Way back when, when 8th came out, my gaming group decided not to follow along, primarily financially because we mutually owned almost all the cool 7th books that came out, and they released a f-ing library in 7th, but also most of us, including myself, didn't like what we then perceived as drastic mechanical changes.


But I am very curious now that a bunch of time has past, do you prefer 8th to 7th? 7th to 8th? What are the pros and cons?

8th is vastly better. Sometimes we remember those clumsy rules of 7th that did nothing for the game and laugh about them. 8th just runs much more smoothly, while also being tactically far more interesting. Also balance is much better and everything has its use, unlike in 7th were every weapon that wasn't Ap2/1 was practically useless. Psychic phase is much better, morale is still useless overall, CC is much better and more engaging, being a vehicle is not a downgrade.

Edit: being able to pick Warlord traits and psychic powers alone is a vast improvement, looking back rolling for them was beyond stupid

The things that are wrong with 7th are the same things that are wrong with 8th. Size creep, power creep, Codex favouritism, slow strangling of customizability, and an endless stack of new special rules to make everything more 'unique'. The push to vehicles-with-saves/armoured-MCs in 7th and the push to T8/strong Invulnerable saves in 8th keeps the whole game built around volume and skew lists, the push to make individual psychic powers bigger and bigger and bigger while keeping a tight constraint on the ability to actually cast powers ends up making psykers not scale at all (one psyker is massively powerful in small games and sort of irrelevant in big games, and subsequent psykers are worse than the first).

I liked 7th better because once you stripped off the pile of bloat there was still a game left over; you had to worry about target priority, fire arcs and Difficult Terrain made positioning relevant, you couldn't just spam one gun and kill everything. 8th is about setting up your card-game combo and the basic gameplay has been so stripped down it might as well not exist.

I'd take 7th any day. It's better to fail making something complicated and in depth and end up with a flawed good game than it is to fail making something simple and ending up with a flawed average game.

In my experience, competitive tournament players don't like it because of balance, but narrative/ campaign style players like it because there's a lot of support for factions that haven't had any in a long time (though some will debate this); there are a lot of games of various scales that interact with each other (you can grow from Blackstone to Kill Team to 40k to Apocalypse pretty seamlessly) and there are multiple story line campaign releases.

My personal opinion is the best 40k has ever been, but I wouldn't play in a tournament if you paid me, and I play all four of the games listed above; my two favourite armies are Sisters of Battle and Genestealer Cults, so I'm pretty heavily invested and kinda biased.

7th and 8th Edition have a lot of similar pros and cons (as pointed out by AnomanderRake). The game is pretty fast these days, and some of the new mechanics have worked out well and better than the 7th core rules ever could. There are shared issues, like the power creep, the need for a library of books to play the game, and the push for everything to have invuln saves for some reason. These are traits that are the same as 7th. Then, there's the exclusive flaws that are new to the edition, such as the lack of customisation (especially with many HQs), the lack of any real terrain rules, and the codex favouritism is getting worse and worse.

Really, it all comes down to 1 thing. If you didn't like 7th edition, you'll probably really enjoy 8th. If you enjoyed 7th edition, you won't get much from 8th.

I greatly enjoyed 8th towards the beginning... but now, I honestly can't be bothered to play it anymore. Games take forever due to the amount of dice things roll, reroll, roll to wound, reroll, saves, and rolls to ignore damage.

I still love my army, and most of the 40k lore... but I have found the only 40k related game I can stand playing is Kill Team. And that is mainly because of with how fast it is, the janky rules and poor balance bug me less than wasting 2-4 hours to slog through a game of 8th.

Mainly playing other game systems now, but would likely come back to full 40k if GW implemented some of the ideas from Apocalypse into standard 40k.

Honest answer? 8th is a bloated mess. It's ended up right in the same place 7th edition was...but it's still a better/more solid rule set.

40K has never been a good rule set, but 8th has been the most enjoyable version of it since 2nd edition (and that's coming from someone who's more or less not playing 8th right now).

8th is a bloated monster of a game with no concept of what scale it wants to play.

That said, it's still less of a mess than 7E, at least thus far. Thats starting to change here over the last couple months, but I'd still play 8E over 6E/7E any day of the week without question or hesitation.

Most fun I've had since 2nd / 3rd.

Most balanced and most responsive GW has ever been despite rolling issues.

Honestly this is the worst place to ask. Go to a store and ask someone to teach you.

its functionally the same as the best and worst parts of 7th but with the added benefit of FAQs to shake up the "meta" a couple times a year.

It has the exact same rules bloat problem, the exact same need to carry many books around to play up to date, power creep (when hasnt that been a problem), armies that are clearly superior to others etc.

so far GWs promise about keeping the game simpler is about as true as when EA makes a promise about no loot boxes, we all know its coming haha.

Is it fun though, subjectively yeah I think so.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Also balance is much better and everything has its use, unlike in 7th were every weapon that wasn't Ap2/1

I dont mean to get argumentative but this was something about 7th that people didn't understand competitively in my circle, at least.

You load up on AP1/AP2, I can beat that gak with dakka every time. And if I load up with AP1/AP2, I will get my ass handed to me by dakka from my opponent. It is a beautiful dynamic that had held up since the beginning to the end of 7th, even with all the fancy formations and all that.

The real problem with 7th is and always has been the AP14 conundrum.

But this is tall from three years ago and no longer relevant, I suppose.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Most fun I've had since 2nd / 3rd.

Most balanced and most responsive GW has ever been despite rolling issues.

Honestly this is the worst place to ask. Go to a store and ask someone to teach you.

All of this. Expect salt if you shout a question down a salt mine.

I personally hated 7th edition and jumped ship early on to play mostly Warmachine/Hordes and later infinity. I came back with 8th and loved it.

The game is getting a little bloated as of late but I don't mind it too much. Also GW released Kill Team in 8th and is continuing to support it. I love playing kill team as well normal 40k and it is a great avenue for new players to get into the hobby. The buy in cost is much lower and the rules aren't that hard for newbies to grasp.

I also love a lot of the new models like primaris. IMO 8th is a big improvement from 7th.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Size creep

I honestly laughed when they came out with the 10 foot tall super-duper-really-this-time Space Marines, but I almost cried when I recently saw that greater daemons are now as big as the Magnus model.

And Deathguard are as big as the super-duper Marines, and it seems like maybe the source modelers are getting old and want to paint on big ass models so they can see. That's my take anyways. It's better than the reality of more plastic = more profit.




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pm713 wrote:
I'd take 7th any day. It's better to fail making something complicated and in depth and end up with a flawed good game than it is to fail making something simple and ending up with a flawed average game.

Referencing 7th, some people in my circle always complained that it was too complicated. But the complication of 7th is precisely what I personally like about it.

I much prefer 8th to 7th. The bloat is about the same, the complicated-ness is about the same, and the idea of power lists are the same... but everything else is pretty much better. Save modifiers really do make different weapons feel different, and you really do want very different numbers of units, and different kinds of units.

For example, in 7th, if you were a bike or a skimmer, the world was your oyster. If you were a basic infantry dude, you were dead or a liability. In 8th, you might want a bunch of little dudes! They can take up more space on the table, which is great because of how you can't deep strike within 9" of enemies most of the time. So, yeah, Infantry Squads, Scouts, Cultists, Termagants, etc. are all very inexpensive models, with bad stats, and bad weapons, with no AP... but they take up a lot more space, are never totally invalidated, and shots against them are shots not against stuff that's more worthwhile.

Not having to attach characters to squads is appreciated. Means that heroes feel more heroic and are more likely to get into actual combat where they excel. A number of characters together with a group of big guns/strong close combat can still make units hit far above their weight class, but they've been careful not to allow things to go too nuts. It's super SUPER rare to run into something that's a 6+ to hit, and nothing has a 2+ Inv.

Actually, speaking of toughness, there's more KINDS of toughness now. There are units with lots of models, units with high regular saves, units with high toughness, units with pretty good Inv. saves, units with lots of wounds, units that reduce damage taken, units that have feel no pain, and units that are harder to hit. And of course, you have mixes of all of these. The toughest thing in the game just recently (came up in past month, and GW came in to fix it) was a Dreadnaught with high actual toughness, high regular save, had a basic invul save, reduced the damage it took, has a very bad feel no pain, and could be healed almost to full in a turn if not killed. That's VERY different from the second-toughest thing in the game that has an average vehicle toughness, multiple penalties to hit, and reduces damage it takes by a little bit.

Also, all those toughnesses aren't always tough to the same things. Mortal Wounds from psykers exist, weapons that auto-hit (like flamers) exist, tons of low-damage weapons exist that don't get reduced, tons of multi-damage weapons exist that push through feel no pains (oh yeah, almost no units have better than a 5+ FnP, the best are 4+), high AP weapons exist to punch through high armour, things that ignore or remove invulnerable save exist to cut through high invulnerable saves. Yeah, lots of toughnesses exist, but so do lots of different ways of pushing through damage.

The speed of play is about the same, but the speed at which units start interacting is faster. You are able to get almost any unit you play with into a position of some kind of effectiveness turn 1, and are highly rewarded for doing so. GW Missions from Chapter Approved or later are also much better with many games, rewarding dynamic and smart play.

Are there issues? Yeah, of course. But the basis of the game is just so much better.

7th was the worst game I've ever played by the end.

Not the worst wargame, the worst game. Videogame, board game, sport, miss mary mack, i spy, the crazy calvinball things you make up as a little kid, didn't matter, 7th was the absolute worst.

8th is fun.


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 jasper76 wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Also balance is much better and everything has its use, unlike in 7th were every weapon that wasn't Ap2/1

I dont mean to get argumentative but this was something about 7th that people didn't understand competitively in my circle, at least.

You load up on AP1/AP2, I can beat that gak with dakka every time. And if I load up with AP1/AP2, I will get my ass handed to me by dakka from my opponent. It is a beautiful dynamic that had held up since the beginning to the end of 7th, even with all the fancy formations and all that.

The real problem with 7th is and always has been the AP14 conundrum.

But this is tall from three years ago and no longer relevant, I suppose.

Also the fact that literally none of that matters because I can make a 50pt unit of blue horrors so resilient it would laugh off an entire riptide wing.

And that's not getting into ACTUAL deathstars.

By the end no one was bringing high ap weapons. You brought D weapons, grav, or a feth ton of S6+ or you didn't bother with shooting. Heck, post Tsons, even eldar massed S6 and SM grav weren't enough to keep up with the things you could do in a daemon psychic phase.


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pm713 wrote:
I'd take 7th any day. It's better to fail making something complicated and in depth and end up with a flawed good game than it is to fail making something simple and ending up with a flawed average game.

I forget how 'complicated and in depth' unlimited 2++ rerollable invuls with a 2+ FNP were.

I'll assume you meant Pink Horrors. I dont know what they did with Chaos Daekons after 7th but in the 6th/7th codex Blue Horrors are a rule you can represent with models, but not a unit you can buy.


And there was such a simple solution to any of those issues that came up with power creep.

"Hey dude. I dont want to play against that army. It's not fun, I dont stand a chance."

If your opponent is a decent wargamer 8n any sense of the word "decent", and you cry Uncle, that player wont use the same army next go around. He or she wont even want to.

I know that basic civility never stood up in pick up games at game shops., but if you think about it for a moment, that has everything to do with gamers and nothing to do with the platform you are gaming on. In any system I've ever played, you have to plan games with your opponents to at least some degree in order for them to be fun, balanced, immersive, etc

If 8th was able to remove this element from gaming, I'd live to know how, but I know no system can. Not even a simple game of chess is in any way whatsoever balanced.

 jasper76 wrote:
I'll assume you meant Pink Horrors. I dont know what they did with Chaos Daekons after 7th but in the 6th/7th codex Blue Horrors are a rule you can represent with models, but not a unit you buy.

They were released late 7th in the Warzone Fenris books.

I feel like 8th had a strong start. Flawed? Very, but by GW standards the game was in a good place. I think it was strong coming into 2019, but has been going downhill throughout the year with the new Marine dex accelerating the trend.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:
I'll assume you meant Pink Horrors. I dont know what they did with Chaos Daekons after 7th but in the 6th/7th codex Blue Horrors are a rule you can represent with models, but not a unit you buy.

They were released late 7th in the Warzone Fenris books.

OK.. I never played with Daemons and the only time I face them is against the summoning chart, so noone I know has ever popped out a unit of Blue Horrors.


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 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I feel like 8th had a strong start. Flawed? Very, but by GW standards the game was in a good place. I think it was strong coming into 2019, but has been going downhill throughout the year with the new Marine dex accelerating the trend.

I remember the big selling point to 8th was you'd ever have to buy another codex. All of us called BS, because we know a significant chunk of the GW business model it to produce and sell books ina perpetual cycle of updates. I mean, this business model is self apparent to any consumer of theirs, it not a secret or anything.

Maybe one day they really will give rules out for free, and just make their cash off cool models. Not going to hold my breath of course

I will say, even though I dont play 8th, it is an absolutely GREAT idea of putting a print of the appropriate rules within the box of models you buy. I always wished they would have done that during 7th. That's a kind of a middle ground and I appreciate they started to do that




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Just to say, it was very interesting reading everyone's ideas about the state of 8th.

Whenever 9th hits, my group will stay with 7th, but I might get a copy to see how they do the 8th 2.0

The basic 8th edition core rules are reasonable enough. They do have some problems, like a lack of terrain rules. But for the most part they're serviceable for fun fast games with the index army lists, and work fine as long as what you pile on top of them in the later codices isn't completely insane.

So of course, that's what GW did. The codices are getting crazier and more complicated as time goes on, to the point where a very fast and simple ruleset now takes forever to play a game with due to endless re-rolls and people forgetting their rules and having to look them up in half a dozen supplements and FAQs.

8th Is just as bad as 7th, just in the opposite direction.

They really did away with terrain rules? I mean, is there still a functional point to having scenery?

Did they at least maintain Line of Sight requirements?

 jasper76 wrote:
They really did away with terrain rules? I mean, is there still a functional point to having scenery?

Did they at least maintain Line of Sight requirements?

Terrain doesn't slow you down anymore, generally provides a blanket +1 to armour saves if you're standing on it, and can still block line of sight. The line of sight rules allow you to draw LOS from any point on one model to any point on another, so if the tip of your Leman Russ' antenna wants to shoot the plume on my Autarch's hat it has all the firepower of the tank behind it.

So technically there are still terrain rules, but not really.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:
They really did away with terrain rules? I mean, is there still a functional point to having scenery?

Did they at least maintain Line of Sight requirements?

Terrain doesn't slow you down anymore, generally provides a blanket +1 to armour saves if you're standing on it, and can still block line of sight. The line of sight rules allow you to draw LOS from any point on one model to any point on another, so if the tip of your Leman Russ' antenna wants to shoot the plume on my Autarch's hat it has all the firepower of the tank behind it.

