-bash. A Land Speeder has index options for dual Heavy Famers, dual Heavy Bolters, and dual Multimeltas. None of those can be built out of the box, but if you've built more than 1000 points of mini-marines you should easily have the parts to build any of them without much trouble. And they are far from the only example.
Jumping back on Sweeping Advance -- it fried things like Tyranid MCs back in 7th too. I had a Haruspex fail to kill any of a unit of 5 Sisters of Silence in combat. The Sisters hit back (maybe also doing nothing, maybe causing a wound, don't remember), and then the Haruspex was Swept off the table.
God, just thinking about Tyranids in 7th makes my blood boil. The Haruspex is almost as bad in 8th, but at least there was some miniscule improvement...
Gene St. Ealer wrote: Jumping back on Sweeping Advance -- it fried things like Tyranid MCs back in 7th too. I had a Haruspex fail to kill any of a unit of 5 Sisters of Silence in combat. The Sisters hit back (maybe also doing nothing, maybe causing a wound, don't remember), and then the Haruspex was Swept off the table.
God, just thinking about Tyranids in 7th makes my blood boil. The Haruspex is almost as bad in 8th, but at least there was some miniscule improvement...
Play apoc, seriously, so much better, he gets to do stuff!
Exemple havocs.
Come with two of each hw or 1 chaincannon.
The squad needs 4 heavy weapons.
They implement a new weapon that is a vast improvement for all csm units that can use it.
There is 1 in the box.
They dont sell additional weapons at a decent price ymmv and instead expect me to buy enough havoc kits to fully equip my squads.
It's artificial scarcity 101, however where scarcity is a market oppurtunity appears.
GW 's greed is not helping it in this case.
I mean, bluestuff and epoxy has existed for a long time to clone your bitz.
But isn't it just better to get good looking 3ed party or recast stuff from people that do it professionaly, then rather try to do it yourself and end up with stuff that looks bad?
Exemple havocs.
Come with two of each hw or 1 chaincannon.
The squad needs 4 heavy weapons.
They implement a new weapon that is a vast improvement for all csm units that can use it.
There is 1 in the box.
They dont sell additional weapons at a decent price ymmv and instead expect me to buy enough havoc kits to fully equip my squads.
It's artificial scarcity 101, however where scarcity is a market oppurtunity appears.
GW 's greed is not helping it in this case.
They did that pretty well with the Deathwatch kill team box as well. They put a pair of heavy weapons unique to the Deathwatch, the flamer/heavy bolter and the Frag cannon, then include but one of them in the box. However, you get enough shoulder pads you can easily out fit like 15 marines, though you only get 5 in the box. No storm bolters, yet storm bolters are an option. Lets see, storm shields are good, oops only two of those as well. They want you to just buy say, 4 boxes of havocs, or 4 boxes of Deathwatch as opposed to put in say, 2 chain cannons in the box so you'd need to buy 2, which is reasonable.
I don't mind them making me buy a couple boxes, if its good enough I may already do that but when they cut back on the options or don't even include some just to make it so stretched thin you have to buy like 4 or more boxes that just feels bad.
I didn't even comment on if you wanted to make stalker bolters, or take any deathwatch shotguns, how there are like 1 of those in the kit, might be two shotguns I don't recall but pretty sure there is only one stalker bolt gun. I look at the kit and have to think they did it on purpose with a clear milking of your money goal in mind. Is there really any mystery third parties see the drives and motivations and fill the need ? Like a hydra yeah they cut off one head but two more take their place because of their designs. It's sad, when they had good ideas, like the bit services they once had up and those days felt great, at least to me.
I wanna say there are two Shotguns in the Deathwatch kit, which is fething stupidity because the Shotgun is terrible for the price and, if you DID want to do just a full squad like I did, you can't because. Seriously, nobody is going to just add one or two Shotguns to a squad. That's just bad.
I just bought the Shotguns from FW. I recommend looking at FW for their Rotor Cannon if you need more of the CSM Chaincannon to be honest.
Yeah, my point with the whole tirade is that it just sucks they do that. Even with options that are more fluff feel than on the board potent. Would it kill them to maybe put two of unique weapon systems in a box ?
