In general I'm happy with the elimination of dedicated vehicle rules in 8th edition. However one funny effect I've been feeling is that vehicles are simultaneously too weak and too strong.
On the one hand, vehicles are too weak: anti-tank weapons are so ubiquitous to deal with knights (and much cheaper than they were in 3rd-5th or 6th editions) that lighter vehicles go up in smoke almost immediately. And medium weapons with S5 and S6 and many shots are capable of putting wounds on even fairly heavy vehicles. Finally, vehicles' size makes them almost impossible to hide anymore given true line of sight and the removal of line-of-sight blocking area terrain.
But on the other hand, vehicles also feel too strong to me: anti-tank weapons almost always do D6 random damage and are going up against tanks with 10-16 wounds. And quite a few vehicles have invulnerable saves and feel-no-pain and similar abilities. The combination of these means that in general it takes a ton of anti-tank hits to reliably kill vehicles, and you basically need to just whittle them down.
Gone are the days of a single lascannon looking dangerous; instead, destroying vehicles feels more like peeling the layers of an onion than trying to line up the perfect killshot. I guess I'm an old fogey here, but I kind of liked the days of 3rd and 4th edition where heavy anti-tank weapons were expensive and rare, but each hit had a decent chance of wrecking a vehicle.
is that while awesome sounding in a narrative sense, I really don't think there's any mechanic that can satisfactorily represent this in a dice game. In a game that essentially consists of I move my blob of models; I shoot your blob of models; you move your blob of models; you shoot my blob of models, I actually think that
peeling the layers of an onion
is the better option. No matter how expensive you make a trooper with a lascannon in terms of points, the tank is always going to cost more money, and removing that expensive tank from the table in the first couple of turns is going to hurt a lot more than removing the trooper.
That said, I do agree with what I think is your essential point about heavy weapons being too ubiquitous as a requirement to deal with Knights and such, but I believe the problem here is with those big centerpiece models. It's been stated ad nauseum on this forum, but I'll repeat it anyway: giant super heavies are more akin to action figure scales like Gundam and Transformers than in 40k and seem very out of place save in games that are either very large or where they serve a specific narrative purpose. Having very large models be as common as they are in the casual hobby just seems very wrong to me, and results in the kinds of effects you're describing here.
Gone are the days of a single lascannon looking dangerous; instead, destroying vehicles feels more like peeling the layers of an onion than trying to line up the perfect killshot. I guess I'm an old fogey here, but I kind of liked the days of 3rd and 4th edition where heavy anti-tank weapons were expensive and rare, but each hit had a decent chance of wrecking a vehicle.
Does anyone else feel similarly?
Yup. Those old mechanics helped balance the game more in favor towards infantry, as that single heavy weapon in a squad could one-shot a tank. AV 14 was still pretty tough, but a lot of the time you could flank those and put a Lascannon into the side of a Leman Russ and have roughly a 25% chance of a kill via Lascannon. I felt the damage mechanics were nice too. Immobilizing things or just stopping them from shooting for a turn.
The other extreme a few editions ago were vehicles were basically non-existent due to how easily Hull Points were removed and either you flooded the board with infantry or wraithknights/riptides which combined the best of both worlds.
I personally like it as it is now with some minor tweaks to make them more durable against mass S7 shooting which is the ideal AT right now.
I think vehicles overall are in a good place and unlike 6th/7th edition they feel pretty sturdy and being a vehicle doesn't mean: "This is a very squishy and clumsy unit that will never be able to shoot all the weapons you pay for it."
However, I think especially the light vehicles are partly too expensive, especially the Rhino. Yes, it is pretty durable for its costs, but it has the damage output of a 20point unit and due to the changes to movement, transports are hardly needed anymore - infantry is fast enough most of the time and can move through terrain easily.
Having your Leman Russ, stalwart battle tank with yard-thick armour get blown up in one shot by a scrub with a lascannon *never* felt satisfying. Vehicles are in a decidedly better place than that now, but still attract a ton of fire and become over efficient to use Strats like Doom against. It is what it is... at least they’re largely playable now!
JohnnyHell wrote: Having your Leman Russ, stalwart battle tank with yard-thick armour get blown up in one shot by a scrub with a lascannon *never* felt satisfying. Vehicles are in a decidedly better place than that now, but still attract a ton of fire and become over efficient to use Strats like Doom against. It is what it is... at least they’re largely playable now!
On the one hand I agree with you, but I think it's not as simple.
you either get:
The satisfaction that your LR stays on the board longer vs. the frustration that you feel while"removing the layers of the onion" (I really liked that image, OP)
or:
The satisfaction of getting the "perfect killshot" vs. the frustration that your vehicle is gone in the first round of battle.
So you'll have to somehow figure out, which of those two options causes more satisfaction or at least less frustration. And I think that is a thiing that no one can objectively do.
JohnnyHell wrote: Having your Leman Russ, stalwart battle tank with yard-thick armour get blown up in one shot by a scrub with a lascannon *never* felt satisfying. Vehicles are in a decidedly better place than that now, but still attract a ton of fire and become over efficient to use Strats like Doom against. It is what it is... at least they’re largely playable now!
On the one hand I agree with you, but I think it's not as simple.
you either get:
The satisfaction that your LR stays on the board longer vs. the frustration that you feel while"removing the layers of the onion" (I really liked that image, OP)
or:
The satisfaction of getting the "perfect killshot" vs. the frustration that your vehicle is gone in the first round of battle.
So you'll have to somehow figure out, which of those two options causes more satisfaction or at least less frustration. And I think that is a thiing that no one can objectively do.
Well, I think rolling a 6 on a Damage D6 weapon comes pretty close to the old vehicle chart. Yes, you don't make that thing explode right away but for most vehicles you at least hurt it substantially with that lascannon-shot.
Vehicles are in the better place these days. However still not perfect, least I don't think so. The issue with vehicles before 6-7 is that it felt off MCs seemed to just function better over all over a vehicle. Like soft killing a vehicle with forever shaking it was a thing and an annoying thing at that.
Then we got hull points which were the poor mans wounds. Then vehicles still could get soft killed but at the same time felt like they were made of rusty junk and just fell apart after 3 or hits and could still explode early, still a little lame. I'd say more lame than before.
So now they are over all better but I'm not sure if we couldn't make them better or at least function better yet. I just don't know what way that would be.
If vehicles had better armor save(and also less ++ saves) and more wounds you could increase ap on things like lascannon and melta while also increasing their damage by quite a lot. Increasing vehicle toughness and top end weapon strength at the same time would also make it better. It shouldnt be ++ saves, fnp, - to hit or - to damage modifiers that make vehicles tough. That they are huge amounts of moving metal should be enough to make them more survivable than infantry.
Then vehicles would feel stronger against things like heavy bolters while lascannons or meltas would feel more threatening again. Especially if they tweaked the degradation profiles or at least made it harder to work around.
Right now you might kill a knight with 5 lascannon/melta shots if lucky but you would probably need closer to 25-30 of them. So if you need many shots anyway you could just do it with autocannons/plasma as it is now. With better weapon balancing it would take maybe 15 lascannon/ lr 10melta shots and at the same time feel like shooting anything between a Heavy Bolter or plasma profile is a waste of ammunition or a desperate measure to take off the last few wounds. Not your main anti tank option.
Same with transports. They should have more wounds but maybe not as much more T or Save or - to hit. They should take a beating but after X lascannons or equivalent you should be pretty sure it is dead. And at least give the models inside a save before they just die. Having multiwound units with 2+/3++ save inside a transport is really dangerous. Lost 3/5 TH/SS terminators due to that explosion in my first 8th ed game and realised what a death trap it is.
I think if they were able to bring back the damage chart for vehicles it would make them far more interesting. Shaking and stunning a tank was a valid tactic to neuter a tank for a turn while you had other things to do.
It was also thematic as hell, an immobilised tank in the middle of a densely packed board, weapons getting destroyed as it gets whittled down, that was cool. Now tanks are just lifted from the table and don't become terrain if they get destroyed.
I do miss when battlefields got added terrain with destroyed tanks, felt pretty cool to have a vehicle or vehicles die out on the board and fight from around, move onto it for cover use even with dangerous terrain checks. Felt very cool and immersive.
Yes well, knights have annoyed me since they were first announced long ago now. As is I've never picked one up though I do have some of the baby knights they feel pretty cool for me.
The issue isn't so much vehicals changing to wounds and toughness it's that GW insisted on staying with single digets while steam rolling the to wound chart flat.
It's why T4 doesn't matter as much as GW thinks, see marines and Orks.
Being only T3 doesnt matter alot of the time, why veing T7 is a massive downside vrs S7/S8 weapons vrs T8 a lascannon being S9 vrs autocannons at S7 or S8 plasma. It's at best a 16% improvement in wounding vrs 100% more shots, and less points.
Flat damage for lascannons and melta would help but would also be back to the days of vehicals are made of paper in 40k.
Vehicals need to start with way more wounds and Toughness spread to actually allow the flat as a pancake wounding chart to show any changes.
But wouldn't that be a problem, when someone brings a ton of vehicles, or something extremly resilient like an old style castellan?
flat damage is okey, when opponents has 3-4 vehicles, it becaomes a totaly different thing when he has 5-6 and something huge. Then to counter that you need vehicles of your own, or fire power that melts opposing armies.
Right now you might kill a knight with 5 lascannon/melta shots if lucky but you would probably need closer to 25-30 of them. So if you need many shots anyway you could just do it with autocannons/plasma as it is now. With better weapon balancing it would take maybe 15 lascannon/ lr 10melta shots...
Knights are not supposed to be countered by lascannons, they are very purposefully supposed to be able to tank bigger guns because they're meant to operate in scenarios where high damage high AP weapons are plentiful between titanic units. It's not a failure of Knight design that they are vulnerable to AP0/-1 instead of AP-3/-4, it's a feature of their design. Take something like a Leman Russ or a Predator instead and you'll see that most often the lascannon does perform better than its competitors, ignoring Combat Doctrines at least. Plasma should not be affected by to-hit modifiers or re-rolls in terms of how many models die from firing the guns, because then you'd actually see some very nice differentiation between the guns, just like if you had an Aura ability that let you re-roll damage rolls then the lascannon would become a lot better, that just doesn't exist while the re-roll hit rolls of 1 is relatively easy to come by, especially for Astartes.
Then you just make a few core rule changes as well. Make vehicles unable to hold objectives or let melee units get bonuses in combat. Like how powerfists and grenades were lethal against tanks in the old days so if you dont have enough non tanks to support them they lose. Or you make a few force organisation/detachment changes that it isnt viable to go all tanks. Or make tank traps common terrain features that makes tanks less viable to be spammed. A bit like how the guard super heavy tanks are quite limited on terrain heavy tables compared to knights. They are wider and shorter so they cant move terrain as easy or see over the terrain.
In real world you want infantry to support your own tanks and there should be in game reasons for that as well.