So technically there are still terrain rules, but not really.

Worst part is needing to have the entire unit in the area terrain to benefit from it. If your Boyz are partially in the ruins and have a few lads outside (say moving up the field into the piece of terrain) then you can't take the bonus to your save unless the Boyz not in the ruins are killed off. The concept of cover from terrain or units being inbetween the shooter and the target is basically non existent.

If you are interested in more detailed terrain rules you play Cities of Death. But the base rules also provide you with rules for ruins, woods, barricades, tank traps and so on, though their effect usually isn't as relevant as in 7th, I agree with that.

People have mentioned rules bloat in 8th, which I'm not really seeing. Or at least not in the way 7th had it where the base rules were already flawed with pointless special rules, vehicle rules that didn't matter due to hullpoints, and things like soulblaze. Or rolling randomly for your equipment like Daemons had to. In 8th I can evade the bloat easily by simply not playing Space Marines I guess
I agree that 8th has less customization of models and it's a real downside compared to 7th (the only one in my view). However I'd also say the options you have are more relevant, due to the better AP system every weapon has its use. Yes, Melter are still overpriced and should be fixed in CA, but oh well.

 Vankraken wrote:

Worst part is needing to have the entire unit in the area terrain to benefit from it. If your Boyz are partially in the ruins and have a few lads outside (say moving up the field into the piece of terrain) then you can't take the bonus to your save unless the Boyz not in the ruins are killed off. The concept of cover from terrain or units being in between the shooter and the target is basically non existent.

What's even stupider is what happens when the bulk of the models are out of sight completely rather than being in cover. In this case, your tank with a 20-shot gatling cannon can shoot at a single visible model and put wounds on all the models in the unit that are completely out of line-of-sight and they get no cover bonus. Whereas, if the other models were visible in or on a piece of terrain rather than being completely out of line-of-sight, then they would get a +1 to their save once the first guy standing out in the open gets blown away.

Yes that's right folks, it's now more protective to be visible but in or on of terrain than it is to be completely unseen behind it!

Also hilariously, If you have models in or on terrain, they get a cover bonus, but if they're behind it (i.e. there are more things between them and the shooters), they get no cover bonus.

Basically terrain and cover have no real effect in 8th edition, except for units of 5 or fewer infantry models which are small enough that all models can occupy ruins and are occasionally capable of being completely out of line of sight. Other than that, forget it: just assume the unit can be targeted and doesn't get a cover save bonus.

Minus some units that were obviously broken, I think the initial 8th edition BRB (only three stratagems for everyone to use) + Indexes was a step in the right direction to attempt to simplify and speed up the gameplay in order to expand the audience of the game. It has been very successful based on GW's sales. However, IMO 8th edition has now become bloated by rules errata, faqs, supplements, too many stratagems, and codex power creep. I'm now playing 1500-2500 point casual 40k games using the new Apocalypse rules (inspired/stolen from old Epic Armageddon) as well as Kill Team with just the main rulebook and and finding them both more enjoyable, primarily due to alternate activation rules. When "normal" 40k does away with its outdated IGOUGO turn system I will consider coming back.

I dont need any details on this, because I probably wont understand them anyway, but do Tyranids play good or bad in 8th? Necrons? (My two "big" 40k era armies are these) Did they get shafted or are they good armies in 8th?


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 Gnarlly wrote:
When "normal" 40k does away with its outdated IGOUGO turn system I will consider coming back.

Have you ever tested the back-and-forth style in 40k? It ends up being sheer madness, of the unfun variery, before you end Turn 1 every time I've tried, but I cant say I've tried with 8th rules.

Tyranids are apparently pretty solid this edition, necrons have done worse in 8th but they where kinda powerful in 7th with their own rules, as well as hull points making them digustingly deadly vs tanks

 jasper76 wrote:


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 Gnarlly wrote:
When "normal" 40k does away with its outdated IGOUGO turn system I will consider coming back.

Have you ever tested the back-and-forth style in 40k? It ends up being sheer madness, of the unfun variery, before you end Turn 1 every time I've tried, but I cant say I've tried with 8th rules.

I have tried a game of 8th 40k alternating unit movements and then alternating units in the shooting phase. You are still left with the problem of some units being taken out before they have an opportunity to act. This is one of the big reasons why I am using the new Apocalypse rules for "normal"-sized 40k games; all units get at least one turn to act as damage is not figured out until the end of the turn. It is also more realistic in the sense that an attacking force would not immediately know when a unit is destroyed in order to switch targeting to another unit.

I still think 8th is a bad ruleset >.< GW just does not write good ones for 40k it seems.

 jasper76 wrote:


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 Gnarlly wrote:
When "normal" 40k does away with its outdated IGOUGO turn system I will consider coming back.

Have you ever tested the back-and-forth style in 40k? It ends up being sheer madness, of the unfun variery, before you end Turn 1 every time I've tried, but I cant say I've tried with 8th rules.

What exactly made AA 40k bad? I do think other changes need to be made, such as reducing weapon ranges and lethality, but even just a change to AA would be a positive.


To your OP, I dislike 8th enough that I no longer play 40k. 7th had massive problems, particularly the poor balance, but there were actually some good ideas at its core, just not well-executed ones. 8th lacks the strategic depth, immersion, and general mental engagement I enjoy. 8th is just as bad as 7th, but in different ways, such has the elimination of USRs, fixed rolls. absence of templates, mortal wounds, a "scale" that encompasses grots and Imperial Knights and Primarchs at the same time, lousy LOS that allows tanks to hide behind buildings yet fire everything from the antenna left exposed, terrain "rules" that hardly impact gameplay, and so on.

 jasper76 wrote:
I dont need any details on this, because I probably wont understand them anyway, but do Tyranids play good or bad in 8th? Necrons? (My two "big" 40k era armies are these) Did they get shafted or are they good armies in 8th?

Tyranids are in an okay place, Genestealers and Warriors are pretty good which is nice since they were trash in 5th-7th AFAIK. Synapse is pretty easy to maintain and gives some solid benefits. The rules are solid but the internal balance still needs some work.

Necrons had FNP replaced with coming back to life, but instead of it being at the end of the phase and failed models being gone, it's at the start of your turn, every turn until the entire unit is gone. This can make for a feast or famine experience, either the unit survives with 1 model, which becomes 10 models, or 0 models survive. Monoliths have some really wonky rules in 8th, not a lot of fun, but at least they won't get stuck on a tank trap for the entirety of the game or crash while arriving from DS. Living Metal lets vehicles heal a steady wound a turn which just feels really nice, especially because of the way damage on vehicles makes them worse, sometimes your opponent will bring you just below a bracket and you'll heal it right back at the start of your next turn. C'tan are a lot of fun in 8th, with a variety of different cool powers that are all more or less worth using and your opponent won't be able to just drown them in bolters like in previous editions because of the updated character rules.

@Blastar, I dont know what you mean by "AA 40k". Is that a club for recivering alcoholic gamers? I know what that is, but that is in principal an awesome idea, exposing people to table top gaming in a detox environment, which I've sort of been to something like that, just not abuse related. You sit there and play Pictiknary all day looking at Nurse Cratchet. Like so much of what you see in the movies is still true, and strangely on the substance abuse end, they dont rely on any kind of science, but rather the manifesto produced by their particular Christ figure (Bill Wilson, right?

I could go on and on and on about AA, they have complete and absolute hegemony over people who are charged with substance abuse issues because of their unnatural alliance with our court system. The door to the left leads to a love bombing cult and freedon, and the door to the left leads to prison and self degradation. Take your chances. And most people in that situation will choose the religion over imprisonment every time

It's really sick thing here in the US, and having said all that, if you drink too much and go to AA to try and get it under control or become abstinent, I support you 100%. I just dont like the relationship between AA and the courts.

It would honestly be more beneficial for the person to go to a legit therapists for a couple months and line there head back on, for your average Joe who just drinks too much

 jasper76 wrote:
@Blastar, I dont know what you mean by "AA 40k". Is that a club for recivering alcoholic gamers? I know what that is, but that is in principal an awesome idea, exposing people to table top gaming in a detox environment, which I've sort of been to something like that, just not abuse related. You sit there and play Pictiknary all day looking at Nurse Cratchet. Like so much of what you see in the movies is still true, and strangely on the substance abuse end, they dont rely on any kind of science, but rather the manifesto produced by their particular Christ figure (Bill Wilson, right?

I could go on and on and on about AA, they have complete and absolute hegemony over people who are charged with substance abuse issues because of their unnatural alliance with our court system. The door to the left leads to a love bombing cult and freedon, and the door to the left leads to prison and self degradation. Take your chances. And most people in that situation will choose the religion over imprisonment every time

It's really sick thing here in the US, and having said all that, if you drink too much and go to AA to try and get it under control or become abstinent, I support you 100%. I just dont like the relationship between AA and the courts.

It would honestly be more beneficial for the person to go to a legit therapists for a couple months and line there head back on, for your average Joe who just drinks too much

Alternating activations, players activate one unit and then let their opponent activate a unit until all units have been activated.

Any kind of community will probably help with alcohol problems, humans are social animals and lack of social interaction makes people go mad. I am sure I am not the only one who enjoys 40k for the community aspect, the miniatures are cool, the game has its ups and downs, it's the people that have kept me coming back.

AA means alternating activations, as opposed to the IGOUGO that 40k currently follows.

For what it's worth, personally I've found adapting 40k to alternating framework rather trivial and in every way a positive change. It does slow things a bit, meaning I'd say the sweet spot is around 1500 points, but above that there's the new and rather good Epicalypse ready to go

Now I haven't played in 7th ed, but from what I have seen in the rules, it doesn't seem to be much different for some armies. 8th was great for eldar, 7th was great for eldar. Marine did okey in7th, they do okey or good in 8th. Stuff that was really bad in 7th, stayed real bad in 8th.

But I do not have a hands on expiriance, so hard to judge how accurate such an observation could be.

8th has been over all positive. Though that isn't hard to do coming off of 7th. I'll say however the overly simplistic nature of the game ends up a little problematic sometimes. At first it felt like a breath of fresh air that would lead to a bloat free life.

Now however, I'm left wondering how wonky all the bare bones rules work, tend to miss things from the past and find the rule set is just as bloated but its bloated on a unit by unit basis as opposed to from the core rules.

Some good, some bad things they could make it very good if they just added some depth to the system, like with terrain for instance, making morale mean more than an all or nothing game. Like I wish you could suppress or shake units etc. Maybe more interesting ways of dealing damage than Mortal Wounds everywhere. Them figuring out how to properly cost transports and making them a more interesting choice.

Just a lot of ways that they could make it more interesting. As an aside I'll never wrap my head around a whole tank shooting from the tread or an ammo box on it.

BrianDavion wrote:
Tyranids are apparently pretty solid this edition, necrons have done worse in 8th but they where kinda powerful in 7th with their own rules, as well as hull points making them digustingly deadly vs tanks

"Pretty solid"

AHHAHAHAHHAHA, the worst Xeno army by as mile (whilsts its faction is literally carried by GSC) yet you say that Necrons are WORSE (when were the last time Tyranids took a serious TOP 3? Necrons do that from time to time at least)

KurtAngle2 wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
Tyranids are apparently pretty solid this edition, necrons have done worse in 8th but they where kinda powerful in 7th with their own rules, as well as hull points making them digustingly deadly vs tanks

"Pretty solid"

AHHAHAHAHHAHA, the worst Xeno army by as mile (whilsts its faction is literally carried by GSC) yet you say that Necrons are WORSE (when were the last time Tyranids took a serious TOP 3? Necrons do that from time to time at least)

Using tournament placing as a measure of how good a 40k army is just a stupid, stupid thing to do. I get on fine with my tyranids and have won a majority of my games. I think I've lost twice in the last two years playing twice a month on average.

Put simply if you want high level competitive play 8th (and 40k in general) is trash and always will be. If you want a fun time with some friends for throwing dice around 8th is the best 40k has ever been,

I didnt like 8th when it came out, I found it too abstracted and boring and I hate the command point system. Don't know where it is now and don't really care. I still follow the scene somewhat but don't play or paint anymore.

Still enjoying 8th but I'd agree bloat is definitely starting to show at this point.
I appreciate the rules updates and "living ruleset" idea but Im struggling to keep up of late =/

I'd also reiterate alpha strike / powerful shooting is dominating too much with HtH being an afterthought

 Sim-Life wrote:

KurtAngle2 wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
Tyranids are apparently pretty solid this edition, necrons have done worse in 8th but they where kinda powerful in 7th with their own rules, as well as hull points making them digustingly deadly vs tanks

"Pretty solid"

AHHAHAHAHHAHA, the worst Xeno army by as mile (whilsts its faction is literally carried by GSC) yet you say that Necrons are WORSE (when were the last time Tyranids took a serious TOP 3? Necrons do that from time to time at least)

Using tournament placing as a measure of how good a 40k army is just a stupid, stupid thing to do. I get on fine with my tyranids and have won a majority of my games. I think I've lost twice in the last two years playing twice a month on average.

Put simply if you want high level competitive play 8th (and 40k in general) is trash and always will be. If you want a fun time with some friends for throwing dice around 8th is the best 40k has ever been,

This is so BS on so many levels I don't even want to fully reply. Discreting the only real statistics we have on Highest level of play for 40K (which ARE tournaments) whilst simultaneously putting all your trust in your local 2 games per month is somewhat I wouldn't try to do even under narcotics.

I don't think Tyranids are meta relevant - but they are surely much more fun and effective to play in 8th than 7th unless you took all the flying hive tyrants.

Which is really... the issue. I struggle to see this version of 7th people describe. There was an impassable tier system - both of units and factions. Now if GW had rebalanced throughout the edition (like CA) maybe it would have worked, but they didn't.

I also guess if you only played with a group of friends, and say one guy played Orks, one played CSM, one played Tyranids and one played DE you wouldn't think it was too bad.

But then someone would turn up Eldar, or Tau, or Necrons (early in the edition, less so later on) or Marines with free transports or superfriends. And then it wouldn't be fun, it would be one-sided tablings. And if you had two of those armies face off against each other so often it would come down to who went first.

So going to a store with one of the above armies was essentially just miserable for all of 2016 and early 2017. This wasn't the LVO - just some guy who knew enough that Wraith Knight+Scat Bikes=good.

Karol wrote:
Now I haven't played in 7th ed, but from what I have seen in the rules, it doesn't seem to be much different for some armies. 8th was great for eldar, 7th was great for eldar. Marine did okey in7th, they do okey or good in 8th. Stuff that was really bad in 7th, stayed real bad in 8th.

But I do not have a hands on expiriance, so hard to judge how accurate such an observation could be.

Well, not really. 7th had Necrons,Tau, Daemons, Eldar, Space Wolves and Space Marines on the top basically playing their own game where all other armies couldn't really compete (CSM got their Decurion very late in the Edition, before that you had to heavily house rule or play Maelstrom to stand a chance).
In 8th I'd say all armies are pretty close with Grey Knights being the only outlier. Of course there are some tourney lists that would crush more casual approaches, but they're not exklusive to any faction, just that Tau, Guard, Knights and maybe the new Marines have it a little easier.