If i wanted to run some of the chain cannons yeah I'd look at FW but probably will still end up costing a mint with their new costs for it in the US. It's just such a shame they didn't cut back on some other weapon options in the havoc kit to at least include two of the new gun for players that want it. As I don't know anybody would bought 4 boxes or more of them around here. Even with that incentive.
ThatMG wrote: Another one was Cover. Can't remember the edition someone will state it.
When you assault a unit in cover you wouldn't get to fight first unless you had assault grenades I think.
Also might have had same time combat. Also Power fists always strike last.
Also the initiative stat.
Playing Necrons, we've never had grenades if any kind, it made some of those editions pure hell.
Absolutely. The initiative stat was pretty much meaningless without grenades. Genestealers had I6, Hormagaunts I5, etc. But it didn't do a thing for them.
AngryAngel80 wrote: Yeah, my point with the whole tirade is that it just sucks they do that. Even with options that are more fluff feel than on the board potent. Would it kill them to maybe put two of unique weapon systems in a box ?
If i wanted to run some of the chain cannons yeah I'd look at FW but probably will still end up costing a mint with their new costs for it in the US. It's just such a shame they didn't cut back on some other weapon options in the havoc kit to at least include two of the new gun for players that want it. As I don't know anybody would bought 4 boxes or more of them around here. Even with that incentive.
Ironically that may have been the best thing about Primaris Marines right up to the point that they started randomly adding Sergeant weapon options to Intercessor; if they had an option it was in the box. None of this "Hey you can also build your Tac squad with any of these five heavy weapons that we didn't put in the box!" nonsense. Some of the character options were only ever available as part of a boxed set, but they were available without kit-bashing anything.
If I had it to do over from the first purchase knowing what I know now I probably wouldn't own any mini-marine models at all outside of maybe a scout squad for when points were tight (and a squad of Centurion Devastators because I love that model), and as much as I'm still using Vindicators, Whirlwinds, and ordinary Dreads more than any of the Primaris vehicles I can also see that it's only a matter of time until those options get supplanted by Impulsor-based tanks and war-walkers of some stripe. I try not to be too salty about that, but it's still annoying.
Yeah, I'd agree with you there. They still could have thought ahead to have Sgt melee weapons in with the Intercessor kits but mostly they do come with it all.
Think of my pain, when I started old marines the only options were plasma pistol, Missile launcher and flamer in the box. It was sad, sad days for sure.
At that point you didn't even have plastic scouts yet, you needed to buy them in metal blister packs. Good times.
Sounds like you started playing close to when I did, the basic Marine box at the time was 10 metal bodies with the arms and backpacks in plastic, and all the marine tanks were just the plastic Rhino kit with the extra bits as metal add-ons.
ThatMG wrote: Another one was Cover. Can't remember the edition someone will state it.
When you assault a unit in cover you wouldn't get to fight first unless you had assault grenades I think.
Also might have had same time combat. Also Power fists always strike last.
Also the initiative stat.
Playing Necrons, we've never had grenades if any kind, it made some of those editions pure hell.
But Necrons were all pretty much I1 or 2 weren't they (except for units like wraiths and flayed ones)? So grenades wouldn't even have helped that much as most armies would be swinging first regardless.
Not the worst rule, but the misinterpretation of the Consolidation rule in 3rd was fairly bad. You had a 3" Consolidation move which could allow you to lock another unit into Combat with no recourse on the receiving player whereas if you did a Sweeping Advance your unit could be shot freely by the entirety of the opposing army, range and LOS permitting. For some odd reason, in the defense of 3rd Ed. I have people mentioning the Consolidation lock as a reason whole armies would get wiped, to which I would reply "Keep your units more than 3" apart, I never had that problem." The IMMEDIATE response was almost universally "But Consolidation was 2D6."
Dysartes wrote: Belatedly - and I'm not going back through the thread to see if it has already been mentioned - but the worst current rule in 40k isn't even a written rule. Instead, it's a GW policy that is poisoning the game.
I am, of course, referring to "No model, no rules"
Pull your collective heads out of your backsides, GW, and realise that people/companies making third party parts are a, doing so because you have left a gap in the market you're not willing to fulfil in a reasonable manner; and b, conversion parts (as opposed to proxy models) still require people to buy your damned kits.