There are lots of ways to make up for not every gun being able to threaten a tank. Maybe not so well in 8th edition with its bare minimun of core rules but it could easily be expanded while implementing changes.
Karol wrote: But wouldn't that be a problem, when someone brings a ton of vehicles, or something extremly resilient like an old style castellan?
flat damage is okey, when opponents has 3-4 vehicles, it becaomes a totaly different thing when he has 5-6 and something huge. Then to counter that you need vehicles of your own, or fire power that melts opposing armies.
1 your not seeing the level of shift in profiles required
All vehicals become T10 to T20
Actual anti tank weapons such as lascannons etc get S doubled.
Heavy Bolter autocannons etc stay as they are. Invulnerable saves die and forcefield etc go to save or wound roll modifiers.
A melta would go to flat 6 damage so you get rewarded for using the right tool for the right job not just spamming rof S5-7 D1-2 weapons against everything.
People already do that with -2 to hit move blocking eldar flyer spam.
Right now you might kill a knight with 5 lascannon/melta shots if lucky but you would probably need closer to 25-30 of them. So if you need many shots anyway you could just do it with autocannons/plasma as it is now. With better weapon balancing it would take maybe 15 lascannon/ lr 10melta shots...
Knights are not supposed to be countered by lascannons, they are very purposefully supposed to be able to tank bigger guns because they're meant to operate in scenarios where high damage high AP weapons are plentiful between titanic units. It's not a failure of Knight design that they are vulnerable to AP0/-1 instead of AP-3/-4, it's a feature of their design. Take something like a Leman Russ or a Predator instead and you'll see that most often the lascannon does perform better than its competitors, ignoring Combat Doctrines at least. Plasma should not be affected by to-hit modifiers or re-rolls in terms of how many models die from firing the guns, because then you'd actually see some very nice differentiation between the guns, just like if you had an Aura ability that let you re-roll damage rolls then the lascannon would become a lot better, that just doesn't exist while the re-roll hit rolls of 1 is relatively easy to come by, especially for Astartes.
Ofc they are able to survive some lascannon fire. But are you seriously telling me that a lascannon should be worse point for point than a heavy bolter against a knight? That knights should be weak to anti infantry fire?
I think a knight should be harder to kill than a leman russ but you should want heavy weapons against both. Not lascannons against the leman russ and then auto cannons against the knights.
I was just spouting numbers to make an example of what is wrong with the way anti tank guns work. 200pts of lascannons or meltas should ofc be more effective than 200pts heavy boltets, auto cannons and plasma against all vehicles. That is my point. Even against knights.
At lighter vehicles, transports like rhinos, its fine if plasma cannons and autocannons are almost as good. But right now plasma is overall better which is a problem. You cant really just change tanks at this point if you also dont change how the weapons work to make anti tank weapons worthwhile.
I feel like vehicles need one major shift - abandon invulnerable saves on them but increase total wounds.
A higher wound count, and a higher potential damage output from things like Melta and Las would make those weapons worthwhile against these targets as their higher AP and higher damage potential would both apply against the very targets they are designed to hunt.
And a higher wound count would mean those 2 damage, high rof weapons become less valuable in this role. Still good in a pinch, but not the best.
Right now you might kill a knight with 5 lascannon/melta shots if lucky but you would probably need closer to 25-30 of them. So if you need many shots anyway you could just do it with autocannons/plasma as it is now. With better weapon balancing it would take maybe 15 lascannon/ lr 10melta shots...
Knights are not supposed to be countered by lascannons, they are very purposefully supposed to be able to tank bigger guns because they're meant to operate in scenarios where high damage high AP weapons are plentiful between titanic units. It's not a failure of Knight design that they are vulnerable to AP0/-1 instead of AP-3/-4, it's a feature of their design. Take something like a Leman Russ or a Predator instead and you'll see that most often the lascannon does perform better than its competitors, ignoring Combat Doctrines at least. Plasma should not be affected by to-hit modifiers or re-rolls in terms of how many models die from firing the guns, because then you'd actually see some very nice differentiation between the guns, just like if you had an Aura ability that let you re-roll damage rolls then the lascannon would become a lot better, that just doesn't exist while the re-roll hit rolls of 1 is relatively easy to come by, especially for Astartes.
Ofc they are able to survive some lascannon fire. But are you seriously telling me that a lascannon should be worse point for point than a heavy bolter against a knight? That knights should be weak to anti infantry fire?
I think a knight should be harder to kill than a leman russ but you should want heavy weapons against both. Not lascannons against the leman russ and then auto cannons against the knights.
I was just spouting numbers to make an example of what is wrong with the way anti tank guns work. 200pts of lascannons or meltas should ofc be more effective than 200pts heavy boltets, auto cannons and plasma against all vehicles. That is my point. Even against knights.
At lighter vehicles, transports like rhinos, its fine if plasma cannons and autocannons are almost as good. But right now plasma is overall better which is a problem. You cant really just change tanks at this point if you also dont change how the weapons work to make anti tank weapons worthwhile.
They both hit on the same thing so assume both heavy bolters and lascannons hit automatically.
Lascannons do an average of 3,5 damage, need 1,5 times as many shots to punch through armour, 1,5 times as many shots to punch through toughness and fire 1 shot.
Number of lascannon Devs needed to destroy a Knight = 24/3,5*1,5*1,5/1=15,4
Lascannon Devastators cost 37 pts per model.
Number of pts worth of lascannon Devs required to destroy a Knight = 15,4*37=569,8
Heavy bolters do 1 damage, need 2 times as many shots to punch through armour, 3 times as many shots to punch through toughness and fire 3 shots.
Number of HBDevs needed to destroy a Knight = 24/1*2*3/3=48
Heavy bolter Devastators cost 22 pts per model.
Number of pts worth of HBDevs required to destroy a Knight = 48*22=1056
Comparing durability HB Devastators are 1,68x as tough as lascannon Devastators.
What is the actual problem causing the issue? Knight Relics and Stratagems that further fortify them against lascannons. Re-roll abilities that make overcharging plasma a breeze. Rules that double the AP and D of heavy bolters but hardly benefit lascannons.
Vehicles not having a 2+ Sv is pretty stupid, with the exception of open-topped vehicles they should pretty much all have a 2+ Sv and some might deserve a 1+ save. That would make heavy bolters (leaving out combat doctrines) much worse at busting tanks but wouldn't impact lascannons nearly as much. The alternative is changing the whole S/T system which I personally like less as a solution because the current rules for wounding are so simple to explain, nearly everyone has it down in their first game and when I play them again most of them can remember. No more wound charts please. Just think about what story GW is telling us as well, a flayer claw (Necron scissorhands) is better against Dreadnoughts than Terminator armour. What?
A lot of the issues that Vehicles have now in 40k is due to the shift in scale. The game has gone from a Squad leve game (2nd edition), to a Platoon level game (3rd - 5th edition), to a 28mm version of Epic (6th-8th edition). Then add in the model range stretching to include things like knights, super heavies I to the base game. Sure these things have always been around, but they were restricted to special formats of the core game. The rules needed to use such things wasn't covered by the core rules.
As a result of this vehicles have been put in an odd place, where what was previously seen as a tough vehicle is now seen as quite weak. The scale and scope of the game got bigger.
What is the biggest loss is transport vehicles, they are now usually slower than the unit they are carrying, and don't offer as much protection.
Perhaps the addition of the armoured keyword to vehicles and the addition of the penetrating keyword to actual anti tank weapons could work?
Something along the lines of the armoured keyword ignoring the ap of weapons unless it has the penetrating keyword, which would apply to things like las cannon and plasma weapons but not anti infantry weapons like heavy bolters and assault cannons?
kingheff wrote: Perhaps the addition of the armoured keyword to vehicles and the addition of the penetrating keyword to actual anti tank weapons could work?
Something along the lines of the armoured keyword ignoring the ap of weapons unless it has the penetrating keyword, which would apply to things like las cannon and plasma weapons but not anti infantry weapons like heavy bolters and assault cannons?
Plasma isn't an anti vehical weapon it's anti heavy infantry, it's one of the worst contributions to the very problem we are discussing.
kingheff wrote: Perhaps the addition of the armoured keyword to vehicles and the addition of the penetrating keyword to actual anti tank weapons could work?
Something along the lines of the armoured keyword ignoring the ap of weapons unless it has the penetrating keyword, which would apply to things like las cannon and plasma weapons but not anti infantry weapons like heavy bolters and assault cannons?
Plasma isn't an anti vehical weapon it's anti heavy infantry, it's one of the worst contributions to the very problem we are discussing.
Hellblasters indicate that GW fully intends plasma to be a light infantry cracker in sufficant numbers
You need about 31 lascannon shots to kill a t8 4++ knight. Not 20.
Unsure what you are trying to say though. Are Knights designed to not be weak against anti tank yet we should redesign how tanks and weapons work so they are?
Im in the mind that GW doesnt really know how to do it and to not make some vehicles too weak they added ++ saves or other modifiers instead of just buffing toughness, wounds and normal save. Probably they werent allowed to go ham with changing those attributes in a single codex so to keep the profile relatively the same they have instead tried working around that with adding special rules. Sure it makes the vehicles tougher but it messes with the weapon dynamics.
vict0988 wrote: When did plasma start being good against vehicles? It has to be 5th ed or earlier, where does the plasma = anti-infantry idea come from?
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Klickor wrote: You need about 31 lascannon shots to kill a t8 4++ knight. Not 20.
What gives it a 4++?
Plasma wasnt reliable enough to kill vehicles back in 4th/5th since they couldnt even glance av 14 and barely touch av 13. But they had ap 2 so they were the best weapons against terminators, space marines and other monsters. Plasma was ok only against stuff like rhinos. You got more shots/blast out of plasma than pure AT weapons and since AT weapons only did 1 shot/damage each they werent good against non tanks.
Missile launchers were better than plasma against tanks and infantry blobs but at the same time also much worse against 2+ save models. Hence plasma as the marine/light vehicle killer.
Umm you have both a warlord trait or relic and a stratagem for the knights. If a list only has a single knight or 2 you can expect it to have a 4++ in the shooting phase.
vict0988 wrote: When did plasma start being good against vehicles? It has to be 5th ed or earlier, where does the plasma = anti-infantry idea come from?
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Klickor wrote: You need about 31 lascannon shots to kill a t8 4++ knight. Not 20.
What gives it a 4++?
1 fluff
2 some of us have played since 2 or 3rd back when weapons actually had a clear purpose.
3 simply put plasma wasn't good against vehicals as it wasn't till 8th it got pushed to S8 for rediculous anti tank ability.
S7+D6, it couldn't touch AV14 and had a good chance of failure vrs even AV 12.
4 why ever wiuld anyone invent melta tech if plasma was actually supposed to be good against vehicals
Fundamentally a problem with the loose force-org / near-non-existent restrictions.