Well eldar were great for months, and their flyer lists are still great. No many people play orcs here, because of army costs, but IG seems to be popular. But it kind does prove my view point on 8th. if I had started in 7th ed, instead of starting in 8th, I would just be miserable for longer. In the end it does really matter what kind of a marine list is beating you over and over again.

It is like in sports, when you have an opponent beats you at every event. It doesn't really matter if he chokes you out wins on points, or is an donkey-cave and wins by making you drop out because of on injury.

Were the demon armies soupy like the ones right now, because from a practical point of view the chaos lists that do well nowadays are full of demons, they just aren't non nurgle demons or they are csm demons.

CSM in csm armies seem to have been as bad in the past, as they are now. At least people here say that the last time csm were good, as in the models, it was 2ed or 3ed. That is a long time of being bad, if someone wants to play csm in their csm army.

KurtAngle2 wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

KurtAngle2 wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
Tyranids are apparently pretty solid this edition, necrons have done worse in 8th but they where kinda powerful in 7th with their own rules, as well as hull points making them digustingly deadly vs tanks

"Pretty solid"

AHHAHAHAHHAHA, the worst Xeno army by as mile (whilsts its faction is literally carried by GSC) yet you say that Necrons are WORSE (when were the last time Tyranids took a serious TOP 3? Necrons do that from time to time at least)

Using tournament placing as a measure of how good a 40k army is just a stupid, stupid thing to do. I get on fine with my tyranids and have won a majority of my games. I think I've lost twice in the last two years playing twice a month on average.

Put simply if you want high level competitive play 8th (and 40k in general) is trash and always will be. If you want a fun time with some friends for throwing dice around 8th is the best 40k has ever been,

This is so BS on so many levels I don't even want to fully reply. Discreting the only real statistics we have on Highest level of play for 40K (which ARE tournaments) whilst simultaneously putting all your trust in your local 2 games per month is somewhat I wouldn't try to do even under narcotics.

Considering a vast, vast majority of people don't play tournaments and play the same way I do I would trust my experience (both with 8th and the previous 18-or-so years of playing) over some tournaments. I mean if you want a really accurate representation of armies based on tournament data you need to factor stuff like the location, the player base, the spread of armies, the average dice rolls over the course of games, player experience, cost of entry, prize money, player attitudes, how well rested they are etc. There are too many variables in play to make any sort of accurate assessment of armies via tournaments.

For example does a hungover player who drove 300 miles the day before and rolled below average approaching the tournament casually but got lucky on some key rolls have the same statistical value as a well rested, competitive player who lives down the road but had bad luck with the dice? No. The very idea of assuming tournament placement is any sort of objectivly useful indicator of anything is laughable. Not to mention supposedly "low tier" armies surprise tournament players all the time. Didn't a Grey Knight army, supposedly THE worst army in 8th win a tournament recently? Why didn't tournament data predict that?

Nah, when it comes to the 40k that most actual people play, which is casual games with friends, I'll trust my own experience and knowledge over some random guy in California who says "oh well Harelquins won the Back-o-Beyond 2019 Tournament so they're OP, no it doesn't matter that there was only 4 players and one left after the first game, this is actual turnament data!".

Okey, but how different are the tournament lists from the non tournament ones? I don't play in tournaments, as it would be just waste of money. Most of my opponents don't play in big tournaments either. People do take part in store events, but I wouldn't call those the hight of tournament game play. Plus there are often wierd rules, like no monsters or no +2sv this round etc. So people don't have super optimised armies. But in reality all this achives is that instead of having 7-9 flyers, my opponent has 5-6. That his IH army doesn't have a leviathan, as we can't use FW rules at the store, but everything else you can find in IH lists is in the army. loyal 32s were common, I think I was the only one that didn't run it out of 17 imperial players at the store.


Also the suprise GK thing happened in 4 events over 2 years span. Two of which happened in scotland, where the guy that won with them anwser to "what about castellans" was "I hid my army, plus people don't play them here", and one was an invitational tournament to showcase painted army.

But yeah people do get suprised by GK, specially new ones. When they hear that a GK basic trooper cost 40+ or 21pts. Some get mind blown by it.

 jasper76 wrote:
Way back when, when 8th came out, my gaming group decided not to follow along, primarily financially because we mutually owned almost all the cool 7th books that came out, and they released a f-ing library in 7th, but also most of us, including myself, didn't like what we then perceived as drastic mechanical changes.


But I am very curious now that a bunch of time has past, do you prefer 8th to 7th? 7th to 8th? What are the pros and cons?

Well. 8th managed to remove tactics and logic. Rules are lot slower as well and only saved by most of armies dead after turn 1.

Balance wise same mess as always. Gw doesn't want balance and it shows.

No. The very idea of assuming tournament placement is any sort of objectivly useful indicator of anything is laughable. Not to mention supposedly "low tier" armies surprise tournament players all the time. Didn't a Grey Knight army, supposedly THE worst army in 8th win a tournament recently? Why didn't tournament data predict that?

Ah also, if GK were good, then people would have had done better with clone lists of the land raider list that won twice. But absolutly no one was able to achive the same results. Top build of the other armies on the other hand, were succesful in large and small events all around the world. And if they worked all around the world in big tournaments, then lists that look kind of a the same are going to just as good outside of tournaments.

People were were pulling their hair out, because of the pre nerf IH lists, that they had some mind blowing close to +50% win ratio. But I don't think many people thought what the old IH would do in non tournament games. Because in touranments you bring your best stuff. And maybe your army is not so good, but it has that one silver bullet build which is good. But if it is a non tournament game and you have not bought in to the tournament list, but "play what you like", then a casual pre nerf IH is going to beat you 10 out of 10 times. This was the problem with old Inari too or castellans. Sure they can be beaten, and not just by playing a mirror match, but it always involved a tournament list or playing a skew list. And not many people like to play skew lists ouside of tournaments, because if you skew too hard, people will just stop playing with you. Because what is there to prove? that an army with 100 str 5 ap 2 shots practicaly ignoring LoS kill a footslogging orc army dead? everyone knows that after 2-3 games.

Oh, one other reason to not listen to this forum - lots of people who dont play will come tell you how awful it is.

Sorry Sim-Life, but KurtAngle is right. If you want to know how well balanced a game system is then you look at what happens at the top of the most competitive environments where people are bringing their A game. You want to see the rules hold up there and see the top players win with a wide variety of armies and factions.

If it's well balanced and hard to abuse the rules in that environment then it's great for casual players just looking for a random pick-up game, because you don't need to have a negotiation over what kind of game you want to play.

Pefect balance isn't possible in any game complex enough to be worth playing, but in an ideal system the game should be decided on the table. A skilled player with a list picked by throwing darts should beat a bad player with a tuned tournament net-list most of the time, and 40k has never worked that way.

The Newman wrote:
Sorry Sim-Life, but KurtAngle is right. If you want to know how well balanced a game system is then you look at what happens at the top of the most competitive environments where people are bringing their A game. You want to see the rules hold up there and see the top players win with a wide variety of armies and factions.

If it's well balanced and hard to abuse the rules in that environment then it's great for casual players just looking for a random pick-up game, because you don't need to have a negotiation over what kind of game you want to play.

Pefect balance isn't possible in any game complex enough to be worth playing, but in an ideal system the game should be decided on the table. A skilled player with a list picked by throwing darts should beat a bad player with a tuned tournament net-list most of the time, and 40k has never worked that way.

Which is exactly why I said at high level play 40k is trash and always will be but at a casual level it's great. Armies people claim are terrible (GK, Tyranids specifically in this thread) do fine at the casual level. I know this because I've used them at that level and won games with them. My main point was that tournament data is useless for the most part because most people don't play at a tournament level, they play at a casual level.

Can I make this any clearer?

The Newman wrote:
Sorry Sim-Life, but KurtAngle is right. If you want to know how well balanced a game system is then you look at what happens at the top of the most competitive environments where people are bringing their A game. You want to see the rules hold up there and see the top players win with a wide variety of armies and factions.

If it's well balanced and hard to abuse the rules in that environment then it's great for casual players just looking for a random pick-up game, because you don't need to have a negotiation over what kind of game you want to play.

Pefect balance isn't possible in any game complex enough to be worth playing, but in an ideal system the game should be decided on the table. A skilled player with a list picked by throwing darts should beat a bad player with a tuned tournament net-list most of the time, and 40k has never worked that way.

Can you offer some examples of games which are well balanced and hard to abuse, where somehow being balanced at the top level of play, means they are balanced at all levels of play?
Because I am drawing a blank.

I feel confident in saying that in 8th, yes, a good player with an average list will tend to beat a bad player with whatever is the currrent net deck, because they will play the mission and the bad player won't.
But sure - if you meet on planet bowling ball and its just a question of throwing dice until one side falls over, the mathematically good stuff tends to win out.
But again, struggling to think of any miniatures game where this isn't the case.

 jasper76 wrote:
Way back when, when 8th came out, my gaming group decided not to follow along, primarily financially because we mutually owned almost all the cool 7th books that came out, and they released a f-ing library in 7th, but also most of us, including myself, didn't like what we then perceived as drastic mechanical changes.

I know this was just an introduction to your actual question, but I've been wondering if I'll feel the same way if GW release a 9th edition. I guess I've only spent about £200 on 8th edition rules so perhaps moving to a new edition wouldn't such a big deal

 Brother Castor wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:
Way back when, when 8th came out, my gaming group decided not to follow along, primarily financially because we mutually owned almost all the cool 7th books that came out, and they released a f-ing library in 7th, but also most of us, including myself, didn't like what we then perceived as drastic mechanical changes.

I know this was just an introduction to your actual question, but I've been wondering if I'll feel the same way if GW release a 9th edition. I guess I've only spent about £200 on 8th edition rules so perhaps moving to a new edition wouldn't such a big deal

Unlikely. They can refresh the system AND still get book sales with Chapter Approved.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Oh, one other reason to not listen to this forum - lots of people who dont play will come tell you how awful it is.

Yes, people who think it's awful don't play it.
Surprising, really.

Like 7th but blander and with less depth.

Tyel wrote:

The Newman wrote:
Sorry Sim-Life, but KurtAngle is right. If you want to know how well balanced a game system is then you look at what happens at the top of the most competitive environments where people are bringing their A game. You want to see the rules hold up there and see the top players win with a wide variety of armies and factions.

If it's well balanced and hard to abuse the rules in that environment then it's great for casual players just looking for a random pick-up game, because you don't need to have a negotiation over what kind of game you want to play.

Pefect balance isn't possible in any game complex enough to be worth playing, but in an ideal system the game should be decided on the table. A skilled player with a list picked by throwing darts should beat a bad player with a tuned tournament net-list most of the time, and 40k has never worked that way.

Can you offer some examples of games which are well balanced and hard to abuse, where somehow being balanced at the top level of play, means they are balanced at all levels of play?
Because I am drawing a blank.

I feel confident in saying that in 8th, yes, a good player with an average list will tend to beat a bad player with whatever is the currrent net deck, because they will play the mission and the bad player won't.
But sure - if you meet on planet bowling ball and its just a question of throwing dice until one side falls over, the mathematically good stuff tends to win out.
But again, struggling to think of any miniatures game where this isn't the case.

The core terrain rules don't help avoid a "planet bowling ball" situation where you need very particular terrain set ups and huge LOS blockers for them to have any real impact on the game. Also games in 8th generally seem so lethal that I've rarely seen them go to being decided by mission and instead it comes down to which army can effectively table the other first.

Backfire wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Oh, one other reason to not listen to this forum - lots of people who dont play will come tell you how awful it is.

Yes, people who think it's awful don't play it.
Surprising, really.

I think that this edition is horrible and I still play it every weekend, or at worse try to play it.

 Sim-Life wrote:

The Newman wrote:
Sorry Sim-Life, but KurtAngle is right. If you want to know how well balanced a game system is then you look at what happens at the top of the most competitive environments where people are bringing their A game. You want to see the rules hold up there and see the top players win with a wide variety of armies and factions.

If it's well balanced and hard to abuse the rules in that environment then it's great for casual players just looking for a random pick-up game, because you don't need to have a negotiation over what kind of game you want to play.

Pefect balance isn't possible in any game complex enough to be worth playing, but in an ideal system the game should be decided on the table. A skilled player with a list picked by throwing darts should beat a bad player with a tuned tournament net-list most of the time, and 40k has never worked that way.

Which is exactly why I said at high level play 40k is trash and always will be but at a casual level it's great. Armies people claim are terrible (GK, Tyranids specifically in this thread) do fine at the casual level. I know this because I've used them at that level and won games with them. My main point was that tournament data is useless for the most part because most people don't play at a tournament level, they play at a casual level.

Can I make this any clearer?

You're plenty clear, I just don't think you can call a game great if you have to negotiage/house rule/gentlemen's agreement your way to a game that either player can win.

The Newman wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

The Newman wrote:
Sorry Sim-Life, but KurtAngle is right. If you want to know how well balanced a game system is then you look at what happens at the top of the most competitive environments where people are bringing their A game. You want to see the rules hold up there and see the top players win with a wide variety of armies and factions.

If it's well balanced and hard to abuse the rules in that environment then it's great for casual players just looking for a random pick-up game, because you don't need to have a negotiation over what kind of game you want to play.

Pefect balance isn't possible in any game complex enough to be worth playing, but in an ideal system the game should be decided on the table. A skilled player with a list picked by throwing darts should beat a bad player with a tuned tournament net-list most of the time, and 40k has never worked that way.

Which is exactly why I said at high level play 40k is trash and always will be but at a casual level it's great. Armies people claim are terrible (GK, Tyranids specifically in this thread) do fine at the casual level. I know this because I've used them at that level and won games with them. My main point was that tournament data is useless for the most part because most people don't play at a tournament level, they play at a casual level.

Can I make this any clearer?

You're plenty clear, I just don't think you can call a game great if you have to negotiage/house rule/gentlemen's agreement your way to a game that either player can win.

When did I say you have to do that?

Karol wrote:

Backfire wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Oh, one other reason to not listen to this forum - lots of people who dont play will come tell you how awful it is.

Yes, people who think it's awful don't play it.
Surprising, really.

I think that this edition is horrible and I still play it every weekend, or at worse try to play it.

This is the only edition you've played and you play in a ridiculously toxic community and use a ridiculously toxic forum.

My 2 cents as a very casual player:

Been at this hobby on and off for decades. Last time I stopped playing was around the time when 7th was introduced. Didn't like it very much.