If I could take over the Towers of Lenton tomorrow, guess what the first edifice I'd start to tear down would be...
This is probably the most pressing issue.
And is especially annoying due to how certain factions are treated with updates to their lines.
That's not GW's fault, it's Chapterhouse's for ruining a good thing by not playing by the rules.
In order for Chapterhouse to have not played by the rules, some form of rules - ideally legally sound ones, unlike the majority of GW's claims - would've needed to have been established.
Chapterhouse did two things they probably shouldn't've done - they made models for three or four unit entries that were published by GW never made models for, and they got the verbiage that they used to describe other parts slightly off. The latter was corrected before the court case actually began, from memory, possibly on the back of a steer from their pro bono legal team.
Let us not forget that GW's Head of IP was shown to be incompetent on the stand, that they were revealed to be trying to get Gary Chalk to sign over ownership of art he had produced for them many years before while the case was going on, and they were trying to claim they owned terms like "halberd", "grenade launcher" and "Roman numeral" - I'm pretty sure the Romans own the IP on the latter...
I mean, when you have to withdraw, or fail to prevail, on 75% of your claims - with the possibility of losing some of the remaining 25% on appeal if they hadn't gone after the CH founder's personal accounts - you don't get to claim that the other party didn't "play by the rules".
With GW producing entries for characters and options that they didn't produce, they shouldn't've been surprised that third parties were going to produce compatible parts (or models) to till those gaps or to offer players aesthetic alternatives. However, a competent legal team would've had some form of license available to allow said third parties to handle these areas to a minimum quality standard, so GW could produce what GW wanted to produce.
Just Tony wrote: Not the worst rule, but the misinterpretation of the Consolidation rule in 3rd was fairly bad. You had a 3" Consolidation move which could allow you to lock another unit into Combat with no recourse on the receiving player whereas if you did a Sweeping Advance your unit could be shot freely by the entirety of the opposing army, range and LOS permitting. For some odd reason, in the defense of 3rd Ed. I have people mentioning the Consolidation lock as a reason whole armies would get wiped, to which I would reply "Keep your units more than 3" apart, I never had that problem." The IMMEDIATE response was almost universally "But Consolidation was 2D6."
There was also a not-too-uncommon misinterpretation that consolidating into another enemy unit meant fighting another round of combat immediately, leading to claims that an entire army could be wiped out by a single enemy unit in one turn.
Just Tony wrote: Not the worst rule, but the misinterpretation of the Consolidation rule in 3rd was fairly bad. You had a 3" Consolidation move which could allow you to lock another unit into Combat with no recourse on the receiving player whereas if you did a Sweeping Advance your unit could be shot freely by the entirety of the opposing army, range and LOS permitting. For some odd reason, in the defense of 3rd Ed. I have people mentioning the Consolidation lock as a reason whole armies would get wiped, to which I would reply "Keep your units more than 3" apart, I never had that problem." The IMMEDIATE response was almost universally "But Consolidation was 2D6."
There was also a not-too-uncommon misinterpretation that consolidating into another enemy unit meant fighting another round of combat immediately, leading to claims that an entire army could be wiped out by a single enemy unit in one turn.
Doesn't it give you lots of faith in the future of humanity when reading comprehension is that poor?
Just Tony wrote: Not the worst rule, but the misinterpretation of the Consolidation rule in 3rd was fairly bad. You had a 3" Consolidation move which could allow you to lock another unit into Combat with no recourse on the receiving player whereas if you did a Sweeping Advance your unit could be shot freely by the entirety of the opposing army, range and LOS permitting. For some odd reason, in the defense of 3rd Ed. I have people mentioning the Consolidation lock as a reason whole armies would get wiped, to which I would reply "Keep your units more than 3" apart, I never had that problem." The IMMEDIATE response was almost universally "But Consolidation was 2D6."
There was also a not-too-uncommon misinterpretation that consolidating into another enemy unit meant fighting another round of combat immediately, leading to claims that an entire army could be wiped out by a single enemy unit in one turn.
Doesn't it give you lots of faith in the future of humanity when reading comprehension is that poor?
No, but it does give me faith in the future of humanity when a company can write rules that poorly on a consistent basis and stay in business for more than three decades. If obvious hacks like GW can make it then the rest of us are going to be just fine.