Make it a bit stronger, it becomes overwhelming if spammed. Make it a bit weaker, it's pointless to ever take 1 or 2 and not spam it.
The logical direction would be to make Knights or heavy tanks, etc.. stronger and more scary, but cap them at 1 per army or something along those lines.
GW is kinda doing it in a round-about way with Knights by making you seemingly take as many as you want, but largely requiring WL-traits / Relics for them to be "good", which is essentially a more restrictive force org for the "good variants" in disguise, but that system, as of now, doesn't really work for regular tanks, etc..
Maybe 9th will expand the system to things like Land Raiders, Repulsors, etc.., where you can take as many as you want (because people apparently hate restrictions), but only one or two can get upgrades to be actually worth it in a list.
I'd be fine with more tanks, stuff like land raiders etc being turned into Lords of War and having their power level dialed up a bit to the point where you're going to take one and it'll be a centerpiece.
BrianDavion wrote: I'd be fine with more tanks, stuff like land raiders etc being turned into Lords of War and having their power level dialed up a bit to the point where you're going to take one and it'll be a centerpiece.
Or remove the LOW slot entirely and banish them to Appocalypse.
That would dial down the size creep.
Which would allow all the MBT 's etc a bit more breathing room.
BrianDavion wrote: I'd be fine with more tanks, stuff like land raiders etc being turned into Lords of War and having their power level dialed up a bit to the point where you're going to take one and it'll be a centerpiece.
Or remove the LOW slot entirely and banish them to Appocalypse.
That would dial down the size creep.
Which would allow all the MBT 's etc a bit more breathing room.
But that ain't making bank for gw.
yeah you try telling space marine players that their land raiders aren't usable in 40k anymore. or that Necrons can't use their monoliths.
BrianDavion wrote: I'd be fine with more tanks, stuff like land raiders etc being turned into Lords of War and having their power level dialed up a bit to the point where you're going to take one and it'll be a centerpiece.
Or remove the LOW slot entirely and banish them to Appocalypse.
That would dial down the size creep.
Which would allow all the MBT 's etc a bit more breathing room.
But that ain't making bank for gw.
And fliers as well pls
But yeah, I agree with some of the posts already made: Vehicles are in a strange place because the game itself did upscale. I also liked a lot of the things the old vehicle rules brought with them (stunned, destroyed weapons etc)
vict0988 wrote: When did plasma start being good against vehicles? It has to be 5th ed or earlier, where does the plasma = anti-infantry idea come from?
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Klickor wrote: You need about 31 lascannon shots to kill a t8 4++ knight. Not 20.
What gives it a 4++?
Plasma wasnt reliable enough to kill vehicles back in 4th/5th since they couldnt even glance av 14 and barely touch av 13. But they had ap 2 so they were the best weapons against terminators, space marines and other monsters. Plasma was ok only against stuff like rhinos. You got more shots/blast out of plasma than pure AT weapons and since AT weapons only did 1 shot/damage each they werent good against non tanks. Missile launchers were better than plasma against tanks and infantry blobs but at the same time also much worse against 2+ save models. Hence plasma as the marine/light vehicle killer.
Umm you have both a warlord trait or relic and a stratagem for the knights. If a list only has a single knight or 2 you can expect it to have a 4++ in the shooting phase.
What AV13 units? The vast majority were AV 10-12 if not in front then in side armour and plasma was great at busting tanks. ML? With AP 3? Were you playing in a magical Land Raider meta?
Sure plasma could in the flanks be a threat but not that easy always. Lots of space marines in my meta so a ton of AV 13-14. And some necrons with their monoliths.
But if you had a mobile unit you would rather take a melta gun than a plasma gun for anti tank duty. Way better than plasma at cracking thanks even if it isnt the case now.
Unless a weapon had ap 1 or - the ap value didnt matter against vehicles so a ML with 48" range and str8 were ofc much better than a 36" str 7 plasma cannon with gets hot at killing tanks.
kingheff wrote: Perhaps the addition of the armoured keyword to vehicles and the addition of the penetrating keyword to actual anti tank weapons could work?
Something along the lines of the armoured keyword ignoring the ap of weapons unless it has the penetrating keyword, which would apply to things like las cannon and plasma weapons but not anti infantry weapons like heavy bolters and assault cannons?
Plasma isn't an anti vehical weapon it's anti heavy infantry, it's one of the worst contributions to the very problem we are discussing.
I'd argue that things like terminators, and to a lesser extent marines, are as well armoured as many vehicles but that's kind of by the by.
I was just thinking about weapons with high ap being better at vehicle hunting and picked plasma as a random example.
Not quite sure on the problem - because the scenario described sounds incredibly like 7th to me.
I mean I guess if you hate plasma etc shooting vehicles - fine. But the old "some games this tank is invincible, other times it gets nuked by the first lascannon shot" wasn't exactly compelling. Vehicles as a rule were not considered good as a result.
I realise some liked the dynamic immobilised, weapon blown off etc rules - but in terms of balance they were not good and just made monstrous creatures much better (points etc depending - Nidzilla tended to be crap because the rules were crap, flying hive tyrant spam aside.)
In terms of the game - the problem is they hand out massive damage, then they hand out massive protection, then they have to up damage again. Your humble lascannon, which had some punch back in the index, looks a bit outdated. Unless it has countless rerolls.
Galas wrote: As other people have said the solution to vehicles is very easy.
Remove invulnerable saves for them and give them many more wounds.
That way high damage and high AP anti tank weapons become the go to tool to kill vehicles, not anti infantry weapons or medium weapons.
Maybe there is something I'm not seeing, but isn't a 4++ basically the same as giving something twice the wounds? What would change, if you give them more wounds while removing an invulnerable save?
Tyranid Horde wrote: I think if they were able to bring back the damage chart for vehicles it would make them far more interesting. Shaking and stunning a tank was a valid tactic to neuter a tank for a turn while you had other things to do.
It was also thematic as hell, an immobilised tank in the middle of a densely packed board, weapons getting destroyed as it gets whittled down, that was cool. Now tanks are just lifted from the table and don't become terrain if they get destroyed.
I like it as is.
The biggest problem was that the old system was that it did not apply to monsters like Tyranids, Wratih knights or most annoyingly fake ones like Riptides. Havinig the same system apply - you can just as easily blow weapon limbs or legs of a monster as damage tracks etc on a vehicle - may have helped 6th/7th a huge amount.
Tyranid Horde wrote: I think if they were able to bring back the damage chart for vehicles it would make them far more interesting. Shaking and stunning a tank was a valid tactic to neuter a tank for a turn while you had other things to do.
It was also thematic as hell, an immobilised tank in the middle of a densely packed board, weapons getting destroyed as it gets whittled down, that was cool. Now tanks are just lifted from the table and don't become terrain if they get destroyed.
It was also one of the reasons they didn't get used.. Because one just loves their investment being easily stunlocked turn after turn while MC's didn't have that problem at all.
It was also why nobody liked when Artillery fire could kill a transport and every unit inside at once.
However most MC's were Toughness 6, so could be hurt by every weapon in the game. Sure they couldn't be locked down or have their weapons damaged, but T6 ³+ save with 4-6 wounds didn't get you very far. A Carnifex surrounded by Guardsmen armed with lasguns could be shot to death, where as an Ork Truck in the same situation wouldn't even get is paint scratched. Plus every anti vehicle weapon could hurt MC's, where as anti MC weapons couldn't hurt vehicles (poison).
I understand the complaint on the surface, but dig a little deeper and it has some serious flaws.
GW made the mistake of adding hull points taken away with glancing hits. This made strength 6-7 very good at taking out medium vehicles.
Galas wrote: As other people have said the solution to vehicles is very easy.
Remove invulnerable saves for them and give them many more wounds.
That way high damage and high AP anti tank weapons become the go to tool to kill vehicles, not anti infantry weapons or medium weapons.
Maybe there is something I'm not seeing, but isn't a 4++ basically the same as giving something twice the wounds? What would change, if you give them more wounds while removing an invulnerable save?
Low damage weapons that have low ap would be half as good while high ap weapons that ignore all armor save would be twice as good compared to now. So an ap 4-5 d6 gun would be about the same if you removed the 4++ but an ap 1-2 d1-2 would be really bad against tanks. Too many wounds for them to chew through.
If you also make d6 weapons d3+3 or 2d3 or flat 3+ they would be the preferable anti tank weapon unlike now. Perhaps add another 1-2 damage so a single shot melta that needs to be close is d6+3 or so if tanks have more wounds on average.
BrianDavion wrote: I'd be fine with more tanks, stuff like land raiders etc being turned into Lords of War and having their power level dialed up a bit to the point where you're going to take one and it'll be a centerpiece.
Or remove the LOW slot entirely and banish them to Appocalypse.
That would dial down the size creep. Which would allow all the MBT 's etc a bit more breathing room.
But that ain't making bank for gw.
yeah you try telling space marine players that their land raiders aren't usable in 40k anymore. or that Necrons can't use their monoliths.
Monoliths are a heavy choice, not LoW. You're thinking of Obelisks and Vaults. Are Land Raiders LoW? That's just weird.
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Galas wrote: As other people have said the solution to vehicles is very easy.
Remove invulnerable saves for them and give them many more wounds.
That way high damage and high AP anti tank weapons become the go to tool to kill vehicles, not anti infantry weapons or medium weapons.
Only if you get rid of variable damage and up the damage values.
If vehicles have 15-20 wounds on average and heavy weapons are only dealing D6, no one will still take heavy weapons because of how unreliable and expensive they are. Lascannons need to deal like a flat 8 damage or something if vehicle wounds are increased. Hell, they should deal like 5-6 damage now, or deal like 5+D3 damage or something.
It's hilarious the difference in design choices from the start of 8th, to now.
Hi, I'm a Baneblade! I'm the super heavy tank of the Imperial Guard, essentially a Titan. I have guns that can one shot Knights and drop a Titan to it's lowest bracket. I've got almost 30 wounds. I cost about 600pts depending on the variant, and fill a Lord of War slot.
Hi, I'm a Repulsor Executioner! I can drop a Baneblade to it's lowest bracket, am tougher to kill than a Baneblade when IH, Fly, am harder to charge, and can transport guys! I cost about 300 points, and fill a Heavy Support slot.
I know this will never happen, but I wish they would make the Baneblade T9 or 10. It wouldn't do much against massed low S shooting, but it would make it harder for actual Anti-tank units to hurt it.
I like the ideas from people suggesting increasing vehicles' toughness, wounds, and save, and then correspondingly increasing the strength, AP, and damage (e.g. to 3D3 or 2D6 damage) of anti-tank weapons and power fists etc. This would be the iterative solution that doesn't radically change anything about the core gameplay mechanics, but makes anti-tank weapons feel like they actually have a role again. It would also lessen the utility of those S7 D2 weapons. and allow the removal of all the invulnerable and FNP saves on vehicles. Frankly I think most of the infantry that have these rules need to lose them too. The game already has adequate design space to describe tough units with toughness, wounds, and saving throw for the most part.