Now, having came back to the hobby, I like the combo of Kill Team and 8th ed 40k much more enjoyable than 7th ed 40k. For beer n pretzels type of a hangout session, 8th ed 40k (casual play) is fun and somehow feels more fluent than 7th ed. For a more cranial napoleonic tabletop experience, Kill Team is better. So our group can kind of choose which flavour of a gaming session we want. So far, I'm digging it.

Dont ask me about meta LOl. I play fluffy lists and tend to lose most of the time :p

 Daedalus81 wrote:


This is the only edition you've played and you play in a ridiculously toxic community and use a ridiculously toxic forum.

you know, I almost belived you guys about it. I really thought that maybe those flyer lists, castellans or old inari list were just our local polish things. But then new marines came out, and I suddenly find out that tons of people are doing their dudes in black to get the best set of rules. Now I think my place is no more toxic the other places, maybe different by cash limitations, and how often people can changed lists and that is all.

And the one edition argument is a rather strange one. Lets assume I played GK in 7th. If 7th was as bad as you say, and I have no grounds to claim it was not, would I have had more fun with my GK army? How about 6th? Or would I have to go to those mythical good GK times that lasted a few months, to have fun with them?

It started off very promising, but sadly morphed back into a very poor game. Some people like it, but some people also like McDonald's food.

Best advise I can give is use your 40k models to play either Apocalypse, or One Page Rules Grim Dark Future. It will be a more satisfying experience.

Its ok - its not great but its hugely better than the piece of gak that was 6th./7th

IMO The problems include:

Terrain rules
The ever increasing lethality
The constant unrelenting focuss on Marines that drains interest, resources and time on all other factions

And wierdly the seeming reluctance to use their own system - not enough use of the range of stats - so all vehicles from open topped buggies to Titans are stupidly stuck with very similar range of Toughness.

I am enjoying Appoclypse more for both 40k and Epic/AT scale games.

Karol wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


This is the only edition you've played and you play in a ridiculously toxic community and use a ridiculously toxic forum.

you know, I almost belived you guys about it. I really thought that maybe those flyer lists, castellans or old inari list were just our local polish things. But then new marines came out, and I suddenly find out that tons of people are doing their dudes in black to get the best set of rules. Now I think my place is no more toxic the other places, maybe different by cash limitations, and how often people can changed lists and that is all.

And the one edition argument is a rather strange one. Lets assume I played GK in 7th. If 7th was as bad as you say, and I have no grounds to claim it was not, would I have had more fun with my GK army? How about 6th? Or would I have to go to those mythical good GK times that lasted a few months, to have fun with them?

GK were a high tier army through most of 6th if I remember. Not just a few months. And no you wouldn't have had fun in 7th edition because it was a terrible edition and the closest 40k has come to dying because of it.

You keep complaining about how bad your GK are but you need to realise that every army goes through this. The last time tyranids were good was 5th edition and now they're middling at best. Chaos Marines have sucked for as long as I can remember, Necrons were last only good in 6th, Sororitas were never good. You just have to wait it out or sell them up and stop acting like you're the only army this has happened to.

Necrons were one of the strongest armies in 7th, they first got their decurion (that's why that wole formation mechanic was named after them).
CSM are in a good place since the end of 7th, they suffered from 5th to 7th, though with both Codizes from that time being worse than the one in 3.5.

I never faced GK, so I can't say whether they're as bad as the internet makes them out to be (I know Necrons aren't), but I'm sure GW will have something for them at some point. They're also Space Marines, and GW loves its Space Marines more than any other faction.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Necrons were one of the strongest armies in 7th, they first got their decurion (that's why that wole formation mechanic was named after them).
CSM are in a good place since the end of 7th, they suffered from 5th to 7th, though with both Codizes from that time being worse than the one in 3.5.

I never faced GK, so I can't say whether they're as bad as the internet makes them out to be (I know Necrons aren't), but I'm sure GW will have something for them at some point. They're also Space Marines, and GW loves its Space Marines more than any other faction.

The Decurion wasn't present from the start of 7th though was it? It came later. I only played enough of 7th to try the armies I owned and the necrons were hugely disappointing when I played them.

And space marine have also been an army thats been average at best for a long time. I guess they suffer for being the first codex of every new edition, they're at the bottom of the creep scale.

 Sim-Life wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Necrons were one of the strongest armies in 7th, they first got their decurion (that's why that wole formation mechanic was named after them).
CSM are in a good place since the end of 7th, they suffered from 5th to 7th, though with both Codizes from that time being worse than the one in 3.5.

I never faced GK, so I can't say whether they're as bad as the internet makes them out to be (I know Necrons aren't), but I'm sure GW will have something for them at some point. They're also Space Marines, and GW loves its Space Marines more than any other faction.

The Decurion wasn't present from the start of 7th though was it? It came later. I only played enough of 7th to try the armies I owned and the necrons were hugely disappointing when I played them.

And space marine have also been an army thats been average at best for a long time. I guess they suffer for being the first codex of every new edition, they're at the bottom of the creep scale.

I believe the release order for 7th was Orks, GK, Wolves, Dark Eldar, and Blood Angels. All of these where very conservative releases with the Wolves being the stronger release (and the only ones to be able to compete with the madness that came later) and a race for the bottom between Orks and Dark Eldar (DE was the worst dex except the haemonculus covens saved them from being a complete dumpster fire). Then the Necrons came out with their Decurion detachment which was a huge leap in power creep. The base dex was ok but the Decurion gave so many bonuses that it completely changed the meta and started the codex arms race with most future codex releases being roughly as strong if not stronger (except the 2nd Ork supplement which was mostly a reprint and completely tone deaf to the issues plaguing the Orks).

So what you're saying is most armies were crap at a point and sometimes get better. Except orks.

 Sim-Life wrote:
So what you're saying is most armies were crap at a point and sometimes get better. Except orks.

7th wasn't a clean slate start but more like minor adjustment from 6th with most rules being wholesale copy and paste so the meta for the most part continued on as normal. Armies like Tau and Eldar where top tier even before they got their codex in 7th. It's just that the early 7th edition releases tended to not push the envelope. GK and DE definitely got nerfed with their 7th edition codex while Orks had some previously terrible units made viable but overall the army got worse due to changing mob rule. Could also say that armies like Guard who didn't even get a 7th edition codex where potentially highly competitive the entire time (thanks in part to forge world silliness).

 jasper76 wrote:
Way back when, when 8th came out, my gaming group decided not to follow along, primarily financially because we mutually owned almost all the cool 7th books that came out, and they released a f-ing library in 7th, but also most of us, including myself, didn't like what we then perceived as drastic mechanical changes.


But I am very curious now that a bunch of time has past, do you prefer 8th to 7th? 7th to 8th? What are the pros and cons?

I think that 8th is the best edition yet.

I started in 2nd Edition and I still have a soft spot in my heart for that time - perhaps nostalgia. I didn't love the changes that 3rd brought but I had some good gaming. I enjoyed 5th edition, but my attention started wondering with 6th. I left the game during 7th - it didn't seem to be 40K. I came back for 8th and have been having the most fun yet. I think that 8th is doing well for three big reasons, some of which have elements that could cause folks to dislike the game but overall bring/keep more people.

First, 8th Edition boiled away the massive rules-set, doing away with USRs, vehicles rules etc. This made the game more accessible and less of a rules argument. While You Make Da Call has many farcical threads, I find few rules disputes in actual games. of 40K against actual opponents. Of course, boiling away rules makes some folks unhappy. One man's chrome is another man's bloat.

Next, 8th Edition took away many of the things that led to disputes and slowed things down such as templates, scatter dice and vehicle facings. This makes games clean and fast. The terrain rules are too simple for some, but at least you can get on with the game.

Finally, throughout 8th Edition the GW team have been engaged with the community and have made adjustments. They actually seem to want to have some element of balance and are willing to admit mistake (if in a roundabout way). Whether they are successful is a hot topic but I think that they have made great progress. "Broken" Codexes see attention fairly quickly - two weeks for the latest ones. This community engagement/adjustment frustrates some who don't want to refer to FAQs etc. I think, however, that the juice is worth the squeeze.

I can understand a closed group wanting to stay with 7th Edition if they loved it (which I guess could be a thing) and don't want to mix with the wider community. Perhaps they also play 30K? I think, however, that tabletop history will judge 7th Ed harshly and find 8th Ed, for all its Dakka-Angst, a golden era in 40K.

Cheers,

T2B

Most Playtested Edition EVER.

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
Next, 8th Edition took away many of the things that led to disputes and slowed things down such as templates, scatter dice and vehicle facings. This makes games clean and fast.

Then they added in hundreds of stratagems, tons of re-rolls, and multiple layers of conditional buffs, as we steadily creep back to cluttered and slow. Yesterday I had a bare-bones Cadian infantry squad, under FRFSRF, shoot at one of my squads of Renegades. That 40pt unit shooting requires an average of 76 dice rolls to resolve. That's ridiculous.

I dunno, man. I really liked how 8th started. I liked how much simpler and cleaner it was than 7th (never liked templates), and I don't mind the comparative lack of depth in things like casualty removal and vehicle facings if it makes for a significantly faster and cleaner game. But just replacing meaningful core gameplay concepts with gotcha stratagems and endless dice rolling, for no time or complexity benefit, doesn't feel like a positive change.

I have three friends who got into 40K this edition, and all have given up on trying to really understand each other's armies. They understand just their own, and then get blindsided by abilities and stratagems they didn't see coming. At least they're not arguing over scatter dice, I guess.

I really like the core 'idea' of 8th, if you will, but I feel like GW is drifting away from that and back into bad habits.

 jasper76 wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Size creep

I honestly laughed when they came out with the 10 foot tall super-duper-really-this-time Space Marines, but I almost cried when I recently saw that greater daemons are now as big as the Magnus model.

And Deathguard are as big as the super-duper Marines, and it seems like maybe the source modelers are getting old and want to paint on big ass models so they can see. That's my take anyways. It's better than the reality of more plastic = more profit.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

pm713 wrote:
I'd take 7th any day. It's better to fail making something complicated and in depth and end up with a flawed good game than it is to fail making something simple and ending up with a flawed average game.

Referencing 7th, some people in my circle always complained that it was too complicated. But the complication of 7th is precisely what I personally like about it.

99% of that "complication" didn't add anything though, so it's not really depth, just book keeping and meaningless detail. As a side note, the reduction of meaningless detail has also been accompanied with an increase in tactical and strategic depth, [not a small part of it forced], which is in my opinion better than knowing how many men bailed out of the M13/40 when it was hit in the upper left forward hull by a 40mm borfors gun.

I like big models, they're nice to paint and I sure as hell don't want to make any more guardsmen.


As for 8th, 8th is way better than 7th. 7th is, IMO, the worst edition of the game I played in. Unfortunately, they're going back that way with the Space Marine codex supplements, but up until recently 8th was really good. The unification of the profiles did away with monstrous creatures just being always better than tanks, and they've done a really good job on balance until recently, with even the most maligned factions doing fairly decently and the gap between the best and the worst being the shortest it's been in like forever.
Unfortunately, there's the new Space Marine codex supplements, which are very much a throwback to 7th, so it's going back down the hole.

If there was an old edition I'd go back to, I'd go back to 5th. That at least could give 8th a run for it's money, but 7th is pretty much the worst edition yet.

 catbarf wrote:

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
Next, 8th Edition took away many of the things that led to disputes and slowed things down such as templates, scatter dice and vehicle facings. This makes games clean and fast.

Then they added in hundreds of stratagems, tons of re-rolls, and multiple layers of conditional buffs, as we steadily creep back to cluttered and slow. Yesterday I had a bare-bones Cadian infantry squad, under FRFSRF, shoot at one of my squads of Renegades. That 40pt unit shooting requires an average of 76 dice rolls to resolve. That's ridiculous.

I dunno, man. I really liked how 8th started. I liked how much simpler and cleaner it was than 7th (never liked templates), and I don't mind the comparative lack of depth in things like casualty removal and vehicle facings if it makes for a significantly faster and cleaner game. But just replacing meaningful core gameplay concepts with gotcha stratagems and endless dice rolling, for no time or complexity benefit, doesn't feel like a positive change.

I have three friends who got into 40K this edition, and all have given up on trying to really understand each other's armies. They understand just their own, and then get blindsided by abilities and stratagems they didn't see coming. At least they're not arguing over scatter dice, I guess.

I really like the core 'idea' of 8th, if you will, but I feel like GW is drifting away from that and back into bad habits.

Beyond the fact that i agree with that sentiment,
How excactly does a cadian infantry squad get to roll 76 shots? 1 for sergant, 9 x 2 for rapidfire 2x for FRFSRF that is 37 shots? Asuming he rerolled 1 's that would be statistically be about 43 shots?

TangoTwoBravo wrote:

Next, 8th Edition took away many of the things that led to disputes and slowed things down such as templates, scatter dice and vehicle facings. This makes games clean and fast. The terrain rules are too simple for some, but at least you can get on with the game.

This isn't my experience, unfortunately. It feels like there are waaaaaaaaay more gameplay-slowing elements in 8th than I ever recall experiencing in 3rd, 4th, or 5th (6th was starting to bloat a bit, and I skipped 7th). Especially with Space Marines and Chaos, the number of rules you need to remember is immense, and these rules are scattered across multiple rulebooks. The games of 8th that I've played have dragged on much longer than I would have expected based on the points size and model count because my opponents keep forgetting their rules and having to look them up again. I don't verify, so I'm sure that they're getting some of their rules wrong too. Heck, I know I'm getting my rules wrong sometimes. In my last battle I forgot about my Kommandos' +1 to wound against models in cover and I mis-remembered my Warboss's warlord trait as being another one (I accidentally played it as +1 S and +1 A instead of re-rolling failed hit rolls and adding +1 D to weapons). Oops. When every single unit has its own special unique rules, it's just so hard to remember all of them. And then the endless re-rolls add time to every phase of the game. Overwatch adds time to assaulting while almost never actually doing anything. The whole psychic phase adds time (it didn't exist in 3rd-5th IIRC). And so on. Sure, templates and scatter dice and vehicle facings are gone now, and that does speed things up. But they've just been replaced with other elements that slow the game down again as much or more IMO.

zerosignal wrote:
Most Playtested Edition EVER.

Yep. Too bad they have discarded the results and gone back to their old practices.

The indexes had promise that GW was trying to balance the game, but as the Codexes came out, they moved further from balancing the game to adding creep and untested options and units. By the time they reached the Custodes codex, GW had apparently seen that its customers don’t want balance, they want power - and they want it piled on. And GW intends to go where the money is.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Beyond the fact that i agree with that sentiment,
How excactly does a cadian infantry squad get to roll 76 shots? 1 for sergant, 9 x 2 for rapidfire 2x for FRFSRF that is 37 shots? Asuming he rerolled 1 's that would be statistically be about 43 shots?

76 rolls in total.

He rolls 37 shots. On average he gets to re-roll about 6 of them. 43 rolls and counting.

On average he winds up with about 22 hits. So then he rolls 22 to wound. 65 rolls so far.