I mean, when you have to withdraw, or fail to prevail, on 75% of your claims - with the possibility of losing some of the remaining 25% on appeal if they hadn't gone after the CH founder's personal accounts - you don't get to claim that the other party didn't "play by the rules".
With GW producing entries for characters and options that they didn't produce, they shouldn't've been surprised that third parties were going to produce compatible parts (or models) to till those gaps or to offer players aesthetic alternatives. However, a competent legal team would've had some form of license available to allow said third parties to handle these areas to a minimum quality standard, so GW could produce what GW wanted to produce.
But a result of all of this is that GW now kills or threatens to kills the "legality" of units with no kits or old kits. Ask Ork players. Before Chapterhouse, there was more encouragement to convert and make your own. You could do it with GW parts and few third party. I mean I don't think GW handled any of this properly, see my signature, but I think Chapterhouse played too dirty in their exploit and we all pay the consequences.
Regarding rules, I'm honestly of the opinion these days that by and large GW is doing them right. It's odd to see how everyone complains about them, but generally ignore 'better' rules. Which makes me think they must be doing something right besides selling great miniatures.
ThatMG wrote: Another one was Cover. Can't remember the edition someone will state it.
When you assault a unit in cover you wouldn't get to fight first unless you had assault grenades I think.
Also might have had same time combat. Also Power fists always strike last.
Also the initiative stat.
Playing Necrons, we've never had grenades if any kind, it made some of those editions pure hell.
How you figure? Necrons were basically all I2 outside the 4th edition codex, and I'm pretty sure Wraiths had a rule to ignore terrain still (but who cares about them because Scarabs + Lightning Field was the REAL MVP)
Just Tony wrote: Not the worst rule, but the misinterpretation of the Consolidation rule in 3rd was fairly bad. You had a 3" Consolidation move which could allow you to lock another unit into Combat with no recourse on the receiving player whereas if you did a Sweeping Advance your unit could be shot freely by the entirety of the opposing army, range and LOS permitting. For some odd reason, in the defense of 3rd Ed. I have people mentioning the Consolidation lock as a reason whole armies would get wiped, to which I would reply "Keep your units more than 3" apart, I never had that problem." The IMMEDIATE response was almost universally "But Consolidation was 2D6."
There was also a not-too-uncommon misinterpretation that consolidating into another enemy unit meant fighting another round of combat immediately, leading to claims that an entire army could be wiped out by a single enemy unit in one turn.
Doesn't it give you lots of faith in the future of humanity when reading comprehension is that poor?
No, but it does give me faith in the future of humanity when a company can write rules that poorly on a consistent basis and stay in business for more than three decades. If obvious hacks like GW can make it then the rest of us are going to be just fine.
Cute.
Try getting a copy of the 3rd Ed. rulebook and look up the rules for Sweeping Advance and for Consolidation. They are clear enough that my brother, who was 12 at the time, had no issue reading it and not getting confused. The issue may indeed not be with GW there, though if you think so lowly of them feel free to find another game rather than waste our time with petty insults.
Just Tony wrote: Not the worst rule, but the misinterpretation of the Consolidation rule in 3rd was fairly bad. You had a 3" Consolidation move which could allow you to lock another unit into Combat with no recourse on the receiving player whereas if you did a Sweeping Advance your unit could be shot freely by the entirety of the opposing army, range and LOS permitting. For some odd reason, in the defense of 3rd Ed. I have people mentioning the Consolidation lock as a reason whole armies would get wiped, to which I would reply "Keep your units more than 3" apart, I never had that problem." The IMMEDIATE response was almost universally "But Consolidation was 2D6."
There was also a not-too-uncommon misinterpretation that consolidating into another enemy unit meant fighting another round of combat immediately, leading to claims that an entire army could be wiped out by a single enemy unit in one turn.
Doesn't it give you lots of faith in the future of humanity when reading comprehension is that poor?
No, but it does give me faith in the future of humanity when a company can write rules that poorly on a consistent basis and stay in business for more than three decades. If obvious hacks like GW can make it then the rest of us are going to be just fine.
Cute.