I also think there's a lot of wisdom embedded in this observation:
Sunny Side Up wrote: Fundamentally a problem with the loose force-org / near-non-existent restrictions.
Make it a bit stronger, it becomes overwhelming if spammed. Make it a bit weaker, it's pointless to ever take 1 or 2 and not spam it.
I'm in favor of reducing wounds but giving a semi-reliable FNP to all of them (say 5+ for lighter vehicles, and 4+ for heavy). So a Chimera or rhino chassis might have W:5 and FNP: 5+, while a Leman Russ would have W:6 and FNP: 4+. It means a las cannon "could" kill one in a single shot, but not reliably, but at the same time, they can be overwhelmed by small attacks.
Mmmpi wrote: I'm in favor of reducing wounds but giving a semi-reliable FNP to all of them (say 5+ for lighter vehicles, and 4+ for heavy). So a Chimera or rhino chassis might have W:5 and FNP: 5+, while a Leman Russ would have W:6 and FNP: 4+. It means a las cannon "could" kill one in a single shot, but not reliably, but at the same time, they can be overwhelmed by small attacks.
That's really the opposite of how you kill armoured vehicles in reality. Shoot an Abrams Markava or Challanger with a 7.62 mangine gun for 1 hour and see if it still drives and shoots.
You take them down with anti armour not just massed flashlights, the old AV vrs S I get why people didn't like it when people suddenly brough full mech lists but this everything wounds everything and invulnerable saves FNP etc has turned it into how many dice can i throw for fewest points.
Mmmpi wrote: I'm in favor of reducing wounds but giving a semi-reliable FNP to all of them (say 5+ for lighter vehicles, and 4+ for heavy). So a Chimera or rhino chassis might have W:5 and FNP: 5+, while a Leman Russ would have W:6 and FNP: 4+. It means a las cannon "could" kill one in a single shot, but not reliably, but at the same time, they can be overwhelmed by small attacks.
If you do that then there's still no point in heavy weapons. Why pay for a lascannon if you can just focus down a rhino with a squad of infantry. Remember that the game has a bunch of stratagems and abilities now that increase fire rate, like shooting twice or generating extra hits. Such abilities benefit weak, high rate of rate weapons instead of heavy weapons, and you bet that in the case of vehicles getting a wounds reduction + FNP, those will still be the go to source of anti-vehicle damage because of how efficient they are compared to dedicated anti-tank weapons.
If you want to make vehicles feel like vehicles and give AT weapons a purpose, you need to make small arms and auto-cannon equivalents less efficient. Which means increasing toughness or wounds, not decreasing them.
Mmmpi wrote: I'm in favor of reducing wounds but giving a semi-reliable FNP to all of them (say 5+ for lighter vehicles, and 4+ for heavy). So a Chimera or rhino chassis might have W:5 and FNP: 5+, while a Leman Russ would have W:6 and FNP: 4+. It means a las cannon "could" kill one in a single shot, but not reliably, but at the same time, they can be overwhelmed by small attacks.
It just adds randomness and additional dice rolling while also removing the option for additional flavour. I dont mind Death Guard having a 6+++ as they are the FNP posterboys but if on a vehicle it shouldnt be because without it it wouldnt be playable. I kinda like the 5++ against mortal wounds some vehicles have in the psychic phase. But your suggestion wouldnt work with that.
I think the game is random as it is and we dont need d6 weapons be even more swingy.
Mmmpi wrote: I'm in favor of reducing wounds but giving a semi-reliable FNP to all of them (say 5+ for lighter vehicles, and 4+ for heavy). So a Chimera or rhino chassis might have W:5 and FNP: 5+, while a Leman Russ would have W:6 and FNP: 4+. It means a las cannon "could" kill one in a single shot, but not reliably, but at the same time, they can be overwhelmed by small attacks.
That's really the opposite of how you kill armoured vehicles in reality. Shoot an Abrams Markava or Challanger with a 7.62 mangine gun for 1 hour and see if it still drives and shoots.
You take them down with anti armour not just massed flashlights, the old AV vrs S I get why people didn't like it when people suddenly brough full mech lists but this everything wounds everything and invulnerable saves FNP etc has turned it into how many dice can i throw for fewest points.
Yeah in theory it works; after all, who would waste a turn focusing down a vehicle? The problem though is that there are so many force multipliers and such huge piles of dice being cast that focusing down vehicles is actually more likely than one would think, especially with D2 weapons, which should really be more for anti-infantry, light vehicles and monsters, not tanks
Mmmpi wrote: I'm in favor of reducing wounds but giving a semi-reliable FNP to all of them (say 5+ for lighter vehicles, and 4+ for heavy). So a Chimera or rhino chassis might have W:5 and FNP: 5+, while a Leman Russ would have W:6 and FNP: 4+. It means a las cannon "could" kill one in a single shot, but not reliably, but at the same time, they can be overwhelmed by small attacks.
That's really the opposite of how you kill armoured vehicles in reality. Shoot an Abrams Markava or Challanger with a 7.62 mangine gun for 1 hour and see if it still drives and shoots.
You take them down with anti armour not just massed flashlights, the old AV vrs S I get why people didn't like it when people suddenly brough full mech lists but this everything wounds everything and invulnerable saves FNP etc has turned it into how many dice can i throw for fewest points.
Also how many of those dice can I re-roll.
The old AV system was elegant and worked. It helped give weapons a clear role, now it is less clear what role weapons are meant to take.
The apoc weapons system seems nice. Weapons have an anti-personnel and anti-tank stat, and some are better at one than others. Maybe one can adapt that system over in normal 40k, like you still have your strength and damage stats, but there's also an anti-vehicle, anti-infantry and anti-monster keyword, and if the weapon doesn't have the right keyword when targeting a certain unit, then it suffers a debuff. Like, -1 to wound or something.
Of course, this would mean that lasguns can't touch T6 and bolters can't touch T8 as you can't wound on a 7+, but that's fine, it should be like that.
Tougness doesn't really matter in 8th, as a lasgun treats a Trukk, a rhino and a monolith and a titan the same. Yeah sure, it may not be efficient, but its still weird and awkward game design. What's the point of having such a wide range of stats, if in most cases they don't really mean anything? You might as well reduce everything to 1-6.
Worse Invulns, more wounds if you need more survivability, and up the deadliness of AT weapons (as in, I'd love it if Melta did 2d6W in half range) when used ideally.
When GW wants to scale durability on hard targets they should be skewing W, T, and Sv.
When GW wants to make something super-agile/hard-to-hit, it should be -1-to-hit.
When GW wants to make something supernaturally indifferent (forcefields, only partial existence, etc), *that* - and only that - should be invulns. Almost exclusively on smaller nonvehicle models.
This would help bring back a little more difference between "anti-tank" weapons and others; anti-tank can be low ROF, but extremely high D weapons, which would be worthless against hordes. And, importantly, anti-infantry weapons (D1 or even some D2) would be a lot weaker against vehicles. So "hulling out" vehicles with high-rof low-power shots is less viable.
Bharring wrote: Worse Invulns, more wounds if you need more survivability, and up the deadliness of AT weapons (as in, I'd love it if Melta did 2d6W in half range) when used ideally.
When GW wants to scale durability on hard targets they should be skewing W, T, and Sv.
When GW wants to make something super-agile/hard-to-hit, it should be -1-to-hit.
When GW wants to make something supernaturally indifferent (forcefields, only partial existence, etc), *that* - and only that - should be invulns. Almost exclusively on smaller nonvehicle models.
This would help bring back a little more difference between "anti-tank" weapons and others; anti-tank can be low ROF, but extremely high D weapons, which would be worthless against hordes. And, importantly, anti-infantry weapons (D1 or even some D2) would be a lot weaker against vehicles. So "hulling out" vehicles with high-rof low-power shots is less viable.
I think some of the effects eg ion shields could be represented by + armour save modifiers.
Ideally I would like armour saves on a D12 but that's not happening before 9th and probably not until 10th more realistically.
BrianDavion wrote: I'd be fine with more tanks, stuff like land raiders etc being turned into Lords of War and having their power level dialed up a bit to the point where you're going to take one and it'll be a centerpiece.
Or remove the LOW slot entirely and banish them to Appocalypse.
That would dial down the size creep.
Which would allow all the MBT 's etc a bit more breathing room.
But that ain't making bank for gw.
yeah you try telling space marine players that their land raiders aren't usable in 40k anymore. or that Necrons can't use their monoliths.
Monoliths are a heavy choice, not LoW. You're thinking of Obelisks and Vaults.
Are Land Raiders LoW? That's just weird.
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Galas wrote: As other people have said the solution to vehicles is very easy.
Remove invulnerable saves for them and give them many more wounds.
That way high damage and high AP anti tank weapons become the go to tool to kill vehicles, not anti infantry weapons or medium weapons.
Only if you get rid of variable damage and up the damage values.
If vehicles have 15-20 wounds on average and heavy weapons are only dealing D6, no one will still take heavy weapons because of how unreliable and expensive they are.
Lascannons need to deal like a flat 8 damage or something if vehicle wounds are increased. Hell, they should deal like 5-6 damage now, or deal like 5+D3 damage or something.
high flat damage on AT weapons would be a good thing in general.
A big part of why actual AT weapons are so unattractive right now is because of the often d6 damage. d6 damage is actually 3.5 damage and has to compete against weapons that do 2 or 3 damage but have more shots.
Lascannons would be a lot more attractive as AT weapons is they did a flat 5 damage for example.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: The apoc weapons system seems nice. Weapons have an anti-personnel and anti-tank stat, and some are better at one than others. Maybe one can adapt that system over in normal 40k, like you still have your strength and damage stats, but there's also an anti-vehicle, anti-infantry and anti-monster keyword, and if the weapon doesn't have the right keyword when targeting a certain unit, then it suffers a debuff. Like, -1 to wound or something.
Of course, this would mean that lasguns can't touch T6 and bolters can't touch T8 as you can't wound on a 7+, but that's fine, it should be like that.
Tougness doesn't really matter in 8th, as a lasgun treats a Trukk, a rhino and a monolith and a titan the same. Yeah sure, it may not be efficient, but its still weird and awkward game design. What's the point of having such a wide range of stats, if in most cases they don't really mean anything? You might as well reduce everything to 1-6.
The problem with translating that directly to 40k is because apoc also gets rid of the "each model has at least one wound' system in 40k.
A lascannon has a 9+ to wound infantry and a 5+ to wound tanks, because a lascannon will kill ONE guardsman, but in apocalypse, all guardsmen in a squad have only 2 wounds between them. In general, 5 models = 1 wound in apoc, until you get into the heavier types of infantry like terminators.
So guns effectiveness is based less on number of shots vs number of models like 40k and more on the wounding stat. a heavy bolter fires only a single shot, but has a chance to wound a whole squad, representing it gunning down 5 guardsmen.