Average 11 wounds. So now I make 11 saves. 76 rolls total.

To resolve all the shooting for a 40pt unit with an army-wide trait and the most basic order, he rolls an average of 65 dice and I roll an average of 11 dice. That's absolutely nuts.

The same interaction in Apocalypse requires less than a tenth as many dice rolls, with no re-rolling, and ultimately I find the granularity afforded by removing individual models doesn't make the slowness worth it for 40K.

Nevermind, he beat me to it.

I'll add that some armies throw FNP saves on top of all that though.

The Newman wrote:
Nevermind, he beat me to it.

I'll add that some armies throw FNP saves on top of all that though.

You're right. In fact, last week I ran my renegades (using Catachan rules) against my buddy's Nurglites. So let's recreate when I shot my Catachan battle cannon at those Plague Marines.

I'm using Grinding Advance, so I get to shoot twice. I'm a TC so I'm using the order to re-roll 1s, too.

So I roll two dice for my number of shots, and then I'll probably choose to re-roll one. 3 rolls so far to establish that I will be firing an average of 9 shots.

I make my 9 attack rolls. 1 or 2 roll 1s, so I get to re-roll. We're up to about 13 rolls at this point, around 7 hits.

I roll to wound. It'll be about 5 successes. 18 rolls so far.

He gets his armor saves. Maybe one succeeds. 23 rolls.

I make four damage rolls and average 8 damage. 27 rolls.

Now he gets to roll Disgustingly Resilient against every point of damage. Except, since each multi-damage wound is allocated to an individual model, he has to roll them individually. So he makes four separate rolls of an average of two dice each, to determine who ultimately dies.

We have, to resolve a tank shooting some Plague Marines, thrown 35 dice over eleven different 'throws', as a fairly typical outcome.

I've never played another game that sucks up so much time just throwing and counting and re-throwing dice. I really think that ultimately any attempts to streamline the game will fall flat on their face so long as basic combat resolution remains so stubbornly complex, time-consuming, and contingent upon a whole host of situational abilities that are easy to forget in the course of gameplay.

 catbarf wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Beyond the fact that i agree with that sentiment,
How excactly does a cadian infantry squad get to roll 76 shots? 1 for sergant, 9 x 2 for rapidfire 2x for FRFSRF that is 37 shots? Asuming he rerolled 1 's that would be statistically be about 43 shots?

76 rolls in total.

He rolls 37 shots. On average he gets to re-roll about 6 of them. 43 rolls and counting.

On average he winds up with about 22 hits. So then he rolls 22 to wound. 65 rolls so far.

Average 11 wounds. So now I make 11 saves. 76 rolls total.

To resolve all the shooting for a 40pt unit with an army-wide trait and the most basic order, he rolls an average of 65 dice and I roll an average of 11 dice. That's absolutely nuts.

The same interaction in Apocalypse requires less than a tenth as many dice rolls, with no re-rolling, and ultimately I find the granularity afforded by removing individual models doesn't make the slowness worth it for 40K.

Ah, well yea that makes sense, as for the comparison to your 11 shots. Welcome to 8th index R&H, population? IG proxxy only.

And yes the whole reroll and wound and rerolls on top of that are an issue, especially paired with exploding hits and exploding wounds.

Actually I think Aggressors with the right traits get worse.

A minimum squad of 3, standing close enough and under Chapter Master, Lieutenant, and IF rules:

006 rolls just to determine number of shots
057 rolls to hit
019 rerolls
063 to wound rolls (38 initial hits + 12.67 reroll to hits + 12.67 hits generated by trait)
010 rerolls to wound
155 rolls total before a save is made for a 111 point unit.

034 wounds to save on a marine target
017 fnps for IH
207 total

45 wounds to save vs guard
200 total.

 catbarf wrote:

The Newman wrote:
Nevermind, he beat me to it.

I'll add that some armies throw FNP saves on top of all that though.

You're right. In fact, last week I ran my renegades (using Catachan rules) against my buddy's Nurglites. So let's recreate when I shot my Catachan battle cannon at those Plague Marines.

I'm using Grinding Advance, so I get to shoot twice. I'm a TC so I'm using the order to re-roll 1s, too.

So I roll two dice for my number of shots, and then I'll probably choose to re-roll one. 3 rolls so far to establish that I will be firing an average of 9 shots.

I make my 9 attack rolls. 1 or 2 roll 1s, so I get to re-roll. We're up to about 13 rolls at this point, around 7 hits.

I roll to wound. It'll be about 5 successes. 18 rolls so far.

He gets his armor saves. Maybe one succeeds. 23 rolls.

I make four damage rolls and average 8 damage. 27 rolls.

Now he gets to roll Disgustingly Resilient against every point of damage. Except, since each multi-damage wound is allocated to an individual model, he has to roll them individually. So he makes four separate rolls of an average of two dice each, to determine who ultimately dies.

We have, to resolve a tank shooting some Plague Marines, thrown 35 dice over eleven different 'throws', as a fairly typical outcome.

I've never played another game that sucks up so much time just throwing and counting and re-throwing dice. I really think that ultimately any attempts to streamline the game will fall flat on their face so long as basic combat resolution remains so stubbornly complex, time-consuming, and contingent upon a whole host of situational abilities that are easy to forget in the course of gameplay.

FNP needs to be removed from Nurgle and Drukhari IMO, replace it with more T or a better Sv. That said there's a neat trick for getting FNP over with more quickly for 1W models. Roll damage all at once, let's say two 1s, three 2s and one 3. You roll FNP for the first damage on the 3, if failed you put it in failed pile, if succesful the damage has been reduced to 2 and you add it to the 2s pile, next you roll three FNP for the 2s (and possibly another one if you passed the 3), you take the failed ones and put them in the failed pile, move all the successful ones over the 1s pile and roll them again, the failed ones go to the failed pile. The number of dice in the failed pile is the amount of dead Plaguebearers. But the game isn't designed around fast dice which is a real shame, I think that's something GW should consider working on for the matched play games. Balance so you can play fairly matched pick-up games. Rules that promote a fast game so you can reach a conclusion and don't have to pack up because you run out of time. Removing most re-rolls and replacing them with more utility related or stat-related things would be better.

As a Necron player, I don't appreciate the Overlord's buff one unit ability from a design standpoint, it's pretty good but it also incentivises me to pack several Overlords into my list which is very unfluffy. Captains shouldn't be spammed, I know they are occasionally spammed for their effectiveness in melee, but the incentive for spamming them is only as big as the unit is undercosted compared to Elite and FA alternatives. If you changed their aura into a targeted ability you'd have to have multiple to get coverage on several units, this would be negative for the thematics of the game. Replacing re-rolls with a +1 to hit aura with some sort of caveat would be an option, otherwise granting additional S, T, A, WS, BS, LD or what have you, just not a targeted spammable ability. For Lieutenants, it'd be more okay since each Company is supposed to have two of them. But 50 Marines led by 3 Captains is too much.

Are people really bad at reading their dice or something? Even rolling like 90 dice picking out misses takes about 5-10 seconds tops for most people in our group.

Or is this one of these non-issues Dakka likes to act are mountains when they're really just molehills?

 Sim-Life wrote:
Are people really bad at reading their dice or something? Even rolling like 90 dice picking out misses takes about 5-10 seconds tops for most people in our group.

Or is this one of these non-issues Dakka likes to act are mountains when they're really just molehills?

I think if you can spot and remove 5-9 dice every second, then you are probably in the running for a Guinness world record in knucklebones/jacks.

You are welcome to search through my post history and decide for yourself whether I'm one of those perpetual complainers. I will absolutely die on the hill that says rolling an average of 76 dice across four trials to resolve a standard attack from a unit that represents literally two percent of the value of my army is utterly ridiculous.

 Sim-Life wrote:
Are people really bad at reading their dice or something? Even rolling like 90 dice picking out misses takes about 5-10 seconds tops for most people in our group.

Or is this one of these non-issues Dakka likes to act are mountains when they're really just molehills?

You have to count your dice so you have the right amount for each throw and with a large number of dice it can take some time. The more dice the more time it takes to pick up and read to not make a mistake.

If you have to roll 10 dice and remove 5 from the pile it might take 4s if include finding and counting the 10dice. If we have 20 it might take 10s and with 40 the whole process is closer to half a minute. The sheer amount of dice just gets unwieldy.

I can throw 97 dice and remove the 1s and 2s in the blink of an eye. I cant count 97 dice and out put them in my hand in a few seconds though.

Sometimes I just remove models/units like scouts if they have less than a 20% chance of surviving just to skip the rolling of dice from 20 guardsmen. Not worth my time just to see if Im very lucky.

 jasper76 wrote:
They really did away with terrain rules? I mean, is there still a functional point to having scenery?

Did they at least maintain Line of Sight requirements?

Terrain rules are very poor. You can even draw a LOS through a forest to your target without any penalties. And it doesn´t help that GW sells those poor bare plastic forests...

Klickor wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
Are people really bad at reading their dice or something? Even rolling like 90 dice picking out misses takes about 5-10 seconds tops for most people in our group.

Or is this one of these non-issues Dakka likes to act are mountains when they're really just molehills?

You have to count your dice so you have the right amount for each throw and with a large number of dice it can take some time. The more dice the more time it takes to pick up and read to not make a mistake.

If you have to roll 10 dice and remove 5 from the pile it might take 4s if include finding and counting the 10dice. If we have 20 it might take 10s and with 40 the whole process is closer to half a minute. The sheer amount of dice just gets unwieldy.

I can throw 97 dice and remove the 1s and 2s in the blink of an eye. I cant count 97 dice and out put them in my hand in a few seconds though.

Sometimes I just remove models/units like scouts if they have less than a 20% chance of surviving just to skip the rolling of dice from 20 guardsmen. Not worth my time just to see if Im very lucky.

don't you use trays to throw dice. We use them at our store. 10 dice fit in to a single line, there is 20 lines. so getting the proper number of dice rolled is fast. Only thing slowling down dice rolling for us, is not the rolling itself, but checking if the opponent isn't picking up extra dice when he is rolling 40+ dice.

It's funny to compare 40k to other games in regards to dice rolling. I played lion rampant yesterday, it's a medieval squad based skirmishing game. Here is an example of a unit attacking another: some crossbowmen wants to shoot knights, they check to activate with 2d6. Success, now they roll 12 dice and hit on 5+. wow 5 hits cool! knights have 4 armour meaning it takes 4 hits to kill one. One dies the last hit is discarded. End of sequence.

Units in the game only roll batches of 12 d6 or 6 d6 if they are crippled. Armour is automatic, no rolls. 14 dice rolled for one attack sequence with one out of your 4-6 squads. The game is fast paced yet exciting. Compared to 40k where 40pts units shoot 76 dice and you have 2000pts armies.

Funny how one man's trash is another man's treasure. Some of the mechinaics of 40k they did away with (apparently) were some of my favorite parts of the game. So many dice you need a bucket, and especially especially scatter, blast markers and templates.

As a side question, when 8th was 8n rumor-mill phase, one of the non-startets was they were talking about doing away with the points system. Did that happen?

 jasper76 wrote:
Funny how one man's trash is another man's treasure. Some of the mechinaics of 40k they did away with (apparently) were some of my favorite parts of the game. So many dice you need a bucket, and especially especially scatter, blast markers and templates.

As a side question, when 8th was 8n rumor-mill phase, one of the non-startets was they were talking about doing away with the points system. Did that happen?

You can’t please everybody all the time, but 8th Ed seems to be very successful. Regarding terrain, there is still cover, but you have to be on/in the terrain to have an effect. LOS. An still be blocked, but you just need to see a bit of the target.

Points still exist, but they also have Power Level (PL) as a streamlined method. It didn’t really catch on with the wider community, but it can work. We will likely now see a vitriolic battle on the subject...

ThE “doing away with points” thing was simply internet rumour-inventing based on AOS launch.

It didn’t happen.

Regarding terrain, it’s incredibly easy to amend any of the terrain rules to suit your game. We use 95% homemade terrain and just borrow bits from the official datasheets that suit. It’s not difficult to do and makes games more enjoyable. I have had to build more tall terrain, as LOS-blocking is crucial to include, but area terrain and ruins you can see into can still be meaningful. If terrain is meaningless in your games try doing something different. We find maneuvering for LOS to generate some of the best moments in our games. Just make meaningful terrain and it’ll have a meaningful impact. Use a handful of Swiss cheese plastic ruins and plastic pipes on Planet Bowling Ball and you’ll have a shocking experience.

Didn't GW try it in 8th with power points though? it is just that no one wanted to play the game that way.

Karol wrote:
Didn't GW try it in 8th with power points though? it is just that no one wanted to play the game that way.

No, they gave another way. Points and PL launched at the same time.

But they really tried to push the new thing, deep strike was for a second limited by it, not by actual points. all the adverts were saying that point costs of units come in the box, but those were only PL , which no one sane uses.

Just because GW fail at implementation and people didn't like it, doesn't mean they didn't want it to be a thing.

It is a thing if you want to use. And it’s not insane to use PL, don’t be that guy. Be polite. It’s an option for those who enjoy it and is in no way the main thrust of 40K. Sure points are behind a paywall but that is Not A New Thing. Matched Play is the default and GW embrace that, whilst providing other play options for those who enjoy them.

Karol wrote:
But they really tried to push the new thing, deep strike was for a second limited by it, not by actual points. all the adverts were saying that point costs of units come in the box, but those were only PL , which no one sane uses.

Just because GW fail at implementation and people didn't like it, doesn't mean they didn't want it to be a thing.

I use Power Levels for games of Basement Hammer - I think I’m sane. It’s not a bad way to start out. I use points for matched play at the FLGS. If they had wanted to do away with points then they would have done away with them. I wouldn’t call it a failure.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
ThE “doing away with points” thing was simply internet rumour-inventing based on AOS launch.

It didn’t happen.

Actually, I think it did and then GW changed it at the last minute.

I'm 99% sure that 8th edition was intended to only use power levels. Hence why only Power Levels are included on each model's dataslates. Points are nowhere to be seen.

I think the pages of point values were a last-minute inclusion after they saw the players' reaction to AoS.

The issue with the 8th edition is that while it is certainly more streamlined than 7th it quickly developed all of the same problems: Rules bloat, rollercoaster power curve, and no idea of the scale that it wants to be. As well as constant and often obvious errors that need to be FAQd within weeks when even a cursory glance would reveal the issues. It's like they are rushing things out without really concerning themselves and just saying oh well we will fix it later so it doesn't matter. This is made worse (or better, YMMV) by the fact it's clear a lot of designs are being driven by the need to satisfy the endless loop of the competitive crowd, I am sure in no small part instigated and pushed by the fact that the ITC and major tournament organizers are also the playtesters. And yes, while balancing the game around competitive play will overall make a more balanced game, GW appears to be simply playing catch-up constantly which results in perfectly fine rules being nerfed into the ground because they are abused in cutthroat competitive play or due to their release schedule having broken things stay broken for months on end and by the time they get fixed, the competitive crowd has already moved on to the next broken thing so fixing the previously broken thing achieves nothing more than grandstanding to show "See? We are taking feedback and balancing things!" for the PR.