Try getting a copy of the 3rd Ed. rulebook and look up the rules for Sweeping Advance and for Consolidation. They are clear enough that my brother, who was 12 at the time, had no issue reading it and not getting confused. The issue may indeed not be with GW there, though if you think so lowly of them feel free to find another game rather than waste our time with petty insults.
I think the word you're looking for is "cheeky", and it clearly was.
Whether Sweeping Advance and Consolidation in particular were clear in 3rd ed. is irrelevant, GW has been terrible at writing rules for years. Everyone knows this. It's not an insult, it's a statement of fact. Besides, GW isn't just the only game in town here, it's the only game for several towns in any direction. "Go find a different game" is functionally identical to "give up table-top wargaming".
True. People here have the option to play 9th age, which automaticly sets them at odds with anyone playing AoS or w40k, a small very closed infinity community, largest w40k group of players, and a group of AoS players.
I mean, when you have to withdraw, or fail to prevail, on 75% of your claims - with the possibility of losing some of the remaining 25% on appeal if they hadn't gone after the CH founder's personal accounts - you don't get to claim that the other party didn't "play by the rules".
With GW producing entries for characters and options that they didn't produce, they shouldn't've been surprised that third parties were going to produce compatible parts (or models) to till those gaps or to offer players aesthetic alternatives. However, a competent legal team would've had some form of license available to allow said third parties to handle these areas to a minimum quality standard, so GW could produce what GW wanted to produce.
But a result of all of this is that GW now kills or threatens to kills the "legality" of units with no kits or old kits. Ask Ork players. Before Chapterhouse, there was more encouragement to convert and make your own. You could do it with GW parts and few third party. I mean I don't think GW handled any of this properly, see my signature, but I think Chapterhouse played too dirty in their exploit and we all pay the consequences.
It’s more a case GW is gleefully laughing that it’s convinced most of its consumers that 3rd party bit makers don’t exist. There’s still a fair number of 3rd party bit makers out there, but you can’t straightforward google them because of the screwed-up names they’ve given their stuff. Fact is GW wants all the monies, and doesn’t want to share. They believe it would be more harmful to their kit sales if they acknowledge the other companies, because who is going to buy a $50 kit from GW when you can get “alternate sculpts” from another company for half that?
Generally allies. I don't mind having an allied force, but showing them as a single entity provides a lot of exploits.
Where you have two...essentially seperate...forces fighting together, it tends not to be a problem, but sharing abilities often leads to balance problems.
In 8th, using 200 points of guardsmen to generate command points to spend on a 400+ point knight is an obvious one.
In 7th, it was more about the 'if a unit contains at least one model with this rule' USRs, where lone white scar techmarine gave 9 frothing psychotic death company hit and run or Azrael made 50 guardsmen fearless and with a 4++ save.
Just Tony wrote: Not the worst rule, but the misinterpretation of the Consolidation rule in 3rd was fairly bad. You had a 3" Consolidation move which could allow you to lock another unit into Combat with no recourse on the receiving player whereas if you did a Sweeping Advance your unit could be shot freely by the entirety of the opposing army, range and LOS permitting. For some odd reason, in the defense of 3rd Ed. I have people mentioning the Consolidation lock as a reason whole armies would get wiped, to which I would reply "Keep your units more than 3" apart, I never had that problem." The IMMEDIATE response was almost universally "But Consolidation was 2D6."
There was also a not-too-uncommon misinterpretation that consolidating into another enemy unit meant fighting another round of combat immediately, leading to claims that an entire army could be wiped out by a single enemy unit in one turn.
Doesn't it give you lots of faith in the future of humanity when reading comprehension is that poor?
No, but it does give me faith in the future of humanity when a company can write rules that poorly on a consistent basis and stay in business for more than three decades. If obvious hacks like GW can make it then the rest of us are going to be just fine.
Cute.
Try getting a copy of the 3rd Ed. rulebook and look up the rules for Sweeping Advance and for Consolidation. They are clear enough that my brother, who was 12 at the time, had no issue reading it and not getting confused. The issue may indeed not be with GW there, though if you think so lowly of them feel free to find another game rather than waste our time with petty insults.