Well, yeah, translating it directly over wouldn't work, but you can still translate the idea of it over, by designating each weapon as being good at dealing with infantry, monsters or vehicles, or a combination of the three.
The strange thing about 8th ed is that for a system that is supposed to rely on keywords, it doesn't make that much use of them.
Like, sure, there are some weapons that specify having an effect on certain keyword types, but why not ALL weapons? That should differentiate them, and solve the AT weapon problem.
Yes I get your point. Historically armed vehicles have a tendency to be alive or dead. They degrade a bit but often what can seriously degrade them just knocks them out instead.
In the fluff a round from a battlecannon or lascannon can knock out your vehicle. Game wise, its nowhere near that. 'Realistically' if a BMP (Chimera) is hit by an MBTs main cannon it is gone. Here it takes a few turns of degrading it.
I think though this was the only way to give them survive-ability so they can tank around the tabletop. But it means when you encounter stuff that for balance reasons can just kill them (some marine stuff for example) it feels so odd compared to classic AT weapons like lascannon not being able to.
Gone are the days of a single lascannon looking dangerous; instead, destroying vehicles feels more like peeling the layers of an onion than trying to line up the perfect killshot. I guess I'm an old fogey here, but I kind of liked the days of 3rd and 4th edition where heavy anti-tank weapons were expensive and rare, but each hit had a decent chance of wrecking a vehicle.
Does anyone else feel similarly?
Yup. Those old mechanics helped balance the game more in favor towards infantry, as that single heavy weapon in a squad could one-shot a tank. AV 14 was still pretty tough, but a lot of the time you could flank those and put a Lascannon into the side of a Leman Russ and have roughly a 25% chance of a kill via Lascannon. I felt the damage mechanics were nice too. Immobilizing things or just stopping them from shooting for a turn.
No it wasn't. There was a reason no one had seen a land raider since 5th, because they popped like balloons. Front/back/side, didn't matter(yes I know they were 14 all around but it was the same with russes). You'd be lucky if they lasted one MODEL of shooting, let alone a whole turn.
The damage mechanics just added insult to injury. There's a reason that by the end of seventh the only vehicles seeing any consistent play were either Free, Knights, or drop pods.
I just don't understand why tanks and the like have a 3+ save. A 2+ would make them highly resistant to anti-infantry weapons but still vulnerable to anti-tank, as they should be. As it stands, a 3+ save makes high-S, high-damage, high-AP, single shot weapons typically less effective than cheap high-volume ones with AP-1.
I'd rather they gave heavier vehicles a 2+ save and dialed back the number of wounds they have. A Leman Russ with a 2+ and 10 wounds would sweat a little more about lascannons that could bracket it in one shot, but wouldn't have to worry about massed bolter fire.
All these problems can be solved over night with one fix.
Move all die and stats to d12. Done. Now I don't care how many S3 shots you shoot at my T10 Rhino, if my toughness is 3x your strength, you cannot damage my vehicle. And vice versa, if you S = 3(T), you automatically do max damage. Thus, A Warlord titan has NO CHANCE of not obliterating your squad of Guardsmen with it's Sunfury Plasma Annihilator. I don't care what you roll, that squad is no longer there.
I like the idea of upping stats and getting rid of invuln saves to make tanks and anti-tank weapons both more appealing. For me though the thing that kills tanks is the ability to shut them down by locking them in combat. That might be the most immersion breaking rule in the game for me. Especially when it's like a land raider surrounded by gants. Why can't the raider just drive over them or at least be shooting it's weapons while it waits for it's slow death by nibbles.
Except the design brief for 8th (we know this from stream interviews) was “everything has at least some chance of damaging everything”, so this wouldn’t fit with their objectives for the edition.
You don't need to throw out "everything has at least some chance of damaging everything" to fix the problem. If vehicles had more wounds, a better save, and few/no invulns and FNP saves, you could still shoot a Knight to death with flashlights, and it would still take so long as to be pointless in all practicality as it is today.
is that while awesome sounding in a narrative sense, I really don't think there's any mechanic that can satisfactorily represent this in a dice game. In a game that essentially consists of I move my blob of models; I shoot your blob of models; you move your blob of models; you shoot my blob of models, I actually think that
peeling the layers of an onion
is the better option. No matter how expensive you make a trooper with a lascannon in terms of points, the tank is always going to cost more money, and removing that expensive tank from the table in the first couple of turns is going to hurt a lot more than removing the trooper.
You can make that infantry lascannon model expensive enough because this isn’t just a dice game or a points game, it’s a game of moving the models around, and position is the kind of expense you can use.
By itself a basic lascannon trooper can start out doing a bad job against tanks. But if it didn’t move that turn, if it’s under half range, if it didn’t get shot at at all the last shooting phase, and even if it has a view of the back of a tank, any sliver at all, then it can start piling on bonuses to wound rolls and damage for each one of those. Getting any of those in combination is pretty difficult, and that’s what makes the model expensive in terms of how good you have to be at the game.
Any amount of getting rid of special rules (invulnerable saves etc) and just using the basic profile characteristics from the main rule book is better, and then just fill in the profile using numbers from the data sheet and board position
Move all die and stats to d12. Done. Now I don't care how many S3 shots you shoot at my T10 Rhino, if my toughness is 3x your strength, you cannot damage my vehicle. And vice versa, if you S = 3(T), you automatically do max damage. Thus, A Warlord titan has NO CHANCE of not obliterating your squad of Guardsmen with it's Sunfury Plasma Annihilator. I don't care what you roll, that squad is no longer there.
So now I have to go out and buy 50 d12s and read them all at a glance? Feth that. And don't give that whole 'oh you'd need less dice durkadur' thing because 50 is AFTER needing less dice.
JohnnyHell wrote: Except the design brief for 8th (we know this from stream interviews) was “everything has at least some chance of damaging everything”, so this wouldn’t fit with their objectives for the edition.
And its a terrible objective. There is no difference between a lasgun wounding T6, T7 and T8+. The only real form of damage mitigation in that respect are saves.
What they could have done was bring back 7+ rolls. Like, if you need a 7+, you roll a 6+ and then you roll a 4+. That would have added more distinction and made toughness worth something.
JohnnyHell wrote: Except the design brief for 8th (we know this from stream interviews) was “everything has at least some chance of damaging everything”, so this wouldn’t fit with their objectives for the edition.
And its a terrible objective. There is no difference between a lasgun wounding T6, T7 and T8+. The only real form of damage mitigation in that respect are saves.
What they could have done was bring back 7+ rolls. Like, if you need a 7+, you roll a 6+ and then you roll a 4+. That would have added more distinction and made toughness worth something.
+1 to saves against weapons that only wound on a 6?
Move all die and stats to d12. Done. Now I don't care how many S3 shots you shoot at my T10 Rhino, if my toughness is 3x your strength, you cannot damage my vehicle. And vice versa, if you S = 3(T), you automatically do max damage. Thus, A Warlord titan has NO CHANCE of not obliterating your squad of Guardsmen with it's Sunfury Plasma Annihilator. I don't care what you roll, that squad is no longer there.
After playing the new Apocalypse at approximately 2000 points per side (a fairly standard-sized 40k game these days), I'm sold on a mix of D6 and D12 for different types of actions/rolls. I'm also sold on anti-tank weapons working much better against tanks, anti-personnel weapons working much better against personnel, no AP modifiers, no invulnerable saves, no first-turn alpha strikes, alternating activations, less down time, less dice needed, less CP and stratagem combo shenanigans, more strategy when choosing which units to activate and when, and actual damage unknown and not determined until after both sides have completed all of their actions. The new Apocalpyse rules do away with the vast majority of issues I have with 40k and I honestly wish they would become the major basis for a new 9th edition.
Move all die and stats to d12. Done. Now I don't care how many S3 shots you shoot at my T10 Rhino, if my toughness is 3x your strength, you cannot damage my vehicle. And vice versa, if you S = 3(T), you automatically do max damage. Thus, A Warlord titan has NO CHANCE of not obliterating your squad of Guardsmen with it's Sunfury Plasma Annihilator. I don't care what you roll, that squad is no longer there.
So now I have to go out and buy 50 d12s and read them all at a glance? Feth that. And don't give that whole 'oh you'd need less dice durkadur' thing because 50 is AFTER needing less dice.
Really the only thing that needs to go to D12 is saving throws to allow AP to be worth a damn and allow invulnerable saves etc to be turned into + modifiers and such.
Atleast that way you can make failing armour saves in enough quantity to count be less of a thing and mean you really do need to pile on the AP to hunt big game instead of the current mess.
Like land raider etc with a 2 or 3+ on a D12 russes on a 4 or 5, invlunerable saves being +1, 2 or 3 to your save and such and your needing to go melta or lascannons to even have a realistic chance of failure.
Marines on 6-7 4+ becoming 8-9, 5+ 10, 11 6+ saves become 11-12
JohnnyHell wrote: Except the design brief for 8th (we know this from stream interviews) was “everything has at least some chance of damaging everything”, so this wouldn’t fit with their objectives for the edition.
And its a terrible objective. There is no difference between a lasgun wounding T6, T7 and T8+. The only real form of damage mitigation in that respect are saves.
What they could have done was bring back 7+ rolls. Like, if you need a 7+, you roll a 6+ and then you roll a 4+. That would have added more distinction and made toughness worth something.
+1 to saves against weapons that only wound on a 6?
Yeah, that might work. Like, if the weapon strength is less half of target toughness, the target gets a bonus to saves which scales by how weak the weapon is.
So S3 against T6 = no bonus
S3 against T7 = +1
S3 against T8 = +2
The new rules on vehicles themselves are mostly fine and a huge improvement over past versions. The main issue is that a lot of the AT weapons are incredibly random and downright terrible against anything else. It creates a situation where in many games AT weapons do nothing and don't feel worth taking, but on the flip side, vehicles themselves have a high enough chance of getting trivially removed that they're too risky to take. The end result is just as you say. Vehicles can often feel too hard to kill while also feeling like they die too easily to feel like you can rely on them pulling their weight.
I like the idea that Infantry weapons are D6 rolls, and Anti-tank rolls are D12. You need at LEAST a D7 to have a chance of wounding a vehicle, so unless you have +1 to wound, it would be impossible for your bolter to wound a tank.
Any it would make it flat out impossible for a flashlight to wound something like a Titan or a lord of war.
Instead of adding extra rules, buffs/debuffs, and other changes IMHO changing the shooting phase to "I pick a unit to shoot, then you pick a unit to shoot" would go a long way for balancing the game (granted, this is ignoring the issue of Knights)
Automatically Appended Next Post: Taking turns in the shooting phase (like in the fight phase) would help prevent vehicles from being shot off before they get a chance to do anything.