Those are still huge problems that continue to exist. So overall I feel 8th is still in a very poor place, but compared to 7th edition it seems like a shining beacon, so people continue to sing its praises and ignore the obvious flaws.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vipoid wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
ThE “doing away with points” thing was simply internet rumour-inventing based on AOS launch.

It didn’t happen.

Actually, I think it did and then GW changed it at the last minute.

I'm 99% sure that 8th edition was intended to only use power levels. Hence why only Power Levels are included on each model's dataslates. Points are nowhere to be seen.

I think the pages of point values were a last-minute inclusion after they saw the players' reaction to AoS.

I would not be surprised. Launch AOS was an experiment that, sadly, fell flat on its face. GW was trying in part to divest their game from the cutthroat competitive nature it had become as well as move back to the "oldschool" style of gaming often seen in historical wargaming where points and "balance" are up to you and a social agreement to not be an ass is in play. It was soundly rejected by the community which for the most part no longer wants that sort of game but wants something with broad tournament appeal and support.

Power Level was and remains the best idea that 8th edition had, it helps to get away from mini-max play styles, and competitive play where every point spent on a force has to be worthwhile.

Sadly it was poorly implemented and needs to be fixed a bit more as it can still be abused. However it came from a very good idea, one that I wish GW had of paid more focus to and scraped points entirely.

Selecting units as blocks with a Power Level point for a weapon option gave GW the parimater for the weapon impact, this would have helped give balance.

 stonehorse wrote:
Power Level was and remains the best idea that 8th edition had, it helps to get away from mini-max play styles, and competitive play where every point spent on a force has to be worthwhile.

Sadly it was poorly implemented and needs to be fixed a bit more as it can still be abused. However it came from a very good idea, one that I wish GW had of paid more focus to and scraped points entirely.

Selecting units as blocks with a Power Level point for a weapon option gave GW the parimater for the weapon impact, this would have helped give balance.

It's a good idea but one that is fundamentally flawed because competitive-minded people will (and do) jump at "free". I often say that when it comes to Power Levels if your immediate thought is "Woo hoo I'll take every single upgrade I can because they're free!" then you're missing the point of power level.

Wayniac wrote:

 stonehorse wrote:
Power Level was and remains the best idea that 8th edition had, it helps to get away from mini-max play styles, and competitive play where every point spent on a force has to be worthwhile.

Sadly it was poorly implemented and needs to be fixed a bit more as it can still be abused. However it came from a very good idea, one that I wish GW had of paid more focus to and scraped points entirely.

Selecting units as blocks with a Power Level point for a weapon option gave GW the parimater for the weapon impact, this would have helped give balance.

It's a good idea but one that is fundamentally flawed because competitive-minded people will (and do) jump at "free". I often say that when it comes to Power Levels if your immediate thought is "Woo hoo I'll take every single upgrade I can because they're free!" then you're missing the point of power level.

Exactly, very much a just because one can, doesn't mean one should.

Sadly I think 40k is too infected with players having a need to win for something like PL to flourish, due to the tournament/competitive scene.

Casual play requires a certain mind set, that the game seems to be less focused upon in my opinion.

 stonehorse wrote:

Wayniac wrote:

 stonehorse wrote:
Power Level was and remains the best idea that 8th edition had, it helps to get away from mini-max play styles, and competitive play where every point spent on a force has to be worthwhile.

Sadly it was poorly implemented and needs to be fixed a bit more as it can still be abused. However it came from a very good idea, one that I wish GW had of paid more focus to and scraped points entirely.

Selecting units as blocks with a Power Level point for a weapon option gave GW the parimater for the weapon impact, this would have helped give balance.

It's a good idea but one that is fundamentally flawed because competitive-minded people will (and do) jump at "free". I often say that when it comes to Power Levels if your immediate thought is "Woo hoo I'll take every single upgrade I can because they're free!" then you're missing the point of power level.

Exactly, very much a just because one can, doesn't mean one should.

Sadly I think 40k is too infected with players having a need to win for something like PL to flourish, due to the tournament/competitive scene.

Casual play requires a certain mind set, that the game seems to be less focused upon in my opinion.

It is. I will 100% state that competitive play has its benefits, in that it often encourages better-written rules and, in most cses (read: non-GW games) better balance. So casual play certainly can benefit from that, but not in Warhammer with GW writing the rules as has consistently been shown over the years.

 vipoid wrote:


Actually, I think it did and then GW changed it at the last minute.

I'm 99% sure that 8th edition was intended to only use power levels. Hence why only Power Levels are included on each model's dataslates. Points are nowhere to be seen.

I think the pages of point values were a last-minute inclusion after they saw the players' reaction to AoS.

there seemed to be a lot of things they planed for 8th that didn't happen in the end, because of how some reactions to AoS. For example the reset in 8th was suppose to be more in depth. And it isn't even suprising that GW reacted by not implementing some of the stuff fully. It is one thing to experiment with stuff that is not making or even losing you money, then to do the same to the thing that keeps you out of the red.

Where do you get the impression that 8th was supposed to be more in depth? It reads to me like 8th was supposed to be a lot *less* deep. The core rules and first books strongly skewed that way. So now we have a shallow system with deep bandaids instead of a deep system with shallow bandaids.

the changes to the lore wer suppose to be more in depth. To a point where some stuff wouldn't come over from prior edition.

I mean you can even read the new marine books now. Normal marines are practicaly not mentioned there. Art is mostly of primaris stuff. Examples for lets say marine progression are made with primaris. Fluff stuff is often and they do X cool things to the sound of bolt rifle fire.

Someone here said that durning one of the studio talks on their channel it was mentioned that initialy they played for Inari to be the eldar of 8th ed.

I wonder if that colossal Tyranid planet/creature that gets a brief mention in the Tyranid Codex was going to be part of the re-write for the Tyranids, but as it didn't go ahead it was left in as an interesting idea.

Karol wrote:
the changes to the lore wer suppose to be more in depth. To a point where some stuff wouldn't come over from prior edition.

I mean you can even read the new marine books now. Normal marines are practicaly not mentioned there. Art is mostly of primaris stuff. Examples for lets say marine progression are made with primaris. Fluff stuff is often and they do X cool things to the sound of bolt rifle fire.

Someone here said that durning one of the studio talks on their channel it was mentioned that initialy they played for Inari to be the eldar of 8th ed.

Ah, I see.

Deep/Depth tends to be about how complex/convoluted/insight-worthy/interesting something is.

Wide/width tends to be about how sweeping/different/changed something is.

I'd call what you're referring to wide but not deep. That's what confused me.

 jasper76 wrote:
Funny how one man's trash is another man's treasure. Some of the mechinaics of 40k they did away with (apparently) were some of my favorite parts of the game. So many dice you need a bucket, and especially especially scatter, blast markers and templates.

As a side question, when 8th was 8n rumor-mill phase, one of the non-startets was they were talking about doing away with the points system. Did that happen?

No. Points are still here.

But I'm glad templates & scatter are gone. The current system doesn't necessarily feel as satisfying as holding a green disk of death over a tower full of devastators, but it slowed down the game more than any number of dice under FRF-SRF [Looking at you, Wyvern!] and resulted in so many "It went this way!" arguments. Mostly I hate the "It went this way!" discussions. I feel like I should give my opponent the benefit of the doubt, but some times it was pretty ridiculous with a claimed 60 degrees difference between us, and of course the whole thing where the tank is 4" wide on it's narrow direction, the template is 5" is diameter, no, I didn't miss, because it's physically impossible for me to miss with a deviation 3"!




As for depth, as I said earlier, detail and complexity do not equal tactical depth. I would say that tactical depth is the range of deciding and meaningful choices you have to make. 8th has a lot more tactical depth than 7th [though some of it is from the stratagem system that could be backwards-applied to earlier editions], though it reduced the overall level of detail and complexity.
Vehicle facing and weapons arcs, which are generally portrayed as the most common area where depth was reduced, were, I don't think, actually seriously meaningful. Everything is on a scale, and I think they were more on the end of their effect just being detail and flavor than tactically meaningful. Outside of edge cases where specific special rules allowed weapons to ignore facing in the late lifecycle of the game [which were just terrible] flanking vehicles was pretty much impossible since the actually weak rear arc was narrow and basically always faced the board edge, and with all weapons generally able to fire in the front arc, minimal ability to split fire of different weapons systems, and restrictions of weapons you can actually use while moving, pointing the tank such that it can shoot at the target also generally put all guns that want to shoot it in the frontal arc.
To be fair, it could have mattered if units had been designed around it, but there weren't generally a whole lot of things that really took advantage of it. The current system has a similar underutilization of the giving of tanks toughness and armor ratings, allowing a theoretically very large range of variation in the defensive properties of vehicles and the effectiveness of weapons against them... but every vehicles is T7/8 Sv3+ W10-12.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:
Funny how one man's trash is another man's treasure. Some of the mechinaics of 40k they did away with (apparently) were some of my favorite parts of the game. So many dice you need a bucket, and especially especially scatter, blast markers and templates.

As a side question, when 8th was 8n rumor-mill phase, one of the non-startets was they were talking about doing away with the points system. Did that happen?

No. Points are still here.

But I'm glad templates & scatter are gone. The current system doesn't necessarily feel as satisfying as holding a green disk of death over a tower full of devastators, but it slowed down the game more than any number of dice under FRF-SRF [Looking at you, Wyvern!] and resulted in so many "It went this way!" arguments. Mostly I hate the "It went this way!" discussions. I feel like I should give my opponent the benefit of the doubt, but some times it was pretty ridiculous with a claimed 60 degrees difference between us, and of course the whole thing where the tank is 4" wide on it's narrow direction, the template is 5" is diameter, no, I didn't miss, because it's physically impossible for me to miss with a deviation 3"!




As for depth, as I said earlier, detail and complexity do not equal tactical depth. I would say that tactical depth is the range of deciding and meaningful choices you have to make. 8th has a lot more tactical depth than 7th [though some of it is from the stratagem system that could be backwards-applied to earlier editions], though it reduced the overall level of detail and complexity.
Vehicle facing and weapons arcs, which are generally portrayed as the most common area where depth was reduced, were, I don't think, actually seriously meaningful. Everything is on a scale, and I think they were more on the end of their effect just being detail and flavor than tactically meaningful. Outside of edge cases where specific special rules allowed weapons to ignore facing in the late lifecycle of the game [which were just terrible] flanking vehicles was pretty much impossible since the actually weak rear arc was narrow and basically always faced the board edge, and with all weapons generally able to fire in the front arc, minimal ability to split fire of different weapons systems, and restrictions of weapons you can actually use while moving, pointing the tank such that it can shoot at the target also generally put all guns that want to shoot it in the frontal arc.
To be fair, it could have mattered if units had been designed around it, but there weren't generally a whole lot of things that really took advantage of it. The current system has a similar underutilization of the giving of tanks toughness and armor ratings, allowing a theoretically very large range of variation in the defensive properties of vehicles and the effectiveness of weapons against them... but every vehicles is T7/8 Sv3+ W10-12.

Armour facing was very important, it allowed fast units/models to utilise their speed and strike the more vulnerable areas.

Not only this, but it also creates situations where vehicles may be in a tough situation, as they may want to move to get to a better position to shoot/block loS/deny objective/etc, but to do so would mean opening up their less armoured sides to attack.

It was about trade off, which while not very deep on the surface when seen in isolation. They offer a lot of depth when the game has a lot of them that compound upon each other

The change to rapid fire weapons as they were in 3rd made a big loss in trade off.

They may have been difficult for new people to see, and frustrating as experienced players could and would capitalise upon them. However, there inclusion made the game more of a game of tactical choices. Unlike now where it is all about list building around a powerful combo and command point farming to use the best strategems for the combo.

 stonehorse wrote:


Armour facing was very important, it allowed fast units/models to utilise their speed and strike the more vulnerable areas.

Not only this, but it also creates situations where vehicles may be in a tough situation, as they may want to move to get to a better position to shoot/block loS/deny objective/etc, but to do so would mean opening up their less armoured sides to attack.

It was about trade off, which while not very deep on the surface when seen in isolation. They offer a lot of depth when the game has a lot of them that compound upon each other

The change to rapid fire weapons as they were in 3rd made a big loss in trade off.

They may have been difficult for new people to see, and frustrating as experienced players could and would capitalise upon them. However, there inclusion made the game more of a game of tactical choices. Unlike now where it is all about list building around a powerful combo and command point farming to use the best strategems for the combo.

This is wholly incongruent with my experience. From my experience in 7th, the "more experience players" than I [by which case I mean the people who beat me], generally weren't using light fast units with ranged weapons that couldn't penetrate the front/side of my tank to get shots against it's AV10 rear, they were using units that had multi-shot Destroyer weapons that I could only hit on 6's [if at all], large sections of multiwound melee cavalry models with a 2+ invulnerable save [and a half dozen special characters for their special rules] that I could still only hit on 6's if target at all, monstrous creatures with the ability to move after they shot and long range firepower, and if they were taking advantage of the fact that my rear armor was 10 and front 14, they were doing so by using a units brought in a special set of units that when brought together and near each other always hit the rear armor and had a 2+ cover save...

Which sounds a lot more like the power combo stacking you're decrying that anything in the modern day.


I rarely had fast lightly armed units try to flank my tanks. The only things that every really tried to get in my rear arc were deep strikers, and if they were going for that they usually carried meltaguns and were equally happy to land to the side or the front of the tank as long as they were close.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 stonehorse wrote:


Armour facing was very important, it allowed fast units/models to utilise their speed and strike the more vulnerable areas.

Not only this, but it also creates situations where vehicles may be in a tough situation, as they may want to move to get to a better position to shoot/block loS/deny objective/etc, but to do so would mean opening up their less armoured sides to attack.

It was about trade off, which while not very deep on the surface when seen in isolation. They offer a lot of depth when the game has a lot of them that compound upon each other

The change to rapid fire weapons as they were in 3rd made a big loss in trade off.

They may have been difficult for new people to see, and frustrating as experienced players could and would capitalise upon them. However, there inclusion made the game more of a game of tactical choices. Unlike now where it is all about list building around a powerful combo and command point farming to use the best strategems for the combo.

This is wholly incongruent with my experience. From my experience in 7th, the "more experience players" than I [by which case I mean the people who beat me], generally weren't using light fast units with ranged weapons that couldn't penetrate the front/side of my tank to get shots against it's AV10 rear, they were using units that had multi-shot Destroyer weapons that I could only hit on 6's [if at all], large sections of multiwound melee cavalry models with a 2+ invulnerable save [and a half dozen special characters for their special rules] that I could still only hit on 6's if target at all, monstrous creatures with the ability to move after they shot and long range firepower, and if they were taking advantage of the fact that my rear armor was 10 and front 14, they were doing so by using a units brought in a special set of units that when brought together and near each other always hit the rear armor and had a 2+ cover save...