In full fairness to him, it was a bit funny. I'd try not to take insult on behalf of a company that is routinely poor at writing clear rules and/or proof reading as well. If I had the inclination I'd look back and bring up a ton of examples of their often lazy and low effort offerings that come with a high price tag. While I had no issue with those consolidation rules or understanding them the same can't be said for some other very off the wall interactions they leave in. So yes, it does feel bad people would make such mistakes, but it does also give me hope despite all the issues baked in we find a way to carry on regardless. You could say its the good in the bad I suppose.
Just Tony wrote: Not the worst rule, but the misinterpretation of the Consolidation rule in 3rd was fairly bad. You had a 3" Consolidation move which could allow you to lock another unit into Combat with no recourse on the receiving player whereas if you did a Sweeping Advance your unit could be shot freely by the entirety of the opposing army, range and LOS permitting. For some odd reason, in the defense of 3rd Ed. I have people mentioning the Consolidation lock as a reason whole armies would get wiped, to which I would reply "Keep your units more than 3" apart, I never had that problem." The IMMEDIATE response was almost universally "But Consolidation was 2D6."
There was also a not-too-uncommon misinterpretation that consolidating into another enemy unit meant fighting another round of combat immediately, leading to claims that an entire army could be wiped out by a single enemy unit in one turn.
Doesn't it give you lots of faith in the future of humanity when reading comprehension is that poor?
No, but it does give me faith in the future of humanity when a company can write rules that poorly on a consistent basis and stay in business for more than three decades. If obvious hacks like GW can make it then the rest of us are going to be just fine.
Cute.
Try getting a copy of the 3rd Ed. rulebook and look up the rules for Sweeping Advance and for Consolidation. They are clear enough that my brother, who was 12 at the time, had no issue reading it and not getting confused. The issue may indeed not be with GW there, though if you think so lowly of them feel free to find another game rather than waste our time with petty insults.
In full fairness to him, it was a bit funny. I'd try not to take insult on behalf of a company that is routinely poor at writing clear rules and/or proof reading as well. If I had the inclination I'd look back and bring up a ton of examples of their often lazy and low effort offerings that come with a high price tag. While I had no issue issue with those consolidation rules or understanding them the same can't be said for some other very off the wall interactions they leave in. So yes, it does feel bad people would make such mistakes, but it does also give me hope despite all the issues baked in we find a way to carry on regardless. You could say its the good in the bad I suppose.
I totally agree that GW in recent editions has been an absolute gak show as far as clarity of rules, and had we been discussing some of those rules I would have capitulated. However, my response was about a ruleset that shockingly is written well enough that those vagarities seemed to have eluded it. It's part of the reason I decided to go back to that ruleset instead of staying current.
flandarz wrote: I started in 8th, so I can't say anything about previous editions, but the sheer abundance of giant robots and vehicles with 3++ Invuln Saves is crazy. It's pretty bad that I have a better chance of dealing damage to a Riptide with a Boy Blob hitting it with knives than I do with a Rocket Launcher designed for the purpose of taking down big things.
Which kinda just goes to my biggest gripe of volume of attacks/shots being more important to taking down anything than using weapons designed for those targets.
The invul problem used to be worst and GW is slowly scaling it back now. These days Invuls seem to exist more to cap how much AP.
Invuln span was because of the AP 'all or nothing' armour system.
Which actually may point to the AP system being the worst rule - not in and of itself, but the knock on effects basically wrecked entire editions and made an awful mess.
God, Virus grenades and whatever it was called when you could use it before the battle. I once had my orks completely gutted before I could even play. I gave up before my first turn. I think we just redeployed and tried again without him using it.
I totally agree that GW in recent editions has been an absolute gak show as far as clarity of rules, and had we been discussing some of those rules I would have capitulated. However, my response was about a ruleset that shockingly is written well enough that those vagarities seemed to have eluded it. It's part of the reason I decided to go back to that ruleset instead of staying current.
3rd edition did have its fair share of rules issues. I remember sending a list of rules queries to GW about 12 months or so in (back before the internet was widespread enough for us all to realise that answers from the 'Rulez Boyz' were actually completely useless) and it was about 5 pages (typed!) of questions.
Although, to be fair, a certain number of those questions were along the lines of 'You could do [thing] in 2nd edition. Where on earth do I find the rules for this now????'
you are Automatically.
game.