Jimbobbyish wrote: Instead of adding extra rules, buffs/debuffs, and other changes IMHO changing the shooting phase to "I pick a unit to shoot, then you pick a unit to shoot" would go a long way for balancing the game (granted, this is ignoring the issue of Knights)
Automatically Appended Next Post: Taking turns in the shooting phase (like in the fight phase) would help prevent vehicles from being shot off before they get a chance to do anything.
Only consistently if damage is calculated and applied at a later phase. Hence, my post above about the new Apocalypse ruleset.
Jimbobbyish wrote: Instead of adding extra rules, buffs/debuffs, and other changes IMHO changing the shooting phase to "I pick a unit to shoot, then you pick a unit to shoot" would go a long way for balancing the game (granted, this is ignoring the issue of Knights)
Automatically Appended Next Post: Taking turns in the shooting phase (like in the fight phase) would help prevent vehicles from being shot off before they get a chance to do anything.
Only consistently if damage is calculated and applied at a later phase. Hence, my post above about the new Apocalypse ruleset.
Gone are the days of a single lascannon looking dangerous; instead, destroying vehicles feels more like peeling the layers of an onion than trying to line up the perfect killshot. I guess I'm an old fogey here, but I kind of liked the days of 3rd and 4th edition where heavy anti-tank weapons were expensive and rare, but each hit had a decent chance of wrecking a vehicle.
Does anyone else feel similarly?
Yup. Those old mechanics helped balance the game more in favor towards infantry, as that single heavy weapon in a squad could one-shot a tank. AV 14 was still pretty tough, but a lot of the time you could flank those and put a Lascannon into the side of a Leman Russ and have roughly a 25% chance of a kill via Lascannon. I felt the damage mechanics were nice too. Immobilizing things or just stopping them from shooting for a turn.
No it wasn't. There was a reason no one had seen a land raider since 5th, because they popped like balloons. Front/back/side, didn't matter(yes I know they were 14 all around but it was the same with russes). You'd be lucky if they lasted one MODEL of shooting, let alone a whole turn.
The damage mechanics just added insult to injury. There's a reason that by the end of seventh the only vehicles seeing any consistent play were either Free, Knights, or drop pods.
Two things.
1. In 5th edition GW reintroduced TLOS, removing much of the cover that vehicles could traditionally obscure themselves with.
2. In 5th the amount of special and heavy weapons available to armies began exploding.
More guns with less to hide behind, what do you think the result was going to be?
Also of interesting:
The shift from 2nd Ed to 3rd saw the prices of infantry drop, while the Land Raider went up in price. In 2nd Edition, a Marine Squad with a Missile Launcher and Flamer was 359 points, while a Land Raider with Lascannons and Heavy Bolters costed 220. In 3rd, the positions of expense were dramatically reversed, 165 (?) for the Marines, 250 for the Raider. In 2nd, even though a single shot might take out a tank, it didn't weigh as heavily in terms of points compared to other units.
People who complain about 300 lasguns being able to kill a tank and wishing for old rules should remember that a squad of Space Marines could reliably punch tanks to Death with their combat knifes, the tanks getting no save against that at all. Or a lascannon taking out a tank but only taking one wound of a Chaos Lord of Nurgle (only If he failed his 4++ and 5+++ of course, after being wounded on a 2+ while vehicles would be the only units to be wounded automatically).
The system right now is okay. I'd like if they did more than just lump anything in T7 or T8 (with Xenos having sometimes less), but somehow only FW units are allowed to go higher. Higher T or more wounds for some vehicles might be okay, though I couldn't say which vehicle I'd consider too squishy these days. Dreadnoughts maybe, but that's just because I'm Death Guard, overall they're cheap enough to die fast.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: People who complain about 300 lasguns being able to kill a tank and wishing for old rules should remember that a squad of Space Marines could reliably punch tanks to Death with their combat knifes, the tanks getting no save against that at all. Or a lascannon taking out a tank but only taking one wound of a Chaos Lord of Nurgle (only If he failed his 4++ and 5+++ of course, after being wounded on a 2+ while vehicles would be the only units to be wounded automatically).
Oh I haven't forgotten about these things. They always felt ridiculous, and we complained about them. If I recall, Eldar Wraithlords and Necron C'Tan were the bane of my Orks back in 3rd edition due to being multi-wound models with a super-high Toughness of 8, which was a *big* deal back then.
Again, in general the change to use the same ruleset for tanks, monsters, and infantry has been a big win overall in my opinion. I just think it needs tweaking to make tanks feel tanky again.
Tyranid Horde wrote: I think if they were able to bring back the damage chart for vehicles it would make them far more interesting. Shaking and stunning a tank was a valid tactic to neuter a tank for a turn while you had other things to do.
It was also thematic as hell, an immobilised tank in the middle of a densely packed board, weapons getting destroyed as it gets whittled down, that was cool. Now tanks are just lifted from the table and don't become terrain if they get destroyed.
I like it as is.
The biggest problem was that the old system was that it did not apply to monsters like Tyranids, Wratih knights or most annoyingly fake ones like Riptides. Havinig the same system apply - you can just as easily blow weapon limbs or legs of a monster as damage tracks etc on a vehicle - may have helped 6th/7th a huge amount.
The old system work as long as the MC's had implicit limits, usually 3-4 wounds (sometimes 5) - sure it was somewhat illogical that a Lascannon could not one-shot a Carnifex, but the MC's were so vulnerable to number of other threats that it was not imbalacing as such. Problems began when Codex designers began to add units with 6 or more wounds, often with Inv saves - it broke the balance down. Why would anyone add a Hammerhead on their army when Riptide is so much tougher?
8th system is a bore. Vehicles are now generic abstracted piles of hp and once the hit points are expended, they disappear magically. Yawn. The system no longer feels like it is simulating a battle, it feels like a game.
Insectum7 wrote: ^Oh yeah, the fact that wrecks dont stick around anymore bugs me too.
granted that's easily house ruled. I do think it's something that should be put into the rules as a "optional rule" without making it REQUIRED, as some minis honestly aren't ones I'd wanna leave sitting on the table as just scenery
Insectum7 wrote: ^Oh yeah, the fact that wrecks dont stick around anymore bugs me too.
One often overlooked feature of that is that knocked out vehicles became terrain that could give cover or disrupt movement/charges. Had quite a few games in 7th where destroyed vehicles played a major part in unit movement and allowed infantry to have some added protection in certain parts of the board. It's something that makes the game feel tactical and the board matters instead of just being a exercise in theory craft number crunching.
Jimbobbyish wrote: Instead of adding extra rules, buffs/debuffs, and other changes IMHO changing the shooting phase to "I pick a unit to shoot, then you pick a unit to shoot" would go a long way for balancing the game (granted, this is ignoring the issue of Knights)
Automatically Appended Next Post: Taking turns in the shooting phase (like in the fight phase) would help prevent vehicles from being shot off before they get a chance to do anything.
Only consistently if damage is calculated and applied at a later phase. Hence, my post above about the new Apocalypse ruleset.
This would be absolutely great.
Well, actually I’d want vehicles to not be able to do this and only infantry to get it but nvm
Mmmpi wrote: I'm in favor of reducing wounds but giving a semi-reliable FNP to all of them (say 5+ for lighter vehicles, and 4+ for heavy). So a Chimera or rhino chassis might have W:5 and FNP: 5+, while a Leman Russ would have W:6 and FNP: 4+. It means a las cannon "could" kill one in a single shot, but not reliably, but at the same time, they can be overwhelmed by small attacks.
That's really the opposite of how you kill armoured vehicles in reality. Shoot an Abrams Markava or Challanger with a 7.62 mangine gun for 1 hour and see if it still drives and shoots.
You take them down with anti armour not just massed flashlights, the old AV vrs S I get why people didn't like it when people suddenly brough full mech lists but this everything wounds everything and invulnerable saves FNP etc has turned it into how many dice can i throw for fewest points.
They would still have high toughness, which means fewer of those hits would go through.
Mmmpi wrote: I'm in favor of reducing wounds but giving a semi-reliable FNP to all of them (say 5+ for lighter vehicles, and 4+ for heavy). So a Chimera or rhino chassis might have W:5 and FNP: 5+, while a Leman Russ would have W:6 and FNP: 4+. It means a las cannon "could" kill one in a single shot, but not reliably, but at the same time, they can be overwhelmed by small attacks.
That's really the opposite of how you kill armoured vehicles in reality. Shoot an Abrams Markava or Challanger with a 7.62 mangine gun for 1 hour and see if it still drives and shoots.
You take them down with anti armour not just massed flashlights, the old AV vrs S I get why people didn't like it when people suddenly brough full mech lists but this everything wounds everything and invulnerable saves FNP etc has turned it into how many dice can i throw for fewest points.
They would still have high toughness, which means fewer of those hits would go through.
Not really. Mathematically speaking T6 and T8 are the same against S3.
Which is a problem, really.
T8 is certainly high tougness, but T6? That's a light vehicle.
Insectum7 wrote: ^Oh yeah, the fact that wrecks dont stick around anymore bugs me too.
One often overlooked feature of that is that knocked out vehicles became terrain that could give cover or disrupt movement/charges. Had quite a few games in 7th where destroyed vehicles played a major part in unit movement and allowed infantry to have some added protection in certain parts of the board. It's something that makes the game feel tactical and the board matters instead of just being a exercise in theory craft number crunching.
Absolutely. I definitely won a couple games by plowing my vehicles forward so I could use the wrecks as cover.
Also when your vehicles took different kind of damage, it forced you to improvise. Your tank lost main gun? Shucks, oh well I have to charge forward to employ secondary weapons, or tank shock, or claim objectives. In 8th, the vehicle stays same, just gets bit worse. Unless it's a small vehicle, then it stays same until it loses its last wound. Yawn.
Mmmpi wrote: I'm in favor of reducing wounds but giving a semi-reliable FNP to all of them (say 5+ for lighter vehicles, and 4+ for heavy). So a Chimera or rhino chassis might have W:5 and FNP: 5+, while a Leman Russ would have W:6 and FNP: 4+. It means a las cannon "could" kill one in a single shot, but not reliably, but at the same time, they can be overwhelmed by small attacks.
That's really the opposite of how you kill armoured vehicles in reality. Shoot an Abrams Markava or Challanger with a 7.62 mangine gun for 1 hour and see if it still drives and shoots.
You take them down with anti armour not just massed flashlights, the old AV vrs S I get why people didn't like it when people suddenly brough full mech lists but this everything wounds everything and invulnerable saves FNP etc has turned it into how many dice can i throw for fewest points.
They would still have high toughness, which means fewer of those hits would go through.
Not really. Mathematically speaking T6 and T8 are the same against S3.
Which is a problem, really.
T8 is certainly high tougness, but T6? That's a light vehicle.
Yeah, I think this game would be a lot different if GW had given vehicles wounds, but had kept the old wound chart at the same time. A Lasgun could hurt only up to T6, Bolter to T7. A Heavy Bolter would only wound T7 and 8 on a 6, also making it less effective of an Anti-Armor weapon. In reverse you'd also have Heavy Bolters wounding T3 on 2's, etc.