Which sounds a lot more like the power combo stacking you're decrying that anything in the modern day.


I rarely had fast lightly armed units try to flank my tanks. The only things that every really tried to get in my rear arc were deep strikers, and if they were going for that they usually carried meltaguns and were equally happy to land to the side or the front of the tank as long as they were close.

Yep that was 7th, how much D can you take, and how strong of a deathstar can you take.

The only time facing had any importance was in 5th and prier and even then many armies didnt care b.c of special rules like Lance, Rend, melta, etc.. I dont remember ANY of my games where the facing actually made the game better tactically, it was more of a "yeah its there and it is cool fluff rule that really doesn't feel needed"

What really mattered was the chart, did you wreck it or not, it could take 1 wound to do it, and other times 10 wounds. So you would prepare multi shots at the same tank no matter what, you might have 1 or 2 on a side, but the rest almost never could be, i think that is why it never really mattered. A lot of the times a head on shot in 4th/5th made them fail that 4+/5+/6+ roll (different weapons had different modifiers on the chart).

Edit: Didnt play 2nd or 3rd, was into fantasy, but from 4th up is my experience, so for me 4 editions and facing never mattered in any of my games.

The issue with facings is that they only affected a single unit type, vehicles. Not monsters, not emplaced artillery, not heavy and crew served weapons, nor giant robots using monster rules.

Even with vehicles, facing often didnt matter. Many, if not most, vehicles had identical or close front/side armor (e.g. all Eldar/Dark Eldar vehicles/Necron vehicles, most SM vehicles), while rear armor was almost universally AV10 and 99% of the time only mattered for CC (where it was a stand-in as opposed to a tactical facing). A Rhino, Falcon, Land Raider, Raider, Doom Barge, Vyper, Dreadnought, Venom, Wave Serpent, Ravager, Razorback, etc ad nauseum didn't care about you fast flanking unit hitting side vs front armor, mostly only IG had to *really* care a whole lot.

Add to that the weirdness with hull shapes and sometimes dealing with as many as two dozen or more hulls on the table, and they became complexity for its own sake rather than adding any real tactical depth to the game. Particularly by the 6E/7e era when so much would either just ignore or overcome any AV (like half a dozen drop podding meltaguns, D weapons, Haywire, etc) or could just strip HP's after their introduction, facing became increasingly less relevant.

If we're gonna deal with facings, it needed to be more widespread to something more than just conventional vehicles, and at a smaller scale where we aren't having to deal with entire tank companies, and in situations where front/side have more meaningful differences for more units. Given the direction of 40k and 8E, losing facings was fine for the ~2000pt games most people play.

They probably could have gone with just a rear facing and rear and sides for super heavy.
Even if not used for armour, you could do something with rear facings that give a bit more thought.
But would not be much if the game itself doesn’t use it.

You could even have 3facings on things like eldar tanks. But I think only super heavy with weapons that are effected would really need sides.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 stonehorse wrote:


Armour facing was very important, it allowed fast units/models to utilise their speed and strike the more vulnerable areas.

Not only this, but it also creates situations where vehicles may be in a tough situation, as they may want to move to get to a better position to shoot/block loS/deny objective/etc, but to do so would mean opening up their less armoured sides to attack.

It was about trade off, which while not very deep on the surface when seen in isolation. They offer a lot of depth when the game has a lot of them that compound upon each other

The change to rapid fire weapons as they were in 3rd made a big loss in trade off.

They may have been difficult for new people to see, and frustrating as experienced players could and would capitalise upon them. However, there inclusion made the game more of a game of tactical choices. Unlike now where it is all about list building around a powerful combo and command point farming to use the best strategems for the combo.

This is wholly incongruent with my experience. From my experience in 7th, the "more experience players" than I [by which case I mean the people who beat me], generally weren't using light fast units with ranged weapons that couldn't penetrate the front/side of my tank to get shots against it's AV10 rear, they were using units that had multi-shot Destroyer weapons that I could only hit on 6's [if at all], large sections of multiwound melee cavalry models with a 2+ invulnerable save [and a half dozen special characters for their special rules] that I could still only hit on 6's if target at all, monstrous creatures with the ability to move after they shot and long range firepower, and if they were taking advantage of the fact that my rear armor was 10 and front 14, they were doing so by using a units brought in a special set of units that when brought together and near each other always hit the rear armor and had a 2+ cover save...

Which sounds a lot more like the power combo stacking you're decrying that anything in the modern day.


I rarely had fast lightly armed units try to flank my tanks. The only things that every really tried to get in my rear arc were deep strikers, and if they were going for that they usually carried meltaguns and were equally happy to land to the side or the front of the tank as long as they were close.

That was one of the major problems with 7th edition. There were also six editions prior to that..........

I remember armor facings being semi-relevant in my games of 3rd-5th, but if I'm honest, it was not all that often. Many vehicles had identical front and side armor values, and pretty much all light vehicles were 10/10/10 open-topped. The heaviest vehicles like Land Raiders and Monoliths were 14/14/14.

In practice, the only vehicles for which I recall it being a consideration were IG, SM, and SOB tanks and Ork battlewagons.

Against these vehicles, more often it made a difference not in shooting but in close combat, because in a few editions, you always hit the rear armor in CC. This could easily be replicated today by imposing a penalty of -1 Toughness for non-walker vehicles being struck in close combat or something. If you really wanted to replicate the tactical shooting aspects of armor facings, you could also give a small number of vehicles yet more special rules like, "this vehicle's Toughness becomes 9 against shooting attacks originating from the following directions [and add a little graphic on the datacard]"

Apple fox wrote:
They probably could have gone with just a rear facing and rear and sides for super heavy.
Even if not used for armour, you could do something with rear facings that give a bit more thought.
But would not be much if the game itself doesn’t use it.

You could even have 3facings on things like eldar tanks. But I think only super heavy with weapons that are effected would really need sides.

Going down the rabbit hole a bit, if I wanted to redesign the old facing system to matter, I'd go with front 180 degrees from the front of the model is the front arc, everything else is the rear arc, like Flames of War and it's KT-equivalent TANKS [at a high angle of incidence, a side hit will bounce anyway]. At this point, it still doesn't matter since it can point it's hull whichever direction it wants to at the end of the move and shoot in whatever direction it wants to with its turret, so restricting turning by having movement costs to turn [ie: takes half your movement to turn] and move in reverse.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Apple fox wrote:
They probably could have gone with just a rear facing and rear and sides for super heavy.
Even if not used for armour, you could do something with rear facings that give a bit more thought.
But would not be much if the game itself doesn’t use it.

You could even have 3facings on things like eldar tanks. But I think only super heavy with weapons that are effected would really need sides.

Going down the rabbit hole a bit, if I wanted to redesign the old facing system to matter, I'd go with front 180 degrees from the front of the model is the front arc, everything else is the rear arc, like Flames of War and it's KT-equivalent TANKS [at a high angle of incidence, a side hit will bounce anyway]. At this point, it still doesn't matter since it can point it's hull whichever direction it wants to at the end of the move and shoot in whatever direction it wants to with its turret, so restricting turning by having movement costs to turn [ie: takes half your movement to turn] and move in reverse.

Having or have no turret itself could be interesting, as well as rules so tanks are unable to turn if they are unable to in terrain. Or blocked by other models.
Being that a lot of tanks have support weapons as well on the hull.
Even a lot of the monsters I think could be interesting under a system like this, attacking from a monsters blind spot should be interesting as well.

Apple fox wrote:


Having or have no turret itself could be interesting, as well as rules so tanks are unable to turn if they are unable to in terrain. Or blocked by other models.
Being that a lot of tanks have support weapons as well on the hull.
Even a lot of the monsters I think could be interesting under a system like this, attacking from a monsters blind spot should be interesting as well.

There's no real reason for monstrous creatures to obey different rules than tanks, they're basically the same thing just differently fluffed, and the whole riptide thing back in 6th exposed that. Any given damage effect can be extrapolated to work on a monstrous creature.

Anyway, an idealized vehicle system probably belongs in a different thread.

Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

Well if infantry and bikes etc had multibases or movement trays they could easaly have unit facings. This would be pretty cool I think. It would look similar like it did in epic. Imagine basing 10 guardsmen together traversing some craters and barbed wire. Really going ham on those environmental effects...

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

RT and 2E had facings for everything, but were playing with much smaller forces, armies that resembled more what we see at 750-1000pts today in most cases. Facings make a lot more sense at that scale.

Pointed Stick wrote:
I remember armor facings being semi-relevant in my games of 3rd-5th, but if I'm honest, it was not all that often. Many vehicles had identical front and side armor values, and pretty much all light vehicles were 10/10/10 open-topped. The heaviest vehicles like Land Raiders and Monoliths were 14/14/14.

It depended what army you played, but for example Guard and Tau facings were very relevant. I found difference for Hammerheads AV13 front and AV12 side often very signifant as with front armour you were often 50% less likely to get penetrating hits. When Hull point system was introduced in 6th edition, facings became slightly less important as massed S7/8 shooting and stripping off HP's was preferred way to deal with vehicles. And then Riptides and Wraithknights and other nonsense monsters pretty much made vehicles irrelevant but that is another story.

One issue with 40k as a game is that all the maneuvering is very linear. 95% of the time you either move forward, or backward. Vehicle facings added at least small motivation for lateral maneuvering.
Somebody said that all those 'complications' like AV values, vehicle facings etc. added nothing but that is incorrect - they added flavour. Flavour is why I played 40k. I want to see stuff blow up, turrets fly and terrified men flee. 8th edition is so abstracted and clean that it no longer feels like watching a battle unfold. It feels like a game, and tactically very weak game which has all weird artificial stuff like command points glued on to add more choices for the player.

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

I think a good place to stop would be 'anything that comes in a unit'. Simply because I don't envy trying to do facing for an entire unit of models.

Or, more accurately, I don't envy trying to do whatever rules GW would write for the facing of an entire unit.

You could just draw an imaginary rectangle around a unit and go from there.

We’ve already been through that silliness in previous editions. Usually 90 degree field of vision to a model’s front was the 2nd ed/Necromunda default. Which for the more TFG folk requires defining what the front of the model is. it’s obvious to most As the way the model is facing or looking, but hey. These being the same people who complained some models couldn’t shoot because LOS was stated as being drawn from the model’s eyes and the model has a helmet on so you can’t see its eyes therefore no Space Marines with hats on can ever fire a gun. Or the “Terminatora don’t have Terminator armour listed so don’t have it”. Boggles the mind, but there you go. Those people exist to poke holes in logic and common sense and would require a full Datafax of diagrams for every possible build of every model. You’d never be able to codify infantry model facings to their satisfaction. Not worrying and having 360 fire is far preferable as a designer as you literally don’t need to worry about codifying any of this or stifling modelling creativity by mandating set model poses.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
We’ve already been through that silliness in previous editions. Usually 90 degree field of vision to a model’s front was the 2nd ed/Necromunda default. Which for the more TFG folk requires defining what the front of the model is. it’s obvious to most As the way the model is facing or looking, but hey. These being the same people who complained some models couldn’t shoot because LOS was stated as being drawn from the model’s eyes and the model has a helmet on so you can’t see its eyes therefore no Space Marines with hats on can ever fire a gun. Or the “Terminatora don’t have Terminator armour listed so don’t have it”. Boggles the mind, but there you go. Those people exist to poke holes in logic and common sense and would require a full Datafax of diagrams for every possible build of every model. You’d never be able to codify infantry model facings to their satisfaction. Not worrying and having 360 fire is far preferable as a designer as you literally don’t need to worry about codifying any of this or stifling modelling creativity by mandating set model poses.

Those "TFGs" are right though. It is helpful to clearly define terms.

Blastaar wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
We’ve already been through that silliness in previous editions. Usually 90 degree field of vision to a model’s front was the 2nd ed/Necromunda default. Which for the more TFG folk requires defining what the front of the model is. it’s obvious to most As the way the model is facing or looking, but hey. These being the same people who complained some models couldn’t shoot because LOS was stated as being drawn from the model’s eyes and the model has a helmet on so you can’t see its eyes therefore no Space Marines with hats on can ever fire a gun. Or the “Terminatora don’t have Terminator armour listed so don’t have it”. Boggles the mind, but there you go. Those people exist to poke holes in logic and common sense and would require a full Datafax of diagrams for every possible build of every model. You’d never be able to codify infantry model facings to their satisfaction. Not worrying and having 360 fire is far preferable as a designer as you literally don’t need to worry about codifying any of this or stifling modelling creativity by mandating set model poses.

Those "TFGs" are right though. It is helpful to clearly define terms.

Clearly defining terms sadly sits on the thin grey line right next to TFG trying to poke holes into every interaction. Some of the "faults" with the rules that get reported are some serious levels stupid. I recall someone trying to argue that the rulebook never defines how to roll dice which apparently opens up a string of issues - "RAW can you actually roll dice?"

 vipoid wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

I think a good place to stop would be 'anything that comes in a unit'. Simply because I don't envy trying to do facing for an entire unit of models.

Or, more accurately, I don't envy trying to do whatever rules GW would write for the facing of an entire unit.

I just naturally do it with my 40k, its sorta so easy even when playing horde armys if your aware that it should not be a issue. But i think 40k is too simple to utilize it at the infantry level anyway. It would probably end up as a +1 to hit or something like that at best, and shudder to think how that could just add so much time onto a very long and laggy feeling game.
Also isnt there some vehicle that are in units, Its been a while since i used some.

All those detailed rules people lament going away come down to the scale of the game.
For many editions 40k has been very confused as to what scale of game it wants to be. A small scale skirmish game with a few squads, a leader, and maybe a tank. Or a big company scaled game with 10+ tanks and over 100 infantry models.

With a small scaled game, it's easy to give more highly detailed rules to your models. Armor facings on tanks, along with an assortment of various damage states that can be applied to them (shaken, stunned, broken weapons, etc), weapon arcs, etc. All that stuff is fine when you don't have all that many models, and indeed most of it originated in earlier editions where there simply were fewer models in the average game.
When you scale the size of the game up however, a lot of that stuff just starts to get in the way, and you end up taking an hour to resolve your turn.

With 8th edition, GW stopped waffling so much about what sort of game they wanted it to be, and came down on the side of a company scaled game with more appropriately abstract rules.
It's still a bit confused however. See stuff like upgrading your guardsman squad sergeant from a las pistol to a bolt pistol. That's the sort of thing that's just irrelevant detail in the current scale of the game. It's fine for kill team, but in 40k it just doesn't matter.


However I agree that those sorts of rules should still have a place. In coming down on one side of the debate, GW has left a hole on the other side. I don't think such rules should come back to regular 40k, but adding a new game sized in-between kill team and 40k in scale would be the right place for it.
However if you want to have the same massive armies we've got in current 40k, and also have highly detailed rules for everything, then I have a bit less sympathy.

Arson Fire wrote:
All those detailed rules people lament going away come down to the scale of the game.
For many editions 40k has been very confused as to what scale of game it wants to be. A small scale skirmish game with a few squads, a leader, and maybe a tank. Or a big company scaled game with 10+ tanks and over 100 infantry models.

With a small scaled game, it's easy to give more highly detailed rules to your models. Armor facings on tanks, along with an assortment of various damage states that can be applied to them (shaken, stunned, broken weapons, etc), weapon arcs, etc. All that stuff is fine when you don't have all that many models, and indeed most of it originated in earlier editions where there simply were fewer models in the average game.
When you scale the size of the game up however, a lot of that stuff just starts to get in the way, and you end up taking an hour to resolve your turn.

With 8th edition, GW stopped waffling so much about what sort of game they wanted it to be, and came down on the side of a company scaled game with more appropriately abstract rules.
It's still a bit confused however. See stuff like upgrading your guardsman squad sergeant from a las pistol to a bolt pistol. That's the sort of thing that's just irrelevant detail in the current scale of the game. It's fine for kill team, but in 40k it just doesn't matter.


However I agree that those sorts of rules should still have a place. In coming down on one side of the debate, GW has left a hole on the other side. I don't think such rules should come back to regular 40k, but adding a new game sized in-between kill team and 40k in scale would be the right place for it.
However if you want to have the same massive armies we've got in current 40k, and also have highly detailed rules for everything, then I have a bit less sympathy.

Why i agree, i do not think GW really worked out what scale they want the game to play at. They just wanted simple, but have clearly not keep to that idea at all. To much money to be made.
But even with the scale 40k is played at i still think it could have all that detail if GW Where to step up and write good rules for it.
WHen it comes down to it, 40k still only has a limited amount of elements on the table at once. With even the most horde armys having a small amount, mostly just in larger groups. But each indvidual one being relatively simple. In many cases if you take out the list of buffs being thrown around, a lot of units on there own amount to a number of dice. With little special going on themselves.

This also relly on them not bumping it up again and throwing in more and more. >.<

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

What would facings on infantry achieve? I don't see any point unless you want to give fire arcs to everyone.

pm713 wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

What would facings on infantry achieve? I don't see any point unless you want to give fire arcs to everyone.

It makes some sense for heavy weapons needing to redeploy to fire in a new facing. Also maybe a flanking attack could pin or scare infantry?

Gitdakka wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

What would facings on infantry achieve? I don't see any point unless you want to give fire arcs to everyone.

It makes some sense for heavy weapons needing to redeploy to fire in a new facing. Also maybe a flanking attack could pin or scare infantry?

It feels a bit like making up more mechanics to justify infantry facing to be honest.

pm713 wrote:

Gitdakka wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

What would facings on infantry achieve? I don't see any point unless you want to give fire arcs to everyone.

It makes some sense for heavy weapons needing to redeploy to fire in a new facing. Also maybe a flanking attack could pin or scare infantry?

It feels a bit like making up more mechanics to justify infantry facing to be honest.

Actually, it would go well with overwatch.
Don't want to get shot by overwatch? Charge the flank.

Arson Fire wrote:
With 8th edition, GW stopped waffling so much about what sort of game they wanted it to be, and came down on the side of a company scaled game with more appropriately abstract rules.
It's still a bit confused however. See stuff like upgrading your guardsman squad sergeant from a las pistol to a bolt pistol. That's the sort of thing that's just irrelevant detail in the current scale of the game. It's fine for kill team, but in 40k it just doesn't matter.

Apocalypse has dipped its toes into this. Like Meganobz just all have "Meganobz weapons" instead of individually having options for powerklaws vs killsaws vs kustom shoota vs kombi shoootas. I rather like this since it leaves you free to model them however you like for aesthetic effect.

This is a slightly annoying problem in 40K right now. If you play Power Level games, Meganobz are worth the exact same PL cost if they all have stock kustom shootas vs if they have kombi-skorchas, which are humongously better. So in the "friendly Power Level game," you're incentivized to cheese the rules by giving them max upgrades since it's the same PL cost. However in matched play with points costs, You're (appropriately) charged for taking max upgrades. Each way to play pulls you in a different direction. And of course having individual models get their own upgrades and shooting/cc profiles increases the bookkeeping and slows down play.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

pm713 wrote:

Gitdakka wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

What would facings on infantry achieve? I don't see any point unless you want to give fire arcs to everyone.

It makes some sense for heavy weapons needing to redeploy to fire in a new facing. Also maybe a flanking attack could pin or scare infantry?

It feels a bit like making up more mechanics to justify infantry facing to be honest.

Actually, it would go well with overwatch.
Don't want to get shot by overwatch? Charge the flank.

But why not turn? I can see a tank not being able to turn and face a charger but not a person. The only way that would make sense to me is if you literally can't see the charger at all but that's easy to avoid.

It would work for something small like Kill Team though.

pm713 wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

pm713 wrote:

Gitdakka wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

What would facings on infantry achieve? I don't see any point unless you want to give fire arcs to everyone.

It makes some sense for heavy weapons needing to redeploy to fire in a new facing. Also maybe a flanking attack could pin or scare infantry?

It feels a bit like making up more mechanics to justify infantry facing to be honest.

Actually, it would go well with overwatch.
Don't want to get shot by overwatch? Charge the flank.

But why not turn? I can see a tank not being able to turn and face a charger but not a person. The only way that would make sense to me is if you literally can't see the charger at all but that's easy to avoid.

It would work for something small like Kill Team though.

On the contrary, a 360 degree arc of vision would make one sense for kill team, imo.
A single person can respond quite quickly to a threat. A whole bunch of people? Not so much. A lot of them will be busy focusing on another threat. Sure, one individual might notice, and respond accordingly, but the other 9 or so soldiers? Probably not so much. The initiative stat should have been retained for overwatch and falling back, really.

pm713 wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

What would facings on infantry achieve? I don't see any point unless you want to give fire arcs to everyone.

I would love it if everything had firing arcs. Then movement and positioning become more relevant. Much of the fun of playing mini games for me is when I get to move my toys around the table. Arcs may also help to make vehicles more interesting while remaining balanced.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 NurglesR0T wrote:

Blastaar wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
We’ve already been through that silliness in previous editions. Usually 90 degree field of vision to a model’s front was the 2nd ed/Necromunda default. Which for the more TFG folk requires defining what the front of the model is. it’s obvious to most As the way the model is facing or looking, but hey. These being the same people who complained some models couldn’t shoot because LOS was stated as being drawn from the model’s eyes and the model has a helmet on so you can’t see its eyes therefore no Space Marines with hats on can ever fire a gun. Or the “Terminatora don’t have Terminator armour listed so don’t have it”. Boggles the mind, but there you go. Those people exist to poke holes in logic and common sense and would require a full Datafax of diagrams for every possible build of every model. You’d never be able to codify infantry model facings to their satisfaction. Not worrying and having 360 fire is far preferable as a designer as you literally don’t need to worry about codifying any of this or stifling modelling creativity by mandating set model poses.

Those "TFGs" are right though. It is helpful to clearly define terms.

Clearly defining terms sadly sits on the thin grey line right next to TFG trying to poke holes into every interaction. Some of the "faults" with the rules that get reported are some serious levels stupid. I recall someone trying to argue that the rulebook never defines how to roll dice which apparently opens up a string of issues - "RAW can you actually roll dice?"

Being clear is just that, being clear to avoid any misunderstanding, and is actually a good preventative measure [i]against[i] "TFG" behavior. Write and ironclad ruleset, at least to the level of Magic: The Gathering, and it becomes much more difficult for people to make stupid arguments.

I was on the RAW side of the 7th DW formation allowing Land Raiders to DS, because the text simply said that units in that formation arrived via DS. (This is how Magic's rules work, by the way- a card does exactly what it says it does) That was not GW's intent, and I knew that, but those are the rules they wrote for us to play with. Eventually, they FAQ'd it. If the codex had been written by a technical writer, properly proofread and play tested, this would have been avoided. Playing according to the written rules is not "TFG" behavior. It is using the single framework provided, that all players can agree on does what it says it does. Intent arguments are just that- arguments that arise when player's attempt to fix poorly written rules themselves.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

pm713 wrote:

Gitdakka wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

What would facings on infantry achieve? I don't see any point unless you want to give fire arcs to everyone.

It makes some sense for heavy weapons needing to redeploy to fire in a new facing. Also maybe a flanking attack could pin or scare infantry?

It feels a bit like making up more mechanics to justify infantry facing to be honest.

Actually, it would go well with overwatch.
Don't want to get shot by overwatch? Charge the flank.

As stated here, that’s certainly one thing. If you have an enemy in front of you and behind you do you, which enemy do you face? Do you point your guys all in one direction and pour fir into one squad and Hope you don’t get charged from behind or do you split your squad’s facing to handle a possible charge from both sides.

Mechanically, you could give units attacking the rear of an enemy a +1 bonus to Wound rolls, indicating shots the enemy never sees coming.

In the end, it just makes positioning a lot more important - do you charge straight into the enemy’s guns or try to maneuver around them to hit from an unexpected angle?

Klickor wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
Are people really bad at reading their dice or something? Even rolling like 90 dice picking out misses takes about 5-10 seconds tops for most people in our group.

Or is this one of these non-issues Dakka likes to act are mountains when they're really just molehills?

You have to count your dice so you have the right amount for each throw and with a large number of dice it can take some time. The more dice the more time it takes to pick up and read to not make a mistake.

If you have to roll 10 dice and remove 5 from the pile it might take 4s if include finding and counting the 10dice. If we have 20 it might take 10s and with 40 the whole process is closer to half a minute. The sheer amount of dice just gets unwieldy.

I can throw 97 dice and remove the 1s and 2s in the blink of an eye. I cant count 97 dice and out put them in my hand in a few seconds though.

Sometimes I just remove models/units like scouts if they have less than a 20% chance of surviving just to skip the rolling of dice from 20 guardsmen. Not worth my time just to see if Im very lucky.

Good thing you're never picking up 97 dice and rolling them. Batches of 20. Proper play would be to lift your models if you know your two models won't survive scores of attacks.

 vipoid wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

I think a good place to stop would be 'anything that comes in a unit'. Simply because I don't envy trying to do facing for an entire unit of models.

Or, more accurately, I don't envy trying to do whatever rules GW would write for the facing of an entire unit.

Do what MEDGe does. First, all kits after the release of this hypothetical edition come with bases (that have them) with notches indicating front and rear arcs. Second, for units of more than one model, facing is determined by the direction the squad leader is facing.

For tanks it is trickier. Front and rear on them are easy, for firing arcs my first thought is using templates of varying degrees. Fiddly, yes, but IMO worth it for the gameplay.

Blastaar wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
We’ve already been through that silliness in previous editions. Usually 90 degree field of vision to a model’s front was the 2nd ed/Necromunda default. Which for the more TFG folk requires defining what the front of the model is. it’s obvious to most As the way the model is facing or looking, but hey. These being the same people who complained some models couldn’t shoot because LOS was stated as being drawn from the model’s eyes and the model has a helmet on so you can’t see its eyes therefore no Space Marines with hats on can ever fire a gun. Or the “Terminatora don’t have Terminator armour listed so don’t have it”. Boggles the mind, but there you go. Those people exist to poke holes in logic and common sense and would require a full Datafax of diagrams for every possible build of every model. You’d never be able to codify infantry model facings to their satisfaction. Not worrying and having 360 fire is far preferable as a designer as you literally don’t need to worry about codifying any of this or stifling modelling creativity by mandating set model poses.

Those "TFGs" are right though. It is helpful to clearly define terms.

So you didn’t actually read to the end of my post...

pm713 wrote:

Gitdakka wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
Personally, I’d like to take facing all the way down to the common infantryman, but that would likely be a bridge too far for most folks.

Though it does beg the question, if you put facings on vehicles and monsters, how small do you go before you stop counting facing? Dreadnought? Bikes? Tyranid Warriors? Terminators? Anything bigger than a 28/32mm base?

What would facings on infantry achieve? I don't see any point unless you want to give fire arcs to everyone.

It makes some sense for heavy weapons needing to redeploy to fire in a new facing. Also maybe a flanking attack could pin or scare infantry?

It feels a bit like making up more mechanics to justify infantry facing to be honest.

Flanking is a core mechanic in other wargames, particularly historicals, and real life. It's how you dig infantry out of cover and inflict irrecoverable morale damage. It's what makes maneuver relevant.

Actually, 40K used to have crossfire rules IIRC- was it a morale penalty?

 JohnnyHell wrote:

Blastaar wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
We’ve already been through that silliness in previous editions. Usually 90 degree field of vision to a model’s front was the 2nd ed/Necromunda default. Which for the more TFG folk requires defining what the front of the model is. it’s obvious to most As the way the model is facing or looking, but hey. These being the same people who complained some models couldn’t shoot because LOS was stated as being drawn from the model’s eyes and the model has a helmet on so you can’t see its eyes therefore no Space Marines with hats on can ever fire a gun. Or the “Terminatora don’t have Terminator armour listed so don’t have it”. Boggles the mind, but there you go. Those people exist to poke holes in logic and common sense and would require a full Datafax of diagrams for every possible build of every model. You’d never be able to codify infantry model facings to their satisfaction. Not worrying and having 360 fire is far preferable as a designer as you literally don’t need to worry about codifying any of this or stifling modelling creativity by mandating set model poses.

Those "TFGs" are right though. It is helpful to clearly define terms.

So you didn’t actually read to the end of my post...

I did, I just focused on the complaint of the TFG abusing rules. Yes, there are people who will deliberately twist or misunderstand things such as the "front" of a model which seems obvious to most, but sometimes people do genuinely get confused about these things. Maybe a mini is posed in such a way that the direction in which it is looking is noticeably different from the angle of its body, and the direction it is pointing its weapon. Mistakes happen, and this kind of clarity is mostly to avoid honest confusion, not protect players from "those people." The LOS argument actually makes a certain kind of sense. LOS was drawn from the model's eyes, and it is perfectly reasonable that players followed that in good faith, not to exploit GW's poor rules to their advantage. What is "obvious" to one person, is less so to another.

360 fire makes great sense for skirmish games, but for unit games, that comes at the cost of depth, and i would certainly prefer the "difficulty" of utilizing arcs of fire for the tactical gameplay.

@eatbarf If I remember correctly there was a rule called crossfire in the advance rules appendix for 3rd ed. It was simply that if a unit fell back into an enemy unit they were destroyed instantly. Ive heard or ork armies that used this rule alot. They could loot IG hellhounds wich caused infantry to auto flee. They used bikes to surround those units before shooting the hellhound causing units to die in droves.