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Backfire wrote: Also when your vehicles took different kind of damage, it forced you to improvise. Your tank lost main gun? Shucks, oh well I have to charge forward to employ secondary weapons, or tank shock, or claim objectives. In 8th, the vehicle stays same, just gets bit worse. Unless it's a small vehicle, then it stays same until it loses its last wound. Yawn.
Yeah, and since facing mattered if you immobilized something you sometimes had the opportunity of working around its firing arcs.
Mmmpi wrote: I'm in favor of reducing wounds but giving a semi-reliable FNP to all of them (say 5+ for lighter vehicles, and 4+ for heavy). So a Chimera or rhino chassis might have W:5 and FNP: 5+, while a Leman Russ would have W:6 and FNP: 4+. It means a las cannon "could" kill one in a single shot, but not reliably, but at the same time, they can be overwhelmed by small attacks.
That's really the opposite of how you kill armoured vehicles in reality. Shoot an Abrams Markava or Challanger with a 7.62 mangine gun for 1 hour and see if it still drives and shoots.
You take them down with anti armour not just massed flashlights, the old AV vrs S I get why people didn't like it when people suddenly brough full mech lists but this everything wounds everything and invulnerable saves FNP etc has turned it into how many dice can i throw for fewest points.
They would still have high toughness, which means fewer of those hits would go through.
Not really. Mathematically speaking T6 and T8 are the same against S3.
Which is a problem, really.
T8 is certainly high tougness, but T6? That's a light vehicle.
Yeah, but that's also as good as the system lets it get.
Mmmpi wrote: I'm in favor of reducing wounds but giving a semi-reliable FNP to all of them (say 5+ for lighter vehicles, and 4+ for heavy). So a Chimera or rhino chassis might have W:5 and FNP: 5+, while a Leman Russ would have W:6 and FNP: 4+. It means a las cannon "could" kill one in a single shot, but not reliably, but at the same time, they can be overwhelmed by small attacks.
That's really the opposite of how you kill armoured vehicles in reality. Shoot an Abrams Markava or Challanger with a 7.62 mangine gun for 1 hour and see if it still drives and shoots.
You take them down with anti armour not just massed flashlights, the old AV vrs S I get why people didn't like it when people suddenly brough full mech lists but this everything wounds everything and invulnerable saves FNP etc has turned it into how many dice can i throw for fewest points.
They would still have high toughness, which means fewer of those hits would go through.
Not really. Mathematically speaking T6 and T8 are the same against S3.
Which is a problem, really.
T8 is certainly high tougness, but T6? That's a light vehicle.
Yeah, but that's also as good as the system lets it get.
Then change the system. They already changed it to something that doesn't work really well and is dumb, they could change it to something that actually works.
The old wound table was fine. If they really wanted to go the "Everything can hurt anything!" route (which is something I disagree with, but whatever), they could have just done 7+ rolls, which already have a precedent.
Tyranid Horde wrote: I think if they were able to bring back the damage chart for vehicles it would make them far more interesting. Shaking and stunning a tank was a valid tactic to neuter a tank for a turn while you had other things to do.
It was also thematic as hell, an immobilised tank in the middle of a densely packed board, weapons getting destroyed as it gets whittled down, that was cool. Now tanks are just lifted from the table and don't become terrain if they get destroyed.
I like it as is.
The biggest problem was that the old system was that it did not apply to monsters like Tyranids, Wratih knights or most annoyingly fake ones like Riptides. Havinig the same system apply - you can just as easily blow weapon limbs or legs of a monster as damage tracks etc on a vehicle - may have helped 6th/7th a huge amount.
The old system work as long as the MC's had implicit limits, usually 3-4 wounds (sometimes 5) - sure it was somewhat illogical that a Lascannon could not one-shot a Carnifex, but the MC's were so vulnerable to number of other threats that it was not imbalacing as such. Problems began when Codex designers began to add units with 6 or more wounds, often with Inv saves - it broke the balance down. Why would anyone add a Hammerhead on their army when Riptide is so much tougher?
8th system is a bore. Vehicles are now generic abstracted piles of hp and once the hit points are expended, they disappear magically. Yawn. The system no longer feels like it is simulating a battle, it feels like a game.
Agreed on the vehicles sticking around but cover /terrain in 8th without H/R's using all the optional rules is weak
Riptides and Wraithnights with all the advantages of Monsters - able to get cover, armour and Invulnerable saves, movement, etc etc where just broken
I like the degrading stats, I like that finally vehicles have got armour saves again.
there are too many bad bad memories of 6th/7th ed and this is just one of them.
I kind of think the abandoning on the armour system for vehicles was a bit of a mistake, it was not handled so well. But I do think under the current rules that it was not the right way to change things.
I also think that fixing them would be a bit more than just returning to a similar system :(
I haven't played Apocalypse at all, but from what I can tell, there's an "infantry" vs "everything larger" classification, and weapons have different chances to wound infantry vs larger models. It's like they went in the opposite direction from 40k 8th edition: instead of making the tanks use the same rules as infantry, they made the monsters use the same rules as tanks!
I'm feeling like maybe I want to play Apocalypse...
Pointed Stick wrote: I haven't played Apocalypse at all, but from what I can tell, there's an "infantry" vs "everything larger" classification, and weapons have different chances to wound infantry vs larger models. It's like they went in the opposite direction from 40k 8th edition: instead of making the tanks use the same rules as infantry, they made the monsters use the same rules as tanks!
I'm feeling like maybe I want to play Apocalypse...
Apoc does not make a distinction between number of shots and damage for different weapons, S, shots and D are all combined into a single wound roll, it's not really as different as it appears to be. A lascannon can only kill a single guardsman in 40k, in Apoc it can kill 5 but it just has a smaller chance of doing it, while a bolter has the same top damage of a lascannon against a tank, but just has a smaller chance of doing that much damage. Since they got rid of AP there is no difference between a great unclean one and a tank, it's just a big thing, no high T, low Sv vs low T high Sv. I'd argue that Sv is something that is missing from Apoc, but I still haven't managed to play a game yet, maybe I'll set one up in the coming week and see what I think. I'd love to sponsor a competitive league for Apoc and see what's broken, the problem is how few people can play it more than once every 6 months even with the shorter game-span it's still a lot of models that might have to be transported and a lot of space required to play. I've been considering contacting Skarri from SkarredCast since he's a tournament organizer and he seems to like auxiliary games, but I'll wait and see if I like the game myself first.
Pointed Stick wrote: I haven't played Apocalypse at all, but from what I can tell, there's an "infantry" vs "everything larger" classification, and weapons have different chances to wound infantry vs larger models. It's like they went in the opposite direction from 40k 8th edition: instead of making the tanks use the same rules as infantry, they made the monsters use the same rules as tanks!
I'm feeling like maybe I want to play Apocalypse...
Apoc does not make a distinction between number of shots and damage for different weapons, S, shots and D are all combined into a single wound roll, it's not really as different as it appears to be. A lascannon can only kill a single guardsman in 40k, in Apoc it can kill 5 but it just has a smaller chance of doing it, while a bolter has the same top damage of a lascannon against a tank, but just has a smaller chance of doing that much damage. Since they got rid of AP there is no difference between a great unclean one and a tank, it's just a big thing, no high T, low Sv vs low T high Sv. I'd argue that Sv is something that is missing from Apoc, but I still haven't managed to play a game yet, maybe I'll set one up in the coming week and see what I think. I'd love to sponsor a competitive league for Apoc and see what's broken, the problem is how few people can play it more than once every 6 months even with the shorter game-span it's still a lot of models that might have to be transported and a lot of space required to play. I've been considering contacting Skarri from SkarredCast since he's a tournament organizer and he seems to like auxiliary games, but I'll wait and see if I like the game myself first.
I think there is a misconception based on past versions of the game that the new Apocalypse requires massive armies and large tables. I've found that the new rules work very well with each side fielding an army in the 100-150 point range, which is comparable to a 40k game with each side fielding about 1500-2000 points, on a standard 6' x 4' table.
As noted, each weapon has a strength against personnel (SAP - light infantry and characters) and a strength against tanks (SAT - heavy tanks, knights, monstrous creatures, huge characters, etc.). Weapons like multi-meltas and lascannons have a great SAT, but poor SAP. Bolter weapons have a good SAP, and not so great SAT. Plasma cannons and missile launchers have good SAP and SAT. Hit rolls are made just like in 40k with the same WS and BS skills, but much fewer attacks are made per unit/weapon. Wound rolls are made using a weapon's SAP or SAT depending on target, rolling a D12 per hit. Hits that cause a wound result in a small blast marker being placed on the target. Some of the more massive/dangerous weapons are classified as "Destroyer" weapons and cause two blast markers per hit. Every two blast markers on a unit are converted to a large blast marker.
Finally, after all sides have made their actions (move, shooting, and/or fighting per unit depending on their order; alternating between players per detachment), the damage phase is when the blast markers are turned into actual damage/wounds with the save rolls. This is neat, because (1) all models get at least one turn to perform an action, and; (2) each player does not know until the end of the turn whether they have placed enough damage markers on a target to destroy it, and there are some command assets (cards) that can be played that let you remove blast markers (ex. Rotate Ion Shields for Knights), sometimes surprising an opponent who thinks they have dealt enough damage to destroy a unit. So if you want to ensure that a unit is destroyed, you really have put several blast markers on it.
There is only one save attribute per unit (no invulnerable saves), though some units do have FNP. For example Terminators, Land Raiders, and Knights all have a 4+ save. A D12 is rolled to save for every normal/small blast marker, and a D6 is rolled for every large blast marker on a unit, with many units not being able to save at all against a large blast marker if they have a 7+ save stat. Each failed save per blast marker equals one damage counter In addition, any unit with a blast marker also has to make a morale check, with additional negative modifiers for additional blast markers, and if failed, that unit takes another damage counter. Leadership/morale actually matters in this game. Once the number of damage markers on a unit equals the amount of wounds for that unit, that unit is destroyed/removed. Super-heavies can explode, causing damage to nearby units.
While a few of the weapon profiles and datasheets need some adjustments in my opinion, overall the system works great and quite fast, with much fewer dice rolls needed and very few opportunities for rerolls. Units like Terminators and Land Raiders actually feel really tough, as they should, and many units that have been overpowered at times in 40k, like Knights, feel much more balanced in play. I haven't even mentioned the terrain rules which make a lot more sense and work quite well. The biggest shock for me was how weak characters are in comparison to their super-hero status in normal 40k, being able to be targeted and destroyed much more easily. But once I got used to that, I found the game to be more realistic and tactical than standard 40k (for a sci-fi tabletop war game with little plastic army men).
Gnarlly wrote: The biggest shock for me was how weak characters are in comparison to their super-hero status in normal 40k, being able to be targeted and destroyed much more easily.
Haha this is something I've always hated about regular 40k, so it sounds like a big improvement to me!
Thanks for the synopsis. It sounds like a very interesting, well-thought-out ruleset. I think I'll check it out.
Besides a couple of tournament games where i experimented with Bone Breakers I have not used Vehicles at all this edition. Ork vehicles are in the category of sucking and that is about it. We have some vehicles which are fine in friendly play and are on the cusp of being competitive but that is it. Those vehicles are the aforementioned Bonebreakers, Gorkanaut......you could argue that is it though.
Every ork vehicle suffers from 2 massive flaws. 1: They are flimsy, they die really really quick, our knight equivalent (Gork/morkanaut) doesn't have a invuln save unless you buy one for the Mork. And our Super heavy (Stompa) doesn't even have a 2+ save let alone an invuln. And #2: They lack damage potential. Every ork vehicle lacks true damage on average. Yeah, for the majority, there is a potential for a lot of damage, but when you are hitting on 5s and have short ranged weapons on a platform which can't stand up to sustained anti-armor weapons...well you don't put out much damage do you?
Yeah, GW seems to have trouble understanding that just because something CAN deal a lot of damage, doesn't mean it WILL. So they overprice units with a lot of damage potential, even though it will never reach that potential as it relies on rolling hot. They should price units according to their lowest or average performance, not their highest.
I think every unit's lowest damage potential is zero. Is there anything that automatically does damage?
I think there's value in having a high, if unlikely, damage potential. Average damage is more important, but sometimes those high swings can really upset a battle.
Insectum7 wrote: I think every unit's lowest damage potential is zero. Is there anything that automatically does damage?
I think there's value in having a high, if unlikely, damage potential. Average damage is more important, but sometimes those high swings can really upset a battle.
ohh agreed, and those high and low swings can often make for the most amusing stories. I know, parituclarly back in 6th/7th there was a lot of blow back agaisnt randomness, but I'd be sad if they removed too much random from the game, it can make things amusing.
The back-blow against randomness in 6th/7th was to do with random psychic powers and warlord traits (and Daemon wargear); the point was the difficulty of actually building a list when you didn't know what you were actually taking.
AnomanderRake wrote: The back-blow against randomness in 6th/7th was to do with random psychic powers and warlord traits (and Daemon wargear); the point was the difficulty of actually building a list when you didn't know what you were actually taking.
yeah and on that I 100% agree. that was dumb. especially as you had events literally being decided by who got lucky and rolled invisability
Still getting to grips with 8th Ed, but vehicles feel a lot more entertaining now.
Sure, I can still get knacked first turn - but it's taking multiple shots to do so, so I still feel like I'm getting something for my points.
Compare to when I last regularly played, and the first shot of the first turn could see a Landraider blown to kingdom come. And quite often did.
Whilst not quite perfect (why the -1 to hit when moving for tanks?) it's hard to sort what's a personal bugbear, and what's a clearer issue with the game itself. Perhaps that'll come with ever more experience (I'm going vehicle heavy for my nascent Iron Hands, who I chose because they're a doddle to paint, not because I'm beardy. I am beardy. But it's a proper face fungus beard, not a metaphorical)
I'm a big fan of depreciating damage, have been since AoS first introduced it. Just feels satisfying, without the risk of something expensive being crippled first turn, and left in a bad position because I really thought I had it out of LoS.
Heck, the only thing I can think of right now to add is some kind of 'if you're assaulting a tank and roll a 1 to hit, guess who just got run over' type stuff. But only because it appeals cinematically!
Insectum7 wrote: I think every unit's lowest damage potential is zero. Is there anything that automatically does damage?
I think there's value in having a high, if unlikely, damage potential. Average damage is more important, but sometimes those high swings can really upset a battle.
The problem is that GW prices a lot of weapons/vehicles, specifically for me, all my ork weapons and vehicles as if the high end damage was the most likely outcome. Look at the Stompa as a great example by itself. Theoretically a Stompa can gun down a pair of knights without breaking stride, in reality, it struggles to kill a Rhino on average.
Gnarlly wrote: After playing the new Apocalypse at approximately 2000 points per side (a fairly standard-sized 40k game these days), I'm sold on a mix of D6 and D12 for different types of actions/rolls. I'm also sold on anti-tank weapons working much better against tanks, anti-personnel weapons working much better against personnel, no AP modifiers, no invulnerable saves, no first-turn alpha strikes, alternating activations, less down time, less dice needed, less CP and stratagem combo shenanigans, more strategy when choosing which units to activate and when, and actual damage unknown and not determined until after both sides have completed all of their actions. The new Apocalpyse rules do away with the vast majority of issues I have with 40k and I honestly wish they would become the major basis for a new 9th edition.
But I would add with fixed profiles. really why are my chimera as tough as Leman Russ..
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CthuluIsSpy wrote: Not really. Mathematically speaking T6 and T8 are the same against S3.
Which is a problem, really.
T8 is certainly high tougness, but T6? That's a light vehicle.
Yes I am all for weapons that are less than half (so S3 vs T7+) not wounding, and conversely more than half (so S7 vs T3) auto wounding.
Yeah, weapons always having a chance to fail at wounding is an odd quirk of the system, even in the old wounding table. If a lascannon just so much as grazes a person, that poor guy is still going down because of the sheer heat. I'm talking like 3rd degree burns just from being close to it. It probably won't kill him, but its going to be so painful that he'll be incapacitated, which is what being removed as a casualty is supposed to represent.
I really don't think the game needs to be more deadly.
I also never had the issue of S3 killing T7 vehicles or S4 killing T8 vehicles. Sure, they plonk off a wound or two, but they never actually kill those vehicles.
Jidmah wrote: I really don't think the game needs to be more deadly.
I also never had the issue of S3 killing T7 vehicles or S4 killing T8 vehicles. Sure, they plonk off a wound or two, but they never actually kill those vehicles.
Jidmah wrote: I really don't think the game needs to be more deadly.
I also never had the issue of S3 killing T7 vehicles or S4 killing T8 vehicles. Sure, they plonk off a wound or two, but they never actually kill those vehicles.
Which means shooting at vehicles with weapons like these is a pointless waste of time that just slows down the game. Allowing Lasguns and Grot Blastas and Guardians throwing punches to put wounds on vehicles almost never actually accomplishes anything, and armies with S3 models and guns have plenty of anti-tank weapons these days. I don't think it would hurt the game to make S3 attacks never have any chance of wounding T7 and above, but it would speed up play and clarify target priority.
Smite also just plonks of a wound or two, as do heavy bolters and assault cannons. Let's just make vehicles immune to everything, because just dealing two damage is a wast of time, right?
If all those S3 attacks would not have re-rolls, additional attacks and whatnot on everything, that would actually save time. 30 grot blastas (how did they get in range?) are not slowing down your game any more than you moving a single infantry unit.
Jidmah wrote: I really don't think the game needs to be more deadly.
I also never had the issue of S3 killing T7 vehicles or S4 killing T8 vehicles. Sure, they plonk off a wound or two, but they never actually kill those vehicles.
Yeah, exactly, they remove a wound or 2. That's 2 less wounds your other weapons have to remove to kill the vehicle. Every bit of damage counts.
You're probably more likely to remove more wounds with small arms than with variable damage weapons anyway, due to sheer volume and how unreliable the D6 damage system is.
Jidmah wrote: I really don't think the game needs to be more deadly.
I also never had the issue of S3 killing T7 vehicles or S4 killing T8 vehicles. Sure, they plonk off a wound or two, but they never actually kill those vehicles.
Yeah, exactly, they remove a wound or 2. That's 2 less wounds your other weapons have to remove to kill the vehicle. Every bit of damage counts.
You're probably more likely to remove more wounds with small arms than with variable damage weapons anyway, due to sheer volume and how unreliable the D6 damage system is.
AnomanderRake wrote: The back-blow against randomness in 6th/7th was to do with random psychic powers and warlord traits (and Daemon wargear); the point was the difficulty of actually building a list when you didn't know what you were actually taking.
I just loved not knowing if my Warlord was going to be good for what i used her for or not. I also had one guy that told me to just cheat and pick each game, since rolling so many things was just something he did not want to watch.
It also mean i could put it all in a list nice and neat to print out! That was painful.
AnomanderRake wrote: The back-blow against randomness in 6th/7th was to do with random psychic powers and warlord traits (and Daemon wargear); the point was the difficulty of actually building a list when you didn't know what you were actually taking.
I just loved not knowing if my Warlord was going to be good for what i used her for or not. I also had one guy that told me to just cheat and pick each game, since rolling so many things was just something he did not want to watch.
It also mean i could put it all in a list nice and neat to print out! That was painful.
That was one of the reasons I just took a named Character with a fixed Warlord Trait during those years. Hated that randomness.
Yeah, exactly, they remove a wound or 2. That's 2 less wounds your other weapons have to remove to kill the vehicle. Every bit of damage counts.
You're probably more likely to remove more wounds with small arms than with variable damage weapons anyway, due to sheer volume and how unreliable the D6 damage system is.
It is quite possible to get 20 ordered lasguns in rapid fire range. That is 80 shots, often re-rolling 1's. Statistically it does 46.7 hits, 7.8 wounds and 2.6 damage. That is enough to go through the rigmarole, but it means rolling almost 150 dice. That is a lot of game slow down for a few points of damage.
AnomanderRake wrote: The back-blow against randomness in 6th/7th was to do with random psychic powers and warlord traits (and Daemon wargear); the point was the difficulty of actually building a list when you didn't know what you were actually taking.
I see where they were going with it, but it was annoying especially for armies with lots of Psykers when you had to spend 20 minutes to roll up and write down all the random stuff your army gets before the game even begins.
On the whole, I feel 'randomness' of 6th/7th edition was much overplayed: people forget all the randomness 5th edition had built in and which was removed or downtuned for 6th. For example, Night Fighting. But 6th/7th edition randomness was still off-putting, because it was a lot of dice rolls which were usually completely meaningless but on occasion might yield something really powerful (like Invisibility).
Yeah, exactly, they remove a wound or 2. That's 2 less wounds your other weapons have to remove to kill the vehicle. Every bit of damage counts.
You're probably more likely to remove more wounds with small arms than with variable damage weapons anyway, due to sheer volume and how unreliable the D6 damage system is.
It is quite possible to get 20 ordered lasguns in rapid fire range. That is 80 shots, often re-rolling 1's. Statistically it does 46.7 hits, 7.8 wounds and 2.6 damage. That is enough to go through the rigmarole, but it means rolling almost 150 dice. That is a lot of game slow down for a few points of damage.
The chance of wounding on sixes is just as high as failing a 2+ armor save or trying to hit a plane with an ork unit. So it's not a toughness problem though, it's a general 40k problem of not having some shortcut to accumulate many models with low quality weapons. 30 goff boyz with warpath, banner and Thrakka nearby will pulverize any T7 vehicles, but it will take ages to do so without a dice app.
